He suffered a severe illness on the journey, and was nursed by his
companion, Gilbert, who gathered herbs and steeped them for his
friend’s use, and once rode thirty miles in the rain to get a doctor.
When they reached California he fell in with Edward Croarkin, a miner,
who nursed him back to health. The manner in which he remembered these
men gives keen satisfaction to the friends of the great merchant.
“Did you have any money when you arrived at the gold-fields?”
“Scarcely any. I struck right out, though, and found a place where I
could dig, and I struck pay dirt in a little time.”
“Did you work entirely alone?”
“No. It was not long before I met Mr. Croarkin at a little mining camp
called Virginia. He had the next claim to mine, and we became partners.
After a little while he went away, but came back in a year. We then
bought in together. The way we ran things was ‘turn about.’ Croarkin
would cook one week and I the next, and then we would have a clean-up
every Sunday morning. We baked our own bread, and kept a few hens,
which kept us supplied with eggs. There was a man named Chapin who had
a little store in the village, and we would take our gold dust there
and trade it for groceries.”
“Did you discover much gold?” I asked.
“Oh, I worked with pretty good success—nothing startling. I didn’t
waste much, and tried to live as carefully as I ever had. I also
studied the business opportunities around, and persuaded some of
my friends to join me in buying and developing a ‘ditch’—a kind of
aqueduct—to convey water to diggers and washers. That proved more
profitable than digging for gold, and at the end of the year the others
sold out to me, took their earnings and went home. I stayed and bought
up several other water-powers, until, in 1856, I thought I had enough,
and so I sold out and came East.”
“How much had you made, altogether?”
“About four thousand dollars.”
“Did you return to Stockbridge?”