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Leader (1850-1860), 7th September 1850, Edition Town of 1, Page 557

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      Untitled Article

      It is in the beds and on the banks of the rivers that most gold has hitherto been found . Labourers , it is said , can earn at the diggings wages averaging from eight dollars to twelve dollars per diem : so soon as they have accumulated sufficient funds to purchase the necessary implements for mining they generally desert their employers and work on their own account . The mode of appropriating land is a curious one , each person being allowed on arrival to stake off ten paces of ground , till the whole river or ravine is taken up . Provisions and all the necessaries of life could be obtained at a reasonable rate . Flour was selling at the diggings at thirty cents per pound , while in January three dollars per pound was the

      common price . Any one going now to California ( says a correspondent just returned thence ) should at once proceed to the highest lands , as it is the opinion of the old miners that the gold is washed down from the mountains to the rivers and valleys . At Dew Creek , emptying into the Yuba river , gold has been found in the highest mountains to an enormous extent ; after digging some eighty or ninety feet a vein of gold was struck yielding from , six to eight y ounces per man per day , and with every prospect of its continuing . One man sold his claim ( ten paces ) for 20 , 000 dollars . The mountains near the Sierra Novada have also proved very rich , two men having averaged seven pounds a-day for several days .

      • The Paris correspondent of the Courier des Etats Unis gives two amusing anecdotes relating to the amazing fortunes which are said to be made so easily in California : — " A year or two since a young man of one of the first families of Paris became very much involved in the double gambling of stocks and lansquenet , and suddenly fled , leaving his « debts of honour * with his other debts unpaid . As he left a young and beautiful wife , who was ardently attached to him , the sensation in their circle of acquaintance was very great , and every effort was made to discover his retreat and look into the means of

      restoring him to his position . After a year had elapsed the family went into retirement , and this summer they had remo ' ved to a Email country house in the neighbourhood of Paris . The unhappy wife was recently walking alone in the garden and brooding over her habitual melancholy , when a swiftly-driven caleche stopped at the gate , and the long-lost rushed in , and enfolded her in is arms . He had returned enriched from the mines of gold , the discovery of which was just announced at the time of his ruin , and was there to repair his obligations , and return once more to the life he had been compelled

      to abandon . . «• The Baron de St . G , who has long shone m the luxurious and fashionable spheres of Paris , was lately obliged , by the consequences of the revolution , to reduce his establishment . His splendid house , in the Faubourg St . Honore , was advertised for sale , and meantime he occupied it as usual . Breakfasting alone , lately , and in melancholy humour , with his fork in one hand and the newspaper in the other , he received the card of a gentleman who wished to bargain for the premises . The name was unknown to him , but he bade the servant show the stranger up . * Ah ! you scoun' —but the baron stopped with the word half pronounced by which he whom he his

      was about to designate one recognized as former valet , and whom he remembered last by a parting kick with which he had sent him down stairs . It was evidently the same man , but the baron recollected that he presented himself as a bargainer for a house worth six hundred thousand francs , and might , therefore , be entitled to more care in an epithet . « Is it you ? * asked the baron , after a moment ' s survey of his countenance , to make sure . Michael , your former valet , but somewhat changed , at least in social position , monsieur le baron , if not in style and features . ' The ex-domestic drew himself up with a look of offended consequence , and proceeded to explain that he had been since

      to California . In the two years that had elapsed he had taken leave of the baron and his unceremonious slipper he had succeeded in becoming enough of a millionaire for his ambitions , and had returned to enjoy life in Paris . He called the baron ' s attention to the fact that his manners had shown that he was not suited to the station he formerly occupied , and he declared that now , for the first time , he felt himself in his element . On his arrival he had seen the advertisement of his former master ' s house , and , well acquainted with its luxuries , he had hastened to make an offer for it . It was doubtless painful , he suggested by way of sympathy , to part with luxuries long enjoyed , but it was the common lot of this life of two buckets in a well , one mounts and the other descends . The baron heard out his ex-valet ,

      but finally concluded that he would enjoy one more luxury in his house before he gave it up , that of turning out of doors , as an impudent rascal , one who was worth seventy-five thousand pounds a-year . And he did so . " The California Courier of July 1 states that there are nearly one thousand Chinese in San Francisco , and that they are the orderly , industrious , and prudent of any class in that city . As mechanics they are said to be quite a match for the wooden nutmegmakers down East : — " They are generally very good mechanics ; some of them keep restaurants and a few trade in nick-knacks and curiosities . When lumber was scarce in the market a large quantity was brought from Chinese ports , ready framed and matched for ten-footers . These made quite comfortable little cribs when a man was satisfied to Bleep

      under a carpenter ' s bench or creep into a crockery crate for protection against the weather ; but now , when lumber is a drug , people much prefer larger space to breathe in , and American carpenters infinitely prefer to

      labour upon square timber to the picayune process of coaxing together the round , crooked sticks of the Celestials . "We saw , the other day , some American carpenters trying to put up a Chinese frame , but it wouldn't do . As fast as one side rose to a perpendicular , the other side tumbled over . At last they gave it up in despair , when a gang of Chinese were sent for , and , presto ! the building went up like magic . The thing was done . No man can put up a Chinese frame , who does not understand the lingo . It is necessary to talk to it to coax it into shape , and to pat it patronizingly upon the pate to keep it in been driven homeIt

      shape , until the last nail has . would be as impossible for an American carpenter to put up a Chinese frame as it would be for him to make a perfect pyramid of the twenty-two hundred letters of the Chinese alphabet . Now that Chinese frames have gone out of date , the Celestials are turning their attention to a competition with our own carpenters in American material ; and , from their known ingenuity , we doubt not that in a few weeks they will be found perched upon every embryo house-top , and going into the shingle and clap-board business with a perfect rush . "

      Untitled Article

      THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH BROKEN . The wire so successfully submerged last week has been cut asunder among the rocks at Cape Grisnez , where the physical configuration of the French coast has been found unfavourable for it as a place of holdfast or fixture . All communication between coast and coast has consequently been suspended for the present . The precise point where the breakage took place , is 200 yards out at sea , and just where the 20 miles of electric line that had been streamed out from Dover joins on to a leaden tube , designed to

      protect it from the surge beating against the beach , and which serves the purpose of conveying it up the front of the cliff to the telegraph station on the top . This leaden conductor , it would appear , was of too soft a texture to resist the oscillation of the sea , and thereby became detached from the coil of gutta percha wire that was thought to have been safely encased in it . The occurrence was , of course , quickly detected by the sudden cessation of the series of communications that have been sustained since the first sinking of the electric cable between Dover and the Cape , though it was at first a perplexing point to discover at what precise spot the wire was broken or at fault . This , however , was done by hauling up the

      line at intervals , a process which disclosed the gratifying fact that since its first sinking it had remained in situ at the bottom of the sea , in consequence of the leaden weights or clamps that were strung to it at every 16 th of a mile . The operation was accomplished by Messrs . Brett , Reid , Wollaston , and Edwards , who have been attending to the management of the telegraph without intermission , and who are now , with their staff , removing the wire to a point nearer Calais , where from soundings it has been ascertained that there are no rocks , and where the contour of the

      coast is favourable . It is thought that for the leaden tube a tube of iron must be substituted , the present apparatus being considered too fragile to be permanently answerable . The experiment , as far as it has gone , proves the possibility of the gutta percha wire resisting the action of the salt water , of the fact of its being a perfect waterproof insulator , and that the weights on the wire are sufficient to prevent its being drifted away by the currents or sinking in the sands . During the period that the wire was perfect messages were daily printed by Brett's Printing Telegraph , in legible Roman type , on long strips of paper , in the presence of a numerous French and English

      audience ; but it is not intended to make use of the wire for commercial and newspaper purposes until the connection of it with the telegraphs of the South-Eastern and that now completed on the other side from Calais to Paris is effected . Should the one wire answer , it is intended eventually to run out twenty or thirty more , so as to have a constant reserve in the event of accident in readiness . This huge Teticulation of electric line will represent 400 miles of telegraph submerged in the sea , and , as each will be a considerable distance apart , a total water width of six or eight miles in extent .

      Untitled Article

      PROPOSED SUPPRESSION OF DONCASTER RACES . A " monster" meeting of the inhabitants of Doncaster was held in the Guildhall on Tuesday night , for the purpose , according to the intention of the promoters , of hearing addresses delivered in deprecation of the evils attendant upon races in general , and the Doncastex races in particular . The meeting was convened by several clergymen and gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood , with whom were associated also the ministers of various denominations of Dissenters . It was appointed for half-past seven

      o ' clock in the evening , and the inhabitants were invited to attend . " They did attend , and in such numbers as have never before been witnessed in the Guildhall . The assemblage was , however , chiefly composed of the working classes , and it was evident from the very first that they were bent upon " smashing the meeting . " Long before half-past seven o ' clock the hall was filled from one end to the other , and before the meeting commenced was crammed to suffocation , there not being less than from 1500 to

      aaa 2000 persons present . Great excitement prevailed in the body of the meeting , and , as the promoters of it successively made their appearance upon the platform , they were received with hooting , yelling , and other noises , varying in degree according to their unpopularity . The great weight of indignation , however , fell upon the Reverend C . R . Alford , Incumbent of Christchurch , who has renderend himself especially obnoxious to many in the town by his having , ever since he came to reside in Doncaster , annually raised , in his pulpit and elsewhere , a protest against the races . In accordance with previous arrangements , Mr . R .

      Baxter , solicitor to the Great Northern Railway , who had taken the chair , presented himself to the meeting , but in vain essayed to get a hearing . He called upon the meeting , if there was any difference of opinion , to discuss the question fairly . He was proceeding amidst great clamour , when a Mr . Charles Buckley , well known in the town , mounted the red-baized bench on the platform , and demanded to know whether Mr . Baxter was self-appointed chairman ,

      whether the meeting was not a public one , and whether they would not choose for themselves a chairman from it . Mr . Baxter attempted to make some observations in reply , but was prevented by the noise of the meeting . Mr . Buckley proposed that Mr . Robert Milner ( Councillor ) do take the chair—a proposition which , being at once seconded and carried , left Mr . Baxter no alternative but to resign the chair to Mr . Milner , which he did amidst the jeers and derision of the meeting .

      The Reverend C . R . Alford and Mr . Halliday , an Independent minister , attempted to address the meeting against the races , but they could not obtain a hearing . Mr . Buckley denounced the promoters of the meeting as selfish hypocrites , who were duly provided for out of the state funds , and therefore independent of the pecuniary advantages of the races , which they wanted to suppress , in order to'deprive the working classes of a great national amusement . He concluded , amidst great applause , by proposing " That this meeting do stand adjourned to this day twelve months , " which was carried almost unanimously .

      Mr . Alford and his friends were received in the street by a party in waiting , who escorted them home , hooting and yelling all the way . At the residence of Mr . Denison , M . P ., in Hallgate , Mr . Alford and party were joined by that gentleman , who accompanied them to Mr . Baxters house , on the Thorneroad . On getting beyond the last gas-lamps stones were thrown at them . One hit Mr . Baxter on the head , and another entered the drawing-room of his house , but no material injury was sustained .

      Untitled Article

      MARSHAL HAYNAU IN LONDON . Three foreigners , one of whom was very old and wore long moustachios , presented themselves at the brewery of Messrs . Barclay and Company , on Wednesday morning , for the purpose of inspecting the establishment . According to the regular practice of visitors they were requested to sign their names in a book in the office , after which they crossed the yard with one of the clerks . On inspecting the visitors ' book the clerks discovered that one of the parties was no other than Marshal Haynau , the late

      commander of the Austrian forces during the attack upon the unfortunate Hungarians . It became known all over the brewery in less than two minutes , and before the general and his companions had crossed the yard nearly all the labourers and draymen ran out with brooms and dirt , shouting out *• Down with the Austrian butcher ! " and other epithets of rather an alarming nature to the marshal . A number of the men gathered round the marshal as he was viewing the large vat , and continued their hostile manifestations . The marshal being made acquainted by one

      of the persons who accompanied him , ot the feeling prevailing against him , immediately prepared to retire . But this was not so easily done . The attack was commenced by dropping a truss of straw upon his head as he passed through one of the lower rooms ; after which grain and missiles of every kind that came to hand were freely bestowed upon him . The men next struck his hat over his eyes , and hustled him from all directions . His clothes were torn off his back . One of the men seized him by the beard , and tried to cut it off . The marshal ' s companions were treated with equal violence . They , however , defended themselves manfully , and succeeded in reaching the outside of the building . Here

      there were assembled about 600 persons , consisting of the brewers' men , coalheavcrs , &c , the presence of the obnoxious visitor having become known in the vicinity . No sooner had the marshal made his appearance outside the gates than he was surrounded , pelted , struck with every available missile , and even dragged along by his moustache , which afforded ample facilities to his assailants , from its excessive length , it reaching nearly down to his shoulders . Still battling with his assailants , he ran in a frantic manner along Bankoidc until he came to the George public-house , when finding the doors open , he rushed in and proceeded upstairs into one of the bedrooms , to the utter astonishment of Mrs . Benfield , the land-

      Untitled Article

      Sept . 7 , 1850 . ] ffifte WL $ * ptt . 557

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 7, 1850, page 557, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1852/page/5/