Many of them drifted into
mercantile pursuits. Harlan tells us: "During my sojourn in Stockton I
mixed freely with the returning and disgusted miners from whom I learned
that they were selling their mining implements at ruinously low prices.
An idea struck me one day which I immediately acted upon for fear that
another might strike in the same place and cause an explosion. The
heaven-born idea that had penetrated my cranium was this: start in the
mercantile line, purchase the kits and implements of the returning
miners at low figures and sell to the greenhorns en route to the mines
at California prices." In this manner innumerable occupations supplying
the obvious needs were taken up by many returned miners. A certain
proportion drifted to crime or shady devices, but the large majority
returned to San Francisco, whence they either went home completely
discouraged, or with renewed energy and better-applied ability took hold
of the destinies of the new city. Thus another sort of Forty-niner
became in his way as significant and strong, as effective and as
romantic as his brother, the red-shirted Forty-niner of the diggings.
But in addition to the miners who had made their stakes, who had given
up the idea of mining, or who were merely waiting for the winter's rains
to be over to go back again to the diggings, an ever increasing
immigration was coming to San Francisco with the sole idea of settling
in that place.
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