Generally speaking, Swett’s was divided in two portions. There was the old bar on the right bank of the river, settled in “’49,” and there was the flat on the other side, whose golden store was not discovered until 1859. Attempts were made to give this flat a distinct name. Various settlers and miners craved the immortality which they supposed might thus be conferred. For a time it was called “Frazier’s Flat,” from a diabolical Scotchman of that name who lived there. Only one of these names would stick, and finally everybody settled down on the old appellation, “Swett’s.” I do not believe that John Swett, if he did confer his name on this Bar, ever realized the local fame and reputation of his name. When first we struck the diggings at Swett’s left bank, we had great expectations. It was a later discovery, a “back river channel.” Consequent on the discovery of pay ground 1,000 feet back of the river, and the definite fixing of the boundary lines between the various claimants, there ensued the usual series of disputes, rows, bad blood, assaults, and threatened shootings. Nobody was shot. Not even a mining law-suit came of it. A local capitalist threw a flume across the river and brought to bear on the flat the upland muddy water, which came down from Columbia diggings, twenty-five miles away, through Wood’s Creek. That flume was being talked of, being planned, being hoped for and very gradually being erected, during the years of “’59” and “’60,” while the rest of the nation was agitated by “Bleeding Kansas,” “John Brown,” “Squatter Sovereignty,” “The Douglas Party,” “The Little Giant” and all that foreboding series of watchword and motto which preceded “The War.” But the Swett’s Bar mind, the Swett’s Bar hope, the Swett’s Bar expedition, was concentrated principally on a wire cable, two uprights on either side of the river, and some 400 feet of rough wooden flume thereby supported, all of which was to bring us water to wash out the expected gold. At last the suspension flume was finished. We had water. We commenced washing. The dirt did not pay as we expected. We averaged week in and week out about three dollars per day, and one dollar of this went for water money.