For six weeks or more the work on the mill continued without serious interruption. Never having seen placer-mining, and having no distinct idea of the methods of finding and washing gold, the laborers at Coloma did not know how to gather the treasures in their vicinity. The first one to find gold outside of the tail-race was Bigler, who was the hunter of the party, sent out by Marshall at least one day in every week to get venison, which was a very acceptable addition to unground wheat and salt salmon, the main articles of food sent from Sutter's Fort. Deer being numerous in the neighboring hills, it was not necessary that Bigler should go far for game; and more than once he managed, while hunting, to look at the banks of the river and find some of the precious metal. His report of his success stimulated others, and they, too, found gold at various places. [Illustration: The song of the sirens (from "Punch").] In regard to the beginning of gold washing as a regular occupation there is a conflict of testimony. Bigler says that the first men who, within the range of his observation, devoted themselves to placer-mining were Willis Hudson and five others, all of Sam Brannan's Mormon colony, whom he visited at Mormon Island, on the American River below Coloma, on the 12th of April. On that day, washing the gravel with pans and pan-like Indian baskets, they took out more than two ounces and a half (forty-one dollars) for each man. On the other hand, Isaac Humphrey, who had been a placer-miner in Georgia, and who was the first person to use a rocker in the Sierra Nevada and to teach others there to use it, said that he arrived in Coloma on the 7th of March, and within a week commenced work with a rocker. We may explain the discrepancy between these two authorities by imagining that for some weeks Humphrey purposely avoided observation, as placer-miners often do; or that in the interval of ten years between his first appearance at Coloma and the publication of his reminiscences his memory misled him in the date.