Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete
viz., to get possession of the ports of Mazatlan and Guaymas, as a
part of the war against Mexico, and not for permanent conquest.
Commodore Shubrick commanded this expedition, and took Halleck
along as his engineer-officer. They captured Mazatlan and Guaymas,
and then called on Colonel Mason to send soldiers down to hold
possession, but he had none to spare, and it was found impossible
to raise other volunteers either in California or Oregon, and the
navy held these places by detachments of sailors and marines till
the end of the war. Burton also called for reenforcements, and
Naglee'a company was sent to him from Monterey, and these three
companies occupied Lower California at the end of the Mexican War.
Major Hardie still commanded at San Francisco and above; Company F,
Third Artillery, and Shannon's company of volunteers, were at
Monterey; Lippett's company at Santa Barbara; Colonel Stevenson,
with one company of his regiment, and the company of the First
Dragoons, was at Los Angeles; and a company of Mormons, reenlisted
out of the Mormon Battalion, garrisoned San Diego--and thus matters
went along throughout 1847 into 1848. I had occasion to make
several trips to Yerba Buena and back, and in the spring of 1848
Colonel Mason and I went down to Santa Barbara in the sloop-of-war
Dale.
I spent much time in hunting deer and bear in the mountains back of
the Carmel Mission, and ducks and geese in the plains of the
Salinas. As soon as the fall rains set in, the young oats would
sprout up, and myriads of ducks, brant, and geese, made their
appearance. In a single day, or rather in the evening of one day
and the morning of the next, I could load a pack-mule with geese
and ducks. They had grown somewhat wild from the increased number
of hunters, yet, by marking well the place where a flock lighted, I
could, by taking advantage of gullies or the shape of the ground,
creep up within range; and, giving one barrel on the ground, and
the other as they rose, I have secured as many as nine at one
discharge. Colonel Mason on one occasion killed eleven geese by
one discharge of small shot. The seasons in California are well
marked. About October and November the rains begin, and the whole
country, plains and mountains, becomes covered with a bright-green
grass, with endless flowers. The intervals between the rains give
the finest weather possible. These rains are less frequent in
March, and cease altogether in April and May, when gradually the
grass dies and the whole aspect of things changes, first to yellow,
then to brown, and by midsummer all is burnt up and dry as an
ashheap.
When General Kearney first departed we took his office at Larkin's;
but shortly afterward we had a broad stairway constructed to lead
from the outside to the upper front porch of the barracks. By
cutting a large door through the adobe-wall, we made the upper room
in the centre our office; and another side-room, connected with it
by a door, was Colonel Mason's private office.
I had a single clerk, a soldier named Baden; and William E. P.
Hartnell, citizen, also had a table in the same room. He was the
government interpreter, and had charge of the civil archives.
After Halleck's return from Mazatlan, he was, by Colonel Mason,
made Secretary of State; and he then had charge of the civil
archives, including the land-titles, of which Fremont first had
possession, but which had reverted to us when he left the country.
I remember one day, in the spring of 1848, that two men, Americans,
came into the office and inquired for the Governor. I asked their
business, and one answered that they had just come down from
Captain Sutter on special business, and they wanted to see Governor
Mason in person. I took them in to the colonel, and left them
together. After some time the colonel came to his door and called
to me. I went in, and my attention was directed to a series of
papers unfolded on his table, in which lay about half an ounce of
placer gold. Mason said to me, "What is that?" I touched it and
examined one or two of the larger pieces, and asked, "Is it gold?"
Mason asked me if I had ever seen native gold. I answered that, in
1844, I was in Upper Georgia, and there saw some native gold, but
it was much finer than this, and that it was in phials, or in
transparent quills; but I said that, if this were gold, it could be
easily tested, first, by its malleability, and next by acids. I
took a piece in my teeth, and the metallic lustre was perfect. I
then called to the clerk, Baden, to bring an axe and hatchet from
the backyard. When these were brought, I took the largest piece
and beat it out flat, and beyond doubt it was metal, and a pure
metal. Still, we attached little importance to the fact, for gold
was known to exist at San Fernando, at the south, and yet was not
considered of much value. Colonel Mason then handed me a letter
from Captain Sutter, addressed to him, stating that he (Sutter) was
engaged in erecting a saw-mill at Coloma, about forty miles up the
American Fork, above his fort at New Helvetia, for the general
benefit of the settlers in that vicinity; that he had incurred
considerable expense, and wanted a "preemption" to the
quarter-section of land on which the mill was located, embracing the
tail-race in which this particular gold had been found. Mason
instructed me to prepare a letter, in answer, for his signature. I
wrote off a letter, reciting that California was yet a Mexican
province, simply held by us as a conquest; that no laws of the
United States yet applied to it, much less the land laws or
preemption laws, which could only apply after a public survey.
Therefore it was impossible for the Governor to promise him (Sutter)
a title to the land; yet, as there were no settlements within forty
miles, he was not likely to be disturbed by trespassers. Colonel
Mason signed the letter, handed it to one of the gentlemen who had
brought the sample of gold, and they departed. That gold was the
first discovered in the Sierra Nevada, which soon revolutionized the
whole country, and actually moved the whole civilized world. About
this time (May and June, 1848), far more importance was attached to
quicksilver. One mine, the New Almaden, twelve miles south of San
Jose, was well known, and was in possession of the agent of a Scotch
gentleman named Forties, who at the time was British consul at
Tepic, Mexico. Mr. Forties came up from San Blas in a small brig,
which proved to be a Mexican vessel; the vessel was seized,
condemned, and actually sold, but Forties was wealthy, and bought
her in. His title to the quicksilver-mine was, however, never
disputed, as he had bought it regularly, before our conquest of the
country, from another British subject, also named Forties, a
resident of Santa Clara Mission, who had purchased it of the
discoverer, a priest; but the boundaries of the land attached to the
mine were even then in dispute. Other men were in search of
quicksilver; and the whole range of mountains near the New Almaden
mine was stained with the brilliant red of the sulphuret of mercury
(cinnabar). A company composed of T. O. Larkin, J. R. Snyder, and
others, among them one John Ricord (who was quite a character), also
claimed a valuable mine near by. Ricord was a lawyer from about
Buffalo, and by some means had got to the Sandwich Islands, where he
became a great favorite of the king, Kamehameha; was his
attorney-general, and got into a difficulty with the Rev. Mr. Judd,
who was a kind of prime-minister to his majesty. One or the other
had to go, and Ricord left for San Francisco, where he arrived while
Colonel Mason and I were there on some business connected with the
customs. Ricord at once made a dead set at Mason with flattery, and
all sorts of spurious arguments, to convince him that our military
government was too simple in its forms for the new state of facts,
and that he was the man to remodel it. I had heard a good deal to
his prejudice, and did all I could to prevent Mason taking him, into
his confidence. We then started back for Monterey. Ricord was
along, and night and day he was harping on his scheme; but he
disgusted Colonel Mason with his flattery, and, on reaching
Monterey, he opened what he called a law-office, but there were
neither courts nor clients, so necessity forced him to turn his
thoughts to something else, and quicksilver became his hobby. In
the spring of 1848 an appeal came to our office from San Jose, which
compelled the Governor to go up in person. Lieutenant Loeser and I,
with a couple of soldiers, went along. At San Jose the Governor
held some kind of a court, in which Ricord and the alcalde had a
warm dispute about a certain mine which Ricord, as a member of the
Larkin Company, had opened within the limits claimed by the New
Almaden Company. On our way up we had visited the ground, and were
therefore better prepared to understand the controversy. We had
found at New Almaden Mr. Walkinshaw, a fine Scotch gentleman, the
resident agent of Mr. Forbes. He had built in the valley, near a
small stream, a few board-houses, and some four or five furnaces for
the distillation of the mercury. These were very simple in their
structure, being composed of whalers' kettles, set in masonry.
These kettles were filled with broken ore about the size of
McAdam-stone, mingled with lime. Another kettle, reversed, formed
the lid, and the seam was luted with clay. On applying heat, the
mercury was volatilized and carried into a chimney-stack, where it
condensed and flowed back into a reservoir, and then was led in
pipes into another kettle outside. After witnessing this process,
we visited the mine itself, which outcropped near the apex of the
hill, about a thousand feet above the furnaces. We found wagons
hauling the mineral down the hill and returning empty, and in the
mines quite a number of Sonora miners were blasting and driving for
the beautiful ore (cinnabar). It was then, and is now, a most
valuable mine. The adit of the mine was at the apex of the hill,
which drooped off to the north. We rode along this hill, and saw
where many openings had been begun, but these, proving of little or
no value, had been abandoned. Three miles beyond, on the west face
of the bill, we came to the opening of the "Larkin Company." There
was evidence of a good deal of work, but the mine itself was filled
up by what seemed a land-slide. The question involved in the
lawsuit before the alcalde at San Jose was, first, whether the mine
was or was not on the land belonging to the New Almaden property;
and, next, whether the company had complied with all the conditions
of the mite laws of Mexico, which were construed to be still in
force in California.
These laws required that any one who discovered a valuable mine on
private land should first file with the alcalde, or judge of the
district, a notice and claim for the benefits of such discovery;
then the mine was to be opened and followed for a distance of at
least one hundred feet within a specified time, and the claimants
must take out samples of the mineral and deposit the same with the
alcalde, who was then required to inspect personally the mine, to
see that it fulfilled all the conditions of the law, before he
could give a written title. In this case the alcalde had been to
the mine and had possession of samples of the ore; but, as the
mouth of the mine was closed up, as alleged, from the act of God,
by a land-slide, it was contended by Ricord and his associates that
it was competent to prove by good witnesses that the mine had been
opened into the hill one hundred feet, and that, by no negligence
of theirs, it had caved in. It was generally understood that
Robert J. Walker, United States Secretary of the Treasury, was then