on the torments of Tantalus. Following up the Sacramento and the Americans', and tracing the arroyos or tributary creeks to their sources, they found the richest deposits in old gravel-beds. But the torrents which had scooped the chasms had long run dry or changed their courses. So the sand had to be carried to the water, which might be many miles away, or else the water must be brought to the sand. The intensity of the labour may be conceived, in trackless valleys, between glowing rocks, and in the blaze of a Californian summer. In 1854 the placer mines had been nearly worked out, but then came the discovery of the metalliferous quartz in the Sierras. For the most part these quartz lodes were in sterile and waterless regions, yet water, and water in profusion, was more indispensable than ever. Companies with enormous capital were formed to work the new mines, and by far their greatest expenditure was on the item of the water-supply. Generally it had to be brought from great distances, sometimes for a distance of twenty or thirty miles. It may give some idea of the rapid progress of Californian mining to mention, that in fifteen years the mining ditches, as they were called, aggregated a length of nearly 5000 miles. Hewn out of the hard rock, or carried in wooden flumes, through beds of shingle and gravel, in cost they far surpassed the superb aqueducts of the Roman Campagna, for the Romans paid little for la

the quantity of water laid on from the fact that sixty millions of gallons may be expended on a single hydraulic claim in a single day. In twenty-five years, according to the estimates of a Treasury official, gold to the value of a thousand millions of dollars had been extracted from California. Nor was it California alone that was contributing to the grand total. Excitement blazed up at intervals on stages leading toward the East. The rushes to Washoe in Western Utah and Pike's Peak in Colorado came in 1858, almost simultaneously with the revelation of the riches of Montana.

We know that with indulgence in big figures we take a long step towards illusive conceptions of infinity and eternity. They may be the pride and pleasure of severe statisticians, but the average intelligence is as hopelessly lost in them as the tenderfoot on the boundless prairies. It is easier to estimate tangible results. Had there been no discoveries of the precious metals, the Californian seaboard might have been indefinitely isolated from the rich and thickly populated Eastern States. Settlers could only have come by sea to that elongated strip of favoured territory. Farmers and graziers would have still pushed beyond the Missouri, but they would have come to a temporary check when they travelled beyond the range of markets. The cattle of Texas would never have fed in the pastures of Montana or filled the slaughter-yards of Chicago.

The mustangs of Mexico and California could never have been sold to the Mississippi dealers or mounted the cavalry of the Union. But the gathering of the golden harvest involved and compelled incessant and increasing expenditure of capital and enterprise. In many cases speculations were tolerably secure; in most there was the possibility of enormous returns. The urgent necessity was ever the development of communications. The vast population which was flocking to the least accessible localities in the sterile wilderness must be clothed, fed, and entertained. The mushroom towns which were shooting up everywhere increased by leaps and bounds in a single season. Forests were felled, rivers were bridged, foottrails were made practicable for vehicles; a tolerably regular post was established, to be supplemented by the telegraphwire, and the telegraph in due course was succeeded by the rival lines of inter-oceanic railways. Many a thriving township at some temporary terminus sprung up like the prophet's gourd, only to die down or move on. But at the mining centres they grew rapidly into cities in face of unexampled obstacles. And then enterprise and energy radiated from these focuses to meet the converging advances from all sides, until the whole Western Continent had quickened into spasmodic but feverish life. A typical example -though in adverting to it we are rather anticipating - was that of Virginia City, the capital of the famous Washoe district, with its fabulous wealth. Ross-Browne, one of the original

"citizens," has written the picturesque story of its early struggles. There was no better timber to be found on the barren hillsides than the brittle sage brush; and the sage scrub denotes a scarcity of water. Worse off than the Israelites, who had only to make bricks without straw, the first squatters could not find soil enough for the adobé building of the Mexicans. Yet the thousands who were swelling their numbers day by day were to be somehow sheltered. The more luxurious aristocrats ran up booths of canvas or blanket, or housed themselves in hovels of mud and sage branches. The boards from boxes or packing-cases were at a premium. The more hardy were satisfied to roof themselves in with a blanket. Gradually, as civilisation progressed, they bored tunnels and dug out chambers in holes scooped by the coyotes or jack-rabbits. The first of the speculators built what they were pleased to call sleeping-houses, where two or three hundred lodgers were half-suffocated at a charge of a dollar a-head. The London twopenny rope was sensuous indulgence by comparison. Almost simultaneously came the gambling-saloons and the drinking-bars by the dozen; the travelling theatre or circus, and the competing newspaper offices.

Things were unpleasant enough in the summer, though if the heat were stifling slight shelter sufficed, and if living was dear there could be no starvation. To do the rough miner bare justice, when in luck he was always willing to share with a neighbour. The man

who was ready to shoot at sight had a heart open to melting charity. But the sufferings in the intense severity of the first winter were worse than any recorded in the colder latitude of Klondyke. The miners had taken the precaution of collecting cattle, but had forgotten to consider how the cattle were to be fed. What little coarse hay there was came to sell at 300 dollars the ton. The carcasses of dead animals covered the ground: the seething mass of corruption attracted the vultures and the wolves; but those scavengers were too few for the work, and the effluvia bred epidemics. The transport horses were wasted to skeletons, and the trains bringing in supplies were held up in the snow-drifts. Yet, all the time, pickaxe and shovel were busy in the frozen ground, and the fever of speculation raged unabated, though none of the rich bonanzas had as yet been discovered.

Meantime the Spanish hamlet of San Francisco had been growing into a place of importance. It was the capital of the mining territories, the centre of promotion and speculation, and the shipping port of the gold. Round San Francisco there was no lack of timber, and the first imposing structures, though in many storeys, were all of wood. Even when Froude visited it in 1885, when gathering materials for his 'Oceana,' most of the pavements were still of plank, although the great Palace Hotel was become the biggest caravanserai in the world. Of course the woodwork in a Californian summer was combustible as tinder, and consequently fires

were frequent. After each conflagration the streets rose from their ashes with improvements: as matter of economy stone came to replace wood, and if the buildings were often in infamous taste, at least they were solid. San Francisco sprang up and extended itself with the influx of prosperity and in the fluctuating rushes of speculation. Every man of grit was ready for a gamble, and each citizen of prominence, whatever his occupation, was a dealer in stocks and shares. But it is a remarkable fact that, till after the discoveries of silver in 1858, there was no regular stock exchange anywhere on the Pacific coast, though the Californian capital was soon to boast three rival institutions, and even the cities on the Comstock were provided with municipal facilities for going "wild-cat" mad. Then there were no joint-stock companies (limited), with shares officially quoted: all the quartzmining was carried on by a few confederates in partnership, and on a system of the strictest secrecy. The buying, the selling, and the gambling went forward none the less briskly that the speculators were generally in the dark and far from the seats of operations. Touts were employed, as on the English turf, to spy on prospectors and owners; detectives were engaged to do duty disguised as workmen; bribery and corruption were everywhere rife, and large sums were paid for reliable tips. It was as yet the day of small things in San Francisco, but already competencies or moderate fortunes

were being rapidly made and as easily lost. It was an easygoing society, and not very lawless. Even in Nevada camps many of the miners went unarmed, and murders were infrequent. It was a charitable world in every sense, and tolerant in its morality. Shrewd ness and a moderate amount of squareness were the redeeming virtues. If a man acted on the straight with his pals and kept the secrets of their common business or rascality, he seldom wanted friends to give him a helping hand when he came to temporary grief. The easy acquisition of precarious affluence gave an extraordinary impulse to reckless habits. Successful men revelled in vulgar vice, and in that drouthy climate, with the gold-fever flowing in the veins, almost everybody opened an unlimited credit with the thirst which would never be sated. What with bargaining all day and drinking far into the nights, a man kept himself up to the mark with continual stimulants, and the semi-intoxicated exaltation of the individual reacted on the general speculative mania. There was no lack of female society of a sort; there were gambling - saloons that never closed their doors, and stood unlimited free drinks to favoured patrons. But it was after the great silver boom of 1859 that San Francisco rose from timber shanties and rough stone dwellings into a city of palaces; that no nouveau riche made anything of a name, or could pretend to municipal office or social respect, unless he were notoriously in the habit of gambling for millions; that lucky miners bathed

metaphorically in champagne, though they infinitely preferred whisky, and were consoled for the discomfort of wearing clean linen by the display of shirtfronts blazing with diamonds. San Francisco sowed its wild oats in a series of orgies of sharp dealings and mad dissipation, ranging from the coarse excesses of common miners suddenly enriched to the luxurious ostentation of ephemeral millionaires seeking to outvie each other in prodigal extravagances. But with the rapid and assured influx of wealth came respectability and the sense of municipal responsibility. The Regulators had prepared the way for the Reign of Law. Character became a matter of consequence. The public promenades and drives became at least as decent as the Bois de Boulogne or the Parks of New York. Since then a new generation has grown up, with all the advantages of education and foreign travel, for the Californians with their golden keys have been unlocking doors more or less exclusive on the Old Continent. In short, the Golden City of to-day shows as creditable a record and as clean a bill of moral health as New York or London, with the fairest prospects of indefinite progress, for as wealth still flows steadily in, so the population multiplies and flourishes. And all that eventful evolution, with the expansion of the Union of which it is merely a symbol, came of the morning's incident on the Sacramento, when the man who was cutting poor Sutter's millrace chanced to be something of a practical mineralogist.