ked the news from the lower
washings, and also how matters were looking at Sutter's when we passed
through. Mr. Marshall had a gang of fifty Indians employed, and Captain
Sutter had another party of nearly double that number, on the same bank
of the river.

We encamped in a woody bottom, by the side of a small stream, which
joined the main torrent here, and where there was good pasture for the
horses. Mr. Marshall's house was about a mile and a half further up the
river. After a good supper of venison steaks--thanks to Bradley's
rifle--we turned in for the night.

Nest day, Lacosse and McPhail, attended by Horry, and driving two extra
horses, rode down to the Mormon diggings, for the purpose of getting up
the provisions which we had left behind. Meantime, I walked out to
reconnoitre our new quarters. I soon arrived at the mills, and saw the
spot where the discovery of the gold had first been made, by the
torrent laying bare the sides of the mill-race. Here I met Mr. Marshall
again. Of course the operations of the saw-mill had been stopped, for
the workmen were employed in the vicinity, either above or below the
works, digging and washing on their own account. Mr. Marshall paid the
Indians he had at work chiefly in merchandize. I saw a portion of the
gang, the men dressed for the most part in cotton drawers and
mocassins, leaving the upper part of the body naked. They worked with
the same implements as those used in the lower washings. Not far from
the place where most of them were employed, I saw a number of the women
and children pounding acorns in a hollow block of wood with an oblong
stone. Of the acorn flour thus produced they made a sort of dry, hard,
unpalatable bread, which assuredly none but an Indian stomach could
digest.

Upon instituting a more particular search into the nature of the
country and our prospects, we found that the places where the gold was
found in the greatest abundance, and in the largest masses, were the
beds of the mountain torrents, now dry, which occasionally descend into
both the forks of the stream. We clambered up some of those precipitous
ravines, and observed, upon several occasions, as we scrambled among
the shingle, shining spangles of gold. The soil was evidently richly
charged; but the great disadvantage was the comparative distance from
water, in the evening our friends arrived from the lower diggings, with
the provisions all safe and sound, and the next day we determined to