| Map showing the extent of the United States in 1848, after Mexico let us have California and New Mexico. |
| WASHING DIRT TO GET OUT THE GOLD-DUST. |
In May, 1848, a man came to San Francisco holding up a bottle full of gold-dust in one hand and swinging his hat with the other. As he walked through the streets he shouted with all his might, "Gold! gold! gold! from the American River."
Then the rush for Coloma began. Every man had a spade and a pick-axe. In a little while the beautiful valley was dug so full of holes that it looked like an empty honeycomb. The next year a hundred thousand people poured into California from all parts of the United States; so the discovery of gold filled up that part of the country with emigrants years before they would have gone if no gold had been found there.
Captain Sutter lost all his property. He would have died poor if the people of California had not given him money to live on.
Marshall was still more to be pitied. He got nothing by his discovery. Years after he had found the shining dust, some one wrote to him and asked him for his photograph. He refused to send it. He said, "My likeness ... is, in fact, all I have that I can call my own; and I feel like any other poor wretch:[7] I want something for self."
| MIRROR LAKE, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. |
5 Western boundary line: the people of Texas held that their state extended west as far as the Rio Grande River, but Mexico insisted that the boundary line was at the Nueces River, which is much further east.