wonderful transformation about to take place. On the 24th of January, ten days before the treaty of peace was signed, James W. Marshall made his world-famous discovery of gold on the American River, some fifty miles above Sutter's Fort. He and Captain Sutter wished to keep the benefits of the find to themselves, but the secret escaped, as great secrets usually do, and in a few weeks the inhabitants of California were hurrying north with shovel and pan, hoping to wash quick fortunes out of the sands brought down from the mysterious Sierras. So great did the "rush "become that at San Francisco and other towns ordinary lines of business were suspended, stores, warehouses, and even printing offices were deserted, and vessels touching at San Francisco had to remain in port because the crews escaped to the mines. Picks, shovels, and pans rose to famine prices.
The news reaches Oregon, August, 1848. Before the summer closed news of the discovery had reached Oregon, producing an excitement scarcely less intense than that caused by the Indian war just ended. Resolutions were instantly taken, plans made, and in a few days a company was on its way southward. Soon a regular tide of travel, on foot, by pack train, and wagon, set in across the Siskiyous. Oregon lost within a single year a very large proportion of its male in perfectly) wrote exultantly to a friend, "What for progress will California make now! "The manuscript letter from which this is quoted is in possession of Mr. P. J. Healy of San Francisco, who kindly permitted the writer to examine his collection.
