sum per month, likewise the first theatre in the city, and other
buildings. He informed me at one time how much his rents amounted to per
month; the sum was several thousand dollars. Money was worth but three
to five per cent in England per year to the owners of the merchandise;
while in California it was in demand at ten per cent per month. I
suppose he thought he would make a great fortune for himself and then
return to England (where he had a wife and children) and pay up all his
obligations with extra allowance, for the use of the money, and make all
satisfactory; but the great fire destroyed all his buildings, and he was
a ruined man, there being no insurance in the city then. I met a friend
in New York about two years after my return from California; I asked him
when he saw Mr. G. last. He said, "it was about 11 o'clock one day at a
hotel where he invited some friends to take a drink. Mr. G. was there,
he declined; but afterward called him to one side and asked him to loan
him $1, saying he had had no breakfast that morning." Such was an
example of some of the fluctuations of fortune in those days.

Some parties came with various kinds of machinery that was to make a
certain fortune for them, and was taken up into the interior at great
expense. I never knew of one that was successful. About all the
companies that were formed in the States to go around Cape Horn for
mining purposes generally dissolved after arriving in California, but
what they brought with them for supplies, sold for so high a price that
it generally sold for more than the cost of their passage, and they had
money coming to them. Some companies bought the ships as they came in
and hired the captain. I recollect one, called the _Mechanics' Own_.
Every person joining their company in the States had to be voted in and
pay $1,000. They put on airs and talked quite aristocratic of their
captain as their boy.