venison. I can recall now to my mind, venison steaks that we would get
in the evening with their rich jellies on it. The luxuries of Asia were
coming in there. Many China restaurants with their signs from Canton or
Pekin. But there was a great scarcity of vegetables. Onions and potatoes
sold for forty cents per pound.

A day or two after my arrival, my friend who came down with me from the
mines came to me and said that there were a lot of blankets to be sold
at auction; that he had no money, or he would buy them; that if I would
buy them he would take them up in the mines and peddle them out for me
for half of the profit. As I knew they were in great demand there--I had
sold, when I left there, mine for $16--I told him if he could buy them
for $4 per pair to bid them off and I would furnish the money to pay for
them. He came back in a short time and said he had bought them, and that
they came to $800. We had them taken to the steamer _Senator_ to ship to
Sacramento. We paid $10 a load to have them carted from the store where
they were bought to the steamer. (The result of this speculation later
on.)

There were at this time several hundred vessels anchored in the bay,
deserted by their officers and crews. A ship could be bought for
probably one-third of what it was worth in New York, and I conceived the
project of buying a ship as soon as I sold my houses, which I expected
soon to arrive, being on so fast a ship as the _Prince de Joinville_,
and going myself to the Sandwich Islands and buying a load of onions and
potatoes, as I was informed that they could be bought as cheap there as
in the States, and ciphered out that one successful venture of that
kind would make my fortune. So I went among the idle ships to see what I
could do in that line, and to have one selected, ready to close the
bargain as soon as the houses arrived. I came across a brig that had