The men worked in this way for three years, making no strikes and averaging about five dollars a day. Then Father and Speers sold out their claim and went to a large camp, Camp Secco, Dry Creek, it was called, and went to merchandising. They bought mules and a wagon and brought in from Sacramento the usual goods necessary to miners. After two years, the captain went home to his family. Father hired a man and kept on for another year, after which he sold out and came away, having accumulated six thousand five hundred dollars, the beginning of his fortune. He was in California from eighteen fifty-two to eighteen fifty-eight. His mates were sober, hard-working men. They made no wonderful strikes and what they got was by hard work and perseverance. There were many robbers and desperadoes about, and Father made one dangerous trip. He had left the few schoolbooks that he had carried even out to California miles away with some people he knew, and one day when it was raining so that he could not work his claim decided to go after them. He took a mule and on several occasions had to swim swollen creeks. Finally, night came on, and he was caught in the hills alone where many a man had disappeared never to be seen again. However, after wandering about for hours in the darkness and in growing terror, he reached his destination at two o'clock in the morning. Before leaving California in eighteen fifty-eight he was naturalized in the San Francisco court and ever held his naturalization papers as one of his most prized possessions. His diary tells of his return to the East and his choice of Leavenworth for a home. Here he went into the leather business as the one of which he knew most and with his later life and business success, we are all familiar. BELLE WILLSON LOBENSTINE I EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY