On January 23, I had turned away from the Indians and was with the white men. Mr. Marshall came along to look over the work in general, and went to where the tail race entered the river. There he discovered a bed of rock that had been exposed by the water the night before, the portion in view in the bottom of the race being three to six feet wide and fifteen to twenty feet long. Mr. Marshall called me to him as he examined the bed of the race, and said: "This is a curious rock; I am afraid it will give us trouble." Then he probed a little further, and added: "I believe it contains minerals of some kind, and I believe there is gold in these hills."
At this statement I inquired, "What makes you think so?" He answered that he had seen blossom of gold, and upon my asking where, he said it was the white quartz scattered over the hills; on my inquiring further as to what quartz was, he told me it was the white, flint-like rock so plentiful on the hills. I said it was flint rock, but he said no, it was called quartz in some book he had read, and was an indication of gold. He sent me to the cabin for a pan to wash the sand and gravel, and see what we could find. I went to a cabin which had been built near the millsite by Alexander Stephens, Henry W. Bigler, James Berger, Azariah Smith, William Johnston and myself, and in which we were doing our own cooking. I brought the pan and we washed some of the bedrock that we had scaled up with a pick. As we had no idea of the appearance of gold in its natural state, our search was unsuccessful.
Mr. Marshall was determined to investigate further, but it was no use that night. He rose and said: "We will hoist the gates and turn in all the water that we can tonight, and tomorrow morning we will shut it off and come down here, and I believe we will find gold or some other mineral here."
CHAPTER XIV.
ARRIVAL OF MEMBERS OF THE MORMON BATTALION AT SUTTER'S FORT OPENS THE WAY FOR THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA—JAMES W. MARSHALL OUT EARLY ON JANUARY 24, 1848—"HE IS GOING TO FIND A GOLD MINE"—REGARDED AS A "NOTIONAL" MAN—"BOYS, I HAVE GOT HER NOW!"—TESTING THE SCALES OF METAL—"GOLD, BOYS, GOLD!"—FIRST PROCLAMATION OF THE GREAT GOLD DISCOVERY—SECOND AND THIRD TESTS—ALL EXCITEMENT—THREE OR FOUR OUNCES OF GOLD GATHERED—AGREE TO KEEP THE DISCOVERY SECRET—FIND THE PRECIOUS METAL FARTHER DOWN THE STREAM—HOW THE SECRET LEASED OUT—MORE DISCOVERIES—FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE NEWS MADE IN A MORMON PAPER—WASHING OUT THE METAL—FIRST GOLD ROCKER—GATHERING GOLD—PART TAKEN BY MR. MARSHALL, THE MORMONS AND CAPTAIN SUTTER IN THE DISCOVERY—MISFORTUNES OF SUTTER AND MARSHALL—ACCOUNT OF THE GOLD DISCOVERY CERTIFIED TO BY SEVERAL EYE WITNESSES.
IT is my understanding that when Captain Sutter and Mr. Marshall were contemplating the erection of the two mills, an apparently insurmountable obstacle confronted them in the inability to get and pay for the skilled labor necessary for portions of the work. This obstacle was removed by the proposition our committee had made to Captain Sutter at the first interview; and in the two or three days' time asked in August, 1847, by the captain, a decision was reached to go ahead. Therefore, if it had not been for the opportune appearance of the mustered-out members of the Mormon Battalion, the sawmill would not have been built that winter, nor would the discovery of gold have been made at that time. But for the action of those Mormons in connection with the enterprise proposed by Captain Sutter and Mr. Marshall, in offering the desired class of labor upon the terms they did, the state of California might have waited indefinitely to have been developed and to be christened the Golden State, and the entrance to the bay of San Francisco might never have received the title of the Golden Gate.
Resuming the narrative of my association with Mr. Marshall on the afternoon of January 23rd, I will state further that each of us went our way for the night, and did not meet again till next morning. I thought little of what Marshall had said of finding gold, as he was looked on as rather a "notional" kind of man; I do not think I even mentioned his conversation to my associates. At an unusually early hour in the morning, however, those of us who occupied the cabin heard a hammering at the mill. "Who is that pounding so early?" was asked, and one of our party looked out and said it was Marshall shutting the gates of the forebay down. This recalled to my mind what Mr. Marshall had said to me the evening before, and I remarked, "Oh, he is going to find a gold mine this morning."
A smile of derision stole over the faces of the parties present. We ate our breakfast and went to work. James Berger and myself went to the whipsaw, and the rest of the men some eight or ten rods away from the mill. I was close to the mill and sawpit, and was also close to the tail race, where I could direct the Indians who were there.
This was the 24th day of January, 1848. When we had got partly to work, Mr. Marshall came, with his old wool hat in his hand. He stopped within six or eight yards of the sawpit, and exclaimed, "Boys, I have got her now!" Being the nearest to him, and having more curiosity than the rest of the men, I jumped from the pit and stepped to him. On looking into his hat I discovered ten or twelve pieces or small scales of what proved to be gold. I picked up the largest piece, worth about fifty cents, and tested it with my teeth; as it did not give, I held it aloft and exclaimed, "Gold, boys, gold!" At that, all dropped their tools and gathered around Mr. Marshall. Having made the first proclamation of the very important fact that the metal was gold, I stepped to the work bench and put it to the second test with the hammer. As I was doing this it occurred to me that while en route to California with the Mormon Battalion, we came to some timber called manzanita. Our guides and interpreters said the wood was what the Mexicans smelted their gold and silver ores with. It is a hard wood and makes a very hot fire, and also burns a long time. Remembering that we had left a very hot bed of these coals in the fireplace of the cabin, I hurried there and made the third test by placing the metal upon the point of an old shovel blade, and then inserted it in among the coals. I blew the coals until I was blind for the moment, in trying to burn or melt the particles; and although these were plated almost as thin as a sheet of note paper, the heat did not change their appearance in the least. I remembered hearing that gold could not be burned up, so I arose from this third test, confident that what had been found was gold. Running out to the party still grouped together, I made the second proclamation, saying, "Gold, gold!"
At this juncture all was excitement. We repaired to the lower end of the tail race, where we found from three to six inches of water flowing over the bed of rock, in which there were crevices and little pockets, over which the water rippled in the glare of the sunlight as that shone over the mountain peaks. James Berger was the first man to espy a scale of the metal. He stooped to pick it up, and found some difficulty in getting hold of it, as his fingers would blur the water, but he finally succeeded. The next man to find a piece was H. W. Bigler; he used his jack-knife, getting the scale on the point of the blade, then, with his forefinger over it placed it in his left hand.
As soon as we learned how to look for it, since it glittered under the water in the rays of the sun, we were all rewarded with a few scales. Each put his mite into a small phial that was provided by Marshall, and we made him the custodian. We repeated our visits to the tail race for three or four mornings, each time collecting some of the precious metal until we had gathered somewhere between three and four ounces.
The next move was to step and stake off two quarter sections, beginning at the mill, one running down the river and the other up. Then we cut and hauled logs and laid the foundation of a cabin on each of them; one was for Sutter, the other for Marshall. This matter being finished, Mr. Marshall was prepared to dictate terms to us, for every tool and all the provisions in that part of the country belonged to Sutter and Marshall. They had full control, and we were depending on the completion of the mill for our pay. Marshall said that if we would stay by him until the mill was completed and well stocked with logs, he would supply us with provisions and tools, and would grant us the first right to work on their gold claims. We all assented to his proposition, and also agreed that we would not disclose the secret of the gold discovery until we learned more about it and had made good our claims. Not having the remotest idea of the extent of the gold deposits, we pushed the mill