00 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



distance up tlie 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 show- 

 ing us small flakes of gold similar to those we had 

 ourselves procured. Marshall tried to laugh the mat- 

 ter 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 

 California, cried out, ^ Oro ! oro !' We were disap- 

 pointed 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, organized 

 a laboring 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 



