Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/163

Gold in California ^45 S. Wells Williams, who went to China as a printer for the Board of Foreign Missions, who mastered the Chinese language, and who lectured in the United States to obtain money to pay for a font of Chinese type, produced The Middle Kingdom. A Sur- vey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, etc., of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants (1848), a book that remains today one of the supreme authorities on the subject. Another traveller in that region was the afterwards eccen- tric George Francis Train. Only twenty-four years of age, he met with much success in commercial ventures in China, and abook was theoMtcorae: An American Merchant in Europe, A sia, and A ustralia ( 1 857) . The last years of Train's life were mainly spent on a bench in Madison Square Park, New York, refusing conversation with all adults. The year following the conclusion of the Mexican War, which completed the sway of the United States over the entire West between the Gila River and the forty-ninth parallel, one of the large events of the world happened. A certain Marshall was employed by Sutter in the construction of a saw-mill up in the mountains, and one morning in January, 1848, when he picked from the sluiceway a particle of metal half the size of a pea, shin- ing in the sun, it made his heart thump, for he believed it to be gold. Gold it proved to be. The great news was quick in reach- ing the outermost ends of the earth, calling men of all kinds, of all nationalities, pell-mell to Eldorado to pick up a fortune. Men of Cathay, men of Europe, men of the Red Indian race, all mingled on common terms in the scramble. Centuries of creeping along the fortieth parallel had at last tied together the far ends of the earth. "Marshall's Own Account of the Gold Discovery" appeared in The Century Magazine, vol. XIX. Gold had been discovered some years before, but the psychological moment had not arrived for its exploitation. A vast literature developed on the subject, one of the earliest books being The Emigrant's Guide to the Gold Mines, and Adventures with the Gold Diggers of California in August 1848 (1848), by Henry I. Simpson, of the New York Volunteers. This book has become rare. Another early but not scarce "gold" item is Theodore T. Johnson's Sights and Scenes in the Gold Regions, and Scenes by the Way (1849). VOL. Ill — 10