My Christmas eve I spent most cheerlessly at Green Spring, and the next day reached Woods’s diggings. On the 26th Dec. I visited Sullivan’s diggings, Jamestown, Yorktown, and Curtis’s Creek. A residence in this portion of the mines was, in every way, more desirable than in the more distant mines at this season. Provisions were cheaper, and there was less danger of attacks from the Indians. All the places I have mentioned, together with the Chinese diggings, Mormon Gulch, Sonora, and others, were a cluster of mines lying near to each other, and between the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers. At each of these places were trading tents and dwellings of the miners, chiefly of canvas, with some log and hide houses, and one or two frame buildings. Sonora is the principal of these, the residence chiefly of Mexicans and Chilinos, of whom there are some twelve thousand. Here are furnished provisions, clothing, tools, &c., at almost as low rates as at Stockton. Its hotels, restaurants, and trading tents presented a very busy appearance; and there is no place in the mines where gambling is so much _the business_. Some comfortable houses have been erected here. After visiting all the mines, and finding but indifferent prospects at any of them, I located myself at Curtis’s Creek, to labor in the winter diggings. I was without a companion, and had heard of a gentleman from New England who was desirous of sharing his tent and provisions with some one. He had been out of health, but was supposed to be improving. My name had been mentioned to him by a friend before I arrived, and he had expressed a desire to enter into such an arrangement as might be of mutual advantage. He was considered a man of great intelligence and worth; and it was partly with the hope of having him as a mining companion that I had visited Curtis’s. His tent was a mile from the settlement. Taking my roll of blankets, I walked over to see him. Judge of my surprise, on reaching his tent, and raising the curtains at the entrance, and stepping in, to find myself standing before a _corpse_, laid out upon a hammock! I learned from a colored man, who soon came in, that Mr. H. had died half an hour before. He was alone, and seemed to have just been reaching from his bed for something. The last sentiment to which he gave utterance was, “I believe I left home a moral and a religious man; I have brought morality and religion with me, and, with God’s assistance, I will keep them to the last.” Neither he nor others supposed that he was dangerously sick. With the black man, I went out, and we selected a spot beneath a large tree, and there we dug his grave. The noon of the next day was the time named for the funeral, and notice accordingly was sent to the various mines near by. It being impracticable to provide a coffin, the body was wrapped in several blankets, and a quantity of pine boughs spread at the bottom of the grave. At the time appointed for the burial, most of the miners might be