[Illustration: Facsimile of Henry W. Bigler's Journal, from a photograph] =The Tide of Western Civilization Started.=--The discovery of gold is the historical event that turned the eyes of the civilized world to California. Within a year it started that mighty wave of western emigration from all parts of the United States, many parts of Europe, and even from Asia. It was to be a subject of the President's message to Congress before the close of the year; within two years it would make California one of the sovereign states of the American Union, with a population of nearly one hundred thousand; in seven years it would result in adding nearly five hundred million dollars to the world's store of gold; and then as the gold from soil and sand was exhausted, and costly operations upon gold-bearing quartz ledges, and delving into the earth were required to secure the precious metal, many men who had come to the mines turned their attention to agriculture and to horticulture and found in the grain fields, vineyards and orchards of the Pacific slope, even a greater source of wealth than in the gold mines. For a time an effort was made to keep the discovery of gold quiet, but gradually it became known, and the secret of the Sierras was revealed to the world, with the result already noted. San Francisco, however, was indifferent for some time, the final conversion of that town to the discovery of gold did not take place until Samuel Brannan, the leader of the Brooklyn Colony of Mormons to California, came down from Sutter's Fort--where he had a store--to San Francisco, in company with a number of others who had with them specimens of collected gold in both dust and nuggets. Brannan, holding in one hand a bottle of yellow dust, and with the other swinging his hat, rushed down the street shouting, "Gold! Gold! Gold! from the American River." This in May; and soon afterwards San Francisco was deserted for the gold-fields.