Starving in a land of plenty, their tribal career never lifted
itself a moment from the level of the brute. And yet gold was the
Spaniards' talisman.
The Mexican-descended rancheros should have looked for gold. The
traditions even indicated it. Their hold on the land was only in
the footprints of their horses and cattle.
Had the priests ever examined the interior, had a single military
expedition explored the State with care, the surface gold deposits
must have been stumbled on.
It remains an inexplicable fact, that, as early as 1841, gold was
found in the southern part of the State. In 1843, seventy-five
to one hundred ounces of dust were obtained from the Indians, and
sent to Boston via the Sandwich Island trading ships. Keen old Sir
Francis Drake's reports to good Queen Bess flatly spoke of these
yellow treasures. They, too, were ignored. English apathy! Pouring
in from the whole world, bursting in as a flood of noisy adventurers
on the stillness of the lazy land of the Dons, came the gold hunters
of California.
Already, in San Francisco, drinking booth, gambling shop, and
haunts of every villany spring up--the toadstools of a night.
Women throng in to add the incantations of the daughters of Sin to
this mad hurly-burly.
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