A GOLD FINDER'S DEATH.

Inangahua Times, Volume XI, Issue 1676, 10 March 1886, Page 2

A GOLD FINDER'S DEATH.

Could anything be more pathetic i than this brief notice that comes to ns from Placerville, California : " James W. Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California, died on Monday at his home in Kelsey. He was 74 years i old, t»nd died a poverty-stricken, dis- . appointed man." ThU was, says a New York paper, the man whose discovery in 1848 made the State of California and led to that production 1 of gold that has since then amounted ; to 1,600,000,000d01. Many a time since that fateful 18th of January has the unfortunate man cursed the day he found the glittering nugget in the mill-race at Coloma, and full of golden 1 dreams flew with the news to his part--1 ner. General Sutter. Alas for the i golden drearaa and for the happiness of industrious obscurity! His discovery was his great misfortune — a veritable curse through life. Adventurers flocked in from every part of the world. They dispossessed him of his hard-earned property and cooly appropriated his houses. His cattle were killed by the starving miners, his claims were "jumped;" and, super* stitiously credited with some mysterious power of finding gold, the unfortunate discoverer was for ever tracked and dogged by men whom disappointed avarice made demons. Again and again he sought to elude them, and would steal off in search of some un explored gulch, where in peace he hoped to find the millions, the vision of which for ever burned in his brain ; but go where he would he could work but a few hours, when a stream of men poured in upon him and took up the claims above and below him, aud finally, disappointed, they would even j drive him from the little spot he selected. He was always unfortunate; he never made any rich strikes, but drifted about, for ever seeking — Tantalus-like— the fortune that for ever eluded him, until, disappointed and embittered by injustice and misfortune, the wretched man fonnd only in the grave rest and refuge from the curse that pursued him. The great State of California, with its millionaires whose lightest folly costs more than would have pensioned Marshall for life, abandoned the discoverer of California's wealth to poverty and wretchedness, Some years ago the Legislature, recognising the claim he had, appropriated £40 a month for him ; bat this appropriation lasted only two years, and since then the great State and its millionaires have stood ignobly by and left to starve the man whose discovery was the origin of their wealth