locality went and returned in about three weeks
and had from three to five thousand dollars apiece, which they showed
me. It was not scale gold, but nuggets of all sizes. Of course, they had
unusual luck.

On the river mining each person was entitled to so many feet, as long as
they left any implements of labor on it. No person would trespass upon
it; but if he took every thing away, then it was inferred he had given
it up, and anybody had a right to take it. All regulations were strictly
respected and every thing was safe, and a person told me that he would
not be afraid to leave his bag of gold in his tent. Every thing was
honorable and safe until the overland emigrants from western Missouri
arrived there.

They were a different kind of people; more of the brute order. When
they saw a party of two or three that had a good claim, and they were
the strongest, they would dispossess them. (I suppose the same class
that raided Kansas in John Brown's time.) They became so obnoxious that
a respectable man would deny his State.

And another corrupt element arrived by sea, the ex-convicts from Sidney.

I went to Coloma one day to get supplies for the party. I rode one of
the mules, the other followed to be packed with the purchases. When I
bought what was wanted, I handed the storekeeper my bag of gold to pay
him. When he returned it to me, I found his statement made was between
three and four dollars less than I knew was in it. I informed him of the
discrepancy. He said he did not see how that could be; that he weighed
it right. He came in in a few minutes and apologized, saying that he had
weighed it in the scales that he used when he traded with the Indians.
It needs no comment to know that the Christian man is not always
superior to the Indian in integrity. There was an Indian who had struck
a pocket. He came to Coloma with $800 in gold dust that he got out in a
short time. He invested it all with the storekeepers in a few hours. He
had dressed himself in the height of fashion, including a gold watch. He
was dressed as no California Indian ever had been before. The gold he
could not eat nor drink.

[Illustration: DRESSED AS NO CALIFORNIA INDIAN EVER WAS BEFORE.]

How the gold came there is one of the mysteries of nature. One theory
is, that the Sierra Nevada mountains were once the banks of the Pacific
ocean, and all California had been thrown up from the bottom of the sea
from that depth where gold was a part of the