Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 41

Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 41

We sometimes in our rambles encountered less agreeable objects. St.

John was wandering one dull drizzly day, with his gun on his shoulder,

on the further side of a distant mountain, when he suddenly became

aware of a pair of eyes as bright as burning glasses glaring upon him

from behind a tall gray bush. He at first thought some wild animal

lay there in ambush, but looking lower he detected beneath the eyes a

pair of naked copper legs that could belong to no animal in the world

except an Indian; and at the same moment he felt with his eyes the

sharp point of a flint-headed arrow projecting through an opening

between the branches.

 

Wisely concluding that to run would be useless, he banished all

appearance of uneasiness, and advanced boldly towards the treacherous

bush, when the eyes, and copper legs, and flint-headed arrow, and

three other Indians he had not observed, stept out and confronted him.

They were ill-looking fellows as one would wish to meet alone and

miles from any habitation, and all carried in their hands villainous

bows and arrows, which the string of birds and squirrels hanging

at their backs showed that they knew full well how to use. Their

monstrous heads, covered with a thick thatch of long black hair, and

mounted on dwarfish bodies and distorted limbs, gave them a peculiarly

inhuman and impish aspect, which their threatening demeanour was

in no wise calculated to diminish. Crowding round St. John they

assailed him with an unintelligible gibberish of Indian and Spanish,

intermingled with a few words of English, that, together with their

signs, gave him to understand that he must surrender his gun or they

would make a prickly porcupine of him quicker than he could say Jack

Robinson. Such spinous honors, however, were anything but agreeable,

and making a sudden spring backward he presented his rifle at the

foremost and biggest, ordering them all with a stern countenance to

keep a proper distance. They understood the action if not the words,

and instantly huddling together sought to screen themselves behind

each other, while St. John, slowly retiring backward and still keeping

his eye and his rifle upon the enemy, reached at length a large rock,

behind which he cunningly withdrew, and then taking to his heels he

never stopt running till he came in sight of a tent on our side of

the mountain. I am inclined, however, to the opinion that the copper

rascals only wanted to make game of him, not in the way above hinted

at, but in a more innocent fashion, inasmuch as there was no instance

of any outrage committed by them in those parts, where the numerous

settlements imposed upon them a salutary dread.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXI.

 

 

_Tuesday, June 10._ Considerable rain fell during the morning. The

thermometer thus far has averaged ten to twenty degrees lower at noon

than during the same time last year. We are at times anxious about our

summer's work, as the river has fallen very little.

 

_Thursday, 12._ Took a long tramp in pursuit of game, got lost, and

walked about twelve miles. Our table expenses at present are about

fifty cents apiece a day.

 

_Wednesday, 25._ Stopped the water at the head of our race on

Saturday, and Monday began again the work which the rain interrupted

two months ago.

 

Sunday afternoon, a quail led her young brood just before our door.

We had been long desirous to secure some of these birds, in hopes of

taming them; but though we had spent part of every day for weeks in

rambling over the country, and had seen innumerable flocks, they had

always eluded our pursuit. Now that our hunting days were over, and

we had given up all hopes of accomplishing our object, it was a very

agreeable surprise to see our prey thus throw itself into our hands.

We made a sudden and impetuous sweep, and in a moment caught eight of

these pretty creatures, no bigger than an English walnut, and covered

with the same soft down that renders the chickens of our barnyards

so engaging. We carried them into the tent, and having secured them

in a small raisin box, I set about constructing what Reaumer calls

an artificial mother, to keep them warm in the cold nights. This was

nothing more than a low shed with a sloping roof of flannel--an old

shirt supplied the material--and here I doubted not my young family

would soon find themselves at home. But hardly had I got into bed when

a faint peep from the raisin box, followed by another and another

till the whole brood were in full chorus, called me to their side.

There was no resisting that plaintive importunity; I put my hand

into the box, like a scooching father-long-legs, and presently the

tender nurselings crept under this warm shelter. I felt their little

checkerberry hearts beating against my fingers, while they quietly

composed themselves to sleep. My heart warmed to them amazingly

on their giving me this proof of confidence, and I began to think

seriously of sitting up all night, rather than disturb their slumbers;

but fearful lest I should fall into a drowse, and perhaps squeeze them

harder than might be convenient, I put them all safely back under the

artificial mother, and left them with anxious concern.

 

The next morning they all lay apparently dead in the bottom of

the box, but by warming them in our hands with our hot breath, we

recovered all but one, and if we had known how to feed them, we

should undoubtedly have succeeded in preserving their lives. We tried

everything we could think of, and were almost in despair, when Jimmy,

one of our company, who had been gamekeeper to an English nobleman,

told us that they fed them on "hants' heggs" in his country. "Hants'"

nests were plenty in our neighbourhood; we lost no time in digging

one open, and soon presented our young starvelings with abundance of

"heggs." They eat a few, but their strength was too far gone to be

restored, and the second morning not one was left alive.

 

Our canal on which we were now working had been in great part

excavated through a ledge of the hardest granite--it varied from

twelve to twenty feet in width, and from five to ten in depth.--Half

of these dimensions would have been sufficient if its course had been

even moderately straight; but the frequent and sudden curves checked

too much the rapidity of the current. As a little labor here would

save a great deal on the dam, we bent our backs to the work with less

reluctance, though nothing that we had yet done in California could

be compared to it for a moment. If there is any thing in this world

deserving the contempt of a rational being, it is a big stone. A pig

is certainly as obstinate, but then he can be wheedled into going the

way you wish. A fool is perhaps as stupid, but he can be beaten into

reason. But a stone, especially if large enough to fancy itself a

rock, is worse than a tortoise. It draws itself up into its shell deaf

to all argument or entreaty, and insensible to blows. If we had only

had Amphion's lyre; but we had not even a fiddle, only crowbars and

gunpowder, and our poor fingers. And there was no wind to disturb the

stagnant air--the sun streamed down into our granite prison till it

became as hot as a Sandwich Island oven.

 

But at length the work was completed--the digging, the blasting, the

rolling of stones, and piling them up into a firm smooth wall, were

all over--the dike at the mouth of the canal was removed--the parched

and thirsty channel seemed to swallow eagerly the inrushing river, and

we entered upon the far more agreeable task of repairing the dam. A

large flatboat had been already built by a ship carpenter belonging

to our company, and the various operations of the preceding year were

soon under full headway.

 

The 4th of July came hot and scorching as the breath of the Sirocco.

We had celebrated it the year before at Ford's Bar by firing guns

and drinking lemonade; but we now slightly varied these amusements.

Above our dam, and formed by the backing up of the water, lay a

swelling pond winding away a mile among the hills. Every day, as we

penned in the water, it stole noiselessly farther and farther up the

shore, drowning one after another the little islands and blades of

grass that vainly standing on tiptoe stretched their heads above

the surface. Embarked in our flatboat with only one companion, a

pleasant young fellow from Philadelphia, we paddled softly up this

newborn lakelet to a point on the farther shore, where another party

had already accumulated a pile of earth supposed to contain a slight

admixture of clay, which it was our duty to transport to the head of

the canal. Here it was taken by a third set of workmen, and carried

two hundred yards in handbarrows, over a most difficult path, to a

part of the canal where the island was so low that a short dike was

necessary to prevent the water from finding its way back into the

river. After making several trips, we yielded our situation to two

of the unfortunates on the bank, and took their place in digging and

carrying. The hillside where they had been excavating was several

hundred feet from the water, and the earth must be carried down to

the shore on handbarrows, of all inventions the most ingeniously

fatiguing. Clouds of dust rose from the parched ground, covering us

from head to foot in an undistinguishable suit of reddish grey. The

whole company were thus occupied a week in constructing a low wall

not more than twenty feet in length, and this being finished, again

returned to work on the dam, which we pushed forward with the fiercest

energy.

 

We had now to settle a very important question, how we should

drain the hollows or ponds that would remain after the river had

been entirely diverted from its channel. Man-power, horse-power,

and water-power were all proposed; but the first was altogether

inefficient, and the other two well nigh impracticable. Nothing then

seemed left but steam. We were all of us at first rather frightened

at the thought of employing so powerful an auxiliary, but it soon

became familiar, and now our only anxiety was lest we should be unable

to obtain an engine of suitable qualifications. Capt. Sampson was

despatched to San Francisco on this errand, and in the mean time our

work went on as usual.

 

Walking one morning along the dam, now presenting a level path for

half its length. I found in the middle where the water still rushed

through, a large salmon, who had leaped the fall, but being jammed

in among the stones was unable to overcome the force of the current.

Another was found soon after in the same predicament--the eyes of

both were gone--their noses worn off, and their bodies gashed with

frightful wounds. This is the condition to which nearly all are

reduced before reaching the sources of those rapid rivers; and perhaps

nothing else can show so clearly the force of what may here at least be fairly termed a blind instinct.