thirty-five miles eastward from Sutter's Fort, found some pieces of yellow metal, which he and the half-dozen men working with him supposed to be gold." He collected a large number of specimens, and submitted them to Isaac Humphrey, an experienced miner from Georgia, who saw at a glance the evidence of "rich diggings." He went to the locality of Marshall's discovery, and immediately commenced washing out the precious metal, making an ounce or two a day. Others, of course, promptly joined him, using pans, or "rockers" of their own construction. On the 15th of March, the following announcement was made in the California paper at San Francisco:

"In the newly-made raceway of the sawmill recently erected by Capt. Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time." This vast country now belonged to the United States; and Americans were beginning to look through it to see what were the prospects for future wealth in this new addition to the Great Republic. Of course, the above announcement produced a stir among them; and, on the 29th of May, the same paper announced its suspension, and said, "The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry of Gold, gold, gold!' while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and every thing neglected but the manufacture of picks and shovels, and the means of transportation to the spot, where one man obtained a hundred and twenty-eight dollars' worth of the real stuff in one day's washing; and the average for all concerned is twenty dollars per diem."

From this the excitement spread abroad through every part of the United States and in foreign countries; and 1849 became distinguished as the year of the hegira to the New Eldorado, and the beginning of a new era in the wealth of the United States and the basis of commerce.

The processes adopted for obtaining the precious metal illustrated the American genius. Scientific mining was not known. But various inventions and unparalleled enterprise supplied all defects. The pan, the rocker, the tom, the flume, the shaft, the tunnel, the prospecting, the wandering and rushing from place to place, the ditches, the dams, the turning of rivers, the quarrying of quartz, the stamps, the blankets, the vats, the races, the quicksilver, the blasting, the hydraulics, and innumerable other methods of gathering the shining dust, all indicated the passionate violence and the unconquerable energy of the American people. Towns sprang up in the gulches and on the foot-hills; the beds of rivers were explored for miles and miles; whole regions were torn up by the blast, the pick, the shovel, and the hose; hills and small mountains were literally blown or washed to pieces; and the mining-belt stretched the length of the Pacific coast, and far up on the Sierras. Europeans and Asiatics mingled in the strife; and the population of the State increased with unprecedented rapidity.

Mining processes have at length become much more regular and economical. New inventions have superseded not only the rustic implements of 1849 and 1850, but the best heretofore known; and though many of the metallurgic processes established by science have yet to be introduced for separating the precious metals from their ores, and exhausting the localities prematurely abandoned, it must be admitted, that, as a whole, the processes of mining for gold and silver have advanced rapidly under the inventive genius of the American mind.

The discovery of silver in Washoe is an event of historic importance. Gold was found in Gold Cañon, a little tributary of Carson River, in 1849. Miners, however, did not like the locality. There was so much silver mixed with the gold as to reduce the price of dust to from ten to twelve dollars per ounce, whereas " that obtained from the western slope of the Sierra usually sold for seventeen or eighteen dollars."

In 1859, a quartz lode was found on what is now known as Goldhill. "Two months later, some miners, in following up a placer-bed in which the gold was mixed with about an equal weight of silver, came on the lode from which the metal had been washed down." This was the famous "Comstock Lode," the discovery of which formed Virginia City and the State of Nevada, and introduced a new era in the mining wealth of the continent. "It is now the most productive mineral vein in the world. A strip of land six hundred yards wide, and three miles long, yields $12,000,000 annually." James Walsh, an intelligent quartz-miner from Grass Valley, seems to have been the first to detect the real value of the "dark-gray stone" found here, a ton and a half of which he sent to San Francisco, where it was sold for $3,000 per ton. He and some of his friends bought fourfifths of 1,800 feet for $22,000, or $14 a foot. So rapidly did the estimate of this claim rise, that, before the end of the year, its market-value was $1,000 a foot. "The silverpanic" in Washoe soon exceeded the former gold-panic in California. Discoveries in Esmeralda, Humboldt, Reese River, and other localities, followed, and at length the mines which gave new impulse and development to Oregon and Washington, and founded the Territories and future States of Idaho and Montana.

Let the following estimates, made by the superintendent of the mint at San Francisco, indicate the results of these various discoveries, and this unparalleled energy.

Gold and silver from California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington Territory:

The second report of J. Ross Brown, just finished, gives as the product of gold, the last year, $70,000,000; and of Nevada silver, $19,000,000.

In the mean time, the capital in business circulation in California must have been in the neighborhood of $30,000,000, and some $10,000,000 are shipped annually to the mines to pay current mining-expenses. In a recent financial crisis in Europe, the power of American wealth from the mines appeared, in the export from San Francisco of $12,000,000 of gold and silver in sixty days. The first eight months of 1866, the shipments of specie from San Francisco amounted to $27,729,010. It is safe to consider our gold-fields and silver-mines practicably inexhaustible.

Some idea of "the importance of the gold and silver mines of the Pacific coast on the national welfare" may be obtained from the fact, that "the product of these metals, for a single year," exceeds in amount all the gold and silver in the national treasury, and in all the banks in all the States:

Whereas the products of the mines of the Pacific coast in 1866 amount to at least $106,000,000.

The whole "amount of treasure manifested for exportation from San Francisco" from 1849 to 1865, inclusive, was

$740,832,623. To this must be added some $50,000,000 in use in the Pacific States and Territories; for gold jewelry, silver plate, and specimens of nuggets and rich ores, say $5,000,000; gold-dust buried by miners in distant camps, some $5,000,000 more. Dust, coin, and bars carried away by miners, and not manufactured, must swell this additional amount, in sixteen years, to $200,000,000. In round numbers, therefore, the yield of precious metals from our Pacific fields, in sixteen years, must have risen to the enormous sum of $1,000,000,000.

We must now glance at the mining regions east of the Rocky Mountains. These include portions of the Territories of New Mexico, Colorado, and Montana; Minnesota, northwest of Lake Superior, and upon the eastern slope of the Alleghany range; the States of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland; and recently gold has been found in New Hampshire. The yields from the various auriferous and argentiferous localities in these States and Territories cannot be accurately ascertained.

The deposits of gold at the United-States mint and its branches, between 1804 and 1866, from the States traversed by the Appalachian gold-field, are reported as follows:

If we assume, what is doubtless true, that about an equal amount passed into manufactures or foreign commerce, without deposit for coinage, the aggregate production would be about $40,000,000, of which fully three-fourths, or $30,000,000, was mined between 1828 and 1848.

Nuggets were found in North Carolina from 1799 to 1835, varying from a pound and a half to twenty-eight pounds.