In the latter part of 1848 adventurers began to arrive from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Mexico.  The winter found the miners with very little preparation, but most of them were accustomed to a rough manner of life in the Western wilds, and they considered their large profits an abundant compensation for their privations and hardships.  The weather was so mild in December and January that they could work almost as well as in the summer, and the rain gave them facilities for washing such as they could not have in the dry season.

In September, 1848, the first rumors of the gold discovery began to reach New York; in October they attracted attention; in November people looked with interest for new reports; in December the news gained general credence and a great excitement arose.  Preparations were made for a migration to California by somebody in nearly every town in the United States.  The great body of the emigrants went either across the plains with ox or mule teams or round Cape Horn in sailing-vessels.  A few took passage in the steamer by way of Panama.

Not fewer than one hundred thousand men, representing in their nativity every State in the Union, went to California that year.  Of these, twenty thousand crossed the continent by way of the South Pass; and nearly all of them started from the Missouri River between Independence and St. Joseph, in the month of May.  They formed an army; in daytime their trains filled up the roads for miles, and at night their camp-fires glittered in every direction about the places blessed with grass and water.  The excitement continued from 1850 to 1853; emigrants continued to come by land and sea, from Europe and America, and in the last named year from China also.  In 1854 the migration fell off, and since that time until the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad California received the chief accessions to her white population by the Panama steamers.

The whole world felt a beneficent influence from the great gold yield of the Sacramento Basin.  Labor rose in value, and industry was stimulated from St. Louis to Constantinople.  The news, however, was not welcome to all classes.  Many of the capitalists feared that gold would soon be so abundant as to be worthless, and European statesmen feared the power to be gained by the arrogant and turbulent democracy of the New World.

The author of a book entitled Notes on the Gold District, published in London in 1853, thus speaks of the fears excited in Europe on the first great influx of gold from the Californian mines:  “Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian discoveries was the alarm communicated to many classes and which was not confined to individuals but invaded governments.  The first announcement spread alarm; but as the cargoes of gold rose from one hundred thousand dollars to one million dollars, bankers and financiers began seriously to prepare for an expected crisis.  In England and the United