Dutch Flat—A Retrospect 161 
cynical note as they were stacked by big 
bony hands; if, I say, in such a barroom in the 
heyday of your youth, you had once fought 
some ten rounds, Marquis of Queensbury rules, 
and a gentleman in overalls, a flannel shirt, 
and spurs had acted as your second, because 
it suited your peculiar fancy and your youthful 
spirit so to do; and if in such a street where 
the murmurous din of a card game could be 
heard, you had once stood and emptied your 
revolver in the air, out of pure delight and 
joy in life—why then you would understand 
how the red dust and the red ants on the 
barroom bottles should have some association 
to middle age, spectacled, sedate, regenerate, 
and no longer easily amused. 
As I sit by the camp-fire in the little sphere 
of cheerful light it creates in the midst of 
darkness, the hoarse murmur of the flume is 
the only sound to break the stillness of the 
night. With the velocity of a millrace the 
water rushes down the mountain, confined 
in its wooden sluice-box, and enters the ditch 
below to do service in orchards and fields which 
have taken the place of the old diggings. 
Once it led to a pipe and that to a nozzle 
which was a very engine of destruction. It 
is many years since hydraulic mining was 
Ir 
