of immigration moved over the Plains, likewise; and through privation,
fatigue, sickness, and the strife of the elements, passed slowly and
painfully on to the goal of their hopes.

Thus pouring into California in every direction and by every route, this
strange and heterogeneous mass of men, the representatives of every
occupation, honest and dishonest, creditable and disgraceful; of every
people under the sun, scattered through the gulches and ravines in the
mountains, or grouped themselves at certain points in cities, towns and
villages of canons or adobe. Perhaps never in the world's history did
cities spring into existence so instantaneously, and certainly never was
their population so strangely diverse in language, habits and customs.
Of course gamblers of every kind and color; criminals of every shade and
degree of atrocity; knaves of every grade of skill in the arts of fraud
and deceit abounded in every society and place. In these early times
gold was abundant, and any kind of honest labor was most richly and
extravagantly rewarded. The honest, industrious and able men of every
community, therefore, applied themselves strictly to business and would
not be diverted from it by any considerations of duty or of patriotism.
Studiously abstaining from politics; positively refusing to accept
office; shirking constantly and systematically all jury and other public
duty, which, onerous in every community, was doubly so, as they thought,
in that new country, they seemed never to reflect that there was a
portion, and that the worst, of the population, who would take advantage
of their remissness, and direct every institution of society to the
promotion of their own nefarious purposes.

Absorbed in their own pursuits, confident that a short time would enable
them to realize their great object of making a fortune and then leaving
the country, the better portion of the community abandoned the control