STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 315 



MINING REVIEW FOR 1865. ' 



From the Mercantile Gazette. 



Just eighteen years have now elapsed since the grand discovery of 

 gold in California, this event having occurred on the fourth day of Jan- 

 uary, eighteen hundred and forty-eight. We say grand discovery, be- 

 cause the existence of the precious metals, in small quantities at least, 

 within the limits of this State, was known long before. It is a well 

 authenticated fact that gold bearing quartz was worked at a point near 

 the Mission San Fernando as early as eighteen hundred and forty-three, 

 placer diggings on a small scale and with moderate results having been 

 engaged in at a much earlier period. If tradition may be credited, the 

 Jesuit missionaries, first inland explorers and founders of the pioneer 

 settlements of Alta California, were well aware of the auriferous char- 

 acter of the country, but refrained from encouraging the business of 

 mining as likely to distract the attention of their neophytes and ulti- 

 mately defeat the purposes that brought them here. That these men, 

 coming, as most of theni did, from Mexico, should, in observing the geo- 

 logical resemblance between the two countries, have concluded that 

 California abounded in the precious metals, seems a reasonable presump- 

 tion, however it might h?ive conflicted with the obligations of their order, 

 or the objects of their mission to engage in seeking after them. Nor is 

 it strange that the secular community did not penetrate the interior in 

 search of these commodities, inasmuch as the region where most of the 

 rich placers have since been found were then inhabited by tribes of hos- 

 tile Indians, rendering their exploration a work of difficulty and danger, 

 from encountering which this unambitious people were doubtless further 

 deterred by the comparative poverty of the mines previously discovered. 

 That the early Spanish settlers, as well as the first American immigrants 

 to this coast should have failecl to discover the gold fields lying in the 

 then uninhabitable portions of the country, is not so extraoi^dinary as 

 that Fremont should at a later day have traversed them in ever}' direc- 

 tion, camping often on what subsequently proved to be the richest bars 

 along our rivers, without ever detecting the golden deposits that lay so 

 near the surface. 



This event, like many other important discoveries, was the result of 

 accident; and though it failed, as often happens in cases of this kind, to 

 enrich the party making it, produced at once a marked efi'ect upon the 

 trade, industry, and financial aspect of the whole civilized world. The 

 energies of the nations were aroused, emigration was excited, new chan- 

 nels of transportation and travel were opened, and new enterprises were 

 set on foot — every interest and department of labor being made to feel 

 its quickening and invigorating influences. 



