One day last week, as I was walking down from Jacksonville, where I had been to purchase provisions, I saw a number of men dragging some heavy object to the edge of a hill hanging over me. Presently they pushed it over the brow, and it came tumbling, like a bag of wool, over and over, down the side of the mountain. It was a grisly bear, which had just been killed, and which weighed six hundred pounds. As the river was too high to allow crossing that evening to my camp, I accepted an invitation from the miner who had killed the bear to be his guest for the night. We feasted upon the flesh, which was tender and sweet. During the following week we had no success in gold-digging, the river being too high. It was also too early to commence working upon our canal; but on May 10th we organized into a company, put up stakes with flags, designating our claim, and made advertisement of the same in Jacksonville, leaving a certified copy with the alcalde. Then we adjourned, to meet for work on the 4th of July, in the mean time having a common purse, and sharing mutually in the profits of the whole till that time. A part of the company went up to the Rattlesnake Creek, prospecting. At this time an association--named the Adelphi Mining Association--was formed, chiefly of miners from Jacksonville, numbering twenty-nine persons. Their object was to drain a portion of the channel of Woods’s Creek, in which was a deep hole, nearly the width of the creek, and twenty yards in length. The place is two miles above the junction of the creek with the Tuolumne. Much gold had been found all along the banks, encouraging the belief that, could we drain the stream and work the bed of it, it would “pay well.” The company was a very mixed one. There were the good and the bad, the serious and the gay. As there was nothing else at this time to occupy my attention, and as it was expected to work out the claim before it would be possible to work in the river, I accepted an invitation to join this company. With seventy pounds’ burden upon my back, I walked up from Hart’s Bar, and accepted an invitation from a miner to use his tent during his absence. Last night I slept upon the ground, spreading my blankets upon a mat at the bottom of the tent. Here I slept alone, and at a distance from any other encampment. This noon, coming up to cook my dinner, a large snake crept from under the mat in the tent, and quickly disappeared in a hole near by. With a spade I dug him out, and, after killing him, found that he measured three feet ten inches. I don’t know his name, but he has a flat head, looks very brassy, and has a sharp horn at the tail. It answers the description of the horned snake. It is said that, taking the end of its tail in its mouth, it will form a perfect hoop with its body, rolling rapidly over till it reaches the object at which it aims, upon which it inflicts a severe, and sometimes fatal blow, with the horn in the tail. As I am