day than he received per month. Not only did soldiers and sailors
desert, but captains and masters of ships actually abandoned their
vessels and cargoes to try their luck at the mines. Preachers
and professors forgot their creeds and took to trade, and
even to keeping gambling-houses. I remember that one of our
regular soldiers, named Reese, in deserting stole a favorite
double-barreled gun of mine, and when the orderly-sergeant of the
company, Carson, was going on furlough, I asked him when he came
across Reese to try and get my gun back. When he returned he told
me that he had found Reese and offered him a hundred dollars for my
gun, but Reese sent me word that he liked the gun, and would not
take a hundred dollars for it. Soldiers or sailors who could reach
the mines were universally shielded by the miners, so that it was
next to useless to attempt their recapture. In due season General
Persifer Smith, Gibbs, and I, with some hired packers, started back
for San Francisco, and soon after we transferred our headquarters to
Sonoma. About this time Major Joseph Hooker arrived from the East
--the regular adjutant-general of the division--relieved me, and I
became thereafter one of General Smith's regular aides-de-camp.

As there was very little to do, General Smith encouraged us to go
into any business that would enable us to make money. R. P.
Hammond, James Blair, and I, made a contract to survey for Colonel
J. D. Stevenson his newly-projected city of "New York of the
Pacific," situated at the month of the San Joaquin River. The
contract embraced, also, the making of soundings and the marking
out of a channel through Suisun Bay. We hired, in San Francisco, a
small metallic boat, with a sail, laid in some stores, and
proceeded to the United States ship Ohio, anchored at Saucelito,
where we borrowed a sailor-boy and lead-lines with which to sound