I was just setting off in the morning, when two or three men, who had seen me sketching the evening before, came and asked me to take their likenesses for them. As they were very anxious about it, I made them sit down, and very soon polished them all off, improving so much on their personal appearance, that they evidently had no idea before that they were such good-looking fellows, and expressed themselves highly satisfied. As I was finishing the last one, an old fellow came in, who, seeing what was up, was seized with a violent desire to have his sweet countenance “pictur’d off” likewise, to send to his wife. It struck me that his wife must be a woman of singular taste if she ever wished to see his face again. He was just about the ugliest man I ever saw in my life. He wanted to comb his hair, poor fellow, and make himself look as presentable as possible; but I had no mercy on him, and, making him sit down as he was, I did my best to represent him about fifty per cent. uglier than he really was. He was in great distress that he had not better clothes on for the occasion; so, to make up for caricaturing his features, I improved his costume, and gave him a very spicy black coat, black satin waistcoat, and very stiff stand-up collars. The fidelity of the likeness he never doubted, being so lost in admiration of his dress, that he seemed to think the face a matter of minor importance altogether. I did not take many portraits in the mines; but from what little experience I had, I invariably found that men of a lower class wanted to be shown in the ordinary costume of the nineteenth century--that is to say, in a coat, waistcoat, white shirt and neckcloth; while gentlemen miners were anxious to appear in character, in the most ragged style of California dress. I went to Foster’s Bar after dinner with a man who was on his way there from Downieville, a town about thirty miles up the river. He told me that he and his partner had gone there a few months before, and had worked together for some time, when they separated, his partner joining a company which had averaged a hundred dollars a day to each man ever since, while my friend had bought a share in another company, and, after working hard for six weeks, had not, as he expressed it, made enough to pay for his grub. Such is mining. Foster’s Bar is a place about half a mile long, with the appearance of having slipped down off the face of the mountains, and thus formed a flat along the side of the river. The village or camp consisted of a few huts and cabins; and all around on the rocks, wherever it suited their convenience, were parties of miners camping out. I could only see one place which purported to be a hotel, and to it I went. It was a large canvas house, the front part of which was the bar-room, and behind it the dining-room. Alongside of the former an addition had been made as a sleeping apartment, and here, when I felt inclined to turn in about ten o’clock, I was accommodated with a cot.