We built ourselves a rude brush house on a shelf of the rocky ledge in a canyon whose sides sloped at an angle of forty-five degrees. Even this shelf was not level. It pitched toward the river, and there was so little of it that during the night’s repose our legs stuck out of the house-entrance. We were obliged to “chock” all our supply of provisions in their respective packages to prevent them from rolling out of our wigwams over the brink and into the Tuolumne. If a potato got loose it ran like a “thing possessed” over the rocks and down into the muddy, raging current. We were obliged to peg ourselves at night while sleeping to prevent a like catastrophe. It was a permanent and laborious existence at an angle of forty-five. To stand erect for any length of time was very tiresome. More frequently, like Nebuchadnezzar, we lived on all fours. “Crevicing” did not prove very profitable. By day the bare rocks become heated by the sun to a blistering capacity. With pick and sledge and crowbar and bent bits of hoop-iron we pried and pounded and scraped, and scraped and pounded and pried all the hot day long, or else were doubled up in all sorts of back-aching, back-breaking, body-tiring positions, drawing up at arm’s-length from some deeper “pothole” or crevice spoonful after spoonful of yellow mould. It did hold considerable gold, and heavy gold too. But it took so long to get the mould. This was in the latter part of September. The termination of the dry season was reached. The first rain came. It came at night. It drizzled through our brush house. It sent tiny streams down the rocky mountain-sides, and some of these streams found their way under us. We had lain and endured the rain from above dripping on our faces and wetting our clothes. In those times one’s day suit served for a nightgown. But when the aqueous enemy undermined our position we had to turn out.