nion had been so fortunate on the
previous day as to meet Mr. W. H. Hooper, who arrived in Coloma
August 8, 1850, and who has lived there practically ever since. Though
eighty-three, he is still strong and vigorous. From him my friend
elicited some very interesting information in regard to Marshall
especially, the substance of which I append from his notes. Mr.
Hooper had known Marshall for many years, and his reminiscences of the
discoverer have a touch of pathos bordering on the tragic.

Marshall, a trapper by trade and frontiersman by inclination,
accompanied General Sutter to California, assisted in the building
of Sutter Fort and, on account of his mechanical ability, was sent to
Coloma to superintend the erection of a sawmill. It was in the mill-race
that he picked up the nugget which made the name "California" the magnet
for the world's adventurers. Unaware of the nature of his "find," he
took it to Sacramento, where it was declared to be gold. He was implored
by General Sutter to keep the mill operatives in ignorance of his
discovery, for fear they should desert their work. But how could such a
secret be kept, especially by a man of generous and impulsive instincts?
At any rate the news leaked out and the stampede followed.

From Mr. Hooper's account, Marshall was a very human character. Late in
life the state legislature granted him a pension of two hundred dollars
per month. This sum being far in excess of his actual needs, it followed
as a matter of course that his cronies assisted him in disposing of it.
In fact, "Marshall's pension day" became a local attraction, and the
Coloma saloon--still in existence--the rendezvous. These reunions
were varied by glorious excursions to Sacramento, his friends in the
legislature imploring him to keep away. After two years the pension was
cut down to one hundred dollars per mouth and finally was discontinued
in toto--a shabby and most undignified procedure. Opposite the saloon,
at some little distance, is a conical hill. For many years Marshall,
seated on the steps of the porch, had gazed dreamily at its summit.
Shortly before his death, addressing a remnant of the "old guard," he
exclaimed: "Boys, when I go, I want you to plant me on the top of that
hill." And "planted" he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar monument on top
of him!

The poor old fellow died in poverty at Kelsey, near Coloma, August 10,
1885, at the age of seventy-five. It is a sad reflection that a tithe o