These Sidney "ducks" were English convicts from Australia, and other thieves and robbers joined them as agreeable companion, making a large class that seemed to glory in destruction and a chance for booty.
I walked around over the hills where I could see the burned district and the destruction of so much valuable property, and when I thought the civil law was not strong enough to govern, it seemed to me it would be a good place for such men as the Helms brothers of Georgetown to come down and do a little hanging business, for they could here find plenty to do, and they could carry out their plan of letting no guilty man escape.
About four o'clock one afternoon we went aboard the Sacramento steamer, Antelope, paying our passage with half an ounce apiece, and were soon on our way past the islands and up the bay.

When we were beyond Benicia, where the river banks were close, McCloud sat watching the shore, and remarked that the boat ran like a greyhound, and it seemed to him, beat the old ocean steamer pretty bad.
He seemed to be nearly well again, and complimented me as the best doctor he ever saw.

Since he had been sick I had paid him all the attention I could, and he gave me all the praise I deserved, now that he was getting to feel himself again.
At Sacramento we changed to another boat bound for Marysville, which place we reached without special incident.

Here we invested in a four-ounce donkey, that is, we paid four ounces of gold for him, just an ounce apiece for four of us--W.L.

Manley, Robert McCloud, Lyman Ross and John Briggs.