The Author and his friends leave Sutter's Fort
Tents in the bottom
A caravan in motion
Green hills and valleys
Indian villages
Californian pack-Horses
A sailor on horseback
Lunch at noon
A troublesome beast
Sierra Nevada
First view of the lower mines
How the gold is dug and washed
The "cradle"
The diggers and their stock of gold
A store in course of construction
The tent is pitched
The golden itch
First attempts at gold-finding
A hole in the saucepan
Sound asleep.
_Sunday, June 4th_.--The morning we left the Fort the scene was one of
great excitement. Down in the bottom some twenty tents were pitched,
outside which big fires were smoking; and, while breakfast was being
prepared, the men of each company were busily engaged in saddling their
horses and arranging their baggage; several wagons and teams were
already in motion, following the road along the windings of the river.
The tents were soon all struck, the smoke from the fires was dying
away, and a perfect caravan was moving along in the direction of the
now no longer ridiculed El Dorado.
We pushed along, as may be believed, with the utmost impatience,
conjuring up the most flattering visions of our probable success as
gold-hunters. The track lay through a spacious grassy valley, with the
Americanos River winding along it, on our left hand. At first, the
stream was nearly two miles distant from the track of our caravan, but
as we advanced we approached its banks more nearly. The country was
pleasant, consisting of a succession of small hills and valleys,
diversified here and there by groves of tall oak trees. We passed
several wretched Indian villages--clusters of filthy smoky hovels, and
now and then caught sight of the river and the line of oak trees which
bordered it. We managed tolerably well with our horses, but it requires
great experience to be able to fasten securely the loads of provisions
and stores which they carry on their backs. Flour, of course, formed
the principal article of our commissariat. This was packed up in sacks,
which were again enclosed in long pockets, made of hides, and called
"parfleshes," the use of which is to defend the canvas of the sacking
from being torn by branches of fern and underwood. The sacks we secured
on strong pack-saddles, between which and the back of the horse were
some thick soft cloths. All our baggage-horses were furnished with
trail ropes, which were allowed to drag on the ground after the horse,
for the purpose of enabling us to catch him more readily. Besides the
animals we rode, we had seven horses, for the conveyance of our
provisions, tents, etc. The two we bought from Captain Sutter, though
strong, were skittish, and gave us much trouble, for our newly engaged
servant, whose name is James Horry, knew more about harpooning and
flenching whales than about the management of horses. He was certainly
willing and did his best, but he occasioned some mirth during the day's
march by his extreme awkwardness on horseback. However, to do him
justice, he bore the numerous falls which he came in for with great
philosophy, starting up again every time he was "grassed," and laughing
as loudly as the rest.
At noon we halted to refresh by the side of a small stream of crystal
purity. While making preparations for our hurried meal, we had all our
eyes about us for gold in the channel of the rivulet, but saw none. We
had not yet reached the favoured spot. After some difficulty in
catching the pack-horses, one of the perverse brutes having taken it
into its head to march up to its belly in the stream, where he
floundered about for some time, enjoying the coolness of the water, we
set forward, determined to reach the lower diggings by sundown. As we
neared the spot the ground gradually became more broken and heavily
timbered with oak and pine, while in the distance, and separated from
us by deep forests of these trees, might be seen a long ridge of
snow-capped mountains--the lofty Sierra Nevada. But we were too anxious
to reach the gold to care much about the more unprofitable beauties of
Nature, and accordingly urged our horses to the quickest speed they
could put forth. We were now travelling along the river's banks, and
towards evening came in sight of the lower mines, here called the
"Mormon" diggings, which occupy a surface of two or three miles along
the river. There were something like forty tents scattered up the hill
sides, occupied mostly by Americans, some of whom had brought their
families with them. Although it was near sundown, everybody was in full
occupation. At every few yards there were men, with their naked arms,
busily employed in washing out the golden flakes and dust from
spadefuls of the auriferous soil. Others were first passing it through
sieves, many of them freshly made with intertwisted willow branches, to
get rid of the coarse stones, and then washing the lumps of soil in
pots placed beneath the surface of the water, the contents of the
vessel being kept continually stirred by the hand until the lighter
particles of earth or gravel were carried away.
A great number of the settlers, however, were engaged in making what
are here called "cradles;" partly, I suppose, from their shape, and
partly from the rocking motion to which they are subjected. These
machines were being roughly constructed of dealboards. Later in the
day I watched one of them at work, and had the process explained to
me. Four men were employed at it. The first shovelled up the earth;
another carried it to the cradle, and dashed it down on a grating or
sieve--placed horizontally at the head of the machine--the wires of
which, being close together, only allowed the smaller particles of
earth and sand to fall through; the third man rocked the cradle--I must
confess I never saw one so perseveringly rocked at home; while the
fourth kept flinging water upon the mass of earth inside. The result of
this fourfold process is, that the lighter earth is gradually carried
off by the action of the water, and a sort of thick black sediment of
sand is left at the bottom of the cradle. This was afterwards scooped
out, and put aside to be carefully dried in the sun to-morrow morning.
I can hardly describe the effect this sight produced upon our party.
It seemed as if the fabled treasure of the Arabian Nights had been
suddenly realised before us. We all shook hands, and swore to preserve
good faith with each other, and to work hard for the common good. The
gold-finders told us that some of them frequently got as much as fifty
dollars a-day. As we rode from camp to camp, and saw the hoards of
gold--some of it in flakes, but the greater part in a coarse sort of
dust--which these people had amassed during the last few weeks, we felt
in a perfect fluster of excitement at the sight of the wealth around
us. One man showed us four hundred ounces of pure gold dust which he
had washed from the dirt in a tin pan, and which he valued at fourteen
dollars an ounce.
As may be imagined, the whole scene was one well calculated to take a
strong hold upon the imagination. The eminences, rising gradually from
the river's banks, were dotted with white canvas tents, mingled with
the more sombre-looking huts, constructed with once green but now
withered branches. A few hundred yards from the river lay a large heap
of planks and framings, which I was told were intended for constructing
a store; the owner of which, a sallow Yankee, with a large pluffy
cigaretto in his mouth, was labouring away in his shirt sleeves.
Bewildered and excited by the novelty of the scene, we were in haste to
pitch our camp, and soon fixed upon a location. This was by the side of
a dried-up water-course, through which, in the wet season, a small
rivulet joined the larger stream; we did not, however, immediately set
to work to make the necessary arrangements for the night. Our fingers
were positively itching for the gold, and in less than half an hour
after our arrival, the pack-horse which carried the shovels, scoops,
and pans, had been released of his burden, and all our party were as
busily employed as the rest. As for myself, armed with a large scoop or
trowel, and a shallow tin pail, I leapt into the bed of the rivulet, at
a spot where I perceived no trace of the gravel and earth having been
artificially disturbed. Near me was a small clear pool, which served
for washing the gold. Some of our party set to work within a short
distance of me, while others tried their fortune along the banks of the
Americanos, digging up the shingle which lay at the very brink of the
stream. I shall not soon forget the feeling with which I first plunged
my scoop into the soil beneath me. Half filling my tin pail with the
earth and shingle, I carried it to the pool, and placing it beneath the
surface of the water, I began to stir it with my hand, as I had
observed the other diggers do. Of course I was not very expert at
first, and I dare say I flung out a good deal of the valuable metal.
However, I soon perceived that the earth was crumbling away, and was
being carried by the agitation of the water into the pool, which
speedily became turbid, while the sandy sediment of which I had heard
remained at the bottom of the pail. Carefully draining the water away,
I deposited the sand in one of the small close-woven Indian baskets we
had brought with us, with the intention of drying it at the camp fire,
there not being sufficient time before nightfall to allow the moisture
gradually to absorb by the evaporation of the atmosphere.
After working for about half an hour, I retraced my steps with my
basket to the spot where we had tethered the horses, and found the
animals still standing there with their burdens on their backs. Mr.
Malcolm was already there; he had with him about an equal quantity of
the precious black sand; it remained, however, to be seen what
proportion of gold our heaps contained. In a short time Bradley and Don
Luis joined us, both of them in tip-top spirits. "I guess this is the
way we do the trick down in these clearings," said the former, shaking
a bag of golden sand. As for José, Don Luis's Indian servant, he was
devout in his expressions of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary and the
Great Spirit, whom he would insist upon classifying together, in a most
remarkable and not quite orthodox manner.
We now set to work to get up our tent. Malcolm, in the meantime,
prepared coffee and very under-baked cakes, made of the flour we had
brought with us. His cooking operations were greatly impeded by our
eagerness to dry the sand we had scraped up--a feat in the achievement
of which Bradley was clumsy enough to burn a hole in our very best
saucepan. However, we managed to get the moisture absorbed, and,
shutting our eyes, we commenced blowing away the sand with our mouths,
and shortly after found ourselves the possessors of a few pinch's of
gold. This was encouraging for a beginning. We drunk our coffee in high
spirits, and then, having picketted our horses, made ourselves as snug
as our accommodation would allow, and, being tired out, not only with
the journey and the work, but with excitement and anxiety, slept
soundly till morning.