In 1848, as previously stated, Captain Sutter found gold on the land of one of his farms, and the news of the discovery at once spread. The excitement extended throughout the Union and the "Argonauts of '49" came swarming to the gold fields. People ran about picking up the precious lumps as "hogs in a forest root for ground-nuts." The golden product of 1848, was $10,000,000; 1849, $40,000,000; and that of 1853, $65,000,000. Silver mining has been attempted in many localities in the State, but generally with poor results. There are valuable deposits of iron ore, coal, copper, tin, platinum, manganese, asphalt, petroleum, lead and zinc. Fruits are abundant, of great size, and are sold in all the Eastern markets. The constitution of California requires a free school to be supported in each district six months in each year, and the system includes primary and grammar schools, high schools, evening schools, normal schools, technical schools, and the State University, which is free to both sexes, and is a perpetual public trust. The schools of California are justly famous. Upper California was discovered in 1538 by a Spanish navigator. In 1578, Sir Francis Drake visited it and gave it the name of New Albion. The Spaniards planted the first colony in 1768. The territory was purchased from Mexico by the United States in 1847 for $15,000,000. A constitution was adopted in the same year, and in 1850, California, without ever having been under a territorial government, was admitted into the Union as a State. The progress of California has been of the most substantial character. Gold mining has become a staple industry, but in the agricultural capabilities of her soil lie the possibilities of her greatest wealth. Among the most valuable of her industries in the future will be those of the orchard and the vineyard. The grape growers of the State can now sell their grapes with as much certainty as the farmer his wheat. There is sent to the Atlantic coast more wine than is imported from France, the heretofore wine market of the world. In Central California a little peninsula juts out from the main land, a great harbor is on one side, a great ocean on the other. The lofty mountains, lower just here, form, as it were, a natural gateway to the great interior beyond. Here, in 1836, an American named John P. Lease settled, and here, in time, a little town called San Francisco grew up around him. Two miles to the south loomed up the antiquated building of the Catholic Mission Dolores, with its pretty old gardens. The opposite shores of the bay presented a most beautiful park-like expanse: the native lawn, brilliant with flowers and dotted by eastward bending oaks, watered by the creeks of the Alameda, San Lorenzo, San Leandro, and their tributaries, and enclosed by the spurs of the Diablo Mountains.