Aug. 26th. On my way to the place for preaching to-day, I stepped into a hornet’s nest, and was badly stung on my hand. These hornets, called “yellow jackets,” live around and in our tents, and share our provisions. I have had twenty of them on my plate at once. My hand was much swollen, and I feared I should be unable to fulfill my engagement with the company by preaching to them. The kindness of the wife of one of the miners, who brought a bottle of hartshorn from the tent, and bathed my hand with it, soon relieved me. Our church was “God’s first temple.” My audience were seated upon the grass on the river bank, beneath a cluster of pine trees. There they were, from all the states--from Europe, from Africa, from Oceanica. Such hours of worship on God’s holy day, spent with my mining companions, or with some beloved Christian brother who remained “steadfast, unmoveable” in his integrity amid the corrupting vices of the mines, will never be forgotten. When we could not walk to the house of God in company, we sometimes walked upon the mountains, and there together sang the songs of Zion, and prayed to the Father ever merciful and good in a strange land. I take pleasure in recalling to my mind such a noble-hearted Christian, who had devoted one fourth of all his anticipated earnings in California to religious charities. It was my pleasure afterward, when in San Francisco, to send him, through the Secretary of the American Bible Society, a quantity of Bibles, hymn-books, and sermons, his purpose being to form a Bible class among the miners. He wished them to be sent as early as possible, as “he hoped,” he said, “to get possession of the ground, and thus keep out the gambling table and the brandy bottle.”