worked upon each other's excitement even occasionally and officially
sent some one of their members to the point of running amuck. Then he
usually broke off all responsibilities and rushed headlong to the gold
coast.

The most absurd ideas obtained currency. Stories did not lose in travel.
A work entitled _Three Weeks in the Gold Mines_, written by a mendacious
individual who signed himself H.I. Simpson, had a wide vogue. It is
doubtful if the author had ever been ten miles from New York; but he
wrote a marvelous and at the time convincing tale. According to his
account, Simpson had only three weeks for a tour of the gold-fields, and
considered ten days of the period was all he could spare the unimportant
job of picking up gold. In the ten days, however, with no other
implements than a pocket-knife, he accumulated fifty thousand dollars.
The rest of the time he really preferred to travel about viewing the
country! He condescended, however, to pick up incidental nuggets that
happened to lie under his very footstep. Said one man to his friend: "I
believe I'll go. I know most of this talk is wildly exaggerated, but I
am sensible enough to discount all that sort of thing and to disbelieve
absurd stories. I shan't go with the slightest notion of finding the
thing true, but will be satisfied if I do reasonably well. In fact, if I
don't pick up more than a hatful of gold a day I shall be perfectly
satisfied."

Men's minds were full of strange positive knowledge, not only as to the
extent of the goldmines, but also as to theory and practice of the
actual mining. Contemporary writers tell us of the hundreds and hundreds
of different strange machines invented for washing out the gold and
actually carried around the Horn or over the Isthmus of Panama to San
Francisco. They were of all types, from little pocket-sized affairs up