Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 42

Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 42

Capt. Sampson returned in less than a week, bringing with him a small

steam-engine, and a heavy pump of cast-iron, of a very peculiar

construction, without valves or boxes, and working by centrifugal

force alone. The whole apparatus weighed about four thousand pounds,

and cost fifteen hundred dollars.

 

In the mean time, our dam had rapidly advanced to completion. We had

nothing better than partially decomposed granite to stop the leaks,

and were obliged to pick the whole of that from the solid ledge; yet

it answered the purpose so admirably that all the water that found its

way through a dam two hundred and fifty feet long and ten feet high,

could easily be carried in a canvass hose six inches in diameter. A

sudden rise in the river, occasioned by rain in the mountains, filled

us with uneasiness lest it should overflow our dam, but by making

great exertions we raised a small mound five or six inches high along

the whole extent, and this slight embankment was sufficient to avert

the threatened calamity. The next day the river had again fallen, and

after that continued steadily to abate, till the top of the dam was

nearly three feet above the surface.

 

It was the close of the third week in July that our patient

perseverance at length prevailed over the waters. The next day, being

Sunday, we saw from our elevated eyrie different members of the

company with pan and shovel wandering about in the bed of the river,

stopping here and there to dig and wash a small quantity of earth and

then shaking their heads in a very dolorous and unaccountable manner.

This process was several times repeated, and on every occasion the

head-shaking grew more decidedly melancholy. Monday morning, on going

to work as usual, we found the whole company, from Capt. Sampson down

to the merest halfshare of them all, in a state closely bordering on

distraction, and radiating the blues as fast as ever a redhot cannon

ball radiated caloric. "Well, Mr. Raven," said Jimmy almost ready to

cry, "our work's all lost. I'd sell my share for a hundred dollars and

glad o' the chance;" and with this the said radiators glowed colder

than ever. On requesting an explanation of this extraordinary conduct,

we learned that they had dug ever so many holes the day before and had

found nothing--so they had at once concluded that there was nothing

to find. As we had been the principal movers and originators of the

whole undertaking, they regarded us as in some sort the authors of

their misfortunes, and hence we had to bear not only our own share of

the common disappointment, but also their ill-concealed displeasure.

Our situation was indeed deplorable--most of us had expended not only

our labour but the greater part of our previous earnings in purchasing

the engine and other matters, and if the dam should prove a failure

we were utterly ruined. But would it prove a failure? We did not

believe it would. In the whole party there was hardly one who knew any

more about prospecting, at least in the river, than a hen of average

intelligence. Most of them had passed their apprenticeship in the

southern mines, and not one had ever had any thing to do with damming.

We ourselves had been very slow to learn the nicer mysteries of our

craft, but we knew enough to satisfy us that a claim like that could

not be explored in a day. We squeezed the gloom out of our companions

like water out of a sponge, and the next morning went to work

prospecting in earnest. St. John sunk the first hole between a snug

family of rocks just on the edge of our upper hollow--the earth paid

from twenty cents to ten dollars a bucket, and in two hours he took

out with my assistance sixty dollars. There was no more grumbling that

day--Jimmy raised his price from one hundred to ten thousand dollars,

and doubted whether he would sell even for that.

 

Hose was still wanting to convey the water that leaked through the

dam quite across the upper hollow, so that it might not increase too

much the labours of the engine,--and Wednesday I rode in a wagon to

Sacramento to obtain canvass sufficient for this purpose. On my return

the next day by stage I found that my companions had already moved the

engine and pump across the river by means of rollers, and had set them

up on a stout frame at the foot of the upper hollow. A short trough

was constructed to lead the water from the pump directly into the

round deep pool below, and we were all ready to begin.

 

Our affairs were now in a highly prosperous condition,--a half share

was sold before the engine had made a stroke, for nearly a thousand

dollars, and every day members of other companies, none of which had

"got into the river," came to look, and admire, and wonder they had

not bought shares when they could have done it so easily. The American

Damming stock was now among the best in the market, and was quoted in

the Sacramento papers at ten thousand dollars a share.

 

All this could not but be highly gratifying even to men of that meek

and modest temper for which, I do not say our whole company, but some

of us were remarkable. In the pride of our heart we could not help

glorying a little over our neighbours, as if our good fortune had been

entirely owing to our superior sagacity--and I noticed that one or

two who had been led into the scheme almost against their wills, were

now the loudest in this self-laudation. We met, however, with almost

innumerable delays--the wood was wet, or the boiler leaked, or the

belt slipt from the whirling drums. It was some time, too, before we

discovered the secret of the pump--after working finely several hours,

and lowering the water as many feet, the stream suddenly ceased to

flow. We took the pump to pieces, and spent nearly all the rest of the

day in trying to detect the cause of this interruption, but gained no

more by our scrutiny than the child who cut open the bellows to find

where the wind came from. After puzzling over it all night, we resumed

our examination in the morning, but with no better success, and were

all ready to despair, when suddenly the Captain and St. John both

cried out at once, "Suppose we put the pump nearer the water, and see

how that will work." Sure enough, it flashed upon us all in a moment

that it was not a suction but a force pump--we accordingly lowered the

frame on which it rested, and in this position found that it would

drain the hole in six hours.

 

The harvest had now commenced that was to repay us for months of

toil--we had thrust aside with strong arm the guardian river, and

its treasures only waited our touch to be laid open to the light. We

hastened to secure them with trembling hand. Rocks were torn from

their deep foundations, and the thick-skinned granite scraped even

to its quivering nerves. The bed where the old South Fork had lain,

reposing in quiet, or restlessly tossing, so many generations, was now

to be well shaken and made up afresh. Parties set to work at different

points, and everywhere the short puff of the engine and droning hum of

the pump mingled with the harsher tones of the rocker and the cheerful

sound of pick and shovel. Our gains were all put into one common

receptacle, and every evening we assembled at the Captain's tent to

see them weighed and divided.

 

There was a peculiar charm about those evening parties that is often

wanting in more elegant assemblies. The scene thus presented would

have made a fine subject for Hogarth. The flickering light of the

fire burning in the huge chimney shone on a group of men with coarse

woollen shirts and unshorn faces, leaning on their elbows round the

rude table, and fixing their eyes with eager interest on the paunchy

bags that lay before the Captain, and the gold which he was nicely

adjusting in the scales by means of his forefinger and thumb, as if

it had been so much genuine Irish Blackguard. A crowd of spectators

stand looking on, either men hired by the company, or miners in the

red bank. Hairy rheumatic Bill, the Captain's cook, with ladle in

hand, alternates from the table to the fire, divided between a fierce

avaricious love of his half share and a more tender solicitude for

the soup simmering in the corner. "Well, Capting, how much has us got

to-night?" says Jimmy, and "How much to a sheer?" cries a Missourian

sitting on the lower end of the long table, and craning his neck and

goggling his eyes after a most alarming fashion. Our three shares,

as being the largest undivided portion, were first weighed out, and

received in a wide-mouthed vial. Then the Captain, with peculiar

satisfaction, set aside a double portion for himself--then as much

more for Jimmy. The half shares, of which at one time there were six,

came last. All that was scattered on the table was magnanimously left

for old Bill. The same jokes were repeated regularly every evening,

and never failed of a favourable reception. "Well, Mr. Raven, your

bottle isn't full yet," says Jimmy, with a chuckle. The Captain

laments the necessity of taking care of so much of the plaguey stuff;

when instantly half a dozen disinterested individuals offer to relieve

him of the trouble, to which his only reply is an abstracted laugh.

The largest sum divided on these occasions was fourteen hundred

dollars, or one hundred and forty to a share, which in those days was

considered very tolerable mining.

 

Nor was the labour itself entirely devoid of excitement. Whenever a

remarkably rich spot was discovered, or there was an unusual "show"

in any of the rockers, nothing would do but all must come and see

it. "Well, boys! I say, just look a here;" and presently half a score

of eager heads are thrust together over the cradle, or down into some

crevice among the rocks lighted up with a right fairy splendour with

spangles of pure gold. When all other epithets have been exhausted,

some one exclaims, "Well! that's real lousy! that is!" a most

felicitous comparison, at least to the ears of a Californian.

 

But in the mean time trouble was brewing in a direction where none

of us looked for it. Ours was the first of a long series of claims

extending in unbroken succession some distance below Mormon Island. A

gap had remained in this chain for several weeks, the second company

below us not having finished their flume so soon as the others, and in

the mean time a second dam had been erected by the South Fork company

still farther down the river. But when the company first mentioned had

completed their preparations, they insisted upon the removal of this

dam, as it backed the water into their claim; and threatened, if their

request were not complied with, to tear it down with their own hands.

The South Fork finally yielded the point, and now our dam answered

for a dozen companies, covering an extent of nearly two miles. The

river ran for this distance sometimes in wooden flumes, and sometimes,

as with us, in canals; and as considerable water escaped from these

artificial channels, and as there were, besides, hollows of different

dimensions requiring to be drained in every claim, it was necessary

for the success of the whole that this water should all be pumped

back into the flumes and not suffered to flow into those below. There

were several reasons why we should not be required to enter into this

arrangement. In the first place, our company being older than those

next below, we had the undisputed right, according to the universal

law of the mines, to work in the way most suited to our convenience.

Furthermore, as only one of the other companies had built a dam, and

that was a very slight affair, while we had laboured for weeks for

the common advantage, we thought they could not reasonably object to

so slight a leakage, especially as, if they had built one, they would

still have had at least an equal quantity of water to contend with.

But it is in vain to expect reason from envy and disappointed avarice.

One day about the middle of August, Captain Sampson having been down

to the village, returned in great excitement with the information that

a large party of miners, consisting of members of the lower companies,

were already on their march to destroy our engine. We heard no more

of it, however, at that time, and members of the companies with whom

we were acquainted assuring us that they had no such design, we hoped

the storm had blown over. But less than a week after, a large party

came upon us while we were at work in the river, "to make us," as

they said, "take care of our leak water." Not one of them seemed to

know exactly what he had to complain of--they had not yet succeeded

according to their expectations, and in some way we were to blame.

They evidently had an idea that a vast body of water was sent down

upon them from our claim, either made by the engine or from some other

mysterious source; but more than all, though we did not learn this

till afterwards, they hated Captain Sampson and those Ravens, they

were so stuck up. Still we had no fears they would proceed to actual

violence, since one of our company could, by toppling a few stones

into our race, raise the river sufficiently to flow over the top of

our dam, when it would have been instantly washed away, and the whole

accumulated flood precipitated bodily upon all below, involving them

in one common destruction. After a long farrago of words, which it

would be in vain to dignify by the name of argument, they proposed

building a dam at the foot of our claim to catch the water then

flowing from our engine. To this we made no objection, as our upper

hollow would be exhausted in a few days, and we had already agreed

with the company immediately below to pump the water from the lower

one into their flume on condition of their providing a trough long

enough for the purpose. Though this difficulty was thus disposed

of, yet the impression it produced was so deep and lasting, and the

idea of continuing in such a state of warfare was so repugnant to

our feelings that we determined to hasten our departure as much as possible.