At the date of the happenings here recorded, 1849, the greater part of California was still an unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by scattered tribes of Indians and the wild beasts. For some three hundred years the Spaniards and the Mexicans had occupied a few choice spots along the coast, with now and then an isolated ranchero in the great interior valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers. Then, in 1846, had come the War with Mexico and the Conquest of California by the Americans, swiftly followed by the discovery of gold in 1848 and the great inflow of gold-seekers from all parts of the world of 1849 and later, who, of course, all rushed pell-mell to the gold regions, leaving the rest of California more thinly populated than ever. Indeed, in 1849, all California, except the gold regions, was practically deserted; and, since the gold regions were located in what had been, a few weeks before, a mountainous wilderness, nearly everybody in California was living in the wilderness, and, necessarily, living under primitive wilderness conditions--a wild, free, independent sort of a life that quickly brought to the surface the real character of each individual. Such, then, was the California of 1849, the California of Thure and Bud; and such were the conditions of the life, the wild romantic life of the wilderness mining camps, toward which we left our young friends hastening, their unwilling pack-horses pulling and tugging on the ropes which were dragging them away from the home-pastures, when we rode a little way on the homeward journey with Iola and Ruth. Now, to return to Thure and Bud. The Conroyal rancho was situated in the Lower Sacramento Valley, some two-days' journey from Sutter's Fort, near which the City of Sacramento on the Sacramento River had sprung into a sudden and marvelous existence; and, as Sacramento City was then the final rendezvous of all those bound for the mines, some forty miles in the wilderness of mountains to the east, Thure and Bud, naturally, had headed straight for this town, intending, when there, to find someone going to Hangtown, with whom they might journey to this mining camp, where they hoped to find their fathers and their friends. Both boys were well acquainted with the trail to Sutter's Fort, having been there frequently with their fathers; and, since Sacramento City was only a couple of miles or so from Sutter's Fort, they would have no difficulty in finding their way thither. The trail, for the greater part of the distance, ran through beautiful valleys and over low-lying hills, where nature still reigned unfretted by man and where a human being was seldom seen, consequently Thure and Bud expected to have a lonely ride to Sacramento City.