We had a very pleasant home and were comfortable and happy.  We had a horse, cows, rabbits, and pigeons.  Our garden furnished berries and vegetables in plenty.  The Indians sold fish, and I provided at first rabbits and then ducks and geese.  One delicious addition to our table was novel to us.  As a part of the redwood’s undergrowth was a tall bush that in its season yielded a luscious and enormous berry called the salmon-berry.  It was much like a raspberry, generally salmon in color, very juicy and delicate, approximating an inch and a half in diameter.  Armed with a long pole, a short section of a butt limb forming a sort of shepherd’s crook, I would pull down the heavily laden branches and after a few moments in the edge of the woods would be provided with a dessert fit for any queen, and so appropriate for my mother.

California in those early days seemed wholly dependent on the foreign markets.  Flour came from Chile, “Haxall” being the common brand; cheese from Holland and Switzerland; cordials, sardines, and prunes from France; ale and porter from England; olives from Spain; whiskey from Scotland.  Boston supplied us with crackers, Philadelphia sent us boots, and New Orleans furnished us with sugar and molasses.

The stores that supplied the mines carried almost everything—­provisions, clothing, dry goods, and certainly wet goods.  At every store there was found an open barrel of whiskey, with a convenient glass sampler that would yield through the bunghole a fair-sized drink to test the quality.  One day I went into a store where a clever Chinaman was employed.  He had printed numerous placards announcing the stock.  I noticed a fresh one that seemed incongruous.  It read, “Codfish and Cologne Water.”  I said, “What’s the idea?” He smilingly replied, “You see its place?  I hang it over the whiskey-barrel.  Some time man come to steal a drink.  I no see him; he read sign, he laugh, I hear him, I see him.”

There was no school in the town when we came.  It troubled my mother that my brother and sister must be without lessons.  Several other small children were deprived of opportunity.  In the emergency we cleaned out a room in the store, formerly occupied by a county officer, and I organized a very primary school.  I was almost fifteen, but the children were good and manageable.  I did not have very many, and fortunately I was not called upon to teach very long.  There came to town a clever man, Robert Desty.  He wanted to teach.  There was no school building, but he built one all by his own hands.  He suggested that I give up my school and become a pupil of his.  I was very glad to do it.  He was a good and ingenious teacher.  I enjoyed his lessons about six months, and then felt I must help my father.  My stopping was the only graduation in my experience.