had, for several decades, penetrated every glen of the Rocky Mountains, and traced every affluent of the great river in quest of their respective prey; but the wild, desolate region watered by the Colorado, the Humboldt, or the streams that are lost in the Great Salt Lake, or some smaller absorbent of the scanty waters of the Great Basin, had never proved attractive to our borderers, and for excellent reasons. It is, as a whole, so arid, so sterile (though its valleys do not lack fertility wherever their latent capacities can be developed by irrigation), and its game is so scanty and worthless, that old Bridger (pioneer of settlers at the military post in northern Utah, now known as Fort Bridger) was probably the only American who had made his home in the Great Basin when Fremont's exploring party first pitched their tents by the border of Great Salt Lake, in September, 1843. The discovery of gold in California, in the summer of 1847, closely following the military occupation and conquest of that country by the United States, wrought a great and sudden revolution. Of the few Americans in that region prior to 1846, probably nine tenths had rounded Cape Horn to reach it, while the residue had made their way across Mexico or the Isthmus of Darien. It was 'a far coy' at best, and very tedious as well as difficult of attainment. We have in mind an American of decided energy, who, starting from Illinois in May or June, 1840, with a party of adventurers, mainly mounted, reached the mouth of the Columbia, overland, in December, and California, by water, in the course of the winter; and who, starting again for California, via Panama, in the summer of 1847, was nine months in reaching his destination. But the tidings that the shining dross was being and to be picked up by the handful on the tributaries of the Sacramento wrought like magic. Early in 1849, steam-ships were dispatched from New York for Chagres, at the mouth of the river of like name on the Isthmus of Darien, whence crowds of eager gold-seekers made their way across, as they best might, to Panama, being taken in small, worthless boats up the river, so far as its navigation was practicable,--say sixty miles,--and thence, mounted on donkeys or mules, for the residue of the distance, which was perhaps half as far. Short as this portage was, it soon came to be regarded with a terror by no means unjustified. The ascent of the rapid, shallow, tortuous stream was at once difficult and dangerous; the boats were of the rudest construction; the boatmen little better than savages; rains fell incessantly for a good part of each year; the warm, moist, relaxing climate bred fevers in the blood of a considerable percentage of those so suddenly and so utterly exposed to its malarious influences; while the road from Cruces, at the head of navigation, being but a rugged bridle-path at best, was soon worn by incessant travel into the most detestable compound of rock and mire that ever aggravated the miseries