Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 38

Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 38

But the road was no longer so lonely; many new inns or ranches had

been built in the edge of the forest, with such enticing names as

"Missouri House," "New England Hotel," &c., besides two or three

half-way houses--a most inhospitable sound, as if nobody ever thought

of stopping, but was perpetually hurried on to some mysterious

somewhere beyond.

 

Presently we came to one, the air of which at once attracted our

attention. A little room had been built out at one side, with a

veranda in front. A rocking-chair stood in the veranda, and through

the open door and window we saw a bit of carpet and the snowy sheets

of a four-poster. "Women and children!" cried St. John.

 

"Women--yes; but where are the children?"

 

"There; don't you see?"

 

Under a noble oak that shaded one side of the house was suspended a

lofty swing, with its polished, shining bit of board.

 

"Children, to be sure, God bless 'em! but who'd have thought of ever

seeing a swing in California?"

 

We met several little troops of dusty miners going up into the country

to take possession, with their everlasting frying-pans, shovels, and

tin kettles. On such occasions, not to lose entirely the pleasurable

emotions of being an object of envy, we would assume a lofty and

swelling demeanour, and stalked by them with a conscious air, all

which, I noticed, had a great effect.

 

We got a lift on a wagon the last five or six miles, and arrived at

Sacramento about four o'clock. On entering this famous city, I could

hardly credit my senses at sight of the changes effected in a single

year. We rode for a mile through Jay street; and every where there

was the same crush of carts and wagons, the same endless variety of

goods, and the same emulous activity. A tall Chinese, mounted on a

high wagon, gaped upon us as we approached, as if he thought all who

were moving in an opposite direction must needs pass down his throat.

He was the first Celestial I had seen, and his portentous ugliness was

altogether beyond any thing indigenous to the western hemisphere.

 

We took supper at one of the eating-houses, that, next to the

gambling saloons, were the most striking feature in Sacramento, and

slept on the counter of a store kept by one of our acquaintance by

day, and an innumerable host of rats by night. These animals are

not--so I was told--native to the country, but have, in a few years,

increased so rapidly, that probably no place in the world except

the slaughter-houses of Paris could send forth an equal army. I was

actually afraid to walk after dark along the sidewalk, where there

were piles of flour and similar articles--the whole space being

apparently alive with rats, and the pattering of their feet sounding

like a gentle shower. The great freshet at Sacramento drove them back

into the country; and it was said that they then, for the first time,

made their appearance in the mines.

 

The gambling-houses at Sacramento were on the same magnificent scale

as those already described at San Francisco, but a new and important

attraction had been added. Bands of skilful musicians were employed to

play at intervals during the evening, the expense being defrayed by

the keepers of the bar and of the different tables. Gaming, however,

seemed to have lost much of its reckless character, and thousands were

now seldom lost and gained by the turn of a single card.

 

We obtained only one letter, but were gratified by meeting some old

acquaintances, one of whom gave us several papers published in our

native city, which we read through, word by word, and with peculiar

relish. The second day we set out on our return to Natoma, where we

arrived, long after dark, and in a very exhausted condition.

 

All the month of October, we waited diligently for rain, as we had

before waited for spring, and then for summer. November having

arrived, and the rainy season being, as we supposed, near at hand,

we thought it time to commence operations on our canal. By means of

a straight-edged board and a plumb-line, we found that the deepest

cut would have to be about four feet; the extreme length was five

hundred feet; and nearly the whole was dug through the stiffest and

most impracticable rubble. The dam was forty feet long, ten feet high

in the middle, and built precisely on the same plan as a beaver's,

with one addition, suggested by the purpose for which the dam was

intended, a sluice or gateway at bottom, that we could open and shut

at pleasure.

 

Our task was lightened by the delightfulness of the season, and by

the pleasing hope that we had at last hit upon a plan that would

render us superior to fortune. When, after a day's toil, we returned

to our tent, in which, from its protected situation, we could hear

the wind without feeling its effects--when the candle was lighted,

the coffee-pot simmered on the stove, and we had exchanged our heavy

boots for comfortable slippers,--we gratefully acknowledged that even

this life had its peculiar charms. An interesting book would sometimes

keep us up till nine, but seven was our usual hour--long practice and

attention having bestowed an extraordinary facility in sleeping. Our

conversation had now become astonishingly sententious and idiomatic.

It was condensed into a kind of shorthand or phonography. We had

become so familiar with each other's modes of thought--like those

unfortunates confined for years in the same dungeon--that a single

word was often enough to fire the whole train. Certain sentences were

now so oppressed and pregnant with meaning, that they seemed fairly to

stagger under the weight. In five years, I am persuaded that we should

have refined away all articulate language, and nothing more would have

been required for the most abstract conversation than the vowels'

sounds, accompanied by almost imperceptible shrugs and winks.

 

I had once the pleasure of listening to a very interesting dialogue

between two savans, with whom I was but slightly acquainted, but whose

proficiency in this difficult art excited my unqualified admiration.

The accent is here all-important.

 

"You save?" says the first.

 

"Yes, me save; do _you_ save?"

 

"Oh, _yes_! _I_ save."

 

Now, to any one--even if he had mastered Spanish without a master--who

was unacquainted with the mode of speaking here employed, these brief

sentences would seem an unintelligible jargon; and, before the least

glimmer of light could reach his understanding, it would be necessary

to dilute or translate them into at least as many pages of modern

English. Yet, not only those who took part in the dialogue, but I

myself, and all who listened to it, were in the highest degree edified

and delighted at this instance of unequalled condensation, which I

would respectfully commend to the consideration of all windy orators.

 

It was not till the 19th of November that the rainy season apparently

commenced. During the night it rained moderately, and the wind blew

with tremendous violence. The great pine overhead wrestled fearfully

with the tempest, with its long-twisted arms, and occasionally sent

down upon the tight drum-head of our canvass roof a shower of cones

as big as a pineapple, that fell on our startled ears with the burst

of a bombshell. We found it impossible to sleep, and, having roused

the drowsy candle, huddled round the stove and amused ourselves with

cracking pinenuts, of which we had, at different times, collected a

plentiful supply. These nuts grow in the cones just mentioned, closely

resemble in size and shape the meat of the almond, and are of a

peculiarly rich and oily flavour.

 

Early the next morning, before we had finished breakfast, the heavy

tramp of armed men, and a number of voices, called us hastily to the

door. A large party were already assembled on the bank above us; and,

through the tall hemlock that covered the hill towards the village,

we saw all along the narrow winding path the glitter of polished pick

and shovel. Hardly more sudden was the apparition of Clan Alpine's

warriors on the side of Benledi.

 

Instant, through copse and heath, arose

Bonnets, and spears, and bended bows;

On right, on left, above, below,

Sprung up at once the lurking foe.

From shingles gray these lances start;

The bracken bush sends forth the dart;

The rushes and the willow wand

Are bristling into axe and brand;

And every tuft of broom gives life

To plaided warrior armed for strife.

 

Our visitors, however, were bound on a more peaceful errand. Some wag

had started a wonderful story about the rich diggings in the Red Bank,

which had produced just such an excitement in Natoma as the California

fever in the Eastern States--all were anxious to obtain a share, and

in a short time the whole bank, three or four hundred feet long, was

staked off among the different claimants. The various disputes that

arose were all amicably adjusted by arbitration, in which we as the

earliest settlers were allowed the highest authority. Our decisions

were marked by the strictest impartiality, and even indifference, for

we believed the whole bank to be absolutely worthless; but after the

leads were fairly opened, we discovered, to our infinite surprise and

mortification, that several of them were far more valuable than our

own. For months we had been lying idle, encamped in the very midst of

riches; and now these new comers, aliens and foreigners to the bank,

had taken them, as it were, out of our hands. Our folly, however,

will appear more excusable when it is known that the whole place had

already been prospected again and again, and even worked for weeks in

two distinct locations by successive parties who had one after another

given up in despair. We had ourselves made several trials in front of

what afterwards proved to be the richest claim, and finding nothing,

concluded, according to what was then considered the universal laws

in such cases, that the bank would yield less and less the farther

it receded from the river. An entirely new feature, however, was now

introduced--instead of growing poorer, the bank became richer as the

miners advanced, till they came in some instances to earth paying

nearly a dollar to the bucket, when the lead gradually failed. This

rich streak ran diagonally across the bank, so that, while at the

upper end it was very near the front, it was found by those working at

the lower extremity fifty or a hundred feet farther back. The value

of all these claims was greatly diminished by the depth to which they

ran, a superstratum of earth varying from five to fifteen feet in

thickness having to be thrown off before they came to that containing

the gold.

 

Our quiet camp now became the centre of a bustling neighbourhood--a

road was laid out through the ravine close by our door for the purpose

of carting earth to the river, and huge piles of earth and stones rose

around us on every side. A party of slaves and free blacks, at work

for an extensive landed proprietor who claimed a front of sixty feet,

kept up an incessant laughing and chattering which would have shamed a

monkey or a yahoo.

 

There was no longer any pleasure in being idle, and we determined

to go to work with the rest without waiting any longer for rain.

We made almost nothing in the morning, and I began really to doubt

if we should ever succeed in earning enough to get home with; but

the afternoon's work was much more encouraging. Our schemes were

now all exhausted; we had nothing more to rely upon but patient,

unremitting toil, and we determined henceforth to lose no more time in

idle dreaming, but to work as long and hard as we could wherever we

could make four dollars a day. We continued to mine in the immediate

vicinity of our tent for the next two months, sometimes in our bank,

and at others in the wide sandy slope between it and the river; and at

the end of that time, besides paying all our debts, we found ourselves worth in dust nearly one hundred dollars apiece.