May 30th.—To my great disappointment, our journey was not resumed to-day. As I had expected, Malcolm had found there was no chance of getting the farrier's assistance yesterday, and he came to me in the evening to inform me that he and the rest were going into camp for the night. Bradley and myself found an ample supper prepared for us; and, after doing due justice to the eatables, and dressing Bradley's arm, I shortened the night a couple of hours by jotting down the events of the day.

This morning I rose early and walked to the camp, which I found, about half a mile off, under some oaks in a piece of pasture land on the Captain's farm. I had some difficulty in finding it out, for there were at least fifteen or twenty tents of one kind or another in the "bottom." The party were all roused, and breakfast was preparing under Don Luis's superintendence. It was the general opinion that we must buy two extra horses to carry our breadstuffs, etc. Malcolm reported that there were a variety of articles we were still in want of; namely, tin drinking-cups, some buckets for water, with forks, and other small articles. He recommended that a couple more axes and a strong saw be bought at Brannan's, together with hammers, nails, etc., and some of the Indian baskets which seem to be so common about here.

On my return to the Fort, I fell in with the Captain, rigged out in a military undress uniform. I chatted with him for half an hour about his farm, etc. He told me that he was the first white man who settled in this part of the country; that some ten years ago, when the Mexican government was full of colonization schemes, the object of which was to break up the Missions, and to introduce a population antagonistic to the Californians, he received a grant of land, sixty miles one way and twelve another, about sixteen or seventeen hundred acres of which he had now brought under cultivation. "When I came here," said the Captain, "I knew the country and the Indians well. Eight years ago these fields were overgrown with long rank grass, with here and there an oak or pine sprouting out from the midst. You can see what they are now. As to the Indians, they gave me a little more trouble. I can boast of fourteen pieces of cannon, though one has little occasion for them now, except to fire a few salutes on days of rejoicing. Well! most of these guns came from Ross within the last four years; but when I first arrived here, I brought with me a couple of howitzers, from which one night, when these thieves were hemming me in on all sides, I discharged a shell right over their heads. The mere sight of it, when it bursted, was sufficient to give them a very respectful notion of the fighting means at my command. But though this saved me from any direct attack, it did not secure me against having my horses and cattle stolen on every convenient occasion." The Captain went on to say, that he at last brought the Indians pretty well under control; and that, by promises of articles of clothing, they became willing to work for him. He took good care to trust very few of them with rifles or powder and shot. Nearly every brick in the buildings of the Fort, he tells me, was made by the Indians, who, moreover, dug all the ditches dividing his wheat-fields. These ditches are very necessary, to prevent the large number of cattle and horses on the farm from straying among the crops.

On our way to the house, I got the Captain to speak to the head blacksmith about our horses, after which we went in to breakfast, when I saw his wife and daughter for the first time. They are both very ladylike women, and both natives of France. During the meal, I found Captain Sutter communicative on the subject of the discovery of the gold mines, which I was very glad of, as I was anxious to learn the true particulars of the affair, respecting which so many ridiculous stories had been circulated. One was to the effect that the mines had been discovered by the Mormons, in accordance with a prophecy made by the famous Joe Smith. Another tale was, that the Captain had seen the apparition of an Indian chief, to whom he had given a rifle (the possession of which he only lived three months to enjoy, having been trampled down by a buffalo in the neighbourhood of the Rocky Mountains, on his way with his tribe to make an attack on the Pawnees), when the ghost in question told the Captain that he would make him very rich, and begged that, with this promised cash, the Captain would immediately buy a ship-load of rifles, and present one to every member of his tribe. Such were the absurd stories circulated. The true account of the discovery I here give, as near as I can recollect, in the Captain's own words.

CHAPTER VII.

"I was sitting one afternoon," said the Captain, "just after my siesta, engaged, by-the-by, in writing a letter to a relation of mine at Lucerne, when I was interrupted by Mr. Marshall—a gentleman with whom I had frequent business transactions—bursting hurriedly into the room. From the unusual agitation in his manner I imagined that something serious had occurred, and, as we involuntarily do in this part of the world, I at once glanced to see if my rifle was in its proper place. You should know that the mere appearance of Mr. Marshall at that moment in the Fort was quite enough to surprise me, as he had but two days before left the place to make some alterations in a mill for sawing pine planks, which he had just run up for me, some miles higher up the Americanos. When he had recovered himself a little, he told me that, however great my surprise might be at his unexpected reappearance, it would be much greater when I heard the intelligence he had come to bring me. 'Intelligence,' he added, 'which, if properly profited by, would put both of us in possession of unheard-of wealth—millions and millions of dollars in fact.' I frankly own, when I heard this, that I thought something had touched Marshall's brain, when suddenly all my misgivings were put an end to by his flinging on the table a handful of scales of pure virgin gold. I was fairly thunderstruck, and asked him to explain what all this meant, when he went on to say, that, according to my instructions, he had thrown, the mill-wheel out of gear, to let the whole body of the water in the dam find a passage through the tail-race, which was previously too narrow to allow the water to run off in sufficient quantity, whereby the wheel was prevented from efficiently performing its work. By this alteration the narrow channel was considerably enlarged, and a mass of sand and gravel carried off by the force of the torrent. Early in the morning after this took place, he (Mr. Marshall) was walking along the left bank of the stream, when he perceived something which he at first took for a piece of opal—a clear transparent stone very common here—glittering on one of the spots laid bare by the sudden crumbling away of the bank. He paid no attention to this; but while he was giving directions to the workmen, having observed several similar glittering fragments, his curiosity was so far excited, that he stooped down and picked one of them up. 'Do you know,' said Mr. Marshall to me, 'I positively debated within myself two or three times whether I should take the trouble to bend my back to pick up one of the pieces, and had decided on not doing so, when, further on, another glittering morsel caught my eye—the largest of the pieces now before you. I condescended to pick it up, and to my astonishment found that it was a thin scale of what appears to be pure gold.' He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces, which on examination convinced him that his suppositions were right. His first impression was, that this gold had been lost or buried there by some early Indian tribe—perhaps some of those mysterious inhabitants of the west, of whom we have no account, but who dwelt on this continent centuries ago, and built those cities and temples, the ruins of which are scattered about these solitary wilds. On proceeding, however, to examine the neighbouring soil, he discovered that it was more or less auriferous. This at once decided him. He mounted his horse, and rode down to me as fast as it would carry him with the news.

"At the conclusion of Mr. Marshall's account," continued Captain Sutter, "and when I had convinced myself, from the specimens he had brought with him, that it was not exaggerated, I felt as much excited as himself. I eagerly inquired if he had shown the gold to the work-people at the mill, and was glad to hear that he had not spoken to a single person about it. We agreed," said the Captain, smiling, "not to mention the circumstance to any one, and arranged to set off early the next day for the mill. On our arrival, just before sundown, we poked the sand about in various places, and before long succeeded in collecting between us more than an ounce of gold, mixed up with a good deal of sand. I stayed at Mr. Marshall's that night, and the next day we proceeded some little distance up the South Fork, and found that gold existed along the whole course, not only in the bed of the main stream, where the water had subsided, but in every little dried-up creek and ravine. Indeed I think it is more plentiful in these latter places, for I myself, with nothing more than a small knife, picked out from a dry gorge, a little way up the mountain, a solid lump of gold which weighed nearly an ounce and a half.

"On our return to the mill, we were astonished by the work-people coming up to us in a body, and showing us small flakes of gold similar to those we had ourselves procured. Marshall tried to laugh the matter off with them, and to persuade them that what they had found was only some shining mineral of trifling value; but one of the Indians, who had worked at the gold mine in the neighbourhood of La Paz, in Lower California, cried out, 'Oro! oro!' We were disappointed enough at this discovery, and supposed that the work-people had been watching our movements, although we thought we had taken every precaution against being observed by them. I heard afterwards, that one of them, a sly Kentuckian, had dogged us about, and that, looking on the ground to see if he could discover what we were in search of, he had lighted on some flakes of gold himself.