CALIFORNIA, AND ITS GOLD.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 387, 4 August 1849, Page 91

CALIFORNIA, AND ITS GOLD.

The recent discovery of the extensive gold districts of California is altogether so remarkable an event, that we have thought a short sketch of the principal facts relating to it would be acceptable to our readers, and we are able to draw these from a source which may be looked upon as authentic. We have before us two reports from the agent of the United States Government residing in California, written in the months of September and October last, at San Francisco, the principal port of that country. The writer, a Captain J. L. Folsom, commences his first report with a short but interesting account of California previous to its annexation to the United States : — " Up to the time the American flag was raised in California by Commodore Sloat, in July, 1846, the country may be said to have slumbered on from its first settlement without enterprise or activity on the part of its inhabitants. Constitutionally indolent in their habits, the climate was admirably adapted to develope and perpetuate the worst forms of slothfulness and improvidence among the occupants of the soil. The people were too much the victims of these vices to become even shepherds in the true sense of the word ; and they lived without either milk, butter, or cheese, although surrounded by thousands of cows ; and scarcely an attempt was made to call out the agricultural virtues of the soil. A little wheat and corn, and a few beans, pumpkins, and melons, satisfied the moderate wants of those who had never known the comforts to be derived from industry, and the grand staple of subsistence with all classes was the flesh of their cattle. The listlessness and apathy of this kind of life clusg to the whole native population, and when the United States' flag was raised here, the country could boast of no improvement, either public or private, i except what the moderate wants of a warm latitude rendered imperatively j necessary." After tbe States' flag wa3 raised, the country progressed rapidly in improvement. Emigration set in from all quarters. Agriculture and trade was prosecuted with the energy which everywhere distinguishes the Anglo-American race, who now commenced spreading themselves over the country, which thus had every appearance of rising soon into importance as as a field for industry and enterprize. " But a change came over the face of affairs In the latter part of February, 1848, a mechanic named James Marshall, was employed building a sawmill for John A. Sutter, Esq., on the south branch of a river known in California as the American Fork, some fifty miles from New Helvetia or Suiter's Fort. On Fremont's map this river is called Rio de los Americanoes. It is the strean by which Captain Fremont descended into the valley of the Sacramento River, by a perilous march in the winter and spring of 1848. While employed in cutting a mill-race or canal for this improvement, Mr. Marshall discovered the pieces of gold as they glistened in the sunlight at the bottom of the sluices. Pieces of considerable size were taken from the water, and in a few days gold to the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars was removed in this manner. The labourers on the works, mostly Mormons, soon became satisfied of its precious nature, and the news spread rapidly about the country. Examinations were prosecuted at other points along the stream, and almost everywhere with success. Reports of a most marvellous nature soon reached the coast touching these mines. Their apparent entravagance created incredulity, and the public attention was not fully called to the subject until gold dust or grain gold was brought into the market in considerable quantities for sale. Doubt soon became belief, and a change almost magical in its nature pervaded the whole population. Lawyers, doctors, clergymen, farmers mechanics, sailors, and soldiers, left their legitimate occupations to embark on a business where fortunes were to be made in a few weeks. Villages and districts, where all had been bustle, industry, and improvement, were soon left without male population. Mechanics, merchants, and magistrates, were alike off to the mines, and all kinds of useful occupation, except gold-digging, were here apparently at an end. In most cases the crops were remarkably good; but they are generally lost for want of labourers to secure them, In some parts of the country hundreds of acres of fine wheat will rot in the fields from the impossibility of getting labourers. Vessels are left swinning idly at their anchors, while both captains and crews are at the mines, and tbe most essential private and public improvements are arrested in their progress. The wages of clerks have advanced at least two hundred per cent., and those of common labourers at least four or five hundred. At the time the excitement broke out I was repairing the U. S. barque Anita. The workmen were receiving three dollars per day, and lived on board the vessel. They struck for higher wages, and one man finally left and forfeited all bis former earnings, rather than continue to work a few days more at six dollars per day. Common sailors demanded 100 dollars per month for work in schooners in the bay. Freight from this port; to Sutter's is from two dollars to four dollars per barrel. The distance is little more than one hundred miles. Common four -ox waggons are hired at fifty dollars per day. In one case I have known a negro cook to be employed at 35 dollars per day for his professional services among the pots and kettles in the gold region." The discovery of the gold, as soon as it became known, drew to the mines all the population from the neighbouring towns, as well as from more distant spots. The influx of population, which in consequence shortly took place., together with the sickness which broke out among the goldseekers, gave back to San Francisco some of its population, and thus saved it from

becoming, as was at one time threatened, wholly deserted. "There is now a large number of labourers here, but many of them refuse to work on any terms, while those who labour do so at exorbitant prices. The ordinary compensation for white labourers is from six dollars to ten dollars per day. lam now paying these prices for men I am forced to employ for repairing the Government lighter, and for discharging the ship Huntress, now in this port. At the same time everything is high in proportion. Butter sells by the barrel at 1 dollar per pound, and hams at the same price ; flour 25 dollars per barrel, and pilot bread forty cents per pound. For the last three pair of boots I have had, I have paid, respectively, 18 dollars, 14 dollars, and 12 dollars per pair. Other things are at corresponding prices m this place, but at the mines everything is much higher. Flour and pork vary in the mines from 40 dollars to 200 dollars per barrel. Common shoes, worth in Boston about 75 cents per pair, sell at 8 dollars or even 12 dollars per pair. There is a kind of recklessness about these prices which would be sought after in vain in any other part of the world, Ifcaw a hex of seidlUz powders, worth 50 cents'in San Francisco, sold in the mines for 24 dollars'in grain gold ; and was credibly informed that brandy had been sold at 48 dollars per bottle. From this very imperfect price current, you can infer the cest of other articles in California. With the prices in the mines, however, the cost of almost everything in California has increased from one to several hundred per cent. Rents have advanced in some sections of the country to an incredible extent. Storehouses of the most fragile and insecure character rent for more than the best warehouses of similar dimensions in Boston or New York." In spite of the charm which gold- digging presents to the imagination, it does not appear to be, in fact, a particularly agreeable occupation. The climate of the goldcountry is most oppressively hot, for though agreeable enough on the coast, where the heat is tempered by the sea-breeze, this never penetrates far into the country, nor passes the hills which lie a short distance back from the coast. Without shelter from the cold night-air, with little food, and standing all day exposed to the concentrated rays of a tropical sun, the gold- seekers lead no enviable life, and dysentery, and fever in all its varieties, was busy among then). " Most of the streams upon which gold is found are mountain torrents, flowing through rocky and precipitous channels, and a yellowish red soil. There is apparently much iron in the earth, and where most of the gold is obtained [the bed and banks of the rivers are composed of coarse gravel intermingled with sand and a yellowish earth. So far as I have observed or canjascertain from others, the gold is always found in the stratum of" drift" or " diluvium," unless it has been displaced by mountain torrents, or through other comparitively modern agencies. The fine gold is found in the lower portions of the streams, and is extracted from the earth by means of washing in common tin pans, and vessels of every kind that can be substituted for them. The finest portions of the earth are removed by washing and a kind of gyratory motion of the pan : the gravel is taken out with the hand, and the gold is left in the vessels, with a kind of black, ferruginous sand, not unlike that used in writing. The residue (gold and sand), is then left upon a board or cloth to dry, when the sand is blown off with a common bellows or the mouth, while the greater specific gravity of the gold causes it to remain behind. Much of the finest of the gold is thus blown off with the Band and lost. It is supposed that at least one-half the gold contained in a given quantity of earth is lost by the imperfect measures taken for cleaning it. "As the workmen ascend the streams into the mountains, the gold becomes coarser and more massive. On the lower portions of the streams it is found in thin flat particles resembling small golden fish scales. Higher in the mountains it is found varying in size, from the finest particles to pieces of five or six ounces in weight and of all conceivable forms. Many of the largest pieces contain small portions of quartz and other granite rock imbedded in them. The coarse gold is dug out of the crevices among the rocks, in the dry beds of mountain torrents, with pickaxes, small iron bars, spades, butchers' knives,[sticks, &c. In many places the streams flow over strata of coarse slate or shale standing vertically, and between the different layers the gold is deposited by the water. As no one has yet found the gold in its native matrix, a question often suggests itself as to its origin. I believe the coarse gold is found near the spots where it originally lay in its native bed, and much of the fine gold has been swept down from the mountains by torrents of water. Almost all the rocks in Upper California are imperfectly organised, being -soft and friable, and incapable of resisting the action of the weather. In the process of time the mountains have gradually crumbled away into fine dust, and the gold has been liberated. The coarse gold, from its massiveness and great specific gravity, was not removed from the mountain sides, whereas the fine gold was swept on to the plains below." The extent of this gold-field it is impossible to conjecture. Already has the metal been dug in quantities at all points along the course of six or eight rivers, and their tributary streams, and at various' spots among the.mountains, and it is thus known to extend over a region of country of more than 600 miles in extent. The writer of these reports furnishes some particulars of the success which bad attended the labour* of individuals, some of which, it moat be confessed, are very alluring :— " On the most southern tributary of the American Fork, sixteen miles from the main stream, -I hw where Messrs. Neily and Crowley got, with six men, in six days, ten and a half 'pounds «f gold, avoirdupois weight In the bottom of a dfry

ravine of the same stream, Messrs. Daly and M'Cooms removed, with a party of Indians and white men, 17,000 dollars in two days, and within two hundred yards of the main stream. From another dry ravine, within a few rods of the last mentioned, it it said that 30,000 dollars were collected in three days. Mr. C. S. Lyman, a clergyman, unaccustomed to labour, informed me that he got 50 dollars for about five hours' labour each day. Mr. Vaca, a New Mexican, who resides about thirty miles from Slitter's, told me, he with four other men, got seventeen pounds of gold, avoirdupois weight, in seven days. I saw the gold. Major Cooper, late of Missouri, with two men and one boy, got 1,000 dollars in two days. Mr. Sinclair had been employed in digging gold about five weeks, with a party of Indians, numbering about forty, sometimes more and sometimes less. He gave his Indians meat, sugar, coffee, flour, and rice, and they ate three times per day. They were mostly wild Indians, and worked altogether with pans. In five weeks, after paying all his Indians and the current expenses of the party, he had 1 7,000 dollars, or upwards of ninety pounds, troy weight, of gold dust. The gold was shown. Mr. Norris and one companion took from a dry ravine, nor far from those already mentioned, 3,000 dollars in two days, and the dirt was packed on horses more than two hundred yards to the water. Mr. Aaron Angland got from his own labour, in twenty consecutive days after his arrival at the mines, 2,200 dollars. But I might go on stating facts like these until I should tire your patience." The writer enters into a calculation of the amount of gold likely to be removed from California during the year commencing July 1, 1849, and he estimates it at 5,500,000 dollars, which is considerably greater than the total amount of all the gold taken in the United States for the fifteen years ending in 1838, and nearly three times as great as the entire gold coinage of the United States Government. The adage, "that all is not gold that glitters," seems verified, even in California: — " It is impossible to foretel what will be the ultimate result of this sudden development of wealth. It is sufficiently obvious, however, that the country will be prematurely filled by a restless, excitable, adventurous and reckless population, and that extended agricultural or mechanical improvements are at an end for some years to come. Gambling and all sorts of thoughtless profusion begin to prevail. The present excitement will attract vast numbers of the idle, vicious, and dissolute. Refugees from justice from the United States, as well as from other countries, will flock to California among the better disposed population, and will find shelter among the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the mountains were such mines of wealth are now opened. These regions are of vast extent, and are remote from the regular settlements, and from the operation of the laws. In the solitary recesses of the Sierra Nevada are little clusters of man with nothing but the trees for their covering, and no protection but their own vigilance and strength. Many of these people are known to possess very large amounts of gold (sometimes as much as 2,0000 dollars) wrapped in their blankets, where there is no eye to see and no agent to pursue the guilty. Is it strange ,|when the temptation is so great, that the robber and assassin should be abroad among the mountains ? Manny robberies and some murders are known already to have occurred ; but little attention is excited by these events, where all are ia the eager pursuit of wealth. No one can conjecture the extent of these outrages, for living witnesses are not at hand, and " dead men tell no tales." The strong and firm hand of Government must be promptly extended to save the country from the most revolting acts of violence." * * • * " The prices of labour here will create surprise in the United States. Kannakas, or Sandwich Islanders, the worst of labourers, are now employed constantly about town in storing and landing merchandise at a dollar an hour each — and the most indifferent labourers are hired by the week together at six or eight dollars per day. Mechanics obtain, when employed by the day, eight or ten dollars per day, and by the month about six. In a few days, as the sickly season is over, I presume wages will advance, for most of the labouring classes are returning to the mines. It is impossible to give you a fair idea of the insuperable difficulties we all meet with in any business which we are called upon to do. I can best effect this, however, by stating facts for your information. I have just completed the repairs upon a Government lighter preparatory to the discharging the cargo of the transport ship Huntress. I attempted to hire a lighter to effect this, but could not get one capable of containing 120 barrels, manned by two men, short of fifty dollars per day. I have had the master of the Government lighter employed for several days in getting a crew for her ; and when he offers eighty dollars per month for sailors, he is laughed at, and told that a man can get that amount in the mines in one day ! A few days since I sent a waggonmaster to employ some men to handle stores in the public warehouse. After searching about the town in vain for several hours, he saw a man on the dock who he felt sure of getting, for the individual in question did not seem to be blessed with a redundancy of this world's gear. He was wearing a slouched hat, without a crown, a dilapi- I dated buckskin hunting- shirt or frock, a very uncleanly red woollen shirt, with pantaloons hanging in tatters, and his feet had an apology for a covering in one old shoe, and one old buckskin mocassin, sadly the worse for wear and old age. When asked if he wanted employment, he replied in the affirmative ; and as the young man was proceeding to tell him what he wished to have him to do, he was interrupted with. ' It is not that kind of work, sir, that I want (at the same time taking about two quarts of gold dust from his buckskin shirt) : I want to work in the mines, sir. Look, here, stranger, do yon see this ? This bag oontains gold dust ; and do you suppose I am to make a damned nigger of myself handling boxes and barrels for eight or ten dollars per day ? I slwuid think not, stranger?" And our friend

left in a most contemptuous manner. Nor was this a solitary instance of like conduct — they occur daily and hourly in this village. All sorts of labour is got at enormous rates of compensation. Common clerks and salesmen in the stores about town, often receive as high as 2,500 dollars and their board. The clerk now in my office is a young boy, who, until a few weeks siuce, was a 1 private of volunteers,' and I am now paying him 1,500 dollars per annum. This will not appear high when I tell you that I have just seen upon his table a wash bill made out and paid, at the rate of eight dollars per dozen — and that almost everything else is at correspoding prices. The principal waiter in the hotel where I board, is paid 1,700 dollars per year, and several others from 1,200 to 1,500 dollars! I fortunately have an Indian boy, or I should be forced to clean my own boots, for I could not employ a good body servant for the full amount of my salary as a Government officer. It will be impossible for any army officer to live here upon his pay without becoming rapidly impoverished, for his time is not his own to enter upon business — and although he might have money, his opportunities for making it useful to him are few, unless he invests it in real estate. Unless something is done, lam unable to see how it is possible for officers living upon the salaries granted by law to military men to support themselves in this country. I believe every army officer in California — with one or two exceptions — would have resigned last summer could they have done it and be free at once to commence for themselves. But the war was not then terminated, and no one could hope to communicate with Washington correspondents to get an answer in less than six, and perhaps ten months. For some time last summer, August and July, the officers at Monterey were entirely without servants, and the Governor (Colonel Mason) actually took his turn in cooking bis mess. Unless some prompt action is taken to pay both officers and men serving in this country in proportion to the unavoidable expenses to be incurred, the former will resign and the latter will desert, and it will be impossible to maintain a military force in California. It cannot be expected that officers will devote their services to the Government at a rate of compensation which will not enable them to employ a servant, to say nothing of living in such a manner as may become their station — and it is utterly impossible to do it in California upon the salaries allowed by law." * • • ♦ " Something should be done here at once for the establishment of peace and good order in the country. All law, both civil and military, is at an end. Among the mines, and indeed in most parts of the country out of the villages, no authority but that of the strongest exists ; and outrages of the most disgraceful nature are constantly occurring, and the offenders go (unpunished. There are now about twenty-five vessels in this port, and I believe there is not one of them that has a crew to go to sea. Frequently the? sailors arm themselves, take the ships' boats, and leave in the most open manner, defying both their officers and the civil magistrates. These things are disgraceful to the country and the flag ; and while vessels have to pay port charges, duties, &c, their owners ought to be protected. The tariff law of 1846 is now in force in California." Captain Folsom again and again urges on his Government the necessity of establishing order in California, which in fact it is bound to do at any cost by every principle of policy and justice. Indeed, so great is the evil felt of the absence of all constituted authority in the country, that some of the shipowners of Sydney have determined on suffering no more of their vessels to proceed to San Francisco until it is known that the United States Government have taken this necessary step. ________„.„«,