Gold! by Fred Rosen Page B

the very land on which the prospectors were prospecting. The confidential agent shows a distinct lack of bigotry, rare in the nineteenth century, but for a man of Larkin’s breeding, not uncommon. He sees the gold fever seizing everyone regardless of race—Chinese, white makes no difference; regardless of profession, from sailors to merchants, all of them united in one common goal: the pursuit of gold.
    At first glance, it looked like Marshall’s discovery had brought out the greed in people’s character. But looked at more closely, and Larkin saw this, the gold and the possibility of getting it offered hope and redemption to literally anyone. There was an egalitarian aspect to the gold fields that was distinctly American that Larkin refers to, specifically that anyone with a pan could find the stuff; there was no magic to it. Placer gold was so plentiful, all you had to do was literally dip your pan in the black sand, sift through it, and just about every time, you were going to find some shiny flecks in the bottom of your pan.
    During the next four weeks, Larkin rode out from San Francisco and went to Sacramento and on to the goldfields. When he got back to his base in Monterey, he sat on his veranda and wrote his next letter to Secretary Buchanan, which would be delivered to the president:
    Monterey, California, June 28, 1848.
    Sir: My last dispatch to the State Department was written in San Francisco, the 1st of this Month. In that I had the honour to give some information respecting the new “placer,” or gold regions lately discovered on the branches of the Sacramento River. Since the writing of that dispatch I have visited a part of the gold region, and found it all I had heard, and much more than I anticipated. The part that I visited was upon a fork of the American River, a branch of the Sacramento, joining the main river at Sutter’s Fort. The place in which I found the people digging was about twenty-five miles from the fort by land.
    I have reason to believe that gold will be found on many branches of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers. People are already scattered over one hundred miles of land, and it is supposed that the “placer” extends from river to river. At present, the workmen are employed within ten or twenty yards of the river, that they may be convenient to water. On Feather River, there are several branches upon which the people are digging for gold. This is two or three days’ ride from the place I visited.
    At my camping place I found, on a surface of twoor three miles on the banks of the river, some fifty tents, mostly owned by Americans. These had their families. There are no Californians who have taken their families as yet to the gold regions; but few or none will ever do it; some from New Mexico may do so next year, but no Californians.
    I was two nights at a tent occupied by eight Americans, viz., two sailors, one clerk, two carpenters, and three daily workmen. These men were in company; had two machines, each made from one hundred feet of boards (worth there 150 dollars, in Monterey 15 dollars—being one day’s work), made similar to a child’s cradle, ten feet long, with out the ends.
    The two evenings I saw these eight men bring to their tents the labour of the day. I suppose they made each 50 dollars per day; their own calculation was two pounds of gold a-day—four ounces to a man—64 dollars. I saw two brothers that worked together, and only worked by washing the dirt in a tin pan, weigh the gold they obtained in one day; the result was 7 dollars to one, 82 dollars to the other. There were two reasons for this difference; one man worked less hours than the other, and by chance had ground less impregnated with gold. I give this statement as an extreme case.
    During my visit I was an interpreter for a native of Monterey, who was purchasing a machine or canoe. I first tried to purchase boards and hire a carpenter for him.