"Gold is the product of the country, and is immediately available, in an uncoined state, for all the purposes of exchange. It is not there, as in other countries, where the productions of the earth and of art are sent to markets—foreign or domestic—to be exchanged for the precious metals, or other articles of value. There, gold not only supplies the medium of domestic trade, but of foreign commerce.
"At first view, this state of things would seem to be unfavorable to an extensive intercourse with other parts of the world, because of the want of return freights of home production for the vast number of vessels which will arrive with supplies.
"These vessels, however, making no calculations on return cargoes, will estimate the entire profits of the voyage on their outward freights, and become, on their arrival, willing carriers for a comparatively small consideration.
"This tendency in the course of trade, it would seem, must make San Francisco a warehouse for the supply, to a certain extent, of all the ports of the Pacific, American, Asiatic, and the Islands.
LIFE AT THE "DIGGINGS,"—SUPPER TIME.
"Almost every article now exported by them finds a ready market in California, and the establishment of a mint will bring there also the silver bullion, amounting to more than ten millions per annum, from the west coast of Mexico, and, perhaps, ultimately from Chili and Peru, to be assayed and coined.
"Vessels bound round Cape Horn, with cargoes for markets on the American coast of the Pacific, can, by taking advantage of the south-east trade winds, and 'standing broad-off the Cape,' make the voyage to San Francisco in as short a time as they can to Valparaiso, or any port south of California. Vessels have sailed from our Atlantic ports to San Francisco in less than one hundred days, and they have been, in more than one instance, over one hundred and twenty days in going from Panama to San Francisco.
"This astonishing difference in time and distance was caused by the course of the winds, and the gulf-stream of the Pacific, mentioned in my remarks on the climate of California.
"The vessels from our Atlantic ports took advantage of the winds by steering from the Cape as far into the Pacific as to be enabled to take a course west of the gulf-stream in sailing northward, thus availing themselves first of the south-east, then of the north-east 'trades,' and avoiding opposing currents.