Captain Sutter's account of the first discovery of the gold
His surprise at Mr. Marshall's appearance at the Fort
Mr. Marshall's statement
The mill-wheel thrown out of gear
The water channel enlarged
Mr. Marshall's attention attracted by some glittering substance
Finds it to be gold
First imagines it to have been buried there
Discovers it in great abundance
Takes horse to Sutter's Fort
Captain Sutter and Mr. Marshall agree to keep the matter secret
They start off to the mill
Proceed up the Fork
Find the gold in great abundance
Return to the mill
The work-people meet them
A knowing Indian and a sly Kentuckian
A labouring party organised
Digging and washing for gold
The news spreads
People flock to the diggings
Arrival of Mormons
The gold found to be inexhaustible
Men of science as blind as the rest of the world.
"I was sitting one afternoon," said the Captain, "just after my siesta,
engaged, by-the-by, in writing a letter to a relation of mine at
Lucerne, when I was interrupted by Mr. Marshall--a gentleman with whom
I had frequent business transactions--bursting hurriedly into the room.
From the unusual agitation in his manner I imagined that something
serious had occurred, and, as we involuntarily do in this part of the
world, I at once glanced to see if my rifle was in its proper place.
You should know that the mere appearance of Mr. Marshall at that moment
in the Fort was quite enough to surprise me, as he had but two days
before left the place to make some alterations in a mill for sawing
pine planks, which he had just run up for me, some miles higher up the
Americanos. When he had recovered himself a little, he told me that,
however great my surprise might be at his unexpected reappearance, it
would be much greater when I heard the intelligence he had come to
bring me. 'Intelligence,' he added, 'which, if properly profited by,
would put both of us in possession of unheard-of wealth--millions and
millions of dollars in fact.' I frankly own, when I heard this, that I
thought something had touched Marshall's brain, when suddenly all my
misgivings were put an end to by his flinging on the table a handful of
scales of pure virgin gold. I was fairly thunderstruck, and asked him
to explain what all this meant, when he went on to say, that, according
to my instructions, he had thrown, the mill-wheel out of gear, to let
the whole body of the water in the dam find a passage through the
tail-race, which was previously too narrow to allow the water to run
off in sufficient quantity, whereby the wheel was prevented from
efficiently performing its work. By this alteration the narrow channel
was considerably enlarged, and a mass of sand and gravel carried off by
the force of the torrent. Early in the morning after this took place,
he (Mr. Marshall) was walking along the left bank of the stream, when
he perceived something which he at first took for a piece of opal--a
clear transparent stone very common here--glittering on one of the
spots laid bare by the sudden crumbling away of the bank. He paid no
attention to this; but while he was giving directions to the workmen,
having observed several similar glittering fragments, his curiosity was
so far excited, that he stooped down and picked one of them up. 'Do you
know,' said Mr. Marshall to me, 'I positively debated within myself two
or three times whether I should take the trouble to bend my back to
pick up one of the pieces, and had decided on not doing so, when,
further on, another glittering morsel caught my eye--the largest of the
pieces now before you. I condescended to pick it up, and to my
astonishment found that it was a thin scale of what appears to be pure
gold.' He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces, which on
examination convinced him that his suppositions were right. His first
impression was, that this gold had been lost or buried there by some
early Indian tribe--perhaps some of those mysterious inhabitants of the
west, of whom we have no account, but who dwelt on this continent
centuries ago, and built those cities and temples, the ruins of which
are scattered about these solitary wilds. On proceeding, however, to
examine the neighbouring soil, he discovered that it was more or less
auriferous. This at once decided him. He mounted his horse, and rode
down to me as fast as it would carry him with the news.
"At the conclusion of Mr. Marshall's account," continued Captain
Sutter, "and when I had convinced myself, from the specimens he had
brought with him, that it was not exaggerated, I felt as much excited
as himself. I eagerly inquired if he had shown the gold to the
work-people at the mill, and was glad to hear that he had not spoken to
a single person about it. We agreed," said the Captain, smiling, "not
to mention the circumstance to any one, and arranged to set off early
the next day for the mill. On our arrival, just before sundown, we
poked the sand about in various places, and before long succeeded in
collecting between us more than an ounce of gold, mixed up with a good
deal of sand. I stayed at Mr. Marshall's that night, and the next day
we proceeded some little distance up the South Fork, and found that
gold existed along the whole course, not only in the bed of the main
stream, where the water had subsided, but in every little dried-up
creek and ravine. Indeed I think it is more plentiful in these latter
places, for I myself, with nothing more than a small knife, picked out
from a dry gorge, a little way up the mountain, a solid lump of gold
which weighed nearly an ounce and a half.
"On our return to the mill, we were astonished by the work-people
coming up to us in a body, and showing us small flakes of gold similar
to those we had ourselves procured. Marshall tried to laugh the matter
off with them, and to persuade them that what they had found was only
some shining mineral of trifling value; but one of the Indians, who had
worked at the gold mine in the neighbourhood of La Paz, in Lower
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
observations have convinced me that it will take many years to bring
about such a result, even with ten times the present number of people
employed.
"What surprises me," continued the Captain, "is that this country
should have been visited by so many scientific men, and that not one of
them should have ever stumbled upon these treasures; that scores of
keen-eyed trappers should have crossed this valley in every direction,
and tribes of Indians have dwelt in it for centuries, and yet that this
gold should have never been discovered. I myself have passed the very
spot above a hundred times during the last ten years, but was just as
blind as the rest of them, so I must not wonder at the discovery not
having been made earlier."
While the Captain was proceeding with his narrative, I must confess that
I felt so excited on the subject as to wish to start off immediately
on our journey. When he had finished, I walked off to see after the
horses, but, although they were ready, the additional shoes we wanted
to carry with us would not be furnished for several hours; it was late
in the afternoon before we got them. We bought two horses of Captain
Sutter (very strong animals), and McPhail managed to engage a big lad
as a servant--a rough-looking fellow, who appears to have deserted from
some ship, and worked his way up here. All things considered, it was
agreed that we should remain here another night, and resume our march
as early as we could in the morning.