Individuals could not work alone to any advantage. All mining operations were carried on by parties of men, varying in number according to the nature of their diggings; and the strange assortment of dissimilar characters occasionally to be found thus brought into close relationship was but a type of the general state of society, which was such as completely to realize the idea of perfect social equality. There are occasions on which, among small communities, an overwhelming emotion, common to all, may obliterate all feeling of relative superiority; but the history of the world can show no such picture of human nature upon the same scale as was to be seen in the mines, where, among a population of hundreds of thousands of men, from all parts of the world, and from every order of society, no individual or class was accounted superior to another. The cause of such a state of things was one which would tend to produce the same results elsewhere. It consisted in this, that each man enjoyed the capability of making as much money as his neighbor; for hard labor, which any man could accomplish with legs and arms, without much assistance from his head, was as remunerative as any other occupation--consequently, all men indiscriminately were found so employing themselves, and mining or any other kind of labor was considered as dignified and as honorable a pursuit as any other. In fact, so paramount was this idea, that in some men it created an impression that not to labor was degrading--that those who did not live by actual physical toil were men who did not come up to the scratch--who rather shirked the common lot of all, “man’s original inheritance, that he should sweat for his poor pittance.” I recollect once arriving in the middle of the night in San Francisco, when it was not by any means the place it now is, and finding all the hotels full, I was compelled to take refuge in an establishment which offered no other accommodation to the public than a lot of beds--half-a-dozen in a room. When I was paying my dollar in the morning for having enjoyed the privilege of sleeping on one of these concerns, an old miner was doing the same. He had no coin, but weighed out an ounce of dust, and while getting his change he seemed to be studying the keeper of the house, as a novel and interesting specimen of human nature. The result showed itself in an expression of supreme contempt on his worn and sunburnt features, as he addressed the object of his contemplation: “Say now, stranger, do you do nothin’ else but just sit thar and take a dollar from every man that sleeps on them beds?” “Yes, that’s my business,” replied the man. “Well, then,” said the miner after a little further reflection, “it’s a d--d mean way of making your living, that’s all I can say.”