Mariposa, September 1, 1850

The most extravagant ideas are circulating throughout the entire world about this country. There has just arrived at Mariposa a company of men of the world who left Le Havre with an engineer at their head. It is not their fault if California no longer resembles the accounts [of easy riches], true or false, which they heard...the fact remains that they believed these stories and they have arrived equipped with rakes with which they expected to pull out the nuggets from the rivers, leaving the gold dust and the smaller grains for those who would come after them. These gentlemen admitted to us that they had thought up this method so as not to have to get into the water believing that the pieces of gold could be fished out in this way, and that this was, moreover, the common belief.

The appearance of those rakes is a curious fact and well illustrates the state of mind everywhere except in California. It is impossible for a man unaccustomed to rough physical labor to endure for long. One has to eat, and before eating one must dig, and dig a long time, ceaselessly, perspiring, suffering, digging under the water, the earth, to its very bowels, before reaching gold, and too often there is none. That is precisely what is happening to them: they did not find the color of gold in their first hole, [therefore] they are discouraged and would like to return to Paris; but you cannot return with empty pockets. On leaving, they told us they had taken an oath not to return to France without 400,000 francs.

They say that a misfortune never comes alone. The second misfortune of these gentlemen was bringing their wives. Seated on stools embroidered in silk, they were expected to pick up the gold with the aid of some pretty little silver tongs which they brought with the stools. If I relate these things it is not to make fun of their misfortune, but to spare others a similar fate. It is the press and the renown which have given birth to and supported so many illusions; it is the press which, better informed today of the actual state of things, must describe these conditions with a rigorous impartiality. All my letters sent from the placers, sir, have had that purpose. I quite expect that they will be contradicted by people interested in doing so, but I can only tell what has been happening here under my eyes every day for seven months.

Excerpt from a letter to the editor of Journal des Debats, a French newspaper.