melancholy men, ready to yield up their last breath at any moment, who left home prematurely, and now humbly acknowledge their error.”  His own happy constitution and buoyant health led him to look on the best side of things, and to take the sunniest possible view of the condition of the new country he was exploring, but occasionally he reveals incidentally the reverse of the picture.  Here is a sketch of a sick miner at Sacramento City, which is enough to make even California “gold become dim, and the fine gold changed.”

“He was sitting alone on a stone beside the water, with his bare feet purple with cold on the cold, wet sand.  He was wrapped from head to foot in a coarse blanket, which shook with the violence of his chill, as if his limbs were about to drop in pieces.  He seemed unconscious of all that was passing; his long, matted hair hung over his wasted face; his eyes glared steadily forward with an expression so utterly hopeless and wild, that I shuddered at seeing it.  This was but one of a number of cases, equally sad and distressing.”

The hardy and healthy portion of the emigrants, under the stimulating excitements of the novel circumstances of their situation, seemed to revel in the exuberance of animal spirits.  Each seemed to have adopted the rule of the wise man:  “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do with all thy might.”  They speculated, dug, or gambled, with an almost reckless energy.  All old forms of courtesy had given place to hearty, blunt good fellowship in their social intercourse.  They reminded our traveler of the Jarls and Norse sea-kings, and in the noisy and almost fierce revelry of these bearded gold-hunters around their mountain tires, he seemed to see the brave and jovial Berseckers of the middle ages.

We cannot forbear quoting a paragraph in relation to the great question of our time, “The Organization of Labor.”

“In California, no model phalanxes or national workshops have been necessary.  Labor has organized itself, in the best possible way.  The dream of attractive industry is realized; all are laborers, and equally respectable; the idler and the gentleman of leisure, to use a phrase of the country, ’can’t shine in these diggings.’  Rich merchandise lies in the open street; and untold wealth in gold dust is protected only by ragged canvas walls, but thefts and robbery are seldom heard of.  The rich returns of honest labor render harmless temptations which would prove an overmatch for the average virtue of New England.  The cut-purse and pickpocket in California find their occupation useless, and become chevaliers of industry, in a better sense than the term has ever before admitted of.  It will appear natural,” says our author, “that California should be the most democratic country in the world.  The practical equality of all the members of the community, whatever might be the wealth, intelligence, or profession of each, was never before so thoroughly demonstrated.  Dress