Mississippi river and successfully passing Vicksburg, which had so much to do with its capture.  He was a perfect gentleman, and commanded your admiration with the skill of his management of the vessel.  There were on the vessel well-dressed pickpockets, who went from New York to the Isthmus, to return by the steamers to the city, for the chances of robbing the returning Californians of their gold dust, as all of them had more or less of it on their persons.  One unfortunate victim of their wiles appealed strongly to my sympathies.  He was an English sailor, and had been two or three years up in the gold mines, and had $3,000 or $4,000 in gold dust in a buckskin bag on his person.  He showed it to me.  I advised him to deposit it with the purser for safety; that I had done so with mine.  He said they could not rob him.  He was about the happiest man I ever saw.  He was richer, in feeling, than the Vanderbilts.  He said he had a wife and children in Liverpool, and would take the first steamer from New York for that port.  He said he had not seen his family for several years, and now that he had the gold he could make them all happy.  He was in the steerage.  A few days after I heard he was sick.  He had fainted.  Some parties had helped him up; evidently pickpockets had taken that opportunity to rob him; his gold was all gone.  I explained his case to Captain Porter, but nothing could be done.  There was no way to identify his gold dust from any other; it was all alike.  When he arrived in New York, he would have to go to the hospital until he got well enough to ship on some other vessel for $14 per month, and not be able to return to his wife and children with his gold, and make them happy, while these black-hearted villainsillians were spending his money, his hard earnings of years.  I entered in a bond, with myself, that if I were ever on a jury I would never show any mercy to a thief.

As we were sailing along many ships and schooners came in sight.  We were evidently nearing the great port of New York.  The land of Staten Island soon came in sight covered with snow.  It was late in the fall.  It was the first I had seen since my departure from the same port, except on the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Here ends my personal adventures of the days of the Forty-niners, to be continued by the peroration on California.

PERORATION.

On my return, in looking over my finances, I was no poorer than when I left.  It must be evident to the reader that I had acquired no wealth to astonish my friends with my riches, which was the visionary expectation of the early pioneers to the gold Eldorado.  I have been writing from personal recollections of events that occurred forty-five years ago.  Of course, there was nothing in my enterprises, or the little fluctuations of fortune that would be of particular interest to any one; but in the form of a personal narrative, it was the only way I could recall vividly