On leaving, I took a trail which kept along the bank of the river for some miles, before striking up to the mountain ridge. Immediately below the town the mountain was very steep and smooth, and round this wound the trail, at the height of three or four hundred feet above the river. It was a mere beaten path--so narrow that two men could not walk abreast, while there was hardly a bush or a tree to interrupt one’s progress in rolling down from the trail to the river. When trains of pack-mules met at this place, they had the greatest difficulty in passing. The “down train,” being of course unloaded, had to give way to the other. The mules understood their own rights perfectly well. Those loaded with cargo kept sturdily to the trail, while the empty mules scrambled up the bank, where they stood still till the others had passed. It not unfrequently happened, however, that a loaded mule got crowded off the trail, and rolled down the hill. This was always the last journey the poor mule ever performed. The cargo was recovered more or less damaged, but the remnants of deceased mules on the rocks down below remained as a warning to all future travelers. It was only a few days before that a man was riding along here, when, from some cause, his mule stumbled and fell off the trail. The mule, of course, went as a small contribution to the collection of skeletons of mules which had gone before him; and his rider would have shared the same fate, had he not fortunately been arrested in his progress by a bush, the only object in his course which could possibly have saved him. The trail, after passing this spot, kept more among the rocks on the river side; and though it was rough traveling, the difficulties of the way were beguiled by the numbers of miners’ camps through which one passed, and in observing the different varieties of mining operations being carried on. For miles the river was borne along in a succession of flumes, in which were set innumerable water-wheels, for working all sorts of pumps, and other contrivances for economizing labor. The bed of the river was alive with miners; and here and there, in the steep banks, were rows of twenty or thirty tunnels, out of which came constant streams of men, wheeling the dirt down to the riverside, to be washed in their long toms. At Goodyear’s Bar, which is a place of some size, the trail leaves the river, and ascends a mountain which is said to be the worst in that part of the country, and for my part I was quite willing to believe it was. I met several men coming down, who were all anxious to know if they were near the bottom. I was equally desirous to know if I was near the top, for the forest of pines was so thick, that, looking up, one could only get a glimpse between the trees of the zigzag trail far above.