Six months in the gold mines

FROM A JOURNAL OF
IN UPPER AND LOWER CALIFORNIA. 1847-8-9. BY E. GOULD BUFFUM, LIEUTENANT FIRST REGIMENT NEW YORK VOLUNTEERS. PHILADELPHIA: LEA AND BLANCHARD. 1850. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, BY LEA AND BLANCHARD, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PHILADELPHIA: C. SHERMAN, PRINTER. TO JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT, THE UNITED STATES SENATOR FIRST CHOSEN TO REPRESENT THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA: THE HISTORY OF WHOSE INVALUABLE PIONEER LABOURS WILL ENDURE AS LONG AS THE MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS, AND PLAINS WHICH HIS COURAGE AND INDOMITABLE ENTERPRISE EXPLORED, AND HIS GENIUS HAS ILLUSTRATED,
BY PERMISSION, IS MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR.
The pages of this work, in consequence of the public interest in all that appertains to California, have been hurried through the press, without the revision expected by the author; there may be, therefore, some slight errors detected through the pages. The writer of the work, formerly connected intimately with the New York press, has been a resident and explorer of California for more than three years, and still remains there. The proof sheets could not, therefore, well be submitted to his revision.
Philadelphia, May, 1850.

On the 26th day of September, 1846, the 7th Regiment of New York State Volunteers, commanded by Colonel J. D. Stevenson, sailed from the harbour of New York under orders from the Secretary of War, to proceed to Upper California. The objects and operations of the expedition, the fitting out of which created some sensation at the time, are now too well understood and appreciated to require explanation. This regiment, in which I had the honour of holding a lieutenant’s commission, numbered, rank and file, about seven hundred and twenty men, and sailed from New York in the ships Loo Choo, Susan Drew, and Thomas H. Perkins. After a fine passage of little more than five months, during which we spent several days pleasantly in Rio Janeiro, the Thomas H. Perkins entered the harbour of San Francisco and anchored off the site of the town, then called Yerba Buena, on the 6th day of March, 1847. The remaining ships arrived soon afterwards.