A bird of very large size has frequently flown over us, soaring very high in the air, which we have supposed was the California eagle; but one, coming within the range of the rifle, was shot, and fell at our feet upon the bar. It proves to be a species of the vulture, and measures, between the tips of its wings, eight feet and eleven inches. The quill which I now have is of great size. There was upon the bar a case of delirium tremens, that most fearful display of the Divine displeasure against intemperance. The young man was from England--had been an officer in the British army. Soon after he came to the mines, he gave himself up to intemperate habits. He was suddenly attacked in the night, imagining himself pursued by horrible fiends, which came to torture him. At midnight he came rushing into my tent, and almost knocked me out of my hammock as he crept under it, to conceal himself from his enemies. He would then dart through the side of my arbor, densely interwoven with brush and boughs, and into a tent near by, where he narrowly escaped being shot as a robber. In the day he would sit near the bank of the river, and converse by the hour with imaginary persons on the hill opposite. He carried on a curious courtship with a woman who was dancing over the river, surrounded by her fifty children. He requested me to marry him to this woman of his imagination; and then, soon after, came in trembling, and told me that the husband was alive, and in his jealous rage was seeking to kill him. There was much sickness upon the bar during the latter part of the season. Much of this was the result of the fearful exposures to which we were subject. The sickness at length assumed a malignant and dangerous form. It commenced in a violent attack of diarrhœa, running into symptoms resembling the cholera, which was then fatally prevalent in the cities of California. The first person attacked was a vigorous and strong German sailor. Nothing could be learned of him or his friends--even his name was unknown to us. We buried him deep in the sand, on the banks of the Tuolumne; and while the burial services were being performed, a crowd--not, however, of our own members--surrounded the gambling-table on the bar. At this time there were three or four gambling companies with us, called into life by the short-lived success of our mining operations.