umps and said they certainly were gold.

The flood-gates between the mill-race and the river were opened again,
and water ran through the ditch, washing more gold in sight. Sutter
picked up enough of this to make a ring and had these words marked on
it:--

"The first gold found in California, January, 1848."

Both Sutter and Marshall tried to keep what they had found a secret,
but that was impossible, and soon people were flocking to the
gold-fields. Then began a wild excitement known as the "gold-fever,"
and men left their stores and houses, gave up business, and left crops
ungathered in a wild chase after nuggets of gold.

By December of 1848, thousands of miners were washing for gold
all along the foot-hills from the Tuolumne River to the Feather,
a distance of 150 miles. A hundred thousand men came to California
during 1849, these Argonauts, or gold-hunters, taking ship or steamer
for the long trip from New York by the Isthmus of Panama. Some went
round Cape Horn, or else made a weary journey overland across the
plains. "To the land of gold" was their motto, and these pioneers
endured every hardship to reach this "Golden State."

Then the miners, with pick, shovel, and pan for washing out gold from
the gravel it was found in, started out "prospecting" for "pay-dirt."
The gold-diggings were usually along the rivers, and this surface, or
"placer," mining was done by shovelling the "pay-dirt" into a pan or a
wooden box called a cradle, and rocking or shaking this box from side
to side while pouring water over the earth. The heavy gold, either
in fine scales or dust, or in lumps called nuggets, dropped to the
bottom, while the loose earth ran out in a muddy stream. The rich sand
left in pan or cradle was carefully washed again and again till only
precious, shining gold remained.

So rich were some of the sand bars along the American and Feather
rivers that the first miners made a thousand dollars a day even by
this careless way of washing gold where much of it was lost. Then
again for days or weeks the miner found nothing at all. He would
wander up and down the canons and gulches, prospecting for another
claim, and dreaming day and night of finding a stream with golden
sands, or of picking up rich nuggets. If he found good "diggings" he
would build a rough shanty under the pines, and dig and wash till the
gold-bearing sand or gravel gave out again. Sometimes he had a partner
and a donkey, or burro, to carry tools