During the second period of working, when the miners flocked to the “placers,” and disputed every inch of the golden soil, the yield began to diminish in a very marked degree. A local mining journal, the “_Placer Times_,” of 26th October, 1850, giving a _resumé_ of the proceedings of the season, including the encampment from the River de la Plume to the River Consumnes, covering an extent of about 100 miles, and occupied by 60,000 gold-seekers, estimated the mean result of a day’s work at from six dollars on the River de la Plume, to four dollars on the l’Yuba and Ours, and five dollars on the American Fork. The information collected by our consuls at the beginning of 1850, gives a result of one to two ounces per day in the Valley of the Sacramento, and from one to four in the newer regions of St. Joaquim. The diminishing produce, comparing one year with the other, was not without some compensation. If the miner gained less, he did not spend as much. The extravagant rise on all sorts of provisions, clothes, and tools, had been brought down to a more reasonable limit:--they no longer paid [78]one dollar for a pound of bread; [79]eighty dollars for an outer covering; [80]fifty dollars a-day for the use of a cart with two oxen, or [81]5000 dollars for a cask of brandy. An artizan could no longer command sixteen dollars for a day’s work. Europe, the United States, and other nations, shipped to California cargoes of provisions and of manufactured goods; competition soon lowered the prices. Roads were made from the “placers” to San Francisco; bridges were thrown over the rivers; they established stores of provisions and merchandize at every canteen. Towns sprung up like mushrooms, and in 1850 San Francisco numbered 50,000 inhabitants. The production of gold in California appears to have now arrived at its third period. The miners have acquired a certain experience, their modes of working are less primitive, and they are more settled. The want of order is diminishing, and the average produce is increasing. The accounts from San Francisco in April, 1852, mentioned “placers” in the valley of the Sacramento, where a day’s working yielded from [82]fifteen to twenty dollars, and others on the frontier of Oregon, where the average was from [83]five to ten. On the frontier of Sonora the washings of the auriferous clay yielded [84]seven to eight dollars a day with the roughest description of work; all agreed that eight hours hard work should produce everywhere from six to [85]eight dollars, if the plain be rich; and as the miner could live on from [86]two to three dollars a day, he might reckon on a gain of from [87]400 to 500 dollars during the season. However, by the latest accounts, it would appear that the “placers” are beginning to be exhausted. 100,000 miners turning over continuously for three years the alluvial sands, (already successfully explored by the first comers in 1848 and 1849,) could hardly fail to extract everything of value.