Descending the declivity, they reached a cabin rudely built of dead wood,
which seemed to have been brought down by the spring rains from the
hill-sides to the west. Knocking at the door, it was opened by a woman,
holding in her arms a child of six months. The woman appeared to be fifty
years of age, but she was in reality only thirty. Casting a searching look
upon the traveler and his companion, she asked them to enter.

The cabin was divided into two apartments, a kitchen, which also served for
a store-room, dining-room, and sitting-room; the other was the chamber, or
rather bunk-room, where the family slept. Five children came tumbling out
from this latter apartment as the traveler entered, and greeted him with a
stare of childlike curiosity. The woman asked them to be seated on blocks
of wood, which served for chairs, and soon threw off her reserve and told
them her story, while they awaited the return of her husband from the
nearest village, some thirty miles distant, whither he had gone the day
before to dispose of the gold-dust which he had "panned out" from a gulch
near by. He was a miner. Four years before he had come with his family from
the East, and pushing on in advance of the main movement of emigration in
the territory, had discovered a rich gold placer in this lonely gorge.
While he had been working in this placer, his wife had with her own hands
turned up the soil in the valley below and raised all the corn and potatoes
required for the support of the family; she had done the housework, and had
made all the clothes for the family. Once when her husband was sick, she
had ridden thirty miles for medicine. It was a dreary ride, she said, for
the road, or rather trail, was very rough, and her husband was in a burning
fever. She left him in charge of her oldest child, a girl of eleven years,
but she was a bright, helpful little creature, able to wait upon the sick
man and feed the other children during the two days' absence of her mother.