SATURDAY, NOV. 4. The deposits here baffle all the pretensions of science. The volcanoes did their work by no uniform geological law; they burst out at random, and scattered their gold in wanton caprice. Were not those old Vulcans dead, they would laugh at the blundering vanity exhibited around them. The old landmarks are the quartz; these are general indications, but too vague when applied to alluvial deposits, and frequently serve only to bewilder and betray. We have a young geologist here who can unroll the whole earth, layer by layer, from surface to centre, and tell the properties of each, and how it came to be deposited there, who unsuspectingly walked over a bank of gold, which a poor Indian afterwards stirred out with a stick. I have seen this _savan_ camp down and snore soundly through the night, with a half-pound piece of gold within a few inches of his nose; and then rise at peep of day to push his learned theory into some ledge of rocks, where not a particle of the yellow ore ever existed. I have seen a digger take from a bank of decomposed granite, in a space not larger than a man’s hat, between three and four pounds of gold, while his only clue to it was a blast on the opposite side of the glen, through which he believed the deil had blown the gold into the bank, where he was at work. What a burlesque on all geological laws as applied to gold deposits! There is only one of these laws, in reference to alluvial deposits, worth a pin, and that is the simple fact that a heavy body will tumble down hill faster than a lighter one, or that a nut shaken from a tree will drop through the fog to the ground. SUNDAY, NOV. 5. I rose this morning with the intention of proposing to the diggers a religious service. But mid-day came, and only here and there one broke from slumbers doubly deep from the overpowering fatigues of the week. In a shaded recess of the hills three of us found a little sanctuary: neither of the two with me was a professor of religion, but each retained in vivid remembrance the religious instructions of his childhood and youth. Time and distance had not effaced these impressions; each lettered trace remained as legible as the footprints of the primeval bird in the fossil rock. Such is the inscription of parental fidelity on the heart of a child: the wave may wear away the mound which it laves, and the marble dissolve under the touch of time, but _that_ inscription remains.