AL, signed "John" to his sister. 3 pp.
Written by a miner in a Gold Rush town of the Sierra Nevada foothills, 20 miles east of Sacramento, who had left his Maine home for California three years before – and had little show for it. “I have wore out all the cloathes that I brought out with me except my Coat and Blancketts. I wear Grey wollen shirts…and have not had a white shirt on but once since I have been out here and I heardly know how I would feel to be dressed up…The weather has been very warm here this summer and it is now quite unhealthy here…I do not feel very well but think I shall be able to go to work in a day or two. I have been a mineing here this summer and have not made much money, is not so easy out here as people think at home nor is gold dust to be found anywhere and everywhere here as has been represented but still there is hope and it does not take long to make a few thousands if one only gits on right spot of ground. But those spots are fiew and far between…you have I suppose read an account of the disturbance in San Francisco, the Vigilent Committee hung two more men a fiew days ago and are sending quite a number of the rascals out of the state on every steamer and there is need enough of it no doubt….”