The following extract is from a letter written by Thomas O. Larkin to
Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary of State. It is dated at Monterey, June 28,
1848.
I am of the opinion that on the American fork, Feather River, and
Copimes River, there are near two thousand people, nine-tenths of them
foreigners. Perhaps there are one hundred families, who have their
teams, wagons and tents. Many persons are waiting to see whether the
months of July and August will be sickly, before they leave their
present business to go to the "Placer." The discovery of this gold was
made by some Mormons, in January or February, who for a time kept it a
secret; the majority of those who are working there began in May. In
most every instance the men, after digging a few days, have been
compelled to leave for the purpose of returning home to see their
families, arrange their business and purchase provisions. I feel
confident in saying there are fifty men in this "placer" who have on an
average $1000 each, obtained in May and June. I have not met with any
person who had been fully employed in washing gold one month; most,
however, appear to have averaged an ounce per day. I think there must,
by, this time, be over 1000 men at work upon the different branches of
the Sacramento; putting their gains at $10,000 per day, for six days in
the week, appears to me not overrated.
Should this news reach the emigration of California and Oregon, now on
the road, connected with the Indian wars, now impoverishing the latter
country, we should have a large addition to our population; and should
the richness of the gold region continue, our emigrants in 1849 will be
many thousand, and in 1850 still more. If our countrymen in California
as clerks, mechanics and workmen will forsake employment at from $2 to
$6 per day, how many more of the same class in the Atlantic States,
earning much less, will leave for this country under such prospects? It
is the opinion of many who have visited the gold regions the past and
present months, that the ground will afford gold for many years,
perhaps for a century. From my own examination of the rivers and their
banks, I am of opinion that, at least for a few years, the golden
products will equal the present year. However, as neither men of
science, nor the laborers now at work, have made any explorations of
consequence, it is a matter of impossibility to give any opinion as to
the extent and richness of this part of California. Every Mexican who
has seen the place says throughout their Republic there has never been
any "placer like this one."
Could Mr. Polk and yourself see California as we now see it, you would
think that a few thousand people, on 100 miles square of the Sacramento
valley, would yearly turn out of this river the whole price our country
pays for the acquired territory. When I finished my first letter I
doubted my own writing, and, to be better satisfied, showed it to one
of the principal merchants of San Francisco, and to Capt. Folsom, of
the Quartermaster's Department, who decided at once I was far below the
reality. You certainly will suppose, from my two letters, that I am,
like others, led away by the excitement of the day. I think I am not.
In my last I inclosed a small sample of the gold dust, and I find my
only error was in putting a value to the sand. At that time I was not
aware how the gold was found; I now can describe the mode of collecting
it.
A person without a machine, after digging off one or two feet of the
upper ground, near the water (in some cases they take the top earth,)
throws into a tin pan or wooden bowl a shovel full of loose dirt and
stones; then placing the basin an inch or two under water, continues to
stir up the dirt with his hand in such a manner that the running water
will carry off the light earths, occasionally, with his hand, throwing
out the stones; after an operation of this kind for twenty or thirty
minutes, a spoonful of small black sand remains; this is, on a
handkerchief or cloth, dried in the sun, the emerge is blown off,
leaving the pure gold. I have the pleasure of inclosing a paper of this
sand and gold, which I, from a bucket of dirt and stones, in half an
hour, standing at the edge of the water, washed out myself. The value
of it may be $2 or $3.
The size of the gold depends in some measure upon the river from which
it is taken, the banks of one river having larger grains of gold than
another. I presume more than one-half of the gold put into pans or
machines is washed out and goes down the stream; this is of no
consequence to the washers, who care only for the present time. Some
have formed companies of four or five men, and have a rough-made
machine put together in a day, which worked to much advantage, yet many
prefer to work alone, with a wooden bowl or tin pan, worth fifteen or
twenty cents in the States, but eight to sixteen dollars at the gold
region. As the workmen continue, and materials can be obtained,
improvements will take place in the mode of obtaining gold; at present
it is obtained by standing in the water, and with much severe labor, or
such as is called here severe labor.
How long this gathering of gold by the handful will continue here, or
the future effect it will have on California, I cannot say.
Three-fourths of the houses in the town on the Bay of San Francisco are
deserted. Houses are sold at the price of the ground lots. The effects
are this week showing themselves in Monterey. Almost every house I had
hired out is given up. Every blacksmith, carpenter and lawyer is
leaving; brick yards, saw mills and ranches are left perfectly alone. A
large number of the volunteers at San Francisco and Sonoma have
deserted; some have been retaken and brought back; public and private
vessels are losing their crews: my clerks have had 100 per cent advance
offered them on their wages to accept employment. A complete revolution
in the ordinary state of affairs is taking place; both of our
newspapers are discontinued from want of workmen and the loss of their
agencies; the Alcaldes have left San Francisco, and I believe Sonoma
likewise; the former place has not a Justice of the Peace left.
The second Alcalde of Monterey to-day joins the keepers of our
principal hotel, who have closed their office and house, and will leave
tomorrow for the golden rivers. I saw on the ground a lawyer who was
last year Attorney General of the King of the Sandwich Islands, digging
and washing out his ounce and a half per day; near him can be found
most all his brethren of the long robe, working in the same occupation.
To conclude; my letter is long, but I could not well describe what I
have seen in less words, and I now can believe that my account may be
doubted; if the affair proves a bubble, a mere excitement, I know not
how we can all be deceived, as we are situated. Gov. Mason and his
staff have left Monterey to visit the place in question, and will, I
suppose, soon forward to his department his views and opinions on this
subject. Most of the land where gold has been discovered, is public
land; there are, on different rivers, some private grants. I have three
such, purchased in 1846 and '47, but have not learned that any private
lands have produced gold, though they may hereafter do so.
* * * * *
Here is a letter of great sprightliness, beauty and interest, prepared
by that finished scholar and noted writer, the Rev. Walter Colton,
Alcalde of Monterey.
MONTEREY, California, Aug. 29, 1848.
The gold discoveries still continue--every day brings some new deposit
to light. It has been found in large quantities on the Sacramento,
Feather River, Yerba River, the American fork--North and South
branches--the Cosamer, and in many dry ravines, and indeed on the tops
of high hills The tract of country in which it is ascertained to exist,
extends some two hundred miles North and South, and some sixty East and
West; and these limits are every day enlarging by new discoveries. On
the streams where the gold has been subjected to the action of water
and sand, it exists in fine grains; on the hills and among the clefts
of the rocks it is found in rough, jagged pieces of a quarter or half
an ounce in weight, and sometimes two or three ounces.
The gold is obtained in a variety of ways; some wash it out of the sand
with bowls, some with a machine made like a cradle, only longer and
open at the foot, while at the other end, instead of a squalling
infant, there is a grating upon which the earth is thrown, and then
water; both pass through the grating,--the cradle is rocked, and being
on an inclined plane, the water carries off the earth, and the gold is
deposited in the bottom of the cradle. So the two things most prized in
this world, gold and infant beauty, are both rocked out of their
primitive stage, one to pamper pride, and the other to pamper the worm.
Some forego cradles and bowls as too tame an occupation, and mounted on
horses, half wild, dash up the mountain gorges and over the steep
hills, picking the gold from the clefts of the rocks with their bowie
knives,--a much better use to make of these instruments than picking
the life out of men's bodies; for what is a man with that article
picked out of him?
A larger party, well mounted, are following up the channel of the
Sacramento, to discover where this gold, found in its banks, comes
from; and imagine that near the river's fount they will find the great
yellow mass itself. But they might as well hunt the fleeting rainbow.
The gold was thrown up from the bed of the ocean with the rocks and
sands in which it is found; and still bears, where it has escaped the
action of the element, vivid traces of volcanic fire. It often encases
a crystal of quartz, in which the pebble lies as if it had slumbered
there from eternity; its beautiful repose sets human artifice at
defiance. How strange that this ore should have lain here, scattered
about in all directions, peeping everywhere out of the earth, and
sparkling in the sun, and been trod upon for ages by white men and
savages, and by the emissaries of every scientific association in the
world, and never till now have been discovered! What an ass man is,
with all his learning! He stupidly stumbles over hills of gold to reach
a rare pepper pod, or rifle a bird's nest!
The whole country is now moving on the mines. Monterey, San Francisco,
Sonoma, San Jose, and Santa Cruz, are emptied of their male population.
A stranger coming here would suppose he had arrived among a race of
women, who, by some anomalous provision of nature, multiplied their
images without the presence of the other sex. But not a few of the
women have gone too, especially those who had got out of tea--for what
is women without her tea pot--a pythoness without her shaking
trypod--an angel that has lost his lyre. Every bowl, tray, warming-pan,
and piggin has gone to the mines. Everything in short, that has a scoop
in it that will hold sand and water. All the iron has been worked up
into crow-bars, pick-axes and spades. And all these roll back upon us
in the shape of gold. We have, therefore, plenty of gold, but little to
eat, and still less to wear. Our supplies must come from Oregon, Chili
and the United States. Our grain gold, in exchange for coin, sells for
nine and ten dollars the ounce, though it is well known to be worth at
the mint in Philadelphia eighteen dollars the ounce at least. Such is
the scarcity of coin here.
We want a mint. Let Congress send us one at once over the Isthmus; else
this grain gold goes to Mazatlan, to Chili and Peru--where it is lost
to our national currency. Over a million of gold, at the lowest
computation, is taken from these mines every month---and this quantity
will be more than doubled when the emigration from they States, from
Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and the Southern republics arrives. Send
us a mint! I could give you forty more illustrations of the extent and
productiveness of these mines, but no one will believe what I _have_
said without my name, and perhaps but few with it.
* * * * *