216 SLEIGHING TO ST JOHN. 



After midnight, we stopped at Darby Hooligan s a 

 name not very suggestive of comfort, which indeed we 

 did not find. After attempting in vain to rest for a few 

 hours, we started again soon after daylight, and, the thaw 

 still continuing, found the road very slippery. In many 

 places it was a perfect sheet of ice, and yet the horses 

 trotted down the icy hills with the most perfect con 

 fidence and sureness of foot : long habit has taught them 

 to dig their sharp shoes into the ice, so as to secure a 

 perfect hold. In other places, again, which were 

 exposed to the wind, and from which the snow had been 

 in a great measure drifted off, the thaw had laid the 

 ground nearly bare, so that the runners of the sleigh 

 grated on the stony surface, and went along heavily and 

 unpleasantly. I reached St John, however, about 

 2 P.M. 



Among other points upon which I found some of my 

 St John friends a little excited was the subject of 

 California. It had been brought home to them, as it 

 were, more truly and directly by the arrival of one of 

 their own townsmen from the diggings, with lumps of 

 gold taken up by his own hands. The fever which had 

 spread over so large a part of the civilised world was, in 

 consequence, finding daily its new victims here also. 



The apprehension, at first very generally entertained, 

 that the introduction of so large a supply of this precious 

 metal would suddenly, or very soon, alter its relation to 

 other commodities as a standard of value, appears to have 

 now very much subsided ; and yet such a result was not 

 unknown in ancient times. In Strabo s Geography, 

 book iv. chap. vi. 9, the following passage occurs : 



u Polybius relates that, in his time, mines of gold 

 were found among the Taurisci Norici, in the neighbour 

 hood of Aquilea, so rich that, in digging to the depth of 

 two feet only, gold was met with, and that the ordinary 

 sinkings did not exceed fifteen feet ; that part of it was 



