land where gold was to be had for the gathering.  The passage round Cape Horn, which from the earliest times had been invested with a dreamy horror, and had inspired a vague fear in every breast, was now dared with an audacity which only the all absorbing greed for gold could have produced.  Old condemned hulks which, at other times, it would not have been deemed safe to remove from one part of the harbor to another, were hastily fitted up, and with the aid of a little paint and a few as deceptive assurances of the owners, were instantly filled with eager passengers and dispatched to do battle, as they might, with the storms and perils of the deep during the tedious months through which the passage extended.  The suffering and distress consequent upon the packing so many human beings in so confined a space; the miserable quality and insufficient quantity of the provisions supplied; the weariness and lassitude engendered by the intolerable length of the voyage; the ill-temper and evil passions so sure to be roused and inflamed by long and forced companionship without sympathy or affection, all tended to make these trips, for the most part, all but intolerable, and in many cases left feelings of hate and desire for revenge to be afterwards prosecuted to bloody issues.

The miseries generally endured were however sometimes enlivened and relieved by the most unexpected calls for exertion.  A passenger described his voyage from New York to San Francisco in 1849, in company with several hundred others in a steamer of small size and the most limited capacity in all respects, as an amusing instance of working one’s passage already paid for in advance.  The old craft went groaning, creaking, laboring and pounding on for seven months before she arrived at her destination.  Short of provisions, every sailing vessel that was encountered was boarded for supplies, and almost every port on the Atlantic and Pacific was entered for the same purpose.  Out of fuel, every few days, axes were distributed, and crew and passengers landed to cut down trees to keep up steam for a few days longer.  He expressed his conviction that every point, headland, island and wooded tract on the coast from the Cape to San Francisco had not only been seen by him, but had resounded with the sturdy blows of his axe during the apparently interminable voyage.  His experience, with the exception of the axe exercise, was that of thousands.

The extent to which the gold fever had impelled people on shipboard may be judged by the facts that from the first of January, 1849, five hundred and nine vessels arrived in the harbor of San Francisco; and the number of passengers in the same space of time was eighteen thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two.  Previous to this time, one or two ships in the course of a year found their way through the Golden Gate and into the beautiful harbor of San Francisco in quest of hides, horns and tallow, and gave languid employment to two or three Americans settled on the sand hills, and engaged in collecting these articles of trade and commerce.  In the closing days of 1849, there were ninety-four thousand, three hundred and forty-four tons of shipping in the harbor.  The stream of immigration moved over the Plains, likewise; and through privation, fatigue, sickness, and the strife of the elements, passed slowly and painfully on to the goal of their hopes.