FIRST DISCOVERY OF GOLD.—PRISON GUARD.—INCREDULITY ABOUT THE
GOLD.—SANTIAGO GETTING MARRIED.—ANOTHER LUMP OF GOLD.—EFFECTS OF THE
GOLD FEVER.—THE COURT OF AN ALCALDE.—MOSQUITOES AS CONSTABLES.—BOB
AND HIS BAG OF GOLD.—RETURN OF CITIZENS FROM THE MINES.—A MAN WITH
THE GOLD-CHOLIC.—THE MINES ON INDIVIDUAL CREDIT.
MONDAY, MAY 29. Our town was startled out of its quiet dreams to-day, by
the announcement that gold had been discovered on the American Fork. The
men wondered and talked, and the women too; but neither believed. The
sibyls were less skeptical; they said the moon had, for several nights,
appeared not more than a cable’s length from the earth; that a white
raven had been seen playing with an infant; and that an owl had rung the
church bells.
SATURDAY, JUNE 3. The most faithful and reliable guard that I have ever
had over the prisoners, is himself a prisoner. He had been a lieutenant
in the Mexican army, and was sentenced, for a flagrant breach of the
peace, to the public works for the term of one year. Being hard up for
funds, I determined to make an experiment with this lieutenant; had him
brought before me; ordered the ball and chain to be taken from his leg,
and placed a double-barrelled gun, loaded and primed, in his hands.
“Take that musket, and proceed with the prisoners to the stone quarry;
return them to their cells before sunset, and report to me.” “Your
order, Señor Alcalde, shall be faithfully obeyed,” was the reply. I then
ordered one of the constables, well mounted and armed, to reconnoitre
the quarry, and, unseen by the prisoners or guard, ascertain how things
went on. He returned, and reported well of their regularity. At sunset,
the lieutenant entered the office, and reported the prisoners in their
cells, and all safe. “Very well, José; now make yourself safe, and that
will do.” He accordingly returned to his prison, and from that day to
this, has been my most faithful and reliable guard.
MONDAY, JUNE 5. Another report reached us this morning from the American
Fork. The rumor ran, that several workmen, while excavating for a
mill-race, had thrown up little shining scales of a yellow ore, that
proved to be gold; that an old Sonoranian, who had spent his life in
gold mines, pronounced it the genuine thing. Still the public
incredulity remained, save here and there a glimmer of faith, like the
flash of a fire-fly at night. One good old lady, however, declared that
she had been dreaming of gold every night for several weeks, and that it
had so frustrated her simple household economy, that she had relieved
her conscience, by confessing to her priest—
“Absolve me, father, of that sinful dream.”
TUESDAY, JUNE 6. Being troubled with the golden dream almost as much as
the good lady, I determined to put an end to the suspense, and
dispatched a messenger this morning to the American Fork. He will have
to ride, going and returning, some four hundred miles, but his report
will be reliable. We shall then know whether this gold is a fact or a
fiction—a tangible reality on the earth, or a fanciful treasure at the
base of some rainbow, retreating over hill and waterfall, to lure
pursuit and disappoint hope.
SATURDAY, JUNE 10. My boy Santiago has taken it into his head to get
married; and being a Protestant, finds it extremely difficult to get
through the ecclesiastical hopper. Were the person whom he wishes to wed
of the same faith with himself, there would be but little impediment;
but as she is a Roman Catholic, it is necessary that he should become
one too. He has been to the presiding priest to see if he could not get
his permission to retain a few articles of his own religion, just enough
to save his conscience. But his reverence told him he must give it up in
toto, renounce it as a heresy, and come without a scruple into the
mother church. Iago is not much of a theologian, but has sense enough to
know that conscientious scruples are not things of which a man can free
himself at will. His love, none the less deep and sincere for his humble
condition, urges him to a compliance with the canonical requirement, but
these very scruples hold him back. How he will extricate himself I know
not. He will probably compound the matter with his conscience by some
mental reservations, as Galileo did when awed into the indignant
confession that the earth was flat. Verily, if a man cannot marry in
this world without becoming a hypocrite or apostate from the faith of
his fathers, the sooner Miller’s conflagrating dream becomes a reality
the better. Perhaps some shape of flame might emerge from its drifting
embers, that would dare glimmer towards heaven without the leave of a
pragmatic priest. I wonder if Adam asked Eve if she were a Roman
Catholic before they celebrated their nuptials. This is an important
question, and ought to be looked into, though now rather late in the
day. I commend it to my venerable friend, the Bishop of New York, who
has recently issued an edict that no Protestant shall marry a Roman
Catholic without first passing his children, prospectively, through his
baptismal font.
MONDAY, JUNE 12. A straggler came in to-day from the American Fork,
bringing a piece of yellow ore weighing an ounce. The young dashed the
dirt from their eyes, and the old from their spectacles. One brought a
spyglass, another an iron ladle; some wanted to melt it, others to
hammer it, and a few were satisfied with smelling it. All were full of
tests; and many, who could not be gratified in making their experiments,
declared it a humbug. One lady sent me a huge gold ring, in the hope of
reaching the truth by comparison; while a gentleman placed the specimen
on the top of his gold-headed cane and held it up, challenging the
sharpest eyes to detect a difference. But doubts still hovered on the
minds of the great mass. They could not conceive that such a treasure
could have lain there so long undiscovered. The idea seemed to convict
them of stupidity. There is nothing of which a man is more tenacious
than his claims to sagacity. He sticks to them like an old bachelor to
the idea of his personal attractions, or a toper to the strength of his
temperance ability, whenever he shall wish to call it into play.
THURSDAY, JUNE 15. Found an Indian to-day perfectly sober, who is
generally drunk, and questioned him of the cause of his sobriety. He
stated that he wished to marry an Indian girl, and she would not have
him unless he would keep sober a month; that this was but his third day,
and he should never be able to stand it unless I would put him beyond
the reach of liquor. So I sentenced him to the public works for a month;
this will pay off old scores, and help him to a wife, who may perhaps
keep him sober, though I fear there is little hope of that.
TUESDAY, JUNE 20. My messenger sent to the mines, has returned with
specimens of the gold; he dismounted in a sea of upturned faces. As he
drew forth the yellow lumps from his pockets, and passed them around
among the eager crowd, the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled.
All admitted they were gold, except one old man, who still persisted
they were some Yankee invention, got up to reconcile the people to the
change of flag. The excitement produced was intense; and many were soon
busy in their hasty preparations for a departure to the mines. The
family who had kept house for me caught the moving infection. Husband
and wife were both packing up; the blacksmith dropped his hammer, the
carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the
baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines,
some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a
litter. An American woman, who had recently established a boarding-house
here, pulled up stakes, and was off before her lodgers had even time to
pay their bills. Debtors ran, of course. I have only a community of
women left, and a gang of prisoners, with here and there a soldier, who
will give his captain the slip at the first chance. I don’t blame the
fellow a whit; seven dollars a month, while others are making two or
three hundred a day! that is too much for human nature to stand.
SATURDAY, JULY 15. The gold fever has reached every servant in Monterey;
none are to be trusted in their engagement beyond a week, and as for
compulsion, it is like attempting to drive fish into a net with the
ocean before them. Gen. Mason, Lieut. Lanman, and myself, form a mess;
we have a house, and all the table furniture and culinary apparatus
requisite; but our servants have run, one after another, till we are
almost in despair: even Sambo, who we thought would stick by from
laziness, if no other cause, ran last night; and this morning, for the
fortieth time, we had to take to the kitchen, and cook our own
breakfast. A general of the United States Army, the commander of a
man-of-war, and the Alcalde of Monterey, in a smoking kitchen, grinding
coffee, toasting a herring, and peeling onions! These gold mines are
going to upset all the domestic arrangements of society, turning the
head to the tail, and the tail to the head. Well, it is an ill wind that
blows nobody any good: the nabobs have had their time, and now comes
that of the “niggers.” We shall all live just as long, and be quite as
fit to die.
TUESDAY, JULY 18. Another bag of gold from the mines, and another spasm
in the community. It was brought down by a sailor from Yuba river, and
contains a hundred and thirty-six ounces. It is the most beautiful gold
that has appeared in the market; it looks like the yellow scales of the
dolphin, passing through his rainbow hues at death. My carpenters, at
work on the school-house, on seeing it, threw down their saws and
planes, shouldered their picks, and are off for the Yuba. Three seamen
ran from the Warren, forfeiting their four years’ pay; and a whole
platoon of soldiers from the fort left only their colors behind. One old
woman declared she would never again break an egg or kill a chicken,
without examining yolk and gizzard.
SATURDAY, JULY 22. The laws by which an alcalde here is governed, in the
administration of justice, are the Mexican code as compiled in Frebrero
and Alverez—works of remarkable comprehensiveness, clearness, and
facility of application. They embody all the leading principles of the
civil law, derived from the institutes of Justinian. The common law of
England is hardly known here, though its rules and maxims have more or
less influenced local legislation. But with all these legal provisions a
vast many questions arise which have to be determined _ex cathedra_. In
minor matters the alcalde is often himself the law; and the records of
his court might reveal some very exquisite specimens of judicial
prerogative; such as shaving a rogue’s head—_lex talionis_—who had
shaved the tail of his neighbor’s horse; or making a busybody, who had
slandered a worthy citizen, promenade the streets with a gag in his
mouth; or obliging a man who had recklessly caused a premature birth, to
compensate the bereaved father for the loss of that happiness which he
might have derived from his embryo hope, had it budded into life. This
last has rather too many contingencies about it; but the principle,
which reaches it and meets the offender, does very well out here in
California, and would not be misapplied in some of those pill-shops
which slope the path to crime in the United States.
THURSDAY, JULY 27. I never knew mosquitoes turned to any good account
save in California; and here it seems they are sometimes ministers of
justice. A rogue had stolen a bag of gold from a digger in the mines,
and hid it. Neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to reveal
the place of its concealment. He was at last sentenced to a hundred
lashes, and then informed that he would be let off with thirty, provided
he would tell what he had done with the gold; but he refused. The thirty
lashes were inflicted, but he was still stubborn as a mule.
He was then stripped naked and tied to a tree. The mosquitoes with their
long bills went at him, and in less than three hours he was covered with
blood. Writhing and trembling from head to foot with exquisite torture,
he exclaimed, “Untie me, untie me, and I will tell where it is.” “Tell
first,” was the reply. So he told where it might be found. Some of the
party then, with wisps, kept off the still hungry mosquitoes, while
others went where the culprit had directed, and recovered the bag of
gold. He was then untied, washed with cold water, and helped to his
clothes, while he muttered, as if talking to himself, “I couldn’t stand
that anyhow.”
FRIDAY, JULY 28. A little laughing girl tripped into the office to-day,
and handed me a bunch of flowers, which she said her mother sent me.
“And who is your mother, my sweet one?” I inquired. She told me, and I
then remembered that I had recovered for her a silver cup, which an
Indian had stolen; and these flowers had now come as a memento.
“Fee me with flowers, they hold no sordid bribe.”
SATURDAY, AUG. 12. My man Bob, who is of Irish extraction, and who had
been in the mines about two months, returned to Monterey four weeks
since, bringing with him over two thousand dollars, as the proceeds of
his labor. Bob, while in my employ, required me to pay him every
Saturday night, in gold, which he put into a little leather bag and
sewed into the lining of his coat, after taking out just twelve and a
half cents, his weekly allowance for tobacco. But now he took rooms and
began to branch out; he had the best horses, the richest viands, and the
choicest wines in the place. He never drank himself, but it filled him
with delight to brim the sparkling goblet for others. I met Bob to-day,
and asked him how he got on. “Oh, very well,” he replied, “but I am off
again for the mines.” “How is that, Bob? you brought down with you over
two thousand dollars; I hope you have not spent all that: you used to be
very saving; twelve and a half cents a week for tobacco, and the rest
you sewed into the lining of your coat.” “Oh, yes,” replied Bob, “and I
have got _that_ money yet; I worked hard for it; and the diel can’t get
it away; but the two thousand dollars came asily by good luck, and has
gone as asily as it came.” Now Bob’s story is only one of a thousand
like it in California, and has a deeper philosophy in it than meets the
eye. Multitudes here are none the richer for the mines. He who can shake
chestnuts from an exhaustless tree, won’t stickle about the quantity he
roasts.
THURSDAY, AUG. 16. Four citizens of Monterey are just in from the gold
mines on Feather River, where they worked in company with three others.
They employed about thirty wild Indians, who are attached to the rancho
owned by one of the party. They worked precisely seven weeks and three
days, and have divided seventy-six thousand eight hundred and forty-four
dollars,—nearly eleven thousand dollars to each. Make a dot there, and
let me introduce a man, well known to me, who has worked on the Yuba
river sixty-four days, and brought back, as the result of his individual
labor, five thousand three hundred and fifty-six dollars. Make a dot
there, and let me introduce another townsman, who has worked on the
North Fork fifty-seven days, and brought back four thousand five hundred
and thirty-four dollars. Make a dot there, and let me introduce a boy,
fourteen years of age, who has worked on the Mokelumne fifty-four days,
and brought back three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven dollars.
Make another dot there, and let me introduce a woman, of Sonoranian
birth, who has worked in the dry diggings forty-six days, and brought
back two thousand one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Is not this
enough to make a man throw down his leger and shoulder a pick? But the
deposits which yielded these harvests were now opened for the first
time; they were the accumulation of ages; only the footprints of the elk
and wild savage had passed over them. Their slumber was broken for the
first time by the sturdy arms of the American emigrant.
TUESDAY, AUG. 28. The gold mines have upset all social and domestic
arrangements in Monterey; the master has become his own servant, and the
servant his own lord. The millionaire is obliged to groom his own horse,
and roll his wheelbarrow; and the hidalgo—in whose veins flows the blood
of all the Cortes—to clean his own boots! Here is lady L——, who has
lived here seventeen years, the pride and ornament of the place, with a
broomstick in her jewelled hand! And here is lady B—— with her
daughter—all the way from “old Virginia,” where they graced society with
their varied accomplishments—now floating between the parlor and
kitchen, and as much at home in the one as the other! And here is lady
S——, whose cattle are on a thousand hills, lifting, like Rachel of old,
her bucket of water from the deep well! And here is lady M. L——, whose
honey-moon is still full of soft seraphic light, unhouseling a potatoe,
and hunting the hen that laid the last egg. And here am I, who have been
a man of some note in my day, loafing on the hospitality of the good
citizens, and grateful for a meal, though in an Indian’s wigwam. Why, is
not this enough to make one wish the gold mines were in the earth’s
flaming centre, from which they sprung? Out on this yellow dust! it is
worse than the cinders which buried Pompeii, for there, high and low
shared the same fate!
SATURDAY, SEPT. 9. I met a Scotchman this morning bent half double, and
evidently in pain. On inquiring the cause, he informed me that he had
just seen a lump of gold from the Mokelumne as big as his double fist,
and it had given him the cholic. The diagnosis of the complaint struck
me as a new feature in human maladies, and one for which it would be
difficult to find a suitable medicament in the therapeutics known to the
profession; especially in the allopathic practice, which has stood still
for three thousand years, except in the discovery of quinine for ague,
and sulphur for itch. The gentlemen of this embalmed school must wake
up; their antediluvian owl may do on an Egyptian obelisk, but we must
have a more wide-awake bird in these days of progress. Here is a man
bent double with a new and strange disease, taken from looking at gold:
your bleeding, blistering, and purging won’t free him of it. What is to
be done? shall he be left to die, or be delivered over to the
homœopathies? They have a medicament that acts as a specific, on the
principle that the hair of the dog is good for the bite. If you burn
your hand, what do you do—clasp a piece of ice?—no, seize a warm poker;
if you freeze your foot, do you put it to the fire?—no, dash it into the
snow; and so if you take the gold-cholic, the remedy is, _aurum—similia
similibus curantur_.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 16. The gold mines are producing one good result; every
creditor who has gone there is paying his debts. Claims not deemed worth
a farthing are now cashed on presentation at nature’s great bank. This
has rendered the credit of every man here good for almost any amount.
Orders for merchandise are honored which six months ago would have been
thrown into the fire. There is none so poor, who has two stout arms and
a pickaxe left, but he can empty any store in Monterey. Nor has the
first instance yet occurred, in which the creditor has suffered. All
distinctions indicative of means have vanished; the only capital
required is muscle and an honest purpose. I met a man to-day from the
mines in patched buckskins, rough as a badger from his hole, who had
fifteen thousand dollars in yellow dust, swung at his back. Talk to him
of brooches, gold-headed canes, and Carpenter’s coats! Why he can unpack
a lump of gold that would throw all Chesnut-street into spasms. And
there is more where this came from. _His_ rights in the great domain are
equal to yours, and his prospects of getting it out vastly better. With
these advantages, he bends the knee to no man, but strides along in his
buckskins, a lord of earth by a higher prescriptive privilege than what
emanates from the partiality of kings. His patent is medallioned with
rivers which roll over golden sands, and embossed with mountains which
have lifted for ages their golden coronets to heaven. Clear out of the
way with your crests, and crowns, and pedigree trees, and let this
democrat pass. Every drop of blood in his veins tells that it flows from
a great heart, which God has made and which man shall never enslave.
Such are the genuine sons of California; such may they live and die.
“They will not be the tyrant’s slaves,
While heaven has light, or earth has graves.”
[Illustration: Burt, sc.]