reaching the landing place at Sacramento, we took a small boat and rowed to the hotel.  There I found a great crowd of earnest and enthusiastic people, all talking about California, and in the highest spirits.  In fact I did not meet with any one who did not speak in glowing terms of the country and anticipate a sudden acquisition of fortune.  I had already caught the infection myself, and these new crowds and their enthusiasm increased my excitement.  The exuberance of my spirits was marvelous.  The next day I took the little steamer “Lawrence,” for Vernon, which was so heavily laden as to be only eighteen inches out of water; and the passengers, who amounted to a large number, were requested not to move about the deck, but to keep as quiet as possible.  In three or four hours after leaving Sacramento, the Captain suddenly cried out with great energy, “Stop her! stop her!”; and with some difficulty the boat escaped running into what seemed to be a solitary house standing in a vast lake of water.  I asked what place that was, and was answered, “Vernon,”—­the town where I had been advised to settle as affording a good opening for a young lawyer.  I turned to the Captain and said, I believed I would not put out my shingle at Vernon just yet, but would go further on.  The next place we stopped at was Nicolaus, and the following day we arrived at a place called Nye’s Ranch, near the junction of Feather and Yuba Rivers.

No sooner had the vessel struck the landing at Nye’s Ranch than all the passengers, some forty or fifty in number, as if moved by a common impulse, started for an old adobe building, which stood upon the bank of the river, and near which were numerous tents.  Judging by the number of the tents, there must have been from five hundred to a thousand people there.  When we reached the adobe and entered the principal room, we saw a map spread out upon the counter, containing the plan of a town, which was called “Yubaville,” and a man standing behind it, crying out, “Gentlemen, put your names down; put your names down, all you that want lots.”  He seemed to address himself to me, and I asked the price of the lots.  He answered, “Two hundred and fifty dollars each for lots 80 by 160 feet.”  I replied, “But, suppose a man puts his name down and afterwards don’t want the lots?” He rejoined, “Oh, you need not take them if you don’t want them:  put your names down, gentlemen, you that want lots.”  I took him at his word and wrote my name down for sixty-five lots, aggregating in all $16,250.  This produced a great sensation.  To the best of my recollection I had only about twenty dollars left of what Col.  Stevenson had paid me; but it was immediately noised about that a great capitalist had come up from San Francisco to invest in lots in the rising town.  The consequence was that the proprietors of the place waited upon me and showed me great attention.