ev- er stimulated by advancing exploration and piratical
adventure. Every step northward in Mexico con-
firmed the belief in still richer lands beyond, and gave
food for flaming tales like those told by Friar Mdrcos
de Niza.
Opinions were freely expressed upon the subject^ some of them taking the form of direct assertions. These merit no attention. Had ever gold been found in Marin county, we might accredit the statement of Francis Drake, or his chaplain, Fletcher, that they saw it there in 1579. As it is, we know they did not see it. Many early writers mention gold in California, referring to Lower California, yet leading some to confound the two Californias, and to suppose that the existence of the metal in the Sierra foothills w^as then known. Instance Miguel Venegas, Shelvocke, and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries, and early encyclopaedia makers. It has always been a favorite trick of navigators to speak of things they either greatly feared or greatly desired as exist- ing. Vizcaino, Knight, and fifty others were certain that the mountains of California contained gold. The developments along the Colorado River led to the same conviction; indeed, it was widely assumed that the Jesuits knew of rich mines within and beyond their precincts. Count Scala claims for the Russians of Bodega knowledge of gold on Yuba River as early as 1815, but he fails to support the assertion. Dana and other professional men of his class are to be cen- sured for what they did not see, rather than praised for the wonderful significance of certain remarks. The mine at San Fernando, near Los Angeles, where work was begun in 1842, is about the only satisfactory instance on record of a knowledge of the existence of gold in Alta California prior to the discovery of Mar- shall. And this was indeed a clew which could not have failed to be taken up in due time by some one among the host of observant fortune-hunters now pouring" in, and forced by circumstances into the for-
