"He puts this last bit on a flat rock an' hammers it with a stone. It beats out flat quite easy. Marshall wasn't no fool, an' he knew there wasn't no yellow metal acted that way but gold or copper, an' native copper ain't that color.
"There was one o' the mill-hands wi' Marshall at the time, a chap called Peter Wimmer. He didn't know any more about gold'n Marshall did, but he'd heard said that every metal, savin' gold, gets black if it's boiled in strong lye. Marshall gets Wimmer to keep quiet by promisin' him a stake in whatever's found, an' tries the boilin' trick. The flakes o' metal stays put, an' shows nary a sign o' tarnishin'.
"By this time, Marshall was gettin' pretty sure that what he'd found was gold. He hadn't no notion of a gold mine, though, seein' he'd never heard of any. He reckoned that these flakes must be gold that had been buried by the Indians, long ago, an' had been washed down; from a grave, maybe, or some o' the treasure that the Spaniards had been huntin'.
"Jest the same, he was curious. He strolled away from the tail-race, idle-like, an' started huntin' promiscuous. He found specks o' gold all over. That settled him. He jumped on a horse an' rode down to Cap'n Sutter wi' the news.
"Sutter was a whole lot more excited than Marshall was. He was educated an' knew the history o' Mexico. He knew the Indians in Californy had possessed gold in the time o' the first comin' o' the Spaniards, an' he reckoned that gold must ha' come from somewhere. There'd always been some talk o' gold around where the Spanish missions had started, and, jest three years afore, a Spanish don had sent some ore to Mexico, sayin' that there was gold an' silver a-plenty around, an' the government had better get busy an' develop it. But the Spaniards weren't havin' any. Ever since they got so badly fooled, a couple o' hundred years afore, in their hunt for the 'Golden Cities o' Cibola,'[6] they let Californy alone.
[6] For the gold-hunting expedition of the Spanish Conquistadores in North America—records of extraordinary heroism and adventure—see the author's "The Quest of the Western World." For the gold-stories of Ancient Mexico, see the author's "The Aztec-hunters."
"Sutter didn't waste no time. He rode right back to the mill wi' the foreman. They didn't have to poke around long afore Sutter was plumb sure it was the real stuff. There was some of it in the Americanos, but the gold was even thicker in the dried-up creeks an' gulches that run into the river on both sides. With his penknife, Sutter pried out o' the rock-face a piece o' gold weighin' nigh two ounces.
"Some o' the mill-hands had got wise, too. Maybe Wimmer talked—though he said he hadn't. Maybe they just got a hunch, when they saw Sutter an' Marshall prospectin' around. They started huntin', too, but the flakes were small an' took a long time to find. None o' them knew enough to try washin' the sand, an' all they found didn't amount to much.
"Sutter took samples o' the gold to the fort at Monterey, where General Mason was in command. Mason was more interested in tryin' to keep the Apaches an' Comanches quiet than he was in fussin' about metals. He was a soldier, an' minin' wasn't his line. But he knew that the federal authorities at Washington ought to be notified.
"There weren't no post nor telegraph in them times—that was 'way afore the days o' the Pony Express,[7] even—an' Mason sent a special messenger. Politics were queer in Californy around that time. Spain claimed the territory, the United States claimed it, an' for a while—a month, maybe—Californy was a republic on her own. The messenger reached Washington, all right, an' his report hurried up the signin' o' the treaty which made Californy American. That happened jest six weeks after Marshall had picked up his first bit o' gold an' only two weeks after the messenger arrived. Word was sent to Mason to be sure an' keep law an' order, no matter what happened. It was a bit too late, then; goin' an' comin' from Washington took months.