“The remaining fifty miles were the most dangerous, for not even a blade of grass could be found. We could scarcely get the animals to go because of their weakness and hunger. When we were about half-way, the road led down such a steep mountain that we could only proceed by sliding.”
-H.B. Scharmann
The remainder of the trip is short on the map, but time-consuming. The climb through the Rockies is interminable. Summer greets you as you descend heading into California; the hills are sharp and steep, and the ground nearly barren. An ox dies daily for four straight days.
When you finally get to gold country, you rent a room in Coloma and lay in a hot bath for an hour. Prices in gold country are exorbitant, and your bankroll is almost empty.
CALIFORNIA, 1849
After the bath you wander downtown, pick a saloon, and sidle up to the long walnut bar, next to a grizzled prospector. After months on the schooner, the summer’s nearly gone. Just as gone, says the prospector, as the gold.
The next morning, you head out to the riverbed. You can’t believe the number of people swarming in the valley.
In the streams and riverbeds, you expected to see men with panning boxes, but you can barely see the water through all the machines.
You overhear two men discussing where to go next: One says he heard of a man who found a two-pound nugget in the riverbed last week; the other said the gold’s dried up along the river, and everyone’s heading for the hills, hammering away in mines.