Passengers from Sacramento, San
Francisco, and Marysville brought incredible news and the wildest
sensations. Firm after firm had failed in the great cities. Old
established houses that dated back to the "spring of '49," and had
weathered the fires and inundations of their perilous Californian
infancy, collapsed before this mysterious, invisible, impalpable
breath of panic. Companies rooted in respectability and sneered at for
old-fashioned ways were discovered to have shamelessly speculated with
trusts! An eminent deacon and pillar of the church was found dead in
his room with a bullet in his heart and a damning confession on the desk
before him! Foreign bankers were sending their gold out of the country;
government would be appealed to to open the vaults of the Mint; there
would be an embargo on all bullion shipment! Nothing was too wild or
preposterous to be repeated or credited.
And with this fever of sordid passion the summer temperature had
increased. For the last two weeks the thermometer had stood abnormally
high during the day-long sunshine; and the metallic dust in the roads
over mineral ranges pricked the skin like red-hot needles. In the
deepest woods the aromatic sap stood in beads on felled logs and
splintered tree-shafts; even the mountain night breeze failed to cool
these baked and heated fastnesses. There were ominous clouds of smoke by
day that were pillars of fire by night along the distant valleys.
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