My friend and his partners were working in a “wing dam” in front of their camp, and the river, being pushed back off one half of its bed, rushed past in a roaring torrent, white with foam. A large water-wheel was set in it, which worked several pumps, and a couple of feet above it lay a pine tree, which had been felled there so as to serve as a bridge. The river was above thirty feet wide, and the tree, not more than a foot and a half in diameter, was in its original condition, perfectly round and smooth, and was, moreover, kept constantly wet with the spray from the wheel, which was so close that one could almost touch it in passing. If one had happened to slip and fall into the water, he would have had about as much chance of coming out alive as if he had fallen before the paddles of a steamer; and any gentleman with shaky legs and unsteady nerves, had he been compelled to pass such a bridge, would most probably have got astride of it, and so worked his passage across. In the mines, however, these “pine-log crossings” were such a very common style of bridge, that every one was used to them, and walked them like a rope-dancer: in fact, there was a degree of pleasant excitement in passing a very slippery and difficult one such as this. CHAPTER XVII CHINESE IN THE EARLY DAYS While at this camp, I went down the river two or three miles to see a place called Mississippi Bar, where a company of Chinamen were at work. After an hour’s climbing along the rocky banks, and having crossed and recrossed the river some half-dozen times on pine logs, I at last got down among the Celestials. There were about a hundred and fifty of them here, living in a perfect village of small tents, all clustered together on the rocks. They had a claim in the bed of the river, which they were working by means of a wing dam. A “wing dam,” I may here mention, is one which first runs half-way across the river, then down the river, and back again to the same side, thus damming off a portion of its bed without the necessity of the more expensive operation of lifting up the whole river bodily in a “flume.” The Chinamen’s dam was two or three hundred yards in length, and was built of large pine trees laid one on the top of the other. They must have had great difficulty in handling such immense logs in such a place; but they are exceedingly ingenious in applying mechanical power, particularly in concentrating the force of a large number of men upon one point.