of dollars. These dollars quickly returned to the
original deposit, in payment for goods bought at the
other end of the store."
Owing to the scarcity of coin, gold-dust did not bring over two thirds of its real value. On the fourth of June, Mormon island and its approaches presented scenes of the greatest excitement. A numerous cara- van was moving along toward the no longer ridiculed El Dorado.
In July, Colonel Mason, then military governor of California, visited Coloma, and found Marshall living;-
7 7 ;— ,
near the mill, while there were many persons at work on the river above and below him. Crossing over to a stream, since known as Weber creek, three or four miles below the mill, he found at work one Sunol, with about thirty employed natives, who received their pay in merchandise. Eight miles above was a large number of whites and Indians, some working in the river bed, and others in the small valleys. These latter were exceedingly rich, two ounces being consid- ered the average yield for a day's work. In a small gutter, not more than a hundred yards long by four feet wide and two or three feet deep, two men had shortly before obtained $17,000 worth of gold. An- other small ravine had yielded $12,000, and on every side there were hundreds of such.
The poor natives gathered round to pick up a few crumbs of civilization, and with a new money buy new comforts to supply new wants. Gold-dust by the bushel had been within tlieir reach for ages ; but with- out the conventional value placed upon it by the cun- ning of progress, it was of no use to them. Now, de- prived of their natural resources, they herded about the mining camps, being permitted occasionally by the kinder-hearted miners to wash a pan of dirt from their claims, or to sweep the sluice-boxes. Frequently they obtained quite a little quantity of gold on the rivers by scraping the crevices of •claims abandoned by the white men. Even in the days of their degeneration,
