The argonauts of 'forty-nine, some recollections of the plains and the diggings. By David Rohrer Leeper
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SUTTER's FORT, 1890.--(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.)
Two miles from the Sacramento, and east of the city, was the famous Sutter's Fort,* which up to that season had been the terminus of the only overland wagon trail entering California, and which for nearly a decade had been the focal point of the American residents of the country. Hence, probably, the name of the river near by,--Rio de los Americanos. The fort was
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established by Captain John A. Sutter (1803-1880) as the headquarters of his great rancho, upon which he had other improvements, including the saw-mill, at which the gold was discovered. Captain Sutter was an ex-officer of the Swiss army, emigrated to this country in 1838, lived in Indiana for a while, and, finally, after several years of adventure, found his way to California, in 1840. He is said to have been liberal and hospitable to a fault. “Everybody was welcome--one man or a hundred, it was all the same.” Yet, it was his grim fate to die upon the verge of pauperism.
[Note : General John Bidwell, of Chico, Cal., a pioneer of '41, who was long connected with this fort as Sutter's general manager, and who retains a vivid recollection of its plan in detail, has kindly furnished me with an outline sketch and other valuable data to aid in the drawing of this cut, which he upon examining the proof pronounces substantially correct and a much truer picture than any of the many others that had come to his notice. I revisited the site of this fort in 1884, and was pained to note that the central two-story adobe building was all that remained of this monument of a unique and picturesque past. This, too, was wholly neglected and in an advanced state of decay. A more appreciative public, however, has quite recently restored the whole structure, of which I have received a photograph since I wrote the foregoing.]
The wood-chopping project not turning out as expected, I again set face for the mines, a friend having loaned me the wherewith for the purpose. I did not wait for Neal, and it was well that I did not; for he drifted elsewhere, and I saw him no more. Nor did I again meet Rockhill until I met him at home, seven years thereafter. I then, for the first time, learned of his fate after we separated at Redding's. He had not been able, in consequence of the floods, to get the team any farther than Deer Creek, where he left all the property in charge of a ranchman, one Colonel Anthony Davis; and, in the Spring, when an accounting was sought, both ranchman and property had disappeared, not again to be found.*
[Note : A statement which I was pleased to have verified thirty-five years later, through my accidental meeting of the ranehman's widow in another and distant part of the state.]
I now headed for Coloma, about fifty-five miles distant, of course still “tramping” it. At all stations along the road, beginning with the Ten Mile House, meals were two dollars each. The lodging
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accommodations were overtaxed at every point. At Shingle Springs, I paid a dollar for the privilege of lodging in a covered cart, in company with a barrel of pork. It was raining hard, and that was the only alternative. Of course one had to furnish his own bedding in those days, no matter where he might lodge.Image for printingTHE TYPICAL OLD-TIMER.
* The roads were so wretched that supplies could be got to the mines only by pack-animals. A dollar per pound was the customary rate to Coloma and to Hangtown, which were about the same distance from Sacramento. Gold dust was the universal currency, and the “blower”* and the scales were a fixture in every place of business. The weights were often home-made, and of very dubious specific gravity. The monte and the faro tables were everywhere running flush. The gambling table indeed is the chief attraction in all new mining regions. The most pretentious and most elegantly furnished quarters, whether tents by the roadside or palaces in a city, are
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dedicated to this purpose. Such resorts are, in fact, about the only places in such regions where men can pass their leisure hours or find companionship and recreation. 'tis ever thus,--Brazen Vice rears his gilded temples before Modest Virtue scarce thinks of breaking ground. The brood of “suckers” was especially bountiful while the inflow of the annual overland emigration lasted.
[Note : The “Panama” hat, silk sash, embroidered shirt, and absence of vest and coat--somewhat after the Mexican style--made up a costume much affected in those days; and was the object of awe and admiration of the “tenderfoot,” who looked upon the chaps thus pompously clad as being already surfeited with the precious dust. Everybody had also a penchant for gibbering Spanish. The typical miner, as usually represented in the prints, is mere caricature, the shabby clothes and the unkempt person being no more than the natural result of the neglect and indifference that men drop into in the absence of society everywhere.]
[Note : A shallow sort of tray, usually of tin, triangular-shaped, with one corner open, used to blow black sand and other foreign substances from gold dust, and to handle the dust about the scales]
“Could fools to keep their own contrive,
On what, on whom, could gamesters thrive?”
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THE DISCOVERER OF GOLD AT SUTTER's MILL.
My first halt was at a double-log house, on the Sacramento-Coloma road, a mile or two west of the latter place. It was called the “Mountaineers' Home,” and was a sort of tavern and trading-post combined. My chief occupation while here was cutting house logs at a dollar each and wood at five dollars per cord, the latter from brittle and crooked oaks. Board was six dollars per day, the sumptuous fare consisting of bacon, beans, coffee, and
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musty-soggy-buggy-wormy bread. Flour was two dollars per pound, and a villainous article at that, the most of it having made the voyage round Cape Horn and heated in the ship's hold. Potatoes were eight dollars per pound, the chief use to which they were put being as a cure for scurvy, which complaint was then quite common. The locality was in the very heart of the best diggings in California, but we did not know this at the time. We often picked up good-sized nuggets in the door-yard after a heavy rain; but it did not occur to any of us to prospect for diggings, either there or anywhere else in the flat of several acres in which the cabin was situated.Image for printingFROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
* My recollections of the place are cherished none the more because of the presence of a victim of delirium tremens, who imagined that he was in hell suffering the torments of the damned, while just beyond him, in plain view, was heaven, with the angels in the full ecstacy of bliss. Another incident of the place
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may be worth relating, as indicative of the social state of the time. One evening, as we were sitting about our generous chimney-fire, a guest dropped in upon us for the night. He was a striking character--young, dark complexioned, dashing, of splendid physique, and of pleasing, cultured address.Image for printingFROM A PHOTOGRAPH. SEE FOOT-NOTE, PAGE 93.
He was partly dazed from the effects of drink, but in an easy, nonchalant manner, gave us his story, in brief as follows: He had belonged, he said, to a detachment of United States regulars, which was crossing the plains that season to Oregon. When near the junction of the California and Oregon roads, he took French leave, and, appropriating two of the best army horses, had made his way to the Golden State. Just now, he had emerged from the culminating scene in a series of other adventures. There were many cattle roaming at will on the plains about Sacramento that winter, and wagons and other team appurtenances were easy of access about the city. From these sources he became possessed of a four-ox team, on the same principle that he had become possessed of the two
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Government horses. Thus equipped, he sought and obtained a load of freight for the mines, for which he was to receive a dollar per pound for transportation. But he diverted from the proper destination, and fetched up at Mormon Island, where he sold both team and goods, and pocketed the proceeds. He next turned up at Coloma. Here he fell in with a German, who was about to leave forDas Vaterland, and who was fond of displaying a bulky purse of nuggets, with which he intended to set the crowds abroad agape. The upshot was: the German missed his nuggets, and his new-made friend was accused, tried in a “people's court,” convicted, and sentenced to a hundred lashes, half to be given at once, and the rest after a week's respite.Image for printingFROM A PHOTOGRAPH. SEE FOOT-NOTE PAGE 93.
When he came to us, he had just undergone the last installment. From his raw and bleeding back, it was evident that the thong had been robustly applied, and the victim vowed eternal vengeance upon the merciless hand that did it. The fellow, however, with refreshing facetiousness, justified the deed, upon the ground that no such fine American gold should be allowed to be taken from the country!
[Note : Henry W. Bigler, St. George, Utah; Azariah Smith, Manti, Utah; and James S. Brown and William Johnson, Salt Lake City, Utah, all Mexican War veterans, and ex-members of the famous Mormon Battalion, which was mustered out in California, in 1848, are the only survivors of the gold discovery party now known to me. Peter L. Wimmer, of San Diego, Cal; and Wilford Hudson, of Grantsville, Utah, also of that party, were living, according to “The Century,” in 1891; but I do not know whether they are living now--1895.]
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Coloma, as is well known, is located on the South Fork of the American River, and is distinguished historically as the place where, on January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, in examining the tail-race of the Sutter sawmill, made the gold discovery, which set the world ablaze, and was so far-reaching and momentous in its results. I saw the mill many times. It was of the old-fashioned, flutter-wheel, sash-saw model,* and was pounding away day and night while I knew it. It was situated a little below the town on an extensive bar, which, through many re-workings, has since been almost wholly washed away; and thus, through these encroachments of the eager, unsentimental gold-seeker, the old-mill, and the race below it where the first piece of gold was picked up, have long since disappeared. Even the exact site of the mill can no longer be pointed out.
[Note : I have been at considerable pains to get an accurate picture of this mill, having had before me several cuts said to have been been sketched on the spot from the original, among which is the print in “California Illustrated,” by G. V. Cooper, and a pencil sketch by C. B. Gillespie. I have also availed myself of suggestions from Gillespie, H. W. Bigler, St. George, Utah, and Azariah Smith, Manti, Utah, the latter two of whom assisted Marshall in building the mill. The conspicuous forebay in the Nahl design, as printed in “The Century,” appears to be merely an embellishment by the artist; for the water entered the mill from the front or east side, and not from the right or north side.]
“Yet, the years may chase each other
Down the rugged steeps of time
The world may lose its harmony.
Life's song its merry rhyme;
But forever and forever
The story of the mill
And the man who dug the mill-race.
Will linger with us still.”
Marshall's discovery at the mill was not, it appears, the result of mere accident. The water-wheel had been set too low, and the water was being let into the tail-race of nights to cut out the channel so as to free the wheel. It was Marshall's custom to walk along the race in the morning, after the water had been shut
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Image for printingSUTTER's MILL, SCENE OF THE GOLD DISCOVERY.
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off, so as to give the men directions in the work. On the day previous to the discovery, a section of bed-rock in the race, laid bare by the water, excited his curiosity; and, calling one of his men* to him, he, after drawing attention to this queer-looking rock, remarked that he believed there was gold thereabouts, this belief being founded on the fact, he said, that he had noticed the “blossom of gold” (quartz) in the adjacent hills, and that he had read in some book that the presence of quartz was a sign of gold. So strong was he in this belief that he sent the man to the cabin for a pan, that he might make the test, by washing some of the sand and gravel from the tail-race. This test was unsuccessful; but the failure did not satisfy Marshall. “Well,” he said to his attendant, “we will hoist the gates tonight and let in all the water we can, and tomorrow morning we will shut it off, and come down here, and I believe we will find gold or some other mineral.” As he was a rather eccentric sort of man, no heed was paid to this seeming whim. But Marshall was in a different frame of mind. The next morning at an unusually early hour some one was heard pounding at the mill. It was Marshall. “There was at the time a carpenter's work-bench standing in the millyard; a little way from it was a saw-pit for whip-sawing lumber; also men at work in the mill-yard{Begin page no. 99}
framing timbers and hewing with a broadaxe. Near the flutter-wheel there was a large bowlder to be blasted out. I was at the drill preparing to put in a blast of powder when Marshall came up from the tail-race carrying his slouch hat in his arms, and, setting it on the work-bench, exclaimed: 'Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine.' At once of the men gathered around, and sure enough in the top of his hat, the crown knocked in a little, was the pure stuff in small pieces or rather thin scales. All knew it was gold, although not one had ever seen the metal before in its natural state.”* It was agreed on all hands that the discovery should be kept secret; but the news took wing in spite of all precautions to the contrary. The public, however, were slow to believe, so that it was some time before the importance of the event came to be realized.
[Note : This man was James S Brown, whose portrait is printed on page 95, and the fact narrated down to the quotation “There was at the time a carpenter's work-bench,”etc., I glean from his interesting pamphlet entitled, “California: An Authentic History of the First Find.” published by himself, Salt Lake City, Utah.]
[Note : This last quotation is from a letter by Henry W. Bigler to the author dated St. George, Utah, May 31, 1894. See portrait and note, p. 93.]
The holidays found me at Hangtown, which took its suggestive name from the circumstance that two men--a Frenchman and a Spaniard--were hanged here, for robbery and murder. The process was in pursuance of the usual miner's code, and occupied but twenty-four hours for its complete execution. The oak that did duty on the occasion may be seen in the annexed plate, between two buildings, nearly opposite the “El Dorado,” from whose tall flag-staff a streamer is flying. In the fall of '50 the camp was the scene of another hanging-bee, the process being much more summary than that just mentioned. The subject was “Irish Dick,” who killed a man across a gambling table in the “El
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HANGTOWN.--(AFTER A CUT IN, CALIFORNIA ILLUSTRATED.”
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Dorado.” The crowd on the inside, in less time than it takes to tell it, seized the wretch and thrust him out the door to the quickly assembled crowd on the outside, when a noose was put about his neck and he was hurried off to the most convenient tree. The other end of the rope was thrown over a limb and grasped by a number of men, when the fellow was asked if he had anything to say. He coolly took a monte deck from his vest pocket, and began to shuffle the cards, saying, “If anybody wants to buck, I'll give him a lay-out.” A quick haul upon the cord, and graceless, conscienceless villian dangled in the air.*
[Note : “Dick” was brought across the plains the
previous season by one of my partners, and was a slim strippling of about
twenty, thin visaged, and with large, uneven teeth, and a slight Irish accent.
He drew a dirk upon me as we were going up street one evening because of some
pleasantry of mine; but I had no thought then that he was capable of murder.] Image
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THE PICK AND SHOVEL AGAIN. HANGTOWN was, at this period, one of the most important mining camps in the State. Claims were limited to fifteen feet square; so the miners could not work long in a place. Two men usually formed the ephemeral mining partnerships, as by the methods of mining then in vogue that number could generally work together the most profitably. The best diggings I “struck” about here were on Hangtown Creek, a half mile below town, where my partner and I took out, for a while, with a long-tom,* fifty to a hundred dollars apiece per day. We also found good mines in Kelsey's Canyon, in which the gold was mainly flax-seed shaped, and of a very uniform and beautiful variety. The largest piece I ever found was in a “gutted” gulch, in the grease-wood hills, westward of town. Here, with the first stroke of the pick, I raked out of the clay an ounce chunk, and with the next stroke, one weighing two and a quarter ounces.* This was certainly encouraging
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for a beginning; but there was no water near, and the beginning proved also to be well-nigh the end. But, as a rule, mining, even at that day, could not, by any means, be reckoned a profitable employment. A lady who kept boarders in Hangtown, in the winter of '49--50, informed me that very few of her boarders paid or were able to pay; and one of these boarders, who applied himself very diligently, owned to me that he had not taken out as much as a quarter of an ounce on any day during the winter.*.
[Note : The first long-tom I saw was in the spring of '50.]
[Note : Gold was usually found in small particles, but it ranged from the size of almost impalpable powder up to very large nuggets. In September, 1871, a piece worth $6,000 was taken out by Bunker &: Co., in the State of Oregon, which perhaps the largest specimen ever found on the Pacific Coast; but we have an account of much larger finds in Australia mines, one discovered in the Donolly district, in 1869, weighing 2,520 oz. and worth $48,000.]
[Note : Doubtless many old miners would agree with Brigham Young in the declaration he made to the Colfax party, in 1865, “that every dollar of gold taken out in United States had cost one hundred dollars.”]
The diggings where the large nuggets were found, and where there were several cabins, were entirely deserted at the time of our operations there; as was also Kelsey's Canyon. The notion generally entertained during the winter of '49-50, was that higher up in the Sierra layin situ the original “big lumps,” of which the flakes and other small particles lower down were but the float or waste. Many were the extravagant yet fully credited rumors whispered about from friend to friend as to the pound-a-day diggings that, up there, invitingly awaited the advent of spring to open up their treasures. Accordingly, when that longed-for time came round, the real mining belt was almost wholly deserted, in the stampedes for those fancied ophirs. My partner and I, not to be left napping under such circumstances, were among the very first to break from this camp. We went by the Carson
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NEAR THE BACKBONE OF THE SIERRA.--(ADAPTED FORM “PACIFIC TOURIST.”
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emigrant trail as far as Leek Springs, at which point we found ourselves up among the branches of the stately sugar pines, on the crust of the snow, which was so solidly packed that our horses's hoofs made just indentation enough to make it comfortable traveling. At this point the backbone of the Sierra was in plain view and apparently but a few miles away. Swathed in winter snows of untold depth, as it now was, this great divide wore most ominous and forbidding aspect, and sent a shudder of awe through the soul as we contemplated its awful majesty:
“With foundations seamed and knit,
And wrought and bound by golden bars,
Sierra's peaks serenely sit
And challenge heaven's sentry-stars.”
Well, it was on the South Fork of the American River, or on a tributary thereto, somewhere in this region, that we were to find a party of miners that had been rolling out the pound chunks the whole winter long. That is to say, it had confidingly come to our ears that some one had affirmed that he had seen a man who had heard another man say that he knew a fellow who, was dead sure that he knew another fellow who, he was certain, belonged to a party that were thus shoveling up the big chunks--or something to that effect. We no, of course, knew that we had been hoaxed; yet it was, doubtlessly, all round a case of--
“Themselves deceiving and themselves deceived.”
But our frank and earnest avowals as to the facts made not the slightest impression upon the party after party we met on our return, that, having got wind of our slipping away, were on our track, determined upon
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sharing in our supposed “good thing.” They became convinced only when they saw the imprints of our horse's hoofs in the snow where we had turned about from our fool's errand. And, forsooth, such is about as rational a foundation as miners' stampedes have usually had from that day to this. For, be it known, that of all men the gold-miner is proverbially the readiest--
“To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched,
And count the chickens ere they're hatched.”
*
[Note : The Sun River stampede in Montana, in the fall of 1865, may be cited as a typical instance. One McClellan had discovered a very rich gulch on the west side of the Range, and had thus acquired considerable fame locally as a prospector. He was afterward, at the time above-mentioned, leaving Helena with two mules packed with provisions. A friend accosted him as to his destination. “Oh,” he repliedsoto voce and with a sly twinkle of the eye. “I've got as good a thing out here as I want, this winter.” The news of this incident got abroad, and touched off the percussion gold-hunters within reach, occasioning the most notable stampede of the country. When the rush was well under way, a tremendous blizzard came up, causing much and intense suffering. Four men were brought back frozen stark dead, and many had limbs or other members more or less seriously frozen. Now, it turned out that all McClellan had meant by his pleasantry was that somewhere out in the Sun River wilds, he had put up a cabin for the winter and taken to himself an Indian wife.]
Another notion then widely prevalent was, that, as the river-bars were rich in aurfferous deposits, the river-beds should be much more so, especially in the deep-water stretches between the rapids. Hence, in the summer of 1850 a large percentage of the miners clubbed together to turn the various rivers of the mining-belt from their beds, at the more favorable points, by means of canals, or flumes, or both, as necessity required. One such company was organized to drain the South Fork at Spanish Bar, opposite Placerville. The conditions here, as the theory ran, were precisely what was desired. Here was the deep-water stretch, and into this emptied the Hangtown and the Kelsey Canyons, both of which were very rich. On the
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strength of this favorable prospect, a large force of men spent the season in turning the river and pumping out the hole, when, to their great surprise and disappointment, but a few hundred dollars were realized, and this was at the mouth of the Hangtown Canyon, where evidently it had been but recently deposited. Such, generally, was the outcome of similar ventures that season; so generally, indeed, that the phrase, “I've been damming the river,” became a current byword, as the usual explanation given that fall by unlucky miners for their season's failure. The “float” gold, as was ultimately found out, lodges on the riffles, or rapids, and not in the deep holes, some hint of which I might have taken from my experience as a neophyte in wrestling with the pot-hole. In the gravel drift of the river-bars, the “pay-dirt” usually lay in “streaks” corresponding to the several strata as these had been succesively superposed one upon another.Image for printing
THE “EMIGRANT's” FIRST APPEARANCE IN THE DIGGINGS.
*
[Note : Adapted from Mark Twain's “Roughing It,” by permission of American Publishing Co., Hartford, Conn. See Appendix, p. iv.]
The Indians were frequent visitors at the mining camps in this section. While the placers were plenty, shallow, and easily worked, they did a good deal of
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spasmomic mining. The pan and the wooden bowl--thebatea (bah-ta-a) of the Mexican--were the implements they chiefly used for the purpose.Image for printing“THE NOBLE SAVAGE.”
A half dozen or more of them would dig and wash diligently for two to three hours, when they would hie themselves off to the nearest store or trading-post to spend the proceeds. At the “Mountaineer's Home,” we had a frequent customer, who pompously pointed to himself as “me Jim, Alcalde,”* and who rarely missed an opportunity to impress upon us the dignity of his personage. Jim evinced a decided partiality for bright calico shirts--at five dollars apiece; for which he appropriated the bulk of the earnings of himself and his handful of followers. These shirts he would put on, one after another, until he had perhaps a half dozen telescoped over his person at once, never taking the
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trouble to remove or to cleanse the ones he had previously successively donned. Thus arrayed, he was fully satisfied to allow the rest of his august figure to remain exposed in its natural grace and symmetry. Occasionally, enough dust would be dug out to lay in a sack of flour, in which case the lord would mount the purchase--a hundred pounds--on the back of his spouse, and then stalk along in her rear with true savages self-complacency as she trotted home with the burden.
[Note : Al-cal-de is the Spanish equivalent for Justice of
of the Mexican regime, the functions and powers exercised by the officials
bearing this title were often little, if any, short of absolute. Hence, to the
unrefined Digger perception, as with Jim, alcalde came to be synonymous with “chief,”
or headman of the tribe or community. For full history of this office see
Shinn's “Mining Camps,” New York, 1885.] Image
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MODERN DIGGER BELLE, IN CEREMONIAL COSTUME. (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.)
One day, the ordinary routine of the Placerville camp was broken by the appearance on the street of an elderly, lean, angular man, who from his wagon proceeded to make a speech and exhibit several ugly gun-shot wounds about the groin. He soon drew a crowd around him. It appeared, according to his story, that he had been a participant in the armed collision which had taken place the day previous between the squatters and the anti-squatters at Sacramento, and in which several men had been killed and
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wounded. The speaker belonged, he said, to the squatters' side and had been attacked and driven off by an armed posse, from whose venegeance he escaped only by plunging into the American River and swimming across beyond their reach. But he had not quit the field, he declared, without having given his assailants a valiant fight; whereupon some one in the crowd sang out, “What is your name?” “My name is Allen,” he responded. “ You must ge some relation to old Ethan Allen,” another spectator suggested. “Yes:” answered the speaker, “I am a grand-son of the hero of Ticonderoga.” But, notwithstanding this avowal as to “the great Jehovah” blood in his veins, he was, obviously, still very much frightened. He had traveled all night to make sure of getting out of harm's way, and he now appealed to his hearers to protect him. At this, of course, everybody present shouted, “We will, we will!” and so the episode ended.*
[Note : This collision occurred on August 14, 1850, Charles Robinson, the squatter leader, and later Governor of Kansas, being among the wounded. The contention between the squatters and the anti-squatters, which was a long and serious element of disturbance in the State is treated of at considerable length in Royce's “History of California.”]
Placerville was the first point in the mines reached on the principal overland trail in the season of 1850, and, early in July, the stream of emigrants from this direction began to pour into the camp. The first arrival was a party from my own town in Indiana--the Fowler brothers--who had made the journey from the Missouri River with an ox team in ninety days. The rush that season was very great, and soon every avenue was filled with the new recruits. A more disappointed and disheartened lot of mortals than they were
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could scarcely be imagined. They believed, as did many of the old-timers also, that the diggings had been worked out, and that the whole country had collapsed into utter ruin. The gloomy outlook was further aggravated by the prevalence of much sickness, which, at this camp, was owing largely to the stagnant, polluted water, which was mostly obtained from the abandoned prospect-holes, of which the streets were full. I was myself taken with typhoid fever several weeks prior to the first arrivals overland, and did not recover so as to be able to work till this camp and the neighboring sections had become overcrowded with the newcomers.Image for printingWOMAN's CINCTURE, HOOPA INDIAN MAKE.
* An ounce* a visit was the usual fee for medical attendance.
[Note : Reproduced by permission from Smithsonian Report for 1886, Part I.]
[Note : The current trade value of gold dust up to September, 1848, was $12 per oz., at which date the merchants of San Francisco, in a public meeting, fixed the value at $16 per oz, and, though the actual average value, as determined by assays, was not far from $18 per oz. the rating established by the merchants was universally accepted as the standard while I was in California, and perhaps for years thereafter. See Hittell, “History of California.”]
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In the latter part of August, Good arrived in Placerville from the Trinity diggings. He had come to this congested labor market to employ men to work for his firm--Brown, Pfouts & Co.--in that remote section, where the evil effects from the emigration had not been, and were not likely to be, seriously felt. He soon engaged about thirty men, at three dollars per day and board. When we were going up the Sacramento Valley, the fall before, we met hundreds of men coming from these same mines, cursing them as utterly worthless; yet, as a matter of fact, the yield here was about as good as anywhere else in California. And thus we found it everywhere--some coming, some going; some praising, some damning.
Through Good's representations, I accompanied him,* driving an ox team as far as Shasta, which was the end of the wagon road in that direction, and which was but a few miles from the scene of our first mining exploitations. We had now to pack the rest of the distance, some seventy miles, to the head of the Big Canyon on the Trinity, where we proposed to locate till the setting in of winter. Upon arriving at our destination, I at once struck ounce diggins, on a small sandy bar, near the river's edge; and one afternoon I scooped up eighty dollars out of the water, from the top of a bed of loose sand, inside of an abandoned coffer-dam. The gold was all fine scales, and was obviously a quite recent deposit. Kendrick and D. K. Wall bailed out the water while I did the
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washing in a rocker, for which I paid each at the rate of ten dollars per day.