Rincon Point, on Telegraph Hill, was the spot where ships and steamers were signalled.  Steamers coming in but once a month, they brought the last news from the East.  The New York papers were peddled at $1 each.  Long lines of people were formed to get the mail, and you had to take sometimes half a day before you could reach the office.  Oakland, opposite the bay, had no existence.  Goat Island had plenty of wild goats on it, and we could never imagine how the first goat ever got there.  There was no scarcity of meat—­plenty of beef and grizzly bears were hung out at the doors of the restaurants as a sign, and plenty of venison.  I can recall now to my mind, venison steaks that we would get in the evening with their rich jellies on it.  The luxuries of Asia were coming in there.  Many China restaurants with their signs from Canton or Pekin.  But there was a great scarcity of vegetables.  Onions and potatoes sold for forty cents per pound.

A day or two after my arrival, my friend who came down with me from the mines came to me and said that there were a lot of blankets to be sold at auction; that he had no money, or he would buy them; that if I would buy them he would take them up in the mines and peddle them out for me for half of the profit.  As I knew they were in great demand there—­I had sold, when I left there, mine for $16—­I told him if he could buy them for $4 per pair to bid them off and I would furnish the money to pay for them.  He came back in a short time and said he had bought them, and that they came to $800.  We had them taken to the steamer Senator to ship to Sacramento.  We paid $10 a load to have them carted from the store where they were bought to the steamer. (The result of this speculation later on.)

There were at this time several hundred vessels anchored in the bay, deserted by their officers and crews.  A ship could be bought for probably one-third of what it was worth in New York, and I conceived the project of buying a ship as soon as I sold my houses, which I expected soon to arrive, being on so fast a ship as the Prince de Joinville, and going myself to the Sandwich Islands and buying a load of onions and potatoes, as I was informed that they could be bought as cheap there as in the States, and ciphered out that one successful venture of that kind would make my fortune.  So I went among the idle ships to see what I could do in that line, and to have one selected, ready to close the bargain as soon as the houses arrived.  I came across a brig that had been running to Sacramento, but was condemned as a foreign bottom, when Collier, the collector, arrived there, a short time before, and extended the marine laws of the United States over California.  The captain and crew were aboard.  The captain was an Englishman; the crew, cosmopolitan—­a Hindostan, a Mexican named Edwin Jesus, an English sailor and an American.  I inquired of the captain about the history of the vessel.  He said she