Inland California presented a strange sight. The roads that ran from San Francisco to Sutter's Fort had formerly lain between prosperous farm lands, but now the crops were going to waste, the houses were empty, and the cattle free to wander through fields of grain. Along the American River, on the other hand, hills and valleys were filled with sheltering tents, and huts built of brush and rocks thrown together in a hurry. Men could not stop for comfort, but worked all day on the river bank. There were almost as many ways of searching for the gold as there were men. Some tried to wash the sand and gravel in pans; some used closely woven Indian baskets; some used what were called cradles. The cradle was a basket six or eight feet long, mounted on rockers, and open at one end; at the other end was a coarse screen sieve. Cleats were nailed across the bottom of the cradle. One workman would dig the gravel from the river bank, another carry it to the sieve, a third pour water over it, and a fourth rock the cradle The screen separated the stones from the gravel, the water washed away the earth and carried the heavier soil out of the cradle, thus leaving the black sand filled with the gold. This was later carried to a pan and dried in the sun. The sand could then be blown away, and the gold would be left. Men knew that fortunes were to be found here. On a creek a few miles below Coloma, seventeen thousand dollars' worth of gold was taken from a ditch three hundred feet long, four wide, and two deep. Another small channel had yielded no less than twelve thousand dollars. Many men already had bags and bottles that held thousands of dollars' worth of the precious mineral. One man, who had been able to get fifty Indians to work for him as washers, obtained sixteen thousand dollars from a small creek in five weeks' time. All this quickly changed the character of upper California. Every man wanted to be a miner, and no longer a cattleman or farmer, as before. It looked as though the towns would shrivel up, because of the tremendously high wages demanded by the men who were needed there. Cooks in San Francisco were paid three hundred dollars a month, and all kinds of mechanics secured wages of fifteen or twenty dollars a day. The forts found it impossible to keep soldiers on duty. As soon as men were paid off they rushed to the American River. Sailors deserted as fast as they could, and the American war-ships that came to anchor off Monterey did not dare to allow a single man to land. Threats of punishment or offers of reward had no influence over the sailors. They all felt certain they could make fortunes in a month at the gold fields.