LELAND STANFORD,

AND THE STORY OF CALIFORNIA.

HE opening up of the great West was more than the mere development of a country; it was the development of men, the evolution of a new race. Not only did the struggle result in the building of an empire, but it also brought forth the abilities of the men who made that empire great. One of the foremost of these men is Leland Stanford. In him were developed not only the powers which make a man capable of great deeds, but the sympa thies which lead him to desire the equal development of all of his race. He will be remembered not merely as the builder of the great Pacific Railroad, not merely as the successful business man, but as the man whose desire for the advancement of others grew out of the experiences of his own struggle. His greatest monu ment is the Leland Stanford, Jr., University, that noble institution whose object is to develop men and women.

California was a foreign country to the people of the United States when it became a part of the national territory at the close of the Mexican War. Its immense wealth, its glorious climate, its unlimited possibilities of development, were all unknown. Peopled by an effeminate and unprogressive race, it lacked all of the features of civilization which characterized the East.

Shortly after its acquisition by the United States, the discovery of gold in its mountain ranges brought the country into sudden prominence. The discovery was made by James Wilson Marshal, in January, 1848. Marshal had beer employed to construct a mill on the estate of a hundred square miles which General John A. Sutter had received as a grant from the Spanish government. Sutter's demesne had been the center of the American colonies in California. General Sutter himself, a Swiss by birth, was a generous-minded visionary, who had shown himself so hospitable to all American immigrants that he had attained to a certain pre-eminence in the affairs of the Territory, and was looked upon by many as a great and heroic figure.

The discovery of gold took place on the afternoon of the 24th of January,

1848, just after Sutter's mill had been completed, and Marshal and his men had for two weeks made a perilous fight to keep the dam from being destroyed by the heavy rains which had set in. In this contest with the water Marshal had exhibited a courage which made him half deserve the accidental fame that came through the finding of the gold. When his men were exhibiting to some

amazed Indians the workings of their new saw-mill, Marshal was inspecting the lower end of the millrace. He came back with the quiet remark, "Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine." He moved off to his cabin, went back to the race, and then again returned to his men, directing them early in the morning to shut down the headgate and see what would come of it. The next morning the men did as they were told, and presently Marshal came back looking won. derfully pleased, carrying in his arms his old white

nat, in the top of whose crown, sure enough, lay flakes and grains of the precious metal. Comparing these pieces with a gold coin one of the men happened to have in his pocket, they saw that the coin was a little lighter in color, and rightly attributed this to the presence of the alloy. Then aii the men hurried down the race, and were soon engrossed in picking gold from the

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seams and crevices laid bare by the shutting down of the head-gate. In the midst of their excitement doubts would sometimes arise, and some of the metal was thrown into vinegar and some boiled in the soap-kettle, to see if it stood these tests. Then Marshal went off to General Sutter, and, feverish with excitement, told him of what had come to light. When he returned to the men he said, “Oh, boys, it's the pure stuff! I and the old Cap went into a room and locked ourselves up, and we were half a day trying it, and the regulars there wondered what the devil was up. They thought perhaps I had found quicksilver, as the woman did down toward Monterey. Well, we compared it with the encyclopedia, and it agreed with it; we tried aqua fortis, but it would have nothing to do with it. Then we weighed it in water; we took scales with silver coins in one side, balanced with the dust in the other, and gently let them down into a basin of water; and the gold went down, and the silver came up. That told the story, what it was."

That did tell the story—and though Sutter tried to keep the story a secret until all the work in connection with the mills had been finished, the story would not keep. A Swiss teamster learned it from a woman who did some of the cooking about the mill, received a little of the gold, spent it for liquor at the nearest store, and then the fame of the discovery swiftly flew to the ends of the earth. General Sutter had been right in his endeavor to keep the discovery secret as long as was within his power, for no sooner did the gold hunters' invasion set in than it became impossible for him to get men to work his mill. The invaders carried things with a high hand, and ended by setting aside his title to his land and establishing the claims which they had made upon it. Never was money made with anything like such rapidity. Nearly every ravine contained gold. Nobody waited to get machinery to begin work. Knives, picks, shovels, sticks, tin pans, wooden bowls, wicker baskets, were the only implements needed for scraping the rocky beds, sifting the sand, or washing the dirt for the gold. A letter in the New York Journal of Commerce, toward the end of August, said of the hunt for gold: "At present the people are running over the country and picking it out of the earth here and there, just as dogs and hogs let loose in the forest would root up ground-nuts. Some get even ten ounces a day, and the least active one or two. They make most who employ the wild Indians to hunt it for them. There is one man who has sixty Indians under his employ. His profits are a dollar a minute. The wild Indians know nothing of its value, and wonder what the pale-faces want to do with it, and they will give an ounce of it for the same weight of coin silver or a thimbleful of glass beads or a glass of grog, and white men themselves often give an ounce of it, which is worth in our mint $18 or more, for a bottle of brandy, a bottle of soda powders, or a plug of tobacco.”

California in those days was another part of the world. The journey to it overland took weeks, and even months, and was full of perils of starvation in case

-of storm and drought, and perils of slaughter if hostile Indians were encountered. When things went well the life was pleasant enough, and is most picturesque to look back upon. The buffalo hunts, the meetings with Indians, the kindling of the camp-fires at the centre of the great circle of wagons drawn up to form a

bulwark against attack and a corral for the cattle, the story-telling in the light of these camp-fires,—all present a picture which men will love to dwell upon so long as the memory of the "Argonauts of Forty-nine" survives. But there were many times when the scenes were those of heart-sickening desolation. The

attacks of the Indians were less horrible than attacks of hunger and disease which set in when the emigrant train reached a territory where the grass had been consumed, or lost their cattle in the terrible snow storms of the Sierras.

The journey by sea was hardly safer and was far less glorious. Every ship for California was loaded down with emigrants packed together as closely as so much baggage. Ships with a capacity for five hundred would crowd in fifteen hundred. The passage money was from $300 to $600. The companies that were able to get their ships back

again simply coined money; but it was no easy matter in those days to get a ship out of San Francisco harbor. The crews would desert for the mines, and the wharves were lined with rotting vessels. Vessels which did make the return voyage were compelled to pay the California rate of wages. One ship in which the commander, engaged at New York, received $250 a month, had to pay on return $500 a month to the negro cook.

San Francisco in those days was the strangest place in the world. In February, 1848, it had hardly more than fifty houses; in August it contained five hundred, and had a large population that was not housed. A pamphlet written in the fall of that year says: "From eight to ten thousand inhabitants may be afloat in the streets of San Francisco; many live in shanties, many in tents, and many the best way they can." The best building in the town was the Parker House, an ordinary frame structure, a part of which was rented to gamblers for $60,000 a year. Even higher sums than this were said to have been paid. The accommodation was fearful. The worst that can be said of bad hotels may here be imagined. The pasteboard houses, hastily put up, were rented at far more than the cost of their construction, for every one figured that the land was as valuable as if it had been solid gold.

The greater part of this city was five times destroyed by fire in the first