Mark D. Manlove

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finally went off. When they were fairly out of sight we went on as fast as possible. Just before night Miller and his companions overtook us and because of the Indians we all kept as near together as we could and camped about two hundred yards apart in the deep grass, holding the lariets [lariats] of our mules.

We got up early the next morning and started, leaning Miller and the others behind.

When we got near the head of Truckee river [River], near the summit of the mountain, we saw the cabin where the Donner Dodder [Donner] family and company starved. They started thru in '46 and got caught in the snow in the mountains in the fall. Indians discovered them in the spring and carried the news to Sutter's Fort. The whites made up a company and went up after them. Those that were alive had lived on human flesh during the winter. There was one woman, when the rescuing party came after them, hid her husband's heart to eat on the road.

To show how deep the snow had been, the stumps left where they had cut off the trees stood eight and ten feet high. That day we crossed over the summit of the Rockies and started down Bear river [River]. There was a small trail and a pack mule company ahead of us. There was a grizzly bear track twelve inches wide. Probably this fellow weighed fifteen or sixteen hundred pounds.

We overtook a fellow from Michigan, who was riding a big bay mare and had a sack of crackers, and more provision then he needed to take him thru, but he would neither sell nor give us anything. He said it

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might be worth a great deal when he got thru. He got ahead of us, but after a while we caught eight of him motioning to us. When we got up to him, he asked if we had any arms. I said "Yes, I have two." He said he meant had we any guns or pistols, I told him I had an old pistol and asked him what he wanted with it. He said he saw an Indian. We went on and saw no more Indians.

When we got down to where Bear River runs into Sacramento Valley there was good grass and we stopped to let our mules rest and eat grass about twelve o'clock (noon). About three o'clock Charley Miller and the two Michigan men came in. We were that much ahead of them. They stopped a short distance from us. I went over and told Charley that we were out of money and out of provision and I wanted to borrow a little money till we could get thru to Sacramento. He said he was about as bad off as we were, but he had a half dollar and some beans. He said for me to take the half dollar and go up to the little trading post (one store) and buy all the beef I could with it and we would boil the beef and beans together and we would eat and rest till evening. The money bought a pound of beef.

It was about fifty or fifty-five miles to Sacramento City. We started in the evening and got thru to Sutter's Fort, about two and onehalf miles out of Sacramento, next day about ten o'clock. Miller thought he would meet some of his St. Louis friends, Chickens, he called them, and we would get all we wanted.

John and I watched the animals at Sutter's Fort, while the rest of

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them walked down to Sacramento. Miller sent word back by the old fellow who had the crackers and the big bay mare, to come on down, that he had met his friends and to leave his mules at the Fort on the grass.

When we got down near the river there were hundreds of tents all over where the City of Sacramento now stands.

I looked after the mules while John went down toward the river to see what we could do. He came back in about a half hour and said he had hired out for us two at ten dollars a piece a day and board and to come down and get our dinner and go to work.

There were two men who were keeping a store in a tent and they wanted to put up a frame building and cover it with canvas for a store building. The work we were wanted for was to saw off blocks to use for a foundation for the corners, and to carry lumber to the carpenters. We worked till evening. That was the fourth building put up in Sacramento City. These men wanted a well dug, and John and I dug the first well in the City. We had the choice of doing the work at ten dollars a day each, or taking it by the job at three dollars a foot. We took it by the job and in just two and a half days we had made sixty dollars clear.

Three days after we arrived at Sacramento the other boys came in on the Carson river road. We had gained that much time on them. We were on the way 83 days from the time we left St. Joe, Mo. St. Joseph, Missouri. We were very glad to meet. They had had hard luck too. There were four of them and their mules had given out on the desert and they had had to

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leave them and get down to water. The Indians stole their packs.

The next day three or four of us got a skiff and crossed the Sacramento river [River] to take a hunt. The land was a good deal lower on that side and all grown up in rushes, (Tulie [Tule] swamps they were called) for two and one-half miles from the river. I saw three deer and shot two of them. I got one; the other got away. We then had plenty of good fresh venison.

The next day we bought provision and started for the mines. Our provision was beans, sugar, coffee, flour and pork. Flour was about ten cents a pound.

We started to go to Deer Creek, about ninety-five miles, but we stopped about half way up and dug gold two or three days. We bought pans and washed it out. I made seven dollars the first day, which was more than the others made.

When we got to Deer Creek, where Nevada now stands, we struck digging where we could make sixteen dollars a day each. An ounce a day, we called it. After working there a couple of weeks, they sent me back to Sacramento for provisions. I took four mules; packed three and rode one. It took me nearly a week to make the trip. It was a long lonesome trip. I don't remember of meeting or seeing anyone on the way. I got my provision and coming back camped one night in Sacramento valley. I took the packs off the mules and let them run loose. I rolled up in a quilt for the night. A coyote came within three feet of where I lay and gnawed the straps that held the meat. That night for supper I ate

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bread that I had gotten in the City and vinegar I did not want to open the packs for. I heard wild cattle bellowing and grizzly bears might come along and get to smelling of the food. While I was gone Jonathan got sick and nearly died.

Along about November we left there, as we were afraid the snow would get too deep for us to work during the winter. We went back to Sacramento, laid in a supply of food and went east near Hangtown Placerville, California, or Placer Mills, as it was sometimes called.

There we found good digging, and as we couldn't get provision up there after the rainy season had set in as the mules and wagon would mire down, Jonathan took the mules and brought up 1100 lbs. of provision. Jonathan was a good deer hunter and he kept us well supplied with venison and some to sell. We could get $1.25 a pound for any kind of provision we had on hand that we could spare. We took one boarder, a man named Goldie from St. Louis at $16.00 a week. We camped out the first two weeks while we were building a shanty. It rained nearly all the time those two weeks, but we got our cabin done and when we moved into it were very comfortable. It was made of logs and clapboards for covering.

The next summer John got tired of digging gold, so he went down and hired out to a ranchman named Scofield for $200.00 a month and board. Scofield hired a Mormon boy to help part of the time. There was a deep pool of water nearby, about 30 feet deep, where they practised [practiced] diving nearly every day, each trying to see which could dive