We left the American Valley country, which was on the headwaters of the Feather River, and struck for the Sacramento River Valley. We thought we might find work on a ranch.
We went down to Marysville. The Uba River enters the Sacramento below Marysville and the Feather River above. Farming was all done when we got down there, so we could not find work. We then struck for Sacramento City. As a fellow would say, we were getting "about strapped," that is, running short of money. We walked from Marysville to the American River bridge one night, about fifty miles. We ate breakfast there, walked twenty miles up the American River and about three o'clock that day, hired to work for the next morning at two dollars and seventy-five cents per day, and board ourselves. I worked for a man by the name of Stewart. I was to work two weeks, but I worked ten days.
We went from here back to Fair Play, from where we had started. We stayed there until November. The weather kept dry—had no rain, so Uncle Joshua came to us and wanted us to work for him on a ranch in the Sacramento Valley, above the city of Sacramento something like three hundred miles, between the towns of Tehama and Red Bluffs. We worked for him ten months at fifty dollars a month.
My brother got sick and went to the mountains and I worked one month for a man by the name of David Jorden and his partner, Joseph Moran, in a brick yard, for fifty dollars. When uncle paid us, and I received my pay for working at the brick yard, I went to my brother, sixty miles southeast of Sacramento, to a mining town called Volcano.
We remained in Volcano for about two weeks. We then went to Sacramento. From there we took a steamboat to San Francisco, where we stayed for two weeks. We then got on a steamship and sailed for Panama. We landed once at a town in Mexico, called Acapuco, to take on beef cattle. We were fourteen days on the way from San Francisco to Panama. We remained in Panama one night, and then took a train and crossed the isthmus by railroad, which was the first railroad train I ever saw.
The next day we arrived at Aspinwall, now called Colon, where we stayed until the next day, when we boarded a ship bound for New York. We were nine days on the way from Aspinwall, or Colon, to New York City. We then took a steamboat and went up the Hudson River to Albany, where we took a train to Buffalo; from there to Cleveland, Ohio; to Indianapolis, and then to LaFayette, Ind. I then went to my home in Fountain County, and later came to Cheney's Grove, Illinois, on horse back. I landed at Cheney's Grove on New Year's Day, 1856.
ERRATA
—Page 5, 2nd paragraph, "Peter House" should read, "Peter Hughs." In next line, "John Feril" should read "John Teril." Likewise same name in 1st line, 2nd paragraph, page 19.