The Southern and Border States send hosts of their restless youths. From the Northwest sturdy freemen, farmers with families, toil toward new homes under freedom's newest star. The East and Middle States are represented by all their useful classes. The news of California's admission finds Hardin and Valois already men of mark in the Occidental city. Disappointed at the issue, Hardin presses on to personal eminence; he turns his energies to seeking honors in the legal forum. Maxime Valois, quietly resuming his studies for the bar, guards his funds, awaiting opportunity for investment. He burns the midnight oil in deep studies. The two men wander over the growing avenues of the Babel of the West. Every allurement of luxury, every scheme of vice, all the arts of painted siren, glib knave, and lurking sharper are here; where the game is, there the hunter follows. Rapidly arriving steamers pour in hundreds. The camp followers of the Mexican war have streamed over to San Francisco. The notable arrival of the steamer California brings crowds of men, heirs to future fame, and good women, the moral salt of the new city. It also has its New York "Bowery Boys," Philadelphia "Plug Uglies," Baltimore "Roughs," and Albany "Strikers." By day, new occupations, strange callings, and the labor of organizing a business community, engage all men. The ebb and flow of going and returning miners excite the daylight hours. From long wharves, river steamers, laden to the gunwales, steam past the city shores to Sacramento. At night, deprived of regular homes, the whole city wanders in the streets, or crowds flashy places of amusement. Cramped on the hilly peninsula, there are no social lines drawn between good and bad. Each human being is at sea in a maelstrom of wild license. The delegated representatives of the Federal Government soon arrive. Power is given largely to the Southern element. While many of the national officials are distinguished and able, they soon feel the inspiring madness of unrebuked personal enjoyment. Money in rough-made octagonal fifty-dollar slugs flows freely. Every counter has its gold-dust scales. Dust is current by the ounce, half ounce, and quarter ounce. The varied coins of the whole world pass here freely. The months roll away to see, at the end of 1850, a wider activity; there is even a greater excitement, a more pronounced madness of dissipation. Speculation, enterprise, and abandonment of old creeds, scruples, and codes, mark the hour.