Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete
a partner in this mining company; and a vessel, the bark Gray
Eagle, was ready at San Francisco to sail for New York with the
title-papers on which to base a joint-stock company for speculative
uses. I think the alcalde was satisfied that the law had been
complied with, that he had given the necessary papers, and, as at
that time there was nothing developed to show fraud, the Governor
(Mason) did not interfere. At that date there was no public house
or tavern in San Jose where we could stop, so we started toward
Santa Cruz and encamped about ten miles out, to the west of the
town, where we fell in with another party of explorers, of whom
Ruckel, of San Francisco, was the head; and after supper, as we sat
around the camp-fire, the conversation turned on quicksilver in
general, and the result of the contest in San Jose in particular.
Mason was relating to Ruckel the points and the arguments of
Ricord, that the company should not suffer from an act of God,
viz., the caving in of the mouth of the mine, when a man named
Cash, a fellow who had once been in the quartermaster's employ as a
teamster, spoke up: "Governor Mason, did Judge Ricord say that?"
"Yes," said the Governor; and then Cash related how he and another
man, whose name he gave, had been employed by Ricord to undermine a
heavy rock that rested above the mouth of the mine, so that it
tumbled down, carrying with it a large quantity of earth, and
completely filled it up, as we had seen; "and," said Cash, "it took
us three days of the hardest kind of work." This was the act of
God, and on the papers procured from the alcalde at that time, I
understand, was built a huge speculation, by which thousands of
dollars changed hands in the United States and were lost. This
happened long before the celebrated McGarrahan claim, which has
produced so much noise, and which still is being prosecuted in the
courts and in Congress.
On the next day we crossed over the Santa Cruz Mountains, from
which we had sublime views of the scenery, first looking east
toward the lower Bay of San Francisco, with the bright plains of
Santa Clara and San Jose, and then to the west upon the ocean, the
town of Monterey being visible sixty miles off. If my memory is
correct, we beheld from that mountain the firing of a salute from
the battery at Monterey, and counted the number of guns from the
white puffs of smoke, but could not hear the sound. That night we
slept on piles of wheat in a mill at Soquel, near Santa Cruz, and,
our supplies being short, I advised that we should make an early
start next morning, so as to reach the ranch of Don Juan Antonio
Vallejo, a particular friend, who had a large and valuable
cattle-ranch on the Pajaro River, about twenty miles on our way to
Monterey. Accordingly, we were off by the first light of day, and
by nine o'clock we had reached the ranch. It was on a high point
of the plateau, overlooking the plain of the Pajaro, on which were
grazing numbers of horses and cattle. The house was of adobe, with
a long range of adobe-huts occupied by the semi-civilized Indians,
who at that time did all the labor of a ranch, the herding and
marking of cattle, breaking of horses, and cultivating the little
patches of wheat and vegetables which constituted all the farming
of that day. Every thing about the house looked deserted, and,
seeing a small Indian boy leaning up against a post, I approached
him and asked him in Spanish, "Where is the master?" "Gone to the
Presidio" (Monterey). "Is anybody in the house?" "No." "Is it
locked up?" "Yes." "Is no one about who can get in?" "No."
"Have you any meat?" "No." "Any flour or grain?" "No." "Any
chickens?" "No." "Any eggs?" "No." "What do you live on?"
"Nada" (nothing). The utter indifference of this boy, and the
tone of his answer "Nada," attracted the attention of Colonel
Mason, who had been listening to our conversation, and who
knew enough of Spanish to catch the meaning, and he exclaimed
with some feeling, "So we get nada for our breakfast." I felt
mortified, for I had held out the prospect of a splendid
breakfast of meat and tortillas with rice, chickens, eggs, etc., at
the ranch of my friend Josh Antonio, as a justification for
taking the Governor, a man of sixty years of age, more than
twenty miles at a full canter for his breakfast. But there was
no help for it, and we accordingly went a short distance to a
pond, where we unpacked our mules and made a slim breakfast; on
some scraps of hard bread and a bone of pork that remained in our
alforjas. This was no uncommon thing in those days, when many
a ranchero with his eleven leagues of land, his hundreds of
horses and thousands of cattle, would receive us with all the
grandiloquence of a Spanish lord, and confess that he had nothing
in his house to eat except the carcass of a beef hung up, from
which the stranger might cut and cook, without money or price, what
he needed. That night we slept on Salinas Plain, and the next
morning reached Monterey. All the missions and houses at that
period were alive with fleas, which the natives looked on as
pleasant titillators, but they so tortured me that I always gave
them a wide berth, and slept on a saddle-blanket, with the saddle
for a pillow and the serape, or blanket, for a cover. We never
feared rain except in winter. As the spring and summer of 1848
advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at
Sutter's saw-mill. Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and
spread throughout the land. Everybody was talking of "Gold!
gold!" until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our
soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of
wagons and packmules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning
fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day, and for a
time it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold. Some of
this gold began to come to Yerba Buena in trade, and to disturb the
value of merchandise, particularly of mules, horses, tin pans, and
articles used in mining: I of course could not escape the
infection, and at last convinced Colonel Mason that it was our duty
to go up and see with our own eyes, that we might report the truth
to our Government. As yet we had no regular mail to any part of
the United States, but mails had come to us at long intervals,
around Cape Horn, and one or two overland. I well remember the
first overland mail. It was brought by Kit Carson in saddle-bags
from Taos in New Mexico. We heard of his arrival at Los Angeles,
and waited patiently for his arrival at headquarters. His fame
then was at its height, from the publication of Fremont's books,
and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of
daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still
wilder Indians of the Plains. At last his arrival was reported at
the tavern at Monterey, and I hurried to hunt him up. I cannot
express my surprise at beholding a small, stoop-shouldered man,
with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to
indicate extraordinary courage or daring. He spoke but little, and
answered questions in monosyllables. I asked for his mail, and he
picked up his light saddle-bags containing the great overland mail,
and we walked together to headquarters, where he delivered his
parcel into Colonel Mason's own hands. He spent some days in
Monterey, during which time we extracted with difficulty some items
of his personal history. He was then by commission a lieutenant in
the regiment of Mounted Rifles serving in Mexico under Colonel
Sumner, and, as he could not reach his regiment from California,
Colonel Mason ordered that for a time he should be assigned to duty
with A. J. Smith's company, First Dragoons, at Los Angeles. He
remained at Los Angeles some months, and was then sent back to the
United Staten with dispatches, traveling two thousand miles almost
alone, in preference to being encumbered by a large party.
Toward the close of June, 1848, the gold-fever being at its height,
by Colonel Mason's orders I made preparations for his trip to the
newly-discovered gold-mines at Sutter's Fort. I selected four good
soldiers, with Aaron, Colonel Mason's black servant, and a good
outfit of horses and pack-mules, we started by the usually traveled
route for Yerba Buena. There Captain Fulsom and two citizens
joined our party. The first difficulty was to cross the bay to
Saucelito. Folsom, as quartermaster, had a sort of scow with a
large sail, with which to discharge the cargoes of ships, that
could not come within a mile of the shore. It took nearly the
whole day to get the old scow up to the only wharf there, and then
the water was so shallow that the scow, with its load of horses,
would not float at the first high tide, but by infinite labor on
the next tide she was got off and safely crossed over to Saucelito.
We followed in a more comfortable schooner. Having safely landed
our horses and mules, we picked up and rode to San Rafael Mission,
stopping with Don Timoteo Murphy. The next day's journey took us
to Bodega, where lived a man named Stephen Smith, who had the only
steam saw-mill in California. He had a Peruvian wife, and employed
a number of absolutely naked Indians in making adobes. We spent a
day very pleasantly with him, and learned that he had come to
California some years before, at the personal advice of Daniel
Webster, who had informed him that sooner or later the United
States would be in possession of California, and that in
consequence it would become a great country. From Bodega we
traveled to Sonoma, by way of Petaluma, and spent a day with
General Vallejo. I had been there before, as related, in the
business of the alcalde Nash. From Sonoma we crossed over by way
of Napa, Suisun, and Vaca's ranch, to the Puta. In the rainy
season, the plain between the Puta and Sacramento Rivers is
impassable, but in July the waters dry up; and we passed without
trouble, by the trail for Sutter's Embarcadero. We reached the
Sacramento River, then full of water, with a deep, clear current.
The only means of crossing over was by an Indian dugout canoe. We
began by carrying across our packs and saddles, and then our
people. When all things were ready, the horses were driven into
the water, one being guided ahead by a man in the canoe. Of
course, the horses and mules at first refused to take to the water,
and it was nearly a day's work to get them across, and even then
some of our animals after crossing escaped into the woods and
undergrowth that lined the river, but we secured enough of them to
reach Sutter's Fort, three miles back from the embcarcadero, where
we encamped at the old slough, or pond, near the fort. On
application, Captain Butter sent some Indians back into the bushes,
who recovered and brought in all our animals. At that time there
was not the sign of a habitation there or thereabouts, except the
fort, and an old adobe-house, east of the fort, known as the
hospital. The fort itself was one of adobe-walls, about twenty
feet high, rectangular in form, with two-story block houses at
diagonal corners. The entrance was by a large gate, open by day
and closed at night, with two iron ship's guns near at hand.
Inside there was a large house, with a good shingle-roof, used as a
storehouse, and all round the walls were ranged rooms, the fort
wall being the outer wall of the house. The inner wall also was of
adobe. These rooms were used by Captain Sutter himself and by his
people. He had a blacksmith's shop, carpenter's shop, etc., and
other rooms where the women made blankets. Sutter was monarch of
all he surveyed, and had authority to inflict punishment even unto
death, a power he did not fail to use. He had horses, cattle, and