IV PREFACE. 



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 rilling the rivers of the Sacramento 

 basin with thick mud throughout the year ; by six thousand miles of 

 mining ditches ; by aqueducts less durable, but scarcely less wonderful, 

 than those of ancient Rome ; by quicksilver mines surpassing those of 

 Spain ; by great deposits of sulphur and asphaltum ; by lakes of borax ; 

 by mud volcanoes, 'geysers, and natural bridges ; by a valley of roman- 

 tic 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 health, and the most favorable to 

 mental and physical exertion so equable 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 dozen species grow to be more than 

 two hundred and fifty feet high, and one species has reached a height of 

 four hundred and fifty feet, and a diameter of forty feet in the trunk ; 

 by a peculiar zoology, composed chiefly of animals found only on this 

 Coast, and including the largest bird north of the Equator, and the 

 largest and most formidable quadruped of the continent ; by the im- 

 portation in early years of all articles of food, and then by the speedy 

 development of agriculture, until her wheat and wine have gone to the 

 furthest cities in search of buyers, and until her markets are unrivaled 

 in the variety and magnificence of home-grown fruits ; by the largest 

 crops of grain, and the largest specimens of fruits and vegetables on 

 record ; by a society where for years there was not one woman to a score 

 of men, and where all the men were in the bloom of manhood ; by the 

 first settlement of Chinamen among white men ; by the rapid fluctua- 

 tions of trade ; by the accumulation of wealth in the hands of men, most 

 of whom came to the country poor ; by the practice, universal in early 

 years, of going armed ; by the multitude of deadly affrays ; by extra- 

 constitutional courts, which sometimes punished villains with immedi- 



