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Show 148 WESTERN WILDS. present level. On the south side another mountain- grooved road leads up 2,500 feet to the divide between the Stanislaus and Tuo-lumne. No running here, but with slow steps the steaming horses drag us along, and we lounge back over the coach seats, gazing al-ternately at frowning cliffs above and the river sinking in dim per-spective below. No wonder that California is producing a new race of original poets; for, surely, if a man have the poetic instinct, this clime and scenery will bring it out in tropic luxuriance, and cause his genius to put forth wondrous growths of freshness and quaint originality. This society, these scenes and this clime Italy and Switzerland combined are the true home of poetry and romance. Two hours of toil bring us to the summit, and thence down a bar-ren hollow a sudden turn reveals an oval valley of rare beauty, in the midst of which is the pretty town of Columbia, fourteen miles from where we changed coaches. Here we enter the great region of placer and drift mining, once alive with twenty thousand miners, and musical with the hum of an exciting and curious industry. For six miles we run among washed- out- placers, beds of " tailings " and " poor dirt;" wind around sluice- boxes, or cross ditches which lead in the water from a main canal which begins fifty miles up the Stanis-laus. At intervals all day we encounter the great ditch of the " Union Water Company," sometimes winding along the mountain side in rocky flumes, sometimes passing beneath us in deep cuts through narrow ridges, and as often far above our heads in mid- air aqueducts carried on trestlework for hundreds of feet across a rocky hollow to me a curiosity almost as great as any in the scenery. This ditch, built by an incorporated company at an expense of two million dollars, begins at the very head of the Stanislaus, where that stream is formed by affluents from the melting snows of the Sierras. It is sixty miles in length, winding a devious course to preserve its level, along the mountains and through gorges down to the foothills; furnishes water to a hundred mining camps, and at last, after being-used, collected, cleared in reservoirs, and used again half a dozen times, its water, yellow with the refuse of pay dirt, or red with iron dust, spreads in a dozen irrigating streams upon the lower valley. Careful study to select the route, skillful engineering to lay it out, economy of space and material, perseverance and capital all spurred on by the love of gold combined to produce the work. Mining here began with the " rocker," many of which we see even now rotting along the gulches; next came the " long torn," which |