staid in California after the discharge of their battalion, had
collected there. I recall the scene as perfectly to-day as though
it were yesterday. In the midst of a broken country, all parched
and dried by the hot sun of July, sparsely wooded with live-oaks
and straggling pines, lay the valley of the American River, with
its bold mountain-stream coming out of the Snowy Mountains to the
east. In this valley is a fiat, or gravel-bed, which in high water
is an island, or is overflown, but at the time of our visit was
simply a level gravel-bed of the river. On its edges men were
digging, and filling buckets with the finer earth and gravel, which
was carried to a machine made like a baby's cradle, open at the
foot, and at the head a plate of sheet-iron or zinc, punctured full
of holes. On this metallic plate was emptied the earth, and water
was then poured on it from buckets, while one man shook the cradle
with violent rocking by a handle. On the bottom were nailed cleats
of wood. With this rude machine four men could earn from forty to
one hundred dollars a day, averaging sixteen dollars, or a gold
ounce, per man per day. While the' sun blazed down on the heads of
the miners with tropical heat, the water was bitter cold, and all
hands were either standing in the water or had their clothes wet
all the time; yet there were no complaints of rheumatism or cold.
We made our camp on a small knoll, a little below the island, and
from it could overlook the busy scene. A few bush-huts near by
served as stores, boardinghouses, and for sleeping; but all hands
slept on the ground, with pine-leaves and blankets for bedding. As
soon as the news spread that the Governor was there, persons came
to see us, and volunteered all kinds of information, illustrating
it by samples of the gold, which was of a uniform kind,
"scale-gold," bright and beautiful. A large variety, of every
conceivable shape and form, was found in the smaller gulches round