information scattered by the Swiss and his dependents
had been further disseminated in different directions
by others. Nevertheless, while a few like Hum-
phrey, the Greorgia miner, responded at once to the
iDlluence, as a rule little was thought of it at first,
particularly by those at a distance. The nature and
extent of the deposits being unknown, the significance
or importance of the discovery could not be appre-
ciated. It was not uncommon at any time to hear of
gold or other metals being found here, there, or any-
where, in America, Europe, or Asia, and nothing
come of it. To emigrants, among other attractions,
.gold had been mentioned as one of the possible or prob-
able resources of California; but to plodding agricul-
turists or mechanics the idea of searching the wilder-
ness for gold would have been deemed visionary, or
the fact of little moment that some one somewhere
had found gold.^ When so intelligent a man as Seni-
ple at Benicia was told of it he said, "I would give
more for a good coal mine than for all the gold mines
in the universe." At Sonoma, Vallejo passed the
matter by with a piece of pleasantry.
The first small flakes of gold that Captain Folsoni examined at San Francisco he pronounced mica; he did not believe a man who came down some time after with twenty ounces when he claimed to have gathered it in eight days. Some time in April Folsom wrote to Mason at Monterey, making casual mention of the existing rumor of gold on the Sacramento, In May Bradley, a friend of Folsom 's, went to Monterey, and was asked by Mason if he knew anything of this gold discovery on the American River. **I have heard of
1 'The people here did not believe it,' says Findla, ' they thonght it was a hoax. They had fottod in Tarious places about 8. F., notably on Pacific Street, •pecimens of different minerals, gold and silver among them, but in very small qnantitiea; and so they were not inclined to believe in the discovery at Sut- ter's mill. ' Gillespie testifies to the same. He did not at all credit the story. Three samples in qnillsand vials were displayed before the infection took in the town. OUleMpie'8 Vig, Com,, MS., 4; Fmdla^s Stat,, MS., 4-6; WilUy'9 Thirty YeoTM, l»-aO.
