in width,
and one inch thick. It is flat, and on one side are deeply cut, in legible letters, these words :
1818
GOLD CAVE IN THIS M. SHIP LODES L M
This cabalistic stone is said to have been picked up on the west branch of Feather river, in 1850, by William Thomas, and given by him to A. J. Pithan, of San Jose, in 1851. Mr Thomas, after diligent search, was unable to find the gold cave. Discussions of possibilities or probabilities are wholly useless. The chances are a hundred to one, in my opinion, that some miner of 1849 cut the letters for pastime, and then threw the stone away, or gave it to some one to make a good story out of.
And now comes Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo with similar testimony, that the Spaniards in California knew of gold, but could not profit by their knowledge on account of the Indians. In the first volume of his Historia de California he further states that, in 1824, while Captain Pablo de la Portilla was encamped at San Emilio, Lieutenant Antonio del Valle, who had a stock of beads, blankets, and tobacco, traded his goods with the Chauchilas and Jozimas for fourteen thousand dollars in gold, "chispas de oro," emphasiz- ing his statement by the further assertion that " el teniente del valle trajo el oro a Monterey, y lo he tenido en mis manos ; y por e&o respondo de la verdad del hecho."
Jose de Jesus Pico, still living in San Luis Obispo, asserts that Father Martinez, the minister of the mis- sion of that name, gave him and three fellow-soldiers, in 1829, twenty ounces of gold in one ounce balls, and that he believes the father must have picked it up at the place named San Jose, near the mission. He suspected that several Spaniards were for a
