Litchfield enquirer., 1871-06-22
From the N. '. Evening Post. CALIFORNIA GOLD FIELDS.

From the N. '. Evening Post.
 CALIFORNIA GOLD FIELDS.
 A WALK OVER DESERTED MINING TRACTS
 SONORA NOW AND IN ITS EALIRER DAYS.
 This is the Land of Drowsy- head; Irving Sleepy Hollow itself.
 As you journey from the Big Trees-th' Calaveras grove mean-towards tue Yo-Se mite, after you leave Murhpy's. every foo almest of the soil. for mile after mile, hal been at some time tuned over by the gold seekers. River beds were laid bare, ant the adjoining bottoms searched; the earti all the way to the foot hills was removed and as you near Columbia, you see immens' fields made up of nothing but rocks ant boulders sticking their barren waterwcrl heads into the landscape, with deep pit between, showing the water eaten sides o the rocks, which the miners searched, scrap ed and polished, as dentist does the teetl of his patient.
 It is a strange and wonderful sight, thi of the deserted beds in which no small par of all the gold of California was found For along this route are placed many now deserted or decaying towns and villages once famous and busy. Along here art Dutch Flat, Mokelumne Hill (which has tht accent on the second syllable), Murphy E Columbia, Jamestown (which IS more con veniently called Jim Town), not to speal of Table Mountain. famous for the geolog ical society whose violent dissolution Bre Harte made classic.
 DESERTED MINING TRACTS
 In this almost deserted mining tract where now only small parties of Chinese o, MexicaDs earn a precarious living. or g lonely Digger Indian indolently pans out his bits worth of gold, squatted by the riv CT bank, you see not only the beds where lay millions of gold, but you have laid bare a part of that ancient pre-Adamite river, which, millions of years ago, washed down from quartz veins now lost, the gold which lay tlll our Americans came to dig 1t up. You see how the swift waters of this ancient river gnawed into the rocks. until now they seem gnarled and twisted like the roots of trees--ard in every corner and hole it de- posted the precious gold. You cannot re- alize how the country looked before our miners came to disturb it; for an old resi- dent who was with us told me that where the rocks now lay bare'and on level with the road, which also had been mined out, from fifteen to thirty ft ct of soil, and often fifty feet, were removed before the gold was reached. They washed away hills, they shovelled away broad elevated plains, dozens of square miles of soil disappeared md were driven off into lower valleys that they might exhume the gold. At intervals you find a small field, a vineyard or gar den, planted in the midst of this desolation, surrounded on all sides by rocks. Your guide-if you are so fortunate as to meet with an old miner-will explain to you that here the ''slum" las they call it), the sediment of earth with which the water is charged which has been used in "placer mining" has been trapped. and caused to deposit itself. Men have made acres and even dozens of acres of land by catching this slum. It is fine earth; all the fumes and water courses still run red with it, for they are mining above; and when it dries out it makes the most fertile of gardens and vineyards. In Sonora an ingenious citizen who had dug out his house lot to wash out the gold it bore, was just filling it up again with ''slum," having first laid his cellar walls; and it is Imaginable to see how easily he controlled the deposit.
 SONORA.
 And thus you travel towards Sonora. The stage rattles you impetuously through the one long street which makes the prin. cipal part of the town, and you notice that the stores have iron shutters and iron doors, fire. .proof-but too many of them closed. You see the shops with wide open broad doors. which tell you that there is no cold weather to be feared. You see two large. roomy hotels, which try 10 pursuade you that Sonora is still busy place. -
 It was once the most important town of this region. It is still the county town and it has many signs of former importance; four churches, for instance, ''but two of them don't go," explained an old resident to me; jail-but it was empty; jail built of iron bars laid across each other and bolt. ed together, forming both walls and fiat roof, and afterwards built around with brick; and, as it seemed to me, with my eastern eyes, an endless vista of bar-rooms or saloons" and restaurants; all, seeming ly, like the jail, empty.
 The climate of Sonora is delicious; the people assure me it is the finest Tn the world; the water is good; there are neither fcvers nor mosquitoes; the nights, even in midsummer, are always cool; the vine grows luxuriantly on all the hill sides. and as the railroad is thirty miles away, the grapes of. ten rot in the vineyards; che orange and the olsander grow the in streets, and roses bloom all the year round.- And the people kindly, generous, free, easily approachable sit on their own door steps, watching tho passing stage-they grow out of doors al the year round too; and do not grow rich
 TRADE N SONORA.
 Business is carried on with extreme mod eration. Of course, as it is the county town Sonora has in fact good deal of business and trade still On Sunday, too, the Chi nese gather in from the surrounding dig | gings, which they are going over for tn, second or third or often the fourth time, t. buy their supplies; other miners come il also in troops or singly; the shops are opel in this strange little place; the restaurant have their little tables set, with flowers or them; the .barrooms are open; and yet s, moderately is everything conducted, tha with all the temptations to indulgence
 did not see a drunken person on the street all day, nor hear noise louder than com mon conversation. There was neither fid ding nor dancing; and as the stage did no come in on that day it was day of unbro ken stiffness, in which, if anybody s.took horn. or ''irrigated," ]" to use the phrase o this region, he did it with the decorum o a Dutch burgher of ancient New Amster dam. As came away from the Snnda, = C Al