t a Jew had potatoes that
he was taking up on speculation, and that he was going to treat his
fellow passengers to some, one day at dinner. We were a little
disappointed when we found they were sweet ones, but still they were a
treat. Vegetables were scarce, potatoes selling from forty to sixty
cents per pound. After a few days we arrived at Sacramento, it being
about one hundred miles from San Francisco by water. There were no hacks
at the landing, nobody that wanted a job to carry your baggage. Governor
Shannon, of Ohio, was among the passengers. He had been minister to
Mexico, yet he had to carry his own baggage, and make several trips to
do it. One of the passengers assisted him. He was president of a mining
company organized in Ohio.

It was evening. We stopped at a hotel, and I slept in my Mackinaw
blanket that I carried with me, on the dining-room floor. The next
morning after breakfast, about 9 o'clock, I went out on the front
portico to take observations of the place. The landlord was there. There
was a loaferish-looking fellow going by on the opposite side of the
street. The landlord cries out to him: "Bill, what will you charge to
chop wood for me from now until night?" He cries back, "What will you
give?" He replies, "$10." Bill answers back, "Can't chop for less than
an ounce," which was $16, and walked right on. It was evident that
common labor was not suffering there for want of employment. I was there
some days, and could find no one to post me how to get to Coloma. All
was excitement and bustle. While there, Sam. Brannan--who had built a
new hotel there (just finished), called the City Hotel--gave a free
entertainment for one day to the public. He must have expended $1,000
for refreshments. He had been a Mormon preacher, and was a captain in
Colonel Stevenson's regiment. He was very enterprising and generous, a
prominent figure with the "Forty-niners."

I saw an article in the paper a few years ago from a California
correspondent, giving a biography of him; that he was, at one time,
worth several millions, and went into some big enterprise--which I
cannot now recall--and was unfortunate and lost all his wealth, and that
he was, at that time, in San Francisco at a twenty-five-cent
lodging-house, and that he told him that he passed two men that day who
had crossed the street to avoid him, to whom he had furnished the money
from which they had made their fortunes. Well, I finally found an
Oregon man with