Produced by Al Haines [Frontispiece: "You stole those papers"] GOLD SEEKERS OF '49 HOW IN THE YEAR 1849 CHARLEY ADAMS AND HIS FATHER SET OUT FOR FAR CALIFORNIA, THERE TO FIND A GOLD MINE; HOW THEY CROSSED THE TROPICAL ISTHMUS OF PANAMA, BY CANOE AND BY MULE TO THE PACIFIC SIDE; HOW THEY LANDED AT LAST IN WONDERFUL SAN FRANCISCO, AND WHAT BEFELL THEM THERE AND IN THE HIGH SIERRAS; RELATING HOW THEY ENCOUNTERED FORTUNE AND MISFORTUNE IN THAT NEW LAND PEOPLED FROM EVERY QUARTER OF THE GLOBE BY EDWIN L. SABIN AUTHOR OF "WITH CARSON AND FREMONT," "ON THE PLAINS WITH CUSTER," "BUFFALO BILL AND THE OVERLAND TRAIL," ETC. _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY_ CHARLES H. STEPHENS _AND MAPS_ PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY TO THE AMERICAN BOY AND THIS WONDERFUL LAND WHICH IS HIS IN WHICH TO GROW AND PROSPER Part of God's providence it was to found A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground; Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest Planted these pickets in the distant West, But He who first the Nation's fate forecast Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past, Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time Should fit the people for their work sublime; When a new Moses with his rod of steel Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal, And the old miracle in record told To the new Nation was revealed in gold. --BRET HARTE FOREWORD It has taken Americans to build the Panama Canal, and it took the Americans to build California. These are two great feats of which we Americans of the United States may well be proud: the building of that canal, in the strange tropics 2000 miles away across the water, and the up-rearing of a mighty State, under equally strange conditions, 2000 miles away across plains and mountains. On the Isthmus men of many nationalities combined like a vast family; each man, from laborer to engineer, doing his stint, without favoritism and without graft, toward the big result. So in California likewise a people collected from practically all the world became Americans together under the Flag, and working shoulder to shoulder--rich and poor, old and young, educated and uneducated, no matter what their manner of life previously--they joined forces to make California worthy of being a State in the Union. So hurrah for the Panama Canal, built by American methods which encourage every man to do his share; and hurrah for California, raised to Statehood upon the foundation of American equality!