me if I knew what the charges were. I said yes, $5 per day. He said it
was more; I had better ask again, which I did. I was informed it was $5
for the room and extra for the meals. I paid my bill and looked out for
other quarters. I had brought in my baggage an Indian rubber mattress
and pillow which was folded up in a small space and could be blown up
with your breath and filled with air, made a soft bed, a pair of new
Mackinaw blankets and other things to provide for any contingency, and
took my meals at a restaurant, which were numerous, including the
Chinese which we often patronized, and found myself satisfactorily
quartered. It may not be inappropriate to make some general remarks
about the history of California.

Although my subject is strictly on the days of forty-niners, which
consisted of about two years from the discovery of the gold, when it was
supposed that the future prosperity of the country depended exclusively
on the mining interest. How different it has turned out since has
nothing to do with my subject. I want to try to paint to the mind of the
reader the condition of California at that time, and the views of the
pioneers in those days. I am doing it in the form of a personal
narrative, as it enables me more distinctly to recall to my mind the
events of those days in which I was a participant. Such fluctuations of
fortune as then occurred, the world never saw before in the same space
of time, and probably never will again, where common labor was $16 per
day. There were some very interesting and truthful articles published in
the _Century_ magazine two years ago from the pen of the pioneers, but
there has been no book published as a standard work for the present and
future, and the participants in it are passing away, for it is
forty-five years since they occurred. California is three times larger
in territory than the State of New York. Its population before the
discovery of gold, including Indians and all, was but a few thousand.