The Audience - So To Speak - Sit On,
Chairs Backed Against The Walls Of The Hotels And Stores, While Many
Prefer The Street Itself, And With Feet On Curb Or Other Coign Of
Vantage, Tilt Their Chairs At Most Alarming Angles.
A sort of animated
lovers' lane is thus formed, through which the promenaders have to run
the gauntlet, and are subjected to a certain amount of criticism.
Everyone knows everyone.
Good natured badinage plays like wild-fire, up
and down and across the street. Later on, the tinkle of mandolin and
guitar is heard far into the night watches.
Having determined to reach Auburn - thirty miles away - the next day, I
made an early start. Coloma lies at the bottom of the great canon of the
South Fork of the American River. Hastening down the grade, in a bend of
the road I almost ran into my friend. It seemed a strange meeting this,
in the heart of the old mining country, and I think we both gave a
perceptible start.
It was at Coloma that gold was first discovered in California, by James
W. Marshall, January 19, 1848. My companion 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.
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