CALIFORNIA AFTER THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD. 307 



busy on shore. Piles of goods heaped up in every street, are 

 in a condition which requires wreckers, as well as watchmen. 

 But no one here is going to trouble himself about your mis- 

 fortunes, nor much about his own. The reverses of to-day 

 are to be more than repaired by the successes of to-morrow. 

 These are only the broken pick-axes and spades by which the 

 great mine is to be reached. What is the loss of a few thou- 

 sands to one who is so soon to possess millions 1 Only a coon 

 back in his hole, while the buffalo remains within rifle shot — 

 only a periwinkle lost, while the whale is beneath the harpoon 

 — only a farthing candle consumed, while the dowered bride, 

 blushing in beauty and bliss, is kneeling at the nuptial altar. 

 But let that pass. 



" But you are not alone in your destitution and dirt. There 

 are hundreds around you who were quite as daintily reared, 

 and who are doing here what they dodged at home. Do you 

 see that youth in red flannel shirt and coarse brogans, rolling 

 a wheel-barrow ? He was a clerk in a counting-house in 

 New York, and came here to shovel up gold, as you scoop up 

 sand. He has been to the mines, gathered no gold, and re- 

 turned, but now makes his ten dollars a-day by rolling that 

 wheel-barrow ; it costs him six, however, to live, and the other 

 four he loses at monte. 



" See you that young man with a long whip m his hand, 

 cracking it over an ox-team 1 He was one of the most learned 

 geologists, for his age, in the United States, and came out 

 here to apply his science to the discovery of gold deposits ; 

 but, somehow, his diving-rods always dipped wrong, and now, 

 he has taken about which there is no mistake, so at least think 

 his cattle. He would accumulate a fortune, did he not lose 

 it as fast as made in some phrenzied s'peculation. But look 

 yonder — do you see that young gentleman with a string of 



