At noon we halted to refresh by the side of a small stream of crystal purity.  While making preparations for our hurried meal, we had all our eyes about us for gold in the channel of the rivulet, but saw none.  We had not yet reached the favoured spot.  After some difficulty in catching the pack-horses, one of the perverse brutes having taken it into its head to march up to its belly in the stream, where he floundered about for some time, enjoying the coolness of the water, we set forward, determined to reach the lower diggings by sundown.  As we neared the spot the ground gradually became more broken and heavily timbered with oak and pine, while in the distance, and separated from us by deep forests of these trees, might be seen a long ridge of snow-capped mountains—­the lofty Sierra Nevada.  But we were too anxious to reach the gold to care much about the more unprofitable beauties of Nature, and accordingly urged our horses to the quickest speed they could put forth.  We were now travelling along the river’s banks, and towards evening came in sight of the lower mines, here called the “Mormon” diggings, which occupy a surface of two or three miles along the river.  There were something like forty tents scattered up the hill sides, occupied mostly by Americans, some of whom had brought their families with them.  Although it was near sundown, everybody was in full occupation.  At every few yards there were men, with their naked arms, busily employed in washing out the golden flakes and dust from spadefuls of the auriferous soil.  Others were first passing it through sieves, many of them freshly made with intertwisted willow branches, to get rid of the coarse stones, and then washing the lumps of soil in pots placed beneath the surface of the water, the contents of the vessel being kept continually stirred by the hand until the lighter particles of earth or gravel were carried away.

A great number of the settlers, however, were engaged in making what are here called “cradles;” partly, I suppose, from their shape, and partly from the rocking motion to which they are subjected.  These machines were being roughly constructed of dealboards.  Later in the day I watched one of them at work, and had the process explained to me.  Four men were employed at it.  The first shovelled up the earth; another carried it to the cradle, and dashed it down on a grating or sieve—­placed horizontally at the head of the machine—­the wires of which, being close together, only allowed the smaller particles of earth and sand to fall through; the third man rocked the cradle—­I must confess I never saw one so perseveringly rocked at home; while the fourth kept flinging water upon the mass of earth inside.  The result of this fourfold process is, that the lighter earth is gradually carried off by the action of the water, and a sort of thick black sediment of sand is left at the bottom of the cradle.  This was afterwards scooped out, and put aside to be carefully dried in the sun to-morrow morning.