Friday, August 10th, we arrived at Natoma, neither richer nor poorer than when we left that place four months before, but yet congratulating ourselves that it was no worse. Hundreds, who had like us illustrated the fable of the Dog and the Shadow, had not escaped half so easily, having lost not only the whole summer, but all their previous earnings. Nowhere else is it so true that a rolling stone gathers no moss; and nowhere else has the said stone the same temptation to roll as in California.

We found Tertium domiciliated with Number Four in a tent which the latter had erected with such taste and elegance as might in the mines fairly be termed magnificent. The interior was decorated with bright blankets of different colours, and festoons of cedar;—the floor covered with a carpet of snowy canvass; and the cot bedsteads standing on opposite sides seemed to promise the highest possible amount of single blessedness. Some Vandal had applied a torch to our former camp, and nothing now remained but a black unsightly blot. We pitched our tent hard by, and having concocted a savoury lobster salad, fell to thinking most vigorously what we should do next. By the time we had discussed the salad, we had come to the conclusion to make another attack upon the bank we had deserted in the spring, where we hoped to find work enough to last till winter, and gold enough to take us home, and buy a suit of clothes in which to present ourselves to our admiring friends. We had long before this been compelled to abandon our original purpose of returning home like princes in disguise, clothed in rags and tatters, but having a royal ransom hidden beneath every patch.

The spot we now selected for our encampment was in the centre of the short ravine already described, and a little beyond the part we proposed to work. Close by the side of the tent the bank rose abruptly to the height of ten or twelve feet, and leaning over it, on its very verge, stood a gigantic pine, with long heavy branches,—its roots, bare and knotted, seeming, like the barky claws of the Arabian roc, to gripe fast hold of the soil. Between the ravine and the river rose a small rocky island, or what would have been such ages before, with a few bushes resembling the horse-chestnut growing on the scanty patches of earth among bald masses of polished granite. Directly in front of this island a party of miners called the South Fork Damming Company were making preparations to drain the river; and among its numbers we found the same ubiquitous individual so often mentioned as the Judge. Between this point and Mormon Island several other companies were occupied in the same manner, and large piles of lumber, to be used in constructing their various flumes, were already scattered here and there along the banks.

Our old claim still remained as we left it, no one having had the hardihood to assail its impregnable front now baked into yet greater hardness by a five months' drought. It was easy to see at a single glance that there was work enough there for a hundred men; as to the gold, that remained to be decided. We were in no hurry, however, to commence the attack; it was necessary first to reconnoitre the bank; digging with the pick was very laborious, and we might perhaps devise some easier way; the heat was excessive, and in the mean time we had enough to do in making our home more comfortable. We built a bower before the door to serve as a dining-room, and drove a number of stout stakes into the ground to support the smooth stone slab that furnished us with a table. At a little distance we built a rude fireplace of stones. The pine-cones that covered the ground made an excellent fuel; our frying-pan and coffee-pot set up their wonted song as cheerfully as ever, and once more our little Lares and Penates came frisking and capering round our hearthstone. We now made up our minds to remain another winter.

On Mormon Island, standing like a goose on one leg in the edge of the river, was a tall awkward water-wheel, turning round with the current, and dipping up with its long arms a quantity of water, which falling into a wide spout was thence conducted into a shallow trough fifteen feet long and as many inches in width. A miner standing by the side of the trough threw into it, from time to time, several buckets of earth, which being carried along by the water to a riddle or sieve at the lower end, fell in a hundred little streams into a shallow box below. Its contents were thus kept in a constant state of agitation, and the gold working its way beneath the surface was saved, while the greater part of the sand and gravel was floated off by the water. This simple apparatus was called by the imposingly suggestive title of Long Tom. The advantage it possessed over the common cradle in enabling us to wash a larger quantity of earth was more than counterbalanced by the difficulties that would beset the use of so cumbrous an ally as the wheel. Yet the wheel was with us the principal attraction,—the splash of its paddles made a pleasing concert, and it performed its task so easily and cheerfully that it was a comfort to look at it.

My urgency having at length prevailed over the wiser counsels of St. John, Tertium maintaining a strict neutrality, we were yet obliged to wait several weeks for the big-bellied carpenter to construct the apparatus, and for the South Fork company to turn the river into their canal, on the edge of which we proposed to set up our works.

In the mean time we were led to embark in an enterprise more weighty than any of our previous operations, and which, after various disappointments, was at length, and in the most unexpected manner, crowned with success.

A quarter of a mile above our tent, a party of miners were engaged in repairing a dam that had been built the preceding summer, and had paid its original proprietors over fifty thousand dollars. The new-comers, who had taken the name of the Washington Damming and Mining Company, had already made considerable headway in the undertaking, and expected in another week to get to work in the bed of the river. One of the members, intending to leave the mines, offered us his share for one hundred and fifty dollars; after some hesitation, we paid the money; and the next day I listened, with becoming gravity, to the reading of the constitution and by-laws, signed my name to that important document, and went to work with the rest.

The company consisted, chiefly, of English sailors and adventurers from Australia, hard-workers and hard-drinkers, but possessing little Yankee adaptation. Their names were generally Tom, Dick, and Harry; the three more prominent members who alternated through the different offices alone rejoicing in the dignity of a surname. Yet in the division of our labour we maintained strict republican equality, each, in turn, wielding the shovel and the pick, and in due time exchanging them for the more laborious task of carrying earth and stones in buckets along the narrow pathway of the dam.

The dam itself was an immense structure, and its massive solidity had enabled it partially to withstand the freshets of the preceding winter. Half the foundation was formed by a pine three feet in diameter and a hundred feet in length, which had been drawn into the river by oxen, and was now held firmly in its place by the jagged rocks against which it rested. On this were laid, at right angles, their blackened butts projecting like a close array of pikes, a large number of stout saplings; and on these, again, a second timber, much smaller, however, than the first. Large stones were then thrown in on the upper side of this rude breastwork; other logs successively added—and, when the whole had thus attained a sufficient elevation, it was made tight with stones and gravel, and, finally, the finest earth we could procure. When I joined the company, about half the dam was completed, but a large part of the river still found its way through the farther extremity. The dam was here ten feet high, and twelve feet wide at the base; and all this mass of earth and stones had to be carried to the spot in buckets, a distance of two hundred and fifty feet, the labour being but slightly relieved by a small flatboat that was employed to bring earth from the opposite bank.

As the long forenoon dragged slowly on, many a chiding look was cast towards two towering pines that stood just one hour apart, high up on the hillside. When the sun at last had reached his meridian tower above the southernmost pine, the buckets and picks and shovels fell from our willing hands; the rest of the party got into the boat and paddled slowly across the river, while I, wearily and with long breaths, picked my way over the rocks—crossed one or two deep ravines—till, reaching the Red Bank, I descended with a bound, and, stretching myself on my blankets, lay in cloddish immutability till called to dinner. At two our long afternoon commenced, and, ah! how earnestly we desired the shadow, bringing with it health and refreshing. Slowly but gently our work went on, like the coral island rising from the deep Pacific. As we hemmed in the headstrong river, the pond above our dam continually enlarged, and more of the water was compelled to find its way through the canal.

But now my companions were impatient to obtain the reward of their labour, and they all said, "Let's go to work in the river bed and earn a little money."

We dug holes here and there in the gravel, but the water filled them like so many wells, and we were compelled to work higher on the bank. Still we made little or nothing, and again returned to the dam.

There were several ugly leaks that defied all our efforts; boat-load after boat-load of earth was emptied on the spot—bushels of old clothes, enough to make the fortune of all the rag merchants of Little Germany, collected in the neighbourhood, and carefully stowed away at the bottom by the most amphibious of our party, who used to emerge from his bath, dripping like a river-god and shivering as in an ague—all was in vain. It was really too bad; we had stopped the whole river, but we could not stop that trifling leak.

And just now, too, our boat was sunk. Pushing heedlessly off from the shore, it went down, full of earth, in ten feet of water; and when we reproached the crew for their clumsiness, we received no other consolation than that of knowing they had lost their boots.

The next day was cold and cloudy—a few wild geese flying south, dripped upon us some drops of rain.

"Well, boys," cried our democratic president, "and what shall we do now?"

"The rainy season is coming! we must go to work, and make what we can, each one for himself!" cried half the members.

We made, during the forenoon, fifty dollars. "This will never do," said the president; "we must have another meeting." We sat round on stones—the surnames argued with a deal of heat and acrimony, to which Tom, Dick, and Harry, opposed an impregnable front of sullen disdain.

The president, by far the ablest man in the company,—though, like all the rest, hasty and passionate,—resigned his office in disgust; and all my persuasive flattery could not induce him to resume it. They would go to work in the river, in spite of my remonstrances; so I left them, and returned to assist in working the Long Tom.

The wheel, some eight feet in diameter, was attached to the end of a long, heavy shaft, projecting two or three feet over the current, and supported at a single point by an iron bolt passing through a stout post set firmly among the rocks at the edge of the canal into which the river had been diverted. By means of this shaft, we could raise or depress the wheel at pleasure. The earth we proposed first to wash was a gentle slope, rising from the river towards our bank, and consisting of a fine sand almost free from stones, and paying from three to ten, or even twenty cents to the bucket.

Thursday morning, September 12, we commenced operations. Round goes the restless wheel, scooping up the dizzy water. The canvass hose rises and falls with its frequent pulse, like the great artery of a whale. The thirsty sand drinks eagerly the cooling stream that dissolves and sweeps it away, leaving bright grains of gold sticking here and there on the bottom of the trough. So, if nothing happens, we shall get rich, after all.

"But seems to me, the river is rising," cries St. John.

"So it is, I declare; what in the world is to pay now, I wonder; there comes Cameron; perhaps he can tell us."

"Well, Mr. Raven," cried Cameron, as well as he could for want of breath, "the dam's gone."

"Dam gone! how? where? when?"

"Just now, down the river, swept away. The Missouri Dam has burst, and the flood has swept the top of ours clean off; I just saved the tools and that's all."

"That's what made the river rise?"

"Yes, it has so."

There was our two thousand vanished into thin air; we all looked rather foolish, and then and there decided that damming was a very unprofitable business, and we would have nothing more to do with it.

It was now twelve o'clock; so raising the wheel out of the water, we walked up to our tent; where we spent an hour or two very pleasantly in forming a comparison between our own situation and that of the great mass of our fellow adventurers. It was of course highly gratifying to find that we belonged to that numerous and respectable class whose praises have been sung in all ages from Solomon to Dr. Franklin; and if half of our acquaintance had more, the other half had even less than had fallen to our share.

Full of this consolatory reflection, and strong in faith, we resumed our labours in the afternoon; but had hardly washed a dozen buckets when suddenly the water in the canal fell two feet or more—the wheel ceased its revolutions—St. John dropped the uplifted shovel—Tertium rested on the handles of the wheelbarrow—and we all stared with open mouth at this new wonder. The flume just above had burst, letting half the river back into its original channel, and we could do nothing until the breach was stopped. I laid my hand on the shaft, intending to raise the wheel, when the whole fabric slowly toppled over into the water. We at once threw off our nether garments, and wading out into the rapid current, which rose nearly to our shoulders, succeeded by a violent effort in restoring the post to its upright position. The cause of this accident was the water undermining a large stone that supported the post.

We worked like beavers all Friday morning in repairing damages, and in the afternoon succeeded in washing two hundred buckets, when the spout that received the water from the dippers, getting entangled in the wheel, was instantly torn from its position, and tossed scornfully into the stream. The wheel itself suffered severely in this encounter, and on setting it in motion the next morning its dizzy efforts to perform its stated task were pitiable to behold, and we found it necessary to strengthen it by passing a strip of hoop iron round its whole circumference.

Sunday, the 15th, there was a slight shower, accompanied by heavy thunder, the first we had ever heard in California. Monday, our wheel worked to our entire satisfaction, but not so with the Tom. A hundred wheelbarrows, equal to six hundred buckets, yielded only sixteen dollars instead of thirty; Tertium and St. John were out of all patience, and it was as much as I could do to persuade them to another trial. We raised the trough so as to increase the fall of water into the box several inches, and now our receipts were nearly doubled.

For several days we went on swimmingly, and I began to exult over my companions; when on the 22d we were alarmed by a few drops of rain, followed the same night by a violent tempest. The wind, and the rain that soaked our blankets through and through, kept us awake till long after midnight; the next morning, however, was unusually pleasant—the river showed no signs of the rain, and after a hard day's work, we retired to rest with minds unprophetic of danger.

I was awaked about midnight by a whistle coming along the ravine. It stopped just at our door, and informed us in few words that the river had risen and swept every thing away. Hurrying down to the shore, the scene of ruin and uproar that presented itself was so appalling, that we rubbed our eyes to make sure that we were awake. The moon then riding high shone upon a proud and angry flood ten times as large as the placid stream we had parted from a few hours before, and bearing helplessly along the mingled wreck of the dams and flumes that had presumed to arrest its course. Our wheel, still standing on its one leg far out in the stream, dipped its paddles into the taller waves as they shot beneath—the other articles had floated away, and we found them lying quietly at anchor in an eddy not far below.

Thus disastrous was the termination of this experiment. "I told you so," cried Tertium—"Just what I expected," said St. John; while I had not a word to offer in defence.