Newspapers were eagerly sought for, such was the hunger for reading.  The Western folks bought the St. Louis papers, while Eastern people found the New York Tribune a favorite.  One dollar each for such papers was the regular price.  It may seem strange, but aside from the news we got from an occasional newspaper, I did not hear a word from the East during the two years I remained on Yuba river.  Our evenings were spent in playing cards for amusement, for no reading could be got.  The snow between Marysville and Downieville was deep and impassable in winter, but we could work our drifting claims very comfortably, having laid in a stock of provisions early in the season, before snowfall.  The nights seemed tediously long and lonesome, for when the snow was deep no one came to visit us, and we could go nowhere, being completely hemmed in.  All the miners who did not have claims they could work underground, went down below the winter snow-line to find work, and when the snow went off came back again and took possession of the old claims they had left.

After the snow went off three German sailors came up and took a river claim a short distance above us on a north fork of the north fork of the stream, where one side of the canon was perpendicular and the other sloped back only slightly.  Here they put logs across the river, laid stringers on these, and covered the bottom with fir boughs.  Then they put stakes at the sides and rigged a canvas flume over their bridge through which they turned the whole current of the river, leaving a nearly dry bed beneath.  This we called pretty good engineering and management on the part of the sailor boys, for no lumber was to be had, and they had made themselves masters of the situation with the material on hand.

They went to work under their log aqueduct, and found the claim very rich in coarse gold.  They went to town every Saturday night with good big bags of dust, and as they were open-hearted fellows, believing that a sailor always has the best of luck, they played cards freely, always betting on the Jack and Queen, and spent their money more easily than they earned it.  They were quite partial to the ladies, and patronizing the bar and card tables as liberally as they did, usually returned to camp on Monday or Tuesday with a mule load of grub and whiskey as all the visible proceeds of a week’s successful mining; but when Saturday night came around again we were pretty sure to see the jolly sailors going past with heavy bags of gold.  They left one nearly pure piece of gold at Langdon’s Express office that weighed five pounds, and another as large as a man’s hand, of the shape of a prickly pear leaf.

They worked their claim with good success until the snow water came down and forced them out.  I went one day to see them, and they took a pan of dirt from behind a big rock and washed it out, getting as much as two teacupfuls of nuggets, worth perhaps a thousand dollars.  When they went away they said they would go to Germany to see their poor relatives and friends, and one of them really went home, but the other two had spent all their money before they were ready to leave San Francisco.  These men were, without doubt, the inventors of the canvas flume which was afterward used so successfully in various places.