A clipper costing $70,000 could pay for herself in one voyage, with freights at sixty dollars a ton.

This gold stampede might last but a little while.

To take instant advantage of it was the thing.

The fastest ships, and as many of them as could be built, would skim the cream of it.

This explains the brief and illustrious era of the California clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launched from 1850 to 1854.