OVER THE MOUNTAINS INTO CALIFORNIA
While we were going down the Humbolt River, several days before we got to the sink or desert, six of our men got tired going so slow, and went on and left us. Uncle tried to get them to stay with us, but when they would go, he offered them provisions to take along. Four of them were so gritty that they would not take any. Two of them did. These four thought they would come to what were called "trading posts," but they had all gone back to California, as we afterwards found. The men had nearly starved to death. They had to shoot birds and they used everything they could find for food.
These "trading posts" were kept by men who had brought on pack mules, provisions from California, to sell to emigrants and bought up weak stock and herded them on the grass until they got strong enough to drive across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California.
Uncle thought we would soon come to one of these trading posts, where we could get flour, but the traders had all gone back and ceased to trade. We ran out of flour and sea biscuits when we crossed the desert into Carson Valley. We had to live on beef and mutton for five or six hundred miles. The first flour and bread we got to eat, was after we crossed the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
I thought I had seen mountains before, but these beat them all. When we got to the headwaters of the Carson River, for it was up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we went over what was called the Johnson Cut Off. When wegot to the foot of the mountain, I looked up its side and told Uncle Joshua that we could never get up this mountain in this world, for it looked as straight up as a wall could possibly be.
"O, yes, we can," he said. "We will get on the trail and go first one way and then another, until we get up."
We were six days getting everything to the top of that mountain, and when we got up, we rested one night. The first horse uncle lost was getting up this mountain. He was a little weak, stumbled and fell off the trail and that was the last we ever saw of him.
The next morning we yoked up the oxen and all got ready to start. Uncle instructed me to lead out. Right on top of the mountain, it was pretty level for some distance. I drove on ahead of the rest. I came to where I saw I had to go down again. I stopped, locked both hind wheels of my wagon, rough locked them by wrapping a chain twice around the felloe and tire, so the tire would ride on the chain and make it drag hard on the ground. I started down. I had not gone far until I found I was going down the same kind of a mountain we had been six days coming up. A little further down, the trail got very narrow. I was on the left side of the oxen, for that was the side upon which we had always taken when driving. That put me on the lower side, so that if I had been knocked off, that would have been the last of me. I stopped and let the wagon pass me, so that I could get on the upper side to drive. When I crossed behind the wagon, the dust blew up in my face so thick that I could not see my wagon, and that was the last I saw of those oxen until nearly sun down.
I went down the mountain as fast as I could. I had no idea I would ever see those oxen again, but when I got down on level ground at the foot of the mountain, where I could see, off about one hundred yards, there stood my oxen and wagon, right side up. There were three yoke of them, six head of cattle, but my near ox, next to the wheel, diedthat night.
The first ones to come down following me, were uncle and aunt. They were in a light one-seated top buggy, the one they had used all the way across the plains. Uncle had his feet under the buggy, holding down the hind axle tree, while aunt had the lines, driving. They drove a brown mare, which I had taken from Indiana and a black horse they had fetched from Wisconsin.
Aunt was saying, "O, Bailey, I will be killed, I will be killed."
"Hold on Susan, hold on, Susan," answered uncle.
The team was nearly setting down on their hind parts and just sliding. They could not move their feet to step for rods at a time.
"How did you ever get down that mountain," uncle asked when he saw me.
"I will never tell, uncle," I said.
Nor did I tell, for I could not tell myself how those oxen got down that mountain.
When we got started again on the trail, we met a man going across the mountains, over the same route, with a pack train. He was packing provisions across to the miners in Carson Valley. Uncle coaxed him out of two fifty pound sacks of flour at thirty dollars a sack. This made our first bread since crossing the desert.
Somebody stole the black horse which uncle and aunt drove down the mountain, while we were camped there that night. This was the second horse uncle lost on the trip, and the last one since starting from the states.
We drove down the west slope toward the gold mine. The second night after we left the summit, it commenced to snow on us, but not very fast. Every day after that, it was snowing or raining until we came to the gold mines. Some mornings the snow would be two or three inches deep, but by night we would get to where it was raining.
One night we camped in what was called Pleasant Valley, near a stream called Boland's Run. A man by the name of Thomas Boland, kept a trading post here, with a stock of groceries, clothing, boots and shoes, and a saloon in connection. A little further down, we helped uncle across the McCosma River, to a place called Fair Play, where uncle said that he and his family could get down to their future home alone. We then bade farewell to uncle and family, and started on a prospecting tour.
This was now the last of November.
After we got to California, we found out that those bad Indians on the Humbolt River, had taken two or three messes or camps, that year, and one man escaped from one of the camps and two out of another, the rest of the men, women and children being killed. These men, who got away from among the Indians in some way or other, got to other camps. The trains that were taken, were camped no great distance apart; far enough so as to herd their stock and keep them separate. They said the Indians holloed on one side and while the campers were looking in the direction of the holloing, the first thing they knew, other Indians came right in on them behind their backs.
These three remaining men said that the next morning they gathered the white men from the camps up and down the river, and followed on the trail of the marauders. The Indians had cut open sacks of flour and scattered it along their trail. They had also cut open feather beds and the feathers were blown over the prairie. When the white men came in sight, the Indians broke and ran in every direction, and when they got up to the captured oxen and wagons, which the Indians had taken from the campers, it was found that the Indians had cooked and were eating an unyoked ox, with the other ox still yoked with the dead one. They did not know how to get the yoke off. The men took what oxen and stock they could find, along with them, but had no time to stay to hunt for them. This is the story of themen who escaped, and were then living in California.
These campers must have driven until after dark, for it seemed they did not have their oxen unyoked, for we always unyoked our oxen as soon as we stopped.
I shall now try to give you a description of the country through which we traveled. Starting in Nebraska, there was what I considered pretty good land for two or three hundred miles, though I did not see very much of the country outside the Platte River bottom. After we came to the Rocky Mountains, I never saw very much of what I called good land laying in one body. Sometimes we would come to some pretty fair rolling land, but it was what I called poor and rough. At times we got so high up, we were above timber line, but we always had grass where there was soil. We passed through sage brush and sand, and all of that kind of country looked desolate to me, but once in awhile, we would come to prairie land. We found some pretty good, rich strips of land away out on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. A good long ways out, we came to such a strip of land, which was called Fur Grove, covered with what we called balsam fir. I do not know in what state it is now, for the whole country from the Missouri River to California was then known as Indian Territory.
Sometimes we would be on the mountain tops, where we could look down and see below where we saw a fog, or at least thought so, but the men said it was raining down in the valley, but clear where we were.
We passed near Red Mountains and there were black mountains not very far apart and which could be seen from one point of view. We crossed some small rivers. I remember one in particular we had to cross on one of those willow brush bridges. There had been so much travel on this bridge, that a great hole was worn in it, but uncle said we did not have time to stop to mend it, and we would have to risk it. We got the horses, sheep, oxen and wagons across on the bridge, but the cattle we had to swim the river.I don't believe I ever heard what the name of that river was, if I did, I have forgotten it.
I did not see much of Iowa on this trip. Of all the country I saw from Indiana, through, or after I got through, there was none suited me like Central Illinois, and I have not changed my mind. There was government land in Illinois to enter at that time.
PROSPECTING FOR GOLD—SOME HARD EXPERIENCES
After we left uncle in the mining district called Fair Play, we crossed back over the McCosma River to Boland's Run and went over to Four Spring Valley and prospected for some time before we struck any gold that paid. We finally struck a claim that paid six dollars a day to the hand, clear of water. We had to buy water from a dike that was dug around on the side of the mountain and which cost us four dollars a day. We worked on this claim about three weeks, when the dike broke between where we were at work and the head of the dike where the dam was made across theMcCosmaRiver to turn the water out into the dike. We could not work any more until the dike was mended.
My brother, Crawford Bailey and Wint Crumly went out prospecting. They went back across the McCosma River into Fair Play district, where we had parted with Uncle Joshua, a distance of fourteen miles. They struck a surface digging, and they wrote me and I went to them. We had to buy water at the same price, one dollar an inch, or four dollars a day. This claim was richer of gold. We made nine dollars a day to the hand, clear of water.
We finally heard that the dike was mended over at Four Springs Valley and I went over and sold our provisions and collected sixty dollars we had loaned to a miner by the name of Thomas Brison. We did not go back to Four Springs Valley to work any more, but remained on the claim at Fair Play, until in June, when the water gave out and we couldnot get water to wash any longer. We then concluded to go north on to the American, Uby and Feather rivers and prospect and see if we could strike claims where we could get water to wash with.
The American River was the next river after leaving the McCosma. When we came to the American River, up in the gold region, where we were crossing, the mountains were very steep and looked like they were straight up. We had to travel six miles to get from the bottom of the mountain to its top. But when we got to the American River district, every place we went, we found it claimed up and plenty of miners at work to do all the work there was to do. We could neither find claims to work for ourselves, nor could we hire out to work for any one else.
We left the American River and went over the mountains to the Uby River. When we got on top of the mountains and started down toward Uby River, we had a hard time finding the path. There was so much gravel and rock and so little soil or dirt, it was almost impossible to see where footmen had made the path. Far toward the west end of the mountain, pack animals could get on top and then travel east ward from where we were crossing, but nothing except footmen and Indians could cross on the trail we were using.
Woodmen had packed their wagons and tools up this mountain somewhere to the westward, to the point where we were crossing, and had cut sawlogs and hauled or rolled them nearby. Then by rolling the logs three or four rods on sloping ground, they would fall straight down to the river bottom, a distance that took us fellows a half day to go up.
I was hunting for the trail which led down the mountain, when I came to the sloping ground where the woodmen had rolled these logs off. I walked carefully down this place, and when I looked down, I saw a yellow streak straight below me. It looked like I could step across it, but I knew it was a river. It made me dizzy to look over the precipice and I stepped backward a few paces and then turned towalk to the top of the mountain again. If I had slipped there, that would have been the last of me.
After hunting a good while, we found the trail and went down the mountain. The path was just wide enough for one to walk on. If a person had stepped off with one foot, the rest of his life's story would have certainly been very brief. When we got down to the river, that little yellow streak which I thought I could step across when looking down the mountain, we had to cross in a ferry boat, the Uby River being a quarter of a mile wide.
We went north and northeast until we reached Morisson's Diggings. The snow at this place was over thirty feet deep in the winter. They had to lay in provisions in the fall to last them all winter and until the snow melted off, and the mountain dried so the ground on the side of the mountains got solid enough so that the trail would not slip off from under the feet of the pack mules.
They built their houses out of round pine or fur logs, a foot and a half in diameter, and porches built by letting one log at the eaves of the house run out and logs a foot through, for posts set up under the ends of these logs. These porches were used to put wood under for winter use. When the snow commenced falling, they would beat it back with their shovels and keep it beaten back until they could form an arch overhead, making a tunnel from one house to another, so they could visit each other during the winter.
It was the twentieth day of July when we got there and they were just getting started to wash gold. The gold was mixed with dirt and quartz rock. These rocks were round and smooth and about the size of a man's fist. When they were washed in the sluice boxes and thrown in piles, they looked as white as snow. I have often thought what a beautiful walk or drive they would make if we had them in Illinois.
We stopped at Morisson's Diggings two or three days. We found Uncle Isaac and his son, Jesse, at this place. Weleft there and went across another mountain to a place called Poker Flat, which was fourteen miles over the mountain. We heard there, that across on the other side of another mountain, on a stream called Nelson Creek, were new diggings. Uncle Isaac and his son made us promise, that if we heard of new diggings being struck, to give them word. I went back the next day and told them and they returned with me over to Poker Flat, where brother Crawford and the four others were waiting for us.
We went over the mountain to Nelson Creek. An old Scotchman by the name of Wright, had struck a rich claim on the side of the creek on a little bottom. The gold here was coarser than it was in the southern diggings. The gold that Mr. Wright was getting, looked like small potatoes. Some were a little less and some a little over one ounce in weight. We prospected all around there, but could not strike any pay dirt. We concluded that if there was gold on this bottom, there must be gold in the creek. We put six men to dig a ditch to turn the creek out of the channel and then dam the creek and turn the water out, so we could get to the bottom of the creek.
Old Mr. Wright had packed a whip saw over to make lumber for sluice boxes. Uncle Isaac and I borrowed the saw and went to work and whipsawed lumber for sluice boxes. We cut down two trees, up as high as we could reach, then cut small trees for skids, laid one end of the skid on the side of the mountain and the other end of the skids on the stumps of the trees we cut off, then rolled the log up on these skids. Then with pick and shovel, a level place was dug underneath, the length of the sawlog, barked and lined it on two sides, then sawed to the lines. One stood on top of the log, the other under it, or in the pit, as it was called. The whipsaw is shaped like one of the common key saws, wide at one end and narrow at the other, only the whipsaw had handles on both ends. It took nice work to whipsaw lumber and keep it true to the line.
We got our lumber sawed, our sluice boxes made, our ditch dug, our creek damed and the creek turned out of the channel, prepared to work in the bed of the creek.
Late one evening, we just had time to roll over a large bolder and get a pan of sand and gravel, and pan it out. We dried the gold and weighed it and there was seventy-five dollars worth of gold in that one pan. We worked out this claim, but it proved to be a slate rock bed and was smooth and sleek, and the water washed all the gold away, only where a huge bolder was imbeded in the slate bed and the gold settled around the bolders. We did not get any more gold out of the rest of that claim, than I got in that one pan.
We left Uncle Isaac at this claim and followed down Nelson Creek. Our party was composed of Crawford Bailey, Winston Crumly, Jack Alberts, Guss Parberry, Bird Farris and myself. There was a nice path beat down on the side of the creek, but the mountains on both sides stood almost straight up. We went down the creek, fifteen or twenty miles, when we suddenly came to a waterfall where the water dropped straight down about forty or fifty rods. There was no way for us to get down. We then thought the people who made the path, had to climb the mountains. We looked up on our right hand and could see the dirt crumbling out from between the rocks. It was straight up. We saw there was no show to go up on that side. We looked up on our left and could not see any dirt or rock crumbling off this mountain.
We concluded that they must have climbed up over this mountain to get out. We started up. We could hardly keep from falling backwards. We held to little vines or little fine brush which grew out from between the layers of rock. Finally, after we had gone up a distance of perhaps a couple of miles, we could see above us a shelf of rock extending out over our heads. It then dawned upon us that the path we had followed down the creek, had been madeby people who had come that far and were compelled to go back and that no one had ever gone up this mountain.
We looked as far as we could see each way, but that shelf of rock stood out over our heads from three to six or eight feet. We were sure that when we got up to that shelf, we could not get over it, neither could we go back down again; for one can go up when one can see where to stick their toes, but cannot see to go down without falling. We began to think we were where we could not get away alive. We looked off to our left and saw one place in this shelf that was narrower than the rest, and we concluded to make for that place with the possibility that we might be able to break off some of the rock and get above. It was still a good ways up from where we were. We made for the narrow shelf, but when we got there, the rock was so hard that we could not pierce it with our picks, but the mountain was not quite so steep under this piece of shelf. My brother said to me:
"If you will pick in the side of the mountain and stick your toes in so you will have a good foothold, and hold against my back with my shovel, and two of the other men, one on each side of me, fix their feet so they can lift me on their picks while I hold to the shelf, I will try and see how it looks above."
Two of our strongest men lifted him on their picks while I held against his back with the shovel until he was high enough to look above the shelf.
"The mountain," he said, "is not steep above here, and it is not far to the top, if we could only get over this shelf. Let me put one foot on one pick and the other foot on the other pick and you fellows lift me up as high as you can. Wash, you hold against my back and if I can get a little farther up, I can catch some brush and pull myself up over the shelf." They lifted and I held him to the shelf, while he climbed up over it. We reached him a shovel and a pick. He dug a good place in which to set his feet, andthen reached the shovel over the bench, for one of the boys to catch hold. We lifted one of the boys, while Crawford pulled him up. We kept this process up until all were up but one. We left the lightest one to the last. He was down where he couldn't see any of us and he got scared and trembled and claimed that he did not believe he could hold to the shovel for us to draw him up. We dug holes to set our heels in and then held others by the feet so they could look down over the shelf and see and talk to him. He was pale and greatly frightened. I got some of the men to hold me by the feet while I encouraged him. I told him to take a good hold of the shovel and as soon as he came to where I was and got him by the arm, he could count himself safe. I don't believe that there ever was a white man or an Indian, who ever went up that mountain before, nor since the last man we got up.
About two miles from where we got on the top of the mountain, we came to a mining town, called Poor Man's Diggings. We could not get work there. We prospected for a few days, but could find no gold, although there were a good many good, paying claims belonging to other men. We left there and went to what was called American Valley, where a man struck a rich claim. This was called a rich claim, because it would pay one hundred dollars or over to the hand a day. We tried to hire out and work by the day, but they had all the hands they could work. Everywhere up north, they paid a man at least five dollars a day.
We left the American Valley country, which was on the headwaters of the Feather River, and struck for the Sacramento River Valley. We thought we might find work on a ranch.
We went down to Marysville. The Uba River enters the Sacramento below Marysville and the Feather River above. Farming was all done when we got down there, so we could not find work. We then struck for Sacramento City. As a fellow would say, we were getting "about strapped," thatis, running short of money. We walked from Marysville to the American River bridge one night, about fifty miles. We ate breakfast there, walked twenty miles up the American River and about three o'clock that day, hired to work for the next morning at two dollars and seventy-five cents per day, and board ourselves. I worked for a man by the name of Stewart. I was to work two weeks, but I worked ten days.
We went from here back to Fair Play, from where we had started. We stayed there until November. The weather kept dry—had no rain, so Uncle Joshua came to us and wanted us to work for him on a ranch in the Sacramento Valley, above the city of Sacramento something like three hundred miles, between the towns of Tehama and Red Bluffs. We worked for him ten months at fifty dollars a month.
My brother got sick and went to the mountains and I worked one month for a man by the name of David Jorden and his partner, Joseph Moran, in a brick yard, for fifty dollars. When uncle paid us, and I received my pay for working at the brick yard, I went to my brother, sixty miles southeast of Sacramento, to a mining town called Volcano.
We remained in Volcano for about two weeks. We then went to Sacramento. From there we took a steamboat to San Francisco, where we stayed for two weeks. We then got on a steamship and sailed for Panama. We landed once at a town in Mexico, called Acapuco, to take on beef cattle. We werefourteen dayson the way from San Francisco to Panama. We remained in Panama one night, and then took a train and crossed the isthmus by railroad, which was the first railroad train I ever saw.
The next day we arrived at Aspinwall, now called Colon, where we stayed until the next day, when we boarded a ship bound for New York. We were nine days on the way from Aspinwall, or Colon, to New York City. We then took a steamboat and went up the Hudson River to Albany, wherewe took a train to Buffalo; from there to Cleveland, Ohio; to Indianapolis, and then to LaFayette, Ind. I then went to my home in Fountain County, and later came to Cheney's Grove, Illinois, on horse back. I landed at Cheney's Grove on New Year's Day, 1856.
—Page 5, 2nd paragraph, "Peter House" should read, "Peter Hughs." In next line, "John Feril" should read "John Teril." Likewise same name in 1st line, 2nd paragraph, page 19.
—Page 18, 1st paragraph, should read, "We trailed westward across the Pacific Springs toward the Bear River." Also 3rd sentence, "When northeast of Salt Lake City" etc.
—Page 28, last paragraph, should read, "'Hold on to them, boys," uncle said, "Hold on to them." I holloed back, "Start up the fires so we can see where to come," and the fires lit up mighty quick.'
—Page 45, 3rd paragraph, 6th sentence, should read "We were 'fourteen' days on the way from San Francisco to Panama."
The foregoing chapters conclude the excellent narrative concerning the remarkable trip of Mr. Bailey to California from 1853 to 1856. Mr. Bailey also kindly consented to give for publication in the LeRoy Journal, a description of the gold regions and the crude methods of mining practiced in that early day, which is placed in this volume as a brief appendix. His comments were as follows:
I will now give you a description of the gold region where gold was found, where I traveled and where I mined.
The McCosma River headed up toward the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains toward the northeast and runs a little southwest until it empties into the Sacramento River. Gold was found in what were called bars, that is, where rock, gravel and sand had lodged on either side, or across the river. Some of these bars would be very rich in gold.
There were, also, what were called gulches, running out from the river on either side. They often headed the valleys. These gulches ran out between mountains and when they headed pretty well up toward the top of a large mountain, that divided the rivers, into what were called ravines. All of these ravines would have gold in them. The bed rock would raise up on both sides and the lowest place in this bed rock, was called the lead. Some would be richer in gold than others, taking the name of rich lead or poor lead. Often there were places up on the sides of the mountains where the bed rock was almost bare, and in these places were cracks or seams down in the bed rock, where the gold would be found mixed with sand and dirt.
When the first miners came, they did not know how tosave the gold and they had no tools to work with. They used their jackknives to dig the gold out of these crevises and carried it in their pans to where there was water and washed out the dirt and sand. When the miners had picks and shovels, they made rockers. They were made just like the rocking beds of the old fashioned kind to rock babies in, only one end was out, except about two inches at the bottom, for what they called a riffle, to lodge the gold against. They put another of these riffles up higher in the rocker for the same purpose. They made a box four square that set on top of this rocker with a sheet iron bottom with round holes punched in it to let the gold and sand through. They would then fill this box with pay dirt, dip water from the creek or river, and pour it in on the pay dirt with one hand and rock with the other. They would then gather up the gold and what little sand remained from behind the riffles, place it in their pans and wash it out, leaving nothing but the gold and some black sand.
Another plan used and a better and faster method, was to use what they called the long tom. This was made of plank on the sides about six feet long and three feet wide. The planks were cut curved on the lower end, so that the sheet iron with the holes in it, would turn upward. The upper end of the tom, was made of planks sawed sloping and drawn in until it was wide enough to lay their water hose in, which furnished the water for washing.
When they washed the gold with pans, they would throw all the top dirt away until they got down deep enough to find it sufficiently rich to pay, then they would pan out the rest of the dirt to the bed rock.
When we mined in California, we washed with sluice boxes, whenever we could get plenty of water. Sluice boxes were made by sawing the bottom board two inches narrower at one end than at the other so we could place the end of every box in the upper end of the next box. We had slats nailedacross the top of the boxes to keep them from spreading. There were slats for riffles, two and a half or three inches wide, fitted down tight on the bottom, for the gold to lodge against. The gold, with the sand and dirt would then be removed and panned out as in the other methods mentioned above.
List of transcriber's changes- so be [we] would strike the lower end of the island.- This was the "pipe of of [pipe of] peace"- huddled and and asked [and asked] uncle- and then skirt the [Rattlesnake] Rattlsnake- Grand Canyons, of world renoun [renown]- and he would do some of thier [their] work in exchange.- a nice place to pull out on the side. [period added]- River, cutting a canyon through it. [period added]- in the same fix." [replaced period with comma] was the reply.- fill it two-thirds ful [full] when their backs were turned- where the dam was made across the McComa [McCosma] River