that of the youngest was less so; his body had not been found; but there was little time for examination, and it seemed almost beyond a doubt that he had also shared the fate of his father and brothers. Upon her arrival in England, the poor woman was sent to the hospital until her wounds were cured, but, after her recovery, was turned out desolate and destitute upon the world. A representation of her case to the War Office was unattended to; nor would her honest pride permit her to persist in importunity. The same independence of spirit forbade her seeking the assistance of her relatives. By means of a small subscription raised among her late husband's comrades, she travelled on foot to the place of his birth near Edinburgh, and with what was left she was enabled to put a few articles of furniture into a cottage which a worthy farmer rented to her for an almost nominal sum. The same kind friend afterwards procured her, although not without difficulty, a small weekly allowance-a mere pittance from the parish funds, with which, and by means of knitting, spinning, rearing a few chickens, and the various other humble expedients of helpless poverty (for she was disabled from fieldlabour), she contrived to support existence in decency, if not in comfort.

Twelve years had passed away, and approaching age was gradually rendering the lonely widow less and less able to obtain the scanty means of sustenance, when one summer afternoon, as she sat knitting at the door of her cottage, a poor crippled object approached, dressed in rags, and weak from disease and fatigue. From the remnants of his tattered clothes, it was evident he had been a soldier, and the widow's heart warmed towards him, as, resigning to him her seat, she entered the cottage and brought him out a drink of meal and water, being all that her humble store enabled her to offer for his refreshment. The soldier looked wistfully at her as he took the bowl-the next moment it dropped from his hand. 'Mother!' he cried, and fell forward in the old woman's arms. It was her youngest son James, whom she thought she had left a corpse on the fatal field of Coruña. After mutually supposing each other to be dead for the long space of twelve years, these unfortunate beings were doomed to be re-united in this vale of sorrow, mutually helpless, feeble, and destitute. But the love of a mother never dies; the poor widow scrupled not to solicit those aids for her son which she never would have asked for herself; and the assistance of some compassionate friends procured her the means of restoring him to health, although he never regained his full strength,

James's story, from the time of their last parting, was a short and sad one. He had recovered from the temporary trance into which his wound had at first thrown him, had seen his mother's mangled and apparently senseless body lying beside him, and concluding she was dead, had endeavoured to crawl out of the way of further danger, but fell into the hands of a party of the enemy.

He remained a prisoner in France for upwards of two years, when, an exchange having taken place, he was once more placed in the British ranks, and sent with his regiment to North America. He had served there during the whole war with the United States, and was subsequently transferred to a West India station, where his wounds broke out afresh, and his health declined, in consequence of the heat of the climate. Those acquainted with military matters will understand, although the writer of these lines confesses his inability exactly to describe, how a British soldier may be deprived of the recompense to which his wounds and length of service legally and justly entitle him. The poor man we speak of met this unworthy fate. He had, at his earnest request, been transferred into a regiment ordered for England (seeing certain death before him in the tropics), which was disbanded the moment of their arrival, and he was thrown utterly destitute, and left to beg or starve, after all his hardships and meritorious services to his country. Being unable to work, he was compelled to assume the mendicant's degraded habit, and had begged his way down to his father's birthplace in Scotland, in the hope of finding some of his relatives alive, and able to shelter him, when he unexpectedly recognised his old mother in the manner described.

EVER was the excitement connected with the discovery of any other metal so intense and so wide-spread as that relating to GOLD. Let us trace some of the extraordinary phases of this excitement, and then glance rapidly at the chief commercial results of the discoveries. But before doing so, it may be well to notice the form or forms in which the metal exists in the natural state.

Gold occurs sparingly in many hard rocks, such as granite, gneiss, mica-slate, chlorite-slate, clay-slate, &c., and sometimes even in limestone and other such rocks. It occurs far more abundantly in quartz, pure unmixed flint, or silex. In igneous or metamorphic rocks, the quartz usually occurs in veins, or in large, irregular bunches or lumps, with veins diverging from them. These veins are most commonly only a few feet wide, and for the most part traverse the rocks in a vertical or highly inclined position. Sometimes, however, veins or irregular masses occur many yards across in every direction; and sometimes, but very rarely, quartz is found in such abundance as to make what even might be called hills of itself. The gold is disseminated in this quartz, sometimes in such exceedingly minute

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particles as to be invisible, not only to the naked eye, but even to the eye aided by a powerful lens. More commonly, the gold is seen as little yellow specks, flakes, or grains scattered through the quartz. When the quartz has a crystalline structure, which it often has, little nests of gold, likewise crystalline, may be seen imbedded between the interlacing crystals of the quartz. Where the interstices in the quartz are large, these are sometimes entirely filled up with gold; and not unfrequently irregular holes and crevices seem to have been formed in the quartz by decomposition or rottenness, which have sometimes been subsequently filled with gold. In such cases, the gold often assumes irregular forms, such as melted lead will when poured into water-forms which have given people the idea of the gold having been deposited in a state of fusion, a notion in all probability utterly unfounded. How the gold got into the quartz, is a point at present so uncertain, that no man of science would take upon himself the responsibility of answering the question. The size of the irregular lumps thus entangled in the quartz varies greatly, the largest hitherto known single lump in the world being an Australian one of 2166 ounces weight. It is, however, usually found in small flakes, grains, and dendritic strings, weighing only a few grains. The last time the land of any country on the earth slowly rose from beneath the sea, it must of course have been subject to the degrading and destructive power of the breakers, and of the waves and tides and currents, and all that wearing action we now see going on on our own shores daily and hourly before our eyes. The consequence is, that portions of every rock, large or small, have been broken off, washed and dashed about upon beaches, or under shallow water, rolled into pebbles, pounded into sand, or ground down into mud and clay. These pebbles, sand, mud, and clay, have been transported by these moving waters often to great distances from their parent site, the largest and heaviest being generally removed the least distance, but the finer and lighter particles swept sometimes tens, sometimes hundreds of miles away from the rock they were first broken off. Such is the origin of all the mud, clay, sand, gravel, and other loose and incoherent materials we so commonly find beneath the surface in all countries when we dig below the soil, interposed between it and the main body of the solid rock* below. Sometimes these accumulations are entirely wanting, even over large spaces; sometimes they are but a few inches thick, often but a few feet; but occasionally they occur in masses 100 or 150 feet in thickness. They are disseminated with great irregularity, sometimes lying on the tops, or resting on the sides of hills of considerable elevation; but most frequently we find them in the valleys and in the lowest levels of a country, whither moving water would have, of course, the greatest tendency to sweep them.

*By rock here, we mean any large regularly formed mass of earthy matter, whether it be hard or soft.

Now, whenever the moving waters of the sea, by which these drift-materials were thus formed and deposited, attacked rock containing gold, it would of course break off lumps of it, just as of any other rock, and equally wash, roll, and knock it about, and thus break it up into smaller fragments, round it into pebbles, and grind it into sand. In this way, much of the gold would be knocked out of the rock, and much water-worn gold accumulated, or water-worn fragments of gold and quartz together.

From this point of time, however, there is a remarkable difference observable in the action of the water on the gold, and on rock which contains no gold. All kinds of rock, or earth, or stone, at all events all the common kinds, are pretty nearly of the same specific gravity -that is to say, of the same weight, bulk for bulk. Chalk, clay, limestone, compact sandstone, granite, marble, basalt, have all specific gravities varying from 2 to 3-that is to say, they are twice or thrice the weight of their bulk of water. Pure gold, however, has a specific gravity of 19, or is nineteen times as heavy as its bulk of water; and the most impure ore of gold that occurs in nature has at least a specific gravity of 12 or 15. Gold, then, is about six or seven times as heavy as quartz, or any other stone it is likely to be associated with. The consequence of this is, that moving water has at least seven times less power over it-less power to move it along, either suspended in the water or rolling along its bed.* When the drift, therefore, was formed, vast quantities of stone might be removed to great distances, while the gold was left behind, not far from its native site. All the large lumps of gold will certainly be but little removed, as also all the large lumps of quartz heavily freighted with gold. Grains of gold and small lumps may be carried further, while scale-gold and fine dust, especially if flat and thin, may be carried to very considerable distances.

GOLD-FEVER IN CALIFORNIA.

Let us now see into what wild paroxysms of excitement and delight, alternating with periods of disappointment and misery, the discovery of gold can lead vast masses of men. And let us begin with California-the auriferous region which was the first of the modern discoveries. While yet its riches were unknown, this region belonged to Mexico, and was known as Upper California, to distinguish it from the peninsula, called Lower California. This last still belongs to Mexico; but, in 1848, Upper California was ceded to the United States, and in 1850 became the state of California.

Separated from the Pacific Ocean by a breadth of 150 miles, there runs along this country the range of the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy

We shall see this more clearly, perhaps, when we reflect, that stone suspended in water loses one-third of its weight, but that gold suspended in water loses only onenineteenth of its weight.