.boys, found the matter, in common with the others, too weighty for them. For a time affairs here pro- ceeded much as usual. The men, who for the most part were honest and conscientious, had pledged their word to six weeks' work, and they meant to keep it. The idea of self-sacrifice, if any such arose, was teni-
Eered by the thought that perhaps after all there was ut little gold, and that little confined within narrow limits; hence if they abandoned profitable service for an uncertainty, they might find themselves losers in the end. As a matter of course, they could have no conception of the extent and power of the spirit they had awakened. It was not necessary, however, that on Sundays they should resist the worship of Mam- mon, who was indeed now fast becoming the chief god hereabout.
The historic tail-race, where first in these parts be- came incarnate this deity, more potent presently than either Christ or Krishna, commanded first attention; indeed, for some time after gold had been found in other places, it remained the favorite picking-ground of the mill-men. Their only tools as yet were .their knives, and with these from the seams and crevices each person managed to extract metal at the rate of from three to eight dollars a day. For the purpose of calculating their gains, they constructed a light pair of wooden scales, in which was weighed silver coin against their gold. Thus, a Mexican real de plata was balanced by two dollars' worth of gold, which they valued at sixteen dollars the ounce, less than it was really worth, but more than could be ob- tained for it in the mines a few months later. Gold- dust which balanced a silver quarter of a dollar was deemed worth four dollars, and so on.
On the 6th of February, the second Sunday after Marshall's discoverv, while the others were as usual busied in the tail-race, Henry Bigler and James Bar- ger crossed the river, and from a bare rock opposite the mill, with nothing but their pocket-
