The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-19 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JAN UARY 19, 1849

cense. While this feeling is at its zenith, it will be
rather worth while we conjecture to take two circum-
stances into consideration. First, the accuracy or in-
accuracy of the statements made as to the riches
abounding in the new territories of the United States;
and, secondly, the effects which must be produced in
the two hemispheres, supposing that these high-flown
anticipations are only partially realised.
Making a vast allowance for the exaggerations to
which the sanguine temperaments of the Americans
are liable on these occasions of excitement, we can-
not but rest satisfied that the accounts received from
the country lying west of the Sierra Nevada are not
altogether without foundation. We cannot have the
assurance to give Colonel MASON what Mr. SAMUEL
SLICK, the Clockmaker, would call "the barn direct."
We have a wholesome disinclination to rile up the
dander of Lieutenant-Colonel FREMONT, or of Mr.
J. S. FoLsom, or of Brigadier- General JONES, or
of Lieutenant EMORY. The official reports trans•
mitted by those gentlemen to the Government
at Washington, without being to us exactly what the
myths of Cambria are to Sir BULWER LYTTON
" Beloved as fable, yet believed as truth,"

contain, at the least, sufficient evidence of the ho-
nourable sentiments with which they have been dic-
tated. And the descriptions derived from other and
miscellaneous authorities tend in a great measure to
c,groborate the assertions made by these distinguished
citizens of the Union. One writer in the American
Journal of Commerce depicts the natives as running
over the country picking up knobs of gold here and
there, " just as a thousand hogs let loose in a forest
would root up ground nuts." Another, in the Wash-
ington Union, mentions the receipt by the Secretary
of War of " a caddy containing about 3,000 dollars'
worth of gold, in lumps and scales." Another, in the
Californian, while speaking of the metallic fruitful-
ness of the gold regions, dilates with admiration upon the
orchards abounding there with " the almond, fig,
olive, pear, apple, and peach." One assayer declares
the golden grains of California to be at the rate of
45 cents. in value for 104 grains—being, says he,
" 24 carats fine, within half a carat of the quality of
English sovereigns or American eagles, and is almost
ready to go to the Mint." Another in the columns
of the Tribune, cries out in an ecstasy, " We are on
the brink of the Age of Gold !" In addition to all
which exhilarating expressions, one of the latest cor-
respondents from New York concludes his epistle
thus—" Emigrants, therefore, from your side need
not hesitate to venture thither from any fear that,
when they arrive, the extensive localities of this
modern El Dorado shall have become enfeoffed by
Anglo-America, and permission to work only be
obtained by charter or letters of license." Such are
specimens of the encouragement afforded to these
who are constitutionally predisposed to plunge into
the current of speculation. Such are the gorgeous
hues, prismatic like the rainbow, and fluctuating
according to the fancy of the speculator, which
have coloured this magnificent bubble. For
that thus, in many respects, the venture must be
designated, we are convinced, notwithstanding the
gold-like "ground nuts," the overflowing "caddy"
received at Washington, and the glittering visions of
the future, indulged in by the Transatlantic news-
papers. Those visions remind one of the complexion
of the two Floridan savages whom CHATEAUBRIAND
has mentioned as the prototypes of his Atala and Celzda,
"a complexion over which a shade, as of a light
orange coloured mist, seemed cast." In the latter
instance the imagination of the poet was distraught
by the bewitching scene in which those two Flori-
dans were beheld—when " the azure vault of heaven
seemed to melt away into a sea of diamond and
sapphire, in which the sun, half sunk, appeared to
dissolve"—when "the earth, in adoration, seemed to
offer incense to the sky, and the perfumes exhaled
from it returned upon it in a refreshing dew, as a
prayer returns on the head of him who prays "
when a last ray of the sun, " glancing beneath the
tree tops, glittered like a set carbuncle on the dark
leaves "—when " fire-flies glittered among the shrubs,
and were eclipsed when they issued into the moon-
beams "—when the " gentle, murmuring flow of the
lake fell on the ear, with an occasional splash of a gold
fish, or cry of a wild duck "—and when, with the
same intoxicating sensations, he recalled to mind the
moment when he " ascended the Parthenon with the
dawn, and saw Cythera, Mount Hymetus, the Acro-
polis of Corinth, the tombs and the ruins,
bathed in a transparent golden mist of
light, reflected by the sea, and floating
like a perfume on the zephyrs of Salamis and Delos."
It was while beside himself in the core of these re-
splendent beauties, it was while he felt himself,accord-
ing to his own delicate phraseology, " living and ve-
getating with nature in a kind of pantheism," that
CHATEAUSRIAND saw over the complexion of the
Floridan savages what seemed to be a shade " as of a
light orange-coloured mist." Had he seen them in
the cold atmosphere of reality, we doubt but that he
would have declared them to be decidedly sallow and
possibly cadaverous. It is precisely in such a
moment as this that the eyes of the san-
guine are directed across the Atlantic to the
banks of the Sacramento. Intoxicated with desires
for a plenteous harvest of riches, the speculators can
only recognise California through a, " transparent
golden mist of light," like that which appeared to
RENE, as " floating like a perfume on the zephyrs of
Salamis and Delos." Against the dangerous fasci-
nation of such hopes we have already warned the
public; and we have a particular satisfaction in re-
peating our advice now that the same tone is assumed
by several of our influential Contemporaries, jour-
nals which formerly endeavoured to enhance rather
than to mitigate the mania about the gold region, at
the time when we remained almost,isolated in desig-
nating the chief part of the El Dorado of California
as a delusion. When further accounts, beyond those
contained in a handful of intelligent pamphlets,* shall
have been received, we may then be enabled to pro-
nounce more decidedly upon the mineral wealth of
the Sacramento; and when we have so decided we
may safety begin to calculate the probable effects of
the discovery upon commerce and finance, upon coin
as a circulating medium, upon the elevation of labour,
and upon the depreciation of property.