THE MILL MEN. SI
sistant of Marshall, and occupied in superintending the Indians digging in the race. Henry W. Bigler was drilling at its head; Charles Bennett and William Scott were working at the bench ; Alexander Stephens and James Barger were hewing timber; Azariah Smith and William Johnson were felling trees; and James O. Brown was whip-sawing with a savage.^*
They were a cheerful set, working with a will, yet with a touch of insouciance, imparted to some extent by the picturesque Mexican sombrero and sashes, and sustained by an interchange of banter at the sim- plicity or awkwardness of the savages. In Marshall they had a passable master, though sometimes called queer. He was a man fitted by physique and tem- perament for the backwoods life, which had lured and held him. Of medium size, strong rather than well developed, his features were coarse, with a thin beard round the chin and mouth, cut short like the brown hair; broad forehead and penetrating eyes, by no means unintelligent, yet lacking intellectuality, at times gloomily bent on vacancy, at times flashing with impatience.^^ He was essentially a man of moods; his mind was of dual complexion. In the plain and
liah pronancuktion to Wimmer. Bigler, Diary ^ MS., 60, haa Werner, which approaches the Weimer form.
- Among thoee who had set out with Marshall uppn the first expedition of
oonstrnction were Ira Willis, Sidney Willis, William Kountze, and Ezekiel Persons. The Willis brothers and Kountzo returned to the fort in Septem- ber 1847, the two former to assist Sutter in throwing a dam across the Amer- ican River at the grist-mill, and the latter on account of ill health. Mention is maile of one Evans, sent by Sutter with Bigler, Smith, and Johnson, Ben- nett and Scott following a little later; but whether Evans or Persons M'ere on the ground at this time, or had left, no one states. Bigler, Stephens, Brown, Barger, Johnson, Smith, the brothers Willis, and Kountze had formerly be- longed to the Mormon battalion.
" Broad enough across the chest, free and natural in movement, he thought lightly of fatiffue and hardships. His complexion was a little shaded; the mouth declined toward the comers; the nose and head were well shaped. In this estimate I am assisted by an old daguerreotype lying before me, and which reminds me of Marshall s answer to the editor of IJutchings* Mcuj'tzine in 1857, when asked for his likeness. *I wish to say that I feel it a duty I o^e to myself,' he writes from Coloma the 5th of Sept.. * to retain my like- ness, as it is in fact all I have that Ican call my own; and I feel like any other poor wretch, I want something for self. The sale of it may yet keep nie from starving, or it mav buv me a dose of medicine in sickness, or pay fur the fnneral of a dog, and such is all that I expect* judging from former kind- Dosses. I owe the country nothing. '
