“John” has been a thorough gleaner of the mines.  The “superior race” allowed him to make no valuable discoveries.  He could buy their half-worked-out placers.  The “river-bed” they sold him when its chances of yielding were deemed desperate.  When the golden fruitage of the banks was reduced to a dollar per day, they became “China diggings.”  But wherever “John” settled he worked steadily, patiently and systematically, no matter whether his ten or twelve hours’ labor brought fifty cents or fifty dollars; for his industry is of an untiring mechanical character.  In the earlier and flusher days of California’s gold-harvest the white man worked spasmodically.  He was ever leaving the five-dollar diggings in hand for the fifty- or hundred-dollar-per-day claims afar off in some imaginary bush.  These golden rumors were always on the wing.  The country was but half explored, and many localities were rich in mystery.  The white vanguard pushed north, south and east, frequently enduring privation and suffering.  “John,” in comparative comfort, trotted patiently after, carrying his snugly made-up bundle of provisions and blankets at one end of a bamboo pole, his pick, shovel, pan and rocker at the other, to work over the leavings.  The leavings sometimes turned out more gold than “new ground,” much to the chagrin of the impatient Caucasian.  But John, according to his own testimony, never owned a rich claim.  Ask him how much it yielded per day, and he would tell you, “sometimes four, sometimes six bittee” (four or six shillings).  He had many inducements for prevarication.  Nearly every white man’s hand was against him.  If he found a bit of rich ground, “jumpers” were ready to drive him from it:  Mexicans waylaid him and robbed him of his dust.  In remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades:  even these were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes.  Lastly came the foreign miner’s tax-collector, with his demand of four dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold.  There were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the mines—­English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese—­but they paid little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote, and the tax-collector was appointed by the sheriff of the county, and the sheriff, like other officials, craved a re-election.  But John was never to be a voter, and so he shouldered the whole of this load, and when he could not pay, the official beat him and took away his tools.  John often fought this persecutor by strategy.  In localities where no white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar.  From the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail to collect his monthly dues.  That signal or a puff of smoke told the Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from the “license-man.”  Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides into artificial caves or leafy coverts.  Out of companies of fifty the collector finds but twenty men at work.  These pay their tax, the official rides on down the river, the hidden thirty Mongolians emerge from cover; and more than once has a keen collector “doubled on them” by coming back unexpectedly and detecting the entire gang on their claim.