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little room at the back of the store, reserved as a private office. Then Marshall showed him the gold. He looked at it in astonishment, and, still doubting, asked what it was. His visitor replied that it was gold. ' Impos- sible ! ' was the incredulous ejaculation of Sutter. Upon this Marshall asked for some nitric acid, to test it, and a vaquero having been despatched to the gunsmith's for that purpose, Sutter enquired whether there was no other way in which it could be tested. He was told that its character might be ascertained by weighing it, and accordingly some silver coin — $3. 25, was all the fort could furnish — and a pair of small scales or balances having been obtained, Marshall proceeded to weigh the dust, first in the air, and then in two bowls of water. The experiment residted as he had foreseen. The du3t went down; the coin rose lightly up. Sutter gazed, and his doubts faded, and a subsequent test with the nitric acid, which by this time had ar- rived, settled the question finally. Then the excitement began to spread. Sutter knew well the value of the discovery, and in a short time, having made hurried arrangements at tl;e fort, he returned with Marshall to Coloma, to see for himself the wonder that had been reported to him.
Here is what purports to be a verbatim relation by Sutter to J. Tyrwliitt Brooks, quite different and in many places contradictory to that given by him to others. One can easily imagine how Sutter himself might change his story in its several narrations accord- ino; to humor and audience:
I was sitting one afternoon, said the captain, just after my siesta, engaged by-the-by, in writing a letter to a relation of mine at Lucerne, wlien I was interrupted by Mr ^Marshall — a gentleman with whom I had frequent buoine :s transactions — bursting hiirriedly into the room. From t'.ie unusual agitation in h's manner I imagined that something serious had occurred, and, as v.e involuntarily do in this part of the world, I at once glanced to see if my riiie was in its proper place. You should know that the mere appearance of Mr Marshall at that moment in the fort was quite enough to surprise me, as he had, but two days before, left the place to make some alterations in a mill for sawing pine planks, which he had just run up for me, some miles higher up the Americanos. \Mien he had recovered himself a little, he told me th.at however great my surprise might be at his unexpected reappearance, it would be much greater when I heard the intelligence he had come to bring me. ' Intelligence ' he added, ' which, if properly profited by, would put both of U3 in possession of unheard of wealth — millions and millions of dollars, in fact.' I frankly own, when I heard this, that I thougl:t something had touched Marshall's l)rain, when suddenly all my misgivings were put to an end l)y his flinging on the table a handful of scales of pure virgin gold. I was fairly thunderstruck, and asked him to explain what all this meant, when he went on to say, that accord hig to my instructions, he had thrown the mill- wheel out of gear, to let the whole body of the water in the dam find a pas- sage through the tail-race, which was previously too narrow for the water to run off in sufficient quantity, whereby the wheel was prevented from effi- ciently performing its work. By this alteration the narrow channel was con- siderably enlarged, and a mass of sand and gravel carried oflf by the force of the torrent. Eaidy in the morning after this took place, he — Mr Marshall — was walking along the left bank of the stream, when he perceived something which he at first took for a piece of opal — a clear, transparent stone, very common here ■ — glittering on one of the spots laid bare by the sudden crumbling away of th.e bank. He paid no attention to this ; but while he was giving directions to the workmen, having ol)served several similar glittering fragments, his curiosity was so far excited, that he stooped down and picked one of them up. ' Do you
