pick up one of the pieces, and had decided on not doing so, when, further on, another glittering morsel caught my eye—the largest of the pieces now before you. I condescended to pick it up, and to my astonishment found that it was a thin scale of what appears to be pure gold.' He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces, which on examination convinced him that his suppositions were right. His first impression was, that this gold had been lost or buried there by some early Indian tribe—perhaps some of those mysterious inhabitants of the west, of whom we have no account, but who dwelt on this continent centuries ago, and built those cities and temples, the ruins of which are scattered about these solitary wilds. On proceeding, however, to examine the neighbouring soil, he discovered that it was more or less auriferous. This at once decided him. He mounted his horse, and rode down to me as fast as it would carry him with the news.

"At the conclusion of Mr. Marshall's account," continued Captain Sutter, "and when I had convinced myself, from the specimens he had brought with him, that it was not exaggerated, I felt as much excited as himself. I eagerly inquired if he had shown the gold to the work-people at the mill, and was glad to hear that he had not spoken to a single person about it. We agreed," said the Captain, smiling, "not to mention the circumstance to any one, and arranged to set off early the next day for the mill. On our arrival, just before sundown, we poked the sand about in various places, and before long succeeded in collecting between us more than an ounce of gold, mixed up with a good deal of sand. I stayed at Mr. Marshall's that night, and the next day we proceeded some little distance up the South Fork, and found that gold existed along the whole course, not only in the bed of the main stream, where the water had subsided, but in every little dried-up creek and ravine. Indeed I think it is more plentiful in these latter places, for I myself, with nothing more than a small knife, picked out from a dry gorge, a little way up the mountain, a solid lump of gold which weighed nearly an ounce and a half.

"On our return to the mill, we were astonished by the work-people coming up to us in a body, and showing us small flakes of gold similar to those we had ourselves procured. Marshall tried to laugh the matter off with them, and to persuade them that what they had found was only some shining mineral of trifling value; but one of the Indians, who had worked at the gold mine in the neighbourhood of La Paz, in Lower California, cried out, 'Oro! oro!' We were disappointed enough at this discovery, and supposed that the work-people had been watching our movements, although we thought we had taken every precaution against being observed by them. I heard afterwards, that one of them, a sly Kentuckian, had dogged us about, and that, looking on the ground to see if he could discover what we were in search of, he had lighted on some flakes of gold himself.

"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.

CHAPTER VIII.

• The Author and his friends leave Sutter's Fort
• Tents in the bottom
• A caravan in motion
• Green hills and valleys
• Indian villages
• Californian pack-Horses
• A sailor on horseback
• Lunch at noon
• A troublesome beast
• Sierra Nevada
• First view of the lower mines
• How the gold is dug and washed
• The "cradle"
• The diggers and their stock of gold
• A store in course of construction
• The tent is pitched
• The golden itch
• First attempts at gold-finding
• A hole in the saucepan
• Sound asleep.

Sunday, June 4th.—The morning we left the Fort the scene was one of great excitement. Down in the bottom some twenty tents were pitched, outside which big fires were smoking; and, while breakfast was being prepared, the men of each company were busily engaged in saddling their horses and arranging their baggage; several wagons and teams were already in motion, following the road along the windings of the river. The tents were soon all struck, the smoke from the fires was dying away, and a perfect caravan was moving along in the direction of the now no longer ridiculed El Dorado.

We pushed along, as may be believed, with the utmost impatience, conjuring up the most flattering visions of our probable success as gold-hunters. The track lay through a spacious grassy valley, with the Americanos River winding along it, on our left hand. At first, the stream was nearly two miles distant from the track of our caravan, but as we advanced we approached its banks more nearly. The country was pleasant, consisting of a succession of small hills and valleys, diversified here and there by groves of tall oak trees. We passed several wretched Indian villages—clusters of filthy smoky hovels, and now and then caught sight of the river and the line of oak trees which bordered it. We managed tolerably well with our horses, but it requires great experience to be able to fasten securely the loads of provisions and stores which they carry on their backs. Flour, of course, formed the principal article of our commissariat. This was