Opportunity awaited every man at every corner. Men who knew how to take
advantage of fortune's gifts were assured of immediate high returns.
Those with capital were, of course, enabled to take advantage of the
opportunities more quickly; but the ingenious mind saw its chances even
with nothing to start on.

One man, who landed broke but who possessed two or three dozen old
newspapers used as packing, sold them at a dollar and two dollars apiece
and so made his start. Another immigrant with a few packages of ordinary
tin tacks exchanged them with a man engaged in putting up a canvas house
for their exact weight in gold dust. Harlan tells of walking along the
shore of Happy Valley and finding it lined with discarded pickle jars
and bottles. Remembering the high price of pickles in San Francisco, he
gathered up several hundred of them, bought a barrel of cider vinegar
from a newly-arrived vessel, collected a lot of cucumbers, and started a
bottling works. Before night, he said, he had cleared over three hundred
dollars. With this he made a corner in tobacco pipes by which he
realized one hundred and fifty dollars in twenty-four hours.

Mail was distributed soon after the arrival of the mail-steamer. The
indigent would often sit up a day or so before the expected arrival of
the mail-steamer holding places in line at the post-office. They
expected no letters but could sell the advantageous positions for high
prices when the mail actually arrived. He was a poor-spirited man indeed
who by these and many other equally picturesque means could not raise
his gold slug in a reasonable time; and, possessed of fifty dollars, he
was an independent citizen. He could increase his capital by interest
compounded every day, provided he used his wits; or for a brief span of
glory he could live with the best of them. A story is told of a new-come
traveler offering a small boy fifty cents to carry his valise to the