82 LIFE SKETCHES OP A JAYHAWKER 



house thereon, which was the beginning of Milpitas. I think the house Is 

 still standing. Soon after that some of our company with myself, concluded 

 to go to the lower country and buy cattle, so I sold my interest in Milpitas 

 for a small sum, but have always kept it in fondest recollection. 



Down near the San Jose Mission, there was quite a little Mormon set- 

 tlement and we were reaping the Mun's crop, who was a Mormon and after- 

 wards he bou^^ht the machine we were running while there. Parly P. Pratt 

 came there from Australia with a young woman that he said was his spirit- 

 ual wife. Well, she had spirit enough for two as far as spirit goes. When 

 we were all called in for dinner into the dining room, there was Pratt with 

 his wife in his lap and she combing his whiskers with her fingers. I thought 

 It took some spirit to do that right before us all, but it may have been an 

 evil spirit. I will speak of Mr. Pratt later. We proceeded with the usual 

 routine as is generally practiced in farming operations, until the harvesting 

 and threshing was completed and as I had no interest in the grain crop I 

 concluded to plant potatoes and succeeded in getting fifty acres planted. It 

 was almost impossible to get seed potatoes to plant, so had to plant such as 

 I could get, which proved to be very poor, just the cullings. The conse- 

 quence was they never came up only at long distances apart and the result 

 was never a potato was dug, showing what a little thing that will prove 

 either for or against. If my crop had turned out well, it would have made 

 me a fortune as they were very high that year, the price commencing at 

 potato-digging lime at four cents per pound and gradually increasing In 

 price until they ran up to fourteen cents per pound. The boys, having fif- 

 teen acres adjoining mine sold them at four cents a pound and netted them 

 five thousand dollars. My fifty acres would have brought me at the lowest 

 price fifty thousand dollars. 



Horner Down, near the Mission, had in fifteen hundred acres in potatoes 

 that year and sold to Beard in the ground. Beard cleared sixty thousand 

 dollars on the deal — that was in 1852, and in 1853 they were not worth 

 digging. 



Thousands of sacks were emptied into the Bay in order to save the 

 sacks. Over-production was the cause and no place to ship them to. When 

 threshing season came on, I, as it happened, was the principal spoke in the 

 wheel to make the machinery go, so with myself and the use of my mule 

 team was able to earn ten dollars a day. By the time the season closed 

 I had earned quite a little, even if I did lose my potato crop. It was not to 

 be for me or I would have had it, consequently I never grieved over It. 



The next venture was to go to the lower country and buy cattle. We 

 used to call Los Angeles, San Diego, and all that country down there, the 

 lower country. Some of the boys on the ranch, including myself (I think 

 there were five of us all together) tried to get started, but it was very hard. 

 We stayed in San Jose tor nearly a week waiting for the water to go down 

 so we could get to Alviso to take a boat for San Francisco. We started at 

 6 A. M., and we arrived at Alviso at 3 P. M. I know I waded the bigger 

 part of the way and carried a woman on my back. I told her it was the 

 only way I could carry her and it was either that or wade the same as I 

 was doing. There were here and there little knolls where I could l«t her 

 down and get my wind for she was pretty heavy. After some of the pas- 

 sengers would get the stage picked out of the mud and come along where 



