2IO Audubon's Western Journal 



hard, ending in slatey rock, soft and dead to pick 

 at, and having the usual friability of the trap slate 

 that is so plentiful all over the country, sticking 

 up in places like the headstones of a deserted 

 churchyard. At Wood's Diggings the same 

 appearance is seen, but with the slate in more 

 upright strata and hard. 



March l8th. At Murphy's New Diggings, the 

 gulch is full of lumps of granite and heavy gravel ; 

 in the part called ''The Flat" in the lower part of 

 the valley the soil is of great depth, in places eight 

 to ten feet, less in others. 



March 20th. From Murphy's New Diggings 

 to Angel's Camp is six miles; the country just 

 undulating, inviting the squatter to put up his log 

 house, made from the few pines that, from time 

 to time, form little clusters, but so far apart as 

 always to arrest the attention, and call forth the 

 admiration of the wanderer through these lonely 

 hills, where the want of woods to me gives more 

 solitude than our densest forest; so much for habit, 

 for I recollect well that "Beaver," my Delaware 

 Indian guide in Texas, always was anxious for 

 the prairie, whenever I took him into the deep 

 swamps of the Brasos or Guadaloupe. 



"Angel's Diggings" is one of the many repeti- 

 tions of the same thing seen every day. A beautiful 

 little brook, with precipitous sides, and gravelly 

 or rocky beds ; high hills of red clayey loam, mixed 



