SAN FRANCISCO.
It was the Fourth of July, the great holiday of boys, if not of the
nation, when the Swiftsure came slowly into the magnificent harbor of
San Francisco. The weather-beaten sails and canvas told of a long and
disastrous voyage. The crew were sullen and discontented, the passengers
worn down by long confinement and miserable fare. They had escaped any
furious gales after leaving Rio, but encountered head winds, and long
unhealthy calms, almost from the time of entering the Pacific. They laid
scarcely out of sight of Valparaiso twenty days together. Sam was not the
only one on ship-board, who thought then, with almost longing, of the
stiff gales and driving sleet and mist off Cape Horn. Our young sailor
had comparatively a very comfortable experience of that great bugbear to
all seamen. Sometimes the weather was fine for several days together;
and gentle-eyed cape pigeons, so tame that it seemed cruel to capture
them, came round the ship, or the passengers amused themselves in snaring
an albatross, and watching the flapping of its useless wings from the
deck.
This strange looking bird reminded Sam of the story he had read in verse,
from a book belonging to his last teacher. Ben and he had carried it
off from the desk to hide it, and have their own fun in the search, but
finding the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” read it over so frequently,
that they could remember more than half, when the hue and cry after the
missing volume compelled them to restore it. Jackson and his messmates
were favored with recitations as they passed within sight of the
rugged and barren promontory, and stretching far away for a favorable
wind, entered the long, rolling swell of the Pacific. There was life
and excitement in the hardest squall they encountered there, that Sam
considered in every way more agreeable than the sameness of a calm in a
southern latitude.
Jackson was sure a sailor must have written the description Sam used to
spout from his favorite “Ancient Mariner,” and was disappointed to find
it was only a poet—“a kind of craft” he had very little respect for. And
so it was—
“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be—
And they did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody sun at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand
No bigger than the moon.
Day after day, day after day,
They stuck, nor sense nor motion,
As idle as a painted ship,
Upon a painted ocean.”
Life grew almost a blank to those on board, until the certainty of
nearing San Francisco, roused once more the feverish excitement with
which they had left home.
Sam thought the last night would never end. He walked the deck
restlessly, and tried to plan what they were going to do. Colcord he knew
had schemes of his own, that Mr. Gilman would be sure to follow. But
how were they to get to the mines to begin with? They had no money, no
friends to apply to. The day broke over the broad swell of the bay, and
lifted the heavy fog that obscured the new city of San Francisco. It was
as yet a wilderness of tents and canvas-covered sheds, stretching along
the beach without order or regularity. Here they dropped anchor at last,
and another eager crowd of adventurers landed on the shores of California.
Mr. Gilman planning the voyage in the bar-room of Mooney’s tavern, or
talking it over, by his comfortable fireside, was a very different person
from Mr. Gilman landed on the beach at San Francisco, not knowing where
to get a breakfast, or the money to pay for it. Colcord too, was more
crest-fallen than Sam ever saw him before or afterwards, and condescended
to say, “Well, Sammy my boy, what are we going to do first?”
That was the question, for they could not sit on their chests all day
and watch the vessels anchored near their own, and Mr. Gilman found, to
his dismay, that it would cost twenty dollars even to land his cherished
gold rocker. Colcord proposed that they should try to get an advance
on it, and for this the two men left Sam to look after their baggage,
a very useless precaution as he soon found. The whole shore was strewn
with piles of goods far more valuable than a sea chest, and lighters were
already coming and going from the different ships, adding to them. Sam
strolled off towards one of these, as he thought he made out the ship
from which it came. He was not mistaken; the Mermaid had arrived before
them, and if the disheartened boy had suddenly been set down at home, he
could scarcely have felt happier, than when he saw his Rio acquaintance,
John, spring on shore. It was a most fortunate meeting. John had been a
Californian three whole weeks, and gave Sam an astonishing account of
what was going on in the country. People had to pay fifty dollars a week
for board, and poor fare at that, John said; as for the gold-washer, on
which so much depended, if they got themselves to the mines they would
be fortunate, and nobody wanted to buy machinery on speculation for that
reason. John had gone to work already, and advised Sam to do the same.
He knew men were wanted to help unload the Mermaid, and other vessels
in port, and some of them had ten dollars a day; boys like themselves
were earning six and eight. John had not much time to talk. He looked
as important as any business man on the New-York Exchange, and bustled
around among the sailors and porters, assisting the clerk who had come
down to take charge of the Mermaid’s cargo. Fourth of July gave no
respite from business here, and but for the national flag flying from
every ship, and an occasional ambitious discharge of Chinese crackers, no
one seemed to notice it.
Colcord and Mr. Gilman came back, not very amiable towards each other or
any one else. Sam had been thinking over his mother’s parting counsel,
and came to the conclusion that she was right about work, as well as
other things.
“Never be afraid of hard work”—he said to himself. “If one kind of work
is not handy, do something else.”—He had come to dig gold, but as far as
that was concerned he might as well have been at home. So he thought the
next best thing would be to earn it. Sam walked up and down the beach,
with hands in both pockets, whistling Hail Columbia, in honor of the
day, with an absent air, when the two men came up; but in half an hour
from that time he was working away alongside the Mermaid, under John’s
orders. Colcord followed his example, when he found it was the only thing
to be done, but Mr. Gilman could not forget his pride, or conquer his
indolence, until driven to it by a very uncomfortable night on the beach.
Even the shelter of a canvas tent had to be paid for. He did more real
hard work, that one week in San Francisco, than he had on the farm in six
years.
Sam now began to be of some consequence in the partnership, and felt his
importance, as might be supposed. He contributed almost as much as either
of the others to the common stock, when they came to purchase their tools
and provisions for the mines.
Mr. Gilman insisted on taking the gold-washer, until the very last
moment, although after he succeeded in getting it landed, it was said to
be useless by people coming from the diggings. No one would make him the
smallest offer for it, and finding at last that it would be impossible
to get it carried across the country from the Sacramento, he left it
reluctantly on the beach at San Francisco, the twenty dollars—two days’
hard work!—paid for landing, added to the original cost.
Sam was very glad to bid good-bye to San Francisco, and find himself
actually on his way to the mines. He had seen very little of it, except
at night, when the eating houses and gambling saloons were like so many
great transparencies, as the light struck through the canvas roofs and
sides. There were no other places of amusement, no churches, no public
buildings to visit. Men worked and speculated all day, and managed to
spend at night almost as much money as they had made. They had no homes,
no family circles, scarcely a tie to life; no wonder that half of them
grew reckless. Sam was not old enough either in years or in the world
to comprehend these things, and he longed for new adventures. He gave a
last look to the old Swiftsure, rocking in the bay, without any other
feeling of regret than a fear he should never see Jackson, his sailor
friend, again. Jackson thought they might “run alongside” in China or
Calcutta yet, but Sam did not think it was very likely _his_ travels
would ever extend so far. John said he might possibly “take a run up to
the mines before the rainy season set in,”—for California boys talk very
independently, and it was John’s great ambition to be considered grown
up. He patronized Sam extensively, the last few days, and slapped him
on the shoulder with a “good-bye old boy—take care of yourself”—as the
little party embarked on the sloop in which they had engaged passage to
Sacramento.
The clothes that Mrs. Gilman so carefully prepared, were reduced to a
very small compass, when they selected what they could carry to the
mines. Where every thing had to be paid for at the rate of twenty cents
a pound, and provisions and mining tools were indispensable, ordinary
baggage was not to be thought of. Many boys of Sam’s age think it
impossible to leave home for a quarter at boarding-school, without at
least “five changes of raiment”—not to mention dressing case, desk and
carpet bag, including a silver fork and spoon. The catalogue of the young
miner’s outfit was very brief. The clothes he wore—two shirts, and a huge
jack-knife, with a common share in the pans, pick-axes and shovels, a
tin cup, frying-pan, and coffee-pot. Boarding-school fare, much as it
is berated, would be considered a feast in comparison to the crackers,
jerked and salt beef—packed with their “assorted cargo”—the stock of
provisions that was to last them to the mines.
Sam felt very dignified and Robinson Crusoe-ish, as he stuck his knife in
a new leather belt, and slung a coarse blue blanket that was to serve as
a bed,—mattress, quilts, pillows, and all,—over his shoulder. He found
the last slightly uncomfortable when the sun beat down upon the narrow
deck, and was obliged to deposit it ignobly beneath him. He was ready for
any kind of adventure in the morning, Indians, coyotes or bears, but such
an unworthy foe as a mosquito cloud damped his ardor very considerably.
He was not at all prepared for the early advances these tormenting little
insects made, nor the perseverance with which the attack was followed
up. He could readily believe the stories some of the passengers told, of
men who had gone mad from their torments, and especially of a thief, who
could not be made to confess by the lash, or any threat of death, but
came to terms very suddenly when tied to a tree, where he was exposed,
defenceless, to a swarm of mosquitoes. Some of these men had already been
to the mines, and were returning with supplies from San Francisco. Their
marvellous stories of the increasing abundance of the gold, the great
yield of the gulches on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, and the ease with
which it was attained, elated Mr. Gilman wonderfully. He was in better
humor all through the trip than he had been since leaving New-York, and
talked more to Sam of home. To have listened to him, any one would have
thought he had always been a most loving and considerate husband, and was
now exiled from all that he cared for, a martyr for their sakes; when
the truth was, he had wasted all that belonged to them, and came away
when his wife would willingly have worked twice as hard, rather than have
him and her son exposed to the hardships and temptations they were now
encountering.
The low, foliage-covered banks of the Sacramento looked pleasant, late
as it was in the season, to those who had been so long on ship-board.
Sometimes they had a distant glimpse of the mountainous country they
were approaching, through the glades and openings along the bank.
Then the river spread through the tule-marshes, all overflowed in the
rainy season, but now only beds of rank coarse rushes. The voyage to
Sacramento City, which lasted three days, was on the whole monotonous
and uncomfortable, varied only by a succession of mosquito battles, or
going on shore as the sloop warped slowly through the cut-away, a kind
of canal, made by a turn in the river, which had forced its way through,
instead of winding around a jutting point of land.
Sacramento City, like San Francisco, they found to be a collection of
temporary houses, half the population living in tents, which were pitched
under the old forest trees, so recently standing there in solitude. The
streets were more regularly laid out, and filled with a motley crowd,
the teams of emigrants and miners arriving and departing constantly.
The canvas-covered stores were as busy as if they had been the most
respectable brick warehouses, quick sales and _large_ profits being the
order of the day. The cattle market and auction sales going on in the
open air, called together the oddest looking people Sam had ever seen;
genuine miners, with their faces and hands like leather, their long
beards and careless dress being the most noticeable. It was certainly a
great contrast to the quiet routine of New England village life, more so
even than the narrow, crowded streets of Rio; and Sam sometimes thought
he must be dreaming over Gulliver’s Travels in the great barn chamber.
What had altered him most of any thing since leaving home, was having
no companion his own age. He had lived among men, and listened to their
conversation, until he had almost lost the fresh simplicity of boyhood.
When he first comprehended his father’s faults, it took away his simple
faith, and the care which his mother impressed on him, had changed the
ordinary feeling between father and son. Painfully sensitive to every
weakness in his father’s habits and disposition, he could not bear any
one else to notice them, and never thought for a moment that there was
any less claim on his obedience. Yet the first love and devotion of
his heart was his mother’s. It was the same everywhere; up aloft on
the Swiftsure, watching for a sail, toiling on the hot beach at San
Francisco, or lying in a dream of home, as the sloop glided up the
Sacramento, the thought of his mother brought a glow to his heart, and
often tears to his eyes. She should not be disappointed in him at any
rate, he said to himself, a hundred times, as he remembered the troubled,
anxious look he had seen at times steal over her cheerful face.