Still within these interior limits last described lies a comparatively narrow belt of land, difficult of access, guarded by a thousand dangers and privations, yet possessing all the extraordinary and magical influence of Aladdin’s cave, and realizing our boyhood’s dreams when we filled our hats with the shining coins. This--the heart of the country--is the true, the mysterious _California_--the shrine at which tens of thousands of weary and exile pilgrims do homage, and where already great multitudes have left their bones. This is _California_--the country lately an uninviting wilderness, where the Indian and the bear disputed possession, now, all along its streams, upon its bars, in its gulches and ravines, covered with the tented home of the miner, while its hill sides echo back ten thousand eager voices, the din of innumerable picks and shovels, and the scraping and grating sounds of a thousand cradles incessantly rocked, emptied, and refilled. Let us attempt a description. Between the Sierra Nevada on the east, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin on the west, and at about twenty-five miles distance from both, are the foot or lower hills of the Nevada. These foot-hills embrace, or rather constitute, the gold region. They are perfectly defined upon the lower side, where they rise abruptly from the level plain below. Upon the upper side they are irregular, often running up toward the mountains, and rising to an elevation of three or four thousand feet. This belt of land is five hundred miles in length and fifty in width. It is traversed by the tributaries of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin which have been mentioned. These streams, rising in the Sierra Nevada, and flowing west, cut their channels through these foot-hills. They also receive, in their progress, the arroyos from a thousand springs, which burst out over all this enchanted region. These creeks and rivulets, sometimes gliding smoothly along to their meeting, and sometimes becoming impetuous mountain torrents, form the world-renowned ravines and gulches of the California gold diggings. During the prevalence of some great freshet, or other cause sufficient to produce such an effect, these streams are sometimes pushed out of their former channels, which instead are filled up, sometimes to the depth of thirty or even forty feet, with a loose foreign soil. Such placers constitute many and the most important of the “dry diggings,” which sometimes spread themselves out over valleys to some considerable extent, and were doubtless formed by washings from the hills in the vicinity. The “river diggings” include the bars and auriferous portions of the channels of the tributaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, during their passage through the foot-hills.