In 1848 Yerba Buena had a population of about 50 people; in 1849, when the gold rush was on, it was estimated at 20,000, coming and going. Even navy and army posts were deserted, and the population of San Francisco was correspondingly increased. It was predominantly a male population, living turbulently under the rule of a disorganized army.

(I quote Major Roger Butterfield. Incidentally, when I brought my bride to San Francisco four years later, in 1853, she was fearful to go out on the streets alone, so unusual was the sight of a woman, especially a modest one, in San Francisco.)

And this was Eldorado!

The very next day after we arrived, several of us from the Hackstaff took passage for Sacramento on a 15 ton sloop loaded with Chilean flour. The 20 passengers were crowded on the deck, for, as the sloop had been a longboat, she had no cabin.

We made good progress until we reached the slough. There the large trees which overhung the banks literally took the wind out of our sails. Since the sails were of no account in the narrow slough, it took us a week to work our way through. We lived on a stew composed of bacon, flour, beans, fish, birds, and chili peppers, too hot for most of us to stomach.

Captain Simmons was almost eaten alive with mosquitoes, which clouded the slough. So distorted was his face, it lost the semblance of humanity. So badly was he poisoned, he could not protect himself from further attack. I saw him black with the pests. On landing, we had to carry him ashore in a hammock. A few more days on the slough, and the mosquitoes would have been the death of him.

(So bad were the mosquitoes, even boatmen would abandon the river boats for other jobs.)

When Captain Simmons was able to travel, we set out for Lacy's Bar on the North Fork of the American River. While the rest of us walked, the captain rode in a Spanish oxcart as part of the freight. The carretta, for the service of which we paid 20 cents per pound, had solid wooden wheels on wooden axles, which shrieked loudly enough to wake the dead.

After a long trek through valleys and over mountains, we arrived at Lacy's Bar and prepared for our mining operations by making two rockers of tree trunks.

In our mining we met with fair success, never taking out less than one to three ounce per day per man. For a week Lane and I each took out 18 ounces a day.

The first gold I panned out, about half an ounce, I put in a letter and mailed to a certain young lady in Boston. Six months later the treasure, in a dirty, dilapidated, torn envelope, reached its destination. Evidently it had been carried about in the pocket of the man who had undertaken to deliver it. Though the gold lay loose in the folds of the paper, not one scale was missing. That identical gold is preserved today.

It was during this period, on August 18, 1849, that my mother wrote me the following letter:

“My Dear Child: I have at last received a letter from you, although you are at the ends of the earth, as it were. Need I tell you how anxious I have been ever since you left, more especially for six weeks past?

“I heard a long time ago of the North Bend being in the Straits of Magellan. Gilman wrote me of seeing the printed news in a paper 20 of July, and where you could be after that I could not tell, unless you were shipwrecked. But your letter has come at last and I received it with rejoicing and thankfulness, as I believe everybody else did, for no sooner did the news come that a letter was in the office from California than men flocked to hear and see who it was from. It was all over town in five minutes.

(She then mentions a number of local people and other letters received from California.)

“Mr. Crosby is on his way to San Francisco in the Mayflower from New York. He is hired by William and Daniel Moors of Waterville to run a steamboat up the Sacramento River, and they carried the boat on board the Mayflower. Mr. Crosby is to see to the putting of it together and is to have $1,000 a year for his services.

“My dear child, I wrote you a letter by him and he said he would try and get it to you. I am thus particular to write you about him because I want you to see him. His advice, you may depend upon, will be very valuable to you. He calculates to be gone from home two years. He made himself well acquainted with that land before he started. Tell him his family were all well the 17 of August and hoping to hear from him as soon as possible.

(After several pargaraphs of purely personal interest she continues.)

“Do right and you will reap the reward. It am fully sensible that you will have to undergo some hardships and privations of daily comforts in that new country, however beautiful and rich it may be in gold. I want you to be prudent and not expose your health. What will you do for a house to sleep in, what for a bed to lie on? I am in the dark as to what they do there.

“I think the best constitution will be broken down by exposure to night air. If you have a tent, will it be comfortable for your health? Will it be secure from robbers and all those evils a new country is exposed to? I wish you had let me know you were intending to go there. I could have provided you a good many necessary little things, which I know you forgot in your sudden departure.

“I charge you again about your health. Don't go without your regular meals on any account, no, not if you could get a peck of gold dust while you were eating. Your health is more valuable to you than all the gold in California.

“And again, your morals are next in danger. Be careful you are not led into difficulties by not knowing your associates, not trusting anyone until you have tried and proved them. I think that was your motto.

“I do not blame you for going to California. I know it held out temptation for a young man who has his fortune to make. Still, I wish you had been contented in Boston. It may all prove for the best yet.

“Again I say, write as often as possible and give some description of California, that our editor may have the pleasure of publishing something from the land of gold. You have had my prayers for your success and still have them. Yes, my child, you shall still have them. Write again. I say write and I will pay the postage with pleasure.^* Describe your country a little.

[Note : There were no stamps or postal facilities. Letters were personally carried and delivered. Letters were folded, addressed on blank side of sheet, sealed with wax, and later on amount of postage was marked on the outside.]

“Do not work on the Sabbath, my child.”

The 18 ounce finds were beginners' luck and bad for us, for when the finds fell off to three ounces, we were willing to listen to the tale of discovery of “the source of gold,” the famous “Gold Lake.”

Excitement over this supposed find had broken out about the time of our arrival in California. It was generally believed that such a head did exist, the fountain source from which all the gold in California had issued. It was reported that a certain woman, the first white woman to arrive in Sacramento by the mountain route, had the proofs of the existence of such a lake and was willing to divulge that information.

From our company of 30, five of us were selected to interview her. We waited upon her and she showed us two large bags of coarse gold. Remembering the strange sights in the big city, we were ready to swallow her story as literal truth. All of us were rather short in our knowledge of geology. I, the youngest on the bar, not yet 21 years old, was a youthful enthusiast.

Her story was that she and her husband had left the Missouri River with a company of 50 or more. Upon reaching the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the two of them had turned off and had entered a canyon in search of food for their weary animals. Taking turns riding their horses, and leading their three pack mules, they had wandered from one canyon to another. Finally they had thrown away most of their heavy provisions, caching one lot in a lateral canyon and making short rations of the remainder.

One night they had camped in a little valley where there was good feed and water. Then, wandering on as before, they had come to a lake about a mile long and a fourth of a mile wide. On the shore of this lake was an Indian village, the dwellings of which were made of white rock (quartz) full of free gold. A ledge of this rock jutted out into the lake, and at the base of this ledge the woman asserted they had gathered enough gold to load their animals, throwing away more provisions and giving many of their trappings to the Indians to save weight.

Realizing at last that they had lost all trace of the main party, they had set out across the mountains and after untold hardships had reached Fort Sutter. Her husband had gone on to San Francisco to purchase provisions and to outfit a company to return to the lake, where they expected to gather a few golden millions and then go back east.

She could give only indefinite directions as to the location of the “find,” but she said it was about 30 miles east of Steep Hollow, near the summit. Steep Hollow was a well known spot on the Emigrant Road. Travelers would cut down trees in the mountains and attach them to the after ends of their wagons, to prevent them from ending over while descending the long, steep declevity into the “hollow.”

The woman's story sounded plausible. There was the gold to corroborate it, in such quantities that it must have been gathered some place. Moreover, she was well informed, talked modestly, using good language, and was about 25 years old. If the spot she described could be located, each of us could help himself to whatever gold he wanted and then return home--for no man would wish to remain in this country, where no rain fell for six months!

Thirty of us thereupon formed a company, returned to Sacramento, and purchased a pile of provisions as big as a house, consisting mostly of Chilean flour and peppers, Oregon bacon, Sandwich Island coffee, and saleratus that was weighed ounce for ounce with gold dust. Other purchases included rockers, tools, pots, pans, 30 horses and an equal number of mules, to make up the pack train. All this we piled beneath a grand old oak tree while we made ready for Gold Lake.

Every morning several horses would be missing from the remuda, but the Mexican vaqueros would finally round them up and return them to us for an ounce of gold dust a head. The regularity with which this performance was repeated pinned suspicion on the Mexicans themselves. We organized a guard and informed the vaqueros that if the animals “stampeded” again, some of the men would be suspended between heaven and earth. We lost no more stock.

We packed the mules and started, but in about 15 minutes some of the packs loosened, others came in contact with trees or with one another, animals stampeded, smashing cradles, ripping open the sacks and strewing the trail with flour, beans, and the rest of our provisions. After a week, this state of affairs ended in a grand row, and the company broke up. The common property was divided, and five of us formed a new group and started for this new “Eldorado.”

We got on well, becoming expert at packing our little train. Packing is an art--and some of our company had never seen a mule before they arrived in California!

When we arrived in Steep Hollow we met returning prospecting parties. They were a miserable, forlorn-looking lot, half starved and used up. Like us they had left “good diggings,” spent all their money, lost half their animals, and thrown away their tools. Now they were returning, sick, ragged and hungry, uttering curses loud and heavy on the woman who was author of the swindle. Three-fourths of these miners were suffering from dysentery, the disease from which thousands of California pioneers died, as the result of poor food, hardship, and exposure incidental to such a life.

It goes without saying that we abandoned our expedition, disillusioned and disheartened; then set about making new plans. To the time of this writing I have been at a loss to understand the woman's motive for circulating her hoax, which was believed because men's heads and judgment were not entirely level and sound. Tall tales had affected them so that her magnificent fabrication of falsehood was swallowed without salt.

We moved our camp east a few miles from the Emigrant Road, and from there made prospecting expeditions to the headwaters of the American and Bear Rivers. Having heard of the rich finds at Foster's Bar on the Yuba, we continued on there, traveling through wilderness where white men had never set foot, crossing streams large and small. We found some gold in all of them, but not in paying quantities.

Because of our ignorance of roadcraft and mountain travel, we made hard work of our travels. Like the King of France, we would march up one side of a mountain, then down the other side, instead of around it, wearing out ourselves and our animals in the process.

One night, after an unusually hard day, I discovered that my pack horse must be abandoned. Several days before, he had been cut by the ironshod rocker of a cradle, and a gash six inches long was infected with maggots. The poor beast seemed to be on his last legs, but I washed and thoroughly cleaned the wound, bound a piece of bacon rind on it with a piece of sacking, and left him in a well watered valley, where there was abundant grass.

He had been a fine animal, and, as we had been companions night and day for weeks, I was much attached to him. When traveling, I did not picket him but gave him his freedom. When he had had his feed he would return to camp and remain near me until he was wanted. One can imagine my sorrow on abandoning him. I hoped, but did not expect, to see him again.

One day, as we were winding around the base of a mountain, shortly after leaving Emigrant Road, the sharp crack of a rifle suddenly broke the stillness. Its echo had hardly died away when another shot ran forth. A ball passed through the cradle and perforated the washpan, which was slung to our pack animal. Nobody was to be seen, nor were there any indications of Indians or whites. Moreover, the Indian trail we were following had apparently not been traveled that year. We were nonplused and have been ever since. Who was the huntsman and what was his motive?

We had another surprise that day, a pleasant one. Toward nightfall, turning into a natural roadway or pass, we were astonished to find fresh wagon tracks. Soon we came upon a camp of seven missionaries, just arrived from their journey across the plains. In search of grass and water for their poor animals, they had strayed with their two wagons into this out-of-the-way place. As we came upon them they were preparing supper, and when they invited us to share it with them, we accepted gratefully. On food from combined stores, prepared by their leader, “The Parson,” we made an excellent meal there beside a running brook. That spot, framed by high mountains that were covered with tall, dark, thickly clothed pines and other evergreens, was one of the most beautiful we saw in all our wanderings. To us weary travelers it was a veritable paradise.

One of the missionaries showed to Claudius Hoag, one of our party, a quantity of coarse gold which had been found in the creek at the head of the valley, but we had traveled a day's journey before Hoag mentioned the fact to the rest of us. He was severely taken to task for his stupidity, and some of the party were ready to turn back, but as we had covered many difficult miles, the majority decided to go on.

We made our way to the forks of the Yuba River and Foster's Bar, prospecting the streams as we went along. As we knew nothing of dry digging, it never occurred to us to look elsewhere than in beds on the bars and banks of waterways.

At the Forks we found a tent store that was kept by a man named Winslow, who lay helpless with a broken leg. His partner, a victim of the scourge, dysentery, lay dead. Our arrival was most welcome, for we buried the body of the one, and as far as possible made the other comfortable. Then, replenishing our haversacks, we resumed our way to Foster's Bar.

There we found a crowd of people who had pre-empted all the ground that looked promising, and as our party had no money with which to buy claims, we started on our return to the Forks and the South Fork of the Yuba.

Another disagreement as to route separated us. Ralph, a German, and I headed one way; the other five another. Endeavoring to follow Indian trails, we went astray. After two days we saw from a high ridge a large river a mile below us, which we believed to be the Yuba. With difficulty we led our horses down the mountain as far as possible, made them fast on a little bench, and continued on foot. Ralph agreed to go down the stream, I up, in search of the Forks or a traveled trail.

When darkness overtook me I retraced my steps to where we had parted and then began the dangerous ascent to the bench. To reach solid ground it was necessary to climb an almost perpendicular, 100 foot cliff of loose shale. I made it, but with cuts and bruises. Climbing to where the horses were fast, I sat down to await Ralph.

Two hours must have passed, when at last I was overjoyed to hear Ralph's whistle directly beneath the bench. The whistling continued for half an hour while I shouted myself hoarse in answer. At length, hearing no more, I concluded he had fallen from the ledge of rocks and hurled to his death on the boulders below. Never before or since, as the tedious hours dragged their slow length through, have I passed such a night of misery.

I knew that Ralph was the embodiment of stored energy, that difficulty and danger only stimulated him to greater exertion, that to him there was no such word as “fail,” and that he had the endurance of an Apache. Yet in my imagination I could see my wonderful companion lying mangled on the rocks. What was I to do with his body and his effects? And how was I to get out of this trackless wilderness alone? Fears, anxiety, and the howling of coyotes tortured me all the night.

At the first streak of dawn I began the descent again. Halting, considerably unnerved, on the little ledge above the cliff, I feared to look down on the horrible picture I had so vividly seen in my mind.

Suddenly a crackling noise broke the stillness. With bated breath, every function of my body becoming eyes and ears, I watched and listened. A short distance down river, a moving object stirred the thick underbrush. Then Ralph appeared!

Up to that moment I had remained comparatively firm, but now his sudden appearance, alive and well, unmanned me. I wept like a child.

The joy of that hour will live with me always. It seemed I had nothing more on earth to ask for. He was alive; my cup of happiness was full. I made a rush for him and in my youthful enthusiasm would have hugged him to my heart. But my friend was made of sterner stuff. Shaking me off, he began cursing energetically and volubly. It was probably the best treatment for me, but, in addition, he had good reason to swear.

“You damn fool, for what a fire you not make already? All night in the river you leave me mit cold to die. Why a fire have you not made?”

I saw my mistake and confessed my stupidity, but the day passed before he forgave me my blunder. In my disturbed emotions I had forgotten that while I could hear his signals, coming from below, he could not hear mine, as I was half a mile above him. Nor had it occurred to me to build a fire.

Having heard nothing from me and seeing no signal fire, he had attempted to cross the river, which was shallow and rapid at that point, to reach fires on the other side which he could see but I could not. He had slipped off the rocks and been carried down stream a quarter of a mile before he was able to gain the shore. Half drowned and fearfully bruised, he had lain down on a flat stone, covered his breast with his blouse and haversack, and shivered through the long night.

My lesson was painfully learned. By evening I was forgiven for “one damn big fire not making,” and having struck a well traveled trail during the day, we soon were back at the Forks.

We found Winslow, the storekeeper, getting about on crutches, with a man to assist in his tent store. Replenishing our haversacks again, we continued on to our rendezvous near Steep Hollow.

There, several days later, we found that our companions had been awaiting us three days. All of us (except Ralph, whom nothing seemed to affect) were thoroughly used up, for want of food and because of the hardships we had undergone. An added annoyance at night was the coyotes--bold pests that howled and barked continually and even tugged at our saddles under our heads.

Next day Ralph was off for Sutter's Fort. I never saw him again, but later I heard he had kept a hotel. It is safe to assume that he did not keep it for long, for such a restless spirit would ever be eager to be off on a new adventure. A born leader, bravest of the brave, he was also gentle as a child.

A few days of rest and food, and we were off again for the South Fork of the Yuba. There we settled on a small series of bars a mile long. So steep was the descent to the river that we could not get our animals out over the same route, and accomplished it finally only by working them slowly down stream. Meantime the long grass on the river banks furnished them abundance of feed.

In this deep gorge, where the sun shone but a few hours of the day, we mined until late in November. During all that time we did not see another human being, and yet in the mountains above the stream, in a spot where I supposed nobody had ever been, I found in a cleft in a rock a piece of newspaper. It was a Dublin paper, and on it were these lines by Shelley:

“How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene.”
“Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world.”
 

Evidently someone else had been enchanted with this spot, as was I.

There was a ranch and store, called French Corral, about 15 miles distant, where Lane had left our animals, but we never visited it until we left for good. Since our mining was only moderately successful, when the first rains came we left hastily for French Corral. We had been told that it was dangerous to remain in a canyon during the rainy season, as the river would rise from 20 to 40 feet in a single night--a wall of water which would sweep everything before it.

It was in this location that I made a remarkable find. Some distance upstream from camp, a large rock in the middle of the river had roused my curiosity. I determined to investigate it. One Sunday, a day we always took for rest, I swam out to the rock and found on its far side a broad, flat surface, just above water line, with a round hole about three feet in diameter and about as deep. Such a cavity, called a well-hole, is worn by the action of swirling, eddying water, aided by sand and perhaps stones.

This one was filled with gravel and small cobbles held together by rust. I broke up the particles with my pick head and washed out nearly two ounces of coarse gold, all as rusty as iron. It must have been deposited in its remarkable hiding place ages before. Because it held great interest for me, I have kept some of it, along with my first clean-up on Lacy's Bar.

When Lane left us at French Corral, he started out to find my old bay, the horse we had abandoned. Strangely enough he did find him, right where we had left him three months before, but now entirely well and fat as a seal. We rejoiced, of course.

At French Corral we were told marvelous tales of rich diggings to be found about Deer Creek and Grass Valley; so we turned our steps that way--and found it to be the identical spot where The Parson had camped in August. But what a transformation! The beautiful vale was changed into a busy, ugly mining camp. Nearly the entire valley had been dug over. Shafts and holes were scattered over its once smooth grass surface. A canvas town had sprung up amid the debris and ruins of Dame Nature.

The spot we had christened Grass Valley was now known as Deer Creek.^* At least 2,000 miners were now at work in the neighborhood. It was one of the richest camps ever known. Millions had been taken out. All the creeks, gulches, and dry watercourses were found to be immensely rich, and the country for miles around had been taken up in claims. We were told that The Parson's party had carried away a fortune, and we were shown holes 50 to 100 feet square where from 50 to 100 pounds of gold had been taken.

[Note : And now again as Grass Valley.--L.E.R.]

Over this untold wealth we had passed without a suspicion of the precious deposit literally under our feet. We had left the golden bed to tramp weary miles, to toil and slave out of sound of fellow man for an ounce or two a day!

To say we were heartsick, discouraged and bitter at our ill luck, at this opportunity lost, does not convey our feelings. But the most miserable of all was Claudius Hoag, who had seen the gold gathered by The Parson's party, but had not been sufficiently impressed to report it to the rest of us. Poor fellow! We had not the heart to upbraid him, for his distress was pitiful. A fortune within our grasp, thrown away! We all felt guilty of a crime.

There was much sickness among the miners from the scourge of fever and dysentery, and the fatality rate was high. That and the fact that our little valley was now covered with claims, plus the nearness of the rainy season, made us decide we had had enough, and we headed south for Sacramento.

Soon after leaving Deer Creek we fell in with two teamsters who had erected a large tent. At their invitation to share it for the night, we gladly spread our blankets beneath its shelter, for it was raining heavily. Except for the blue arch of heaven, it was our first covering in months, or since we had left with the mining expedition. About midnight, however, we awoke to find ourselves in about six inches of water, our blankets dripping. We were glad to retreat to the shelter of the oxcart.

Morning revealed that the tent had been set up over a bowl-shaped hollow, and all the water that was shed from the canvas flowed directly into the tent. This was our first and last night under such a shelter.

Arriving at Sacramento, we placed our animals--four horses and three mules--on the little peninsula called Boston, formed by the junction of the Sacramento and American Rivers and the slough. By building a brush fence about 40 rods long, we secured them in good quarters with plenty of feed.

That night we enjoyed the privilege, with 50 others, at a dollar a head, of spreading our blankets on the barroom floor of the United States Hotel. Packed together like sardines, we were insured warmth as an offset to other discomforts.

Dan Lane and I parted company in Sacramento, he to go to New York via Panama on the bark Brontes, then lying at Sacramento, to complete his apprenticeship with the New York pilots. As his leave had expired, he resolved to return to something definite after the wild goose hunt in California.

He and I owned seven animals over in “Boston,” and he suggested that I buy his interest for six ounces of gold. I replied that I was done with horses and mules and never cared to see another, that he could have my half to do with as he pleased. He persisted, and the upshot was that he talked me out of the six ounces. Even “Big Bay,” the horse we had abandoned and then rescued, and of which I was very fond, I abandoned again. Hard times make hard decisions.

Meantime, poor Captain Simmons had contracted poison oak to a serious degree. His body swelled so badly that on our return to Sacramento we found him at death's door. Making a bed of boughs and brush in an oxcart, we placed him in it and shipped him to Sutter's Fort for medical treatment.

Michael Fitz Simmons must have been born under an unlucky star. Though I never saw him again, I learned that he prospered for a time in San Francisco, where he bought up all the deserted whaleboats in the bay and then rented them out. Bad luck trailed him, for the first norther of the winter knocked his boats into splinters on the rocks off Clark's Point.

Later he went to Sydney, purchased a cargo of potatoes and returned. On the very day of his arrival home, in an altercation with the ship's surgeon, he was stabbed to the heart and instantly killed. So ended the fantastic career of a colorful old salt.

[From "American Memories", Library of Congress]