PREFACE. XV 



than by digging for it in the placers. We abandoned the mines. Our 

 bright dreams of becoming millionaires by washing the sands of the 

 Sierra Nevada were all dissipated. Nor have we, as a class, made large 

 fortunes in other pursuits, and of those who have, not a few have lost 

 them again. But when we look back at the interval of twenty years, 

 we do not regret that we became pioneers. "We had demanded of Cali- 

 fornia that she should fill the purses of every one with gold. She re- 

 fused that demand to many, but she gave to all a cherished home, a 

 sunny and genial sky, a fertile soil, a delightful landscape, a clime 

 suited to the development of every energy, the companionship of the 

 most intelligent and enterprising people, and a site suited for a great 

 city and for the concentration of the commerce of a wealthy coast. She 

 gave us the greatest relative abundance of gold known in the world. 

 She compressed, within a few years, the progress that elsewhere would 

 have required a century. Our business has been unparalleled in its 

 activity. Our lives have been a rapid succession of strong sensations. 

 Great wealth has hovered about us all, within reach of all, and if many 

 of us did not know the precise moment for grasping it, still we have for 

 years been interested in the chase ; and perhaps the active excitement of 

 pursuit has given us more pleasure than we could have enjoyed in posses- 

 sion. Many of us have gone back to the Eastern States, intending to 

 make homes there, but found the attempt a complete failure. Life was 

 a dull and commonplace routine ; once accustomed to the whirl of Cali- 

 fornian speculation and the cordiality of Californian society, we could 

 not live without them. 



For a long time we could not think or speak of this as home. "We had 

 started with the expectation the promise of soon returning. When 

 we first saw the brown mountains and the bare plains of California in 

 the fall of 1849, it did not occur to us that we should ever want to live 

 here. There was nothing here to reward ambition save gold. Our 

 mothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives, remained in "the States," and for 

 years we longed to get back to them. And they, deprived by unjust 

 and oppressive social rules of an equal chance in the race of life, hoped 

 that we would come to give them our companionship and assistance. 

 The affections of a million families throughout the civilized world were 



