ARGONAUTS OF '49, a literary name (the colloquial one being "Forty-niners°) ap plied to the California pioneers. The first dis covery of gold was in January 1848, but it was not generally realized till April; from thence till the following winter California itself (re cently obtained by the United States from Mexico) was partially depopulated outside the mining camps, even soldiers and sailors de serting in great numbers and rushing to the mines, while executive authority was paralyzed. These local changes of place, however, did not constitute a "voyage for the Golden Fleece° from far distant regions, which is what the term implies. The excitement, spread by offi cial reports, and intensified by journalistic in ventions, had fully roused the east by winter; from January onward the great sea routes were thronged. By the end of the year the new province (it never was organized as a Terri tory, entering the Union as a State from a condition of legal nullity or permitted tres pass) contained toward 100000 people. The imperfect State census of 1852 showed 264,435, nearly all Argonauts proper.
Much the greater portion came by sea; the favored route being by the Isthmus of Panama. The passengers landed at Chagres, took boat up that river to Cruces, then crossed over by horse or mule conveyance to Panama, where they took such coasting steamers or sailing craft as came along. The crowds which flocked thither by all sorts of Atlantic vessels far out ran the Pacific fleet's capacity, and large num bers had to wait many weary weeks for a passage. At one time 3,000 were collected at Panama, so wild with impatience that several small companies unsuccessfully attempted to make the voyage to San Francisco in the natives' log canoes. An assemblage of several hundred to a thousand was common; and at one time they enlivened the tedium by issuing a newspaper. But a far more terrible foe than ennui had to be faced: the cholera and Panama fever, which carried off great numbers of the emigrants and a quarter of the inhabitants of Panama. Before the excitement had begun, two new steamers, the California and Oregon, were assigned to this route to run monthly.
The fare was $300, and the competition for space was so great that double price was some times paid. The California reached San Francisco on her first trip 28 Feb. 1849. When she came up the west coast after rounding the Horn to reach Panama, the gold fever had just reached Peru, and 75 Peruvians took passage. This preoccupation of space so enraged the 1,000 or so of waiting Americans that they in duced the commandant of the United States forces in California, who was waiting with them, to issue a proclamation ejecting the Peruvians as intending trespassers on United States public lands not yet opened for settle ment. As they refused to go, however, no one dared use force. In one case some 300 intend ing passengers drew lots for the 52 steamer tickets on sale. Many gold-seekers crossed at Nicaragua, at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, or at central Mexico. Many thousands, how ever, chose the cheaper and unbroken but time wasting sailing voyage of several months around Cape Horn. The vessels on this route were miscellaneous and often unfit and ill manned; the food was poor and insufficient, and the voyage full of hardship. There was also a large overland emigration across the plains, through the Great Basin and its alkali deserts, and over the Coast Range. This jour ney, too, was full of suffering from lack of food, lack of water, lost trails, and exhaustion; and sometimes after a summer of endurance to the last gasp, the pilgrims saw the snows close up the mountain passes before them, and either wintered or died on the eastern flank, or lost themselves trying to penetrate through the snow. This overland body had two strongly distinguishing marks from the immigrants by sea. First, it contained nearly all the families among the Argonauts, as distinguished from the solitary masculine adventurers; and there fore nearly all the women. Second, it was nearly all a Northern and free-labor element an important point in the struggle to make new States free or slave then going on be tween the sections.