1841.] RAPID IMMIGRATION. 439 



amounted to one hundred millions of dollars, resting for sup- 

 port upon a metallic or specie basis of only ten millions. 

 City and town lots, houses and farming lands, food and rai- 

 ment, everything that man needs or desires, are the object* 

 of speculation. What will be the result of all this, the future 

 only can determine. Those who keep aloof from the whirl- 

 pool, or pause in time, may reap a rich harvest ; but if 

 California herself, or the older states in the Union that be- 

 come too intimately connected with her, are ultimately bene- 

 fited, it will be an anomaly in the history of the world. 



Yet the mineral resources of California arc unquestionably 

 great ; and even the smallest rivulets that course down the 

 corrugated sides of the Sierra Nevada are richly impregnated 

 with gold, silver, and platina. But although these deposit* 

 of wealth may be nearly, or quite inexhaustible, when the 

 treasures which have been accumulating for so many years 

 near the surface have been gathered, as they soon must be, 

 labor, be it ever so industrious and enterprising, will reap no 

 more abundant harvests at the placer as of California, than, if 

 properly applied, it can obtain from the rich farming lands in\f 

 the Atlantic states and the valley of the Mississippi. 



(7.) Previous to the cession of Upper California to the 

 United States, there were, as has been remarked, something 

 less than forty thousand persons in the territory. The popu- 

 lation is now estimated at over one hundred thousand. Up 

 to the first day of November, 1849, about five hundred ves- 

 sels, containing more or less passengers, besides their crews, 

 had arrived at San Francisco within the preceding year ; and 

 there were at that time upwards of two hundred vessels, each 

 having its cargo of living freight, on their way from the At- 

 lantic states. Numerous caravans of immigrants have 

 crossed over land, and adventurers by scores have gone by 

 way of Panama. Around Cape Horn, across the isthmus, 

 and over the desert prairies and bleak mountains of the far 

 west, the tide has swept like the waters of the sea. Danger 

 in every form has been defied. Animated by the all-pervad- 

 ing, if not unhallowed thirst for gold — auri sacra fames — 



