vessel at Stockton, but did not believe it, but thought that some accident might have happened.  I had borrowed a spy-glass to investigate the bay.  I could have recognized my vessel by the red streak around it.  Finally, after it had been gone long enough to make several trips, I discovered it at anchor in the bay.  I went and supplied myself with money, in case it should prove true that the captain had left the vessel, to pay his men in full before they got ashore, because the vessel was liable for their wages, whoever might have employed them; so I hired a boat to row me out to it.  I met a man on the deck that seemed to be in command.  I inquired of him where the captain was.  He said he had run away.  I spoke to him in a sharp tone of voice and said, how do you know that?  He said, because I saw him on the back of a mule going over the plain.  Then he asked me, are you the owner?  I said, yes.  Then I said, you have all got your pay before he went; I did not employ you.  He said, some of them have got some.

As you seem to be in command, I suppose you have kept an account of how it stands.  He said, “Come down in the cabin and I will show it to you.”  I said, “It was hard on me to be robbed of all my freight money, but it was also hard for them to be cheated out of their hard earnings, and I would see what I could do for them.”  He presented the statement of what each man had received and what was due them.  I was surprised at his correctness.  I said:  It seems all right and I would pay them, which I did, and took their receipt.  I was afraid if they went ashore and found the vessel was liable for their wages they might make any kind of demands, so I got possession of my vessel again, very much damaged.  Before leaving the port he had let the steamer Senator run into the bows of the vessel, and it cost me $700 to have it repaired, ship carpenters’ wages being $20 per day, payable in gold.  The events which I had anticipated of the decline of that kind of property had come, and, after it was repaired, I put it up at auction and sold it, so that rascal cost me several thousand dollars.  Such was life in California in the days of the Forty-niners.

Having some leisure I thought I would take a trip up the mining regions, and make a visit to my old friends there.  More than a year had passed, and greater changes had taken place than would have occurred in any other country in many years.  The population of California increased one hundred thousand the first year after the discovery of the gold, which had accounted for the great changes which had taken place since my previous trip.  I went up on the steamer Senator to Sacramento, which had become quite a city, and the next morning started for Coloma in a stage full of passengers, drawn by mules.  I took a seat aside of the driver.  I got in conversation with the driver.  I asked him what pay he received?  He said, only $450 per month and his board.  I asked him if he had driven stages before?  He