Marshall hammered his new metal, and found it malleable; he put it into the kitchen fire, and observed that it did not readily melt or become discolored; he compared its color with gold coin; and the more he examined it, the more he was convinced that it was gold. The next morning he paid another visit to the tail-race, where he picked up other specimens; and putting all he had collected, about a spoonful, on the crown of his slouch hat, he went to the mill, where he showed them to the men as proof of his discovery of a gold mine. The scantiness in the provision supply gave Marshall an excuse for going to the fort, though he would probably not have gone at this time if he had not been anxious to know Sutter's opinion of the metal. He rode away, and, according to Sutter's diary, arrived at the fort on Friday the 28th. Sutter had an encyclopedia, sulphuric acid, and scales, and with the help of these, after weighing the specimens in and out of water, he declared that they were undoubtedly gold.
Sutter's Mill, the scene of the gold discovery.
The first record of the discovery, and the only one made on the day of its occurrence, was in the diary of Henry W. Bigler, one of the Mormon laborers at the mill. He was an American by birth, then a young man, and afterwards a citizen of St. George, Utah. He was in the habit of keeping a regular record of his notable observations and experiences, selecting topics for remark with creditable judgment. His journal kept during his service in the Mormon battalion and his subsequent stay in California is one of the valuable historical documents of the State. On the 24th of January, in the evening, Bigler wrote in his diary, "This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail-race that looks like goald."
The artless arrangement of ideas, and the ungrammatical phraseology, accompanied by the regular mental habits that demanded a diary, and the perception that enabled him to catch with his pen the main facts of life as they passed, add much to the interest as well as to the authority of his diary.
For six weeks or more the work on the mill continued without serious interruption. Never having seen placer-mining, and having no distinct idea of the methods of finding and washing gold, the laborers at Coloma did not know how to gather the treasures in their vicinity. The first one to find gold outside of the tail-race was Bigler, who was the hunter of the party, sent out by Marshall at least one day in every week to get venison, which was a very acceptable addition to unground wheat and salt salmon, the main articles of food sent from Sutter's Fort. Deer being numerous in the neighboring hills, it was not necessary that Bigler should go far for game; and more than once he managed, while hunting, to look at the banks of the river and find some of the precious metal. His report of his success stimulated others, and they, too, found gold at various places.
The song of the sirens
(from "Punch").
In regard to the beginning of gold washing as a regular occupation there is a conflict of testimony. Bigler says that the first men who, within the range of his observation, devoted themselves to placer-mining were Willis Hudson and five others, all of Sam Brannan's Mormon colony, whom he visited at Mormon Island, on the American River below Coloma, on the 12th of April. On that day, washing the gravel with pans and pan-like Indian baskets, they took out more than two ounces and a half (forty-one dollars) for each man. On the other hand, Isaac Humphrey, who had been a placer-miner in Georgia, and who was the first person to use a rocker in the Sierra Nevada and to teach others there to use it, said that he arrived in Coloma on the 7th of March, and within a week commenced work with a rocker. We may explain the discrepancy between these two authorities by imagining that for some weeks Humphrey purposely avoided observation, as placer-miners often do; or that in the interval of ten years between his first appearance at Coloma and the publication of his reminiscences his memory misled him in the date.