But I have passed over a very interesting fact.  As soon as we had returned from our first visit to the gold-mines, it became important to send home positive knowledge of this valuable discovery.  The means of communication with the United States were very precarious, and I suggested to Colonel Mason that a special courier ought to be sent; that Second-Lieutenant Loeser had been promoted to first-lieutenant, and was entitled to go home.  He was accordingly detailed to carry the news.  I prepared with great care the letter to the adjutant-general of August 17, 1848, which Colonel Mason modified in a few Particulars; and, as it was important to send not only the specimens which had been presented to us along our route of travel, I advised the colonel to allow Captain Folsom to purchase and send to Washington a large sample of the commercial gold in general use, and to pay for the same out of the money in his hands known as the “civil fund,” arising from duties collected at the several ports in California.  He consented to this, and Captain Folsom bought an oyster-can full at ten dollars the ounce, which was the rate of value at which it was then received at the custom house.  Folsom was instructed further to contract with some vessel to carry the messenger to South America, where he could take the English steamers as far east as Jamaica, with a conditional charter giving increased payment if the vessel could catch the October steamer.  Folsom chartered the bark La Lambayecana, owned and navigated by Henry D. Cooke, who has since been the Governor of the District of Columbia.  In due time this vessel reached Monterey, and Lieutenant Loeser, with his report and specimens of gold, embarked and sailed.  He reached the South American Continent at Payta, Peru, in time; took the English steamer of October to Panama, and thence went on to Kingston, Jamaica, where he found a sailing vessel bound for New Orleans.  On reaching New Orleans, he telegraphed to the War Department his arrival; but so many delays had occurred that he did not reach Washington in time to have the matter embraced in the President’s regular message of 1848, as we had calculated.  Still, the President made it the subject of a special message, and thus became “official” what had before only reached the world in a very indefinite shape.  Then began that wonderful development, and the great emigration to California, by land and by sea, of 1849 and 1850.

As before narrated, Mason, Warner, and I, made a second visit to the mines in September and October, 1848.  As the winter season approached, Colonel Mason returned to Monterey, and I remained for a time at Sutter’s Fort.  In order to share somewhat in the riches of the land, we formed a partnership in a store at Coloma, in charge of Norman S. Bestor, who had been Warner’s clerk.  We supplied the necessary money, fifteen hundred dollars (five hundred dollars each), and Bestor carried on the store at Coloma for his share.  Out of this investment, each of us