But on that day when he finished his modest house on the corner of New Montgomery and Market streets, he little thought that in after years there would spring up, as if by magic, under the skillful hands of the Lelands, famous in San Francisco as in Saratoga in the olden days, the magnificent Palace Hotel, with its royal court, its great dining halls, and its seven hundred and fifty-five rooms for guests, rivalling in its grandeur and its luxurious appointments the palaces of kings.
The growth of San Francisco was very rapid after the discovery of gold.

The population immediately leaped into the thousands.

California was the goal of the gold-seeker, the El Dorado of his quest.

Men in search of fortune came from all parts of the world to the Golden West.
It was on the 19th of January, 1848, that gold was discovered.

The story reads like a romance.