To them it seemed extremely possible that gold in such
quantities was to be found almost anywhere for the mere seeking.
Authenticated instances are known of men getting ten, fifteen, twenty,
and thirty thousand dollars within a week or ten days, without
particularly hard work. Gold was so abundant it was much easier to dig
it than to steal it, considering the risks attendant on the latter
course. A story is told of a miner, while paying for something, dropping
a small lump of gold worth perhaps two or three dollars. A bystander
picked it up and offered it to him. The miner, without taking it, looked
at the man with amazement, exclaiming: "Well, stranger, you are a
curiosity. I guess you haven't been in the diggings long. You had better
keep that lump for a sample."

These were the days of the red-shirted miner, of romance, of Arcadian
simplicity, of clean, honest working under blue skies and beneath the
warm California sun, of immense fortunes made quickly, of faithful
"pardners," and all the rest. This life was so complete in all its
elements that, as we look back upon it, we unconsciously give it a
longer period than it actually occupied. It seems to be an epoch, as
indeed it was; but it was an epoch of less than a single year, and it
ended when the immigration from the world at large began.

The first news of the gold discovery filtered to the east in a
roundabout fashion through vessels from the Sandwich Islands. A
Baltimore paper published a short item. Everybody laughed at the rumor,
for people were already beginning to discount California stories. But
they remembered it. Romance, as ever, increases with the square of the
distance; and this was a remote land. But soon there came an official
letter written by Governor Mason to the War Department wherein he said
that in his opinion, "There is more gold in the country drained by the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers than would pay the cost of the late
war with Mexico a hundred times over." The public immediately was alert.
And then, strangely enough, to give direction to the restless spirit
seething beneath the surface of society, came a silly popular song. As
has happened many times before and since, a great movement was set to
the lilt of a commonplace melody. Minstrels started it; the public
caught it up. Soon in every quarter of the world were heard the strains
of _Oh, Susannah!_ or rather the modification of it made to fit this
case:

"I'll scrape the moun