May happiness crown their hopes is my most enthusiastic wish.

Of course, the shipments of merchandise from San Francisco were very large to keep pace with this sudden transmigration of thousands to a region totally unsupplied with the commodities. necessary for their use and subsistence, but the supply was still unequal to the demand.

Recurring again to San Francisco, the rush and excitement are by no means confined to miners, but seem to have operated on all classes alike. Even newspaper men, the most inveterate and pertinacious of all, were about leaving in considerable numbers. A lively business very lively it is to be presumed-was reported to be doing in the hardware and clothing lines as well as in provisions-very indispensable, we guess. Nearly all those from the interior require a new fit out in whole or in part. Revolvers, rifles, shot, guns, and knives; pickaxes, shovels, and hoes, rocker iron drills and rifle boxes, flannel shirts, thick coats and pants, waterproofs, oilcloths, and water-bootseagle-topped ones, of course-were all in high demand. So great is the rush, that hundreds

are unable to procure an immediate passage, while thousands were waiting their turn at Sacramento and Stockton for conveyance to San Francisco. Scarcely one leaves the latter city without disbursing more or less money, and more than a million dollars were calculated to have been added to the daily circulation of the place since the rage set in. Such is the unparalleled effect of the discovery of our New El Dorado-the golden realm of thrice ten thousand hopes.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINGER-POST.

THE difficulties which present themsemselves at first sight in the way of reaching our El Dorado, are obviously greater than those attending a transmigration direct to the shores of the Australasian isles; these, however, upon examination, will be found either easy of obviation or such as may be readily surmounted by those endowed with the spirit of enterprise, and possessed of that subordinate but necessary qualification, their passage-money.

The readiest mode which the traveller can pursue is to take passage to New York, from

which city he can travel with a through ticket to San Francisco viâ the Isthmus.

From San Francisco steamers ply to Frazer's River, up which he can proceed without delay in boats and canoes. California may be reached at a minimum expense of twenty-five or thirty pounds only from England, from which the adventurer can either proceed overland on foot and horse viâ Puget's Sound, or by steamer, at a chance fare, to the nearest navigable point of the new gold. diggings. Frazer's River lies seven hundred miles north of San Francisco, yet it is still one or two degrees south of the latitude of London; and although at a distance of one hundred and fifty miles from the shores of the Pacific, there stands a barrier of mountains, whose rugged and lofty summits are ever snow-capped; still the average temperature throughout the year between that and the coast is fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, while snow is seldom lodged on the ground for more than three days throughout the entire winter. Fruit-trees blossom in April, and salad goes to seed early in May. Wheat yields from The trees twenty-five to thirty bushels per acre. are gigantic, while iron, copper,

and other

There

minerals intersect the rich and flowery pasture lands. From Frazer's River down to Peru the rivers all bear down treasures of a natural wealth perfectly inestimable; thus demonstrating the vast resources, collateral and direct, of that land where Fortune stands beckoning, and lavishes her bounteous gifts upon all who come. is a strong and growing demand for all kinds of labour at almost fabulous rates of remuneration. There are the finest openings for trade speculations that ever existed. Credit, of course, as in all new countries, is, and will continue to be abundant, thus dispensing with the necessity for capital; all that is required being the wideawake faculty, a stout heart and a strong arm. Men who have been groping in the hazy squalor of poverty for years in this country, and might remain so for ever, may at once make a plunge into the arena of wealth and all its attendant glory, by embarking for the golden shores of our dazzling El Dorado.

There are 500,000 square miles of the richest and most splendid country in the world, even looking at it in an agricultural point of view only, spread out before him, when he stands on