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The discovery of gold in amazingly rich deposits in California hastened the conflict of the rival sections. During the second half of 1848 and all through 1849 thousands of Southerners, Easterners, and Westerners rushed pell-mell into the new Eldorado, bent on making hasty fortunes and oblivious of the anxious thoughts of statesmen. The motley gold-diggers needed government.
People rushed to America for gold: these people had to be fed and clothed. Then farmers and manufacturers followed the gold-hunters; they tilled the soil to feed the miners. The new farms which dotted the region of the gold-diggers added to the wealth of the country in which the mines were located. Colonization followed gold-digging.
The fact is, that she is such a very singular girl, and has told me so many wonderful things, in the strangest, cool way, that I am quite uncertain of myself. Murderers, and gold-diggers, and silver-mines, and camps full of men without women, making presents of gold girdles and dog-collars, and ear-rings that drag your ears down. It is enough to upset any one."
Vessels are daily arriving from the islands and ports upon the coast, laden with goods and passengers, the latter destined for the gold-washings. "Much sickness prevails among the gold-diggers; many have left the ground sick, and many more have discontinued their labours for the present, and gone into more healthy portions of the country, intending to return after the sickly season has passed.
Occasionally he dimly glimpsed deserted cabins, habitations built by the gold-diggers of other days. Carefully he followed the all but indistinguishable sled tracks ahead of him until they swerved abruptly in toward the bank. Here he paused, pulled a mitten, and, moistening a finger, held it up to test the wind.
Now, you know-at least I can tell 'ee that my old chum Willum is as rich as a East Injin nabob. You wouldn't believe, madam, what fortins some gold-diggers have made. W'y, I've seed men light their pipes with fi'-pun' notes for a mere brag out there. I've made a goodish lump o' money myself too, a'most more than I know what to do with, an' as to Willum, I may say he's actooally rollin' in gold.
We had not yet learnt the gold-diggers' variant of a well-known proverb: "Nothing is gold that glitters." We scrambled down the steep mountain-side, between patches of forest and over reefs of quartz. The latter had a special interest for us; we were now in the land of gold and who could tell where the clues of Fortune were not to be picked up?
The stories of the diamonds, the gold-diggers, and the silver-mines, had been added to, and embellished, in the most ornate and startling manner. It was well known that only Lady Theobald's fine appreciation of Miss Belinda Bassett's feelings had induced her to extend her hospitalities to that lady's niece.
After the Californian gold-diggers had changed the configuration of the ground of entire provinces by having, with Titanic might, deposited masses of earth into the sea until they expanded into hilly districts, so as to obtain therefrom, with the aid of ingenious machinery, the smallest particle of gold which was contained therein, they have astonished the world in their capacity of agriculturalists, whose produce is sent even to the most distant markets, and everywhere takes the first rank without dispute.
Shortly after the cholera had ceased to rage in Jamaica Mary Seacole proceeded on a visit to her brother, who owned a large, prosperous store at Cruces in California. On arriving there, she found the place crowded with a mixed mob of gold-diggers and speculators, some proceeding to the gold-fields, others returning.
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