hastened northward; their keepers followed in pursuit, if indeed they had not preceded, but they took care not to find them. Soldiers fled from their posts; others were sent for them, and none returned. Valuable land grants were surrendered, and farms left tenantless; waving fields of grain stood abandoned, perchance opened to the roaming cattle, and gardens were left to run to waste. The country seemed as if smitten by a plague.

21

All along down the coast from Monterey to Santa Bárbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego, it was the same. Towns and country were wellnigh depopulated. There the fever raged fiercest during the three summer months. At the capital a letter from Larkin gave the impulse, and about the same time, upon the statement of Swan, four Mormons called at Monterey en route for Los Angeles, who were reported to carry 100 pounds avoirdupois of gold gathered in less than a month at Mormon Island. This was in June. A fortnight after the town was depopulated, 1,000 starting from that vicinity within a week.22 At San Fran

mechanic can be obtained in town.' Vallejo says that the first notice of gold having been discovered was conveyed to Sonoma through a flask of gold-dust sent by Sutter to clear a boat-load of wheat which had been forwarded in part payment for the Ross property, but lay seized for debt at Sonoma. 'Gov. Boggs, then alcalde of Sonoma, and I,' says Vallejo, 'started at once for Sacramento to test the truth of the report, and found that Sutter, Marshall, and others had been taking out gold for some time at Coloma... We came back to Sonoma, and such was the enthusiasm of the people that the town and entire country was soon deserted.' Vallejo's Oration at Sonoma, July 4, 1876, in Sonoma Democrat, July 8, 1876. The general evidently forgets, or at all events ignores, the many rumors current prior to the reception of the flask, as well as the positive statement with proofs of friends and passers-by.

"Such is Mason's report. María Antonia Pico de Castro, announcing from Monterey to her son Manuel in Mexico the grand discovery, says that everybody is crazy for the gold; meanwhile stock is comparatively safe from thieves, but on the other hand hides and tallow are worth nothing. Doc. Hist. Cal., MS., i. 505. At Santa Cruz A. A. Hecox and eleven others petitioned the alcalde the 30th of Dec. for a year's extension of time in complying with the conditions of the grants of land obtained by them according to the usual form. Under the pressure of the gold excitement labor had become so scarce and high that they found it impossible to have lumber drawn for houses and fences. The petition was granted.

He was

"Swan's Trip, 1-3; Buffum's Six Months, 68; Carson's Rec., 4. 'One day,' says Carson, who was then at Monterey, 'I saw a form, bent and filthy, approaching me, and soon a cry of recognition was given between us. an old acquaintance, and had been one of the first to visit the mines. Now be stood before me. His hair hung out of his hat; his chin with beard was

cisco commerce had been chiefly affected; here it was government that was stricken. Mason's small force was quickly thinned; and by the middle of July, if we may believe the Reverend Colton, who never was guilty of spoiling a story by too strict adherence to truth, the governor and general-in-chief of California was cooking his own dinner.23

ers.

In a proclamation of July 25th, Colonel Mason called on the people to assist in apprehending desertHe threatened the foothills with a dragoon force; but whence were to come the dragoons? The officers were as eager to be off as the men; many of them obtained leave to go, and liberal furloughs were granted to the soldiers, for those who could not obtain leave went without leave. As the officers who remained could no longer afford to live in their accustomed way, a cook's wages being $300 a month, they were allowed to draw rations in kind, which they exchanged for board in private families." But even

black, and his buckskins reached to his knees.' The man had a bag of gold on his back. The sight of its contents started Carson on his way at once. In May Larkin had prophesied that by June the town would be without inhabitants. June 1st Mason at Monterey wrote Larkin at S. F.: 'The golden-yel. low fever has not yet, I believe, assumed here its worst type, though the premonitory symptoms are beginning to exhibit themselves, and doubtless the epidemic will pass over Monterey, leaving the marks of its ravages, as it has done at S. F. and elsewhere. Take care you don't become so charged with its malaria as to inoculate and infect us all when you return.' Jackson McDuffee, addressing Larkin on the same date, says: 'Monterey is very dull, nothing doing, the gold fever is beginning to take a decided effect here, and a large party will leave for the Sacramento the last of the week. Shovels, spades, picks, and other articles wanted by these wild adventurers are in great demand.' Schallenberger on the 8th of June tells Larkin that a great many are leaving Monterey. Times duller than when you left.' In Sept. there was not a doctor in the town, and Mrs Larkin who was lying ill with fever had to do without medical attendance.

23 Gen. Mason, Lieut Lanman, and myself form a mess...This morning for the fortieth time we had to take to the kitchen and cook our own breakfast. A general of the U. S. army, the commander of a man-of-war, and the alcalde of Monterey in a smoking kitchen grinding coffee, toasting a herring, and peeling onions!' Three Years in Cal., 247-8. 'Réduit à faire lui-même sa cuisine,' as one says of this incident in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 1849.

24 I of course could not escape the infection,' says Sherman, Mem., i. 46, and at last convinced Colonel Mason that it was our duty to go up and see with our own eyes, that we might report the truth to our government.' Swan relates an anecdote of a party of sailors, including the master-at-arms, belong. ing to the Warren, who deserted in a boat. They hid themselves in the pine

PHILOSOPHY AND DESTINY.

65

then they grew restless, and soon disappeared, as Commodore Jones asserts in his report to the secretary of the navy the 25th of October.25 the 25th of October.25 Threats and entreaties were alike of little avail. Jones claims to have checked desertion in his ranks by offering large rewards; but if the publication of such notices produced any marked effect, it was not until after there were few left to desert.26

In the midst of the excitement, however, there were men who remained calm, and here and there were those who regarded not the product of the Sierra foothills as the greatest good. Luis Peralta, who had lived near upon a century, called to him his sons, themselves approaching threescore years, and said: "My sons, God has given this gold to the Americans, Had he desired us to have it, he would have given it to us ere now. Therefore go not after it, but let others go. Plant your lands, and reap; these be your

woods till dark, and then came into town for provisions, but got so drunk that on starting they lost the road, and went to sleep on the beach opposite their own ship. Just before daylight one of them awoke, and hearing the ship's hell strike, roused the others barely in time to make good their escape. Swan afterward met them in the mines. Trip to the Gold Mines, MS., 3. Certain volunteers from Lower California arriving in Monterey formed into companies, helped themselves to stores, and then started for the mines. Green's Life and Adventures, MS., 11; Californian, Aug. 14, 1848. The offer of $100 per month for sailors, made by Capt. Allyn of the Isaac Walton, brought forward no accepters. Frisbie's Remin., MS., 30–2; Ferry, Cal., 325-6; Sherman's Mem., i. 57; Bigler's Diary, MS., 78.

25 Nov. 2d he again writes: "For the present, and I fear for years to come, it will be impossible for the United States to maintain any naval or military establishment in California; as at the present no hope of reward nor fear of punishment is sufficient to make binding any contract between man and man upon the soil of California. To send troops out here would be needless, for they would immediately desert...Among the deserters from the squadron are some of the best petty officers and seamen, having but few months to serve, and large balances due them, amounting in the aggregate to over $10,000.' William Rich, Oct. 23d, writes the paymaster-general that nearly all of Company F, 3d artillery, had deserted. The five men-of-war in port dared not land a man through fear of desertion. Two companies alone remained in Cal., one of the first dragoons and the other of the 3d artillery, 'the latter reduced to a mere skeleton by desertion, and the former in a fair way to share the same fate.' Revere's Tour of Duty, 252-6; Sherman's Mem., i. 56-7; Lants, Kal., 24-31.

26 In Nov. the commander gave notice through the Califormian that $40,000 would be given for the capture of deserters from his squadron, in the following sums: for the first four deserting since July, $500 each, and for any others, $200 each, the reward to be paid in silver dollars immediately on the delivery of any culprit.

HIST. CAL., VOL. VI. 5

best gold-fields, for all must eat while they live."27 Others looked around and saw with prophetic eye the turn in the tide when different resources must spring into prominence; not only land grants with farms and orchards, and forests with their varied products, but metals and minerals of a baser kind, as quicksilver, copper, coal. 28 They foresaw the rush from abroad of gold-seekers, the gathering of vast fleets, the influx of merchandise, with their consequent flow of traffic and trade, the rise of cities and the growth of settlements. Those were the days of great opportunities, when a hundred properly invested would soon have yielded millions. We might have improved an opportunity like Sutter's better than he did. So we think; yet opportunities just as great perhaps present themselves to us every day, and will present themselves, but we do not see them.

27 Archives Santa Cruz, MS., 107; Hall's Hist., 190-1; Larkin's Doc., MS., vi.

28 Men began to quarrel afresh over the New Almaden claim, now abandoned by its workmen for more fascinating fields; in the spring of this year the country round Clear Lake had been searched for copper.

CHAPTER V.

FURTHER DISCOVERIES.

MARCH-DECEMBER, 1848.

ISAAC HUMPHREY AGAIN-BIDWELL AND HIS BAR-READING AND HIS INDIANS ON CLEAR CREEK-POPULATION IN THE MINES-ON FEATHER RIVER AND THE YUBA-JOHN SINCLAIR ON THE AMERICAN RIVER— THE IRISHMAN YANKEE JIM-DR TODD IN TODD VALLEY KELSEYWEBER ON WEBER CREEK-THE STOCKTON MINING COMPANY-MURPHY -HANGTOWN-ON THE STANISLAUS-KNIGHT, WOOD, SAVAGE, AND HEFFERNAN-PARTY FROM OREGON--ON THE MOKELUMNE AND COSUMNES THE SONORANS ON THE TUOLUMNE-CORONEL AND PARTY.

ONE of the first to realize the importance of Marshall's discovery was Isaac Humphrey, the Georgia miner before mentioned, who accompanied Bennett on his return to Sutter's Fort, after the failure to obtain a grant of the gold region. Humphrey advised come of his friends to go with him to seek gold, but they only laughed at him. He reached Coloma on the 7th of March; the 8th saw him out prospecting with a pan; the 9th found him at work with a rocker. The application of machinery to mining in California was begun. A day or two later came to the mill a French Canadian, Jean Baptiste Ruelle by name, commonly called Baptiste, who had been a miner in Mexico, a trapper, and general backwoodsman. Impressed by the geologic features of that region, and yet more perhaps by an ardent fancy, he had five years before applied to Sutter for an outfit to go and search for gold in the mountains. Sutter declined, deeming him unreliable, but gave him occupation at the whip-saw on Weber Creek, ten miles east of Coloma. After