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a klndhearled man but not avaricious, and he still thouo-ht his visitor a little insane. Leadincr him with- in, he set food before him, and then giving him for a piece of the quartz a napoleon, and telling him to call again whenever he pleased, dismissed him. The man never reappeared, but the rock, when anal- yzed, was found to be rich in gold. Fifteen years elapsed, and the incident was well-nigh forgotten, when one day a small, heavy parcel, enclosed in a torn and greasy handkerchief, was handed with a letter to the antiquarian, by the keeper of a lodging house in a neighboring street, who said that they were left there by a man who had died, and that they had been a long time mislaid. What was the antiquary's as- tonishment, on opening the letter, to find it from the poor invalid, and dated but a few days after his visit, while the heavy package was the block of quartz.
" I am dying," he wrote. " You alone listened to me. You alone stretched out a helping hand. I be- queath you my secret. The country whence I brought this gold is called California ! "
It is stated that a Scotchman, Young Anderson by name, attempted, in 1837, to enlist English capital in mining ventures, through representations made to him by a Guatemalan priest who had lived in California, that gold existed in the neighborhood of San Francisco. The Scotchman was unsuccessful.
In 1851, some three years after Marshall's discovery, it was related in the Worcester Transcript that one W. F. Thompson, an experienced trapper, remembered having found gold while on the north Yuba, some twelve years before, a pound of which he carried with him to Fort Leavenworth. There he left it, no one seemino; to know or to care what it was. When tidino-s of the gold excitement were noised abroad, he was engaged in trapping in the far north, and recognizing his mistake, at once hurried back to the spot, only to find every inch of the ground uprooted.
There was quite a mania for mining in Alta Cali-
