“There,” said Bob Hewitt, as he drew his coat sleeve across his eyes, after having read his letter while sitting upon a stump in the street, “that’s just my infernal luck!”
“Why, what’s the matter now, Bob?” his friends inquired.
“Matter! why I have just got the news that I have lost a fortune down in old Kentuck.”
“How is that?” they inquired.
“Well boys, don’t you remember that little red-headed cuss who worked with me over in the big canon last winter?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, he went home on a visit and I sent a lot of specimens and presents by him to my gal, and I’ll be doll garned if he didn’t tell her that I was dead and married her himself, the little cuss, and she had a fortune too. Oh!”
A regular post-office was soon established with T. Nugent as our first postmaster, and, if I am not mistaken. I think it was Mr. Nugent who first gave to the camp the name of Placerville sometime during the spring of ’51, although it continued to be known and called Hangtown for three or four years afterwards, by the mining community.
At this early day, there was but very little coin, either of gold or silver, in use in the mining regions, and gold dust was invariably used for all business purposes. It was customary in all business places, stores, hotels, and bar-rooms, as well as in the barber shops, to have upon the counter, or other convenient place, a pair of gold scales for weighing the gold dust, with the proper weights for weighing any desired amount, from the price of a drink of whiskey to a sack of flour, the value of gold dust being estimated at $16.00 per ounce, or $.80 to the penny-weight, as its standard value for the purchase of all commodities. In the use of fine gold dust in this manner much was scattered and lost; but in some of the saloons the ingenious barkeepers would take the precaution to cover the floor below the scales with cloth or zinc, and by this means increase their regular salary to some extent. Of one in particular it was said that in handling sacks of gold dust, although he was generally very careful, yet at such a time it was often observed that his hand had a remarkable way of trembling violently. The consequence was that the cloth upon the floor below the scales panned out monthly an average of about $100, which would have been entirely lost but for the wise forethought of the bartender. One of the barkeepers in a prominent saloon remarked that by the judicious handling of the buckskin sack, and with a tight floor behind the counter it was an easy job to realize $300 per month, and, furthermore, that he could even improve upon that, when he felt real well.