“The next day I rode back to the Fort, organised
a labouring party, set the carpenters to work on a
few necessary matters, and the next day accompanied
them to a point of the Fork, where they encamped for
the night. By the following morning I had a party
of fifty Indians fairly at work. The way we first
managed was to shovel the soil into small buckets,
or into some of our famous Indian baskets; then wash
all the light earth out, and pick away the stones;
after this, we dried the sand on pieces of canvas,
and with long reeds blew away all but the gold.
I have now some rude machines in use, and upwards of
one hundred men employed, chiefly Indians, who are
well fed, and who are allowed whisky three times a-day.
“The report soon spread. Some of the gold
was sent to San Francisco, and crowds of people flocked
to the diggings. Added to this, a large emigrant
party of Mormons entered California across the Rocky
Mountains, just as the affair was first made known.
They halted at once, and set to work on a spot some
thirty miles from here, where a few of them still
remain. When I was last up at the diggings, there
were full eight hundred men at work, at one place and
another, with perhaps something like three hundred
more passing backwards and forwards between here and
the mines. I at first imagined the gold would
soon be exhausted by such crowds of seekers, but subsequent
observations have convinced me that it will take many
years to bring about such a result, even with ten
times the present number of people employed.
“What surprises me,” continued the Captain,
“is that this country should have been visited
by so many scientific men, and that not one of them
should have ever stumbled upon these treasures; that
scores of keen-eyed trappers should have crossed this
valley in every direction, and tribes of Indians have
dwelt in it for centuries, and yet that this gold
should have never been discovered. I myself have
passed the very spot above a hundred times during
the last ten years, but was just as blind as the rest
of them, so I must not wonder at the discovery not
having been made earlier.”
While the Captain was proceeding with his narrative,
I must confess that I felt so excited on the subject
as to wish to start off immediately on our journey.
When he had finished, I walked off to see after the
horses, but, although they were ready, the additional
shoes we wanted to carry with us would not be furnished
for several hours; it was late in the afternoon before
we got them. We bought two horses of Captain
Sutter (very strong animals), and McPhail managed to
engage a big lad as a servant—a rough-looking
fellow, who appears to have deserted from some ship,
and worked his way up here. All things considered,
it was agreed that we should remain here another night,
and resume our march as early as we could in the morning.
