Two horses stray away
How orders were enforced at the diggings
Sunday work
Nature of the soil
Inconveniences even in gold getting
Dinner and rest
A strike for higher wages
A walk through the diggings
Sleeping and smoking
Indians and finery
Californians and Yankee
Runaway sailors and stray negroes
A native born Kentuckian
"That's a fact"
A chapel at the diggings
A supper with an appetite.
The morning broke brilliantly, and the first thing we discovered on
rising was, that two of the horses had broken their fastenings during
the night, and strayed. As we could not afford to lose the animals,
José and Horry were despatched lo look after them, and they grumbled
not a little at being thus sent off from the scene of golden operations;
but Bradley, producing a rifle, swore that he would shoot them both
unless they obeyed orders; so, after a little altercation, away they
went.
Breakfast was soon despatched, and the question as to the day's
operations asked. Don Luis was the only one who, on the score of its
being Sunday, would not go to the diggings. He had no objection to
amuse himself on Sunday, but he would not work. To get over the
difficulty, we agreed to go upon the principle of every man keeping his
own findings, our bonds of unity as a party to extend merely to mutual
protection and defence. Leaving Don Luis, then, smoking in the tent,
we proceeded to work, and found that the great majority of the
gold-finders appeared to entertain our opinions, or at all events to
imitate our practice, as to labouring on the Sunday. I had now leisure
more particularly to remark the nature of the soil in which the gold
was found. The dust is found amid the shingle actually below water, but
the most convenient way of proceeding is to take the soil from that
portion of the bed which has been overflowed but is now dry. It is
principally of a gravelly nature, full of small stones, composed, as
far as I could make out, of a species of jasper and milky quality,
mingled with fragments of slate and splinters of basalt. The general
opinion is, that the gold has been washed down from the hills.
I worked hard, as indeed we all did, the whole morning. The toil is
very severe, the constant stooping pressing, of course, upon the spinal
column, whilst the constant immersion of the hands in water causes the
skin to excoriate and become exceedingly painful. But these
inconveniences are slight when compared to the great gain by which one
is recompensed for them.
At twelve o'clock, our usual primitive dinner hour, we met at the tents,
tolerably well tired with our exertions. No dinner, however, was
prepared, both José and Horry being still absent in pursuit of the
strayed horses. We had, therefore, to resort to some of our jerked
beef, which, with biscuits and coffee, formed our fare. After dinner,
we determined to rest until the next day. The fact is, that the human
frame will not stand, and was never intended to stand, a course of
incessant toil; indeed, I believe that in civilized--that is to say,
in industrious--communities, the Sabbath, bringing round as it does a
stated remission from labour, is an institution physically necessary.
We therefore passed some time in conversation, which was interrupted by
the arrival of José and Horry with the strayed horses. Horry demanded
an immediate increase of wages, threatening to leave us and set to work
on his own account if we refused. Bradley tried to talk big and bully
him, but in vain. José had a sort of fear of Don Luis--who in return
looked on his servant as his slave--so he said nothing. We could see,
however, that they had evidently been in communication with the diggers
around, and so we gave in. Later in the afternoon I started with
Malcolm and McPhail for a walk through the diggings. We found
comparatively a small proportion of the people who had commenced work
in the morning still at their pans. Numbers were lying asleep under the
trees, or in the shade of their tents and wagons. Others sat smoking
and chatting in circles upon the grass, mending their clothes or
performing other little domestic duties at the same time. It was really
a motley scene. Indians strutted by in all the pride of gaudy calico,
the manners of the savage concealed beneath the dress of the civilized
man. Muscular sun-burnt fellows, whose fine forms and swarthy faces
pronounced that Spanish blood ran through their veins, gossiped away
with sallow hatchet-faced Yankees, smart men at a bargain, and always
on the lookout for squalls. Here, and there one spied out the flannel
shirt and coarse canvas trousers of a seaman--a runaway, in all
probability, from a South Sea whaler; while one or two stray negroes
chattered with all the volubility of their race, shaking their woolly
heads and showing their white teeth. I got into conversation with one
tall American; he was a native-born Kentuckian, and full of the bantam
sort of consequence of his race. He predicted wonderful things from the
discovery of the mineral treasures of California, observing that it
would make a monetary revolution all over the world, and that nothing
similar, at least to so great an extent, was ever known in history.
"Look around! for, stranger," said he to me, "I guess you don't realise
such a scene every day, and that's a fact. There's gold to be had for
the picking of it up, and by all who choose to come and work. I reckon
old John Bull will scrunch up his fingers in his empty pockets when he
comes to hear of it. It's a most everlasting wonderful thing, and
that's a fact, that beats Joe Dunkin's goose-pie and apple sarse."
Farther on we came upon a tremendous-looking tent, formed by two or
three tents being flung into one, which, on examination, we found was
doing duty as a chapel. A missionary, from one of the New England
States, as I hear, was holding forth to a pretty large congregation.
The place was very hot and chokey, and I only stayed long enough to
hear that the discourse abounded in the cloudy metaphors and vague
technicalities of Calvinistic theology.
The remainder of the afternoon I have been devoting to writing my
journal, which I here break off to commence a hearty good supper, in
revenge for the scrambling sort of dinner one has had to-day. The beef
doesn't look roasted as they would put it on the table at the
Clarendon, or at Astor House even; but none of those who sit down to
the Clarendon table, at any rate, have such an appetite as I now have,
far away beyond care and civilisation, in the gold-gathering region of
California.