was good for any store bills.  Its always treating the crowd had made it popular, and nobody would trade with the storekeeper who would not trust it, so it was death to the prosperity of the storekeeper, whether he trusted it or not.  They never got any gold while there through “dummy,” and when he left to go further down the river to try another place, the main storekeeper there lost $800 by trusting it, which broke him.  These stores were tents, to supply immediate wants of the miners.  I never heard of “dummy” afterward.  I have no doubt he operated on all the store tents until he came to grief like all evil-doers.

The productiveness of the gold rivers had not diminished any that I could perceive.  I talked to a man who had been off a little ways to prospect in another place.  I asked him what luck?  He said, there was nothing there.  I said, was there no gold?  He said; yes, there was some, but of no value.  He said a man could make $10 a day, and who was a going to waste their time on that.  My visit over, I returned to San Francisco.  My friend R.’s brewery was not completed.  I was informed he had been borrowing money from a Jew at twenty per cent a month.  It was no use for me to back him any more, however valuable it might be, if completed, and I had no doubt there was a fortune in it, but neither he nor I had the capital to do it.

I had some other financial entangling matters, and I was afraid if I kept on with them I might get broke, and the only way I saw of getting out with them was to announce that I was going to leave, and going down to Relago, Central America.

There was an English steamer advertised to sail for that port and Panama.  I thought I would go for sixty days and then return and commence again and manage my affairs in a more conservative way, and what I could control.  Well I closed my matters out the best I could and engaged my passage on the steamer for Relago.  There was considerable excitement at this time about the Nicaragua route.  The above place would be the terminus on the Pacific coast, and, consequently, a place of importance.  As I had missed it in trading six of my houses for lots in San Francisco, there might be a chance to get some there in advance of any rise on them.  Any way, I wanted to get out of my entangling alliances and take a fresh start.  The night before I sailed Mr. Brady (Colonel Stevenson’s son-in-law) came to me and said the colonel did not like to have me go.  I told him I had paid my passage, $200.  He said the colonel understood that.  He put his hand in his vest pocket and pulled out a roll of bills.  He said, here is the $200, which he told me to give you, so you will not lose any thing by not going.  There was once a lady, the wife of one of the officers of his regiment, who arrived there, expecting to meet her husband, but he was up in the country.  The colonel asked me to go down to the steamer and meet her, and escort her to a boarding-house to stay until her husband arrived, which I did.  I told him that she was short of funds, having expected to meet her husband.  He gave me $150 and told me to give it to her, as if I loaned it to her, and when her husband paid me I could return it to him.  I mention these little incidents to show that whatever faults he may have had, he was the most generous of friends.