It was about the end of March when I started. The winter was quite over; all that remained of it was an occasional heavy shower of rain; the air was mild and soft, and the mountains, covered with fresh verdure, were blooming brightly in the warm sunshine with many-colored flowers. In every ravine, and through each little hollow in the high lands, flowed a stream of water; and wherever water was to be found, there also were miners at work. From the towns and camps, where the supply of water was constant, and where the diggings could consequently be worked at any time of the year, they had expanded themselves over the whole face of the country; and in traveling through the depths of the forests, just as the solitude seemed to be perfect, one got a glimpse in the distance, through the dark columns of the pine trees, of the red shirts of two or three straggling miners, taking advantage of the short period of running water to reap a golden harvest in some spot of fancied richness. This was the season of all others to see to the best advantage the grandeur and beauty of the scenery, and at the same time to realize how widely diffused and inexhaustible is the wealth of the country. Inexhaustible is, of course, only a comparative term; for the amount of gold still remaining in California is a definite quantity becoming less and less every day, and already vastly reduced from what it was when the mines lay intact seven years ago; but still the date at which the yield of the California mines is to cease, or even to begin to fall off, seems to be as far distant as ever. In fact, the continued labor of constantly increasing numbers of miners, instead of exhausting the resources of the mines, as some persons at first supposed would be the case, has, on the contrary, only served to establish confidence in the permanence of their wealth. It is true that such diggings are now rarely to be met with as were found in the early days, when the pioneers, pitching, as if by instinct, on those spots where the superabundant richness of the country had broken out, dug up gold as they would potatoes; nor is the average yield to the individual miner so great as it was in those times. Subsequent research, however, has shown that the gold is not confined to a few localities, but that the whole country is saturated with it. The mineral produce of the mines increases with the population, though not in the same ratio; for only a certain proportion of the immigrants betake themselves to mining, the rest finding equally profitable occupation in the various branches of mechanical and agricultural industry which have of late years sprung up; while the miner, though perhaps not actually taking out as much gold as in 1849, is nevertheless equally prosperous, for he lives amid the comforts of civilized life, which he obtains at a reasonable rate, instead of being reduced to a half-savage state, and having to pay fabulous prices for every article of consumption.