OFF FOR THE MINES
I remained in San Francisco till the worst of the rainy season was over,
when I determined to go and try my luck in the mines; so, leaving my
valuables in charge of a friend in San Francisco, I equipped myself in
my worst suit of old clothes, and, with my blankets slung over my
shoulder, I put myself on board the steamer for Sacramento.
As we did not start till five o’clock in the afternoon, we had not an
opportunity of seeing very much of the scenery on the river. As long as
daylight lasted, we were among smooth grassy hills and valleys, with but
little brushwood, and only here and there a few stunted trees. Some of
the valleys are exceedingly fertile, and all those sufficiently watered
to render them available for cultivation had already been “taken up.”
We soon, however, left the hilly country behind us, and came upon the
vast plains which extend the whole length of California, bounded on one
side by the range of mountains which runs along the coast, and on the
other side by the mountains which constitute the mining districts.
Through these plains flows the Sacramento river, receiving as
tributaries all the rivers flowing down from the mountains on either
side.
The steamer--which was a very fair specimen of the usual style of New
York river-boat--was crowded with passengers and merchandise. There were
not berths for one-half of the people on board; and so, in company with
many others, I lay down and slept very comfortably on the deck of the
saloon till about three o’clock in the morning, when we were awakened by
the noise of letting off the steam on our arrival at Sacramento.
One of not the least striking wonders of California was the number of
these magnificent river steamboats which, even at that early period of
its history, had steamed round Cape Horn from New York, and now, gliding
along the California rivers at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour,
afforded the same rapid and comfortable means of traveling, and
sometimes at as cheap rates, as when they plied between New York and
Albany. Every traveler in the United States has described the river
steamboats; suffice it to say here, that they lost none of their
characteristics in California; and, looking at these long, white,
narrow, two-story houses, floating apparently on nothing, so little of
the hull of the boat appears above water, and showing none of the lines
which, in a ship, convey an idea of buoyancy and power of resistance,
but, on the contrary, suggesting only the idea of how easy it would be
to smash them to pieces--following in imagination these fragile-looking
fabrics over the seventeen thousand miles of stormy ocean over which
they had been brought in safety, one could not help feeling a degree of
admiration and respect for the daring and skill of the men by whom such
perilous undertakings had been accomplished. In preparing these
steamboats for their long voyage to California, the lower story was
strengthened with thick planking, and on the forward part of the deck
was built a strong wedge-shaped screen, to break the force of the waves,
which might otherwise wash the whole house overboard. They crept along
the coast, having to touch at most of the ports on the way for fuel; and
passing through the Straits of Magellan, they escaped to a certain
extent the dangers of Cape Horn, although equal dangers might be
encountered on any part of the voyage.
But besides the question of nautical skill and individual daring, as a
commercial undertaking the sending such steamers round to California was
a very bold speculation. Their value in New York is about a hundred
thousand dollars, and to take them round to San Francisco costs about
thirty thousand more. Insurance is, of course, out of the question (I do
not think 99 per cent. would insure them in this country from Dover to
Calais); so the owners had to play a neck-or-nothing game. Their
enterprise was in most cases duly rewarded. I only know of one
instance--though doubtless others have occurred--in which such vessels
did not get round in safety: it was an old Long Island Sound boat; she
was rotten before ever she left New York, and foundered somewhere about
the Bermudas, all hands on board escaping in the boats.
The profits of the first few steamers which arrived out were of course
enormous; but, after a while, competition was so keen that for some time
cabin fare between San Francisco and Sacramento was only one dollar; a
ridiculously small sum to pay, in any part of the world, for being
carried in such boats two hundred miles in ten hours; but, in
California at that time, the wages of the common deck hands on board
these same boats were about a hundred dollars a-month; and ten dollars
were there, to the generality of men, a sum of much less consequence
than ten shillings are here.
These low fares did not last long, however; the owners of steamers came
to an understanding, and the average rate of fare from San Francisco to
Sacramento was from five to eight dollars. I have only alluded to the
one-dollar fares for the purpose of giving an idea of the competition
which existed in such a business as “steamboating,” which requires a
large capital; and from that it may be imagined what intense rivalry
there was among those engaged in less important lines of business, which
engrossed their whole time and labor, and required the employment of all
the means at their command.
Looking at the map of California, it will be seen that the “mines”
occupy a long strip of mountainous country, which commences many miles
to the eastward of San Francisco, and stretches northward several
hundred miles. The Sacramento river running parallel with the mines, the
San Joaquin joining it from the southward and eastward, and the Feather
river continuing a northward course from the Sacramento--all of them
being navigable--present the natural means of communication between San
Francisco and the “mines.” Accordingly, the city of Sacramento--about
two hundred miles north of San Francisco--sprang up as the depot for all
the middle part of the mines, with roads radiating from it across the
plains to the various settlements in the mountains. In like manner the
city of Marysville, being at the extreme northern point of navigation of
the Feather river, became the starting-place and the depot for the
mining districts in the northern section of the State; and Stockton,
named after Commodore Stockton, of the United States Navy, who had
command of the Pacific squadron during the Mexican war, being situated
at the head of navigation of the San Joaquin, forms the intermediate
station between San Francisco and all the “southern mines.”
Seeing the facilities that California thus presented for inland
navigation, it is not surprising that the Americans, so pre-eminent as
they are in that branch of commercial enterprise, should so soon have
taken advantage of them. But though the prospective profits were great,
still the enormous risk attending the sending of steamboats round the
Horn might have seemed sufficient to deter most men from entering into
such a hazardous speculation. It must be remembered that many of these
river steamboats were despatched from New York, on an ocean voyage of
seventeen thousand miles, to a place of which one-half the world as yet
even doubted the existence, and when people were looking up their
atlases to see in what part of the world California was. The risk of
taking a steamboat of this kind to what was then such an out-of-the-way
part of the world, did not end with her arrival in San Francisco by any
means. The slightest accident to her machinery, which there was at that
time no possibility of repairing in California, or even the extreme
fluctuations in the price of coal, might have rendered her at any moment
so much useless lumber.
In ocean navigation the same adventurous energy was manifest. Hardly had
the news of the discovery of gold in California been received in New
York, when numbers of steamers were despatched, at an expense equal to
one-half their value, to take their place on the Pacific in forming a
line between the United States and San Francisco _via_ Panama; so that
almost from the commencement of the existence of California as a
gold-bearing country, steam-communication was established between New
York and San Francisco, bringing the two places within twenty to
twenty-five days of each other. It is true the mail line had the
advantage of a mail contract from the United States government; but
other lines, without any such fostering influence, ran them close in
competition for public patronage.
The Americans are often accused of boasting--perhaps deservedly so; but
there certainly are many things in the history of California of which
they may justly be proud, having transformed her, as they did so
suddenly, from a wilderness into a country in which most of the luxuries
of life were procurable; and a fair instance of the bold and prompt
spirit of commercial enterprise by which this was accomplished was seen
in the fact that, from the earliest days of her settlement, California
had as good means of both ocean and inland steam-communication as any of
the oldest countries in the world.
Sacramento City is next in size and importance to San Francisco. Many
large commercial houses had there established their headquarters, and
imported direct from the Atlantic States. The river is navigable so far
by vessels of six or eight hundred tons, and in the early days of
California, many ships cleared directly for Sacramento from the
different ports on the Atlantic; but as the course of trade by degrees
found its proper channel, San Francisco became exclusively the emporium
for the whole of California, and even at the time I write of, sea-going
vessels were rarely seen so far in the interior of the country as
Sacramento.
The plains are but very little above the average level of the river, and
a levee had been built all along the front of the city eight or ten feet
high, to save it from inundation by the high waters of the rainy season.
With the exception of a few handsome blocks of brick buildings, the
houses were all of wood, and had an unmistakably Yankee appearance,
being all painted white turned up with green, and covered from top to
bottom with enormous signs.
The streets are wide, perfectly straight, and cross each other at right
angles at equal distances, like the lines of latitude and longitude on a
chart. The street nomenclature is unique--very democratic, inasmuch as
it does not immortalize the names of prominent individuals--and
admirably adapted to such a rectangular city. The streets running
parallel with the river are numbered First, Second, Third Street, and so
on to infinity, and the cross streets are designated by the letters of
the alphabet. J Street was the great central street, and was nearly a
mile long; so the reader may reckon the number of parallel streets on
each side of it, and get an idea of the extent of the city. This system
of lettering and numbering the streets was very convenient, as, the
latitude and longitude of a house being given, it could be found at
once. A stranger could navigate all over the town without ever having
to ask his way, as he could take an observation for himself at the
corner of every street.
My stay in Sacramento on this occasion was limited to a few hours. I
went to a large hotel, which was also the great staging-house, and here
I snoozed till about five o’clock, when, it being still quite dark, the
whole house woke up into active life. About a hundred of us breakfasted
by candlelight, and, going out into the bar-room while day was just
dawning, we found, turned out in front of the hotel, about
four-and-twenty four-horse coaches, all bound for different places in
the mines. The street was completely blocked up with them, and crowds of
men were taking their seats, while others were fortifying themselves for
their journey at the bar.
The coaches were of various kinds. Some were light spring-wagons--mere
oblong boxes, with four or five seats placed across them; others were of
the same build, but better finished, and covered by an awning; and there
were also numbers of regular American stage-coaches, huge high-hung
things which carry nine inside upon three seats, the middle one of which
is between the two doors.
The place which I had intended should be the scene of my first mining
exploits, was a village rejoicing in the suggestive appellation of
Hangtown; designated, however, in official documents as Placerville. It
received its name of Hangtown while yet in its infancy from the number
of malefactors who had there expiated their crimes at the hands of Judge
Lynch. I soon found the stage for that place--it happened to be one of
the oblong boxes--and, pitching in my roll of blankets, I took my seat
and lighted my pipe that I might the more fully enjoy the scene around
me. And a scene it was, such as few parts of the world can now show, and
which would have gladdened the hearts of those who mourn over the
degeneracy of the present age, and sigh for the good old days of
stage-coaches.
Here, certainly, the genuine old mail-coach, the guard with his tin
horn, and the jolly old coachman with his red face, were not to be
found; but the horses were as good as ever galloped with Her Majesty’s
mail. The teams were all headed the same way, and with their stages,
four or five abreast, occupied the whole of the wide street for a
distance of sixty or seventy yards. The horses were restive, and pawing,
and snorting, and kicking; and passengers were trying to navigate to
their proper stages through the labyrinth of wheels and horses, and
frequently climbing over half-a-dozen wagons to shorten their journey.
Grooms were standing at the leaders’ heads, trying to keep them quiet,
and the drivers were sitting on their boxes, or seats rather, for they
scorn a high seat, and were swearing at each other in a very shocking
manner, as wheels got locked, and wagons were backed into the teams
behind them, to the discomfiture of the passengers on the back-seats,
who found horses’ heads knocking the pipes out of their mouths. In the
intervals of their little private battles, the drivers were shouting to
the crowds of passengers who loitered about the front of the hotel; for
there, as elsewhere, people will wait till the last moment; and though
it is more comfortable to sit than to stand, men like to enjoy their
freedom as long as possible, before resigning all control over their
motions, and charging with their precious persons a coach or a train, on
full cock, and ready to go off, and shoot them out upon some remote part
of creation.
On each wagon was painted the name of the place to which it ran; the
drivers were also bellowing it out to the crowd, and even among such a
confusion of coaches a man could have no difficulty in finding the one
he wanted. One would have thought that the individual will and
locomotive power of a man would have been sufficient to start him on his
journey; but in this go-ahead country, people who had to go were not
allowed to remain inert till the spirit moved them to go; they had to be
“hurried up;” and of the whole crowd of men who were standing about the
hotel, or struggling through the maze of wagons, only one half were
passengers, the rest were “runners” for the various stages, who were
exhausting all their persuasive eloquence in entreating the passengers
to take their seats and go. They were all mixed up with the crowd, and
each was exerting his lungs to the utmost. “Now then, gentlemen,” shouts
one of them, “all aboard for Nevada City. Who’s agoin’? only three seats
left--the last chance to-day for Nevada City--take you there in five
hours. Who’s there for Nevada City?” Then catching sight of some man who
betrays the very slightest appearance of helplessness, or of not knowing
what he is about, he pounces upon him, saying, “Nevada City, sir?--this
way--just in time,” and seizing him by the arm, he drags him into the
crowd of stages, and almost has him bundled into that for Nevada City
before the poor devil can make it understood that it is Caloma he wants
to go to, and not Nevada City. His captor then calls out to some one of
his brother runners who is collecting passengers for Caloma--“Oh
Bill!--oh Bill! where the ---- are you?” “Hullo!” says Bill from the
other end of the crowd. “Here’s a man for Caloma!” shouts the other,
still holding on to his prize in case he should escape before Bill comes
up to take charge of him.
This sort of thing was going on all the time. It was very ridiculous.
Apparently, if a hundred men wanted to go anywhere, it required a
hundred more to despatch them. There was certainly no danger of any one
being left behind; on the contrary, the probability was, that any
weak-minded man who happened to be passing by, would be shipped off to
parts unknown before he could collect his ideas.
There were few opposition stages, excepting for Marysville, and one or
two of the larger places; they were all crammed full--and of what use
these “runners” or “tooters” were to anybody, was not very apparent, at
least to the uninitiated. But they are a common institution with the
Americans, who are not very likely to support such a corps of men if
their services bring no return. In fact, it is merely part of the
American system of advertising, and forcing the public to avail
themselves of certain opportunities, by repeatedly and pertinaciously
representing to them that they have it in their power to do so. In the
States, to blow your own horn, and to make as much noise as possible
with it, is the fundamental principle of all business. The most eminent
lawyers and doctors advertise, and the names of the first merchants
appear in the newspapers every day. A man’s own personal exertions are
not sufficient to keep the world aware of his existence, and without
advertising he would be to all intents and purposes dead. Modest merit
does not wait for its reward--it is rather too smart for that--it
clamors for it, and consequently gets it all the sooner.
However, I was not thinking of this while sitting on the Hangtown stage.
I had too much to look at, and some of my neighbors also took up my
attention. I found seated around me a varied assortment of human nature.
A New Yorker, a Yankee, and an English Jack-tar were my immediate
neighbors, and a general conversation helped to beguile the time till
the “runners” had succeeded in placing a passenger upon every available
spot of every wagon. There was no trouble about luggage--that is an
article not much known in California. Some stray individuals might have
had a small carpet-bag--almost every man had his blankets--and the
western men were further encumbered with their long rifles, the barrels
poking into everybody’s eyes, and the butts in the way of everybody’s
toes.
At last the solid mass of four-horse coaches began to dissolve. The
drivers gathered up their reins and settled themselves down in their
seats, cracked their whips, and swore at their horses; the grooms
cleared out the best way they could; the passengers shouted and
hurrahed; the teams in front set off at a gallop; the rest followed them
as soon as they got room to start, and chevied them up the street, all
in a body, for about half a mile, when, as soon as we got out of town,
we spread out in all directions to every point of a semicircle, and in
a few minutes I found myself one of a small isolated community, with
which four splendid horses were galloping over the plains like mad. No
hedges, no ditches, no houses, no road in fact--it was all a vast open
plain, as smooth as a calm ocean. We might have been steering by
compass, and it was like going to sea; for we emerged from the city as
from a landlocked harbor, and followed our own course over the wide wide
world. The transition from the confinement of the city to the vastness
of space was instantaneous; and our late neighbors, rapidly diminishing
around us, and getting hull down on the horizon, might have been bound
for the uttermost parts of the earth, for all we could see that was to
stop them.
To sit behind four horses tearing along a good road is delightful at any
time, but the mere fact of such rapid locomotion formed only a small
part of the pleasure of our journey.
The atmosphere was so soft and balmy that it was a positive enjoyment to
feel it brushing over one’s face like the finest floss silk. The sky was
clear and cloudless, the bright sunshine warmed us up to a comfortable
temperature; and we were traveling over such an expanse of nature that
our progress, rapid as it was, seemed hardly perceptible, unless
measured by the fast disappearing chimney tops of the city, or by the
occasional clumps of trees we left behind us. The scene all round us was
magnificent, and impressed one as much with his own insignificance as
though he beheld the countries of the earth from the summit of a high
mountain.
Out of sight of land at sea one experiences a certain feeling of
isolation: there is nothing to connect one’s ideas with the habitable
globe but the ship on which one stands; but there is also nothing to
carry the imagination beyond what one does see, and the view is limited
to a few miles. But here, we were upon an ocean of grass-covered earth,
dotted with trees, and sparkling in the sunshine with the gorgeous hues
of the dense patches of wild flowers; while far beyond the horizon of
the plains there rose mountains beyond mountains, all so distinctly seen
as to leave no uncertainty as to the shape or the relative position of
any one of them, and fading away in regular graduation till the most
distant, though clearly defined, seemed still to be the most natural and
satisfactory point at which the view should terminate. It was as if the
circumference of the earth had been lifted up to the utmost range of
vision, and there melted into air.
Such was the view ahead of us as we traveled towards the mines, where
wavy outlines of mountains appeared one above another, drawing together
as they vanished, and at last indenting the sky with the snowy peaks of
the Sierra Nevada. On either side of us the mountains, appearing above
the horizon, were hundreds of miles distant, and the view behind us was
more abruptly terminated by the Coast Range, which lies between the
Sacramento river and the Pacific.
It was the commencement of spring, and at that season the plains are
seen to advantage. But after a few weeks of dry weather the hot sun
burns up every blade of vegetation, the ground presents a cracked
surface of hard-baked earth, and the roads are ankle-deep in the finest
and most penetrating kind of dust, which rises in clouds like clouds of
smoke, saturating one’s clothes, and impregnating one’s whole system.
We made a straight course of it across the plains for about thirty
miles, changing horses occasionally at some of the numerous wayside
inns, and passing numbers of wagons drawn by teams of six or eight mules
or oxen, and laden with supplies for the mines.
The ascent from the plains was very gradual, over a hilly country, well
wooded with oaks and pines. Our pace here was not so killing as it had
been. We had frequently long hills to climb, where all hands were
obliged to get out and walk; but we made up for the delay by galloping
down the descent on the other side.
The road, which, though in some places very narrow, for the most part
spread out to two or three times the width of an ordinary road, was
covered with stumps and large rocks; it was full of deep ruts and
hollows, and roots of trees spread all over it.
To any one not used to such roads or to such driving, an upset would
have seemed inevitable. If there was safety in speed, however, we were
safe enough, and all sense of danger was lost in admiration of the
coolness and dexterity of the driver as he circumvented every obstacle,
but without going one inch farther than necessary out of his way to save
us from perdition. He went through extraordinary bodily contortions,
which would have shocked an English coachman out of his propriety; but,
at the same time, he performed such feats as no one would have dared to
attempt who had never been used to anything worse than an English road.
With his right foot he managed a brake, and, clawing at the reins with
both hands, he swayed his body from side to side to preserve his
equilibrium, as now on the right pair of wheels, now on the left, he cut
the “outside edge” round a stump or a rock; and when coming to a spot
where he was going to execute a difficult maneuver on a piece of road
which slanted violently down to one side, he trimmed the wagon as one
would a small boat in a squall, and made us all crowd up to the weather
side to prevent a capsize.
When about ten miles from the plains, I first saw the actual reality of
gold-digging. Four or five men were working in a ravine by the roadside,
digging holes like so many grave-diggers. I then considered myself
fairly in “the mines,” and experienced a disagreeable consciousness that
we might be passing over huge masses of gold, only concealed from us by
an inch or two of earth.
As we traveled onwards, we passed at intervals numerous parties of
miners, and the country assumed a more inhabited appearance. Log-cabins
and clapboard shanties were to be seen among the trees; and occasionally
we found about a dozen of such houses grouped together by the roadside,
and dignified with the name of a town.
For several miles again the country would seem to have been deserted.
That it had once been a busy scene was evident from the uptorn earth in
the ravines and hollows, and from the numbers of unoccupied cabins; but
the cream of such diggings had already been taken, and they were not now
sufficiently rich to suit the ambitious ideas of the miners.
After traveling about thirty miles over this mountainous region,
ascending gradually all the while, we arrived at Hangtown in the
afternoon, having accomplished the sixty miles from Sacramento city in
about eight hours.