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Show 10 PERSONAL ADVENTURES you have no cause to complain, for you appear to \Veather it well." " Oh, I don't know that !" be responded : " I have had but indifferent luck. For several days after I got here, I did not make any thing; but since then I have, by the hardest ·work, averaged about seven dollars a day. When you consider the price of provisions, the hardness of the labour, and the wear and tear of body, mind, and clothes"- here he exhibited his rags-" you will ad1nit that this is but poor remuneration. I-Iowever, I live in hopes of getting a streak of luck yet. I am no'v cooking for our party. There are ten of us, and a1nongst the rest are Van Anken . and Hughes. Van has been immensely for·· tunate. Every place he touches turns to gold under his fingers. Sometirnes, after exhausting one place, he tries another which has been abandoned, and I have known him pick out of it seven and eiO'ht ounces a day for b ' days together. One thing is, he never tires. fie is, as you know, a stout though a smallmade man, with a constitution a~ tough as IN CALIFORNIA. old iron. l-Ie laughs at fever and goes to sleep by the side of the1n they 'vere first-rate bedfello,vs. 1 l ague, and as though It's as to-nishing the number of tnen who have lost a fortune through these two complaints; when they're touched, good bye. If their '' diggin" 'vere ever so rich, they're obliged to desert it; and, once deserted, 'vhy not even their O'\-Vll brother would respect it. 1-Iughes, no\v, has been every bit as unlucky. He bas had the poorest chance of all, and I don't think he has dug In ore than five ounces ever since he came here." " I should have thought him likelier to succeed than any other," I observed ; " for he is a large and a strong-looking rnan." "Ah! it's more luck than any thing else," replied he. "But, luck or no luck, no man can pick up golrl, even here, without the very hardest labour, and that's a fact. Some think that it is only to come here, squat do\vn anywhere, and pick away. But they soon find out their mistake. I never kne\v what hard work was until I came here. Talk of |