We went back to camp with the little we had killed and soon got ready to start north.  Bennett was to go with his team to Sacramento and wait there until he heard from us.

Four of us, mounted on mules, now started on our journey along the foothills without a road.  We struck the Tuolumne river at a ferry.  The stream was high and rapid and could not be forded, so we had to patronize the ferryman, and give him half an ounce apiece.  We thought such charges on poor and almost penniless emigrants were unjust.

The point we were seeking to reach was a new discovery called Gold Lake on Feather River, where many rich gulches that emptied into it had been worked, and the lake was believed to have at least a ship load of gold in it.  It was located high in the mountains and could be easily drained and a fortune soon obtained if we got there in time and said nothing to anyone we might meet on the road.  We might succeed in getting a claim before they were all taken up.  We followed along the foothills without a road, and when we came to the Stanislaus River we had to patronize a ferry and pay half an ounce each again.  We thought their scale weights were rather heavy and their ferrymen well paid.

We continued along the foothills without any trail until we struck the road from Sacramento to Hangtown.  This sounded like a bad name for a good village, but we found it was fittingly named after some ugly devils who were hanged there.  The first house that we came to on this road was the Mormon Tavern.  Here were some men playing cards for money, and two boys, twelve or fourteen years old, playing poker for the same and trying in every way to ape the older gamblers and bet their money as freely and swear as loud as the old sports.  All I saw was new and strange to me and became indelibly fixed on my mind.  I had never before seen such wicked boys, and the men paid no attention to these fast American boys.  I began to wonder if all the people in California were like these, bad and wicked.

Here we learned that Gold Lake was not as rich as reported, so we concluded to take the road and go to Coloma, the place where gold was first found on the American River.

We camped at Coloma all night.  Mr. Bradford got his mule shod and paid sixteen dollars, or in the mining phrase, an ounce of gold dust.  I visited the small town and found that the only lively business place in it was a large gambling house, and I saw money (gold dust) liberally used—­sometimes hundreds of dollars bet on a single card.  When a few hundred or thousand were lost more would be brought on.  The purse would be set in the center of the table and the owners would take perhaps twenty silver dollars or checks, and when they were lost the deposited purse would be handed to the barkeeper, the amount weighed out and the purse returned.  When the purse was empty a friend of the better would bring another, and so the game went on almost in silence.  The game called Monte seemed to be the favorite.  How long these sacks of gold lasted or who eventually got the whole I never knew.  This was a new country with new people, and many seemed to be engaged in a business that was new, strange and hazardous.  The final result of all this was what puzzled me.