THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
On the 4th of July I went over to Columbia, four miles distant from
Sonora, where there were to be great doings, as the latter place had
hardly yet recovered from the effects of the fire, and was still in a
state of transition. So Columbia, which was nearly as large a town, was
to be the place of celebration for all the surrounding country.
Early in the forenoon an immense concourse of people had assembled to
take part in the proceedings, and were employing themselves in the
meantime in drinking success to the American eagle, in the numerous
saloons and bar-rooms. The town was all stars and stripes; they
fluttered over nearly every house, and here and there hung suspended
across the street. The day was celebrated in the usual way, with a
continual discharge of revolvers, and a vast expenditure of powder and
squibs and crackers, together with an unlimited consumption of brandy.
But this was only the overflowing of individual enthusiasm; the regular
program was a procession, a prayer, and an oration.
The procession was headed by about half-a-dozen ladies and a number of
children--the teachers and pupils of a school--who sang hymns at
intervals, when the brass band which accompanied them had blown
themselves out of breath. They were followed by the freemasons, to the
number of a hundred or so, in their aprons and other paraphernalia; and
after them came a company of about the same number of horsemen, the most
irregular cavalry one could imagine. Whoever could get a four-legged
animal to carry him, joined the ranks; and horses, mules, and jackasses
were all mixed up together. Next came the hook and ladder company,
dragging their hooks and ladders after them in regular firemen fashion;
and after them came three or four hundred miners, walking two and two,
and dragging, in like manner, by a long rope, a wheelbarrow, in which
were placed a pick and shovel, a frying-pan, an old coffee-pot, and a
tin cup. They were marshalled by half-a-dozen miners, with long-handled
shovels over their shoulders, and all sorts of ribbons tied round their
old hats to make a show.
Another mob of miners brought up the rear, drawing after them a long tom
on a pair of wheels. In the tom was a lot of “dirt,” which one man
stirred up with his shovel, as if he were washing, while a number of
others alongside were hard at work throwing in imaginary shovelfuls of
dirt.
The idea was pretty good; but to understand the meaning of this gorgeous
pageant, it was necessary to be familiar with mining life. The pick and
shovel in the wheelbarrow were the emblems of the miners’ trade, while
the old pots and pans were intended to signify the very rough style of
his domestic life, particularly of his _cuisine_; and the party of
miners at work around the long tom was a representation of the way in
which the wealth of the country is wrested from it by all who have stout
hearts and willing hands, or stout hands and willing hearts--it amounts
to much the same thing.
The procession paraded the streets for two or three hours, and proceeded
to the bull-ring, where the ceremonies were to be performed. The
bull-ring here was neither so large nor so well got up as the one at
Sonora, but still it could accommodate a very large number of people. As
the miners entered the arena with their wheelbarrow and long tom, they
were immensely cheered by the crowds who had already taken their seats,
the band in the meantime playing “Hail Columbia” most lustily.
The Declaration of Independence was read by a gentleman in a white
neckcloth, and the oration was then delivered by the “orator of the
day,” who was a pale-faced, chubby-cheeked young gentleman, with very
white and extensive shirt-collars. He indulged in a great deal of
buncombe about the Pilgrim Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, the
“Blarney-stone of America,” as the Americans call it. George the Third
and his “red-coated minions” were alluded to in not very flattering
terms; and after having exhausted the past, the orator, in his
enthusiasm, became prophetic of the future. He fancied he saw a distant
vision of a great republic in Ireland, England sunk into insignificance,
and all the rest of it.
The speech was full of American and local phraseology, but the richness
of the brogue was only the more perceptible from the vain attempt to
disguise it. Many of the Americans sitting near me seemed to think that
the orator was piling up the agony a little too high, and signified
their disapprobation by shouting “Gaas, gaas!” My next neighbor, an old
Yankee, informed me that, in his opinion, “them Pilgrim Fathers were no
better than their neighbors; they left England because they could not
have everything their own way, and in America were more intolerant of
other religions than any one had been of theirs in England. I know all
about ’em,” he said, “for I come from right whar they lived.”
In the middle of the arena, during the ceremonies, was a cage containing
a grizzly bear, who had fought and killed a bull by torchlight the night
before. His cage was boarded up, so that he was deprived of the pleasure
of seeing what was going on, but he could hear all that was said, and
expressed his opinion from time to time by grunting and growling most
savagely.
After the oration, the company dispersed to answer the loud summons of
the numerous dinner-bells and gongs, and in the afternoon there was a
bull-fight, which went off with great _éclat_.
It was announced in the bills that the celebrated lady bull-fighter, the
Señorita Ramona Perez, would despatch a bull with the sword. This
celebrated señorita, however, turned out to be only the chief _matador_,
who entered the arena very well got up as a woman, with the slight
exception of a very fine pair of mustaches, which he had not thought it
worth while to sacrifice. He had a fan in his hand, with which he half
concealed his face, as if from modesty, as he curtseyed to the audience,
who received him with shouts of laughter--mixed with hisses and curses,
however, for there were some who had been true believers in the
señorita; but the infidels were the majority, and, thinking it a good
joke, enjoyed it accordingly. The señorita played with the bull for
some little time with the utmost audacity, and with a great deal of
feminine grace, whisking her petticoats in the bull’s face with one
hand, whilst she smoothed down her hair with the other. At last the
sword was handed to her, which she received very gingerly, also a red
flag; and after dodging a few passes from the bull, she put the sword
most gracefully into the back of his neck, and, hardly condescending to
wait to see whether she had killed or not, she dropped both sword and
flag, and ran out of the arena, curtsying, and kissing her hand to the
spectators, after the manner of a ballet-dancer leaving the stage.
It was a pity the fellow had not shaved off his mustache, as otherwise
his acting was so good that one might have deluded oneself with the
belief that it was really the celebrated señorita herself who was
risking her precious life by such a very ladylike performance.
I had heard from many persons of two natural bridges on a small river
called Coyote Creek, some twelve miles off; and as they were represented
as being very curious and beautiful objects, I determined to pay them a
visit. Accordingly, returning to M’Lean’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, at
the point where Coyote Creek joins that river, I traveled up the Creek
for some miles, clambering over rocks and winding round steep
overhanging banks, by a trail so little used that it was hardly
discernible. I was amply repaid for my trouble, however, when, after an
hour or two of hard climbing in the roasting hot sun, I at last reached
the bridges, and found them much more beautiful natural curiosities
than I had imagined them to be.
Having never been able to get any very intelligible account of what they
really were, I had supposed that some large rocks rolling down the
mountain had got jammed over the creek, by the steepness of the rocky
banks on each side, which I fancied would be a very easy mode of
building a natural bridge. My idea, however, was very far from the
reality. In fact, bridges was an inappropriate name; they should rather
have been called caves or tunnels. How they were formed is a question
for geologists; but their appearance gave the idea that there had been a
sort of landslip, which blocked up the bed of the creek for a distance
of two or three hundred feet, and to the height of fifty or sixty above
the bed of the stream. They were about a quarter of a mile apart, and
their surface was, like that of the hills, perfectly smooth, and covered
with grass and flowers. The interiors were somewhat the same style of
place, but the upper one was the larger and more curious of the two. The
faces of the tunnel were perpendicular, presenting an entrance like a
church door, about twelve feet high, surrounded by huge stony
fungus-like excrescences, of a dark purple-and-green color. The waters
of the creek flowed in here, and occupied all the width of the entrance.
They were only a few inches in depth, and gave a perfect reflection of
the whole of the interior, which was a lofty chamber some hundred feet
in length, the straight sides of which met at the top in the form of a
Gothic arch. At the further end was a vista of similarly arched small
passages, branching off into darkness. The walls were deeply carved into
pillars and grotesque forms, in which one could trace all manner of
fanciful resemblances; while at the base of some of the columns were
most symmetrically formed projections, many of which might be taken for
fonts, the top of them being a circular basin containing water. These
projections were of stone, and had the appearance of having congealed
suddenly while in a boiling state. There was a beautiful regularity in
the roughness of their surface, some of the rounded forms being deeply
carved with circular lines, similar to the engine-turning on the back of
a watch, and others being rippled like a shirt of mail, the rippling
getting gradually and regularly finer, till at the top the surface was
hardly more rough than that of a file. The walls and roof seemed to have
been smothered over with some stuff which had hardened into a sort of
cement, presenting a polished surface of a bright cream-color, tinged
here and there with pink and pale-green. The entrance was sufficiently
large to light up the whole place, which, from its general outline, gave
somewhat the idea of a church; for, besides the pillars, with their
flowery ornaments, the Gothic arches and the fonts, there was at one
side, near the entrance, one of these stone excrescences much larger
than the others, which would have passed for a pulpit, overhung as it
was by a projection of a similar nature, spreading out from the wall
several feet above it.
The sides of the arches forming the roof did not quite meet at the top,
but looked like the crests of two immense foaming waves, between which
were seen the extremities of numbers of pendants of a like flowery form.
There was nothing rough or uncertain about the place; every part seemed
as if it were elaborately finished, and in strict harmony with the
whole; and as the rays of the setting sun fell on the water within the
entrance, and reflected a subdued light over the brilliant hues of the
interior, it looked like a gorgeous temple, which no art could improve,
and such as no human imagination could have designed. At the other end
of the tunnel the water emerged from a much smaller cave, which was so
low as not to admit of a man crawling in.
The caves, at each end of the other tunnel, were also very small, though
the architecture was of the same flowery style. The faces of it,
however, were extremely beautiful. To the height of fifty or sixty feet
they presented a succession of irregular overhanging projections,
bulging out like immense mushrooms, of which the prevailing hue was a
delicate pink, with occasional patches of bright green.
In any part of the Old World such a place would be the object of a
pilgrimage; and even where it was, it attracted many visitors, numbers
of whom had, according to the established custom of snobhood,
acknowledged their own insignificance, and had sought a little
immortality for their wretched names by scratching them on a large
smooth surface by the side of the entrance to the cave.
While I was there, an old Yankee miner came to see the place. He paid a
very hurried visit--he had not even time to scratch his initials; but he
was enthusiastic in his admiration of this beautiful object of nature,
which, however, he thought was quite thrown away in such an
out-of-the-way part of creation. It distressed him to think that such a
valuable piece of property could not be turned to any profitable
account. “Now,” said he, “if I had this here thing jist about ten miles
from New York City, I’d show it to the folks at twenty-five cents a
head, and make an everlastin’ pile of money out of it.”