The San Francisco call., 1898-01-23
HOW TE NEWS STARTED COLD RUST

8 < sand dollars The people up there promised to keep it secret long, but thought the time that it could hardly be kept secret for six weeks"
 Hardly Can you imagine yourself felling trees blaming lumber. digging out the mill race carrying stones, hammering and saving and laborng in all the varied ways that necessary turn wilder ness into town, while at your feet lies the smiling glittering, inviting gold, alurng you with it's rich promse begging, beseeching you only to stoop and pick up fortune, pleasure, power all the things man yearns for?
 And yet for a time the building of the mill went on. Until one day a carpenter named Bennett ern- ployed by Marshall, left Coloma for Monterey. He carried with him quantity of the dust, passing through Yerba Buena met Isaac Humphrey, a miner who had washed gold in Georgia Humphrey came to Coloma with Bennett, where they arrived early in March. He found few of the half-heartedly hunting for gold; but work was going at the mil as there were no better use to make of those hours apart from all the myriads since the be- ginning of time the fruitful.
 Humphrey changed all this. He washed pan of dust; and the men, clustering round saw pebbles washed and then the rock, and then the lighter earth. And with every cradling every new washing the bottom of the grew brighter and brighter. The black dust appeared and the gold smiling up from under the thin coating of water lay in flakes and grains, pure, fine, rich
 Then Humphrey built rocker. And suddenly every man there found that rocker was the one thing he needed All the little Coloma world set to building rockers. The Indians the carpenters the blacksmith even the children and Mrs. Weimer her self had to have a rocker. :
 It was the first case of clearly defined, well-de- veloped gold fever Unfortunately there was no physician at Cooma to watch the progress of the malady. But even if there had been. he himself would caught the delightful contagion and the first symptom, all the world knows is the loss of memory of wit of wisdom of everything but the de- sire for gold-gettng.
 Even before that careless sxty-word announce ! of the finding of gold. in the Monterey Cali fornian the rush the valley of the American River began
 T have seen boats with blankets writes the man who owned the first store in Coloma, pass Benicia loaded with who working with might and main bailing out their fraiI crafts with hats, shoes and other such things and then. in cases they did net succeed in preventing them from swamping."
 vded only they got there They depopulated New Helvetia they left traps and uncared-for cattle They walked the mountains they crawled, they crept; but they reached the golden little Mecca.
 T have slept out in the winter rain without a tent, and merely something over head to keep the rain from battering my face and little trenches dug around body to carry the water off" says a forty-niner.
 This man had come west on a sailing vessel that left Baltimore in March and arrived at Yerba Buena n November. Just about this time the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was ready for business, and then all the world poured into California. They from Oregon and Washington, from Mexico, from Hawaii The population sprang up 100000 and increased by 500oo annually for the next five or six years.
 In June, 1S48, there were only five people left in Yerba Buena, and children. I wonder why they, tco, didn't go on that wondrous pilgrimage Everybody else did. Towns and farms deserted Rancheros, vaqueros, wood-choppers, soldiers and sailors who had deserted or obtained leave of ab- devoted all their energies to washing the sands of Colcma.
 .Tbe whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada resounds with the sordd of Gold! Gold! Gcld while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of picks and shovels and the means of transportation to the spot"
 This was the cry of the Californian on May 2s. after inveighing against the sordidness of the gold desire it's editor promptly and very humaniy succumbed the fever himself The Californian suspended. In fact, everything was suspended but gold hunting.
 And it was worth while. man frorl Sonor1a who went to the placer mines had collected $500 in tw6' weeks and still averaging $10u day. A man, his wife and his making S50O q day. Many got from $500 to $500 day Auburn, farther north, and got $16,000 out Of five carloads of dirt. IL was rumored that Murphy of Murphys Camp had collected $15OO.000 in gold dust be- fore the close of the wet season of 1S48 Two men who had employed white and Indians to work for them Cooma paid off their party and left at the end of a week with $10000. soldier of Masons Artillery Company returned from twenty days fur lough eleven days of which he had spent in travel ing In week he had made $500 greater than he would receive in pay clothes and rations during enlistment of five years. At Brannans store, just outside the walls of Sutters Fort they had received payment for goods 5000 in gold dust alone in two months. single nugget worth s130O0 was found. There were two worth $2IOOO apiece one worth S10000 and numberess nuggets sin gle bits of rock worth from SlOO tc $5ooV one man found nugget worth $SOOO and went raving mad the next day.
 We drove over the other day from Placerville- Placervie whose streets are frozen in hard ridges just at this season-to visit Coloma.
 The air was sharp, biting, with piny, mountain
 fragrance that is
 hilarating. The road