tory, 40 newspapers in Nebraska; and among these there is a NewsLetter in San Francisco, and, in recollection of the pioneer of Boston, it seems quite appropriate that its name should be perpetuated on the other side of the continent. Alaska is not included in the above list, but a paper is published there called the Times.

When Vice-president Colfax visited California a few years ago, his old associates of the case and stick, who had migrated to the Pacific to assist in printing these papers, presented him with a rule made of the mere dust of that state-the golden rule-suitably inscribed, which he always proudly carries, and proudly exhibits as one of the neatest gifts he ever received.

As already mentioned on page 478, the first specimen of gold-dust sent from California to the Atlantic was a pinch of the rare article, in the shape of small scales, inclosed in a letter from Thomas Larkin, long the United States Naval Agent at Monterey and Mazatlan, to James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald. Wonderful discoveries of precious metals in North Carolina, Georgia, and other parts of the United States had been made known at various times to the Herald, and announcements of these discoveries were largely mixed up with cupidity. It was first thought these discoveries in California were of a similar character; but on the publication in that paper of the analysis of the tiny specimen, a great popular excitement began, and as news arrived overland from California of additional developments and discoveries, it increased till there was a perfect stampede to the Pacific. There were no steamers then; the Isthmus of Panama was crossed with difficulty, and the passage up the coast an uncertain adventure. Small parties crossed overland through Mexico. The Pacific Mail Steam-ship Company had been organized, but the steamers were not then on the line. It was difficult to hold in the ardent lovers of gold who wished to go at once to the new Dorado. Fernando Wood had, curiously enough, dispatched the bark John W. Cater around the Cape with an assorted cargo; but the first vessel to leave New York with gold-hunters was the John Benson, which sailed for Chagres with sixty passengers, including Jem Grant, the well-known Herald barber, the pioneers of that immense throng of gold-seekers that afterwards left the Atlantic and Middle States to people the shores of the Pacific, and where Jem Grant became an alderman and a millionaire. The three regiments composing Colonel Stevenson's expedition, of course, preceded all these, but when they took their departure from New York no one dreamed of the wealth so soon to be discovered and developed in California.

Obtaining the latest news from the mines was the feature of NewYork journalism till the steamers commenced their regular trips.

News from Home!

593

All other matters, in Europe or elsewhere, were subordinate in interest to the freshest advices from California. News came at uncertain times, sometimes by the way of Panama, but oftener by individuals, who came overland by the way of Mazatlan and the City of Mexico. These individuals were interviewed and facts" pumped" out of them. There were no newspapers to take news from. For some time the intelligence was verbal. The Herald was remarkably successful in getting the much-sought-for news in this way. Watchfulness and industry thus had their reward.

After the discovery of gold and the rush of gold-hunters from the Atlantic States, the miners were largely supplied with news from home by California editions of the New York Tribune, the New York Herald, the Boston Journal, the New Orleans Delta, and a few others. These sheets were made up expressly for that region, and every steamer for the Isthmus from New York and New Orleans would carry forty, fifty, and sixty thousand copies of these journals. The Boston Journal and New York Herald would each send ten thousand copies by each steamer.

Scenes on the arrival of these papers at San Francisco, as they have been described, were full of fun and sentiment. One month and six weeks without tidings from home wound up the feelings of the miners to the highest point of tension, and when the steamers arrived they found vent in all sorts of ways. Some idea of this "pent-up Utica" is developed in the enthusiasm of a party of miners, who had not seen a female form for months, who danced with the wildest glee for hours around a cast-off crinoline which had mysteriously come into their possession, and which they had suspended on a pole, so that they could the more fully enjoy the sight. Once or twice, by the way of Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan, a single copy of the New York Herald would reach San Francisco in advance of the steamers. Fabulous sums have been paid for these journalistic waifs; and they would be so thoroughly read as to be completely deprived of all signs of printing-ink. They would be worn to a dirty white paper. On occasions, as has already been stated, the owners of the papers would mount tables, chairs, rocks, and stumps, and read the contents to the assembled crowds of deeply-excited and attentive listeners.

The Grass Valley National, in 1865, thus described a scene which its editor witnessed in 1850, which fully illustrates what we have said on the subject:

Arriving in Sacramento from across the Plains, we could not help but wonder (although it was a natural consequence of the immense immigration) at the myriads of people who thronged the streets. Ahead of us on J Street we saw a crowd dividing, as if to make way for something authoritative to pass, and soon we beheld a burly personage of about forty years, with a grizzly head, and a face PP'

full of energy, striding onward, looking neither to the right nor the left, and bearing on his arm an enormous basket containing papers. As he went, he exclaimed at the top of his voice, "Here's the California True Delta, the greatest paper ever published in the United States of America, or in any part of the civilized world. Any body that has money can throw a dollar into that basket and take a copy, and any poor man may take a copy for nothing." Paper after paper disappeared, and dollar after dollar jingled in the basket. All this time the burly vender disdained to look around to see whether payment was correctly made or not, or how things were going. As unconcerned as if money were a mere matter of moonshine, and it was totally indifferent to him whether he made $1000, or $50, or $10, he moved serenely on, making a broad lane as he went, and stepping to the music of the silver coins which played in his basket. Attracted by the orig. inality of this exceedingly eccentric proceeding, we followed in the track of this marvelous disseminator of intelligence until he got rid of his last paper, and saw him go back in the direction from whence he came, with nothing in his basket but a huge pile of silver, which he paid no attention to whatever, although every man that he passed had an opportunity to take out a handful if he chose. Still curious to see more of this unique way of doing business, we followed on until our hero arrived at a huge building, into a large room of which he entered, as if he were at home, and, opening a drawer, tumbled the contents of his basket into it as though he had been emptying out of it potatoes or onions. The place was a grand dépôt for Atlantic newspapers, and the character described one of the notabilities of that primal period of California history.

News agents, such as Gregory, who had been a gardener on Staten Island, and Sullivan, who had been an active news-boy in New York, were the avant coureurs in this pursuit. Afterwards Adams's Express Company, and then Wells & Fargo, energetically and skillfully managed the carrying business of that remote section; but, on the establishment of enterprising newspapers in California, and the extension of the telegraph lines to the Golden Gate, this enormous circulation of the Eastern journals fell off to almost nothing, and the newspaper business there assumed the same natural position as in other parts of the country. Telegrams from New York, reaching San Francisco, and published almost simultaneously, the difference in time considered, with their delivery to the New York offices, shut out newspapers which were twenty-five, or even seven days en route. But it is not improbable in the future, in the marvelous progress of events, and the wonderful strides of science, to have parcels of newspapers daily distributed all over the Union by pneumatic tubes, and delivered, too, on the morning of publication! Then the leading papers of the metropolis may again largely circulate in distant cities, where they have been suppressed by telegraphic news dispatches. San Francisco, New Orleans, Oregon, Washington City, Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, Salt Lake City, will then be, in a newspaper point of view, extended streets, and wards, and districts of the metropolis, as the New-England villages and cities are now to the city of Boston by their network of railways.

The Telegraphic Era.

595

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE TELEGRAPHIC ERA.

VARIOUS MODES OF TRANSMITTING INTELLIGENCE FOR NEWSPAPERS.-CARRIER PIGEONS AND BALLOONS.-INTRODUCTION OF THE TELEGRAPH.-ITS STRUGGLES. OPINION OF A WALL-STREET MILLIONAIRE. NOMINATION OF SILAS WRIGHT.-INFLUENCE OF THE TELEGRAPH ON THE PRESS.-CuRIOUS PREDICTION OF LAMARTINE. THE BATTLES IN MEXICO.-MARVELOUS PROGRESS.-THE BATTLES IN EUROPE.-AFFAIRS of the WORLD DAILY ELECTROTYPED FOR THE JOURNALIST.-THE LIGHTNING EXPRESS LINES. MORSE has been a benefactor of the Press. This, it is true, is not the opinion of every publisher, narrowly, perhaps meanly, looking after the financial affairs of his establishment, nor of every journalist desirous of an influence beyond the limits of the city where his paper is published, especially when he reads an announcement that "the Elmira (N. Y.) Advertiser publishes telegraph news fif teen hours in advance of the receipt of the New York dailies." But newspaper statistics prove our position. Morse has undoubtedly struck, as with lightning, many newspapers off the lists of journalism, yet he has added many others, and increased newspaper enterprise and newspaper readers by the thousands. He has placed an electric force in every printing-office in the land.

When the News-Letter was the only paper printed in America, it had but three hundred weekly circulation. When the Gazette and Mercury in Boston, the Mercury in Philadelphia, and the Gazette in New York were added to the number, all within the period of twenty years of the first issue of the News-Letter, and with only a small increase in population, the weekly circulation of these five papers reached an aggregate of two or three thousand copies. The colonists had acquired more taste for newspapers by their periodical appearance, and this taste had increased with the increase of papers, and the facilities for acquiring news and spreading it before the people. It is probable that the circulation of the New York Herald or the New York Sun is as large to-day as the united circulation of all the New York papers, daily and weekly, issued in 1844, when the telegraph was first practically introduced in this country. Other cities present the same fact. This circulation is, perhaps, not so comprehensive in a national point of view; but the facilities for obtaining news from every quarter of the globe are now so easy and ex

tensive, that nearly every one acquainted with the alphabet reads the papers, and every one in New York, or London, or Paris, or Berlin feels as much interest in the affairs of the rest of the world as they previously did in events nearer home. Village gossips are magnified into world gossips.

"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,

The whole boundless universe is ours.'

Intellectual vitality and physical energy are constantly at work devising means to annihilate space. Fast horses in the time of Reeside, the great mail contractor in the days of mail-coaches; carrier pigeons, with their tissue-paper dispatches prepared in cipher; swift locomotives and steam-boats on our public highways, and telegraphic lines in this electric age, have been the progressive steps in developing the physical forces of the world. While canals, railroads, steam-ships, telegraphs, have occupied the minds of active and acquisitive business men, these same enterprises have entered extensively into the dreams and calculations of journalists, as necessary parts of the machinery of well-organized newspaper establishments. Means of swift communication have always been a study in the offices of leading journals. Horses, pilot-boats, pigeons, steam-boats, locomotives, and semaphore telegraphs had become common carriers of news previous to 1844.

Of all these means of communication between distant points anterior to the magnetic telegraph, none surpassed the carrier pigeon for speed. Next to light and electricity, these beautiful birds are the most rapid in their flights. They were used in 1249 in the crusade of Louis IX. In the midst of the battle of Mansourah, a pigeon was dispatched by the Saracens, in great alarm, to Cairo. This pigeon carried this message under its wing:

At the moment of starting this bird the enemy attacked Mansourah; a terrible battle is being fought between the Christians and Mussulmans.

This threw that city into a state of great commotion. Another pigeon was sent off late in the afternoon announcing the total defeat of the French. Since then, carrier pigeons have been more or less used by journalists, speculators, and governments. They are swift flyers, and can go long distances without intermission. Their speed ranges from forty to seventy-five miles an hour. They have been known to fly, in a few instances, at the rate of one hundred miles an hour. Nothing practical but the telegraph can exceed this velocity. Cannon balls move at the rate of 1200 miles per hour; eagles fly 145 miles; swallows, 185 miles; and the ice-yachts Quick Step, Flying Cloud, and Icicle run over the frozen surface of the Hudson at the rate of a mile a minute; but neither cannon balls, nor eagles, nor swallows, nor ice-yachts can be employed as news mes