“Although a large amount of gold has been collected in California within the past eighteen or twenty months” (he writes at the close of 1849), “yet, considering the number of persons engaged in digging for it, the average amount to each is far less than is generally supposed. This conclusion is forced upon the mind irresistibly, when the results of the actual experience of a large number of the operators are taken into consideration. “The newspapers frequently relate instances of the return of individuals with considerable sums of gold. Many of these are much overrated, and the far greater number obtained it by other means than digging with their own hands--one portion by honest trading; but much of the hard-earned treasure in the hands of returned individuals has been borne off in triumph, and brought home as the spoils of the conqueror, in contests where honor belongs to neither winner nor loser. “Representations from and about California are to be received with many grains of allowance. The preternatural excitement which has been produced by divers causes, in some cases to promote individual benefit, has really impaired to a large extent the faculty of seeing things as they would otherwise have been viewed. And there is yet no prospect of an end to this state of things, because, as soon as the public mind begins to recover from the effects of previous causes of undue excitement, additional ones are presented in the shape of most exaggerated accounts of golden discoveries. Whether the public good will be promoted by this state of things may well be doubted. A reference to _some_ of these causes it is proper to give.