THE DISCOVERER OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2147, 17 November 1885, Page 2

THE DISCOVERER OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.

©_ Could anything be more pathetic than this brief notice that comes from' Placerville, California 1— " August 12th—James W. Marshall, 'the discoverer of gold in Kelsey. He was 74 years old, and died a poverty-stricken disappointed old man.", This was, says a New York paper, the man whose discovery in 1848 made the State of California, and led to that production of sold that has since then amounted to one thousand six million dollars. Many a time since fateful 18th of January lias the unfortunate man cursed the day when he found the glittering nugget in the mill-race of Colomba, and full of golden dreams flew" with the news to his partner General Sutter. A las for the golden dream's, an d for the peace and happiness of jhdustrious obscurity. His discovery was his great misfortune—a veritable curso through lifo. Adventurers flocked in from every part of the world. They dispossessed him of his hard-earned property,- and cooley appropriated his houses. His cattle were killed by the starving miners,- his claims jtee " jumped," and, superstitiously crecflßl with some mysterious power of finding gold, the unfortunate discoverer was ever tracked and dogged by'mou whom disappointed* avarice made demons. Again and again he sought to elude them, and would steal off in search of. some unex- ; plored gulch, where in peace he hoped to find the millions, the vision of which for ever burned in his brain; but go where he could, lie would work for a few hours, when a stream of men poured in upon him, and took up the claims above and below him, and finally, disappointed, they would even drive him from the little sjjofcAhe selected. He was always unfortunip; he never made any rich strikes, but crating about, for ever seeking—Tantalus like —the fortune that for ever eluded him, until, disappointed and embittered by injustice and misfortune, the wretched man found onlyin thegraveresfcand refuge from thecursethatpursued him. ThegreatState of California, with its millionaires whose lightest folly costs more than wouldhave pensioned Marshall for life, abandoned the discoverer of California's, wealth to poverty and wretchedness. ago the Legislature, recognising tlsßlaim he had, appropriated 200dols a month for him, but this appropriation lasted only two years, and since then the great State and its millionaires have stood ignobly by and left to starve the man whose discovery was the origin of their wealth.