60 rUHTHER RUMORS OF GOLD.
gled into Monterey with a specimen which he had hammered into a clasp for his bow. It fell into the hands of my secretary, W. R. Garner, who communi- cated the secret to me. The Indian described the locality in which it was found with so much accuracy that Mr Garner, on his recent excursion to the mines, readily identified the spot. It is now known as Car- son's Dio-o-inas-. . . It was the full intention of Mr Gar- ner to trail this Indian at the first opportunity, and he was prevented from so doing only by the impera- tive duties of the office."
Both Parsons and Barstow affirm that previous to his discovery, Marshall had often expressed his belief in the existence of gold in the mountains ; and Mrs Weimer goes so far as to assert that the discovery was not accidental. It is indeed somewhat remarka- ble that the secret remained so long unrevealed. The ground had been traversed these many years by na- tives, by servants of the fur-companies and free trap- pers, by emigrants, by explorers, and by professional scientists who observed nothing, notwithstanding that the tell-tale blush was there upon the foothills plahily visible to those who could read it. And yet it is no matter for surprise. Do not even the most gifted in this latter-day dispensation, with all the brilliant light revealed by science, walk as men blind or dream- ing, while on every side, wrapped in the invisible, or latent in the earth and air and sky, are secrets as manifold, and as pregnant with meaning as any hith- erto divulged, awaiting but the eternal march of mind ?
If Dana and Sandels, or any of those who have been heedlessly credited with the discovery, had really found gold as did Marshall, and had published it to the world as did the teamster, how different might have been the destiny of the Pacific coast nations. To England, or to France, either of which countries would have paid thrice over the paltry fifteen millions and the indemnity due the United
