California, cried out, 'Oro! oro!' We were disappointed enough at this
discovery, and supposed that the work-people had been watching our
movements, although we thought we had taken every precaution against
being observed by them. I heard afterwards, that one of them, a sly
Kentuckian, had dogged us about, and that, looking on the ground to see
if he could discover what we were in search of, he had lighted on some
flakes of gold himself.

"The next day I rode back to the Fort, organised a labouring party, set
the carpenters to work on a few necessary matters, and the next day
accompanied them to a point of the Fork, where they encamped for the
night. By the following morning I had a party of fifty Indians fairly
at work. The way we first managed was to shovel the soil into small
buckets, or into some of our famous Indian baskets; then wash all the
light earth out, and pick away the stones; after this, we dried the
sand on pieces of canvas, and with long reeds blew away all but the
gold. I have now some rude machines in use, and upwards of one hundred
men employed, chiefly Indians, who are well fed, and who are allowed
whisky three times a-day.

"The report soon spread. Some of the gold was sent to San Francisco,
and crowds of people flocked to the diggings. Added to this, a large
emigrant party of Mormons entered California across the Rocky
Mountains, just as the affair was first made known. They halted at
once, and set to work on a spot some thirty miles from here, where a
few of them still remain. When I was last up at the diggings, there
were full eight hundred men at work, at one place and another, with
perhaps something like three hundred more passing backwards and
forwards between here and the mines. I at first imagined the gold
would soon be exhausted by such crowds of seekers, but subsequent