I noticed some places in the streets where it was muddy and a narrow walk had been made out of boxes of tobacco, and sometimes even bacon was used for the same purpose.  Transportation from the city to the mines was very slow and made by schooner.  Ship loads of merchandise had arrived and been unloaded, and the sailors having run away to the mines, everything except whiskey and cards was neglected.  Whiskey sold at this place for fifty cents a drink.

A man at the tavern where we stopped tried hard to sell me a fifty-vara lot there in the edge of the mud (near where the Custom House now stands) for six hundred dollars.  I thought this a pretty high price and besides such a lot was no use to me, for I had never lived in town and could not so easily see the uses to which such property could be put.  It seemed very doubtful to me that this place would ever be much larger or amount to much, for it evidently depended on the mines for a support, and these were so shallow that it looked as if they would be worked out in a short time and the country and town both be deserted.  And I was not alone in thinking that the country would soon be deserted, for accustomed as we all had been to a showery summer, these dry seasons would seem entirely to prevent extensive farming.  Some cursed the country and said they were on their way to “good old Missouri, God’s own country.”  Hearing so much I concluded it would be wise not to invest, but to get me back to Wisconsin again.

The steamer we took passage in was the Northerner, advertised to sail on the twenty-ninth day of November, 1850.  The cabin room was all engaged, and they charged us nine ounces for steerage passage; but I did not care as much about their good rooms and clean sheets as I would have done at one time, for I had been a long time without either and did not care to pay the difference.  When we were at the ship’s office we had to take our turns to get tickets.  One man weighed out the dust, and another filled out certificates.  When the callers began to get a little scarce I looked under the counter where I saw a whole panful of dust to which they added mine to make the pile a little higher.  They gave out no berths with these tickets, but such little things as that did not trouble us in the least.  It was far better fare than we used to have in and about Death Valley, and we thought we could live through anything that promised better than the desert.

The passenger list footed up four hundred and forty, and when all got on board, at about ten o’clock in the morning, there was hardly room for all to stand up comfortably.  It seemed to me to be a very much over-crowded boat in which to put to sea, but we floated out into the current, with all the faces toward the shore, and hats and handkerchiefs waving goodbye to those who had come down to see the home-goers safely off.