The gold is found in small particles: the largest I have seen, but such are rare, weighs seventy-one ounces troy. The appearance invariably is as though it had been spurted up when melted through crevices and fissures in drops, which have often the form of the leaves and gravel on which they have fallen. I speak of this as an appearance, not as a theory or hypothesis. The extent ascertained within which gold is thus found is at least four hundred miles long by forty wide; in almost every part of which, where the surface is depressed by the beds of rivers, gold has been obtained without digging more than ten feet below the surface, and very seldom that much. It is impossible to furnish any grounds for estimating the number of people engaged in mining, or the amount they have produced. Persons engaged in trading with the miners say they amount to about ten thousand, but I cannot say with what reason. They can better judge of the amount produced, which the lowest estimate places at $4,000,000. More than three thousand persons have been added to the miners up to this time,--chiefly from Mexico and South America. When the mines were first discovered, all the ports of South America on the Pacific, and of the Sandwich islands, sent the merchandise collected and stored there to be sold here. They realized enormous profits, before any competition from our eastern States could meet them; and these goods were generally owned by European houses, who thus became possessed of the first fruits of the mines, which were shipped to Europe on their account; and it is thus that so little gold has reached the United States. When the merchandise now on its way from our Atlantic States arrives, and is sold, the current will set that way; but the profits will be much diminished by competition, and still more by the enormous expenses here for labor, storage, &c. These are almost incredible; the ordinary wages for the poorest laborer is $6 per day; many receive $10. The extent and richness of the gold region have not been exaggerated; and the exorbitant prices paid for labor, rent, and subsistence, have hardly been fully set forth. But all the estimates of the amount actually produced are but mere suppositions, which may surpass or may fall short of the truth.