The Missourians, however, although they acquired no new accomplishments on their journey to California, lost none of those which they originally possessed. They could use an ax or a rifle with any man. Two of them would chop down a few trees and build a log cabin in a day and a half, and with their long five-foot-barrel rifle, which was their constant companion, they could “draw a bead” on a deer, a squirrel, or the white of an Indian’s eye, with equal coolness and certainty of killing. Though large-framed men, they were not remarkable for physical strength, nor were they robust in constitution; in fact, they were the most sickly set of men in the mines, fever and ague and diarrhœa being their favorite complaints. We had many pleasant neighbors, and among them were some very amusing characters. One man, who went by the name of the “Philosopher,” might possibly have earned a better right to the name, if he had had the resolution to abstain from whisky. He had been, I believe, a farmer in Kentucky, and was one of a class not uncommon in America, who, without much education, but with great ability and immense command of language, together with a very superficial knowledge of some science, hold forth on it most fluently, using such long words, and putting them so well together, that, were it not for the crooked ideas they enunciated, one might almost suppose they knew what they were talking about. Phrenology was this man’s hobby, and he had all the phrenological phraseology at his finger-ends. His great delight was to paw a man’s head and to tell him his character. One Sunday morning he came into our cabin as he was going down to the store for provisions, and after a few minutes’ conversation, of course he introduced phrenology; and as I knew I should not get rid of him till I did so, I gave him my permission to feel my head. He fingered it all over, and gave me a very elaborate synopsis of my character, explaining most minutely the consequences of the combination of the different bumps, and telling me how I would act in a variety of supposed contingencies. Having satisfied himself as to my character, he went off, and I was in hopes I was done with him, but an hour or so after dark, he came rolling into the cabin just as I was going to turn in. He was as drunk as he well could be; his nose was swelled and bloody, his eyes were both well blackened, and altogether he was very unlike a learned professor of phrenology. He begged to be allowed to stay all night; and as he would most likely have broken his neck over the rocks if he had tried to reach his own home that night, I made him welcome, thinking that he would immediately fall asleep without troubling me further. But I was very much mistaken; he had no sooner lain down, than he began to harangue me as if I were a public meeting or a debating society, addressing me as “gentlemen,” and expatiating on a variety of topics, but chiefly on phrenology, the Democratic ticket, and