It was in the first flush of the Californian fever, when moderate
people talked of making one's fortune in a fortnight, and the more
sanguine believed that golden pokers would soon become rather common,
that the _Betsy Jones_ from London to New Zealand, with myself on
board as a passenger, dropped anchor in the bay of San Francisco, and
master and man turned out for the diggings. It is my impression that
not a soul remained on board but the surgeon, who was sick, and the
negro cook, who wouldn't leave him; and the first man I met on the
deck of the _Go-Ahead_ steamer, which took as up to Sacramento, was
our enterprising captain, clad in a canvas jacket and trousers, with
the gold-washing apparatus, two shirts, and a tin kettle, slung at his
back. The crew followed his example, and all the passengers. The
latter were some thirty men, from every corner of Britain, and of
various birth and breeding. There were industrious farm-servants and
spendthrift sons of gentlemen among them. Some had sailed with money,
to purchase land in the southern colony, some were provided only with
their hopes and sinews; but California was an irresistible temptation
to them all, and by general desire, they had come to try their luck at
the washing. We had mere boys and men of grizzling hair in our
company. Two were married, but they wisely left their wives in San
Francisco, where, having brought with them some spare blankets and
crockery, the ladies improvised a boarding-house, and I believe
realised more than their wandering lords. Nevertheless, we, one and
all, went up the broad river with loftier expectations than the
prudent among us cared to make public.
There was one who made no secret of his hopes. The man's name was Bill
Williams. I had had a loose acquaintance with Bill from school-time,
for we had been brought up in the same good town of Manchester, where
his father was a respectable tradesman, and his three brothers were
still in business. Many a town and many a trade had Bill tried to
little purpose. Never doing what his relatives could call well, he had
gone through a series of failures, which tired out both kinsmen and
creditors, and at length shipped for New Zealand, leaving a wife and
seven children to the care of the said three brothers, till he should
see how the climate agreed with him, and find a home for them. Bill
did not belong to the extended fraternity of scapegraces. He was
neither wild nor worthless, in the ordinary sense of those terms, but
there was a faith in him, the origin of which baffled his most
penetrating friends, that he was to get money somehow without working
for it by any of the common methods. Unlike many a professor of better
principles, Bill had carried that faith into practice. Under its
influence, he had engaged in every scheme for making fortunes with
incredible rapidity which coffee-house acquaintances or advertising
sheets brought to his knowledge. There was not a banking bubble by
which he had not lost, nor a mining company of vast promise and brief
existence in which he had not held shares. Uncompromisingly averse to
the jog-trot work of ordinary mortals. Bill was neither indolent nor
timid in his own peculiar fashion of seeking riches. He would have
gone up in a balloon to any height, or down in a diving-bell to depths
yet unsounded, had the promise been large enough; and there was
something so suitable to his inclinations in the Californian reports,
that he was the prime mover of our visit to San Francisco, and the
entire desertion of the ship. Strange to say, every man on board
believed in Bill; from the captain to the cabin-boy, they had all
listened to his tales. Where he had learned such a number, fortune
knows, concerning found treasures, and wealth suddenly obtained by
unexpected and rather impracticable ways. That was the whole circle of
Bill's literature, and going over it appeared his chief joy; but the
gem of the collection was a prophecy which a gipsy woman, whom his
mother met once in a country excursion, had uttered concerning
himself--that he should find riches he never wrought for, and leave a
great fortune behind him. In the faith of that prediction Bill had
lived; and it was a curious illustration of the sympathetic force
inherent in a firm belief, that both passengers and seamen, even those
who affected to laugh at the rest of what they called his wonderful
yarns, entertained a secret conviction in favour of that tale, and
felt secure of gold-gathering in Bill's company.
I am not certain that my own mind was entirely clear of a similar
impression, but the two among us who contemned loudest and believed
most devoutly, were the captain and his mate. They were brothers, and
of Jewish parentage; the rest of the family still hang about an
old-clothes and dyeing establishment in the neighbourhood of
Houndsditch. I made that discovery by an accidental glance at a torn
and mislaid letter before we left the Thames, and thought proper to
reserve it for private meditation. The relationship of the two was
kept a profound secret, for reasons best known to themselves; but to
the eye at least it was revealed by their striking resemblance, both
being small, spare, dingy-complexioned men, with keen, cunning eyes,
and faces that looked as hard and sharp as steel. Ever since they
first heard of the prophecy, they had half ridiculed, half flattered,
and kept remarkably familiar with Bill. That familiarity rather
increased as we went up the Sacramento. A goodly number we made on the
deck of the _Go-Ahead_, our only place of accommodation; and at length
we reached the new town, the golden city, which takes its name from
the river, christened in old times of Spanish voyaging by some
discoverer for his Catholic majesty, and which was to be the
metropolis of the diggings. When I first saw it, it consisted of some
hundred huts and tents, a large frame-house, in which an advertising
board informed us there was an ordinary, a gaming-table, and all
manner of spirits; and a timber wharf, somewhat temporarily put
together, at which we landed. Yet the city was rising, as cities rise
only in the western hemisphere: broad streets and squares were marked
out; building was going forward on all sides; while bullock-wagons,
canoes, and steamers, brought materials by land and water. The
enterprise and vagrancy of all nations were there, as we had seen them
at San Francisco; and those not engaged in building the town, were
going off in caravans to the gold-gathering.
We fraternised with a company of Americans, who said they knew 'a
bluff that flogged creation for the real metal,' and sold us two spare
tents and a wagon, at a price marvellous to ask or pay. Our journey
was not far. It led along the course of the Sacramento, and towards
evening we came in sight of the diggings. A strange sight it was for
one accustomed to London streets and shops. The Sacramento runs
through a great inclined plane, sloping from the hill-country to the
sea. Here and there, it is covered with low coppice or underwood; but
the greater part is bare and sandy, or sprinkled over with thin, dry
waving grass. As far as the eye could reach upon the plain, and up the
river-banks, the smoke of fires was rising from hut, tent, and
upturned wagon, which served for temporary dwellings. Groups of men
were hard at work in small trenches, and numbers more stood with pan
and cradle, washing out the gold in the shallow creeks of the river.
'Our location,' as the Americans called it, was an earthy promontory
jutting far out into the water. Close by its landward base we pitched
our tents, turned up our wagon--the bullocks that brought it belonged
to the Americans, who promised to sell us a share when they were
killed--and commenced operations. Digging out tenacious clay, and
washing its sandy particles for minute grains of gold, sleeping under
canvas at night, and living on half-cooked and not very choice
provisions, have little in them of interest worth relating. The first
thing that struck me, was the silence that prevailed among the
workers. In a district so populous, scarcely a sound was heard from
tent, trench, or river. Caravan after caravan, as it arrived, pitched
its tents, and fell to work in the same quiet fashion. A cynical
character might have attributed this to the absence of all feminine
faces, for in my time there was not a woman at the diggings.
Incredible as it may seem to the fair ones themselves, they were not
missed; but nobody missed anything except gold. Relations parted; old
comrades left each other with scarcely a leave--taking in search of
better gatherings; our American friends began to get tired of the
bluff that flogged creation; for although we were getting gold, it was
but little, and the more impatient spirits of our company departed
with them to find another.
I wondered that Bill did not join their company. He was long ago weary
of gold-washing; the work was too regular, and the returns far too
slow for him. He used to declare that shopkeeping was better; and it
is probable that most of us had similar convictions regarding the
vocations we had left in Britain; but except occasionally cooking for
the rest, smoking the tobacco he had providently brought with him, and
suggesting wild projects of digging down the bluff, and dredging the
river for lamps of gold, which, he said, all the grains we found came
off, Bill at last did nothing at all. With hard labour and harder
fare, we had collected some of us more and some less of the precious
dust; but nobody's fortune was yet made, and the rainy season set in.
The heavy rains confined us for days to the shelter of tent and wagon;
but the days were nothing to the nights, which on the banks of the
Sacramento are almost equinoctial throughout the year; and we had
neither coal nor candle. All the fuel that could be found was rather
too little for culinary purposes. Concerning the rest of our comforts,
there is no use in being particular; but at intervals between the
drowning showers, we were willing enough to come out and work, though
the muddy soil and the swollen river made our labour still harder, and
our profits less. The best service was done us by an honest Paisley
weaver, who had left his helpmate and two children at San Francisco,
in hopes of taking back, quite full, a strong chest, of some two
hundredweight capacity, which he had brought with infinite pains to
the diggings. He enlivened our wet leisure by repeating whole volumes
of Burns and Scott. Bill also returned to his wonderful stories,
though the captain and mate sneered at them more than ever; indeed,
they were by far the most discontented of the company, and an
unaccountable sort of distrust seemed growing between them and Bill.
At length, fever and ague began to thin the ranks of the gold-seekers;
we saw the working-parties around us diminish day by day, and graves
dug in the shadows of the low coppice. Our company kept lip amazingly,
perhaps because, according to the captain's counsel, we held but
little communication with other workers; but the want of the
buffalo-meat, which the Indian traders were accustomed to bring, was
much felt among us; and one day less rainy than usual, Bill Williams,
as the idlest, was sent up the river's bank, on their wonted track, to
look out for their coming. The rest were busy, and did not miss him;
but I thought he stayed long. The sky became unusually dark; great
clouds floated over us from the west, and then broke with a sudden
thunder-crash, which was renewed every five minutes with such rain and
lightning as I had never seen. We ran to our tents, and, when fairly
sheltered, Bill also arrived, wet to the skin, out of breath, and
looking terribly frightened. He said, hastily, that he had seen
nothing, and no word of the Indians; but the poor fellow began to
shiver as he spoke, and before evening the fever was strong upon him.
To keep the rest safe, he was quartered alone in a small hut which the
Americans had left us. It was a poor shelter, being built of turf, and
roofed with boughs and grass, but as good as any we had. There was no
surgeon among us, and handing him food or drink was deemed a perilous
business; but all his comrades had a sort of a liking for Bill, and,
besides, he was regarded as the palladium of the party. The fever was
not violent, though Bill raved at times, and all his wanderings were
after gold. I have heard him talk for half-hours together in a loud
whisper, as if communicating a secret to some very dull car,
concerning a pool among rocks, with glistening sands, and something
shining far down in a crevice. He was restless, too, and kept looking
out on the track of the Indians after they had come and gone. One
evening I observed him particularly so. The night fell with heavy
rain; we all took early to shelter, and slept so soundly, that Bill
was forgotten among us; but in the morning we found him lying wrapped
in his blanket, as thoroughly wet as if he had been dipped in the
river, while the hut remained quite dry. Where he had been, or under
what illusion of the fever, we could not learn, for he never spoke a
rational word after. The wet and exposure increased his malady
tenfold. He became fiercely delirious, and struck at whoever
approached him, swearing he would let nobody kill him for his gold.
The captain warned us all, that this was the most dangerous time for
infection; but I saw that he and his brother had got wind of
something, for their eyes were never off the hut.
Towards the second evening, Bill grew worse, his ravings became faint
and low, and he lay gathered up on a corner of his mattress. I had
placed a pitcher of water as near him as possible, escaping by chance
a blow which the poor soul struck at me in his feverish fury; but I
could not help thinking of him when we had all gone to rest. The night
was so still, that I could hear the rush of the river and the cries of
the night-hawks on its opposite bank; but being unable to sleep, I
crept out of the tent, and looked to Bill's hut. A smothered sound of
scuffling came from that direction, and stepping nearer, I saw by the
rising moon, which just then shone with extraordinary brightness, two
men struggling, as it seemed for life, in the narrow space between
Bill's bed and the door.
'If you don't give me the full half, I'll tell them all,' said the
voice of the captain's brother; but almost as he spoke, his antagonist
threw him heavily back. I knew it was upon poor Williams, for a low
moan reached my ear, and I sprang forward just in time to intercept
the victor, who stumbled over me as he rushed out, and a heavy bag
rolled from him. The next moment the other was at my side, and I stood
face to face with the captain and his brother in the broad moonlight.
The bag for which they had sneaked, and sinned, and scuffled, had
burst by the fall, and its contents--stones, gravel, and sand, with
some small sparkles of gold-dust amongst them--were scattered at my
feet. Both stood stupefied, and I stepped into the hut; but Bill was
dead, and growing cold, with his stiff hands stretched out, as if
clutching at something, and a wild expression of pain and anger in the
ghastly face, which lay turned up to the moon. Her light filled the
hut, and lay upon plain, and tent, and river. It was a glorious night,
such as sometimes shines in the gold-country. I woke up my comrades,
and told them what I had seen, but they all said: 'Poor Bill! How
could they help it? and it was a good thing that the captain and his
chum had been disappointed;' upon which every man composed himself
again to sleep.
Next morning, the captain and mate were gone with all their traps,
having joined, as we afterwards heard, a company returning to San
Francisco. We laid Bill beside the gold-seekers who rested in the
coppice, and our company broke up, and scattered away: some settled at
San Francisco; some went to the United States; and I, having collected
through so many hardships almost a pound of dust, returned to the
employment I had left in London with such high contempt. From an old
comrade, however, still located at the diggings, I heard by letter
that a party of Americans had made a great discovery of gold among
some rocks in a creek of the Sacramento, and that they had found,
sticking fast in a crevice close by, a small spade marked with the
name of Bill Williams, which the poor fellow had cut on the handle, as
I well remembered, in one of his many idle hours. This explained to me
Bill's long absence when he went to look for the Indians, his
after-anxiety, and where he had been in the delirium of the fever,
filling up that canvas bag which so fatally deceived the captain and
his brother. The last I heard of these worthies was, that they had
gone to the diggings in Australia; and I never see gold in any shape
without a recollection of their disappointment, and my own experiences
in California.