fusedly jumbled
together; the very _olla-podrida_ of moral and mental combination. They
were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or
labor had proved tedious or unproductive--with whom the toils, aims, and
impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an
inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a
sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel employment of
gold-finding--or rather gold-_seeking_, for it was not always that the
search was successful--the very name of such a pursuit carrying with it
to many no small degree of charm and persuasion. To these, a wholesome
assortment of other descriptions may be added, of character and caste
such as will be found ordinarily to compose everywhere the frontier and
outskirts of civilization, as rejected by the wholesome current, and
driven, like the refuse and the scum of the waters, in confused
stagnation to their banks and margin. Here, alike, came the spendthrift
and the indolent, the dreamer and the outlaw, congregating, though
guided by contradictory impulses, in the formation of a common caste,
and the pursuit of a like object--some with the view to profit and gain;
others, simply from no alternative being left them; and that of
gold-seeking, with a better sense than their neighbors, being in their
own contemplation, truly, a _dernier_ resort.

The reader can better conceive than we describe, the sorts of people,
passions, and pursuits, herding thus confusedly together; and with these
various objects. Others, indeed, came into the society, like the rude
but honest woodman to whom we have already afforded an introduction,
almost purely from a spirit of adventure, that, growing impatient of the
confined boundaries of its birthplace, longs to tread new regions and
enjoy new pleasures and employments. A spirit, we may add, the same, or
not materially differing from that, which, at an earlier period of human
history, though in a condition of society not dissimilar, begot the
practices denominated, by a most licentious courtesy, those of chivalry.

But, of whatever stuff the _morale_ of this people may have been made
up, it is not less certain than natural that the mixture was still
incoherent--the parts had not yet grown together. Though ostensibly in
the pursuit of the same interest and craft, they had anything but a like
fortune, and the degree of concert and harmony which subsisted between
them was but shadow