“The estimate in a former chapter of three or four dollars per day per man, as the average yield during my late visit to the gold regions, has been most extensively and generally confirmed since that period. Innumerable letters, and persons lately returned from the diggings, (including successful miners,) now fix the _average at from three to four dollars per day_ for each digger during the season.”—(P. 243.) “Thus far the number of successful men may have been one in every hundred. In this estimate those only should be considered successful who have _realized and safely invested their fortunes_. The thousands who thus far have made their fortunes, but are still immersed in speculations, do not belong as yet to the foregoing number.”—(P. 245.) This is applying the just principle, “Nemo ante obitum beatus,” which is too generally forgotten when the first sudden shower of riches falls upon ourselves or our neighbours. “Individual efforts, as a general rule, must prove abortive. So far as my knowledge enables me to judge, they already have. _I do not know of a single instance of great success at the mines_ on the part of a single member of the passengers or ship’s company with whom I came round Cape Horn: of the former there were a hundred, and of the latter twenty. Many have returned home, who can tell the truth.”—(P. 249.) This last extract does not contain Mr Johnson’s own experience, but that of a physician settled at San Francisco, from whose communication he quotes; and the same writer adds many distressing particulars, which we pass by, of the fearful misery to which those free men, of their own free will, from the thirst of gold, have cheerfully exposed themselves. “Quid non mortalia pectora cogis Auri sacra fames?” The latest news from Australia contains a repetition of the Californian experience. A recent _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_ speaks thus of the gold-hunters— “In all parts of the colony, labour is quitting its legitimate employment for the lottery of gold-hunting; and, as a natural consequence, industrial produce is suffering. Abundant as is the metal, misery among its devotees is quite as abundant. The haggard look of the unsuccessful, returning disheartened in search of ordinary labour, is fully equalled by the squalor of the successful, who, the more they get, appear to labour the harder, amidst filth and deprivation of every kind, till their wasted frames vie with those of their less lucky neighbours. With all its results, gold-finding is both a body and soul debasing occupation; and even amongst so small a body of men, the vices and degradation of California are being enacted, in spite of all wholesome check imposed by the authorities.”