They arrived in San Francisco the sixth of July, but made no stop, going on that afternoon by boat to Sacramento, and from there on to Volcano Diggings, their objective point. Here they found Benjamin Flint, a brother of Thomas, who had come out in 1849. Their time from home was fifty-three days. Volcano was a characteristic mining town, not far from Sutter’s Mill, Mokelumne Hill, Hangtown, and other places familiar to all who have read of those early California days. It was the point on the overland trail to which Kit Carson was accustomed to conduct emigrants, leaving them to find their own way from there on to their various destinations. The wheel marks of the old wagons may still be seen on the limestone rocks above the town. After a few months father’s brothers, Marcellus and Jotham, came around the Horn in a sailing vessel, the Samuel Appleton. Uncle Marcellus commented in his diary on the monotony of the long trip--“a dull business going to California on a sail ship.” He spoke of the beauty of the extreme southern mountains like white marble pyramids, of the killing of an albatross with a fourteen-foot wing-spread, of the cape pigeons, “the prettiest birds alive.” With these brothers came two cousins, making the family group in this one little settlement about a dozen. They all of them dabbled more or less in the search for gold, but gradually turned to agricultural pursuits. Father’s mining days were limited to one week, employed in driving a mule for gathering up pay dirt; that satisfied him. He took a job in the local butcher shop at one hundred and fifty dollars a month, with “keep,” a very important item in those days of high living cost. He preferred the sureness of stated wages to the uncertain promise of gold. Apparently he and the Flints soon purchased the business and continued to conduct it as long as they remained in Volcano. They were associated in some way with Messrs. Baker and Stone, of the Buena Vista Ranch, very fertile mountain meadow land upon which heavy crops of barley were grown, and cattle were fattened for market. After a year and a half the three of them, young men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, determined to “unite their fortunes for the undertaking of bringing to California sheep and cattle, more for the trip than profit.” Consequently, on Christmas Day, 1852, they left for home, making their way out of the mountains over roads so buried in snow as to be almost impassable. In Sacramento the river was twelve miles wide and the streets so full of water that the hack from hotel to steamer was a flat boat pulled by a horse.