Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/347

Rh in the summer of 1854, as after the efforts of Thurston, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company made a spasmodic pretence of keeping their contract, which was soon again abandoned out of fear of the Umpqua bar, and this abandonment, together with the successful rivalry of the road from Crescent City to the Rogue River Valley, and the final destruction of the Scottsburg road by the extraordinary storms of 1861–2, terminated in a few years the business of the Umpqua, except such lumbering and fishing as were afterward carried on below Scottsburg.

The history of beach mining for gold began in the spring of 1853, the discovery of gold in the sand of the sea-beach leading to one of those sudden migrations of the mining population expressively termed a 'rush.' The first discovery was made by some half-breeds in 1852 at the mouth of a creek a few miles north of the Coquille, near where Randolph appears on the map. The gold was exceedingly fine, the use of a microscope being often necessary to detect it; yet when saved, by amalgamation with mercury, was