CAUSE OF SICKNESS IN THE MINES.—THE QUICKSILVER MINES.—HEAT AND COLD
IN THE MINES.—TRAITS IN THE SPANISH CHARACTER.—HEALTH OF CALIFORNIA
LADIES.—A WORD TO MOTHERS.—THE PINGRASS AND BLACKBIRD.—THE
REDWOOD-TREE.—BATTLE OF THE EGGS.
SATURDAY, DEC. 2. I found Monterey, on my return from the mines, under
the same quiet air in which her green hills had soared since I first
beheld their waving shade. Many had predicted my precipitate return,
from the hardships and baffled attempt of the tour; but I persevered,
taking it rough and tumble from the first, and have returned with
improved health. I met with but very few cases of sickness in the mines,
and these obviously resulting from excessive imprudence. What but
maladies could be expected, where the miner stands by the hour in a cold
mountain stream, with a broiling sun overhead, and then, perhaps,
drinking every day a pint of New England rum? Why, the rum itself would
shatter any constitution not lightning-proof. I wish those who send this
fire-curse here were wrapped in its flames till the wave of repentance
should baptize them into a better life.
I have missed but two things, since my return, from my goods and
chattels—my walking-cane and my Bible; both have been carried off during
my absence I hope the latter will do the person who has taken it much
good: I forgive the burglary for the sake of the benefit. Prometheus was
chained to the Caucasian rock for having filched fire from heaven; but
no such fearful retribution awaits him who has stolen my Bible, flooded
though it be with a higher light than ever dawned on the eyes of the
guilty Titan. May its spirit reach the offender’s soul, and quicken
thoughts that shall wander without rest till they light on the Cross,
where hang the hopes of the world.
TUESDAY, DEC. 12. The quicksilver mines of California constitute one of
the most important elements in her mineral wealth. Only one vein has as
yet been fully developed; this lies a few miles from San José, and is
owned by Hon. Alexander Forbes, British consul at Typé, in Mexico—a
gentleman of vast means and enterprise—and who has a heart as full of
generous impulses as his mine is of wealth. Many of our countrymen, in
misfortune, have shared his munificent liberality. His mine, in the
absence of suitable machinery, has been worked to great disadvantage;
and yet, with two whaling-kettles for furnaces, he has driven off a
hundred and fifty pounds a day of the pure metal. If this can be done
with an apparatus intended only for trying blubber, a ton may be rolled
from a capacious retort constructed for the purpose. The title of Mr.
Forbes to this mine has excited some inquiry, but it will be found among
the soundest in California.
Instead of attempting to shake this title, a more wise and profitable
course will be to open a fresh vein. They lie in the contiguous spurs of
the same mountain range, and only require a small outlay of labor and
capital to develop their untold wealth. The metal need not travel from
California to find a market; vast quantities will be required in the
gold mines: the cradle and bowl must give place to more complicated
machinery; the sands of the river pass through a more delicate process;
and the quartz of the steep rock, crumbled under the stamper, surrender
its gold to the embrace of quicksilver. This stupendous issue is close
at hand; and they who anticipate it, will find the fruits of their
sagacity and enterprise in sudden fortunes.
MONDAY, DEC. 25. The multitudes who are in the mines, suffer in health
and constitution from the extreme changes of temperature which follow
day and night. In some of the ravines in which we camped, these
variations vibrated through thirty and forty degrees. In mid-day we were
driven into the shade to keep cool, and in the night into two or three
blankets to keep warm. The heat is ascribable in part to the nature of
the soil, its naked sandy features, its power of radiation, and the
absence of circulation in the glens. But the cold comes with the visits
of the night-wind from the frosty slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
These extreme variations follow the miner through the whole region in
which his tempting scenes of labor lie, and require a degree of prudence
seldom met with in that wild woodland life. The consequence is, a group
of maladies under which the strongest constitution at length breaks
down. But I am convinced from personal experience, that with proper
precaution and suitable food, many, and most of these evils may be
obviated. The southern mines are in elevations which exempt them from
the maladies incident to the low lands which fringe the streams farther
north. There are no stagnant waters, no decomposition of vegetable
matter, no miasma drifting about in the fog, to shake and burn you with
alternate chill and fever. I never enjoyed better health and spirits;
and never encountered in a great moving mass, notwithstanding their
irregularities, so few instances of disease traceable to local causes. I
have seen more groaners and grunters in one metropolitan household, than
in any swarming ravine in the southern mines.
SUNDAY, JAN. 7. Lapses from virtue are not unfrequently associated, in
the character of the Spanish female, with singular exhibitions of
charity and self-denial. She is often at the couch of disease,
unshrinkingly exposed to contagion, or in the hovel of destitution,
administering to human necessity. She pities where others reproach, and
succors where others forsake. The motive which prompts this unwearied
charity, is a secret within her own soul. It may be as a poor expiation
for conscious error, or the impulse of those kindly sentiments not yet
extinct, or gratitude for that humanity which foregoes merited
reprehension. Be the cause what it may, it justly retains her within the
pale of Christian charity, and entitles her to that sympathy in her own
misfortunes which she so largely bestows on the sorrows of others.
Denunciation never yet protected the innocent, confirmed the wavering,
or recovered the fallen. That spirit of ferocity which breaks the
bruised reed, partakes more of relentless pride than virtuous
disapprobation. Many sever themselves from all sympathy with the erring,
from the mistaken apprehension that the wider the chasm, the more
advantageous the light in which _they_ will appear. But that chasm which
seems so wide to them, narrows to a faint line in the eye of
Omniscience. Forgiveness is our duty; not that forgiveness which scorns
and forsakes the object on which it is bestowed, but which seeks to
reclaim the erring, and reinstate the fallen in merited confidence and
esteem. When repentant guilt trembled and blushed in the presence of Him
whose divine example is our guide, no frown darkened His brow, no
malediction fell from His lips; His absolving injunction was—_go, and
sin no more_. The brightest stars are they which have emerged from a
horizon of darkness.
TUESDAY, JAN. 16. The climate on the seaboard is remarkably equable; it
varies at Monterey, the year round, but little from sixty. You never lay
aside your woollen apparel, and always feel ready for a bear-hunt, or
any other field-sport that may tempt your taste or skill. Till the
Americans came here there was hardly a house in the town which contained
a fireplace; even the cooking was done in a detached apartment,
seemingly to avoid the straggling rays of its grate. The children ran
about in the winter months without a shoe, and in their little cotton
slips, the perfect pictures of health. The girl of seventeen, the mother
of forty, and the venerable lady, who had reached her threescore and
ten, were never seen hovering around a fire: they were at their
household affairs, in apartments where a coal had never been kindled; or
in their gardens, where the last rain had revived their drooping plants;
or out in the woods at pic-nics, where the very birds sung out in
rivalry of their jocund mirth. Health spread its rose in the cheek, and
elastic life thrilled in the bounding limb. The birth of a child was
only a momentary pause in this scene of pleasurable activity, and more
than compensated for its brief encroachment in a new bud of being, to be
clustered among the rest—now blooming in fragrant life around the parent
tree.
Think of this, ye mothers who cloister your daughters in air-tight
parlors, with furnaces blowing in hot steam from below. It is no wonder
they wither from their cradles, and that their bridal couch is often
ashes. Your mistaken tenderness, vanity, and pride have supplied death
with trophies long enough. Look here to California; among all these
mothers and daughters, there is not one where the cankerworm of that
disease is at work which has spread sorrow and dismay around your
hearths. The insidious disguises and sapping advances of the consumption
are not known here; I have not yet met with the first instance where
this disease, contracted here, has found a victim. It is your in-door
habits, hot parlors, prunellas, and twisting corsets, that clothe this
generation with weeds, and bequeath to the next constitutions that fall
like grass under the scythe of death. If your daughters won’t take
out-door exercise from persuasion, then drive them forth as the guardian
angel of Eden your erring progenitrix. It may have been that the
development of her physical forces, as well as retributive justice,
induced her expulsion from the luxurious roses, the balmy airs, and
lulling streams of her first abode. But your Eves will come back again,
and sparkling eyes, and buoyant spirits, and a vigorous pulse will
commend your maternal wisdom; and when a man, worthy of your confidence
and the affections of your daughters, wants a wife, his choice will not
lie in a group of valetudinarians. He carries off a bird that floats a
strong wing, and that can sing in concert with him as they build the
nest out of which other harmonies are to charm the warbling grove; and
then, too, the young fledglings will come back to you, all bright and
beautiful, and touched with the spirit of gladness in which their breezy
cradle swung. Why, is not this enough to make a mother’s soul leap to
her laughing eyes!
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 24. Nature never leaves any portion of her troubled
domain without a compensation. Here, where the hills and plains, under
the long summer’s drought, become so parched and dry that the
grasshoppers cease to sing, she presents a pingrass, on which the cattle
still thrive; and when this fails, it has already dropped a seed even
more nutritious than the stem which sustained its bulbous cradle. For
this, a California horse will leave the best bin of oats that ever waved
in the harvest-moon. The first copious shower, which usually occurs in
November, destroys it, but around its ruins another grass springs, to
throw its green velvet, inwrought with millions of flowers, on the
charmed eye. It is no wonder the birds here sing through the year, and
forego those migrations to which they are subjected in other climes. The
lay of the robin, the whistle of the quail, and the tender notes of the
curlew, are always piping in the grove, or filling with melody the
garden-tree.
Were the blackbird to migrate, and never come back, no farmer would
regret his absence; for he is a mischievous bird, who has no respect for
the rights of property. He squats by millions where he likes and would
rob a wheat-field of its last kernel with a thousand thunders rattling
overhead. His legions darken the heaven where they fly, and drown all
other harmonies in the jargon of their obstreperous chatter. They are
said to be good for a pot-pie; and there are enough of them here to
plump a pie around which nations might sit and carve at will: and how
much better to be carving a common pie than carving into each other’s
lands,—to be popping at blackbirds than shooting each other. There is
not a blackbird but what laughs under his glossy wing when he sees a man
levelling his gun at another, which the sable rogue knows ought to be
levelled at him; and when the smoke-clouds loom up from the field of
battle, he chatters in very glee, and even the eyes of the sedate raven
are filled with unwonted light. Man makes himself a mournful tragedy and
ludicrous comedy in the great creation of God.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7. There is one tree in California that is worthy of
note, which is peculiar to the country, and as deserving a place on her
coat-of-arms as her grizzly bear, and much more so, unless her people
intend to overawe their neighbors with the terrors of their insignia.
This tree is called the redwood, and closely resembles, in its texture,
size, and antiseptic qualities, the giant cedars which have pinnacled,
through the storms of a thousand years, the steeps of Lebanon. It is
found on the table-lands between the coast range and the sea, and grows
in distinct forests, like the savage tribes which once slumbered in its
shadows. Its shaft rises straight and free of limbs, till high over the
wave of other trees it can spread its emerald sails to the wind, compact
as the royals of a ship of the line. The wood is of a pale red hue, and
easily yields to any shape under the implements of the carpenter, but is
not sufficiently firm for the severer tests of cabinet work. It resists
decay, whatever may be its exposure, and in the ground or on the roof is
true to its trust. The same shingle which shook the rain from your
grandsire, wards it from you; and the same board which pannelled his
coffin, echoes to the rumbling sounds of yours as you go down to join
him. In a grove of these trees, only a short ride from Monterey, stands
one measuring sixty feet in circumference! Of its height I am not
certain, as I had no means of measuring it—say three hundred feet—or at
least as high as the steeple of that church, a warden of which, who had
caught the spirit of its elevation, is reported to have said in reply to
a proposition for the introduction of lamps and an evening service,
“this line goes through by daylight.” Let those versed in moral
mensuration determine the elevation of that warden’s spiritual pride,
and they will have the height of my tree exactly.
FRIDAY, FEB. 16. Mr. Larkin has closed the amusements of the carnival
with a splendid entertainment, graced with all the beauty and bravery of
Monterey. As no egg could be broken after midnight, without trenching on
the solemnities of Lent, each went equipped with these weapons, ready
for an early contest. Several small volleys opened the engagement
between some of the parties; while the fandango engrossed the attention
of others. In this oval war the ladies are always the antagonists of the
gentlemen, and, generally, through their dexterity, and larger supply of
ammunition, bear off the palm. They will sometimes carry two or three
dozen rounds each, and as snugly stowed away as cartridges in the box of
a new recruit. Still both parties will fight it out—
“With blow for blow, disputing inch by inch,
Where one will not retreat, nor t’other flinch.”
But there were two shot in the company, in the shape of goose eggs, well
filled with cologne, to which an unusual interest attached. One of them
had been brought by Gen. M——, the other by Donna J——, and each was only
watching an opportunity for a crash on the head of the other. Both were
endowed with physical force, dexterity, and firmness, and a heart in
which pity relaxed none of these energies. Neither turned an eye but for
a moment from the other; but in that moment the donna dashed to the side
of the general, and would have crashed her egg on his head, had not the
blow been instantly parried. The assailed now became the assailant, and
both were in for the last tests of skill—
“While none who saw them could divine
To which side conquest would incline.”
The donna changed her tactics, stood on the defensive and parried, and
in one of these dexterous foils dashed her egg on the head of her
antagonist, who, in the same instant, brought his down plump on hers.
Both were drenched in cologne; both victors in defeat: a shout followed,
which shook the rafters of the old tenement. The engagement now became
general; each had his antagonist, and must “do or die;” the battle
swayed this way and that—sometimes in single combat, and at others in
vollied platoons; and then along the whole blazing line: each recoil was
recovered by a more vigorous assault; each retreat in rallied thunder,
more than redeemed; while first and foremost, where wavered or withstood
the foe—
“The _donna_ cheered her band.”
But, in this most critical crisis of the field, the fire began to
slacken along the line of the men; their ammunition was giving out; only
a few rounds here and there remained; the heroines perceived this, and
opened with double round and grape on their foes—
“Who form—unite—charge—waver—all is lost!”
The bell tolled the hour of midnight, and Lent came in with her ashes to
bury the dead! They may trifle who will with this field; but there was
more in it worthy of a good man’s remembrance than half the fields
fought from Homer’s day to this. If this be treason to the bullet and
blood chivalry—make the most of it.