There is no danger of taking cold sleeping on the ground in the dry season, when it does not rain for seven months.  He had set fire to a dead tree to keep the grizzly bears off, and about the time I got comfortably laid down, there was a pack of coyote wolves came howling around.  Amid those surroundings, the burning of the fire to keep the grizzlies off and howling of the wolves, I fell asleep and did not wake until morning, refreshed from my slumbers.  After a breakfast similar to the meal the night before, we proceeded on our journey, but the ox team travelled so slow that in walking I got away ahead of it, and then got tired of waiting for it to come up to me, and so went on alone.  Toward night I came to Mormon Island, the first gold diggings.  I inquired if there was a place where I could get quarters for the night.  They said I might, at the hospital.  It was a log cabin with bunks in it, and what was my astonishment to find the proprietor, a doctor from Troy, N.Y., an old acquaintance.  I was more than welcome.  We were both delighted to see each other.  I to find such comfortable quarters, and he to meet with a friend in the wilderness, and to hear the latest news from the East.  He got for me the best supper that the surroundings would afford; as I had eaten nothing since morning, it was very acceptable, and he provided for me the most comfortable of his bunks for sleeping.  He informed me that it was twenty-five miles from Coloma, and there was but one place on the way where I could get water to drink.  I started after breakfast, refreshed.  After travelling some miles, I came to the smoke of the camp-fire of Indians, just ahead of me.  It was rumored that the Oregon men were in the habit of shooting an Indian on sight when they had a chance.  The Indians killed white men in retaliation, as they could not make peace until they had killed as many whites as they had lost, according to their ideas of equity.  As I did not care particularly about being one to make up the number, I struck off in a ravine and passed around so as to avoid their camping ground and came to the road beyond them.  What truth there was about the shooting of them I could not say, but it was currently reported at the time.  About 4 o’clock, P.M., I got to a stopping place six miles from Coloma.  There I met a man with a long beard, slouched hat, a sash around his body, a flannel shirt, evidently a miner.  I had a long talk with him.  He posted me about the gold diggings and I him about the news from the States.  As we were about to part, he asked me to take a drink.  He inquired of the proprietor if he had champagne?  He said, yes, at $10 a bottle.  The man said, pass us down a bottle, which we drank together.  He, evidently, had struck good diggings.  We parted, as I was anxious to get to Coloma before dark, which I did, just as the sun was setting, having made twenty-five miles in one day on foot.  I found a regular tavern here, kept by a man from Mississippi, with his family.  I sat down to a regular table for my supper, which seemed quite a treat.  He informed me that he had no bed-room for me; that I could sleep on the dining-room floor, or in his barn.  He had just had some new hay put in.  I chose the latter.  It was a kind of a shanty building, but the soft bed of new hay was a luxury after my twenty-five miles walk.