The sad effects of an insane haste to grow rich by chasing gilded shadows, instead of taking the secure path of industry, are exemplified in the fact, that hundreds of our countrymen who have abandoned places of profit for the dazzling placers of speculation, and business, which afforded a decent competency, for wild and uncertain adventure, are now crowding the shore of the Pacific at Panama, with exhausted means and dissipated hopes. The all-absorbing desire for speedy fortune precluded even the common and most ordinary caution as to probabilities. At the first sound of the horn, the hunter was off, regardless of obstacles, defiant of fate, and with a recklessness unpardonable, the comforts of home were sacrificed, and all the dangers of a doubtful, hardy, and perilous enterprise were imprudently braved. The sad uncertainty of fortune—the more than doubts of her existence for them—has been cruelly thrust into their faces, and impressed upon their hearts. The return of that tremendous tide, which seemed to sweep wise men and madmen together resistlessly upon its bosom, comes freighted with the first fragments of hopes wrecked, and wealth, and perhaps health dissipated and lost. Time and opportunity here—more valuable than gold—are gone, and the adventurer comes back with unstrung nerves and faded visions of greatness, to battle again in the busy and uncompromising marts of trade, for bread. The illusion has vanished!—the cheat is transparent! “The sober second-thought” has come with its impressive lesson. The blanks turn out in this, as in all lotteries, the most numerous and certain—the prizes equally few and unreliable. When the voice of that vaster multitude now filling the streams and plains of California shall have been heard, we shall have a sonorous echo of the despairing wail of the impoverished and deluded at Panama. Mark it! * * * * *