cradle, and “panned out,” or washed, in the same way as in prospecting. While this is being done by one of the company, it is common for the others to spend the ten minutes’ interval in resting themselves. Seated upon the rocks about their companion, they watch the ridge of gold as it dimples brightly up amid the black sand, seeming to me always _the smile of hope_, while many enlivening remarks and the cheering laugh go round. At length, the washing completed, the pan passes from one to another, while each one gives his opinion as to the quantity. The holes in the bottom of the cradle are stopped, more dirt is thrown into the hopper, and again the grating, scraping sounds are heard which are peculiar to the rocking of the cradle, and which, years hence, will accompany our dreams of the mines. July 7th. This morning witnessed an instance of that remarkable success in mining which rarely occurs, but which, when it takes place, turns the heads of so many. I might aptly quote Virgil’s figurative description of Rumor, and apply it to these gold stories. They go out quite respectable in appearance, furnished with hat and cane at the start, but, as they proceed, they suddenly expand to the proportions of Hercules, with his trunk of a tree for a club. We met this story long afterward, after it had returned from its voyage to the States and to Europe, and, but for its having claimed Salmon Falls as its birth-place, it could not have been recognized at all. The facts were simply these: Two Irishmen followed the “lead” of the Jordan brothers, who had made their gold by penetrating into a bank which had evidently been detached from the mountains behind in some convulsion of nature, and pushed forward over the bar. They commenced in the bank at the edge of the bar, and when they reached the line in which the Jordans had found their vein, they were so fortunate as to find it again. This vein is about seven inches wide, and ten feet below the surface of the bank, and is imbedded in a stratum of hard clay, through which the fine scale gold is richly sprinkled. The vein runs, in a compact body, diagonally across the claims which have been and are being “worked out,” and so on, in a straight line, to the edge of the bar, where it is broken, scattered, and lost by its descent. At this remarkable place, these two men, before breakfast this morning, took out $422. As I witnessed their success, for we are working within three yards of them, and when I held a large bottle, nearly full of the beautiful gold, in my hands, I was at first conscious of feelings of elation and hope. This has given place, this evening, to temporary despondency, for I have been compelled to contrast our own small operations with their brilliant success. Poor Jemmie, one of these Irishmen, and who had never before been the owner of a sovereign, said to me to-day, “Every body is talking about my good luck, but, I don’t know how it is, I can’t feel so; and, faith, I think _a