While I was still here the now famous Downieville Butte quartz mine was discovered, but there was no way then of working quartz successfully, and just at that time very little was done with it, but afterward, when it was learned how to work it, and the proper machinery introduced, it yielded large sums of bullion.
The miners had a queer way of calling every man by some nickname or other instead of his true name, and no one seemed offended at it, but answered to his new name as readily as to any.
It was nearly fall when we found we had worked our claims out, and there were no new ones we could locate here, so we concluded to go prospecting for a new locality. I bought a donkey in town of a Mr. Hawley, a merchant, for which I paid sixty dollars, and gave the little fellow his old master’s name. We now had two animals, and we packed on them our worldly goods, and started south up the mountain trail by way of the city of six, where some half dozen men had located claims, but the ground was dry and deep, so we went on.
We still went south, down toward the middle Yuba River and when about half way down the mountain side came to a sort of level bench where some miners were at work, but hardly any water could be had. They called this Minnesota. We stayed here a day or two, but as there seemed to be no possible further development of water, concluded to go on further. Across the river we could see a little flat, very similar to the one we were on, and a little prospecting seemed to have been done on the side of the mountain. We had a terribly steep canon to cross, and a river also, with no trail to follow, but our donkeys were as good climbers as any of us, so we started down the mountain in the morning, and arrived at the river about noon. Here we rested an hour or two and then began climbing the brushy mountain side. The hill was very steep, and the sun beat down on us with all his heat, so that with our hard labor and the absence of any wind we found it a pretty hot place.
It was pretty risky traveling in some places, and we had to help the donkeys to keep them from rolling down the hill, pack and all. It took us four hours to make a mile and a half or two miles in that dense brush, and we were nearly choked when we reached the little flat. Here we found some water, but no one lived here. From here we could see a large flat across a deep canon to the west, and made up our minds to try to go to it. We went around the head of the canon, and worked through the brush and fallen timber, reaching our objective point just as night was coming on. This flat, like the one we had left, was quite level, and contained, perhaps, nearly one hundred acres. Here we found two men at work with a “long tom”—a Mr. Fernay and a Mr. Bloat. They had brought the water of a small spring to their claim and were making five or six dollars per day. We now prospected around the edge of this flat, and getting pretty fair prospects concluded we would locate here if we could get water.