In 1848 California was largely an unexplored region, the home of certain old Spanish missions, with a few seaport towns scattered along the coast. Some pioneers from the East had settled inland after California had been separated from Mexico, and were ranching and farming. One of these pioneers, a well-to-do person named John A. Sutter, had staked out a considerable tract of land near the American River. He built a fort or stockade as headquarters, and made his plans to cultivate the tract. He had a number of people working for him, building a sawmill on the south branch of the American River, about forty miles from his main house. These workmen were in charge of James Wilson Marshall, who intended to have a dry channel serve as the tail-race for the mill, and was widening and deepening it by loosening the earth. At night the water of the stream was allowed to run through this channel, and wash out the gravel and sand. One day early in January, as Marshall was walking along the bank of the race, he noticed some shining yellow flakes in the soil. He thought these flakes might be gold, and gathering some of the earth carefully washed and screened it. In this way he obtained what looked like gold-dust. Early the next morning he went back to the race, and after some searching found a yellow scale larger than the others. He showed this, together with those he had obtained the day before, to some of the workmen, and they helped him to gather about three ounces. Later in the day Marshall went to his employer Sutter, who was at the fort, and there the two people tested the flakes as well as they were able, and reached the conclusion that they were really gold-dust.

It was important to keep the discovery as quiet as possible. Searching along the dry channel Sutter and Marshall found more of the gold flakes. In some places the yellow scales were very plentiful, and seemed to promise that large quantities of the valuable mineral could be found near at hand. It was impossible, however, to keep the news from the workmen who had helped in finding the flakes. Before long the news spread, and in March, 1848, two newspapers of California mentioned the discovery on the south fork of the American River.

The country was so sparsely settled, and life so primitive, that no great excitement was caused by this news for some months. But in May a Mormon, coming from the settlement of Coloma to San Francisco, walked down the main street waving a bottle filled with gold-dust and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"

His words, and the sight of the glittering bottle, caused tremendous excitement in San Francisco, and in the twinkling of an eye people took possession of sailboats, sloops, launches, any kind of craft, and started up the Sacramento River. Those who could not get boats to take the quicker course hurried off on horses or mules, in wagons or on foot. It was like a fairy tale. The seaport town of San Francisco, which had been well filled, was practically deserted overnight. Shopkeepers closed their stores, families hurried from their houses, and every class of people pushed toward the American River. The roads that led thither, which had usually been almost as empty as the prairies, were now filled with a wildly rushing throng. A person who had crossed the Strait of Carquines in April was the only passenger on the ferry, but when he returned two weeks later he found two hundred wagons trying to drive on board the ferry-boat.

Business on the coast came to a standstill. The newspapers that had been started stopped publication. The churches closed, and all the town officers deserted their posts. As soon as a ship touched the coast and the crew heard of the finding of gold they deserted, and the captain and mates, seeing themselves without a crew, usually dashed after the others. Empty vessels lay at the docks. A large ship belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, which had put into San Francisco harbor, was in charge of the captain's wife, every one else having left for the gold fields. Prices in all the country from San Francisco to Los Angeles jumped prodigiously. If people were to stay at their work they demanded and received twice their former wages. Shovels and spades sold for ten dollars apiece. They, and a few other mining implements, were the only things still manufactured. The cry of gold had turned people's heads like the magic wand of some fairy.

Inland California presented a strange sight. The roads that ran from San Francisco to Sutter's Fort had formerly lain between prosperous farm lands, but now the crops were going to waste, the houses were empty, and the cattle free to wander through fields of grain. Along the American River, on the other hand, hills and valleys were filled with sheltering tents, and huts built of brush and rocks thrown together in a hurry. people could not stop for comfort, but worked all day on the river bank. There were almost as many ways of searching for the gold as there were people. Some tried to wash the sand and gravel in pans; some used closely woven American Indian baskets; some used what were called cradles. The cradle was a basket six or eight feet long, mounted on rockers, and open at one end; at the other end was a coarse screen sieve. Cleats were nailed across the bottom of the cradle. One workman would dig the gravel from the river bank, another carry it to the sieve, a third pour water over it, and a fourth rock the cradle The screen separated the stones from the gravel, the water washed away the earth and carried the heavier soil out of the cradle, thus leaving the black sand filled with the gold. This was later carried to a pan and dried in the sun. The sand could then be blown away, and the gold would be left.

People knew that fortunes were to be found here. On a creek a few miles below Coloma, seventeen thousand dollars' worth of gold was taken from a ditch three hundred feet long, four wide, and two deep. Another small channel had yielded no less than twelve thousand dollars. Many people already had bags and bottles that held thousands of dollars' worth of the precious mineral. One person, who had been able to get fifty American Indians to work for him as washers, obtained sixteen thousand dollars from a small creek in five weeks' time.

All this quickly changed the character of upper California. Every person wanted to be a miner, and no longer a cattleman or farmer, as before. It looked as though the towns would shrivel up, because of the tremendously high wages demanded by the people who were needed there. Cooks in San Francisco were paid three hundred dollars a month, and all kinds of mechanics secured wages of fifteen or twenty dollars a day. The forts found it impossible to keep soldiers on duty. As soon as people were paid off they rushed to the American River. Sailors deserted as fast as they could, and the American warships that came to anchor off Monterey did not dare to allow a single person to land. Threats of punishment or offers of reward had no influence over the sailors. They all felt certain they could make fortunes in a month at the gold fields.

Soon people began to wonder whether they could not duplicate in other places the discovery that Marshall had made on Sutter's land. Wherever there was a river or stream explorers began to dig. They were well rewarded. Rich placers of gold were found along the course of almost all the streams that flowed to the Feather and San Joaquin Rivers. Along the course of the Stanislaus and Toulumne Rivers was another field for mining. By midsummer of 1848 settlers in southern California were pouring north in thousands, and by October at least ten thousand people were washing and screening the soil of river banks.

The Pacific coast was very far away from the rest of the United States in that day. News usually traveled by ship, and sailors brought the report of the discovery of gold to Honolulu, to Oregon City, and to the ports at Victoria and Vancouver. Letters carried the first tidings to the people in the East, and by the middle of the summer Washington and New York had learned what was happening in California, and adventurers along the Atlantic coast were beginning to turn their faces westward. The letters often greatly exaggerated the truth. A New York paper printed reports which stated that people were picking gold out of the earth as easily as hogs could root up groundnuts in a forest. One person, who employed sixty American Indians, was said to be making a dollar a minute. Small holes along the banks of streams were stated to yield many pounds of gold. But even allowing for much exaggeration it was evident that people were making fortunes in that country.

Colonel Mason, in charge at San Francisco, sent Lieutenant Loeser with his report to Washington. The lieutenant had to take a roundabout route. He went from Monterey to Peru, from there to Panama, across the Isthmus, took boat to Jamaica, and from there he sailed to New Orleans. When he reached the capital he delivered his message, and showed a small tea chest which held three thousand dollars' worth of gold in lumps and flakes. This chest was placed on exhibition, and served to convince those who saw it that California must possess more gold than any other country yet discovered. President Taylor announced the news in an official message. He said that the mineral had been found in such quantities as could hardly be believed, except on the word of government officers in the field. During the winter of 1848-49 thousands of people in the East planned to start for this El Dorado as soon as they could get their outfits together, and spring should open the roads.

The overland route to the West was long and very difficult. At that time, though the voyage by sea was longer, it was easier for people who lived on the Atlantic coast. They might sail around Cape Horn, or to the Isthmus of Panama, or to Vera Cruz, and in the two latter cases cross land, and hope to find some ship in the western ocean that would take them to San Francisco. Business people in the East seized the opportunity to advertise tents, beds, blankets, and all manner of camp equipment, as well as pans, rockers, and every kind of implement for washing gold from the gravel. The owners of ships of every description, many of them unseaworthy, fitted up their craft, and advertised them as ready to sail for San Francisco. The ports of Boston, Salem, Newburyport, New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans were crowded with brigs and schooners loading for the Pacific. A newspaper in New York stated that ten thousand people would leave for the gold country within a month.

All sorts of schemes were tried. Companies were formed, each member of which paid one hundred dollars or more to charter a ship to take them around the Horn. Almost every town in the East had its California Association, made up of adventurers who wanted to make their fortunes rapidly. By the end of January, 1849, eighty vessels had sailed by way of Cape Horn, and many others were heading for Vera Cruz, and for ports on the Isthmus of Panama. The newspapers went on printing fabulous stories of the discoveries. One had a letter stating that lumps of gold weighing a pound had been found in several places. Another printed a letter from a person who said he would return in a few months with a fortune of half a million dollars in gold. A miner was said to have arrived in Pittsburgh with eighty thousand dollars in gold-dust that he had gathered in a few weeks. Whenever people met they discussed eagerly the one absorbing topic of the fortunes waiting on the coast.

The adventurers who sailed around Cape Horn had in most cases the easiest voyages. There were plenty of veteran sea captains ready to command the ships. A Boston merchant organized "The Mining and Trading Company," bought a full-rigged vessel, sold places in it to one hundred and fifty people, and sailed from Boston early in January, 1849. The first place at which she touched was Tierra del Fuego, and she reached Valparaiso late in April. There she found two ships from Baltimore, and in two days four more arrived from New York, and one from Boston. July 6th she entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco, and found it crowded with vessels from every port. The ships were all deserted, and within an hour all this ship's crew were on shore. The town itself was filled with bustle and noise. Gambling was practically the only business carried on, and the stores were jammed with people paying any price for outfits for the gold country. This company chose a place on the Mokelumne River, and hastened there, but they found it difficult to work on a company basis. The people soon scattered and drifted to other camps; some of them found gold, others in time made their way east poorer than when they came.

Those who went by the Isthmus had many adventures. Two hundred young people sailed to Vera Cruz, and landed at that quaint old Mexican city. There they were told that bands of robbers were prowling all through the country, that their horses would die of starvation in the mountains, and that they would probably be killed, or lose themselves on the wild trail. Fifty of them decided not to go farther, and sailed back in a homeward-bound ship to New York. Those who went on were attacked by a mob at the town of Jalapa, and had to fight their way through at the point of revolvers. In several wild passes bandits tried to hold them up, but the Easterners put them to flight and pushed on their way. All through the country they found relics and wreckage of the recent days when General Scott had marched an army into Mexico.

There was more trouble at Mexico City. A religious procession was passing along the plaza, and the Americans did not fall upon their knees. The crowd set upon them, and they had to form a square for their protection, and hold the mob at bay until Mexican officers came to their rescue. Only after fighting a path through other towns and a long march did they reach the seaport of San Blas. One hundred and twenty of them took ship from there to San Francisco. Thirty, however, had left the others at Mexico City, thinking they could reach the sea-coast more quickly by another route. The ship they caught could get no farther than San Diego. From there they had to march on foot across a blazing desert country. Their food gave out, and they lived on lizards, birds, rattlesnakes, and even buzzards, anything they could find. Worn and almost starving they reached San Francisco, ten months after they had left New York. Such adventures were common to the American Argonauts of 1849.

Those gold-seekers who went by the Isthmus of Panama had to stop at the little settlement of Chagres, where one hundred huts of bamboo stood on the ruins of the old Spanish fort of San Lorenzo. The natives warily watched the scores of people from the eastern United States, who suddenly began to hurry through their town. Here the gold-hunters bargained for river boats, which were usually dugouts, with roofs made of palmetto branches and leaves, and rowed by natives. It was impossible with such rowers to make much speed against the strong current of the Chagres River. Three days were required to make the journey to Gorgona, where the travelers usually landed. At this place they had to bargain afresh for pack-mules to carry them the twenty-four miles that lay between Gorgona and Panama. Many people, who could not find any mules left in the town, deserted their baggage and started for the Pacific coast on foot. The chances were that no ship would be waiting for them there, and they would have to warm their heels in idleness for days.

General Persifor F. Smith, who had been ordered to take command of the United States troops at San Francisco, was one of those who had to wait for a ship at Panama. Here he heard reports that a good deal of the new-found gold was being sent to foreign countries. Some said that the British Consul had forwarded fifteen thousand ounces of California gold to England, and that more than nine million francs' worth of the mineral had been received in the South American ports of Lima and Valparaiso. As a result hundreds of people from those ports were taking ship to California. General Smith did not like the idea of foreigners profiting by the discovery of gold in California, and issued an order that only citizens of the United States should be allowed to enter the public lands where the diggings were located. When the California, a steamship from New York, reached Panama in January, 1849, with seventy-five Peruvians on board, General Smith warned them that they would not be allowed to go to the mines, and sent word of this order to consuls along the Pacific coast of South America. In spite of his efforts, however, foreigners would go to Upper California, and the American prospectors were too busy with their own searches to prevent the strangers from taking what gold they could find.

When the California arrived at Panama she was already well filled with passengers, but there were so many people waiting for her that the captain had to give in to their demands, and crowd his vessel with several hundred more gold-seekers. Loaded with impatient voyagers, the steamship sailed up the coast, and reached San Francisco about the end of February. Immediately every one on board, except the captain, the mate, and the purser, deserted the ship, and dashed for the gold fields. The next steamer to reach Panama, the Oregon, found an even larger crowd waiting at that port. She took more passengers on board than she was intended to carry, but fortune favored the gold-seekers, and the Oregon, like the California, discharged her adventurous cargo in safety at San Francisco. Hundreds of others who could not board either of these steamers ventured on the Pacific in small sailing vessels, or any manner of ship that would put out from Panama bound north.

It is interesting to know the story of some of these pilgrimages. One of the Argonauts has told how he organized, in a little New England town, a company of twenty people. Each person subscribed a certain sum of money in return for a share in any profits, and in this way ten thousand dollars was raised. The people who were to go on the expedition signed a paper agreeing to work at least two years in the gold fields for the company. The band went from the New England town to New York, where they found the harbor filled with ships that were advertised to sail for Nicaragua, Vera Cruz, or Chagres. The leader of the company chose a little brig bound for the latter port, and in this the party, with some twenty-five other passengers, set sail in March. They ran into a heavy storm, but in three weeks reached the port on the Isthmus. There they had to wait some days, as all the river boats had gone up to Gorgona. When the boats were ready, thirty natives poled ten dugouts up the river. When the people landed they were told that there was no ship at Panama; that half the gold-seekers in that town were ill, and that there was no use in pushing on. So the party built tents on the bank of the river, and stayed there until the rainy season drove them to the coast. There they camped again, and waited for a ship to arrive. There was one vessel anchored in the harbor, but the owner was under a bond to keep it there as a coal-ship. The leader of the company, however, persuaded the owner to forfeit this bond, and four hundred waiting passengers paid two hundred dollars apiece to be conveyed to California. The ship was hardly seaworthy, and took seven weeks of sailing and floating to reach the harbor of Acapulco. There the vessel was greeted by a band of twenty Americans, ragged and penniless, who had come on foot from the City of Mexico. They had waited so long for a ship that twenty of the passengers agreed to give them their tickets, and take their places to wait until the next vessel should arrive. It was almost seven months after that New England party had left New York before they arrived at the Golden Gate of San Francisco.

There was very little choice between the Panama and the Nicaragua routes to the West. Among those who tried the latter road were a number of young people who had just graduated from Yale College. They boarded a ship in New York that was advertised to sail during the first week in February, and expected to land in San Francisco in sixty days. It was March, however, before the ship, crowded with voyagers, set sail south from Sandy Hook. Three weeks brought her to the mouth of the San Juan River. The ship's company was landed at the little tropical town of San Juan de Nicaragua. A small steamboat had been brought along to take them up the river, but when the machinery was put together the boat was found to be worthless. Like the voyagers by Panama, these people then had to trust to native dugouts, and in this way they finally got up the river to San Carlos. Had it not been for their eagerness to reach California such a trip would have been a delight to people who had never seen the tropics before. The San Juan River flowed through forests of strange and beautiful trees. Tamarind and dyewood trees, tall palms, and giant cacti, festooned with bright-colored vines, made a background for the brilliant birds that flew through the woods. Fruit was to be had for the taking, and the weather at that time of the year was delightful. But the thought of the fortunes waiting to be picked up in California filled the minds of most of the travelers.

After leaving the boats this party traveled by mule to Leon. Nicaragua was in the midst of a revolution, and the Americans acted as a guard to the President on the road to Leon. Near the end of July the company separated. Some finally sailed from the port of Realejo, and after many dangers and a voyage of almost five months succeeded in reaching San Francisco. Others reached Panama, set sail in a small boat, and were never heard from again; while yet a third party boarded a vessel at a Nicaraguan port, and managed to reach California after almost perishing from hunger and thirst.

Such were the adventures of some of those who tried to reach the gold fields of the West by sea. Hundreds of people made the trip by one of these routes, and as soon as spring arrived thousands set out overland. It was understood that large parties would leave from western Missouri early in March, and as a result many people, some alone, some in bands of twenty or thirty, gathered there from all parts of the East. Sometimes they formed military companies, wore uniforms, and carried rifles. The main place of gathering was the town of Independence, which grew to the size of a large city in a few weeks. people came on foot and on horseback; some with canvas-covered wagons, prairie schooners, and pack-mules; some with herds of cattle; some bringing with them all their household goods. All the Middle West seemed to be in motion. In a single week in March, 1849, hundreds of wagons drove through Burlington, Iowa. Two hundred from Memphis went along the Arkansas River, and hundreds more from Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania crossed the border of Iowa.

The spring was late, and as the overland trip could not be taken until the grass was high enough to feed the cattle, the great company had to wait along the frontiers from Independence to Council Bluffs. As people gathered at these towns they would form into companies, and then move on to a more distant point, in order to make room for later arrivals. Twenty thousand gathered along these frontiers before the signal was given to start westward. The march began about May 1st, and from then on, day and night, scores of wagons crossed the Missouri River, and the country looked like a field of tents.

From Independence most of the emigrants crossed rolling prairies for fifteen days to the Platte River at Grand Island. The route then wound up the valley of the Platte to the South Fork, and from there to the North Fork, where a post-office had been built, at which letters might be left to be carried back east by any travelers who were going in that direction. From here the emigrants journeyed to the mountain passes. They usually stopped at Laramie, which was the farthest western fort of the United States. By this time the long journey would be telling on many of the companies, and the road be strewn with all sorts of household goods, thrown away in order to lighten the burden on the horses.

At the South Pass, midway of the Rocky Mountains, two roads divided; those who took the southern road traveled by the Great Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and so into California. The northern road lay partly along the course of the Snake River to the headwaters of the Humboldt, and from there the emigrants might choose a path still farther to the north toward the Columbia River, or westward to the Sacramento. Many went by the trail along the Humboldt, although this route was one of the most difficult. "The river had no current," said one of the gold-hunters. "No fish could live in its waters, which wound through a desert, and there was not enough wood in the whole valley to make a snuff-box, nor vegetation enough on its banks to shelter a rabbit. The stream flowed through desert sands, which the summer heat made almost unbearable for people and horses." Following its course the travelers came to a lake of mud, surrounded for miles by a sandy plain. Across this they had to march for thirty-four hours to reach the Carson River. Along the trail lay the bodies of horses, mules, and oxen, and broken wagons parched and dried out in the blazing sun.

The first of the overland travelers who crossed the mountains late in the summer brought such reports to the officers at the Pacific posts that the latter decided that relief parties must be sent back to help those who were still toiling in the desert. It was known that some had been attacked by American Indians, and obliged to leave their covered wagons; that some had lost all their cattle, and were almost without food. Therefore relief parties were hurried into the mountains from the western side. They found the overland trail crowded with people on foot and in wagons. Many were sick, and almost all were hungry. One person carried a child in his arms, while a little boy trudged by his side, and his invalid wife rode on a mule. The soldiers gave food to all who needed it, and urged them to push on to the army posts. Day after day they met the same stream of emigrants, all bent on reaching the golden fields of California.

Late in the autumn, with winter almost at hand, the voyagers were still crossing the deserts and mountains. The soldiers could not induce many of them to throw away any of their goods. They crept along slowly, their wagons loaded from baseboard to roof. The teams, gradually exhausted, began to fall, and progress was almost impossible. Then the rescuers hurried the women to nearby settlements, and forced the people to abandon some of their baggage in an effort to reach shelter before the winter storms should come. By the end of November almost all the overland emigrants had crossed the mountains.

The city of San Francisco had sprung up almost overnight. In 1835 a Captain Richardson had landed on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove, and built a hut of four redwood posts, covered by a sail. Five years afterward this village of Yerba Buena contained about fifty people and a dozen houses. In 1846 the American warship Portsmouth anchored there, and her captain raised the "Stars and Stripes" on the Plaza. At that time there were not more than fifty houses and two hundred people. When the town became American the Plaza was renamed Portsmouth Square, and a year later the settlement was christened San Francisco. That was in January, 1847; and by midsummer of 1849 the town had become a city. It was an odd place to look at. The houses were made of rough unpainted boards, with cotton nailed across the walls and ceiling in place of plaster; and many a thriving business was carried on in canvas tents. There were few homes. The city was crowded; but most of the population did not intend to stay. They came to buy what they needed, or sell what they brought with them, and then hasten away to the mines. So many eager strangers naturally drove the prices up enormously, especially when it seemed as though gold could be had for the taking. The restaurants charged three dollars for a cup of coffee, a slice of ham, and two eggs. Houses and lots sold for from ten thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars each, and everything else was in proportion. What happened in San Francisco also happened in many other California towns. Sacramento was the result of the gold-craze. Speculators bought large tracts of land in any attractive place, gave it a high-sounding name, and sold city lots. Many of these so-called cities, however, shriveled up within a year or two. The seaports flourished because they were the gateways through which the newcomers passed in their rush to locate in the gold country.

These seaports became the goal of merchants everywhere. Necessary articles were so scarce that they were shipped long distances. Flour was brought from Australia and Chili, rice and sugar from China, and the cities along the Atlantic provided the dry-goods, the tools, and the furniture. At one time a cotton shirt would sell for forty dollars, a tin pan for nine, and a candle for three. But on the other hand cargoes of goods that were not needed, silks and satins, costly house-furnishings, were left on the beaches and finally sold for a song.

From the seaports the new arrivals hurried either up the Sacramento and the Feather Rivers to the northern gold fields, or up the San Joaquin to the southern country. Usually they were guided by the latest story of a rich find, and went where the chances seemed best. Several people would join forces and pitch their tents together, naming their camp Rat-trap Slide, Rough and Ready Camp, Slap-jack Bar, Mad Mule Gulch, Git-up-and-Git, You Bet, or any other name that struck their fancy. There were no laws to govern these little settlements, and the people adopted a rough system of justice that suited themselves. But as the numbers increased it was evident that California must have a better form of government, and steps were taken to have that rich stretch of land along the Pacific admitted as a state to the United States.

In three years California had grown from the home of about two thousand people to the home of eighty thousand. The finding of gold had changed that almost unknown wilderness into a thriving land in the twinkling of an eye. Railroads were built to reach it, and more and more people poured west. Some people made great fortunes, but more in a few months abandoned their claims and drifted to the cities, or made their way slowly back to the eastern farms and villages from which they had set out. The Forty-niners, as the gold-seekers were called, found plenty of adventure in California, even if they did not all find a short-cut to wealth.