Mr. Larkin then spoke of the effects of the “mineral yellow fever,” as he called it, having been most extraordinary in San Francisco.  When he left that town, he said more than two-thirds of the houses were deserted.  We were not surprised at this, as we knew the people who were continually arriving here must have come from somewhere.  Nearly all the ships in the harbour too had lost a great part of their crews by desertion.  A barque called the Amity had only six men left when Mr. Larkin started from the port.  On board another ship from the Sandwich Islands the captain was left actually and literally alone.  On the road Mr. Larkin fell in with another captain who had started off for the gold region with every man of his crew, leaving his ship unprotected in port.  On Mr. Larkin remonstrating with him on the flagrancy of his conduct, he merely replied, “Oh, I warrant me her cables and anchors are strong enough to last till we get back.”  Mr. Larkin told us what we were fully prepared to hear, namely, that wages and salaries of all classes have risen immensely; clerks, he said, were getting from nine hundred to twelve hundred dollars, instead of from four hundred to five hundred and fifty dollars, with their board.  Both the Star and Californian newspapers, he said, had stopped.  Thinking to surprise us, he told us that shovels which used to be one dollar were selling in San Francisco, when he left, for five and six dollars each.  Bradley replied that he thought this was a very reasonable figure, for he had heard thirty dollars offered for a spade that very day.

“Do you know, by-the-by,” said Mr. Larkin, “who I saw here to-day, up to his knees in water, washing away in a tin pan?  Why, a lawyer who was the Attorney-General to the King of the Sandwich Islands, not eighteen months ago.”—­“I guess,” said Bradley, “he finds gold-washing more profitable than Sandwich Island law; but he’s not the only one of his brethren that is of much the same spirit; there’s lots of lawyers in these diggings.  Well! they are better employed now than ever they were in their lives.  They’re money-getting rascals all the world over; but here they do have to work for it, that’s one comfort.”  Before turning in, we took a stroll through the camp with Mr. Larkin.  It was a bright moonlight night, and some of the more eager diggers were still at work.  These were the new-comers, probably, who were too much excited to sleep without trying their hands at washing the golden gravel.  Mr. Larkin left us the following day.

June 23rd, Friday.—­The last entry in my diary seems to have been written last Sunday.  Next day we began to find the provisions running short.  A consultation was accordingly held upon the subject.  It was quite out of the question to buy provisions in the diggings.  Work as one might, the day’s living of any man with a respectable appetite—­and one seems always to feel hungry here—­would pretty well absorb the day’s labour.  We