I now loaned Mr. Hall, with whom I lived, six hundred dollars to enable
him to cross the plains to California and try to make his fortune. To
secure this I took a mortgage on his eighty-acre farm, and he set out to
make the journey. I had another eighty acres of land near here which I
bought at government price before going to California, but I could not
now sell it for what it cost me. When I went away I had left my chest
and contents with my friend Samuel Zollinger, and he had kept it safely,
so I now made him my lawful agent. I placed my narrative and some other
papers in the chest and gave the key into his charge, while I went
north, across the Wisconsin River, to visit my old hunting and trapping
friend, Robert McCloud. Here I made a very pleasant visit of perhaps a
week, and the common prospects of the country were freely talked over.
It seemed to us as if the good times were still far off; every day was
like Sunday so far as anything going on; no money in circulation, many
places abandoned, and, like myself, many had gone to California to seek
gold instead of lead. (The mines at Mineral Point are mostly of lead,
with some copper.)
Looking at matters in this light it did not need a great deal of
McCloud's persuasion to induce me to go back with him to California, all
the more so as my little pile seemed to look smaller every day, while
three or four years ago it would have seemed quite large. Deciding to
go, I wrote to Mr. Zollinger to send the account I had written to my
parents in Michigan, reading it first himself, and admonishing him not
to lend it.
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