in strange lands. It is a matter of pride with many
to be seen by their friends in their mining costume ;
so the bushy head and long beard are protected with
care, and every hole in the battered hat, every patch
in the woollen shirt, every dirt-stain on the greasy
pantaloons, are regarded with hallowed affection. Thus
appearing in his native village, with hints suggestive
of secreted gold-dust, and inuendoes which seemed
to say, " I could tell you a thing or two if I liked,"
"Perhaps John Robinson came back without his pile,
and perhaps he didn't," the returned Californian is the
hero of the hour.
It was a common remark that more money went east in the steerage than in the cabin. Some canied buckskin bags of dust in their pockets, others in belts under their shirts, and guarded by an ominous-looking navy revolver. Experience had made many shy of entrusting their hard earnings to banks and express companies, and freight on gold was high. Sometimes a party of two or three would put their fortunes in a carpet-bag, ten or twenty thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust, alternately guarding it, and never leaving it unwatched for a single instant during the whole voyage from San Francisco to New York, thereby saving in exchange the price of passage for each of them. Notwithstanding all their care, many return- ing miners were robbed by professional sharpers, who infested all the main avenues of travel, and followed their vocation regularly on the steamers between As- pinwall and New York.
In the steerage also were many penniless persons, broken in health and spirits, going home to die. There were those, pusillanimous and disgusting individuals, eaten up of disease, already morally dead ; there were self-pitying unfortunates, whining and complaining, whom success never attends under any circumstances, and who never should have left their mothers' apron- strings; and there were those who Imd manfully fought the battle and been beaten. Faithfully and
