In the last two years of the 1840’s San Francisco exploded onto the world map; a small village on America’ s West Coast rose in a few months to become a "boom" town for gambling, drinking and violence. (1) From the four comers of the earth, from Europe, China, India and Australia, men met on the west coast with one aim — Gold, which was the magnet that attacted these first settlers. It had all started on the 24th January 1848, when a workman came across gold in a river in the Sacramento valley. (2) Almost overnight, this discovery was known up and down the Pacific coast, and the news of quick fortunes to be made spread rapidly eastwards with amazing effects. Men who had previously been thought sensible and industrious left their jobs, wives, families and homes and set out to join the rush to California. All possible routes were taken by the forty-niners(1848年去加州淘金的人) as these pioneers came to be called, who set out to find gold; they sailed round Cape Horn, they crossed at the Isthmus of Panama, or they tripped across the continent along the Oregon or California Trails. (3) And with the honest fortune-seekers came men who were lees, particular as to how they made their money. It was inevitably the more reckless and adventurous, and those who had least to lose, who were among the first to jump onto the bandwagon and who came off best. The common desire to get rich quickly mused the violence and terrorism that swept the California gold-fields.
(4) Men who had given up everything became desperate in their search for wealth; they would rob their friends of gold, make their fortunes only to lose them, and possibly their lives, in the gambling house of San Francisco. And of course, hot on the heels of the gold explorers came others, more practiced in the art of money-, like businessmen, lawyers and saloon-own ers, to serve the newly-rich settlers. Speculation in land was an easier and safer way to get rich than separating gold from dirt in the gold-fields; and so was the job of providing whisky, women and gambling facilities for the explorers, usually at absurdly high prices measured in pinches(微量) of gold.
(5) The excitement was, however, short-lived; within a very few years the place of these first violent settlers had been taken by farmer% shop-owners and professional men, who under took in a more reasonable fashion the formation of the new state of’ California.

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In the last two years of the 1840’s San Francisco exploded onto the world map; a small village on America’ s West Coast rose in a few months to become a "boom" town for gambling, drinking and violence. (1) From the four comers of the earth, from Europe, China, India and Australia, men met on the west coast with one aim — Gold, which was the magnet that attacted these first settlers. It had all started on the 24th January 1848, when a workman came across gold in a river in the Sacramento valley. (2) Almost overnight, this discovery was known up and down the Pacific coast, and the news of quick fortunes to be made spread rapidly eastwards with amazing effects. Men who had previously been thought sensible and industrious left their jobs, wives, families and homes and set out to join the rush to California. All possible routes were taken by the forty-niners(1848年去加州淘金的人) as these pioneers came to be called, who set out to find gold; they sailed round Cape Horn, they crossed at the Isthmus of Panama, or they tripped across the continent along the Oregon or California Trails. (3) And with the honest fortune-seekers came men who were lees, particular as to how they made their money. It was inevitably the more reckless and adventurous, and those who had least to lose, who were among the first to jump onto the bandwagon and who came off best. The common desire to get rich quickly mused the violence and terrorism that swept the California gold-fields.
(4) Men who had given up everything became desperate in their search for wealth; they would rob their friends of gold, make their fortunes only to lose them, and possibly their lives, in the gambling house of San Francisco. And of course, hot on the heels of the gold explorers came others, more practiced in the art of money-, like businessmen, lawyers and saloon-own ers, to serve the newly-rich settlers. Speculation in land was an easier and safer way to get rich than separating gold from dirt in the gold-fields; and so was the job of providing whisky, women and gambling facilities for the explorers, usually at absurdly high prices measured in pinches(微量) of gold.
(5) The excitement was, however, short-lived; within a very few years the place of these first violent settlers had been taken by farmer% shop-owners and professional men, who under took in a more reasonable fashion the formation of the new state of’ California.