ELDORADO i6i 



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," con- 

 tinued 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 circumstances to anyone, 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 be- 

 tween us, more than an ounce of gold mixed up with a 

 good deal of sand. I stayed at Marshall's that night, 

 and the next day we proceeded some little distance 

 up the South Fork and found the 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 mountains, 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 our- 

 selves 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 neighborhood of La Paz, in Lower 



