Excerpt from Tenderfoot and Expert On receipt of the above telegram from Tenderfoot to meet him at Reno, Expert took the noted Southern Pacific Limited for Goldfield. While quietly admiring the Grand Gorge, the American River had cut through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about two hundred miles east of San Francisco, who should drop alongside of Expert and sing out, as they were passing Dutch Flat, hut a wiry, little old man. well groomed and with a high-pitched voice: "I never saw these diggin's before, but I know all about 'em. I also know about Union Valley, Hangtown, Grizzly Flat, Yuba Hill and Yuba Dam," as he pointed a long, slender finger beyond Dutch Flat. "And then I was a forty-niner a-working on the river bar in old Mariposa County. Mighty hard work, this mining business, working in the water, a-scrapin' of the bed rock for those little chunks of gold, I got stiffer than a poker, yes I did, yes I did." Expert said: "These diggings in Forty-nine around Grizzly Flat, Yuba Hill and Yuba Dam were far richer, so history says, than the placer diggings in old Mariposa." The old man braced up and said: "There was mighty rich spots in old Mariposa, yes there was, yes there was." He warmed up and said in a high key to prove the wonders of Mariposa County: "I knew a feller down there on the Merced River who came from 'Old Mizzoura, ' who, by the way, was a fine young chap, who picked up a dirty rock and found it was heavy, and when he washed off the dirt, what do you think? It was a gold nugget worth nigh onto three thousand dollars, yes he did, yes he did. What der you think? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.