On resuming our journey, we were joined by a man who said he always liked to have company on that road. Several robberies and murders had been committed on it of late, and he very kindly pointed out to us, as we passed it, the exact spot where, a few days before, one man had been shot through the head, and another through the hat. One was robbed of seventy-five cents, the other of eight hundred dollars. It was a very romantic place, and well calculated for the operations of the gentlemen of the road, being a little hollow darkened by the spreading branches of a grove of oak trees; the underwood was thick and very high, and as the trail twisted round trees and bushes, a traveler could not see more than a few feet before or behind him. We had our revolvers in readiness; but I was not very apprehensive, as three men, all showing pistols in their belts, are rather more than those ruffians generally care to tackle. We arrived at Nevada City between five and six o’clock, when I took a look round to find the most likely place for a good supper, being particularly ravenous after the long walk and the salt-pork dinner. I found a house bearing the sign of “Hotel de Paris,” and my choice was made at once. As I had half an hour to wait for supper, I strolled about the town to see what sort of a place it was. It is beautifully situated on the hills bordering a small creek, and had once been surrounded by a forest of magnificent pine trees, which, however, had been made to become useful instead of ornamental, and nothing now remained to show that they had existed but the numbers of stumps all over the hillsides. The bed of the creek, which had once flowed past the town, was now choked up with heaps of “tailings”--the washed dirt from which the gold has been extracted--the white color of the dirt rendering it still more unsightly. All the water of the creek was distributed among a number of small troughs, carried along the steep banks on either side at different elevations, for the purpose of supplying various quartz-mills and long toms. The town itself--or, I should say, the “City,” for from the moment of its birth it has been called Nevada City--is, like all mining towns, a mixture of staring white frame houses, dingy old canvas booths, and log cabins. The only peculiarity about the miners was the white mud with which they were bespattered, especially those working in underground diggings, who were easily distinguished by the quantity of dry white mud on the tops of their hats.