Never before had there been brought together, in a far quarter of the earth, a body of men of so varied trades and professions all massed in a twinkling to one common pursuit. Social distinctions vanished at a touch. Soft-handed lawyers and clergymen wielded pick and shovel side-by-side with born navvies, cooked their own meals and washed their own clothes. No honest labor lowered the dignity of a gentleman, since that gentleman needs must wait upon himself and provide for himself with the work of his own hands. Out of this common necessity grew, as it were over-night, a natural democracy in which all men met each other on an equal footing. No deference was paid save to conspicuous ability of such sort as was useful in the work at hand. The popular notion of a miner is that of a rude and reckless fellow who “works one day with a tin pan and gets drunk the next.” There were, indeed, many of this ilk in the gold-diggings; but in the main, the miners of ’49 were a picked and superior class of men. It was not as if a bonanza had been struck within easy reach of the riffraff of the nations. California, by the shortest route, was two thousand miles from any well populated part of America, five thousand from a European port. The journey thither was expensive, and most of the men who undertook it were such as had accumulated, by their own industry, a good “stake” at home. They were adventurers, to be sure; but what is an adventurer? One who hazards a chance, especially a chance of danger. That is the spirit which starts almost any enterprise that demands courage, determination and self-reliance. Beyond this, the argonauts were notably capable and intelligent men, as their works soon proved. An unbiased observer said of them: “Perhaps in no other community so limited could one find so many well-informed and clever men--men of all nations who have added the advantages of traveling to natural abilities and a liberal education.” Most of them were charged with spontaneous and persistent energy. Immediately, as by an electric shock, the California of dreaming friars and lazy vaqueros was tossed aside and an amazing industry whirred into action.