Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/399

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN OLD PIONEER. fession in the valley, came to our camp. I inquired of him who resided in that house. He replied, "Mr. Nye." "What is his Christian name?" "Michael." I had known Michael Nye in Missouri, and my brother-in-law, John P. Rogers (who was with me) and Nye had been intimate friends when they were both young men. We at once called upon Nye at his house. He received us most kindly. He and his brother-in-law, William Foster, with their families, were living together. NYxt morning we left for the Yuba ; and after traveling some eight or ten miles, we arrived at noon on the brow of the hill overlooking Long's Bar. Below, glowing in the hot sunshine, and in the narrow valley of this lovely and rapid stream, we saw the canvas tents and the cloth shanties of the miners. There was but one log cabin in the camp. There were about eighty men, three women, and five children at this place. The scene was most beau- tiful to us. It was the first mining locality we had ever seen, and here we promptly decided to pitch our tent. We drove our wagons and teams across the river into the camp, and turned out our oxen and horses to graze and rest. rarrivedat the mines November 5, 1848; and the remainder of the day I spent looking around the camp. No miner paid the slightest attention to me. They were all loo busy. At last I ventured to ask one of them, whose appearance pleased me, whether he could see the particles of gold in the dirt. Though dressed in the garb of a rude miner, he was a gentleman and a scholar. He politely replied that he could ; and taking a handful of dirt, he blew away the fine dust with his breath, and showed me a scale of gold, about as thick as thin paper, and as large as a Hax seed. This was entirely new to me. In the evening, when the miners had quit work and re- turned to their tents and shanties, I found a number of