Although, to tell the truth, I never left a place with more regret, as hard as the fare was.  We were interested every day in the work for gold, and did not know when we might make a rich strike.  My last day there it rained.  Notwithstanding, a companion and myself went out to dig for a couple of hours.  When we returned, we had $25 worth.  That was the last of my mining.  I started the next morning for Sacramento afoot.  I sold my pistol and blankets for an ounce each, $16 apiece.  On my route I met a man bound for the same place.  We joined teams and became very intimate.

The only incident of importance was when we got within five miles of Sacramento.  We stopped at a log cabin and ordered dinner.  A short time after my companion came to me in some excitement and said he had looked through the window and that they were cooking potatoes for dinner.  I could not believe the good news, and so went and looked for myself and found it was true.  I had not tasted one in two months.  We took the steamer Senator that evening for San Francisco.  It had been a Long Island steamboat and had arrived since my departure for the mines.  It was the first steamer that had ever sailed the interior waters of California, and had been put on to run from San Francisco to Sacramento.  I think it belonged to Grenell, Minton & Co., a prominent shipping firm of New York city.  Charley Minton had charge of it.  Of course its profits were great.  But I could not sleep in my state-room berth; I had been so long used to a hard bed I was restless, but we arrived safe the next morning at San Francisco.  The bulk of my book will be events that occurred during my residence in that city.  I scarcely know how to begin to describe it.  My efforts will be to portray them truthfully.  To do so I must continue in the form of a personal narrative.  That is the only way I can recall the events to my mind of so long ago.

At this time more changes took place there in a month than in most any other place in a year.  Every thing was done by the month.  Buildings were rented by the month; money was loaned by the month; ten per cent per month was the regular interest.  There was but one bank, called the Miners’, on the corner of the plaza, owned by three parties.  During my absence a great boom had taken place—­influenced by new arrivals and most favorable news from the gold mining sections.  This was the fall of 1849.  The lots that I had thought of trading six of my houses for had tripled in value, but lumber was still bringing fabulous prices and every thing looked favorable for a big strike on my houses when they arrived.  Montgomery street was on the banks of the bay.  There was one pier at this time constructed from it in the bay, and a temporary pier by Colonel Stevenson at the north beach.  The city was growing up toward Happy Valley.  Portsmouth Square, the plaza, still had some of the adobe buildings on it.  The best hotel was the Parker House, on the west corner of it.  The plaza was sand, no vegetation on it.