[97] Captain Bailey had succeeded D. D. Porter, afterwards Admiral of the Navy, in command of the Panama, but Porter was aboard the ship on this voyage. Others on board who were to reach eminence in various callings were John B. Weller, William W. Gwin, afterwards United States Senator, from California; Jessie Benton, daughter of Thomas H. Benton, and the wife of John C. Fremont; Joseph Hooker, afterwards known as “Fighting Joe Hooker;” William H. Emory, afterwards a general; Hall McAllister, brother of Ward McAllister, and Lieutenant Derby, the humorist who wrote under the name of “Phoenix.”
Porter was then thirty-six years old and had made a good record in the Mexican war. Hooker was a year older and his rank was that of assistant-adjutant general. Gwin had been in Congress nine years, but was yet to earn that title of Duke which came from his relations to Louis Napoleon in Mexico. Admiral Porter died on February 13, 1891, four days before the writer of these Reminiscences. The Panama remained for many years in active service between San Francisco and other Pacific ports. In 1876 she was a store ship at Acapulco.
[98] By the census of 1890 San Francisco had a population of 297,900.
[99] The gambling tents in the mining towns became the principal places of resort. One of these tents later on paid a rental of $40,000 a year and $20,000 was known to be staked on the issue of a game of cards. A two-story frame building chiefly used for gambling purposes rented for $120,000 a year. A building known as the Parker House, at one time rented for $15,000 a month. It was then sublet for gambling purposes and made to return a handsome profit above the original lease.
[100] Prices fluctuated greatly in the years 1848-49-50, due to the inflexible rule of supply and demand. The highest prices appear to have been reached just before the first steamer arrived. Bancroft says flour sold as high as $800 a barrel. Sugar and coffee were $400 a barrel; a shovel, pair of boots or gallon of whiskey and many other things were $100 each. Eggs sold for $3 apiece. A doctor charged $100 or $50 or nothing for a visit. Cooks earned $25 a day. Butter was $6 a pound, and ale $8 a bottle. Mr. Pratt spent the winter of 1849-50 on the coast and gives figures to show the cost of living. He sold for $400 a cooking stove that cost him $60. A good workman could demand $16 a day. Boots that cost him $6 in New York would bring $100, and revolvers costing $20 would bring $150. A chicken could be sold for $16. Lumber brought $500 a thousand feet, but in the following year when mills had been started and the market overstocked he bought enough lumber to build a warehouse for the bare cost of freight.
[101] In August, 1849, small vessels were so scarce that 10,000 or 12,000 persons were waiting in San Francisco for the means by which to reach the mines up and beyond the Sacramento.
[102] Mr. Bancroft affirms that “the great majority of diggers obtained little more than the means to live at the prevailing high prices, and many not even that. In 1852 the average yield in cash for the 100,000 men engaged in mining was only $600, or barely $2 a day, while wages for common laborers were twice or three times as much.”
[103] Edmund B. Birch, a brother of Albert G. Birch of Unadilla, went to California in 1849, making the overland trip by way of Council Bluffs. Lyman Birch, another brother, started by the Panama route, but engaged to work for the railroad at Panama, then offering large inducements to labor which was scarce. Mr. Birch was taken ill with fever and returned home.
Other names might be added to show the extent to which the gold fever reached this part of the Susquehanna Valley. Some twenty-five or thirty men in the neighborhood of Oneonta besought Collis P. Huntington to accept the leadership of a company formed by them to go into the mines, but Mr. Huntington—wise man that he was—declined the offer and shipped a load of goods instead, realizing handsome profits on them.
[104] Sutter’s Fort had been founded in 1839 by John A. Sutter, a native of Switzerland. Its walls were 500 feet long and 160 feet in the other direction, with loopholes and bastions and a dozen cannon. Sutter was a pioneer and a great local magnate. In 1847 he owned 12,000 cattle, 2,000 horses, from 10,000 to 15,000 sheep and 1,000 hogs. He employed some Mormons to build a flour mill six miles up the American river and forty miles up the South Fork at Colona he built a sawmill with its power derived through a millrace. Of all that Sacramento region he had become a sort of lord, when through the construction of this millrace his agent, Marshall, found what he believed to be gold dust.