Prentice Mulford's Story

One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that “them stories about finding gold in Californy was all true.” It was “wash day” and our folks and some of the neighbors were gathered in the “wash house” while the colored help soused her fat black arms in the suds of the wash tub.

That was the first report I heard from California. Old Eben had been a man of the sea; was once captured by a pirate, and when he told the story, which he did once a week, he concluded by rolling up his trousers and showing the bullet-scars he had received.

California then was but a blotch of yellow on the schoolboy’s map of 1847. It was associated only with hides, tallow, and Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast.” It was thought of principally in connection with long-horned savage cattle, lassoes, and Mexicans. Very near this in general vacancy and mystery was the entire region west of the Rocky Mountains. What was known as the Indian Territory covered an area now occupied by half a dozen prosperous States. Texas was then the Mecca of adventurers and people who found it advisable to leave home suddenly. The phrase in those days, “Gone to Texas,” had a meaning almost equivalent to “Gone to the——.” Then California took its place.