Island, so that in July, 1848, we found about three hundred of them there at work.  Sam Brannan was on hand as the high-priest, collecting the tithes.  Clark, of Clark’s Point, an early pioneer, was there also, and nearly all the Mormons who had come out in the Brooklyn, or who had staid in California after the discharge of their battalion, had collected there.  I recall the scene as perfectly to-day as though it were yesterday.  In the midst of a broken country, all parched and dried by the hot sun of July, sparsely wooded with live-oaks and straggling pines, lay the valley of the American River, with its bold mountain-stream coming out of the Snowy Mountains to the east.  In this valley is a fiat, or gravel-bed, which in high water is an island, or is overflown, but at the time of our visit was simply a level gravel-bed of the river.  On its edges men were digging, and filling buckets with the finer earth and gravel, which was carried to a machine made like a baby’s cradle, open at the foot, and at the head a plate of sheet-iron or zinc, punctured full of holes.  On this metallic plate was emptied the earth, and water was then poured on it from buckets, while one man shook the cradle with violent rocking by a handle.  On the bottom were nailed cleats of wood.  With this rude machine four men could earn from forty to one hundred dollars a day, averaging sixteen dollars, or a gold ounce, per man per day.  While the’ sun blazed down on the heads of the miners with tropical heat, the water was bitter cold, and all hands were either standing in the water or had their clothes wet all the time; yet there were no complaints of rheumatism or cold.  We made our camp on a small knoll, a little below the island, and from it could overlook the busy scene.  A few bush-huts near by served as stores, boardinghouses, and for sleeping; but all hands slept on the ground, with pine-leaves and blankets for bedding.  As soon as the news spread that the Governor was there, persons came to see us, and volunteered all kinds of information, illustrating it by samples of the gold, which was of a uniform kind, “scale-gold,” bright and beautiful.  A large variety, of every conceivable shape and form, was found in the smaller gulches round about, but the gold in the river-bed was uniformly “scale-gold.”  I remember that Mr. Clark was in camp, talking to Colonel Mason about matters and things generally, when he inquired, “Governor, what business has Sam Brannan to collect the tithes here?” Clark admitted that Brannan was the head of the Mormon church in California, and he was simply questioning as to Brannan’s right, as high-priest, to compel the Mormons to pay him the regular tithes.  Colonel Mason answered, “Brannan has a perfect right to collect the tax, if you Mormons are fools enough to pay it.”  “Then,” said Clark, “I for one won’t pay it any longer.”  Colonel Mason added:  “This is public land, and the gold is the property of the United States; all of you here are trespassers, but, as the Government