consisting of fried bacon and a very homely apple-tart,
might have been worse. I can hear the harsh voice of
the garrulous old crone even now. She kept up a rambling
sort of conversation, well garnished with pungent
epithets, telling me all about her bereavement, for she
was a widow, and her subsequent troubles, and how
the English came to be the cause of the family’s misfortunes.
The M’Canns, she said, had belonged to one
of the oldest families in Ireland, and the grandfather
of the lamented Pat, her husband, had been a grand
gentleman, holding some mighty post in Leinster
during the Irish troubles towards the end of the last
century, and those d English had hanged him for
being a patriot, whereupon his family, along with many
others, had been shipped off to ’Mericato find bread
wherever they could. Her tale was so minute and circumstantial
that I became interested in it, and on my
return I felt tempted to test its truth. Strange
enough, in an old Irish record I found, what I have
since seen confirmed in Walpole’s “ Ireland,” that in
1798, under Cornwallis, as Viceroy, a person of the
name of M’Cann,—amongst some forty others who had
been excluded from the benefits of the Amnesty Bill,—
belonging to the “ United Irishmen ” League, and
secretary to the Provisional Committee of the County
of Leincester, or Leinster, was tried as a rebel and
a traitor, convicted, and hung on the 19th J u ly !
What curious individuals one does sometimes meet
far away from home I
There were two mines within easy reach, the one
breaking up from forty to fifty tons of quartz daily,
the other only seven to e ig h t; each ton, I understood
the owner to say, yielding about three ounces of gold,
or in the proportion of one in ten thousand, which, in
California is considered a good return. The depth at
which these mines were worked was 600 to a
1,000 feet, but the number of men employed below
was inconsiderable,-^1 think sixteen in the smaller
works ; labour is dear, fifty to sixty dollars a month
besides board. A common, slatternly servant girl I
noticed at the manager’s cottage got thirty dollars
monthly wages. Since my return I have heard that
both these mines- have been sold to companies for very
large sums of money.
After a good deal of discomfort during my mountain
journey which had occupied several days, I was glad to
get into more open country. Bower’s Estate was my
next halting place; it belonged to a Frenchman who
had been a settler in these regions for many years, and
who undoubtedly swears by California ; he has a large
family around him, and farms thousands of acres re<-
quiring very little help, excepting during harvest-time,
BB