IV PREFACE. 



by the liberality with, which the mines were thrown open. 

 and made free to all comers ; by the rush of adventurers 

 of every color and of every tongue ; by the prices of her 

 labor, and the rates of her interest for mone}^, double those of 

 the other American states, and quadruple those of Europe ; 

 by the vast extent of her gold-fields, and the facility with 

 which they could be worked ; by the auriferous rivers in 

 which fortunes could be made in a week ; by antediluvian 

 streams richer than those of the present era ; by beds of 

 lava, which, after filling up the beds of antediluvian rivers, 

 were left, by the washing away of the banks and adjacent 

 plains, to stand as mountains, marking the position of great 

 treasures beneath ; by nuggets each worth a fortune ; by 

 the peculiar nature of her mining industry ; by new and 

 strange inventions ; by the washing down of mountains ; 

 by filling the rivers of the Sacramento basin with thick 

 mud throughout the year ; by lifting a hundred mountains 

 from their beds ; by six thousand miles of mining ditches ; 

 by aqueducts less durable, but scarcely less w^onderful 

 than those of ancient Eome ;' by silver mines that promise 

 to rival those of Peru; by quicksilver mines surpassing 

 those of Spain ; by great deposits of sulphur and asphal- 

 tum ; by lakes of borax ; by mud volcanoes, geysers, and 

 natural bridges ; by a valley of romantic and sublime beauty, 

 shut in by walls nearly perpendicular and more than three- 

 quarters of a mile high, with half a dozen great cascades, 

 in one of which the water at two leaps falls more than the 

 third of a mile ; by a climate the most conducive to healthy 

 and the most favorable to mental and physical exertion — so 

 temperate on the middle coast that ice is never seen and 

 thin summer clothing never worn, and that January differs 

 in average temperature only eight degrees of Fahrenheit 

 from July; by a singular botany, including the most 

 splendid known group of coniferous trees, of which half a 



