We continued to work the claim we had first taken for two or three weeks with very good success, when the diggings gave out--that is to say, they ceased to yield sufficiently to suit our ideas: so we took up another claim about a mile further up the creek; and as this was rather an inconvenient distance from our tent, we abandoned it, and took possession of a log cabin near our claim which some men had just vacated. It was a very badly built cabin perched on a rocky platform overhanging the rugged pathway which led along the banks of the creek. A cabin with a good shingle-roof is generally the coolest kind of abode in summer; but ours was only roofed with cotton cloth, offering scarcely any resistance to the fierce rays of the sun, which rendered the cabin during the day so intolerably hot that we cooked and ate our dinner under the shade of a tree. A whole bevy of Chinamen had recently made their appearance on the creek. Their camp, consisting of a dozen or so of small tents and brush houses, was near our cabin on the side of the hill--too near to be pleasant, for they kept up a continual chattering all night, which was rather tiresome till we got used to it. They are an industrious set of people, no doubt, but are certainly not calculated for gold-digging. They do not work with the same force or vigor as American or European miners, but handle their tools like so many women, as if they were afraid of hurting themselves. The Americans called it “scratching,” which was a very expressive term for their style of digging. They did not venture to assert equal rights so far as to take up any claim which other miners would think it worth while to work; but in such places as yielded them a dollar or two a day they were allowed to scratch away unmolested. Had they happened to strike a rich lead, they would have been driven off their claim immediately. They were very averse to working in the water, and for four or five hours in the heat of the day they assembled under the shade of a tree, where they sat fanning themselves, drinking tea, and saying “too muchee hot.”