Vocabulary

(The diary was written by Indiana James, who emigrated with her father from Indiana to California.)

February 28, 1850

It was so cold today.. I am looking forward to it warming up. The downpour caused a lot of flooding. Most roads were very bad. My father and I left home, our loved ones, and our friends to endure the hardship of a long and exhausting Journey. We have to brave the dangers of camp life. We want to come to California to get free land. We had dreams of filling our pockets with yellow gold, but even more important to us was finding Aaron. My brother who had left for California two years before. California... This country was called the heavenly country. Sickness was hardly ever known here. It was believed that this state was the treasure of every pioneer...

July 7, 1850

Today was the worst day ever. Someone died, a small child from whooping cough. His name was James. It's the third death in barely a week.  I remember his angel’s face, his sweet voice and above all his green eyes. It makes me remember my husband's death. He died before reaching California.

Sometimes, i wonder if it was good to do that. Maybe it's weird and unsane to past a whole life to search gold to have a better life. It's contradicting.  I reconfort myself, saying that I do this for my children. After all, the future belongs to them. I remember that all began since January with the gold’s discovery at Sutter's Mill. A sawmill owned by the Swiss Johann August Sutter, near Coloma, east of Sacramento... The news of this discovery spread quickly and attracted more than 300,000 Americans and foreign adventurers. It's quite strange each time i realise that I am one of them.

September 8, 1850

It has been raining  all week, but today the sky was clear. I didn't know what I got into when I went to the gold fields with my father. We started this morning at daylight, without having breakfast before. We hoped finding new diggings. We traveled over the burning sand. My lips were quite parched up. Gold mining was very difficult and time consuming.  Many people who went to mine had no experience with mining. We returned home with little more than we had at the beginning.

Then, rather than spending my afternoon in the goldfields, I took the opportunity to write a letter to my children. It has been a long time since I wrote to them. I miss them so much.

My father was so worried.. and I was more. It has already been seven months since we started to look for Aaron in January and we still don't found him...

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