g teller at the gambling
tables.

The buildings seemed to be rather cheap, although material was very
expensive, as well as labor, mechanics of all sorts getting as much as
ten or twelve dollars per day for work. Coin seemed to be scarce, and a
great deal of the money needed on the gambling tables was represented by
iron washers, each of which represented an ounce of gold.

I noticed some places in the streets where it was muddy and a narrow
walk had been made out of boxes of tobacco, and sometimes even bacon was
used for the same purpose. Transportation from the city to the mines was
very slow and made by schooner. Ship loads of merchandise had arrived
and been unloaded, and the sailors having run away to the mines,
everything except whiskey and cards was neglected. Whiskey sold at this
place for fifty cents a drink.

A man at the tavern where we stopped tried hard to sell me a fifty-vara
lot there in the edge of the mud (near where the Custom House now
stands) for six hundred dollars. I thought this a pretty high price and
besides such a lot was no use to me, for I had never lived in town and
could not so easily see the uses to which such property could be put. It
seemed very doubtful to me that this place would ever be much larger or
amount to much, for it evidently depended on the mines for a support,
and these were so shallow that it looked as if they would be worked out
in a short time and the country and town both be deserted. And I was not
alone in thinking that the country would soon be deserted, for
accustomed as we all had been to a showery summer, these dry seasons
would seem entirely to prevent extensive farming. Some cursed the
country and said they were on their way to "good old Missouri, God's own
country." Hearing so much I concluded it would be wise not to invest,
but to get me back to Wisconsin again.

The steamer we took passage in was the Northerner, advertised to sail on
the twenty-ninth day of November, 1850. The cabin room was all engaged,
and they charged us nine ounces for steerage passage; but I did not care
as much about their good rooms and clean sheets as I would have done at
one time, for I had been a long time without either and did not care to
pay the difference. When we were at the ship's office we had to take our
turns to get tickets. One man weighed out the dust, and another filled
out certificates. When the callers began to get a little scarce I looked
under the counter where I s