Our prospecting gave us 25 cents each. Feb. 4th. This is a day to be remembered. _Letters from home!_ If any one would learn the full significance of these words, let him pass ten months in California without one word from his loved ones, an unhappy exile from his own family. They may be sick, suffering, dying, and he who should be near them, to care for, and protect, and comfort them, is far away, and knows not their condition. It is an era in the mines--the arrival of the mail-agent. How cheerfully are our two dollars a letter paid. It was like receiving back my family from the _dead_--those letters, after so _long_ and _weary a silence_. I am _happy_, and I am _miserable_! I am _calm_, and I am _fearfully excited_! It is an era in the miner’s life when such, although tardy, messengers reach him. I have been present when many of these have given up to their owners their treasures of love or their burden of wretchedness. One has just opened his letter, and bursts into immoderate weeping. I inquire the cause. “My wife and child are both dead!” A physician of one of the hospitals told me that they dared not give their letters from home to those who were very sick; that in several instances they had seen persons in this condition, upon reading their letters, turn over and die. A party of individuals, from the ranches on the plains below, passed us on their way to the headwaters of the Tuolumne, in pursuit of Indians who had stolen some of their mules. They were joined by numbers of the miners. Feb. 5th. There is some excitement with regard to a bar one mile above us. Captain W. and myself have spent the day there, and have made $5 37 each. The lump of gold found at Sonora, and which, it was said, weighs seventy pounds, weighs only twenty-two pounds. The miner through whom I received my information had a claim next to the one in which this lump was found. It lay within two inches of the very spot where he was at work. One blow of his pick would have given him possession of it. Feb. 6th. We have to-day made 75 cents each. An interesting instance of success happened recently in a gulch upon the Stanislaus in our vicinity. Two young men, on their way to the mines, heard of this gulch, and concluded to commence their mining at that place; but, when they arrived there, they found the whole ground, considered favorable, occupied. Not knowing what to do or where to go, they made their first essay in a small ravine, across which a log was thrown for the convenience of the crowd constantly passing. In this ravine, and by the side of that log, they dug their hole. They came to a crevice in the rock, and saw opened before them a sight which makes the miner’s heart glad--pounds of pure virgin gold, lying in lumps and scales, but awaiting their slightest effort to transfer it to their own pockets.