habitants. Some of the most prominent men passed into this new emigration; for example, Peter H. Burnett, soon to become the first governor of the State of Cahfornia. When General Lane and Joe Meek reached San Francisco on their way northward, they saw numbers of Oregon men, some of whom, leaving the Willamette valley or Puget Sound almost penniless, were already returning to their families with thousands of dollars in gold dust.
The "Forty-niners "; progress of California. The news was carried across the Rockies, and before the arrival of winter hundreds, thousands, on the Atlantic coast were preparing for the voyage to Panama, expecting to cross the Isthmus and take ship to San Francisco. Others in the interior impatiently waited till the grass should start in the spring, when twentyfive thousand persons, in an almost continuous caravan, moved westward to the valley of the Sacramento. But this was only the beginning. Month after month, and year after year, the excited multitudes pressed on to this new El Dorado. All were looking for the golden treasure; but while most men sought it in the river drift, many took the surer methods of carrying supplies to the mines, or of cultivating the soil in order to produce flour, bacon, fruit, and other necessities which during the early years of the gold rush brought such fabulous prices. Hundreds of new occupations were opened, and fortunes made in the most diverse ways. No young western community had ever been advertised
