Page:History of California (Bancroft) volume 6.djvu/79

Rh hastened northward; their keepers followed in pursuit, if indeed they had not preceded, but they took care not to find them. Soldiers fled from their posts; others were sent for them, and none returned. Valuable land grants were surrendered, and farms left tenantless; waving fields of grain stood abandoned, perchance opened to the roaming cattle, and gardens were left to run to waste. The country seemed as if smitten by a plague.

All along down the coast from Monterey to Santa Bdrbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego, it was the same. Towns and country were wellnigh depopulated. There the fever raged fiercest during the three summer months. At the capital a letter from Larkin gave the impulse, and about the same time, upon the statement of Swan, four Mormons called at Monterey en route for Los Angeles, who were reported to carry 100 pounds avoirdupois of gold gathered in less than a month at Mormon Island. This was in June. A fortnight after the town was depopulated, 1,000 starting from that vicinity within a week. At San Fran