red Carr and Negro "Joe," from Miss.

There were a great many reports about finding rich mines about this
time, and these stories have been magnified and told in all sorts of
ways since then, and parties have returned to try to find the great
riches.

Among the Jayhawkers were two Germans who could speak but little English
and probably for this reason, kept apart from the remainder of the
party.

One day, after the wagons were abandoned these German fellows were
marching along alone with their packs on their backs in the warm sun,
suffering very much for want of water and food, when one of them sat
down on a hill-side in pretty nearly absolute despair, while the other
man went down into a ravine hoping to find a puddle of water in the
rocky bottom somewhere, though it was almost a forlorn hope. All at once
he called out to his partner on the hill--"John, come down here and get
some of this gold. There is a lot of it." To this poor John Galler only
replied:--"No, I won't come. I don't want any gold, but I would like
very much to have some water and some bread." And so they left the
valuable find and slowly walked on, pulling through at last with the
rest of them, and reaching Los Angeles.

The man who found the gold went to the Mission of San Luis Rey and
started a small clothing store, and some time afterward was killed. John
Galler settled in Los Angeles and established a wagon shop in which he
did a successful business. He was an honest, industrious man and the
people had great confidence in him. He often told them about what his
partner had said about finding the gold in the desert, and the people
gave him an outfit on two or three occasions to go back and re-locate
the find, but he did not seem to have much idea of location, and when he
got back into the desert again things looked so different to him that he
was not able to identify the place, or to be really certain they were on
the same trail where his companion found the gold.

The Author saw him in 1862 and heard what he had to say about it, and is
convinced that it was not gold at all which they saw. I told him that I
more than suspected that what he saw was mica instead of gold and that
both he and his partner had been deceived, for more than one man not
used to gold had been deceived before now. "No sir!" said he, "I saw
lots of gold in Germany, and when I saw that I knew what it was." The
Author went back over that trail in 1862 and sought out the Germa