"We have no industry left _now_," they told me, "and no men; everybody and everything hereabouts has gone to decay.

We are only bummers--out of the game, a thin scatterin' of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used to be in the grand old gold-days.

We were giants then, and you can look around here and see our tracks." But although these lingering pioneers are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such surroundings as theirs.

As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet.

The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted this field by any means.