of aguardiente we began the toasts.  All that I remember is that Folsom and I spoke for our party; others, Captain Sutter included, made speeches, and before the celebration was over Sutter was enthusiastic, and many others showed the effects of the aguardiente.  The next day (namely, July 5, 1848) we resumed our journey toward the mines, and, in twenty-five miles of as hot and dusty a ride as possible, we reached Mormon Island.  I have heretofore stated that the gold was first found in the tail-race of the stew-mill at Coloma, forty miles above Sutter’s Fort, or fifteen above Mormon Island, in the bed of the American Fork of the Sacramento River.  It seems that Sutter had employed an American named Marshall, a sort of millwright, to do this work for him, but Marshall afterward claimed that in the matter of the saw-mill they were copartners.  At all events, Marshall and the family of Mr. Wimmer were living at Coloma, where the pine-trees afforded the best material for lumber.  He had under him four white men, Mormons, who had been discharged from Cooke’s battalion, and some Indians.  These were engaged in hewing logs, building a mill-dam, and putting up a saw-mill.  Marshall, as the architect, had made the “tub-wheel,” and had set it in motion, and had also furnished some of the rude parts of machinery necessary for an ordinary up-and-down saw-mill.

Labor was very scarce, expensive, and had to be economized.  The mill was built over a dry channel of the river which was calculated to be the tail-race.  After arranging his head-race, dam and tub-wheel, he let on the water to test the goodness of his machinery.  It worked very well until it was found that the tail-race did not carry off the water fast enough, so he put his men to work in a rude way to clear out the tail-race.  They scratched a kind of ditch down the middle of the dry channel, throwing the coarser stones to one side; then, letting on the water again, it would run with velocity down the channel, washing away the dirt, thus saving labor.  This course of action was repeated several times, acting exactly like the long Tom afterward resorted to by the miners.  As Marshall himself was working in this ditch, he observed particles of yellow metal which he gathered up in his hand, when it seemed to have suddenly flashed across his mind that it was gold.  After picking up about an ounce, he hurried down to the fort to report to Captain Sutter his discovery.  Captain Sutter himself related to me Marshall’s account, saying that, as he sat in his room at the fort one day in February or March, 1848, a knock was heard at his door, and he called out, “Come in.”  In walked Marshall, who was a half-crazy man at best, but then looked strangely wild.  “What is the matter, Marshall!” Marshall inquired if any one was within hearing, and began to peer about the room, and look under the bed, when Sutter, fearing that some calamity had befallen the party up at the saw-mill, and that Marshall was really crazy, began