"On the 14th an' 15th, a whole fleet o' launches an' small boats started out across San Francisco Sound an' Pablo Bay an' up the Sacramento River, every boat loaded to the gunwales. They said there was 2,000 men on the way.
"That wasn't jest a rush, it was a stampede. Not ten men in the entire crowd knew the first durn thing about prospectin'. They had some fool idee that pannin' gold was like pickin' flowers, all you had to do was to find it. Any one what knew better could ha' told 'em, but there wasn't any one to tell 'em, an' likely, they wouldn't ha' listened if he had. What's the use o' talkin' to a crazy man? An' a gold-rush is a bunch o' lunatics. I know! I've been that way myself, more'n once.
"Out Salt Lake City way, the winter had been bad. We Mormons had gone to Utah to avoid bein' citizens o' the United States, an' the government had took in Utah as soon as we made it worth takin'. My grand-pap an' my father were sore at that, an' they decided to start off with a party for Californy, which was still Spanish.
"Right around the 1st o' May, they reached the Sacramento River an' heard about gold bein' found. They took it as a sign that Providence was protectin' 'em, an' settled right down there to pan out the stream. Travelin', as the Mormons always did, with a proper leader, they pitched an organized camp. Trained to the last notch by their wanderin's in the wilderness, there wasn't a tenderfoot or an idle man in the bunch, an', workin' steadily, they begun to clean up pretty good.
"Jest a month later come the first wave o' the rush from 'Frisco. They struck the placers, their mouths fairly waterin' for gold, only to find the Mormons there already. That was a bit too much! After all their trouble an' misery, all the expense, all the deaths, they come to find all the claims along the strike staked out by Mormons.
"Durin' this time, Californy had been taken over by the United States. The 'Frisco bunch knew they'd be protected by law for anything they did against the Mormons, an', after a short pow-wow, they tried to rush the camp.
"But my grand-pap, an' some more o' the leaders, who were right handy with their rifles, were standin' at the ready. They'd fought their way across the plains, when the redskins were swarmin', an' they weren't the kind to take back water before a crowd o' tenderfeet. The 'Frisco men, city chaps a lot o' them, begun to waver, an' asked a parley.
"The Mormon leader, he told 'em, cold, what they'd get if they come any farther, an' hinted, pretty broad, that there was more cold lead around those diggin's than there was gold. But he told 'em, too, that there was a lot o' the other placers around wi' no one washin' 'em. The others grumbled but got out. Luckily, there was gold enough for all, at first. Later on, there was a sure-enough fight over a sluice, and the bullets went thick. The Mormons knew how to shoot, an' there was fifty o' the Gentiles dead when they broke back. Our folks were let alone on the Sacramento, after that.
"Durin' this month, John Bidwell struck it rich on the Feather River, 75 miles away from Sutter's Mill, and Pearson B. Reading on the Clear River, 100 miles further on. The news scattered the 'Frisco crowd, many a man leavin' a good claim in hopes to find a better. Others went prospectin' on their own. By the end o' the year, along the whole western slope o' the Sierra Nevada, from Pitt River to the Tuolumne, there wasn't a stream or a creek or a dry ravine that didn't have some one prospectin' or pannin' on it.
"Most o' those that got on to the diggin's in the first two months made money an' made it fast. A few struck bonanzas and took out a thousand dollars a day. Quite a lot got good pickin's an' cleaned up at the rate of a hundred a day. The rest were doin' good if they cleaned up twenty, an' that was jest about enough to live on, at minin'-camp prices. I've seen potatoes sell at five dollars apiece to be eaten raw, when the scurvy was ragin', an' three men were killed in a fight over the buyin' of a fresh cabbage.