Our new house, as it should properly be called, was of nearly the same dimensions as that we had occupied the preceding winter; but instead of being set up in the usual manner, the canvass walls and roof were stretched over a slender frame of posts and boards four inches wide. We were occupied nearly a week in building the house and bedsteads, and arranging the other furniture to our satisfaction. We knocked in the head of our hogshead, and transporting its contents, one by one, up the river to our new domicile, disposed them in the same relative position they had formerly occupied. When we commenced moving our provisions, we were suddenly put to flight by a storm of yellow-jackets that had invaded our sugar bags, and did not seem inclined to give them up without a struggle. In the contest that ensued I received several severe stings, but the enemy were finally routed with a loss of five or six thousand that we decoyed into an ambush in the shape of a large pickle jar. They had carried off, before we interrupted their depredations, several pounds of sugar; but this loss was trifling compared with the annoyance they inflicted upon us at dinner, when lured by the smell of fresh meat, as vultures are by carrion, they hung around us in countless throngs, buzzed in our soups or molasses, and levied contributions on every morsel as we conveyed it to our mouth. There were other insect plagues yet more familiar, but the subject is a sore one, and I forbear.
The new year commenced with a considerable improvement in our style of living. Since our first arrival in the mines our table expenses had not varied materially from a dollar a day; but prices had so far diminished that we were now enabled to indulge freely in certain aristocratic luxuries that we had then tasted not oftener than once a week. We had butter in plenty at only 70 cents a pound, and sweet and Irish potatoes at only twenty dollars a bushel. A regular meat market had been established in the village, where we could obtain tolerably good beef at only twenty-five cents a pound. The wild cattle of the country were driven in in large numbers by men armed with lassoes, and shut up in a kraal or pound formed by planting stout posts close together.