Downieville is situated at what is called the Forks of the Yuba River, and the town itself was frequently spoken of as “The Forks” in that part of the country. It may be necessary to explain that, in talking of the forks of a river in California, one is always supposed to be going up the river; the forks are its tributaries. The main rivers received their names, which they still retain, from the Spaniards and Indians; and the first gold-hunting pioneers, in exploring a river, when they came to a tributary, called one branch the north, and the other the south fork. When one of these again received a tributary, it either continued to be the north or south fork, or became the middle fork, as the case might be. If a river was never to have more than two tributaries, this would do very well, but the river above Downieville kept on forking about every half-a-mile, and the branches were all named on the same principle, so that there were half-a-dozen north, middle, and south forks. The diggings at Downieville were very extensive; for many miles above it on each fork there were numbers of miners working in the bed and the banks of the river. The mountains are very precipitous, and the only communication was by a narrow trail which had been trodden into the hillside, and crossed from one side of the river to the other, as either happened to be more practicable; sometimes following the rocky bed of the river itself, and occasionally rising over high steep bluffs, where it required a steady head and a sure foot to get along in safety. One spot in particular was enough to try the nerve of any one but a chamois-hunter. It was a high bluff, almost perpendicular, round which the river made a sweep, and the only possible way of passing it was by a trail about eighty feet above the river. The trail hardly deserved the name--it was merely a succession of footsteps, sometimes a few inches of a projecting rock, or a root. Two men could pass each other with difficulty, and only at certain places, by holding on to each other; and from the trail to the river all was clear and smooth, not a tree or a bush to save one if he happened to miss his footing. At one spot there was an indentation in the precipice, where the rock was quite perpendicular: to get over this difficulty, a young pine-tree was laid across by way of a bridge; it was only four or five inches in diameter, and lay nearly a couple of feet outside of the rock. In passing, one only rested one foot on the tree, and with the other took advantage of the inequalities in the face of the rock; while looking down to see where to put one’s feet, one saw far below, between his outstretched legs, the most uninviting jagged rocks, strongly suggestive of sudden death.