MONDAY, OCT. 23. It was now near noon, and my day to cook the dinner; so I hastened back to our camping-tree, and piling up the half-extinguished brands, soon raised a fire. Then taking a tin pan, which served alternately as a gold-washer and a bread-tray, I turned into it a few pounds of flour, a small solution of saleratus, and a few quarts of water, and then went to work in it with my hands, mixing it up and adding flour till I got it to the right consistency; then shaping it into a loaf, raked open the embers, and rolled it in, covering it with the live coals. While this baking was going on, I placed in a stew-pan, after pounding it pretty well between two stones, a string of jerked-beef, with a small quantity of water, and lodged it on the fire. Then taking some coffee, which had been burnt the evening before, I tied it in the end of a napkin, and hammering it to pieces between two stones, turned it into a coffee-pot filled with water, and placed that, too, on the fire. In half an hour or so my bread was baked, my jerk-beef stewed, and my coffee boiled. I settled the latter by turning on it a pint of cold water. The bread was well done; a little burnt on one side, and somewhat puffed up, like the expectations of the gold-digger in the morning, or the vanity of a stump-orator just after a cheer. My companions returned, and seating ourselves on the ground, each with a tin cup of coffee, a junk of bread, and a piece of the stewed jerky, our dinner was soon dispatched, and with a relish which the epicure never yet felt or fancied. The water here is slightly impregnated with iron and sulphur; the one acting as a tonic, the other as an aperient. And then this fine mountain air, some eight hundred feet above the level of the sea, all conduce to health and buoyancy of spirits. Among the hundred gold-diggers around, not one hypochondriac throws on rock or rill the shadow of a long countenance. Even they who hardly get out gold enough to pay their way, laugh at their bad luck, and hope for better success to-morrow. They have yet plenty of tickets in the lottery, and some of them may turn out prizes. At any rate, they are not going to despond while these glens contain an undisturbed bar, or these hills lift their cones of white rock in the sun.