The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-04 00:00:00

CALIFORNIA.

If our Californian intelligence is to be implicitly
trusted, the reports just received must be described
as more extraordinary than any which have pro-

ceeded even from that region of wonders. The dis-
coveries of gold mines, if not of gold, multiply daily.
" Placers " and " washings " ere brought to light,
each successively of greater productiveness than those
known before. Large as is the influx of adventurers,
the opportunities of the period and the resources of
the soil appear to increase in a far more than corre-
sponding ratio. A clue seems at length to have been
found to those primary veins of native gold of which
the present diggings merely represent the pulverised
deposits. Colonel Fremont's estate has yielded a solid
bed of gold stone more than a mile long and upwards
of two feet thick. This was the first announcement.

Later reports, however, allege that the length of the
vein is fully two leagues, with an average breadth of
150 feet, and the story is characteristically com-
pleted by the statement that at one end of the
mine there is a deposit of native silver calcu-
lated to defray all the expenses of machinery
and working. So singular a -coincidence of pro-
vision seems almost peculiar to 'Transatlantic soil,
and is, perhaps, the greatest prodigy of the place;
but the town-gossip of San Francisco is full of con-
clusions scarcely less astonishing. It seems to be now
ascertained that this city itself is built of auriferous
materials and upon a real placer of gold, so that, to
match the living wonders of California, we shall have
nothing left but those desirable regions depicted in
the " Arabian Nights," where fruit trees are loaded
with the richest porcelain, and stupendous castles are
constructed from a single ruby. The results upon
the town population are most remarkable. Little
boys make their five or six dollars a-day by grubbing
in the gutters, like the urchins who scramble fur
halfpence in the mud at Blackwall. One of the re-
venue officers, being debarred by his duties from the
exhilarating air of the public placers, beguiled his
confinement by instinctively picking out the adobes,
or bricks, from the walls of the Custom-house, and
found that he had got as good a digging as his
neighbours. Large profits are made by sinking
wells, and sewers in this favoured settlement pay
for their own construction five times over. Nor
can the rents perhaps be any longer considered
exorbitant, for a man may pay his landlord with the
proceeds of his own bricks and mortar. Yet the dis-
covery is not without its dangers. The possible
contingencies are too alarming to be speculated upon
with calmnes, fur, if free scope is left to the tempta-
tions of these domestic diggings, the honeycombed
streets will some day or other collapse and settle, like
Troy in its flames ; and a dead lake of rubbish will
be all that is left of the young emporium of the
Pacific. At present, however, San Francisco still
sits in state among her hundred suburbs. Towns are
looking up, excepting a new New York of Colonel
Stevenson's, which is rather low in credit. Benicia
lots (i. e. streets), too, are slightly dull, but the other
creations of the summer are promising fairly. Labour
still commands its share of the earth's treasures,
and in one instance, indeed, has carried its de-
mands so high as to exemplify very strikingly the
operation, in this respect, of the immutable prin-
ciples of free trade. Eight dollars a dozen were
exacted as terms for that vulgar kind of " washing"
which was naturally in disrepute in San Francisco.
The consequence has been that the Californians have
signally reversed the advice of the proverb, and
instead of keeping their dirty linen at home have
actually sent it to be washed in China. The practice,
though not, as we should think, without its inconve-
niences, has been decidedly successful in an economical
point of view, and a welcome arrival of some hundred
dozen " articles" from the Canton wash took placejust
as the last mail was leaving. One of the most extra-

ordinary results of this wonderful discovery is the
impulse it has given to the enterprise of the Celestial I
Empire. Chinamen, hitherto the most impassive and
domestic creatures of the universe, have started into
new life at the tidings from the mines, and have
poured into California by thousands. Besides im-
porting several large suburbs, complete, they have
constructed, erected, and furnished nearly half the
houses in San Francisco. They swarm in the settle-
ment like Scotchmen in India, or Maltese in the
Mediterranean towns. They have even seized upon
the most profitable trades, and the best restaurants
in the place are kept by . adventurers from the
Flowery Land. Bong-sung and Wang-tong
especially have acquired by their chow-chow, curry,
and tarts, a prodigious reputation, and, fur the first
time in the annals of the world, Frenchmen appear
to have been superseded in their hereditary capacities
of mitres dheotel. From no quarters, however, has
the tide of immigration slackened, nor does it appear
that the number of settlers is yet thought in any de-
gree to have approximated to the capacities of the
country for maintaining them. Hitherto there has
been no jealousy of feeling in this respect. One act,
indeed, of the community redounds highly to their
credit, and speaks voluines for the abundant promise
ltihkeem likely to
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that although gold is undoubtedly both found and
exported in considerable epautities, so little effect has
been produced upon the bullion markets of the world.
Two great results were naturally anticipated from the
Californian discoveries—the rapid and summary colo-
nization of the North Pacific Coast of America, and
an unexampled abundance of the most precious of
metals. The first of these expectations has been
realised in its fullest extent, but the latter has been
hitherto disappointed. Even in the New York money-
market no direct inluence of the mines has been yet
perceptible, and our latest intelligence states, as the
only result of the arrival of one large cargo and the
announcement of others, that confidence has been
given to capitalists, and that the -market continues
in a sound and wholesome condition. In this
country, though some of the genuine produce of the
diggings has at length reached us, yet it is singular
how little the great gold mart of the world can be
hitherto said to have been directly affected. A few
moderate consignments, a single story of a successful
adventurer actually returned, and a periodical publi-
cation of new and more wonderful discoveries, re-
present all that we know of California and its trea-
sures. Nor, if we form our conclusions by analogy
rather than by rumour, do we think there is much
ground for presuming any startling change to be in
prospect. Various reasons have been hitherto alleged
for the disappointment of predictions, but time has
disposed of all these excuses, and still we get little
more gold than before. On the whole, therefore, we are
confirmed in our belief, that though the ultimate re-
sults of these discoveries may materially affect both
civilization and commorce,lthey will not comprise any