The following is Marshall’s own description as published in the Century Magazine (Vol. 41). “It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. Yet it did not seem to be of the right color; all the gold coin I had seen was of a reddish tinge; this looked more like brass. I recalled to mind all the metals I had seen or heard of, but I could find none that resembled this. Suddenly the idea flashed across my mind that it might be iron pyrites. I trembled to think of it.” Finally, to make sure, Marshall, like Juan Lopez, mounted his horse and rode away to find some one with more knowledge than himself. That some one was Captain Sutter, who looked in his encyclopedia, probably the only one in the territory at that time, and by comparing the weight of the metal with the weight of an equal bulk of water found its specific gravity, which proved it to be gold. Still Sutter thought that he should like better authority. General Sherman, in Memoirs, tells how the news came to Monterey, where, he was the governor’s gay young military secretary:-- “I remember one day, in the spring of 1848, that two men, Americans, came into the office and inquired for the Governor. I asked their business, and one answered that they had just come down from Captain Sutter on special business and they wanted to see Governor Mason in person. I took them in to the colonel and left them together. After some time the colonel came to his door and called to me. I went in and my attention was directed to a series of papers unfolded on his table, in which lay about half an ounce of placer gold. “Mason said tome, ‘What is that?’ I touched it and examined one or two of the larger pieces and asked, ‘Is it gold?’ I said that if that were gold it could be easily tested, first by its malleability and next by acids. I took a piece in my teeth and the metallic lustre was perfect. I then called to the clerk, Baden, to bring in an ax and hatchet from the backyard. When these were brought, I took the largest piece and beat it out flat, and beyond doubt it was metal and a pure metal. Still we attached little importance to the fact, for gold was known to exist at San Fernando at the south and yet was not considered of much value.” About this time some of the business men who had settled in the little town of Yerba Buena, finding that all ships that entered the harbor were sent by their owners not to Yerba Buena, of which they knew nothing, but to San Francisco, persuaded the town council to change the name of the settlement from Yerba Buena to San Francisco, which was already the name of the mission and presidio. “Gold! Gold!! Gold!!! from the American River,” cried a horseman from the mines, riding down Market Street, waving his hat in one hand, a bottle of gold dust in the other.