It was easy enough, if one had any curiosity on the subject, to learn something of a man’s history, for there was little reserve used in alluding to it. What a man had been mattered as little to him as it did to any one else; and it was refreshing to find, as was generally the case, that one’s preconceived ideas of a man were so utterly at variance with the truth. Among such a motley crowd one could select his own associates, but the best-informed, the most entertaining, and those in many respects the most desirable, were not always those whose company one could have enjoyed where the inseparable barriers of class are erected;--and it is difficult to believe that any one, after circulating much among the different types of mankind to be found in the mines, should not have a higher respect than before for the various classes which they represented. CHAPTER XXVII THE RESOURCEFUL AMERICANS After a month or two spent on the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, and in the more sparsely populated section of country lying still farther south, I returned to Sonora, on my way to San Francisco. Here I took the stage for Stockton--a large open wagon, drawn by five horses, three leaders abreast. We were well ballasted with about a dozen passengers, the most amusing of whom was a hard, dried-up man, dressed in a greasy old leathern hunting-shirt, and inexpressibles to match, all covered with tags and fringes, and clasping in his hand a long rifle, which had probably been his bosom-friend all his life. He took an early opportunity of informing us all that he was from Arkansas; that he came to “Calaforny” across the plains, and having been successful in the diggings, he was now on his way home. He was like a schoolboy going home for the holidays, so delighted was he with the prospect before him. It seemed to surprise him very much that all the rest of the party were not also bound for Arkansas, and he evidently looked upon us, in consequence, with a degree of compassionate interest, as much less fortunate mortals, and very much to be pitied. We started at four o’clock in the morning, so as to accomplish the sixty or seventy miles to Stockton before the departure of the San Francisco steamer. The first ten or twelve miles of our journey were consequently performed in the dark, but that did not affect our speed; the road was good, and it was only in crossing the hollows between the hills that the navigation was difficult; for in such places the diggings had frequently encroached so much on the road as to leave only sufficient space for a wagon to pass between the miners’ excavations.