"Boys, I'll work an hour for that chap if you will."

At the end of the hour a hundred dollars' worth of gold dust was laid
in the youth's handkerchief. The miners made out a list of tools and
necessaries.

"You go," they said, "and buy these, and come back. We'll have a good
claim staked out for you. Then you've got to paddle for yourself."
Thus genuine and unconventional was the hospitality of the
mining-camp.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN,
in __Mining Camps._



DECEMBER 9.


Down in the gulch bottoms were the old placer diggings. Elaborate
little ditches for the deflection of water, long cradles for the
separation of gold, decayed rockers, and shining in the sun the tons
and tons of pay dirt which had been turned over pound by pound in the
concentrating of its treasure. Some of the old cabins still stood. It
was all deserted now, save for the few who kept trail for the
freighters, or who tilled the restricted bottom lands of the flats.
Road-runners racked away down the paths; squirrels scurried over
worn-out placers, jays screamed and chattered in and out of the
abandoned cabins. And the warm California sun embalmed it all in a