THE PLAINS.
Sam did wish Ben could have seen them, as they started across the plains
in the wake of the team on which their cooking and mining utensils were
carried. Several of the sloop’s passengers had joined the party, so
that the wagon was heavily loaded, and the oxen toiled patiently along.
Before them stretched an endless reach of level country, the road winding
through it past clumps of oaks, that dotted the plain like islands, for
miles and miles, with scarcely a shrub or rock to break the uniformity.
The only danger to be dreaded was a scarcity of food for the oxen, and
water for themselves. The springs and wayside pools had all disappeared
in the heat of the dry season, and every person carried their bottle of
water, as carefully as if it had been some costly luxury. If water had
been the only liquid that the party carried, it would perhaps have been
better for many of them, Mr. Gilman included.
The afternoon shadows were stretching from the tents pitched on the
outskirts of Sacramento, when they left it, and the first stage of their
journey lengthened to midnight. The owner of the oxen, a fortune in
themselves at this time, took good care to guide them to a spring, and
here they halted for the night. The cattle were turned loose to graze,
fires were built of dry twigs and branches, kettles boiled, and beef
hissed in the frying-pan. Sam was installed the cook for their party. His
father stretched himself on the grass as soon as possible, and Colcord
knew very little about the matter. It was no hardship to the young cook,
who watched the rest of the party, and practised on his recollections of
the galley of the Swiftsure. Never had beef or coffee tasted like that to
him, though he was no more remarkable for a bad appetite than most boys
of his age, at any time. He was so delighted with his success, that he
thought it was useless to try to go to sleep. And so it was. He found it
the very easiest thing in the world, once rolled in his blanket, watching
the moonlight flicker through the leaves on the queer figures stretched
around him.
Long before daylight the little camp was again in motion, the remnants of
the last night’s supper made them a hurried meal, the kettles were slung
to the wagon, the oxen driven in and harnessed, the water bottles filled,
and they were miles on their journey when the sun rose. This early start
was to avoid the great heat of the unsheltered road at mid-day, and
halting as before, at a clump of low scrub oaks, they lolled around in
what shade they could find, cooked their dinners, and waited until almost
nightfall to recommence their journey.
The fourth day they were not so successful in finding water. They were
later in starting, as the cattle had strayed some distance, and the
sun came out hot and red. Neither the men nor animals were fresh, the
loose gravelly ridges of the road impeded them, and their flasks were
all empty, from the lengthened merry-making of the night before. The
straggling party dragged slowly along, their steps impeded by as little
clothing as it was possible to wear. The patient oxen lolled their
parched tongues, and the jokes and snatches of negro melodies, with which
the men beguiled the time, died away in an ominous quiet. They had not
breath to waste even in complaining. It was almost noon when they came
to a shallow stagnant pool, mantling with green mould, and the driver
tried in vain to make them pass it without halting. He expected to find
a spring by digging in the dry hollows, through which the road sometimes
ran; but they would not listen to him in their frantic thirst. Some
of the party threw themselves on the ground, and drank where the oxen
themselves turned away, and then sickened of the nauseous draught. Others
tried in vain to conquer their disgust, and but moistened their parched
lips.
Poor Sam, the bravest of them all, had never imagined such suffering. His
feet seemed like bars of iron as he tried to keep in the sandy road, and
his head grew dizzy, while his mind wandered to the old well at home,
the ice-cold water brimming and dripping over the bucket, as he raised
it to his lips. Then he seemed to hear the plash of the fountains at
Rio, mocking him,—the recollection of the scanty allowance, warm and
unpalatable as it then seemed, served out to them at sea, was delicious.
He thought he must die as travellers in the great deserts had done,
and he tried to pray, but his mind wandered again to the old well, to
the mill pond, with its shadow of alder bushes, and sweet flags. Could
it be possible that he had ever wasted water so—that it had ever been
plentiful enough to bathe in, to float about, laving his limbs with its
cool ripple. Then he looked around again to try and remember where he
was, and saw the dreary plain, the short fringe of grass withered to dust
beneath his feet, and the first belt of timber where they could hope for
shade, miles beyond, the furnace glow of the plain cutting off all hope
of reaching it alive. He would have laid down there, and died, or gone
raging mad, as men have done from thirst, had not his father sunk with
fatigue and fever, resisting the entreaties of his companions. It roused
him for a moment to forgetfulness of his own agony. He urged and prayed,
and entreated his father to struggle on a little longer, with no answer
but moans of suffering. He could not leave him to die by the road-side.
But they must both perish, if he staid there longer; the train, slowly as
it moved, was far ahead of them. He lost sight of their guide descending
in a dry ravine. Why did they stop there so long? they could not all have
despaired; the last straggler hurried forward—he thought he heard a faint
shout—a cry of joy! He left his father alone on the hot sand; he ran, he
struggled on, as in some horrid dream, feeling that every step must be
the last, that he should never, never reach the train. All consciousness
of action left him,—but they saw him, they came towards him, some less
selfish, less delirious than the rest; and as he staggered and fell, a
kind hand held water to his lips, and dashed it on his face. In that
first gasp of returning strength, he only thought that his father’s life
was saved. What was gold—mines of gold—mountains of gold, to that one
precious draught, that most common of all God’s blessings, water!
No one thought of food for hours after. A sleep, almost like lethargy,
followed the intense thirst and exhaustion, and then as night came, they
woke to drink and sleep again. They scarcely noticed the long unbroken
outline of the Sierra rising before them, the first wooded slope of the
highlands being almost gained. For once they forgot even their thirst for
gold.
The next evening’s travel was delightful, after they had entered the
scattered wood at the bottom of the hills, although the path was rough
and uneven. The stir of foliage overhead was pleasant, and rocks and
falling trees, though they made the way more difficult, were something
to rest the eye after the unbroken sameness of the plains. Sam could
scarcely realize their late danger, encamped for the night near a small
but clear and sparkling lake one of the party had discovered among the
hills. The camp fires streamed up, the coffee bubbled and steamed over
the glowing coals, they ate and drank and sang, and speculated over the
sums they expected to make, with reckless unconcern, though only the day
before they would have given all but life for a cup of cold water! Most
of them had met with too many perils and hairbreadth escapes, to give
one thought to any thing that was fairly over with, however frightful
or disagreeable it might be at the time, and they were within one day’s
journey of the waters of the Yuba—and boundless wealth. At least it was
theirs in anticipation, though many of them were never to have it in
reality.
It was almost as thrilling as the first cry of “land!” when Sam reached
the summit of the mountain ridge, and looked down upon the camp of the
miners on Larkin’s Bar.
Here he was,—the same good-hearted daring boy, that a year ago had
considered a ducking in the mill-pond, or climbing Prospect Mountain, an
adventure,—in the very heart of a California range, thinking as eagerly
of gold hunting, as the party of bearded, travel-worn men around him. His
brown sunburnt face, neglected hair, and careless dress, would have drawn
a crowd in Yankee-land, but here it was the costume of the country. He
stood on the very highest spur of the hill, looking back with a wave of
the tin cup in his hand to cheer on less active climbers, and then down
into the ravine, through which the shrunken stream brawled and foamed, as
if fretted at the many intruders that were tearing up its banks.
Sam had heard them talk of bars, and knew they were going to one, but he
had always supposed it was like the bar at the entrance of a river or
harbor. To his great wonder, it was only the bed of the river, laid bare
by the water subsiding in the dry season, into a narrow, rocky channel.
As the particles of gold were washed down from the mountains, they were
deposited on these bars, beneath the loose, gravelly soil, or in the
fissures of the rocks. The miners’ camp was beneath the high bluff on
which he stood. A few small tents, a rough canvas-covered shed, dignified
into a store,—some benches and a table, at which meals were served to
those who could afford the luxury of having their cooking done for them,
and groups of cooking utensils at intervals marking the place where less
opulent individuals “did their own work,” and slept in their blankets,
was all that made Larkin’s Bar a habitable place.
It was nearly sundown when they reached it, and most of the miners had
finished a week’s hard toil, and were collecting or calculating their
gains. The only curiosity they showed in receiving the new comers, was
for news from the States, and when a mail was expected; but they were
very good-natured in giving them all the information they wanted.
Mr. Gilman was not at all pleased with his first discovery. All the
bar had been claimed, or bought of the original discoverers, and the
privilege of working it was to be paid for, accordingly. The smallest
claim, as the water lots were called, could not be had under three
hundred dollars. Mr. Gilman was for resisting any such injustice, and Sam
did not like the idea of working two or three weeks for other people,
when they might as well be helping themselves. It was found the best and
only thing they could do in the end, as all the bars in the neighborhood
were occupied, and they would lose more time in going on to the Feather
River; it might be only to find the same thing there.
There was some comfort in hearing that nearly every one who arrived hired
themselves out for a few days, to learn how to handle their tools; but
the commencement of Mr. Gilman’s schemes of independence, was to find
himself using a spade and pickaxe as a day-laborer.