Today’s installment concludes Gold Discovered in California,
our selection from Mining in the Pacific States of North America by John S. Hittell published in 1861.
If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of four thousand words. Congratulations! For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.
Previously in Gold Discovered in California.
Time: 1848
Place: Sutters Mill in Colomal, California
Public domain image from Wikipedia.
The news spread, men came from all the settled parts of the territory and as they came they went to work mining and gradually they moved farther and farther from Coloma and before the rainy reason had commenced (in December) miners were washing rich auriferous dirt all along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, from the Feather to the Tuolumne River, a distance of one hundred fifty miles; and also over a space of about fifteen miles square, near the place now known as the town of Shasta, in the Coast Mountains, at the head of the Sacramento Valley. The whole country had been turned topsy-turvy; towns had been deserted or left only to the women and children; fields had been left unreaped; herds of cattle went without anyone to care for them. But gold-mining, which had become the great interest of the country, was not neglected. The people learned rapidly and worked hard.
In the latter part of 1848 adventurers began to arrive from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands and Mexico. The winter found the miners with very little preparation but most of them were accustomed to a rough manner of life in the Western wilds and they considered their large profits an abundant compensation for their privations and hardships. The weather was so mild in December and January that they could work almost as well as in the summer and the rain gave them facilities for washing such as they could not have in the dry season.
In September, 1848, the first rumors of the gold discovery began to reach New York; in October they attracted attention; in November people looked with interest for new reports; in December the news gained general credence and a great excitement arose. Preparations were made for a migration to California by somebody in nearly every town in the United States. The great body of the emigrants went either across the plains with ox or mule teams or round Cape Horn in sailing-vessels. A few took passage in the steamer by way of Panama.
Not fewer than one hundred thousand men, representing in their nativity every State in the Union, went to California that year. Of these, twenty thousand crossed the continent by way of the South Pass; and nearly all of them started from the Missouri River between Independence and St. Joseph, in the month of May. They formed an army; in daytime their trains filled up the roads for miles and at night their camp-fires glittered in every direction about the places blessed with grass and water. The excitement continued from 1850 to 1853; emigrants continued to come by land and sea, from Europe and America and in the last named year from China also. In 1854 the migration fell off and since that time until the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad California received the chief accessions to her white population by the Panama steamers.
The whole world felt a beneficent influence from the great gold yield of the Sacramento Basin. Labor rose in value and industry was stimulated from St. Louis to Constantinople. The news, however, was not welcome to all classes. Many of the capitalists feared that gold would soon be so abundant as to be worthless and European statesmen feared the power to be gained by the arrogant and turbulent democracy of the New World.
The author of a book entitled Notes on the Gold District, published in London in 1853, thus speaks of the fears excited in Europe on the first great influx of gold from the Californian mines: “Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian discoveries was the alarm communicated to many classes and which was not confined to individuals but invaded governments. The first announcement spread alarm; but as the cargoes of gold rose from one hundred thousand dollars to one million dollars, bankers and financiers began seriously to prepare for an expected crisis. In England and the United States the panic was confined to a few; but on the Continent of Europe every government, rich or poor, thought it needful to make provision against the threatened evils. An immediate alteration in prices was looked for; money was to become so abundant that all ordinary commodities were to rise but more especially the proportion between gold and silver was to be disturbed, some thinking that the latter might become the dearer metal. The Governments of France, Holland and Russia, in particular, turned their attention to the monetary question and in 1850 the Government of Holland availed themselves of a law, which had not before been put in operation, to take immediate steps for selling off the gold in the Bank of Amsterdam, at what they supposed to be the highest prices and to stock themselves with silver.
Palladium, which is likewise a superior white metal, was held more firmly and expectations were entertained that it would become available for plating. The stock, however, was small. The silver operation was carried on concurrent with a supply of bullion to Russia for a loan, a demand for silver in Austria and for shipment to India and it did really produce an effect on the silver market, which many mistook for the influence of Californian gold. The particular way in which the Netherlands operations were carried on was especially calculated to produce the greatest disturbance of prices. The ten-florin pieces were sent to Paris, coined there into Napoleons and silver five-franc pieces drawn out in their place.
At Paris the premium on gold in a few months fell from nearly 2 per cent. to a discount and at Hamburg a like fall took place. In London, the great silver market, silver rose, between the autumn and the new year, from five shillings per ounce to five shillings one and five-eighths pence per ounce and Mexican dollars from four shillings ten and one-half pence to four shillings eleven and five-eighths pence per ounce; nor did prices recover until toward the end of the year 1851, when the fall was as sudden as the rise.”
In the spring of 1849 Reading crossed the Coast Range with a party of his Indians and discovered rich diggings in the valley of the Trinity. In the summer of the same year Colonel Frémont discovered the mines on his ranch, in the valley of the Mariposa.
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