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Many emigrants left the train when they got to the great Sacramento River valley, and settled here and there to farming. Polly's father with others kept on to the gold-diggings and camped there. He built a log-cabin soon, for it was almost winter and time for the rains, and Polly says she was glad to have a house at last.
As these difficulties of transit subside under the surge of population toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends, as has been so often repeated, upon isolation.
"Hurrah!" yelled Thure, at sight of the wagons and the men. "I'll bet a coon skin that they are bound for Sacramento City and the gold-diggings, too. Come, let's hurry up our horses and see if we can't overtake them. I'll feel a lot safer when we're in with that crowd," and his keen eyes glanced swiftly over the valley in front of them.
A snow-storm had covered the gold-diggings, and the people were leaving, on account of sickness, intending to return in the spring, which is said to be the best season for the gold harvest. Labourers, according to one letter-writer, demanded a dollar an hour!
'If I drown myself, her father must support her, I thought; 'the old hypocrite could never refuse her a shelter; but while I live she has no claim on him. I went down to a rickety old wooden pier, meaning to wait there till it was dark, and then drop quietly over the end of it into the water; but while I sat there smoking my pipe, and staring vacantly at the sea-gulls, two men came down, and one of them began to talk of the Australian gold-diggings, and the great things that were to be done there.
"While I sat smoking two men came along, and began to talk of the Australian gold-diggings and the great fortunes that were to be made there in a short time. I got into conversation with them, and learned that a ship sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne in three days. The thought flashed on me that that was better than the water.
About twenty miles above Sacramento we passed the mouth of Feather River, disgorging coffee-colored mud from the innumerable gold-diggings along its course, and came into lovely blue water, pure as the cradling snow-ridges between which it issued. The immediate margin began to be thickly wooded with overhanging willows, oaks, and sycamores. These were alive with birds of every aquatic description.
'We're going to see some life, it strikes me, says he. 'We'll know it all directly. But the first thing we've got to do is to shut these young 'uns up safe in the sale-yard. Then we can knock round this town in comfort. We went outside of a rocky point, and sure enough here was the first Australian gold-diggings in full blast. What a sight it was, to be sure!
He would have to explain how he came to be found disguised, carefully disguised, in garments such as no baronet's eldest son even though that baronet be the least ancestral man of mark whom it suits the convenience of a First Minister to recommend to the Sovereign for exaltation over the rank of Mister was ever beheld in, unless he had taken flight to the gold-diggings.
"Ay, Ned," interrupted his uncle, "and all about California, I'll be bound." "Why, how did you guess that?" "It needs not a wizard to guess that, lad. I've observed that you have read nothing in the newspapers for the last three months but the news from the gold-diggings of California.
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