Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 39
Though our harvest had not been very plentiful, we were unwilling to
let Thanksgiving pass unnoticed. Number Four took dinner with us, and
we did our best, as usual on such occasions, to provoke appetite to
the utmost and yet give it an overwhelming defeat. Our first course
consisted of roast beef nicely baked under a cheese box, potatoes,
onions, and apple-sauce ad libitum. This was succeeded by a regular
oldfashioned Christmas pudding, the crowning glory of the occasion,
wanting nothing but eggs and milk, flanked on either side by a
molasses pie, and a dish of tarts well stuffed with delectable currant
jelly, and bravely supported by a dessert of raisins and English
walnuts.
The pies would hardly have passed muster with Aunt Chloe; "they were
pies sartin, but then what kind o' crust?" but perhaps that renowned
"perfectioner" would have experienced some difficulty in making her
"rale flecky paste" if she had had to roll it out with a bottle on the
under side of a three-legged stool.
Christmas, Number Four returned the compliment and invited us to
take supper at his tent, when China furnished her choicest teas and
chouchou or preserves of infinite variety. We had promised ourselves
the agreeable addition of Dr. Browne to our little circle, but he did
not make his appearance till the next afternoon. A dam at Ford's Bar,
in which he had invested all his earnings, had proved a failure, owing
to nearly the same causes that had disappointed our own expectations;
he had abandoned mining and was now on his way to the Sandwich
Islands. In spite of his reverses he was still full of ardour as ever,
and urged us strongly not to leave that part of the world at present.
It was impossible not to be somewhat infected by his enthusiasm,
and we found in our own dreams an additional reason for resting in
the same conclusion. Whenever we dreamed of being at home, which we
did repeatedly, our regret and vexation were so extreme that the
remembrance of what we had suffered on waking was sufficient to quiet
our homesick impatience for weeks.
The last of January, our old claim no longer yielding over four
dollars a day, we moved a quarter of a mile up the river to a bar
not far above the American Dam. The next day Number Four came up to
bring us some letters, accompanied by two of his fine city or village
acquaintance.
Dr. Ripsome was a notable instance of what may be accomplished by care
and industry even under the most unfavourable circumstances. It would
be difficult to find even in our most fashionable cities a more nicely
dressed gentleman. His elegance was a perpetual wonder, a continued
miracle. His ruffled shirt-bosom was without a spot, and his collar
seemed made of enamelled tin, so boldly did it rise on either side of
his carefully trimmed jet whiskers. Not a speck could be detected on
his immaculate trowsers, nor on those boots that looked as if they
belonged to a blacking bottle; indeed, dust and he seemed to have
no affinity, but to be rather in a constant state of repulsion. He
carefully dusted a smooth stone with his cambric handkerchief and sat
down while we read our letters.
They contained various interesting items, all suggestive of the length
of our absence from home. S. had got married--Tom had got whiskers
and was become a great ladies' man--and little St. Johnny had begun
to talk and was stoutly demanding when his California uncles would
get home. Ah lo que es el mundo! why couldn't they have waited a
little longer?--by the time we do get home, everything will be over,
and nothing left to happen. This is the worst part of going away
from home,--if one could only seal up what he left behind him with a
certainty of finding everything undisturbed on his return, or if, like
the sun in Ajalon or a clock whose pendulum has ceased its vibrations,
home would stand still waiting his touch to set it again in motion,
a long journey would no longer be such an ugly gap in existence, but
like a break in an electric current, throw its light over our whole
path.
CHAPTER XX.
The first of February we again changed the scene of our labours, and
commenced working on American Bar within a few rods of our dam. This
bar had been originally extremely rich, but having been already dug
over by three or four successive parties, nothing now remained but the
bare granite and numerous piles of paving-stones with a little sand
sifted among them. Nevertheless, we worked here for three weeks, and
in that time took out about three hundred dollars; almost all of which
we found embedded from one to six inches in the soft granite. Here
follow a few extracts from my most meagre journal.
_Monday, Feb. 10._ Worked all the last week without knowing one day
where to go the next; yet our earnings, one hundred dollars, exceeded
those of any other week this season. The last three days have been
unusually delightful,--there has been a something in the air like the
first warm summer days at home, when the earth dries, as it were, all
at once, and the boys hurry to the ball-ground.
_Wednesday, 12._ Came home in the middle of the afternoon with only
six dollars--found a man who had been buried under a mass of earth
in the red bank laid on one of our beds. After he had sufficiently
recovered he informed us that when he found himself unable to move,
his only anxiety was to tell his wife where to look for his life
policy, and the next moment he fell asleep.
_Thursday, 13._ In a fit of desperation I went to work on our
bank--Tertium prospected, and St. John went to try his fortune
once more on American Bar. He did so well that I joined him in the
afternoon.
_Friday._ All worked on the bar--made fourteen dollars and a-half.
_Monday, Feb. 17._ Dr. Ecossais sold his claim in the red bank,
together with his tools, for eight hundred and fifty dollars, to a
Captain Sampson, who has just come in from the southern mines.
_Tuesday._ Sold our claim to Dr. Ecossais for fifty dollars. I worked
on the bar alone--St. John and Tertium prospected--in vain.
_Wednesday._ Rain sent us home at ninety buckets. We begin to hope to
make something out of our dam, and St. John and I think of remaining
till fall. Thus the time for our return continually flies from us.
_Friday._ A melancholy, lugubrious, opaque morning--rain at a hundred
and twenty buckets, and an undecided afternoon.
This it so happened, though we had no such expectation at the time,
was our last bank mining in California.
We had sold our claim as above mentioned, not because we believed it
to be entirely exhausted, but chiefly from want of patience to contend
longer with such a stubborn foe. What the result would have been if
the same quantity of rain had fallen as in the preceding winter I can
only conjecture, but have no doubt our engineering operation would
have been highly profitable. The two seasons, however, were in this
respect widely different--the first year it rained according to our
observation fully one third of the time from the 1st November to
the end of March; while during the second there was hardly as much
rain as commonly falls in a New England summer. The weather was also
cooler--hoar frosts were frequent--and several mornings we found the
ground frozen to the depth of three or four inches.
This scarcity of rain, however, though it interfered so materially
with the plan of our winter operations, was full of promise for the
approaching summer. The rivers would probably be unusually low;
and it was this circumstance that led us, in spite of our former
disappointment, to turn once more a favourable eye upon our unlucky
dam. As early as the 5th of January I had put up a notice signifying
my intention to work the claim the next summer, which Cameron, our
bonny Scot, no sooner discovered than he scrawled his own name
beneath, and by this characteristic stroke of policy made at once two
hundred and fifty dollars. The other members of the company having
destroyed their constitution and dispersed in different directions,
we anticipated no trouble from that quarter; but we regarded with
considerable uneasiness the movements of another party who, seeing
the claim abandoned, had also put up a notice, and of an earlier
date than my own. As they were already in possession, however, of
another claim a mile below the island, and as my having been a member
of the Washington Company gave us, in spite of my long neglect, no
slight advantage, we determined to maintain our ground, and tore down
their notices without further ceremony. Still more to strengthen our
hands, we now proposed to form an alliance with two of the principal
miners in the red bank, whose numerous retainers would enable us, if
need were, to repel force by force. The first, whom we have already
mentioned by the name of Capt. Sampson, was a New York Texan, who had
patched the cautious calculation of his native State with the sudden
enterprise of the frontier. The two tempers had not united--there was
the iron and the carbon, but not the steel. He made money and he lost
it with equal facility.
Dr. Ecossais was the other, whom we, or rather Capt. Sampson, proposed
as a partner in our new enterprise. He had also made money, by keeping
a tavern in the village; and he had also lost all he had made, by
speculating in dams. He was one of the first to settle on the red
bank, where he was now in a fair way to retrieve his losses.
While this important negotiation was still in progress, I went down
to San Francisco to attend to certain matters which required our
attention. I left Natoma on foot, hoping soon to fall in with a
wagon that would carry me to Sacramento, but none overtook me till
I had walked more than half the distance. We arrived at Sacramento
about noon, and at two I started in the steamer Confidence for San
Francisco. An exciting race with the Senator made the first half-hour
pass pleasantly enough, but when we at length yielded the palm,
and I had gone through the boat and sufficiently admired the fine
engravings in the saloon, I became impatient even of twenty miles an
hour. My only companion was Dr. Ripsome, with his enamelled dickey,
who, having tried both doctoring and digging in vain, was now going to
practise his profession at San Francisco. We reached that city about
nine, and my companion led me blunderingly to a hotel at the head of
Sansome street, where, for the first time since leaving home, I crept
in between the snow-white sheets, with an awkwardness that seemed to
say that I had no right in such dainty lodgings. An alarm of fire
during the night--the ringing of the bells and the hoarse cries of the
boys--made me believe myself for a moment at home, but a glance at the
bare rafters of my narrow cell soon dispelled that illusion.
San Francisco had not changed so much as Sacramento. The most striking
feature was the old hulks lying in the very heart of the city, with
streets and houses all about them, and suggesting vague and puzzling analogies to the ark on Mount Ararat.
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