That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony with the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves.

In accordance with the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our board welcome to tramping miners--they drifted along nearly every day, dumped their paust shovels by the threshold and took "pot luck" with us--and now on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality.
Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo Semite--but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him?
I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take his blessing.

Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else.
Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely, and may be a little obscure to the general reader.

In "placer diggings" the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings it is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in a solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some other kind of stone--and this is the most laborious and expensive of all the different kinds of mining.

"Prospecting" is hunting for a "placer"; "indications" are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to the washing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt; a "prospect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt--and its value determines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it is worth while to tarry there or seek further..