2-889-579 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Political Meeting at San Francisco, 1850. Engraving from a daguerreotype, showing '...an open-air political meeting in favour of annexation to the United States - the stripes and stars floating over the hustings...The existence of California has, at length, become a "great fact" of the day. For nearly two years Europe was stupified with the strange exaggerations and contradictory tales which were received from this unknown and mysterious Dorado, but which she feared to believe. The doubt is, however, now solved; she has seen, she has touched, and even used the gold from the productive mines, the existence of which, not long since, she altogether discarded. The gold-seekers have quitted her shores in poverty, and returned laden with wealth; and accounts of its discovery, the veracity of which is incontestable, have been published in various languages'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.