A story is told of a miner, while paying for something, dropping
a small lump of gold worth perhaps two or three dollars. A bystander
picked it up and offered it to him. The miner, without taking it, looked
at the man with amazement, exclaiming: "Well, stranger, you are a
curiosity. I guess you haven't been in the diggings long. You had better
keep that lump for a sample."
These were the days of the red-shirted miner, of romance, of Arcadian
simplicity, of clean, honest working under blue skies and beneath the
warm California sun, of immense fortunes made quickly, of faithful
"pardners," and all the rest. This life was so complete in all its
elements that, as we look back upon it, we unconsciously give it a
longer period than it actually occupied. It seems to be an epoch, as
indeed it was; but it was an epoch of less than a single year, and it
ended when the immigration from the world at large began.
The first news of the gold discovery filtered to the east in a
roundabout fashion through vessels from the Sandwich Islands. A
Baltimore paper published a short item. Everybody laughed at the rumor,
for people were already beginning to discount California stories. But
they remembered it. Romance, as ever, increases with the square of the
distance; and this was a remote land.
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