satisfied with smelling it. . . while a gentleman placed the specimen on the top of his gold-headed cane and held it up, challenging the sharpest eyes to detect a difference. But doubts still hovered in the minds of the great mass. They could not conceive that such a treasure could have lain there so long undiscovered. The idea seemed to convict them of stupidity. There is nothing of which a man is more tenacious than his claims to sagacity. . . .

Tuesday, June 20. My messenger sent to the mines has returned with specimens of the gold; he dismounted in a sea of. upturned faces. As he drew forth the yellow lumps from his pockets and passed them around among the eager crowd, the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled. All admitted they were gold, except one old man, who still persisted they were some Yankee invention, got up to reconcile the people to the change of flag. The excitement produced was intense; and many were soon busy in their hasty preparations for a departure to the mines. The family who had kept house for me caught the moving infection. Husband and wife were both packing up; the blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, the tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter. An American woman, who had recently established a boarding house here, pulled up stakes and was off before her lodgers had even time to pay their bills. Debtors ran, of course. I have only a community of women left, and a gang of prisoners, with here and there a soldier, who will give his captain the slip at the first chance.1 I don't blame the fellow a whit! seven dollars a month, while others are making two or three hundred a day! that is too much for human nature to stand.

1 President Polk in his last annual message, December 5, 1848, said: Nearly the whole of the male population of the country [California] have gone to the gold districts. Ships arriving at the coast are deserted by their crews and their voyages suspended for want of sailors. Our commanding officer there entertains apprehensions that soldiers cannot be kept in the public service without a large increase of pay. Desertions in his command have been frequent."- Richardson, Messages and Papers, Vol. IV, p. 636.

Tuesday, July 18. Another bag of gold from the mines, and another spasm in the community. It was brought down by a sailor from Yuba river, and contains 136 ounces. It is the most beautiful gold that has appeared in the market; it looks like the yellow scales of the dolphin, passing through his rainbow hues at death. My carpenters at work on the school-house, on seeing it, threw down their saws and planes, shouldered their picks, and are off for the Yuba. Three seamen ran from the Warren, forfeiting their four years' pay; and a whole platoon of soldiers from the fort left only their colors behind.1

Thursday, Aug. 16. Four citizens of Monterey are just in from the gold mines on Feather River, where they worked in company with three others. They employed about thirty wild Indians, who are attached to the rancho owned by one of the party. They worked precisely seven weeks and three days, and have divided $76,844 — nearly $11,000 to each. . . .

Tuesday, Aug. 28. The gold mines have upset all social and domestic arrangements in Monterey; the master has become his own servant, and the servant his own lord. . . . Out on this yellow dust! it is worse than the cinders which buried Pompeii, for there, high and low shared the same fate!

Monday, Oct. 2. [After a horseback journey of over 150 miles from Monterey to the gold fields] I went among the golddiggers; found a half a dozen at the bottom of the ravine, tearing up the bogs and up to their knees in mud. Beneath these bogs lay a bed of clay, sprinkled in spots with gold.... Not having much relish for the bogs and mud, I procured a light

1" San Francisco became almost deserted by man. Stores were closed, places of business vacated, houses left tenantless.. In May the Californian and in June the Star ceased to be published. Typesetters, pressmen, and printer's devil had all gone. The Town Council held no sittings. The Church was closed. The Alcalde was nowhere to be found, and every ship that came was deserted by her crew almost as soon as she dropped anchor.... The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles. . . resounded with the sordid cry of Gold! Gold! Gold! while fields were left half tilled, houses half built, and every industry save the manufacture of picks and shovels was neglected.” – J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. VII, p. 586.

crowbar and went to splitting the slate rocks which project into the ravine. I found between the layers, which were not perfectly closed, particles of gold, resembling in shape the small and delicate scales of a fish. These were easily scraped from the slate by a hunter's knife, and readily separated in the washbowl from all foreign substances. . . . There are about seventy persons at work in this ravine, and all within a few yards of each other. They average about one ounce [worth about $20] per diem each. They who get less are discontented, and they who get more are not satisfied. Every day brings in some fresh report of richer discoveries in some quarter not far remote, and the diggers are consequently kept in a state of feverish excitement. . . . Such is human nature; and a miserable thing it is, too, especially when touched with the gold fever. . . .

Monday, Oct. 16. I encountered this morning in the person of a Welshman, a pretty marked specimen of the gold-digger. He stood some six feet eight in his shoes, with giant limbs and frame. A leather strap fastened his coarse trousers above his hips, and confined the flowing bunt of his flannel shirt. A broad-rimmed hat sheltered his brawny features, while his unshorn beard and hair flowed in tangled confusion to his waist. To his back was lashed a blanket and a bag of provisions; on one shoulder rested a huge crowbar, to which were hung a goldwasher and a skillet; on the other rested a rifle, a spade, a pick, from which dangled a cup and a pair of heavy shoes. He recognized me as the magistrate who had once arrested him for a breach of the peace. "Well, Señor Alcalde," said he, "I am glad to see you in these diggings. You had some trouble with me in Monterey; I was on a burster [drunk]; you did your duty, and I respect you for it; and now let me settle the difference between us with a bit of gold: it shall be the first I strike under this bog."... He struck a layer of clay: "Here she comes," he ejaculated, and turned out a piece of gold that would weigh an ounce or more. "There," said he, "Señor Alcalde, accept that; and when you reach home . . . have a bracelet made of it for your good lady." He continued to dig around the same place, but during the hour I remained with him, found no other piece of gold — not a particle.

The story of the discovery of the first particles of gold by James A. Marshall, a native of New Jersey, who was in the employ of a wealthy Swiss-American named Sutter, who had lumber mills near the present site of Sacramento City, is thus told by Sutter himself:

I was sitting one afternoon, just after my siesta, engaged bye-the-bye in writing a letter to a relation of mine at Lucerne, when I was interrupted by Mr. Marshall- a gentleman with whom I had frequent business relations bursting hurriedly into the room. From the unusual agitation in his manner I imagined that something serious had occurred, and, as we involuntarily do in this part of the world, I at once glanced to see if my rifle was in its proper place. You must know that the mere appearance of Mr. Marshall at that moment in the fort was quite enough to surprise me, as he had, but two days before, left the place to make some alterations in a mill for sawing pine planks, which he had just run up for me, some miles higher up the Americanos [American Fork]. When he had recovered himself a little, he told me that however great my surprise might be at his unexpected reappearance, it would be much greater when I heard the intelligence he had come to bring me. "Intelligence," he added, "which, if properly profited by, would put both of us in possession of unheard-of wealth - millions and millions of dollars, in fact." I frankly own, when I heard this I thought something had touched Marshall's brain, when suddenly all my misgivings were put an end to by his flinging on the table a handful of scales of pure virgin gold. I was fairly thunderstruck and asked him to explain what all this meant, when he went on to say, that according to my instructions, he had thrown the mill-wheel out of gear, to let the whole body of the water in the dam find a passage through the tail-race, which was previously too narrow for the water to run off in sufficient quantity. . . . By this alteration the narrow channel was considerably enlarged, and a mass of sand and gravel carried off by the force of the torrent. Early in the morning after this took place, he Mr. Marshall was walking along the left bank of

the stream, when he perceived something which he at first took for a piece of opal - a clear, transparent stone, very common here- glittering on one of the spots laid bare by the sudden crumbling away of the bank. He paid no attention to this; but while he was giving directions to the workmen, having observed several similar glittering fragments, his curiosity was so far excited, that he stooped down and picked one of them up. "Do you know," said Marshall to me, "I positively debated within myself two or three times, whether I should take the trouble to bend my back to pick up one of the pieces, and had decided on not doing so, when, further on, another glittering morsel caught my eye― the largest of the pieces now before you. . . .” He then gathered some twenty or thirty similar pieces. . . . He mounted his horse and rode down to me as fast as it would carry him, with the news.... I eagerly inquired if he had shown the gold to the work-people at the mill, and was glad to hear that he had not spoken to a single person about it. "We agreed,” said the captain smiling, "not to mention the circumstance to anyone, and arranged to set off early the next day for the mill. On our arrival, just before sun-down, we poked the sand about in various places, and before long succeeded in collecting between us more than an ounce of gold, mixed up with a good deal of sand. . . . On our return to the mill we were astonished by the work-people coming up to us in a body, and showing us small flakes of gold.... Marshall tried to laugh the matter off with them, and to persuade them that what they had found was only some shining mineral of trifling value; but one of the Indians, who had worked at the gold mine in the neighborhood of La Paz, in Lower California, cried out oro! oro! We were disappointed enough, and supposed the work-people had been watching our movements, although we had taken every precaution against being observed by them."

THE OMNIBUS BILL

...

Probably no other speech ever delivered in the halls of Congress has stirred the moral feelings of our country more deeply or contributed more effectively to the passage