Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings

According to the preface, Woods undertook writing this book after promising his friends that he would "keep a journal of his mining life, exhibiting its lights and shades, its fortunes and misfortunes." This he did, jotting down from day to day the incidents as they occurred. Many mining companions, aware of this fact, requested him to prepare his journal for the press so that their friends might thus have a view of their circumstances and employments. Woods spent 16 months working the American and Tuolumne Rivers and their tributaries.