Furnished with my purchase, I returned to the tent, and the stock of gold dust realised by each man was weighed, and computed at the current rate in which the mercantile transactions of this little colony are reckoned—namely, fourteen dollars each ounce of gold dust. We found that McPhail and Malcolm had been, upon the whole, the most successful, each having obtained nearly two ounces of pure gold dust, valued at twenty-eight dollars. I myself had about twenty-three dollars' worth, and Bradley had twenty-five dollars' worth. An amount which, considerable though it was, we hope greatly to increase as soon as we get our cradle into operation.

During the day, there were numerous arrivals from Sutter's Fort; and in my opinion, these diggings will soon be overcrowded. Two of the new-comers were known to Bradley—one, a Mr. Biggs, a shipping agent from San Francisco; the other, Mr. Lacosse, a French Canadian, who has recently settled in California. They accepted our offer for them to join our party. If this influx of people continues, I think the Yankee with the store will do better than any one; and keeping a shanty will be a far more profitable speculation than handling a shovel or working a cradle. What surprises me is, that in this remote spot, so distant from anything that can be called Law, so much tranquillity prevails under the circumstances. One hears of no deeds of violence, or even dishonesty. In fact, theft would hardly pay. The risk would be more than the advantage; for if any one was detected plundering, he would soon have a rifle-bullet put through him. One thing in favour of good order is, that here there is no unequal distribution of property—no favoured classes. Every man who has a spade or a trowel, and hands to use them, is upon an equality, and can make a fortune with a rapidity hitherto almost unknown in the history of the world.

Sunday, June 11th.—Nearly a week has elapsed since I last opened my diary. On Tuesday, we set to work upon our cradle. We resolved upon the construction of two; and, for this purpose, went down to the store in a body, to see about the boards. We found the timber extravagantly dear, being asked forty dollars a-hundred. After some bargaining, we obtained sufficient for our purpose, at the rate of thirty-five dollars.

The next question was, as to whether we should hire a carpenter. We were told there were one or two in the diggings who might be hired, though at a very extravagant rate. Accordingly, Bradley and I proceeded to see one of these gentlemen, and found him washing away with a hollow log and a willow-branch sieve. He offered to help us at the rate of thirty-five dollars a-day, we finding provisions and tools, and could not be brought to charge less. We thought this by far too extravagant, and left him, determined to undertake the work ourselves. Meantime, Horry had brought down two of our horses with him to the store. We loaded them immediately with boards, and returned to our tent.

After breakfast, which consisted of coffee without milk, flour cakes, and strips of dried beef, roasted on the embers, we set to work. We had a sufficient number of axes and a good stout saw, one large plane, and a few strong chisels, with plenty of nails. As may be expected, we proved to be very awkward carpenters. Mr. Lacosse was perhaps the handiest, and Malcolm not much inferior to him, until the latter unfortunately received a severe cut with a chisel, extending in a transverse line along the joint of the forefinger of the left hand. I strapped up the wound, but the rough work soon tore away the diaculum: no bad consequences, however, ensued. The wound, in spite of the hard treatment which it received, closed and healed by the first intention—proving the healthy habit of body engendered by temperance and constant exercise in the open air.

In building our cradles, or "gold canoes," as the Indians called them, we found that to mortice the planks into each other was a feat of carpentering far above our skill, particularly as we had no mortice chisels. We were therefore obliged to adopt the ruder experiment of making the boards overlap each other by about an inch, nailing them firmly together in that position. As, however, the inequality of surface at the bottom of the cradle, produced by the mode of building, would have materially impeded our operations, we strained some pieces of tarred canvas, which we fortunately possessed amongst our tent cloths, over the bottoms, thus rendering the surface even, and suited to our purpose. By the time we had got so far with our undertaking, we fell sufficiently tired to give over work for the night. We had laboured unceasingly at them, pausing only to swallow a hasty meal, and stuck by our hammers and chisels till dusk. We were up early the next morning, and toiled away to get the cradles completed, as we were constantly seeing proofs of the great advantages of these machines. We fixed a wicker sieve over the head, by means of a couple of transverse bars, and then set about to construct the working Apparatus, which we had all along feared would put our mechanical skill to rather a severe test; but we found it easier than we had anticipated, and before sundown the rockers were fixed on both cradles, which, to all intents and purposes, were now ready for use. The work was rather rough, but it was firm and strong. So fearful were we first of all that our cradles might be removed or tampered with in the night, that I jocularly proposed two of us should give up the shelter of the tent, and, like pretty little children, sleep in our cradles till the morning.

The next day we set to work with them with the utmost eagerness, having first dragged the lumbering machines to a likely spot in the vicinity of the water. The labour was hard enough, but nothing compared to the old plan of pot-washing, while it saved the hands from the injury inflicted by continual dabbling in sand and water. We took the different departments of labour by turns, and found that the change, by bringing into play different sets of muscles, greatly relieved us, and enabled us to keep the stones rolling with great energy. In the evening, with the help of our newly purchased scales, we tested our gains. The cradle which was worked by Don Luis, Malcolm, and myself, for it was so near the water that three hands were sufficient, had realised six ounces of gold dust; the other, attended to by Bradley, McPhail, Biggs, and Lacosse, had nearly as much. During the day there was another considerable influx of people to the diggings; the banks of the river are therefore getting more and more crowded, and we hear that the price of every article of subsistence is rising in the same proportion.

CHAPTER XI.

June 18th, Sunday.—The proceedings of the past week have been but a repetition of those of the week previous, the amount of gold dust realised being rather greater, and amounting on an average to very nearly sixteen ounces per day. Cradles are now in use everywhere around us; nevertheless, the numbers who stand in the water washing with tin or wooden bowls do not appear to be diminished.