The Arizona sentinel., 1885-12-05
CALIFORNIA; GOLD.
An Iconociast Who Spells the Pretty Mar
 shalI-Sutter Story of It's Discovery.

An Iconoclast Who Spells the Pretty Mar.
 shalI-sutter Story of Its Discovery.
 An official report made to the Direc. tor of the Mint brands as fiction the pleasing stories in the school histories that gold was first discovered in Cali fornia at Sutter's Mill. James Mar shall, so the fable ran, was walking by the mill-tail looking at the water, when the glistening of nugget in the sands caught his eyes. He stopped down, picked it up, and then rode at full speed to the fort, which stood on the present site of Sacramento. In subsequent years Marshall has had to divide the honor attached to the discov- cry of gold in California with Peter L. Weimer, poor man, who was with him when the nugget was found. gold, and called his companion's at tention to it, but Marshall had the horse and carried the unknown metal to the fort, so that he got the credit for the ''find.n
 The lapse of time has served to in- crease the heat of the controversy over this credit for discovery, and in the search for truth facts have been col lated which greatly diminish the inn portance history has atta he'd to the incident at Sutter's Mill. MT. Walter A. Skidmore, who makes the report to the Director, says that the existence of gold in California was we'll known nearly hundred years ago.
 ~ Il. II California in 1910. and who is an au- thority on the earlier annals of the coast, states that in 1924, while on a military expedition to the region which is now Kern and San Bernardino Coun- ties, he found Russian living between the Kings and Kern Rivers who was and had been for some time mining gold. This miner was fully equipped with all the then known appliances for sep arating the metal. About that time and for years later, General Vallejo used to remit gold dust, in the sealed quills of the vuIture, to the authorities at the City of Mexico.
 Captain Walter Comstock, a whaler. who was in the employ of the Grinnells, of New York. has asserted that ne took gold from California in 1924, and nearly every vessel which put into the harbor of Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, in those times, carried away gold.
 Professor Hanks, the California min- erologist, has evidence that placer was discovered near the Colorado River, in San Diego County, in 1775. For twenty years before 1S4S. the date of of 'c I glngs were operated on the upper waters of the Santa Clara River. Gold-dust to the value af apc cef:aa f:taa aaaa M -te tdfIes before these records of actual mining, Cali fornia had the rather mythical reputa- ton of possessing gold in abundance. An old work, published in Europe in the sixteenth century, contained this:
 "The soldiers of Vasquirus Coronatus having found no gold in Vevola, in or der not to return to Mexico without gold, resolved to come to Quivera, Cal. for they had heard much of the gold mines, and that TatarraXes, the power full King of that country, was amply provided with riches"
 Sir Francis Drake, Tn 1879, visited the coast of California and entered the bay which bears his name. On his return to England he gave such powerful ac- count of the country that Hakluyt, an historian of that day, in writing of Cali fornia, said there was no part of the soil which did not contain reasonable quantity of gold or silver. This early knowledge, however, was not altogether No oprecious metals have ever been found in the district around Drake's Bay.-Cor. St. Louis Globe Denlocrat.