his room at the fort one day in February or March, 1848, a knock
was heard at his door, and he called out, "Come in." In walked
Marshall, who was a half-crazy man at best, but then looked
strangely wild. "What is the matter, Marshall!" Marshall
inquired if any one was within hearing, and began to peer about the
room, and look under the bed, when Sutter, fearing that some
calamity had befallen the party up at the saw-mill, and that
Marshall was really crazy, began to make his way to the door,
demanding of Marshall to explain what was the matter. At last he
revealed his discovery, and laid before Captain Sutter the
pellicles of gold he had picked up in the ditch. At first, Sutter
attached little or no importance to the discovery, and told
Marshall to go back to the mill, and say nothing of what he had
seen to Mr. Wimmer, or any one else. Yet, as it might add value to
the location, he dispatched to our headquarters at Monterey, as I
have already related, the two men with a written application for a
preemption to the quarter-section of land at Coloma. Marshall
returned to the mill, but could not keep out of his wonderful
ditch, and by some means the other men employed there learned his
secret. They then wanted to gather the gold, and Marshall
threatened to shoot them if they attempted it; but these men had
sense enough to know that if "placer"-gold existed at Coloma, it
would also be found farther down-stream, and they gradually
"prospected" until they reached Mormon Island, fifteen miles below,
where they discovered one of the richest placers on earth. These
men revealed the fact to some other Mormons who were employed by
Captain Sutter at a grist-mill he was building still lower down the
American Fork, and six miles above his fort. All of them struck
for higher wages, to which Sutter yielded, until they asked ten
dollars a day, which he refused, and the two mills on which he had