It was located high in the mountains and could be easily drained
and a fortune soon obtained if we got there in time and said nothing to
anyone we might meet on the road. We might succeed in getting a claim
before they were all taken up. We followed along the foothills without a
road, and when we came to the Stanislaus River we had to patronize a
ferry and pay half an ounce each again. We thought their scale weights
were rather heavy and their ferrymen well paid.
We continued along the foothills without any trail until we struck the
road from Sacramento to Hangtown. This sounded like a bad name for a
good village, but we found it was fittingly named after some ugly devils
who were hanged there. The first house that we came to on this road was
the Mormon Tavern. Here were some men playing cards for money, and two
boys, twelve or fourteen years old, playing poker for the same and
trying in every way to ape the older gamblers and bet their money as
freely and swear as loud as the old sports. All I saw was new and
strange to me and became indelibly fixed on my mind. I had never before
seen such wicked boys, and the men paid no attention to these fast
American boys. I began to wonder if all the people in California were
like these, bad and wicked.
Here we learned that Gold Lake was not as rich as reported, so we
concluded to take the road and go to Coloma, the place where gold was
first found on the American River.
We camped at Coloma all night.
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