Enos had guided Fremont through Wyoming.
It is rather too bad that Palmer could not have accompanied Fremont and
Kit Carson when, in February, 1844, they crossed the snowy summit of the
Sierras and descended through the deep drifts to Sutter's Fort and
safety. That was four years before the discovery of gold in El Dorado
County.
Palmer was not crazy for gold. Arrived in the Sacramento Valley, he
spent three or four years at farming. Perhaps his Yankee shrewdness saw
larger profits in hay and cattle than in washing gravel. But certainly
his New England integrity and soberness of character were more in
keeping with the spirit of the pioneer than with the spirit of the
adventurer.
While reckless young men were swarming up the valleys of South, Middle
and North Yuba, finding fabulous quantities of gold and squandering the
same upon the Chinese harlots of Downieville, Robert Palmer was making
hay while the sun shone, which was every day in the Sacramento Valley.
But land titles were so uncertain that in 1853 he turned to mining,--at
Jefferson, on the South Yuba. He prospered to such an extent that by
1859 he had sent $8,000 back to Connecticut to pay his debts; and he had
laid by as much more.
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