It was the
epoch of the gold excitement. Large fortunes had already been made. The
contents of the shops and warehouses had, as soon as the gold discovery
became known, been emptied into every vessel in the harbor, and sent to
San Francisco. The lucky speculators had gained five or six hundred per
cent. profit for their ventures of preserved and dried fruits, champagne,
other wines and liquors, Madeira nuts and the most paltry stuff
imaginable. In five months some of the Valparaiso merchants had cleared
five hundred thousand dollars. The excitement was still unabated. Shippers
were still loading and dispatching their goods daily for San Francisco.
Many were going there themselves, and hardly a clerk could be kept at
Valparaiso at any salary, however large.
The day was brilliantly bright, and the air so pure and bracing that it
did the lungs good to breathe. So I made my way out of counting-house and
street for a walk. I ascended the dry, crumbling hills which with long,
deep gullies and breaks in them, and friable soil, looked as if they were
ready to tumble into pieces at the first shake of one of those earthquakes
so frequent in the country.
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