noon
In the stores , no matter how constructed , every kind of goods was being sold , signs bore high-sounding names such as the Alhambra , Delmonico 's , United States Hotel , and other signs were being added hourly ; from the wharf on Montgomery Street to the top of the Clay Street hill beyond the post-office busy hammers beat a great chorus , in the bay flew hundreds of flags , and in the streets school-teachers , bankers , lawyers and farmers rubbed elbows with Mexicans , Peruvians , Chinamen and Kanakas , while all talked in terms of thousands of dollars . Why , here was New York , New Orleans and St. Louis thrown together and boiled down . Up at the post-office the post-master and his clerks evidently were still sorting out the 25,000 letters , for the lines of waiters were unbroken . Mr. Grigsby was promptly on hand , at noon , in the hotel . He reported that he had engaged passage on a sail-boat , the _ Mary Ann _ , for the town of Sacramento , 120 miles north up the Sacramento River . `` That is , '' he added , `` if you want to try the American River country , where the first diggin 's are . Sacramento is the old _ embarcadero _ -LSB- which , as Charley found out , was the Spanish for boat-landing -RSB- for Sutter 's Fort , up the American .