The average gain of the miner in those days can never be known. Though he was extraordinarily frank and confiding in the offhand conversations about the camp-fire, yet there is reason to believe that his largest receipts were sometimes not reported. My observation was that the industrious worker rarely brought to his supper less than ten dollars, often an ounce (reckoned at sixteen dollars), and sometimes six ounces, or even more. I myself took from the earth nearly one hundred and fifty ounces in seventeen successive working days. My largest clean-up was $224. One day, in less than half an hour, I took with my knife from a crevice in the rocks six and a half ounces of gold. When the river went down after it had been swollen by the first rains and had swept over the bed-rock of bars supposed to be worked out, hundreds of glittering scales were left exposed, affording pleasant picking for a day or two.
Mining is one of the most fascinating and exciting of employments. But in the earlier days, when we knew less about genuine indications, mining was, more than now, a species of gambling. The effects are yet to be seen in hundreds of men still living near their old haunts, who, in common phrase, have "lost their grip"; others live in our memories who, after repeated disappointment, sleep on the mountain sides in nameless graves. Yet these same unfortunates did their part in giving to the world thousands of millions of dollars, thus stimulating progress probably more than was ever known in any other epoch of similar length in the history of mankind.
The early miner has never been truly painted. I protest against the flippant style and eccentric rhetoric of those writers who have made him a terror, or who, seizing upon a sporadic case of extreme oddity, some drunken, brawling wretch, have given a caricature to the world as the typical miner. The so-called literature that treats of the golden era is too extravagant in this direction. In all my personal experience in mining-camps from 1849 to 1854 there was not a case of bloodshed, robbery, theft or actual violence. I doubt if a more orderly society was ever known. How could it be otherwise? The pioneers were young, ardent, uncorrupted, most of them well educated and from the best families in the East. The early miner was ambitious, energetic, and enterprising. No undertaking was too great to daunt him. The pluck and resources exhibited by him in attempting mighty projects with nothing but his courage and his brawny arms to carry them out was phenomenal. His generosity was profuse and his sympathy active, knowing no distinction of race. His sentiment that justice is sacred was never dulled. His services were at command to settle differences peaceably, or with pistol in hand to right a grievous wrong to a stranger. His capacity for self-government never has been surpassed. Of a glorious epoch, he was of a glorious race.