December 11 Wednesday ca. – With a bad case of mining fever, Sam set out for the newly opened Humboldt region with three other men: Keokuk friend William H. Clagett (“Billy”) (1838-1901), Augustus W. Oliver (“Gus”; b. 1835) recently appointed probate judge of Humboldt County, and Cornbury S. Tillou, Carson City blacksmith and jack-of-all-trades. It was a 200-mile trip that took eleven days [MTL 1: 149-50 & n4]. Mack writes that the party did not leave until after Dec. 10, delayed by a fight in the legislature over the county-capital bill [126].
“Hurry was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself [Clagett, Oliver, and Tillou]. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put 1,800 pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon” [MTB 183].
Once back in Carson City Sam would write his mother a long account of this trip on Jan. 30. In Roughing It, Sam wrote of a “small, rude cabin” that he and his three traveling companions built in Unionville in Dec. 1861 [Roughing It, Ch. 28].