The first gold washing was done on the bars of the rivers, where the gravel was shallow, usually not more than two or three feet deep, and where prospecting was easy, and mining was prompt in its returns and liberal in its rewards. The gravel was rich if it yielded twenty-five cents to the pan; and in favorable situations a man could dig and wash out fifty to sixty pans in a day, while with a rocker he could do three times as much. But on the bars of the American, the Bear and the Yuba Rivers it was no uncommon event to obtain from one dollar to five dollars in a pan, and then the yield for a day's work was equal to a princely revenue. When the rainy season began in the winter of 1848 the rivers rose and covered their bars, and the miners, compelled to hunt claims elsewhere, found them in ravines which were dry through nine months of the year. These were in many cases almost as rich as the bars. It was not uncommon to hear, on good authority, that this or that man had taken out $1000 in a day, and occasionally $5000 or more would reward the day's work. In 1849 the miners generally got $16 a day or more, and when a claim would not yield that much it had no value. The successful miners demanded provisions, tools, clothing and many luxuries, for which they offered prices double, treble, and tenfold greater than those paid elsewhere. Sailing vessels went to Oregon, Mexico, South America, Australia and Polynesia with gold dust to purchase supplies, and soon filled all the seaports of the Pacific with the contagion of excitement. The reports of the discovery, which began to reach the Atlantic States in September, 1848, commanded little credence there before January; but the news of the arrival of large amounts of gold at Mazatlan, Valparaiso, Panama, and New York in the latter part of the winter put an end to all doubt, and in the spring there was such a rush of peaceful migration as the world had never seen. In 1849, 25,000--according to one authority, 50,000--immigrants went by land, and 23,000 by sea from the region east of the Rocky Mountains, and by sea perhaps 40,000 from other parts of the world, adding twelve-fold to the population and fifty-fold to the productive capacity of the territory. The newcomers were nearly all young, intelligent, and industrious men. Fortunately the diggings were rich enough and extensive enough to give good reward to all of them, and to much larger numbers who came in later years. The gold yield of 1848 was estimated at $5,000,000; that of 1849 at $23,000,000; that of 1850 at $50,000,000; that of 1853 at $65,000,000; and then came the decline which has continued until the present time. In forty-one years the gold yield of California was about $1,200,000,000.