The ideas of our pioneer cooks and housekeepers regarding quantities, kinds, and qualities of provisions necessary to be procured for longer or shorter periods, were at first vague. There was an Argonaut who resided at Truetts’ Bar, and, in the fall of 1850, warned by the dollar a pound for flour experience of the past winter, he resolved to lay in a few months’ provisions. He was a lucky miner. Were there now existing on that bar any pioneers who lived there in ’49, they would tell you how he kept a barrel of whiskey in his tent on free tap. Such men are scarce and win name and fame. Said he to the Bar trader when the November clouds began to signal the coming rains, “I want to lay in three months’ provisions.” “Well, make out your order,” said the storekeeper. This troubled G----. At length he gave it verbally thus: “I guess I’ll have two sacks of flour, a side of bacon, ten pounds of sugar, two pounds of coffee, a pound of tea, and--and--a barrel of whiskey.” My own experience taught me some things unconsidered before. Once, while housekeeping, I bought an entire sack of rice. I had no idea then of the elastic and durable properties of rice. A sack looked small. The rice surprised me by its elasticity when put on to boil. Rice swells amazingly. My first pot swelled up, forced off the lid and oozed over. Then I shoveled rice by the big spoonful into everything empty which I could find in the cabin. Still it swelled and oozed. Even the washbasin was full of half-boiled rice. Still it kept on. I saw then that I had put in too much--far too much. The next time I tried half the quantity. That swelled, boiled up, boiled over and also oozed. I never saw such a remarkable grain. The third time I put far less to cook. Even then it arose and filled the pot. The seeds looked minute and harmless enough before being soaked. At last I became disgusted with rice. I looked at the sack. There was the merest excavation made in it by the quantity taken out. This alarmed me. With my gradually decreasing appetite for rice, I reflected and calculated that it would take seven years on that Bar ere I could eat all the rice in that sack. I saw it in imagination all boiled at once and filling the entire cabin. This determined my resolution. I shouldered the sack, carried it back to the store and said: “See here! I want you to exchange this cereal for something that won’t swell so in the cooking. I want to exchange it for something which I can eat up in a reasonable length of time.” The storekeeper was a kind and obliging man. He took it back. But the reputation, the sting of buying an entire sack of rice remained. The “boys” had “spotted” the transaction. The merchant had told them of it. I was reminded of that sack of rice years afterward. CHAPTER XXIII. THE COPPER FEVER.