THURSDAY, OCT. 26. Where is the little Dutchman and the red-haired Paddy? ran in excited inquiry through the ravine this morning, for they had now been missed from the camp twenty-four hours, and no doubt existed on the minds of many that they had found a rich deposit somewhere, and were secretly working it out. I knew well where they were, but no one thought of questioning me on the subject, for I was looked upon as a sort of amateur gold-hunter, very much given to splitting rocks and digging in unproductive places; and, indeed, this was not far from the truth, for my main object was information, and a specimen of wild mountain life. But to return to the little Dutchman. All knew him to be a shrewd gold-hunter, and determined to find him before he should exhaust his discovery. No child lost in the woods ever awakened half the concern: some started in this direction, others in that, till all the cardinal points in the heaven, and all the glens between, had men travelling towards them. The most curious feature in this business is, that out of a regiment of gold-hunters, where the utmost apparent confusion prevails, the absence of two men should be noticed. But the motions of every man are watched. Even when he gathers up his traps, takes formal leave, and is professedly bound home, he is tracked for leagues. No disguise can avail him; the most successful war-stratagem would fail here. FRIDAY, OCT. 27. I have just returned from another ravine, five miles distant, where there are eighty or a hundred gold-diggers. They are mostly Sonoranians, and, like all their countrymen, passionately devoted to gambling. They were playing at monté; the keeper of the bank was a woman, and herself a Sonoranian. There was no coin on the table; the bank consisted of a pile of gold, weighing, perhaps, a hundred pounds; and each of the players laid down his ounce or pound, as his means or courage permitted. The woman, on the whole, appeared to be the winner, though one man, in the course of half an hour, took ten pounds from her yellow pile. But such a loss was felt only for the moment, and only had the effect to stimulate others to lose what little they had left. A Sonoranian digs out gold simply and solely that he may have the wherewithal for gambling. This is the rallying thought which wakes with him in the morning, which accompanies him through the day, and which floats through his dreams at night. For this he labors, and cheerfully denies himself every comfort. All this is the result of habit. A Mussulman looks upon gambling as a species of larceny,—as a crime which deserves the bastinado. I saw a Turkish cadi at Smyrna sentence a man to thirty-nine lashes for having, as he termed it, _swindled_ another out of fifty dollars at faro. Give me a Turk where there is a rogue to be caught or a crime punished. The flashings of the sword of justice follow the crime as light the shark in a phosphoric sea.