Captain Sutter's men[3] deserted him in a body. The American settlers and Indians of the neighborhood next caught the infection. Gold was quickly found at a point midway between Sutter's Fort and Mill, called the Mormon Diggings,[4] on Feather River, and in the gulches above the mill site. From these districts the first miners began to straggle down to San Francisco with pouches of gold-dust in their possession. Men who had hardly known what it was to have a dollar of their own suddenly lived
"Like an emperor in their expense."
The effect was magical. Within a short three months most of the houses in San Francisco and Monterey were shut up. Blacksmiths left their anvils, carpenters their benches, sailors their ships. Soldiers were every day deserting from the garrisons of San Francisco, Sonoma, and Monterey. The two newspapers[5] then printed in the country suspended their issue indefinitely. Everybody was off for the mines, and nothing else was talked of but gold.
TWO MINERS.
Consul Larkin thus describes the scene at the Mormon Diggings in June, 1848: "At my camping-place I found forty or fifty tents, mostly occupied by Americans, strewn about the hillsides next the river. I spent two nights in company with eight Americans, two of whom were sailors, two carpenters, one a clerk, and three common laborers. With two machines called cradles, these men made fifty dollars each per day. Another miner had washed out, with a common tin pan, gold to the value of eighty-two dollars in a single day."
Mr. Larkin thought there were then about one thousand people, mostly foreigners, actually working in the mines, whose daily gains would amount to at least ten thousand dollars. And he even ventured to hint that at this rate gold enough would be produced in a single year to repay what California had cost the nation.
Colonel Mason, the military governor, adds what he saw while making a tour of inspection to the new placers: "Along the whole route mills were lying idle, fields of wheat were open to cattle and horses, houses vacant, and farms going to waste. At Sutter's there was more life and business. Launches were discharging their cargoes at the river, and carts were hauling goods to the fort, where were already established several stores, a hotel, etc. Captain Sutter had only two mechanics in his employ, whom he was then paying ten dollars a day. Merchants pay him a monthly rent of one hundred dollars per room; and while I was there a two-story house in the fort was rented as a hotel for five hundred dollars a month."