DISCOVERY OF GOLD.

The first mention of gold in California was made in Hakluyt's account of the voyage of Sir Francis Drake, who spent five or six weeks, in June and July, 1579, in a bay on the coast of California. It has always been a question and will remain a question, whether this bay was that of San Francisco or one further to the north. In the narrative of Hakluyt it is written: "There is no part of the earth here to be taken up wherein there is not a reasonable quantity of gold or silver." At this day we know that this statement must have been untrue, and was doubtless written for the purpose of attracting attention to the importance of the expedition of Sir Francis Drake. California was then a comparatively unknown country. It had been visited only by early explorers, and its characteristics were merely conjectural. When Hakluyt wrote there could hardly be a "handful of soil taken up wherein there is not a reasonable quantity of gold or silver," in the light of the present the statement was absurd, for neither gold nor silver has ever been found in the vicinity of the point where Drake must have landed.

Other early explorers stated that gold had been found long before the discovery by Marshall; and there is no doubt that a well founded surmise prevailed that gold existed in California. The country had been explored at times since the sixteenth century, by Spanish, Russian, and American parties. It was visited by Commodore Wilkes, who was in the service of the United States on an extensive exploring expedition; and members of his party ascended the Sacramento River and visited Sutter at the fort, while others made explorations by land.

James D. Dana, a celebrated author of several works on mineralogy, was the mineralogist of this expedition and passed by land through the upper portion of California. In one of his works he says that gold rock and veins of quartz were observed by him in 1842 near the Umpqua River, in Southern Oregon; and again, that he found gold near the Sierra Nevada and on the Sacramento River; also, on the San Joaquin River and between those rivers. There is, in the reports of the Fremont exploring expedition, an intimation of the existence of gold.

It has been said that in October and November, 1845, a Mexican was shot at Yerba Buena (San Francisco) on account of having a bag of gold dust, and when dying pointed northward and said, "Legos! Legos!" (yonder), indicating where he had found the gold dust.

It has been claimed, and with a considerable degree of probability, that the Mormons who arrived in San Francisco on the ship "Brooklyn" found gold before the famous discovery at Coloma. The circumstances in connection with this discovery are somewhat romantic. The Mormon people had established themselves at Nauvoo, Illinois, a point where they believed themselves to be beyond the reach of persecution. However, the country there became populated by those not of their faith, and the antagonism against the Mormons resulted finally in bloodshed, and the founder of the Church, Joseph Smith, was shot by a mob and killed. The Mormons then determined to remove farther west, and into a section of country beyond the reach of the Government of the United States. They selected California as their future home. Their land expedition started across the plains, and a ship named the "Brooklyn" carried from the eastern side of