CALIFORNIAN ADVENTURE.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 782, 12 October 1853, Page 3

CALIFORNIAN ADVENTURE.

[From the *' Alta California,” May 31.]

The desire of becoming suddenly rich has probably been the cause of more evil to California than to any other country in the world. People have not, as a general thing, come here to stay, but to get a certain amount of gold and then leave. They have not been willing to wait long enough to take things to advantage, but so soon as they set foot on our shores they have dashed into everything that offered itself, little regarding consequences. Hence we see so many, who have been here for a long time, and in many instances men of good sense, have succeeded but poorly from the fact that in the race for wealth they were in too much haste to make speed. Every one who has been here for a year or two can see how he might have made a fortune had he used more deliberation and waited for the auspicious moment. But people would not do that, and they have either in many instances spent their time in building air-castles and chasing ignis fatui, till they find, after a long and laborious time, they have little to show for their toil. In the meanwhile, those who have been more deliberate, and, Mahomet-like, preferred to have the mountain come to them, rather than go themselves to the mountain, have, as a general thing, been far more successful. We may notice that when a man has settled down in some advantageous spot and begun in a small way, by raising vegetables, poultry and pigs, he has almost invariably become rich in the world. So it has been with the ranchero. If he has used judgment and discrimination in his location, he has accumulated property in spite of himself. Since this is the case, it seem unaccountable that people will not learn to take things to greater advantage in California, and settle down more quiet and contented. There need not be this over-anxiety about wealth, and there ought not to be, for it defeats itself. The tortoise is more like to win the race here than the hare, and we look to a recognition, of this idea as being calculated to be of great service to the State and give us a more contented and permanent population.

But the folly of this over-eagernoss for wealth is better illustrated in the mines than in any other part of the country. There it is the practice for them to get as much as possible to-day—to work when that evening’s tale shall show the most dust, not heeding whether or no the work must all be done over .again. Men do not work in the way they would elsewhere, and as they would here if they had a better title to the grounds, and everybody was not actuated by the desire to get what he can in a short time and leave. What stupid folly has been manifested in the kind of methods used for washing the gold. For a long time the cradle and pan were the only instruments employed. People could see then, as wall as now-, that this w r as a laborious method of washing dirt, but they had no time to stop for experiments : no time for improvements ; and so they worked on with such means as were most convenient. If they stopped a day to make an improved machine, it was lost time; for that night would show no addition to the bag. Hence the first digging consisted in coyoting and tracing out rich leads and the narrow beds of gulches, leaving the great burden of the dirt to be washed afterwards. How often do the same miners wash the same dirt several times! They begin, and finding how much they can make by washing out the best part of a bar or gulch, they leave those parts that pay least until they work out the richest part, thinking to find another as rich place elsewhere. But they are often disappointed, and go to work on the bar again, and wash over the old tailings to get them out of the way, and then they go deeper in the bars and banks. In fact, we do not believe the history of the world hardly shows a parallel to the useless lal or that has been performed in the California mines.