Mormon island. Five persons, Ira Willis, Jesse B. Martin, Ephraim Green, Israel Evans, together with Hudson and Sidney Willis, were at work, and had, on that day, obtained two hundred and fifty dollars. Bigler here noticed an improvement in mining, for one or two of the Mormons had Indian baskets, and were able in a short time to wash out from twenty-five cents to two dollars.
Bigler arrived at Coloma on the 13th, and from that date he and his friends began mining. It was hard work, for the only tools they had were their knives. He tried to get an Indian basket, but none were available; and so had to use a tray on which he kneeded dough to serve as a washer, while Alick Stevens did good service with his wooden wash-bowl. There was only one tin pan, about the size of an eight quart basin, among all the miners; so they had to carry the dirt in sacks from the dry- gulches, a mile below the mill, to the river, some five to six hundred yards distant, and there wash and separate the gold. In less than three weeks after Bigler's arrival at the saw-mill the great rush to the mines took place, and soon the little gulches were thronged with eager gold-seekers, who disputed Marshall's claim to the land, and dug where they pleased. Among the strangers was an old Sonoran who was evidently a miner. He dug a hole and filled it with water. Then he fitted into it a cotton sheet, into which he shovelled dirt, which the water dissolved, leaving the gold sticking to the cloth. Bigler and Brown then tried the same method, but with partial success.
It was at this juncture, the middle of June 1848, that Bigler, and many others of the Mormon battalion, turned their faces toward the new city of the saints. None tell us how hard it was for them to leave the fascinations of the gold fields for the distant desert, or whether it was hard at all. But it is very certain that there were few in the canons of the
