SATURDAY, NOV. 11. I encountered an old man to-day, sitting listlessly on a rock under the broken shade of a decayed oak. A few gray hairs strayed from under his camping-cap, and his face was deeply wrinkled; but his eye flashed, at intervals, with the fires of an unquenched spirit. He had not, as he told me, obtained an ounce of gold in this ravine, and was about trying some other locality. I advised him to roll over the rock on which he was sitting; he said he would do it to please me; but as for gold, he might as well look for a weasel in a watchman’s rattle. The rock was easily rolled from its inclined position; beneath it was found a layer of moss, and beneath this, in the crevices of another rock, a deposit of gold, in the shape of pumpkin-seeds, bright as if fresh from the mint, and weighing over half a pound. The eyes of the old man sparkled; but he was thinking of his home and those left behind. SUNDAY, NOV. 12. Could the parents of the youth in these glens cast a glance at their children, what a tide of affection and concern would rush through their hearts! No treasured ship at sea was ever environed by deeper perils; storms lower in thick darkness above, and breakers thunder below, and no pharos throws its friendly ray from the shrouded cliff. The only light they have to guide them is in their own tempest-tost bark, and the lamp in the binnacle is dim. The merchant who should send his ship to sea without compass or rudder, would not be more frantic and foolish than the parent who sends his son out upon the world without any religion in his soul. These youths in these glens are to shape the destinies of California; under their hands her political, social, and moral institutions are to be reared. Unless religion lie at the foundations, these structures, though columned with gold, will fall. It was frailty and rottenness at the base that has left all the proud fabrics of the Old World a storied mass of ruins. MONDAY, NOV. 13. A mounted company of gold-diggers arrived on our camping premises last evening, and we struck in for four horses, which we purchased at their own prices. Mine is an Indian pony from Oregon, full of heart and hardihood; but as for ease of motion, you might as well ride a trip-hammer. But an extremity makes the most indifferent gift of nature a blessed boon.