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while he and others " were in the lower end of the mill-race, Marshall the overseer and his little girl came in, and the child picked up a pretty stone, as she called it, and showed it to her father who pro- nounced it gold. He was so excited about it that he saddled his horse and that day rode to Sutter's fort to tell Captain Sutter, but he did not believe it worth mtice, and for a while the idea died away. The Mormons wishing to keep their discoveries a secret from people not Mormons worked out the gold and said nothmg more . . . Marshall died either four days before he arrived home in the eastern states with a barrel of gold, or four days from the coast." Amongst the falsehoods so thickly scattered here, it is difficult to detect a particle of truth. Marshall never went east never had a barrel of gold ; was not dead ; the Mormons never worked out the gold ; never wished to keep their discovery secret from all who were not Mormons, nor did they first discover gold; Evans was not present when the first gold was found at the saw-mill ; the idea with Sutter never died away ; Cox and Beardsley were not the first to find Mormon Island ; Sutter did believe Marshall's statement backed by tne evidence worth his notice ; Marshall's child did not pick up the gold ; Marshall had no child present ; and so on back to the beginning. I must apologize for occupying so much space in criticising a work so unworthy of notice as that of George M. Evans; but if this for myself be necessary, I should apolo- gize in a ten-fold degree for the many journalists, here and in the east, who published his Munch au- senisms as facts, and thus imposed on a credulous public. One of his statements Evans concludes with the oflensivo intimation that he would not ob- ject to a gift from the government in return for the inestimable benefit conferred by him on mankind. Several attempts have been made to rob Marshall of the honor of the discovery ; but so far from the exist- ence of extensive gold deposits being known prior to
