Of course, there is a good deal of road-
making and other work yet to be done in the
new country. For example, this is the sort
of excitement open to a passenger upon the
box-seat of a coach or spring-waggon, rattled
along the mine district by six horses, well
broken in to crossing gulches and mudholes.
Now, the road is down a dry gulch, then, through
a bog, to be crossed in safety only by hard
driving; then, along the steep slope of a hill,
with one wheel up, the other down, and all
passengers " hard up to the right," at the
command of the colonel who drives—that is
to say, throwing their weight all on one side
to maintain a balance. Presently, the vehicle
is dragged up through an infinity of small
cindery rocks to the summit of a used-up
crater. The colonel puts the break on with
his leg, and down they slide among the rocks,
the colonel loudly adjuring the horses not to
touch one of them. Near the bottom the
off-wheels get into a mudhole. The colonel
without hesitation orders all passengers to
hang on to the near side of the waggon,
jumps upon the lap of the gentleman who
occupies the box-seat, and with a crack of the
whip starting the whole concern, sends it flying
and swaying from side to side to the bottom of
the hill. There they pull up, and the colonel
relieves his neighbour of his weight,
observing, in extenuation of what might otherwise
have appeared a liberty, that he is
obliged to be a little " sarsy " on the road.
All goes well for a time. Presently, the
colonel turns round to his neighbour, his
hands being occupied with his ribbons, and
says, " I guess there's a flea on my neck."
It is the business of the box-seat to catch and
kill it. The colonel, as he nods his thanks,
remarks that he generally has three or four
of the "darned cattle put through " in that
fashion during the journey.

Then again, as we need hardly say, men in
those parts walk armed. Outrage has
become comparatively infrequent, theft is less
common than at home in the old country;
but even in San Francisco men go armed.
In this and in some other respects many
things in California carry our minds back to
the period when Europe itself was, so to
speak, a new country, a few centuries ago.
The energies, too, that were displayed by the
pioneers to whom we owe the present state
of the old world, though different in kind,
were in no degree less wonderful than those
which we now see put forth by the best class
of Californian adventurers. There is a great
deal in such a parallel that would be worth
pursuing.

Before the last San Francisco fire,
burglaries, says Mr. Marryat, were so common
that it became necessary to carry firearms
after dark, more particularly as the streets
were not lighted. An acquaintance of his
was walking late one night through a street
which was apparently deserted, and in which
one dim light alone shed a sickly ray from
over the door of a closed restaurant. As he
reached this spot, a man started from the
obscurity, and requested, with the politeness
of a Claude Duval, to know the time. With
equal civility the person addressed presented
the dial of his watch to the light, and allowing
the muzzle of his revolver to rest gracefully
upon the watch-glass, he invited the stranger
to inspect for himself. Slowly the man
advanced, and the sickly ray gleamed on the
barrel of the "sixshooter" as well as upon
the dial-plate, as with some difficulty he
satisfied himself respecting the time. Both
then prepared to depart, and for the first
time the light fell on their faces; then these
desperate fellows discovered that they were
no burglars, but old acquaintances, who had
dined in company that very evening. This
might surely pass for a scene out of the old
town life of Europe.

On board the local steamboats, the open
bunks line the saloon and decorum forbids
undressing; but by a placard— though indeed
vainly— " gentlemen are requested not to go
to bed in their boots." Apropos to this,
writes Mr. Marryat, I remember attending a
political meeting in a little church at Benicia;
in each pew was a poster, which requested
that you would neither cut the woodwork,
nor spit on the floor; but the authorities had
provided no spittoons; so, as a gentleman
observed to me, whilst inside the sacred
edifice, " what-the-something was a man to do
who chewed?"

That the Californian gold was sought,
although not found, by the early Spanish
priests, is evident from the number of old
shafts in some places, sunk sometimes in
the centre of rich districts. Often it has
happened that they who seek for the gold
miss it, and they who had no thoughts of it in
their minds fall upon heaps. A market-
gardener who had long been abusing his ground
for producing cabbages that were all stalk,
one day pulled up an aggravating sample,
and found a piece of gold adhering to its
roots. Holden's garden, near Sonora, was
found to be so rich that the gamblers of the
town sallied out and fought for claims in it.
For four years it has yielded riches, pieces of
gold weighing many pounds having been
sometimes taken from it. There is a
famous digging upon Carson's Hill, in the
vicinity of which a rich gulch was
discovered under circumstances that were
related to Mr. Marryat by Mr. Carson:
One of the miners died, and as he had been
much respected, it was determined to give
him an unusually ceremonious funeral. A
digger in the neighbourhood, who had once
been a powerful preacher in the United
States, was requested to officiate, and after
"drinks all round," the party went in solemn
order to the grave. Around the grave all
knelt while the man of power laboured
indefatigably at a lengthy prayer. Time began to
hang heavy on the hands of listeners; their