PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION, 



I write the resources of a State, which, though young in years, small 

 in population, and remote from the chief centers of civilization, is yet 

 known to the furthest corners of the earth, and during the last twenty- 

 four years has had an influence upon the course of human life and 

 the prosperity and trade of nations, more powerful than that exerted 

 during the same period by kingdoms whose subjects are numbered by 

 millions, whose history dates back through thousands of years, and 

 whose present stock of wealth began to accumulate before our continent 

 was discovered, or our language was formed. I write of a land of 

 wonders. I write of California, which has astonished the world by 

 many marvelous facts in her history, and by the singular forms assumed 

 by nature within her limits; by the great migration that suddenly 

 built up the first large Caucasian community on the shores of the 

 North Pacific ; by her vast yield of gold, amounting to $1,000,000,000, 

 preceptibly affecting the markets of labor and money in all the leading 

 nations of Christendom ; by the rapid development of her commerce ; 

 by the swift settlement of her remote districts ; by the prompt organiza- 

 tion of her government ; 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 high rates of her interest 

 and wages ; 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 pliocene streams richer than 

 those of the present era ; by beds of lava, which, filling up the 

 beds of pliocene rivers, were left, after the erosion of the banks and 



