We started on our journey in the afternoon. The country through which we traveled looked as if it had been an old-settled land, and deserted by its inhabitants. It seemed that we must come to a farm-house, but there was none. There were scattering trees in the country and occasionally a woods, but no dense forest. We made eight miles, then camped for the night on the edge of a woods. I had brought no provisions with me, so I offered him $1 per meal to eat with him, which was accepted. He made tea, cooked some Indian meal, and had a jug of molasses; so we made a very good supper. I got my satchel out of the wagon for a pillow, and with my blankets made my bed on the ground under the wagon. I thought it would keep the dew off, but there was none.
There is no danger of taking cold sleeping on the ground in the dry season, when it does not rain for seven months. He had set fire to a dead tree to keep the grizzly bears off, and about the time I got comfortably laid down, there was a pack of coyote wolves came howling around. Amid those surroundings, the burning of the fire to keep the grizzlies off and howling of the wolves, I fell asleep and did not wake until morning, refreshed from my slumbers. After a breakfast similar to the meal the night before, we proceeded on our journey, but the ox team travelled so slow that in walking I got away ahead of it, and then got tired of waiting for it to come up to me, and so went on alone. Toward night I came to Mormon Island, the first gold diggings. I inquired if there was a place where I could get quarters for the night. They said I might, at the hospital. It was a log cabin with bunks in it, and what was my astonishment to find the proprietor, a doctor from Troy, N.Y., an old acquaintance. I was more than welcome. We were both delighted to see each other. I to find such comfortable quarters, and he to meet with a friend in the wilderness, and to hear the latest news from the East. He got for me the best supper that the surroundings would afford; as I had eaten nothing since morning, it was very acceptable, and he provided for me the most comfortable of his bunks for sleeping. He informed me that it was twenty-five miles from Coloma, and there was but one place on the way where I could get water to drink. I started after breakfast, refreshed. After travelling some miles, I came to the smoke of the camp-fire of Indians, just ahead of me. It was rumored that the Oregon men were in the habit of shooting an Indian on sight when they had a chance. The Indians killed white men in retaliation, as they could not make peace until they had killed as many whites as they had lost, according to their ideas of equity. As I did not care particularly about being one to make up the number, I struck off in a ravine and passed around so as to avoid their camping ground and came to the road beyond them. What truth there was about the shooting of them I could not say, but it was currently reported at the time. About 4 o'clock, P.M., I got to a stopping place six miles from Coloma. There I met a man with a long beard, slouched hat, a sash around his body, a flannel shirt, evidently a miner. I had a long talk with him. He posted me about the gold diggings and I him about the news from the States. As we were about to part, he asked me to take a drink. He inquired of the proprietor if he had champagne? He said, yes, at $10 a bottle. The man said, pass us down a bottle, which we drank together. He, evidently, had struck good diggings. We parted, as I was anxious to get to Coloma before dark, which I did, just as the sun was setting, having made twenty-five miles in one day on foot. I found a regular tavern here, kept by a man from Mississippi, with his family. I sat down to a regular table for my supper, which seemed quite a treat. He informed me that he had no bed-room for me; that I could sleep on the dining-room floor, or in his barn. He had just had some new hay put in. I chose the latter. It was a kind of a shanty building, but the soft bed of new hay was a luxury after my twenty-five miles walk.
I awoke the next morning refreshed. After my breakfast I took in the place and went to the raceway where the first piece of gold was discovered. There were three or four stores in the place to supply the miners of the surrounding region. I got my direction how to find the Dutch Bar, eight miles from there. Proceeding on my way, after going about five miles, I came to a person, his face covered with a long beard, whom I recognized, by the expression of his eyes, as a person who I knew in Albany, and who belonged to the party I was seeking. He informed me that I was within three miles of them, and he gave me plain directions how to find them. I soon came to their camp and there was a genial meeting and exchange of news. There were five in the company. They had a tent and owned a pair of mules. I joined them, as I had not come to depend on mining, as I never had been accustomed to physical labor. At first I thought it was awful hard work, and that it was lucky for me that I had not come to California depending on it, but after a short time I got used to it and liked it. They took turns in cooking, so each one had one day in the week that he did the cooking. We lived on fried pork and flapjacks made from wheat flour fried in the fat of the pork, tin cups for our tea and coffee, and tin dishes. We each had stone seats, and a big one in the center for our table. At night we slept under our tent. The gold rivers were not navigable. They were sunk way down deep in the earth. When the rainy season sets in during the winter months, and sometimes rains every day in the month, causing the snow to melt on the Sierra Nevada mountains, where these streams take their rise, will cause the water to rise often from ten to twenty feet in a night, and in the course of ages has worn their depth down into the earth, and is supposed to have washed out of the earth the scales of gold that are found on the banks of the rivers. The first mining was a very simple process. A party of three could work together to the best advantage. A virgin bar was where the river had once run over and now receded from it. Three persons worked together, one to clear off the sand on the ground to within six inches of the hardpan. The top earth was not considered worth washing, the scales of gold, being heavier, had settled through it, but could not penetrate that portion of the earth called the hardpan, so the earth within six inches of it was impregnated with more or less gold, and one to carry the bucket to the rocker, and the other to run the rocker, which was located close to the water. The rocker was a trough about three feet in length with three slats in it and a sieve at the upper end, on which the bucket of earth was thrown. The man worked the rocker with one hand and dipped the water out of the river with a tin-handled dipper. As he worked the rocker the fine earth and scales of gold passed through the holes of the sieve and settled behind the slats in the trough, and the stones and large lumps in which there was no gold were caught in the sieve and thrown away. After a certain number of buckets of earth had been run through in that way, the settlings behind the slats in the trough were put in a milk-pan and the water was allowed to run in the pan and the fine earth and sand would float on the top of the water. You would let that run off.
After a few operations of that kind you would see the yellow scales of gold on the edge of the sand. You would continue that process until there was but a little of the sand left; then you would take it with you when you went to the tank and warm it by a fire to dry the sand; then with your breath you would blow away the sand and have the gold, which you carried in a buckskin bag, which was the currency of the country, at $16 per ounce, and at the mint in Philadelphia was worth $18.25. I have carried three hundred buckets in a day, and at twenty-five cents worth of gold in a bucket, it would amount to $75, $25 to each man for his day's work, which was frequently the average. In those days all it cost for a party of three for capital to start mining was about $15. Then you had the chances of striking a pocket. That was a cavity in the rocks where gold had settled. In the course of ages, and where the strong currents of the streams, when the rivers were high, could not reach it to wash it out, I have known a person to take out $800 of gold in less than an hour. The first miners, when they found gold on the banks of the river, thought if they could only dig in the deep holes of the bed they would find chunks of it, and they went to a big expense, and those who had money hired laborers to assist in constructing raceways at $16 per day, to change the current of the river; but when they had effected their object and dug there they found no gold, for there was nothing to prevent the strong current from carrying it off; but I knew a party to draw off the water and expose the bed of the river, where there were rapids, and they were successful, and the gold had settled down between the crevices of the rocks, and the currents could not disturb it.
There were some other kinds of diggings discovered different from the river mining, called cañons, one I know of, called the Oregon. It was described like a tunnel, deep down in the earth, where a party of three persons from near our locality went and returned in about three weeks and had from three to five thousand dollars apiece, which they showed me. It was not scale gold, but nuggets of all sizes. Of course, they had unusual luck.
On the river mining each person was entitled to so many feet, as long as they left any implements of labor on it. No person would trespass upon it; but if he took every thing away, then it was inferred he had given it up, and anybody had a right to take it. All regulations were strictly respected and every thing was safe, and a person told me that he would not be afraid to leave his bag of gold in his tent. Every thing was honorable and safe until the overland emigrants from western Missouri arrived there.
They were a different kind of people; more of the brute order. When they saw a party of two or three that had a good claim, and they were the strongest, they would dispossess them. (I suppose the same class that raided Kansas in John Brown's time.) They became so obnoxious that a respectable man would deny his State.
And another corrupt element arrived by sea, the ex-convicts from Sidney.
I went to Coloma one day to get supplies for the party. I rode one of the mules, the other followed to be packed with the purchases. When I bought what was wanted, I handed the storekeeper my bag of gold to pay him. When he returned it to me, I found his statement made was between three and four dollars less than I knew was in it. I informed him of the discrepancy. He said he did not see how that could be; that he weighed it right. He came in in a few minutes and apologized, saying that he had weighed it in the scales that he used when he traded with the Indians. It needs no comment to know that the Christian man is not always superior to the Indian in integrity. There was an Indian who had struck a pocket. He came to Coloma with $800 in gold dust that he got out in a short time. He invested it all with the storekeepers in a few hours. He had dressed himself in the height of fashion, including a gold watch. He was dressed as no California Indian ever had been before. The gold he could not eat nor drink.
