There is one great invention which will ever illumine the time between the Dark Ages and the present epoch. An invention which is as remarkable for its intensity of light as the Middle Ages for their impenetrable darkness and consequent superstition. This is the invention of printing by John Gutenberg of Metz in Germany in fourteen hundred and forty. By one sublime thought which struck the mind of a single man or more properly, by the divine inspiration of a single human being, benefits as great and incalculable were bestowed upon mankind as universal space itself is infinite and beyond human calculation. Before that time all learning was limited to one class—the Clergy of all countries, who had it in their power to devote time which was at their own disposal to literary pursuits, in which they had great assistance in the manuscripts of former ages, therefore enjoyed already although to a limited extent the blessings which the art of printing afterwards bestowed more universally upon the mass of mankind. We all know now that as much as man is superior and master of all other animals, so is the intelligent and well informed, master of the ignorant and superstitious. The priests therefore of former ages—since they possessed knowledge above the rest of mankind were to a great extent the masters and in consequence ruled with a stronger rod than ever any monarch ruled his subject since printing and consequent knowledge became more diffused among the masses of mankind. When books, in consequence of their cheapness became plentier and the masses became possessed of the same—light began to penetrate the utter darkness which formerly reigned supreme in the mind of man and in a comparatively short period of time since the death of this inventor, the human family has made a more rapid and greater progress in science and useful knowledge than was made in all time before that great event. March twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight. Left this day Camp Secco—where I had been stopping for three years doing business, such as groceries and miners' implements. My success has been pretty good—might however have been better. Still I don't complain. Although I have not made as much as many a one has done in the same length of time, still I am satisfied.