California Part 2

We pushed along, as may be believed, with the utmost impatience, conjuring up the most flattering visions of our probable success as gold-hunters. The track lay through a s.p.a.cious gra.s.sy valley, with the Americanos River winding along it, on our left hand. At first, the stream was nearly two miles distant from the track of our caravan, but as we advanced we approached its banks more nearly. The country was pleasant, consisting of a succession of small hills and valleys, diversified here and there by groves of tall oak trees. We pa.s.sed several wretched Indian villages--cl.u.s.ters of filthy smoky hovels, and now and then caught sight of the river and the line of oak trees which bordered it. We managed tolerably well with our horses, but it requires great experience to be able to fasten securely the loads of provisions and stores which they carry on their backs. Flour, of course, formed the princ.i.p.al article of our commissariat. This was packed up in sacks, which were again enclosed in long pockets, made of hides, and called "parfleshes," the use of which is to defend the canvas of the sacking from being torn by branches of fern and underwood. The sacks we secured on strong pack-saddles, between which and the back of the horse were some thick soft cloths. All our baggage-horses were furnished with trail ropes, which were allowed to drag on the ground after the horse, for the purpose of enabling us to catch him more readily. Besides the animals we rode, we had seven horses, for the conveyance of our provisions, tents, etc. The two we bought from Captain Sutter, though strong, were skittish, and gave us much trouble, for our newly engaged servant, whose name is James Horry, knew more about harpooning and flenching whales than about the management of horses. He was certainly willing and did his best, but he occasioned some mirth during the day's march by his extreme awkwardness on horseback. However, to do him justice, he bore the numerous falls which he came in for with great philosophy, starting up again every time he was "gra.s.sed," and laughing as loudly as the rest.

At noon we halted to refresh by the side of a small stream of crystal purity. While making preparations for our hurried meal, we had all our eyes about us for gold in the channel of the rivulet, but saw none. We had not yet reached the favoured spot. After some difficulty in catching the pack-horses, one of the perverse brutes having taken it into its head to march up to its belly in the stream, where he floundered about for some time, enjoying the coolness of the water, we set forward, determined to reach the lower diggings by sundown. As we neared the spot the ground gradually became more broken and heavily timbered with oak and pine, while in the distance, and separated from us by deep forests of these trees, might be seen a long ridge of snow-capped mountains--the lofty Sierra Nevada. But we were too anxious to reach the gold to care much about the more unprofitable beauties of Nature, and accordingly urged our horses to the quickest speed they could put forth. We were now travelling along the river's banks, and towards evening came in sight of the lower mines, here called the "Mormon" diggings, which occupy a surface of two or three miles along the river. There were something like forty tents scattered up the hill sides, occupied mostly by Americans, some of whom had brought their families with them. Although it was near sundown, everybody was in full occupation. At every few yards there were men, with their naked arms, busily employed in washing out the golden flakes and dust from spadefuls of the auriferous soil. Others were first pa.s.sing it through sieves, many of them freshly made with intertwisted willow branches, to get rid of the coa.r.s.e stones, and then washing the lumps of soil in pots placed beneath the surface of the water, the contents of the vessel being kept continually stirred by the hand until the lighter particles of earth or gravel were carried away.

A great number of the settlers, however, were engaged in making what are here called "cradles;" partly, I suppose, from their shape, and partly from the rocking motion to which they are subjected. These machines were being roughly constructed of dealboards. Later in the day I watched one of them at work, and had the process explained to me. Four men were employed at it. The first shovelled up the earth; another carried it to the cradle, and dashed it down on a grating or sieve--placed horizontally at the head of the machine--the wires of which, being close together, only allowed the smaller particles of earth and sand to fall through; the third man rocked the cradle--I must confess I never saw one so perseveringly rocked at home; while the fourth kept flinging water upon the ma.s.s of earth inside. The result of this fourfold process is, that the lighter earth is gradually carried off by the action of the water, and a sort of thick black sediment of sand is left at the bottom of the cradle. This was afterwards scooped out, and put aside to be carefully dried in the sun to-morrow morning.

I can hardly describe the effect this sight produced upon our party.

It seemed as if the fabled treasure of the Arabian Nights had been suddenly realised before us. We all shook hands, and swore to preserve good faith with each other, and to work hard for the common good. The gold-finders told us that some of them frequently got as much as fifty dollars a-day. As we rode from camp to camp, and saw the h.o.a.rds of gold--some of it in flakes, but the greater part in a coa.r.s.e sort of dust--which these people had ama.s.sed during the last few weeks, we felt in a perfect fl.u.s.ter of excitement at the sight of the wealth around us. One man showed us four hundred ounces of pure gold dust which he had washed from the dirt in a tin pan, and which he valued at fourteen dollars an ounce.

As may be imagined, the whole scene was one well calculated to take a strong hold upon the imagination. The eminences, rising gradually from the river's banks, were dotted with white canvas tents, mingled with the more sombre-looking huts, constructed with once green but now withered branches. A few hundred yards from the river lay a large heap of planks and framings, which I was told were intended for constructing a store; the owner of which, a sallow Yankee, with a large pluffy cigaretto in his mouth, was labouring away in his shirt sleeves.

Bewildered and excited by the novelty of the scene, we were in haste to pitch our camp, and soon fixed upon a location. This was by the side of a dried-up water-course, through which, in the wet season, a small rivulet joined the larger stream; we did not, however, immediately set to work to make the necessary arrangements for the night. Our fingers were positively itching for the gold, and in less than half an hour after our arrival, the pack-horse which carried the shovels, scoops, and pans, had been released of his burden, and all our party were as busily employed as the rest. As for myself, armed with a large scoop or trowel, and a shallow tin pail, I leapt into the bed of the rivulet, at a spot where I perceived no trace of the gravel and earth having been artificially disturbed. Near me was a small clear pool, which served for washing the gold. Some of our party set to work within a short distance of me, while others tried their fortune along the banks of the Americanos, digging up the shingle which lay at the very brink of the stream. I shall not soon forget the feeling with which I first plunged my scoop into the soil beneath me. Half filling my tin pail with the earth and shingle, I carried it to the pool, and placing it beneath the surface of the water, I began to stir it with my hand, as I had observed the other diggers do. Of course I was not very expert at first, and I dare say I flung out a good deal of the valuable metal.

However, I soon perceived that the earth was crumbling away, and was being carried by the agitation of the water into the pool, which speedily became turbid, while the sandy sediment of which I had heard remained at the bottom of the pail. Carefully draining the water away, I deposited the sand in one of the small close-woven Indian baskets we had brought with us, with the intention of drying it at the camp fire, there not being sufficient time before nightfall to allow the moisture gradually to absorb by the evaporation of the atmosphere.

After working for about half an hour, I retraced my steps with my basket to the spot where we had tethered the horses, and found the animals still standing there with their burdens on their backs. Mr.

Malcolm was already there; he had with him about an equal quant.i.ty of the precious black sand; it remained, however, to be seen what proportion of gold our heaps contained. In a short time Bradley and Don Luis joined us, both of them in tip-top spirits. "I guess this is the way we do the trick down in these clearings," said the former, shaking a bag of golden sand. As for Jose, Don Luis's Indian servant, he was devout in his expressions of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary and the Great Spirit, whom he would insist upon cla.s.sifying together, in a most remarkable and not quite orthodox manner.

We now set to work to get up our tent. Malcolm, in the meantime, prepared coffee and very under-baked cakes, made of the flour we had brought with us. His cooking operations were greatly impeded by our eagerness to dry the sand we had sc.r.a.ped up--a feat in the achievement of which Bradley was clumsy enough to burn a hole in our very best saucepan. However, we managed to get the moisture absorbed, and, shutting our eyes, we commenced blowing away the sand with our mouths, and shortly after found ourselves the possessors of a few pinch's of gold. This was encouraging for a beginning. We drunk our coffee in high spirits, and then, having picketted our horses, made ourselves as snug as our accommodation would allow, and, being tired out, not only with the journey and the work, but with excitement and anxiety, slept soundly till morning.

CHAPTER IX.

Two horses stray away How orders were enforced at the diggings Sunday work Nature of the soil Inconveniences even in gold getting Dinner and rest A strike for higher wages A walk through the diggings Sleeping and smoking Indians and finery Californians and Yankee Runaway sailors and stray negroes A native born Kentuckian "That's a fact"

A chapel at the diggings A supper with an appet.i.te.

The morning broke brilliantly, and the first thing we discovered on rising was, that two of the horses had broken their fastenings during the night, and strayed. As we could not afford to lose the animals, Jose and Horry were despatched lo look after them, and they grumbled not a little at being thus sent off from the scene of golden operations; but Bradley, producing a rifle, swore that he would shoot them both unless they obeyed orders; so, after a little altercation, away they went.

Breakfast was soon despatched, and the question as to the day's operations asked. Don Luis was the only one who, on the score of its being Sunday, would not go to the diggings. He had no objection to amuse himself on Sunday, but he would not work. To get over the difficulty, we agreed to go upon the principle of every man keeping his own findings, our bonds of unity as a party to extend merely to mutual protection and defence. Leaving Don Luis, then, smoking in the tent, we proceeded to work, and found that the great majority of the gold-finders appeared to entertain our opinions, or at all events to imitate our practice, as to labouring on the Sunday. I had now leisure more particularly to remark the nature of the soil in which the gold was found. The dust is found amid the shingle actually below water, but the most convenient way of proceeding is to take the soil from that portion of the bed which has been overflowed but is now dry. It is princ.i.p.ally of a gravelly nature, full of small stones, composed, as far as I could make out, of a species of jasper and milky quality, mingled with fragments of slate and splinters of basalt. The general opinion is, that the gold has been washed down from the hills.

I worked hard, as indeed we all did, the whole morning. The toil is very severe, the constant stooping pressing, of course, upon the spinal column, whilst the constant immersion of the hands in water causes the skin to excoriate and become exceedingly painful. But these inconveniences are slight when compared to the great gain by which one is recompensed for them.

At twelve o'clock, our usual primitive dinner hour, we met at the tents, tolerably well tired with our exertions. No dinner, however, was prepared, both Jose and Horry being still absent in pursuit of the strayed horses. We had, therefore, to resort to some of our jerked beef, which, with biscuits and coffee, formed our fare. After dinner, we determined to rest until the next day. The fact is, that the human frame will not stand, and was never intended to stand, a course of incessant toil; indeed, I believe that in civilized--that is to say, in industrious--communities, the Sabbath, bringing round as it does a stated remission from labour, is an inst.i.tution physically necessary.

We therefore pa.s.sed some time in conversation, which was interrupted by the arrival of Jose and Horry with the strayed horses. Horry demanded an immediate increase of wages, threatening to leave us and set to work on his own account if we refused. Bradley tried to talk big and bully him, but in vain. Jose had a sort of fear of Don Luis--who in return looked on his servant as his slave--so he said nothing. We could see, however, that they had evidently been in communication with the diggers around, and so we gave in. Later in the afternoon I started with Malcolm and McPhail for a walk through the diggings. We found comparatively a small proportion of the people who had commenced work in the morning still at their pans. Numbers were lying asleep under the trees, or in the shade of their tents and wagons. Others sat smoking and chatting in circles upon the gra.s.s, mending their clothes or performing other little domestic duties at the same time. It was really a motley scene. Indians strutted by in all the pride of gaudy calico, the manners of the savage concealed beneath the dress of the civilized man. Muscular sun-burnt fellows, whose fine forms and swarthy faces p.r.o.nounced that Spanish blood ran through their veins, gossiped away with sallow hatchet-faced Yankees, smart men at a bargain, and always on the lookout for squalls. Here, and there one spied out the flannel shirt and coa.r.s.e canvas trousers of a seaman--a runaway, in all probability, from a South Sea whaler; while one or two stray negroes chattered with all the volubility of their race, shaking their woolly heads and showing their white teeth. I got into conversation with one tall American; he was a native-born Kentuckian, and full of the bantam sort of consequence of his race. He predicted wonderful things from the discovery of the mineral treasures of California, observing that it would make a monetary revolution all over the world, and that nothing similar, at least to so great an extent, was ever known in history.

"Look around! for, stranger," said he to me, "I guess you don't realise such a scene every day, and that's a fact. There's gold to be had for the picking of it up, and by all who choose to come and work. I reckon old John Bull will scrunch up his fingers in his empty pockets when he comes to hear of it. It's a most everlasting wonderful thing, and that's a fact, that beats Joe Dunkin's goose-pie and apple sa.r.s.e."

Farther on we came upon a tremendous-looking tent, formed by two or three tents being flung into one, which, on examination, we found was doing duty as a chapel. A missionary, from one of the New England States, as I hear, was holding forth to a pretty large congregation.

The place was very hot and chokey, and I only stayed long enough to hear that the discourse abounded in the cloudy metaphors and vague technicalities of Calvinistic theology.

The remainder of the afternoon I have been devoting to writing my journal, which I here break off to commence a hearty good supper, in revenge for the scrambling sort of dinner one has had to-day. The beef doesn't look roasted as they would put it on the table at the Clarendon, or at Astor House even; but none of those who sit down to the Clarendon table, at any rate, have such an appet.i.te as I now have, far away beyond care and civilisation, in the gold-gathering region of California.

CHAPTER X.

Digging and washing, with a few reflections A cradle in contemplation Scales to sell, but none to lend Stack of gold weighed More arrivals Two newcomers Mr. Biggs and Mr. Lacosse Good order prevails at the mines Timber bought for the cradles The cradles made The cradles worked The result of the first day's trial.

_June 5th_.--We have laboured hard all day, digging and washing, and with good success. I begin to hope now that I have really laid the foundation of a fortune, and I thank G.o.d for it. I have been kicked tolerably well about the world, and the proverb, that a "rolling stone gathers no moss," has, I am sure, been abundantly proved by my case.

Now, however, I have a grand chance, and I am resolved that all that industry and perseverance can do shall be done to improve it.

Before starling for work this morning, it was agreed that Jose should act as cook for the day; it being stipulated that he was to have the afternoon to himself for digging. Horry was left in charge of the horses. I worked hard, keeping near Bradley, and conversing with him as I shovelled the gravel into the pail, and stirred it about in the clear pools. We had very fair success, but still we could not but think that this was a poor way of proceeding; besides, I didn't like the back-breaking work of stooping all day. I therefore proposed that we should endeavour to knock up a cradle. The expense for wood would certainly be great, but it would be better to incur it than keep to the present rude and toilsome plan of operation.

We proposed the plan to our comrades at dinner-time, and it was, on the whole, well received. Malcolm and McPhail entered into the notion, and we determined to try whether we could not put forth sufficient carpentering ability to carry it out. The next day was fixed upon for commencing the work.

After dinner we returned to our shovels and pails. In the evening we were anxious to know how much gold we had realised by our labours up to the present time; and, accordingly, I set off to borrow a pair of scales. After entering several tents in vain, I was directed to the Yankee who had the materials for a store, and whose name was Hiram Ensloe. He had several pairs to sell, but none to lend. I asked his prices, and now had, for the first time, a real example of the effects of plenty of gold and scarcity of goods. For a small pair of ordinary bra.s.s scales, with a set of troy weights, I paid, on behalf of the party, fifteen dollars, the seller consoling me by the information that in his opinion, if the gold-hunters continued to pour in for a fortnight longer, I would not have got the article for three times the amount.

Furnished with my purchase, I returned to the tent, and the stock of gold dust realised by each man was weighed, and computed at the current rate in which the mercantile transactions of this little colony are reckoned--namely, fourteen dollars each ounce of gold dust. We found that McPhail and Malcolm had been, upon the whole, the most successful, each having obtained nearly two ounces of pure gold dust, valued at twenty-eight dollars. I myself had about twenty-three dollars' worth, and Bradley had twenty-five dollars' worth. An amount which, considerable though it was, we hope greatly to increase as soon as we get our cradle into operation.

During the day, there were numerous arrivals from Sutter's Fort; and in my opinion, these diggings will soon be overcrowded. Two of the new-comers were known to Bradley--one, a Mr. Biggs, a shipping agent from San Francisco; the other, Mr. Lacosse, a French Canadian, who has recently settled in California. They accepted our offer for them to join our party. If this influx of people continues, I think the Yankee with the store will do better than any one; and keeping a shanty will be a far more profitable speculation than handling a shovel or working a cradle. What surprises me is, that in this remote spot, so distant from anything that can be called Law, so much tranquillity prevails under the circ.u.mstances. One hears of no deeds of violence, or even dishonesty. In fact, theft would hardly pay. The risk would be more than the advantage; for if any one was detected plundering, he would soon have a rifle-bullet put through him. One thing in favour of good order is, that here there is no unequal distribution of property--no favoured cla.s.ses. Every man who has a spade or a trowel, and hands to use them, is upon an equality, and can make a fortune with a rapidity hitherto almost unknown in the history of the world.

_Sunday, June 11th_.--Nearly a week has elapsed since I last opened my diary. On Tuesday, we set to work upon our cradle. We resolved upon the construction of two; and, for this purpose, went down to the store in a body, to see about the boards. We found the timber extravagantly dear, being asked forty dollars a-hundred. After some bargaining, we obtained sufficient for our purpose, at the rate of thirty-five dollars.

The next question was, as to whether we should hire a carpenter. We were told there were one or two in the diggings who might be hired, though at a very extravagant rate. Accordingly, Bradley and I proceeded to see one of these gentlemen, and found him washing away with a hollow log and a willow-branch sieve. He offered to help us at the rate of thirty-five dollars a-day, we finding provisions and tools, and could not be brought to charge less. We thought this by far too extravagant, and left him, determined to undertake the work ourselves. Meantime, Horry had brought down two of our horses with him to the store. We loaded them immediately with boards, and returned to our tent.

After breakfast, which consisted of coffee without milk, flour cakes, and strips of dried beef, roasted on the embers, we set to work. We had a sufficient number of axes and a good stout saw, one large plane, and a few strong chisels, with plenty of nails. As may be expected, we proved to be very awkward carpenters. Mr. Lacosse was perhaps the handiest, and Malcolm not much inferior to him, until the latter unfortunately received a severe cut with a chisel, extending in a transverse line along the joint of the forefinger of the left hand. I strapped up the wound, but the rough work soon tore away the diaculum: no bad consequences, however, ensued. The wound, in spite of the hard treatment which it received, closed and healed by the first intention--proving the healthy habit of body engendered by temperance and constant exercise in the open air.

In building our cradles, or "gold canoes," as the Indians called them, we found that to mortice the planks into each other was a feat of carpentering far above our skill, particularly as we had no mortice chisels. We were therefore obliged to adopt the ruder experiment of making the boards overlap each other by about an inch, nailing them firmly together in that position. As, however, the inequality of surface at the bottom of the cradle, produced by the mode of building, would have materially impeded our operations, we strained some pieces of tarred canvas, which we fortunately possessed amongst our tent cloths, over the bottoms, thus rendering the surface even, and suited to our purpose. By the time we had got so far with our undertaking, we fell sufficiently tired to give over work for the night. We had laboured unceasingly at them, pausing only to swallow a hasty meal, and stuck by our hammers and chisels till dusk. We were up early the next morning, and toiled away to get the cradles completed, as we were constantly seeing proofs of the great advantages of these machines. We fixed a wicker sieve over the head, by means of a couple of transverse bars, and then set about to construct the working Apparatus, which we had all along feared would put our mechanical skill to rather a severe test; but we found it easier than we had antic.i.p.ated, and before sundown the rockers were fixed on both cradles, which, to all intents and purposes, were now ready for use. The work was rather rough, but it was firm and strong. So fearful were we first of all that our cradles might be removed or tampered with in the night, that I jocularly proposed two of us should give up the shelter of the tent, and, like pretty little children, sleep in our cradles till the morning.

The next day we set to work with them with the utmost eagerness, having first dragged the lumbering machines to a likely spot in the vicinity of the water. The labour was hard enough, but nothing compared to the old plan of pot-washing, while it saved the hands from the injury inflicted by continual dabbling in sand and water. We took the different departments of labour by turns, and found that the change, by bringing into play different sets of muscles, greatly relieved us, and enabled us to keep the stones rolling with great energy. In the evening, with the help of our newly purchased scales, we tested our gains. The cradle which was worked by Don Luis, Malcolm, and myself, for it was so near the water that three hands were sufficient, had realised six ounces of gold dust; the other, attended to by Bradley, McPhail, Biggs, and Lacosse, had nearly as much. During the day there was another considerable influx of people to the diggings; the banks of the river are therefore getting more and more crowded, and we hear that the price of every article of subsistence is rising in the same proportion.

CHAPTER XI.

The proceedings of the week Visit from Mr. Larkin What will the Government do?

What "enough" is San Francisco Houses and ships deserted A captain and ship without a crew A ship without a crew or captain Wages, newspapers, and shovels The Attorney-General to the King of the Sandwich Islands Something for the lawyers Gold-diggers by moonlight Mr. Larkin's departure Provisions run short Seek a supply at Salter's Good luck Diggings' law Provisions arrive A wagon wanted Arrival of Californians and their families Gay dresses and coquettish manners Fandangos El Jarabe The waltz Lookers-on and dancers Coffee, and something stronger No more Sunday work Jose and the saints The Virgin Mary cheated Contemplated migration.

_June 18th, Sunday_.--The proceedings of the past week have been but a repet.i.tion of those of the week previous, the amount of gold dust realised being rather greater, and amounting on an average to very nearly sixteen ounces per day. Cradles are now in use everywhere around us; nevertheless, the numbers who stand in the water washing with tin or wooden bowls do not appear to be diminished.

On the evening of Thursday we were visited by a gentleman from Monterey, a Mr. Larkin, who, I believe, is connected with the States Government, and who has arrived in the diggings with the view of making a report to the authorities at Washington. Don Luis immediately recognised him, and invited him to spend the evening and night in our tent. We were very anxious to hear the news from the coast, and Mr.

Larkin in turn was very anxious to pick up all the information he could get respecting the diggings. Don Luis says he is a man of large fortune, so his tour is purely one of inspection, and not with any eye to business. We made him as comfortable as we could; Lacosse exerted himself in the manufacture of the coffee in honour of our guest, and we had several hours of interesting conversation.

Mr. Larkin said he had no idea what steps the Government at Washington would take with reference to the "placer." "It can't matter much to you, gentlemen," observed he, "for although there can be no doubt of its being upon public territory, still, before any instructions can be received from Washington, the great body of the diggers and washers here will be enriched to their heart's content, if a man ever does feel contented with any amount of wealth."--"Your observation," exclaimed Malcolm, "puts me in mind of a story which my father used to tell of a farmer, a friend of his, who once took his rent, the odd money short, to an old miserly landlord rolling in wealth. He was asked by him why he had not brought the full amount. 'Why,' replied the farmer, 'I thought you had enough.'--'Enough!' said the miser; 'do you know what _enough_ is? I'll tell you--Enough is _something more_ than a man hath!'"

Mr. Larkin then spoke of the effects of the "mineral yellow fever," as he called it, having been most extraordinary in San Francisco. When he left that town, he said more than two-thirds of the houses were deserted. We were not surprised at this, as we knew the people who were continually arriving here must have come from somewhere. Nearly all the ships in the harbour too had lost a great part of their crews by desertion. A barque called the Amity had only six men left when Mr.

Larkin started from the port. On board another ship from the Sandwich Islands the captain was left actually and literally alone. On the road Mr. Larkin fell in with another captain who had started off for the gold region with every man of his crew, leaving his ship unprotected in port. On Mr. Larkin remonstrating with him on the flagrancy of his conduct, he merely replied, "Oh, I warrant me her cables and anchors are strong enough to last till we get back." Mr. Larkin told us what we were fully prepared to hear, namely, that wages and salaries of all cla.s.ses have risen immensely; clerks, he said, were getting from nine hundred to twelve hundred dollars, instead of from four hundred to five hundred and fifty dollars, with their board. Both the _Star_ and _Californian_ newspapers, he said, had stopped. Thinking to surprise us, he told us that shovels which used to be one dollar were selling in San Francisco, when he left, for five and six dollars each. Bradley replied that he thought this was a very reasonable figure, for he had heard thirty dollars offered for a spade that very day.

"Do you know, by-the-by," said Mr. Larkin, "who I saw here to-day, up to his knees in water, washing away in a tin pan? Why, a lawyer who was the Attorney-General to the King of the Sandwich Islands, not eighteen months ago."--"I guess," said Bradley, "he finds gold-washing more profitable than Sandwich Island law; but he's not the only one of his brethren that is of much the same spirit; there's lots of lawyers in these diggings. Well! they are better employed now than ever they were in their lives. They're money-getting rascals all the world over; but here they do have to _work_ for it, that's one comfort." Before turning in, we took a stroll through the camp with Mr. Larkin. It was a bright moonlight night, and some of the more eager diggers were still at work.

These were the new-comers, probably, who were too much excited to sleep without trying their hands at washing the golden gravel. Mr. Larkin left us the following day.

_June 23rd, Friday_.--The last entry in my diary seems to have been written last Sunday. Next day we began to find the provisions running short. A consultation was accordingly held upon the subject. It was quite out of the question to buy provisions in the diggings. Work as one might, the day's living of any man with a respectable appet.i.te--and one seems always to feel hungry here--would pretty well absorb the day's labour. We therefore determined to dispatch Bradley and Jose back to Sutter's Fort for a supply, it being stipulated that Bradley should share in the gold we might find during their absence. This arrangement being duly concluded, they started off the following morning on horseback, driving before them the two beasts we purchased at Sutter's.

We instructed Bradley, if possible, to buy a light wagon, in which to store the provisions he was to bring back. The two extra horses would be able to draw it, and such a vehicle would be useful in many respects. He took with him two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of gold, so as to be in sufficient funds, in case the sum demanded should be an over-exorbitant one.