Monday, Feb. 10. Worked all the last week without knowing one day where to go the next; yet our earnings, one hundred dollars, exceeded those of any other week this season. The last three days have been unusually delightful,—there has been a something in the air like the first warm summer days at home, when the earth dries, as it were, all at once, and the boys hurry to the ball-ground.
Wednesday, 12. Came home in the middle of the afternoon with only six dollars—found a man who had been buried under a mass of earth in the red bank laid on one of our beds. After he had sufficiently recovered he informed us that when he found himself unable to move, his only anxiety was to tell his wife where to look for his life policy, and the next moment he fell asleep.
Thursday, 13. In a fit of desperation I went to work on our bank—Tertium prospected, and St. John went to try his fortune once more on American Bar. He did so well that I joined him in the afternoon.
Friday. All worked on the bar—made fourteen dollars and a-half.
Monday, Feb. 17. Dr. Ecossais sold his claim in the red bank, together with his tools, for eight hundred and fifty dollars, to a Captain Sampson, who has just come in from the southern mines.
Tuesday. Sold our claim to Dr. Ecossais for fifty dollars. I worked on the bar alone—St. John and Tertium prospected—in vain.
Wednesday. Rain sent us home at ninety buckets. We begin to hope to make something out of our dam, and St. John and I think of remaining till fall. Thus the time for our return continually flies from us.
Friday. A melancholy, lugubrious, opaque morning—rain at a hundred and twenty buckets, and an undecided afternoon.
This it so happened, though we had no such expectation at the time, was our last bank mining in California.
We had sold our claim as above mentioned, not because we believed it to be entirely exhausted, but chiefly from want of patience to contend longer with such a stubborn foe. What the result would have been if the same quantity of rain had fallen as in the preceding winter I can only conjecture, but have no doubt our engineering operation would have been highly profitable. The two seasons, however, were in this respect widely different—the first year it rained according to our observation fully one third of the time from the 1st November to the end of March; while during the second there was hardly as much rain as commonly falls in a New England summer. The weather was also cooler—hoar frosts were frequent—and several mornings we found the ground frozen to the depth of three or four inches.