Tour of the Gold-fields 233 



one corner being better fitted up for the rancher 

 and his family. 



Under some grand old oaks three hundred feet 

 to the eastward, is a cemetery containing a number 

 of graves all made, they tell me, last year when 

 miners and emigrants alike succumbed to illness 

 brought on in many cases by exposure, poor food, 

 and, in some cases, doubtless by disappointed hopes. 



Sacramento City is a country village built on a 

 flat point, between a lagoon and the river just below 

 the junction of American River, so low as to be 

 eighteen inches under average high water mark. 

 It has been a source of such speculations as '36 

 never heard of. I was shown a plot of some half- 

 dozen half lots, which cost last fall two hundred 

 and fifty dollars. The gentleman who owned 

 them. Dr. Pierson, told me he had sold two of 

 them, about a quarter of the whole, for three thou- 

 sand five hundred dollars, after holding them six 

 months. Truly people did come to California to 

 make money, and some made it, but California will 

 for the present lower the moral tone of all who 

 come here. 



There are few refining influences and men 

 become coarse and profane in language, while the 

 hard life does not improve the temper; the sight 

 of the gold they see dug, and the fortunes they 

 hear of that have been made in months, some few 

 even in weeks, make them avaricious. 



