ublic domain of the United
States. The army of occupation, however, offered no opposition to the
invading army of prospectors. The miners were, in 1849, twenty years
ahead of the railroad and the electric telegraph. The telephone had not
yet been invented. In the parlance of the times, the prospectors "had
the drop" on the army. In Colonel Mason's unique report of the situation
that confronted him, discretion waited upon valor. "The entire gold
district," he wrote to the Government at Washington, "with few
exceptions of grants made some years ago by the Mexican authorities, is
on land belonging to the United States. It was a matter of serious
reflection with me how I could secure to the Government certain rents or
fees for the privilege of procuring this gold; but upon considering the
large extent of the country, the character of the people engaged, and
the small scattered force at my command, I am resolved not to interfere,
but permit all to work freely." It is not recorded whether the resolute
colonel was conscious of the humor of his resolution. This early
suggestion of conservation was, under the circumstances, manifestly
academic.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in commenting on the singular
situation in which Colonel Mason found himself, clearly and forcefully
states his predicament. "His position," says that Court, "was unlike
anything that had preceded it in the history of our country . . . . It
was not without its difficulties, both as regards the principle upon
which he should act, and the actual state of affairs in California. He
knew that the Mexican inhabitants of it had been remitted by the treaty
of peace to those municipal laws and usages which prevailed among them
before the territory had been ceded to the United States, but that a
state of things and population had grown up during the war, and after
the treaty of peace, which made some other authority necessary to
maintain the rights of the ceded inhabitants and of immigrants, from
misrule and violence. He may not have comprehended fully the principle
applicable to what he might rightly do in such a case, but he felt
rightly and acted accordingly. He determined, in the absence of all
instruction, to maintain the existing government. The territory had been
ceded as a conquest, and was to be preserved and governed as such until
the sovereignty to which it had passed had legislated for it. That
sovereignty was the United States, under the Constit