Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: October 6, 2025
Beyond, up the bare valley of a mountain stream, lay the trail to Downieville, nine miles away. His mission to Hintzen performed, he would spend the night at Forest City, and push on to Downieville the next morning.
While I was still here the now famous Downieville Butte quartz mine was discovered, but there was no way then of working quartz successfully, and just at that time very little was done with it, but afterward, when it was learned how to work it, and the proper machinery introduced, it yielded large sums of bullion.
I made some few sales, and generally aimed to put matters in such a shape that time would bring the best result. Some of our heaviest creditors were John M. Rhodes & Co., of Sacramento and Shasta; Langton & Co., of Downieville; and E. M. Stranger of Murphy's.
The snow between Marysville and Downieville was deep and impassable in winter, but we could work our drifting claims very comfortably, having laid in a stock of provisions early in the season, before snowfall. The nights seemed tediously long and lonesome, for when the snow was deep no one came to visit us, and we could go nowhere, being completely hemmed in.
I paid one dollar simply to get my name on his letter list, and when a letter came I had to pay one dollar for bringing it up, as there was no Post Office at Downieville. Newspapers were eagerly sought for, such was the hunger for reading. The Western folks bought the St. Louis papers, while Eastern people found the New York Tribune a favorite.
In trying to put these debts in course of settlement, I made some arrangement in Downieville with the law-firm of Spears & Thornton, to collect, by suit, a certain note of Green & Purdy for twelve thousand dollars.
On Sundays Downieville was full of men, none very old, and none very young, but almost every one of middle age. Nearly every man was coarsely dressed, with beard unshaved and many with long hair, but on any occasion of excitement it was not at all strange to see the coarsest, roughest looking one of all the party mount a stump and deliver as eloquent an address as one could wish to hear.
He was married to a daughter of Governor Foote; was living in a small frame house on the bar just below the town; and his little daughter was playing about the door in the sand. Stewart was then a lawyer in Downieville, in good practice; afterward, by some lucky stroke, became part owner of a valuable silver-mine in Nevada, and is now accounted a millionaire.
Early in April, I learned that Spears had collected three thousand seven hundred dollars in money, had appropriated it to his own use, and had pledged another good note taken in part payment of three thousand and fifty-three dollars. He pretended to be insane. I had to make two visits to Downieville on this business, and there, made the acquaintance of Mr. Stewart, now a Senator from Nevada.
Next morning the river was booming, its surface covered with all sorts of mining outfit such as flume timber, rockers, various qualities of lumber, pieces of trees as well as whole ones, water wheels and other traps. The river between Downieville and here must have been swept clean of all material that would float, including "long Toms."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking