you do go, you will never forgive yourself, but go to the mines and try
your luck; then, if you are discouraged and want to go back, I will give
you a free passage, as we have no passengers on our return trip.


HOME SICKNESS.

When a person was attacked with it, it seemed the worst kind of malady,
as it would take them months to return if they had the money to pay
their passage. Many were married men, separated a great distance from
their wives and children. Others, young men, who had their engaged ones
waiting for them to return, with their fortunes made in the gold mines,
to marry them. I can recall several instances where I have known them to
lie down and die from despair. I was talking with an old Californian of
those days. He said he had once given up and made up his mind to wander
off by himself on the mountains and die, which he did. As he lay there
in despair, after a while he thought he would look around him, and he
saw the hill was covered with every variety of beautiful wild flowers.
He said their beauty seemed to refresh and revive his mind, and give him
new resolution, and he decided to try his fortune again, and he became
successful and returned to the States with a competency.

[Illustration: THE DESPONDENT MINER.]

The early pioneers had some conflict with the Indians in the interior of
the country. Five Oregon men were massacred by them when engaged in
digging gold, but a terrible retribution was visited upon those Indians
concerned in it by the enraged Forty-niners. The Indians, at first, had
nothing but bows and arrows, and, of course, could not compete with
rifles. Several other small engagements were rumored, but they soon