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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
“THE FORKS.” 219
spoken of as “ The Forks” in that part of the country.
It may be necessary to explain that, in talking of
the forks of a river in California, one is always supposed to be going up the river; the forks are its
tributaries. The main rivers received their names,
which they still retain, from the Spaniards and Indians ; and the first gold-hunting pioneers, in exploring a river, when they came to a tributary, called one
branch the north, and the other the south fork. When
one of these again received a tributary, it either continued to be the north or south fork, or became the
middle fork, as the case might be.
If a river was never to have more than two tributaries, this would do very well, but the river above
Downieville kept on forking about every half-a-mile,
and the branches were all named on the same principle, so that there were half-a-dozen north, middle,
and south forks.
The diggings at Downieville were very extensive ;
for many miles above it on each fork there were numbers of miners working in the bed and the banks of
the river. The mountains are very precipitous, and
the only communication was by a narrow trail which
had been trodden into the hillside, and crossed from
one side of the river to the other, as either happened
to be more practicable ; sometimes following the rocky
bed of the river itself, and occasionally rising over
high steep bluffs, where it required a steady head and
a sure foot to get along in safety.
One spot in particular was enough to try the