Miscellaneous Intelligence. 307 



Two weeks ago I made an excursion into the Snowy Mountains forty- 

 five miles higher up the river. Twenty miles above this, the quartz near- 

 ly ceases, and the gold also so far as we could discover; and we pass- 

 ed first a region of gneiss, and afterwards of granite which forms the 

 backbone rock of the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Mountains. We as- 

 | cended perhaps eight thousand feet, and approached within eight or ten 



miles of the snow, though in the middle of July. The range before us 

 in its white robes presented a beautiful appearance. 



Gold occurs also in abundance on the Sacramento, the Feather and 

 una rivers, Bear Creek, the river Cosumnes, and in short over a region 

 fifty miles wide by a hundred in length — and how much farther I 

 know not. 



The discovery of these rich mines may prove beneficial to the States, 

 but it will be a curse to the general prosperity of California. Agricul 



ture, and the arts will be at a stand still ; — a few merchants will make 

 fortunes. 



In a moral and social point of view, California was bad enough be- 

 fore, but the gold mines will make the matter ten times worse. At the 

 mines, the population is like a nest of ants running hither and thither. 

 ■Law cannot well be made to exert its power — vice is unrestrained; — 

 hundreds of runaway sailors and soldiers are here, and with their little 

 fortunes dug out in a trice, will have frolicking and drunkenness to their 

 heart's content. 



Goods sell at enormous prices. Checked shirts sell to the Indians 

 for fifteen to thirty dollars. Glass beads for their weight in gold. I 

 gave ten dollars for a poor shovel, and ten more for a pick. Flour is 

 from thirty to forty cents a pound, — coffee one dollar, — figs and raisins 

 one dollar, — salt one dollar a quart, — sugar fifty cents to one dollar a 

 pound, — beef from twelve and a half cents to twenty-five cents per 

 pound, — shoes ten dollars per pair, — thin pants eight to ten dollars* 

 ardent spirits six dollars per bottle, and other things in proportion. 



Pueblo de San Jose, Nov. 6th, 1848. 



I left the " diggings" the last of August to avoid the sickness which 

 it was expected would prevail, and which indeed was quite prevalent 

 for several weeks, especially in the vicinity of the Sacramento river. 

 It was chiefly billious and intermittent fever. After spending a month 

 here and at San Francisco, I made a trip to another part of the 

 mines on the river Stanislaus, one hundred and forty miles from this 

 place, and one hundred or more from the diggings where I wrote the 

 letter referred to above. I returned a few days since, having been ab- 

 sent a month. While at the mines, although many of the miners had 

 left, flour w s sold at $1.50 per pound, and brown sugar at $3.00. 

 Flour had been sold two weeks earlier from 2 to 4 dollars, and sugar 

 1-00. These are fair specimens of the prices at the mines. Poor 

 allow candles bring fifty cents apiece — sperm 81.00 do.— Onions 

 $1.00 a pound— bullocks $100 a piece, and other things in proportion. 

 But the most profitable article of traffic is liquor, which of course no 

 roan of any principle will have any thing to do with. But while I was 

 at the Stanislaus a fellow opened a grog booth there and cleared over 

 §7,000 in six days, and that from two barrels of liquor. 



