room as long as they would favor it with their presence, if so be they would kindly withdraw their suit for damages. The injured but forgiving pair acquiesced. One thing only now remained. A little bill of $500 for professional services on the part of the landlord's attorney., Groaning in spirit the landlord paid it, and the lawyers divided it between them. They also kept the defamation action in terrorem, whereat the landlord ever after was very meek.
During the season of 1848-9 some men wintered in the region of Calaveras and Mokelumne, and before spring gold was more plent}^ than creature comforts. Hence it was that the first spring traders reaped rich harvests.
In February 1849, a man named Ricord, with a body guard of three, to each of whom he paid $400 for two weeks' services for man and horse, started from Staples, then McKenzie's rancho, on the Mokelumne river, for the spot later known as Robinson's ferry on the Stanislaus. Ricord drove nine pack animals loaded with 200 pounds each of assorted goods, composed largely of liquors. The rains had so softened the ground as to greatly impede their progress, but the sales which they made—clay pipes two dohars each; blankets forty dollars a pair; liquor twenty dollars a bottle, one ounce the tin cup full or two dollars a drink: boots forty dollars a pair, and beads, powder, and medicines, weight for weight in gold — this description of barter reconciled the trader to the rain and mud.
Passing Angel's and Carson's, even at that early day regarded as worked out, though later considered good diggings still, thoy finally reached their point of destination at the foot of Murphy's gulch, on the Stanislaus. No more riotous, roaring camp ever frightened the coyotes of the Sierra drainage. There concrreo-ated the discgfers from every quarter, and held high carnival as long as their money lasted. Was it
