hausted, it “dries up." I don't know whether I am right in also attributing the frequent use of the word "mean," as a depreciatory adjective, to the miner's opinion of Mother Earth's conduct in withholding her wealth.

Another not uncommon operation in mining was "jumping a claim." The adventurer was

allowed to stake off the amount of unoccupied land he meant to work; but it was possible for the unscrupulous either to move the stakes, and encroach on his "lot," or to possess themselves of it in any way by fraud. But this was a perilous game, in such disodour as to be punishable (by Judge Lynch and a Vigilance Committee) with death.

Gambling, with its two chief games at cards, "Euchre," which is a sort of Piquet, and “Poker," which is a sort of Brag (not to name Rondo, a sort of roulette), supplies much Californese. In the latter game, the covering of the last player's stake throws a light upon the motive of the gentleman who "saw the pin, and went two diamonds better," as it also explains how a street in Roaring Camp could "lay over," i.e., cover, a street in Red Dog. To "give a show" is to take a hand, in which a "bower" is the best card of a suit, a "right bower" the best card in the best suit. I think “laying for a man and fetching him" must also owe its origin to the finesse of gambling. "Playing it low down" on any one certainly does. The horse of Mr. Oakhurst—who is a portrait from

life, as I am informed-is called "Five Spot," after the cinque. As the song says :—

'Oh, the five spot takes the four,

And the four spot takes the three;
And since we all are gathered here,
We'll drink in company!"

Apropos of the nag, I may mention that "bucking against faro" is a horsey metaphor, due, no doubt, to the rough-riding of "mustangs," or wild-horses, who are, of course, accomplished buck-jumpers.

Travelling gives us first of all-derived from presteam days, when goods were carried on packsaddles by mules-the expression, "I packed him on my back." The Pacific Railway has abolished the mule, but it was preceded by the expression "sending in your checks ;" in other words, claiming your baggage and-finishing your journey.

"Running free," used by Tennessee's pardner, is a nautical term, which deserting ships' crews carried to the gold-fields, as it is probable they did also the word "rum" as a generic term for liquor.

To the Spanish language are due "corral," the enclosure for cattle; "cañon" (pronounced canyon), a water-worn gorge with perpendicular sides; "ranch," a farm; "casa," a house; "vaquero," an oxherd; "riata," a lasso; and "coyote," the grey prairie wolf-the chip-che-pu-kos of the Indians. "Tule" is the swamp grass which overruns the marshes. "Las mariposas," literally "butterflies," give a name to a district and a flower.

From the French we can trace "cachéd," for

"hidden," due to the days when explorers concealed from Indians and other wild animals, on their outward course, stores for their home voyage. "Savey," as meaning "sense," is also obviously French.

Foot-hills-to come at last to terms which do not range themselves under any particular heading-are not lowlands at the foot of the hills, but baby-hills lying below the loftier eminences. They are distinctive features in the Californian landscape, I am informed by Mr. Hingston, to whom I am otherwise indebted for information in these pages.

A "Grocery" in America does not confine itself to tea, but combines a bar with the counter, as a rule, especially when it is a "corner grocery." A "stated preacher" is the regularly appointed minister, as distinguished from irregular and unordained holders-forth. Saleratus is "digger" for "Sal aëratus," a preparation of soda, used in lieu of yeast for the saving of time in baking, and seemingly also employed in the teapot to soften the spring-water of the mines. The "Buckeye" (which gives its name to Ohio and the natives thereof) is the horse-chestnut. "Greaser" is an opprobrious name for the sleek, but not clean, Mexican. A "Derringer," it is hardly necessary to say, is a revolver. "Nigger-luck," which means-as one would scarcely guess-"good luck," owes its origin to the fact that "nought is never in danger," and a negro can fall from the top of a house, and alight on his head with perfect impunity. "To go back upon" a man, means to betray him, after having

been in his confidence, and to become, in American phrase," States' "-not Queen's-" Evidence." It so clearly depicts the encouraging of the victim up to a certain point, and then the desertion of him, that I don't attempt to trace it to "mining" or "gambling," but lay it to the general account of human nature.

Thanks to the notorious Fisk and his doings, few will need to be told the meaning of a "Ring in politics or finance. Thence comes the verb; and when Roaring Camp thought Red Dog, if entrusted with the baby, would "ring in somebody else upon it," it meant, "would by combination and fraud impose somebody else upon it."

"Skeesicks"-the word Yuba Bill applies to Miggles's Jim-is a word whose derivation no one knows. Mr. C. G. Leland, who has kindly given me the aid of that universal knowledge of languages whereof "Hans Breitmann " makes only a partial revelation, tells me it shows "a goodnatured contempt," and that it made its first appearance in the following story:-" At a political meeting, a noisy fellow continued to bawl for 'Smith! Smith!' 'Why, that's Smith now speaking,' said a by-stander. He be darned,' was the reply; 'why, that's the little skeesicks who told me to holler for Smith.""

I trust the reader will find in this desultory gossip a key to the dialect in which Bret Harte writes.

T. H.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

A SERIES of designs—suggested, I think, by Ho

garth's familiar cartoons of the Industrious and Idle Apprentices—I remember as among the earliest efforts at moral teaching in California. They represented the respective careers of The Honest and Dissolute Miners: the one, as I recall him, retrograding through successive planes of dirt, drunkenness, disease, and death; the other advancing by corresponding stages to affluence and a white shirt. Whatever may have been the artistic defects of these drawings, the moral at least was obvious and distinct. That it failed, however, as it did,—to produce the desired reform in mining morality may have been owing to the fact that the average miner refused to recognize himself in either of these positive characters; and that even he who might have sat for the model of the Dissolute Miner was perhaps dimly conscious of some limitations and circumstances which partly relieved him from responsibility. "Yer see,” remarked such a critic to the writer, in the untranslatable poetry of his class, "it ain't no square game. They've just put up the keerds on that chap from the start."