WEDNESDAY, NOV. 8. Some fifty thousand persons are drifting up and down these slopes of the great Sierra, of every hue, language, and clime, tumultuous and confused as a flock of wild geese taking wing at the crack of a gun, or autumnal leaves strown on the atmospheric tides by the breath of the whirlwind. All are in quest of gold; and, with eyes dilated to the circle of the moon, rush this way and that, as some new discovery, or fictitious tale of success may suggest. Some are with tents, and some without; some have provisions, and some are on their last ration; some are carrying crowbars; some pickaxes and spades; some wash-bowls and cradles; some hammers and drills, and powder enough to blow up the rock of Gibraltar—if they can but get under it, as the monkeys do, when they make their transit, through a sort of Thames tunnel, from the golden but barren sands of Africa to the green hills of Europe. Wise fellows they, notwithstanding the length of their tails—they won’t stay on the Congo side of the strait, to gather gold, when, by crossing, they can gather grapes. Wisdom is justified of her children. But I was speaking of the gold-hunters here on the slopes of the Sierra. Such a mixed and motley crowd—such a restless, roving, rummaging, ragged multitude, never before roared in the rookeries of man. As for mutual aid and sympathy—Samson’s foxes had as much of it, turned tail to, with firebrands tied between. Each great camping-ground is denoted by the ruins of shovels and shanties, the bleaching bones of the dead, disinhumed by the wolf, and the skeleton of the culprit, still swinging in the wind, from the limb of a tree, overshadowed by the raven. From the deep glen, the caverned cliff, the plaintive rivulet, the croaking raven, and the wind-toned skeleton come voices of reproachful interrogation— “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity has brought thee here?”