best gold-fields, for all must eat while they live."^
Others looked around and saw with prophetic eye the
turn in the tide when different resources must spring
into prominence; not only land grants with farms and
orchards, and forests witU their varied products, but
metals and minerals of a baser kind, as quicksilver,
copper, coal.^ They foresaw the rush from abroad of
gold-seekers, the gathering of vast fleets, the influx
of merchandise, with their consequent flow of traffic
and trade, the rise of cities and the growth of settle-
ments. Those were the days of great opportunities,
when a hundred properly invested would soon have
yielded millions. We might have improved an oppor-
tunity like Sutter's better than he did. So we think;
yet opportunities jiist as great perhaps present them-
selves to us every day, and will present themselves,
but we do not see them.
^Archives Santa Cruz, MS., 107; HalCa HiaL^ 190-1; Larkin*s Doc,, MS., vi.
^ Men began to quarrel afresh over the New Almaden claim, now aban- doned by its workmen for more fascinating fields; in the spring of this year the country round Clear Lake h^d been searched for copper.
