The Indians living on lower Mad River had been removed for safety to the Smith River Indian Reservation.  They were not happy and felt they might safely return, now that the Indian war was over.  The white men who were friendly believed that if one of the trusted Indians could be brought down to talk with his friends he could satisfy the others that it would be better to remain on the reservation.  It was my job to go up and bring him down.  We came down the beach past the mouth of the Klamath, Gold Bluff, and Trinidad, to Fort Humboldt, and interviewed many white settlers friendly to the Indians until the representative was satisfied as to the proper course to follow.

In 1851 “Gold Bluff” was the first great mining excitement.  The Klamath River enters the ocean just above the bluff that had been made by the deposit of sand, gravel, and boulders to the height of a hundred feet or more.  The waves, beating against the bluff for ages, have doubtless washed gold into the ocean’s bed.  In 1851 it was discovered that at certain tides or seasons there were deposited on the beach quantities of black sand, mingled with which were particles of gold.  Nineteen men formed a company to take up a claim and work the supposedly exhaustless deposit.  An expert report declared that the sand measured would yield each of the men the modest sum of $43,000,000.  Great excitement stirred San Francisco and eight vessels left with adventurers.  But it soon was found that black sand was scarce and gold much more so.  For some time it paid something, but as a lure it soon failed.

When I was first there I was tremendously impressed when shown at the level of the beach, beneath the bluff and its growing trees, an embedded redwood log.  It started the imagination on conjectures of when and where it had been clad in beauty as part of a living landscape.

An interesting conclusion to this experience was traveling over the state with Charles Maltby, appointed to succeed my friend, to turn over the property of the department.  He was a personal friend of President Lincoln, and he bore a striking resemblance to him and seemed like him in character.

In 1883 a nominee for the Assembly from San Francisco declined the honor, and it devolved on a group of delegates to select a candidate in his place.  They asked me to run, and on the condition that I should solicit no votes and spend no money I consented.  I was one of four Republicans elected from San Francisco.  In the entire state we were outnumbered about four to one.  But politics ordinarily cuts little figure.  The only measure I introduced provided for the probationary treatment of juvenile delinquents through commitment to an unsectarian organization that would seek to provide homes.  I found no opposition in committee or on the floor.  When it was reached I would not endanger its passage by saying anything for it.  It passed unanimously and was concurred in by the Senate.  My general conclusion is that the average legislator is ready to support a measure that he feels is meritorious and has no other motive than the general good.