The miner, apparently aware of my presence for the first time, sent me a piercing glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.  “So your grandfather—­”

“He wasn’t exactly a forty-niner,” I acknowledged.  “He arrived outside the Heads the night of December thirty-first but there was a heavy fog and the vessel didn’t get inside until the next morning.”

“Hard luck,” sympathized the old man, “coming near to being a forty-niner and missing it.”

“But it’s practically the same thing,” persisted the Bostonian.  “Only a few hours.”

“The same thing!” scornfully repeated the miner.  “There’s as much difference as between Christmas and Fourth of July.  A forty-niner’s a forty-niner, and a man that came in fifty—­well, he might as well have come in sixty or seventy, or even in the twentieth century.  It’s the forty-niner that counts in this community.”  He drew himself up proudly.  Then plunging his hand deep into his pocket, drew out a nugget.

“Picked that up off my first claim,” he explained, “but the dirt didn’t pan out so well.  I’ve carried it in my pocket all these years, just for the sentiment of the thing, I suppose.  Many a time I was tempted to throw it on a table in the El Dorado, but I hung on to it.”

“The El Dorado?” questioned the Easterner.

“Yes, one of the big gambling places here on the Plaza.  Everybody took a chance in those days, even some of the preachers.  You met all your friends there, and heard the best music and the latest news.”

“Did they gamble with nuggets?” my companion led the old man on.

“Well, I guess they did! and gold dust in piles.  The few children in town used to pan out the dirt of the Plaza in front of the Temples of Chance every morning after the places were swept out.  The Californians put up parts of their ranchos, too, sometimes.”

“How high did the stakes run?” Evidently this descendant of the Pilgrims had not lost all the sporting blood of his earlier English ancestors.

“Often as high as five hundred or a thousand dollars.  The largest stake I ever saw change hands was forty-five thousand.  Many a miner went back to the placers in the spring without a dollar in his pockets.  But everybody was doing it and you could almost count the nationalities in the crowd around the table by the kinds of coins in the stacks.  There were French francs, English crowns, East Indian rupees, Spanish pesos and United States dollars.  The dress was as different as the money.  We miners wore red and blue shirts, slouch hats and wide belts to carry our dust.  The Californians were gorgeous in coats trimmed in gold lace, short pantaloons and high deer-skin boots, and the Chinese ran a close second in their colored brocaded silks.  You knew the professional gamblers by their long black coats and white linen—­real gentlemen, many of ’em and the most honest in the country.

“Ever see a picture of the Plaza in forty-nine,” he asked abruptly.