half pounds a day to have prevented it from
spoiling: the tobacco in store was sufficient
for sixty-five years' consumption; every pair
of feet must have worn fifty pairs of shoes;
ten times the number of inhabitants that
existed must have been continually
intoxicated, and every one must have chewed
twenty-five pounds of tobacco daily, if butter,
boots, spirits, or pigtail were to be kept from
destruction. Again, seeing the need for some
kind of better lodgment than the canvas
and the chip of the first immigrants,
speculators sent out iron houses, and bricks for
building; and these, notwithstanding the
enormous cost of their exportation, soon
reduced rents seventy-five per cent., besides
paying themselves in six or eight mouths.
Of course the market was glutted with iron-houses
and manufactured bricks; and the
one, two, and three hundred per cent. of the
first importers was soon transformed to a
grievous balance on the losing side with the
later speculators. House rent is still very
dear in San Francisco. A business building,
worth twelve thousand dollars, lets at three
hundred dollars, or at two-and-a-half per cent.
per month, profit; while a "villa" with a
garden, in the suburbs, worth four thousand
dollars, will let from eighty to a hundred
dollars the month. Fire insurance is dear,
perhaps owing to past traditions rather than
to present experience. But, as San Francisco
has been completely burnt down more than
once, it can scarcely be wondered at that the
insurance companies preserve their
traditions; and although the city is now of brick
and stone, and therefore liable to no great
danger, they still charge according to the
risks of the past. As, however, their profits
are mounting up beyond all reasonable need,
opposition companies are being started, which
will soon equalise the matter. Nothing proves
the energy and go-aheadness of the Califomian
population more than one of those numerous
fires. While the ashes were still smouldering,
the ring of the axe and the blow of the
hammer would be heard; and, with the ground
hot and scorched beneath their feet, a party of
workmen would build up a new street before
half the city knew that the old street had
been destroyed. The quiet, tame Chinamen,
with their pigtails and their rats' meat, and
the thick-skulled negro, were as energetic
and as clever as any. Being in a free State,
the last class excited no animosity, and were
more encouraged than in most of the other
States of America; the consequence is, a far
larger development of intelligence among
them than is found in the Slave States, or
where they are scouted and scorned. As
for the Celestials, they find themselves so
well off, that forty thousand at least are now
located in California, either about the diggings
or in the city.

Many causes may be ascribed for the failure
of most of the Californian mining companies
in England. In the first place, land was
often bought and claims purchased by the
map and by hearsay report alone; (land often
rose from three hundred to one thousand per
cent. in one day, on the merest rumour of
gold); then, companies were formed under
managers new to the country and the
business alike—perhaps naval or military men,
needy diplomats, or still needier younger sons:
men whose former habits totally unfitted
them for the rough and ready life they had
to encounter, and who expected to carry all
before them by the magic weight of English
blood and gentleman-like breeding; they
often carried workmen, under contracts for
comparatively small wages, who, of course,
abandoned their masters and set up as
"placers " for themselves the moment they set
foot on shore; frequently no quartz-crushing
machines were sent out, or those sent were
of no use when dragged lumbering up to
the mines; or, as happened in one instance,
they were sunk in the Sacramento river.
These, added to unbounded extravagance
and entire ignorance, were the reasons of the
failure of our English companies, and not,
as the cry then went out, that the gold
was exhausted, and the quartz not worth
the labour of crushing. Mr. Seyd asserts,
that the quartz veins are abundantly rich,
and will yield greatly for many years to
come; while a sample of gold-sand, yielding
seventeen and two-thirds ounces to the ton
of two thousand pounds, is by no means an
exaggerated example of the ordinary gold-sand
of the mines. Indeed, all the minerals
are abundant in this "backbone of America;"
and were even her gold to fail her,
California has other mineral wealth remaining,
which would still keep her foremost in the
rank of rich nations. Of the two hundred
millions sterling which have been poured
into the money market since California and
Australia opened their hidden stores, the
major part has come from California.

Land is cheap; wages are dear; the
climate is delicious; the produce of the
farm and garden luxuriant beyond measure;
and all that is wanting to California, says
Mr. Seyd, are labour and capital. Strange
that capital should be wanting in the land
of gold! but the ethics of commercial life
are beyond the comprehension of the
uninitiated; and we only record a fact,
which we accept with becoming modesty.
Such, however, being the case, it is earnestly
asked why all discontented labourers, all
striving artizans, all men with families, all
hopeless single men, all small capitalists, all
strong-armed paupers—above all, why all
young ladies of every degree, husbandless and
portionless here—do not set out for the
Golden City? Work and wages; certain
prosperity for the industrious, and certain
wealth and saved capital for the careful;
more offers in a day than she could read, for
every "decent-faced" woman; a climate that
would have renovated old Parr at the