According to Mr. Butler King, American emigration hardly began to flow towards California until September, 1849; up to that period, foreigners, principally from Mexico and Oregon, had reaped all the profit of the washings. The _San Francisco Herald_ estimated, that at the end of 1850, the gold produce of California, for the twenty-one months between 1 April, 1849, and 31 December, 1850, at the sum of 68,587,591 dollars (nearly [90]367,000,000 francs). According to the documents published in France by the Minister of Commerce, which appear to have been derived from local statistics, the produce was rather less than the above. From 1 April, 1849, to 31 March, 1851, in two years, it was raised to [91]329,000,000 francs. Monsieur Emilie Chevalier, who has just returned from a government mission to Panama, in a report to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, considers the result as having been much larger. The gold brought as freight by steamers in 1850, he estimates at [92]50,306,525 dollars. The author of the report adds, on the testimony of a person whom he considers as competent to give a sound opinion, that the sums carried by passengers are not less than three fourths of the amounts brought as merchandize; and thus he arrives at the extraordinary figures of 88,000,000 dollars (more than [93]470,000,000 francs) for a single year. At St. Francisco, where they are able to form probably a more correct estimate on a subject so difficult to trace accurately, they do not value the amount of gold carried by passengers at above one-fourth the amount taken in freight. Even on this supposition there will be a sum of 25,000,000 dollars, or above [94]133,000,000 francs to be deducted; but it appears to me very doubtful, if the produce of 1850 exceeded this figure of [95]329,000,000 francs, according to the French documents already referred to. We have more valuable documents of another kind to rely upon, in the quantities of gold coined at the United States’ Mint; the following are the official figures:-- SENT TO THE MINT. COINED. 1849 12,243,175 dollars £2,448,635 9,007,761 dollars £1,801,552 1850 38,365,160 ” 7,673,032 31,981,737 ” 6,396,347 1851 56,867,220 ” 11,373,444 62,812,478 ” 12,562,496 ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Total, 107,475,555 ” £21,495,111 103,801,976 ” £20,760,395 ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------