Entrance to California.—The Camp at San
Francisco in 1849.—Description of the
People.—Gold-Hunters.—Speculations.—Prices of
Merchandise.—Visit to the Diggings.—Adventures on
the Route.—The First Election.—The Constitutional
Convention.—San Francisco after Two Months’ Absence.—Poetical
Descriptions.—Departure for Mexico.—Arrival at
Mazatlan.—Overland to the Capital.—Adventure with
Robbers.—Return to New York.
The circumstances under which Mr. Taylor entered California, were in
striking contrast with those which surrounded him when he made his first
attempt to see the world. For, when he started for his European tour,
and throughout the whole period of his stay there, he was hindered and
annoyed by the lack of money, and by the lack of acquaintances. Then,
he was dependent wholly upon his own earnings and economy for every
privilege he enjoyed. He had nothing substantial behind him, and nothing
certain before him. But in California he moves among the people with
the prestige and capital of a powerful journal behind him, and before
him the certainty of ample remuneration for all his trials. He is no
longer the unknown, uncared-for stripling, whose adventures are regarded
as visionary, and whose company was an intrusion. He was the welcomed
guest of naval officers, of army officers, and invited to the home of the
Military Governor, and to the headquarters of Gen. John C. Fremont.
When he entered San Francisco, that place was only a miners’ camp,
composed of tents, barracks, piles of merchandise, and tethered mules.
How utterly incomprehensible it seems now to the visitor to that great
metropolis, when he reads that, as late as 1849, there were only huts
and tents where now stand the palatial business blocks, gorgeous hotels,
and miles of residences made of brick and stone! It was an interesting
time to visit the Pacific shore, and most interestingly did Mr. Taylor
describe it in his letters, and in his book entitled “Eldorado.” The
great camp of San Francisco was but a few weeks old when he arrived
there; but, in its boiling humanity, Mr. Taylor noticed Malays, Chinamen,
Mexicans, Germans, Englishmen, Yankees, Indians, Japanese, Chilians,
Hawaiians, and Kanakas, rushing, shouting, gesticulating, like madmen.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Everything, anything for gold! Though hundreds lay
in the swamps of Panama, dead or dying with the cholera; although the
bleaching bones of many enthusiasts gleamed in the sun on the great
American desert; although thousands had perished in the thickets, snows,
and floods of the Sierra Nevada, their eyes never to be gratified with
the sight of gold-dust; yet the increasing multitude followed faster,
and more recklessly in their footsteps. Into such a mass of half-insane
humanity, did Mr. Taylor thrust himself, that the world, as well as
himself, might profit thereby. Great names were given to the smallest
things, and prices larger than the names. The Parker House was a board
shanty with lodging-rooms at twenty-five dollars a week, and was not more
than seventy feet square, but rented to the landlord for one hundred
and ten thousand dollars a year. Newspapers sold for a dollar each, and
nearly every class of merchandise from the Eastern States brought a
profit of several thousand per cent. The wages of a common laborer were
from fifteen dollars to twenty dollars a day, while real estate went up
so fast in price, that few dared to sell, lest the next day should show
that they had lost a fortune. One man, who died insolvent, but having, in
his name a small tract of land, left after all a million of dollars to
his heirs, so much did the lands increase in value before the estate was
settled.
Fortunes were made in a single day. If a man arrived there with anything
to sell, he could put his own price upon it, and dispose of it to the
first comer. One man, whose store was a log-cabin with a canvas roof,
made five hundred thousand dollars in eight months. Gambling was carried
on in an equally magnificent scale. Greater bets than Baden-Baden or
Monaco ever saw, were common-place there. Millions of dollars changed
hands every day. Gold was so plentiful, that boys made immense profits,
gathering, out of the dust in the streets, the nuggets and fine gold
which had been carelessly allowed to drop from the miners’ bags or
pockets.
From that strangest of all strange medleys, Mr. Taylor travelled,
mule-back, through a wild and dangerous region, to Stockton, and thence
to the productive “diggings” on Mokelumne River. There he saw the miners
hard at work gathering the gold in the most primitive manner. The sands
found in the dry bed of the river were mixed with gold, while in the
crevices and little holes in the rocks, pieces of gold, varying from the
size of a five-cent piece to that of a hen’s egg, were frequently found.
Gold from the sand was gathered by shaking a bowlful of it until the
heaviest particles fell through to the bottom; and by washing away the
finer particles of dirt, and picking out the stones with the fingers.
Nearly every miner found some gold; but those who made the immense
fortunes were quite rare. For many of such as were in luck, and who found
great sums, were so sure of finding more, that they squandered what
they had discovered, in a manner most unfortunate for them, but very
fortunate for those who had found nothing. All the details, experiences,
and adventures of these followers of Mammon were exhibited to Mr. Taylor,
and the most tempting offers made to him to dig for himself. But, true
to his employers, he turned from mines “with millions in them,” and
wrote letters for the “Tribune.” Over jagged mountains, through thickets
of thorns, through muddy rivers, over desert plains, and along routes,
dangerous alike from man and beast, he fearlessly pursued his journey
of observation, exhibiting many of those characteristics which have
distinguished H. M. Stanley, that other great correspondent. Sights he
saw that curdled the blood; men he met, pale, haggard, and dying; bones
he saw of lost and starved miners; and the extremes of misery and joy,
wealth and poverty, generosity and meanness, faith in God, and worship of
the devil, which must have bewildered him.
The fact that he had money and social influence did not protect him from
the hardships common to all travellers who visited the gold mines of
California at that early period. Many nights he slept in the open air,
having his single blanket and the cold earth for a bed. Often he made his
couch on a table or the floor in some rude and dirty cabin. Sometimes he
was lost in the woods or among the mountains, and frequently suffered
long for food and water. He was determined to see the land and its
freight of human life in its most practical form, although by so doing he
often risked the loss of comfort, of property, and occasionally of his
life.
One of the most interesting chapters of history to be found in any work
connected with life in the United States, is to be found in his simple
but graphic account of the first election in California. The rough,
disintegrated, and shifting communities of that new land had for a year
and a half depended for law and order upon the innate respect for the
rights of others to be found in the hearts of a majority of civilized
men. Beyond this there were organized in some of the mining towns a
vigilance committee, and in a few others a judge with almost supreme
power was elected by a vote of the people. These officials administered
justice by common consent, having no commission or authority from the
National Government. The enormous crowds of immigrants which filled
towns and cities in a single month made the necessity for some form of
State or Territorial government apparent to the least thoughtful. So a
few of the more enterprising individuals, advised and assisted by the
military authorities, undertook to bring order out of chaos by calling
upon the people to elect delegates to a Constitutional Convention. The
readiness and systematic manner in which the people of that whole region
responded to the call, was one of the most remarkable as well as one
of the most instructive popular movements to be found in the annals of
freedom. The meeting of that Constitutional Convention at Monterey;
the rude accommodations, the ability of the body, the harmony of their
deliberations, and the wisdom of their regulations and provisions, was
the subject of many most enthusiastic epistles from the pen of Mr.
Taylor. In his celebrated book, now so much prized by the people of
California, and by students of American history, he gives many little
details and incidents which are left out of other books and so often
overlooked by authors and correspondents, but which are of inestimable
importance in gaining an accurate knowledge of the inside social and
political beginnings of that powerful State. He described the appearance
of the building in which the Convention met, gives sketches of the
prominent actors in the assembly, and, as if foreseeing how posterity
would like to preserve the memory of that great day, he gives the
complexion, color of the hair, stature, and dress of the noted men who
held seats. It is as exciting as one of Scott’s novels to read of the
emotion, the tears, among those legislators when the new State was born,
and when the “thirty-first” gun was fired from the fort to announce the
completion of the great event. Thus, from the consent of the governed
in its most literal sense, the officers of the State of California
derived their just powers. And without discord, rebellious or seditious
conspiracies, a new government took its place among the empires of the
world. The description of that event in his simple, straightforward way
was one of Mr. Taylor’s best deeds.
Yet every incident and scene had its poetic side to him, and, while that
phase of his nature did not lead him to exaggeration in prose, it often
led him to break into independent poetic effusions. He appears to have
long looked upon the Pacific coast as a field of poetry and song, for,
before he had any idea of visiting the country, he wrote several poems,
and located them there. “The Fight of Paso del Mar” was one of those
early poems, and the scene was the cliff at the entrance to the harbor at
Santa Barbara.
“Gusty and raw was the morning,
A fog hung over the seas,
And its gray skirts, rolling inland,
Were torn by the mountain trees;
No sound was heard but the dashing
Of waves on the sandy bar,
When Pablo of San Diego
Bode down to the Paso del Mar.
The pescadòr, out in his shallop,
Gathering his harvest so wide,
Sees the dim bulk of the headland
Loom over the waste of the tide;
He sees, like a white thread, the pathway
Wind round on the terrible wall,
Where the faint, moving speck of the rider
Seems hovering close to its fall.”
Most sweetly sang he of the climate, and the prolific gifts of nature
in California, and one verse of his “Manuela” contains a very vivid and
accurate picture of some of California, as seen by many travellers.
“All the air is full of music, for the winter rains are o’er,
And the noisy magpies chatter from the budding sycamore;
Blithely frisk unnumbered squirrels, over all the grassy slope;
Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps the antelope.”
In a prophetic strain, which has been so often quoted in that land where
“The seaward winds are wailing through Santa Barbara’s pines,
And like a sheathless sabre, the far Pacific shines,”
he foretold, in “The Pine Forest of Monterey,” what has already happened
in that magic land of sunshine, gold, and miraculous progress.
“Stately Pines,
But few more years around the promontory
Your chant will meet the thunders of the sea.
No more, a barrier to the encroaching sand
Against the surf ye’ll stretch defiant arm,
Though with its onset and besieging shock
Your firm knees tremble. Never more the wind
Shall pipe shrill music through your mossy beards,
Nor sunset’s yellow blaze athwart your heads
Crown all the hills with gold. Your race is past:
The mystic cycle, whose unnoted birth
Coeval was with yours, has run its sands,
And other footsteps from these changing shores
Frighten its haunting Spirit. Men will come
To vex your quiet with the din of toil;
The smoky volumes of the forge will stain
This pure, sweet air; loud keels will ride the sea,
Dashing its glittering sapphire into foam;
Through all her green cañadas Spring will seek
Her lavish blooms in vain, and clasping ye,
O, mournful Pines, within her glowing arms,
Will weep soft rains to find ye fallen low.”
He portrayed his California experiences in rhyme, when he sang of “The
Summer Camp,” and we quote a few lines of it, so appropriate to his
departure from San Francisco.
“No more of travel, where the flaming sword
Of the great sun divides the heavens; no more
Of climbing over jutty steeps that swim
In driving sea-mists, where the stunted tree
Slants inland, mimicking the stress of winds
When wind is none; of plain and steaming marsh,
Where the dry bulrush crackles in the heat;
Of camps by starlight in the columned vault
Of sycamores, and the red, dancing fires
That build a leafy arch, efface and build,
And sink at last, to let the stars peep through;
Of cañons grown with pine, and folded deep
In golden mountain-sides; of airy sweeps
Of mighty landscape, lying all alone
Like some deserted world.”
He mentioned the deep impression of ceaseless progress which the
change of a few weeks had made in the growth of San Francisco. When
he re-entered it, after his short stay in the mountains, he could not
recognize the streets, while the inhabitants and their manners had
undergone a change still more astonishing. Where there were tents a few
days before, now were large buildings of wood, while the log-cabins and
Chinese houses had, in many places, given place to structures of brick
and stone. Wharves had been built, streets regularly laid out, banks
opened, wholesale stores established, lines of steamers running to
the various ports along the coast, and up the rivers; while the rude,
dirty, careless, rushing multitude had assumed a cleanliness and a
gravity, unequal of course to that of an Eastern city, but astonishingly
in advance of the previous wildness. Law offices, brokers’ boards,
smelting establishments, barber-shops, hotels, bakeries, laundries, and
news-stands had all been established in a confusingly short space of
time. The place he found as a frontier camp, he found four months later
a swarming yet civilized city, with all the officials, and some of the
red tape which characterize older corporations. But San Francisco was
not alone in its growth; for Sacramento, San José, Monterey, and many
other towns and cities, had been as nothing, less than a year before. At
the time he left San Francisco, they were populous cities and villages,
teeming with a resistless, sleepless activity. To accurately record such
a change, to give an anxious public correct information regarding that
wonderland, and the fortune of their friends, and to bear a share in the
work of establishing such a State, was the task of Mr. Taylor, and most
creditably did he perform his part.
On leaving California, about the first of January, 1850, he decided to
go down the coast to Mazatlan and thence overland through Mexico. He
came to that conclusion after long consultations with his friends, none
of whom could or dared accompany him, while all told him of robbers,
deserts, impassable streams, and dangerous wild beasts which awaited all
travellers in that benighted and trackless country. Mr. Taylor would have
enjoyed some thrilling adventures; and the fears of his advisers only
made him more decided in his determination to go. So, alone, and with but
slight knowledge of the Spanish language, he disembarked at Mazatlan on
the Mexican coast, near the mouth of the Gulf of California, and with
a pair of pistols and a dwarfed mule, started into the unknown wilds of
that tropical land.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF CHAPULTEPEC.]
His hardships were many, and his fatigue at times almost unbearable; but
his love for things new and strange, for the unexplored and unknown,
kept him moving perseveringly on through the thickets and ravines of
upper Mexico. By great skill and considerable assurance he managed to
keep in the good graces of the people he met, and for several days, in
the forests and in the villages, he met, with very kind and hospitable
treatment.
On one occasion, however, he fell among thieves. Before he arrived at the
city of Mexico, and while still in the wilderness of the interior of the
Mexican highlands, he was suddenly attacked by three Mexican robbers, to
whose marauding purposes he could make no resistance, he having placed
such reliance upon the good faith of the natives as to carry his pistol
without a cartridge in it. The banditti made him dismount and hand
over what little money in coin he happened to have, and after taking
such blankets and trinkets as they desired, left him with his hands
tied behind him, to get on as best he could. Fortunately they did not
want his horse, which he had bought in place of the useless mule, and
after extricating himself from his bonds by long struggles, he mounted
his horse and rode on to Mexico with his drafts for money all intact.
He seems to have placed less reliance on the Mexicans, after that
encounter, and took good care to ride out of range of their muskets and
to keep himself supplied with ammunition.
His visit to the Mexican capital was an occasion of great interest to
him, and brought up freshly and vividly the story which Prescott has so
well told of the Aztecs and the heroic age of Cortez. No scene in Europe
is said to combine such extremes of sweetness and grandeur, of light
and shade, of valley and hill, of plain and cragged highland, of land
and water, of art and nature, as the valley of Mexico. There he saw the
evidences of prehistoric civilization, and looked with curiosity and awe
upon the towering fortress of Chapultepec, which connects the present
with the ages past. However, Mr. Taylor could not stop long in that
charming vale, and hastened on over the battle-fields of Scott to Vera
Cruz. From Vera Cruz he went by steamer to Mobile, from thence overland
to Charleston, S. C., and by way of North Carolina, Virginia, and
Washington, to New York, where, about the middle of March, he resumed his
duties as editor of the “Tribune” with the thought that there he might
stay the remainder of his life.