The next day, the cargo having been entered in due form, we began
trading. The trade-room was fitted up in the steerage, and
furnished out with the lighter goods, and with specimens of the
rest of the cargo; and Mellus, a young man who came out from
Boston with us before the mast, was taken out of the forecastle,
and made supercargo's clerk. He was well qualified for this
business, having been clerk in a counting-house in Boston; but he
had been troubled for some time with rheumatism, which unfitted
him for the wet and exposed duty of a sailor on the coast. For a
week or ten days all was life on board. The people came off to
look and to buy,-- men, women, and children; and we were
continually going in the boats, carrying goods and passengers,--
for they have no boats of their own. Everything must dress itself
and come aboard and see the new vessel, if it were only to buy a
paper of pins. The agent and his clerk managed the sales, while we
were busy in the hold or in the boats. Our cargo was an assorted
one; that is, it consisted of everything under the sun. We had
spirits of all kinds (sold by the cask), teas, coffee, sugars,
spices, raisins, molasses, hardware, crockery-ware, tin-ware,
cutlery, clothing of all kinds, boots and shoes from Lynn,
calicoes and cotton from Lowell, crapes, silks; also, shawls,
scarfs, necklaces, jewelry, and combs for the women; furniture;
and, in fact, everything that can be imagined, from Chinese
fireworks to English cart-wheels,-- of which we had a dozen pairs
with their iron tires on.
The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make
nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they
buy, at a great price, bad wine made in Boston and brought round
by us, and retail it among themselves at a real (12 1/2 cents) by the
small wineglass. Their hides, too, which they value at two dollars
in money, they barter for something which costs seventy-five cents
in Boston; and buy shoes (as like as not made of their own hides,
which have been carried twice round Cape Horn) at three and four
dollars, and ``chicken-skin boots'' at fifteen dollars a pair.
Things sell, on an average, at an advance of nearly three hundred
per cent upon the Boston prices. This is partly owing to the heavy
duties which the government, in their wisdom, with an idea, no
doubt, of keeping the silver in the country, has laid upon
imports. These duties, and the enormous expenses of so long a
voyage, keep all merchants but those of heavy capital from
engaging in the trade. Nearly two thirds of all the articles
imported into the country from round Cape Horn, for the last six
years, have been by the single house of Bryant, Sturgis, & Co., to
whom our vessel belonged.
This kind of business was new to us, and we liked it very well for
a few days, though we were hard at work every minute from daylight
to dark, and sometimes even later.
By being thus continually engaged in transporting passengers, with
their goods, to and fro, we gained considerable knowledge of the
character, dress, and language of the people. The dress of the men
was as I have before described it. The women wore gowns of various
texture,-- silks, crape, calicoes, &c.,-- made after the European
style, except that the sleeves were short, leaving the arm bare,
and that they were loose about the waist, corsets not being in
use. They wore shoes of kid or satin, sashes or belts of bright
colors, and almost always a necklace and ear-rings. Bonnets they
had none. I only saw one on the coast, and that belonged to the
wife of an American sea-captain who had settled in San Diego, and
had imported the chaotic mass of straw and ribbon, as a choice
present to his new wife. They wear their hair (which is almost
invariably black, or a very dark brown) long in their necks,
sometimes loose, and sometimes in long braids; though the married
women often do it up on a high comb. Their only protection against
the sun and weather is a large mantle which they put over their
heads, drawing it close round their faces, when they go out of
doors, which is generally only in pleasant weather. When in the
house, or sitting out in front of it, which they often do in fine
weather, they usually wear a small scarf or neckerchief of a rich
pattern. A band, also, about the top of the head, with a cross,
star, or other ornament in front, is common. Their complexions are
various, depending-- as well as their dress and manner-- upon the
amount of Spanish blood they can lay claim to, which also settles
their social rank. Those who are of pure Spanish blood, having
never intermarried with the aborigines, have clear brunette
complexions, and sometimes even as fair as those of English women.
There are but few of these families in California, being mostly
those in official stations, or who, on the expiration of their
terms of office, have settled here upon property they have
acquired; and others who have been banished for state offences.
These form the upper class, intermarrying, and keeping up an
exclusive system in every respect. They can be distinguished, not
only by their complexion, dress, and manners, but also by their
speech; for, calling themselves Castilians, they are very
ambitious of speaking the pure Castilian, while all Spanish is
spoken in a somewhat corrupted dialect by the lower classes. From
this upper class, they go down by regular shades, growing more and
more dark and muddy, until you come to the pure Indian, who runs
about with nothing upon him but a small piece of cloth, kept up by
a wide leather strap drawn round his waist. Generally speaking,
each person's caste is decided by the quality of the blood, which
shows itself, too plainly to be concealed, at first sight. Yet the
least drop of Spanish blood, if it be only of quadroon or
octoroon, is sufficient to raise one from the position of a serf,
and entitle him to wear a suit of clothes,-- boots, hat, cloak,
spurs, long knife, all complete, though coarse and dirty as may
be,-- and to call himself Español, and to hold property, if he can
get any.
The fondness for dress among the women is excessive, and is
sometimes their ruin. A present of a fine mantle, or of a necklace
or pair of ear-rings, gains the favor of the greater part. Nothing
is more common than to see a woman living in a house of only two
rooms, with the ground for a floor, dressed in spangled satin
shoes, silk gown, high comb, and gilt, if not gold, ear-rings and
necklace. If their husbands do not dress them well enough, they
will soon receive presents from others. They used to spend whole
days on board our vessel, examining the fine clothes and
ornaments, and frequently making purchases at a rate which would
have made a seamstress or waiting-maid in Boston open her eyes.
Next to the love of dress, I was most struck with the fineness of
the voices and beauty of the intonations of both sexes. Every
common ruffian-looking fellow, with a slouched hat, blanket cloak,
dirty under-dress, and soiled leather leggins, appeared to me to
be speaking elegant Spanish. It was a pleasure simply to listen to
the sound of the language, before I could attach any meaning to
it. They have a good deal of the Creole drawl, but it is varied by
an occasional extreme rapidity of utterance, in which they seem to
skip from consonant to consonant, until, lighting upon a broad,
open vowel, they rest upon that to restore the balance of sound.
The women carry this peculiarity of speaking to a much greater
extreme than the men, who have more evenness and stateliness of
utterance. A common bullock-driver, on horseback, delivering a
message, seemed to speak like an ambassador at a royal audience.
In fact, they sometimes appeared to me to be a people on whom a
curse had fallen, and stripped them of everything but their pride,
their manners, and their voices.
Another thing that surprised me was the quantity of silver in
circulation. I never, in my life, saw so much silver at one time,
as during the week that we were at Monterey. The truth is, they
have no credit system, no banks, and no way of investing money but
in cattle. Besides silver, they have no circulating medium but
hides, which the sailors call ``California bank-notes.''
Everything that they buy they must pay for by one or the other of
these means. The hides they bring down dried and doubled, in
clumsy ox-carts, or upon mules' backs, and the money they carry
tied up in a handkerchief, fifty or a hundred dollars and
half-dollars.
I had not studied Spanish at college, and could not speak a word
when at Juan Fernandez; but, during the latter part of the passage
out, I borrowed a grammar and dictionary from the cabin, and by a
continual use of these, and a careful attention to every word that
I heard spoken, I soon got a vocabulary together, and began
talking for myself. As I soon knew more Spanish than any of the
crew (who, indeed, knew none at all), and had studied Latin and
French, I got the name of a great linguist, and was always sent by
the captain and officers for provisions, or to take letters and
messages to different parts of the town. I was often sent for
something which I could not tell the name of to save my life; but
I liked the business, and accordingly never pleaded ignorance.
Sometimes I managed to jump below and take a look at my dictionary
before going ashore; or else I overhauled some English resident on
my way, and learned the word from him; and then, by signs, and by
giving a Latin or French word a twist at the end, contrived to get
along. This was a good exercise for me, and no doubt taught me
more than I should have learned by months of study and reading; it
also gave me opportunities of seeing the customs, characters, and
domestic arrangements of the people, beside being a great relief
from the monotony of a day spent on board ship.
Monterey, as far as my observation goes, is decidedly the
pleasantest and most civilized-looking place in California. In the
centre of it is an open square, surrounded by four lines of
one-story buildings, with half a dozen cannon in the centre; some
mounted, and others not. This is the Presidio, or fort. Every town
has a presidio in its centre; or rather every presidio has a town
built around it; for the forts were first built by the Mexican
government, and then the people built near them, for protection.
The presidio here was entirely open and unfortified. There were
several officers with long titles, and about eighty soldiers, but
they were poorly paid, fed, clothed, and disciplined. The
governor-general, or, as he is commonly called, the ``general,''
lives here, which makes it the seat of government. He is appointed
by the central government at Mexico, and is the chief civil and
military officer. In addition to him, each town has a commandant
who is its chief officer, and has charge of the fort, and of all
transactions with foreigners and foreign vessels; while two or
three alcaldes and corregidores, elected by the inhabitants, are
the civil officers. Courts strictly of law, with a system of
jurisprudence, they have not. Small municipal matters are
regulated by the alcaldes and corregidores, and everything
relating to the general government, to the military, and to
foreigners, by the commandants, acting under the governor-general.
Capital cases are decided by the latter, upon personal inspection,
if near; or upon minutes sent him by the proper officers, if the
offender is at a distant place. No Protestant has any political
rights, nor can he hold property, or, indeed, remain more than a
few weeks on shore, unless he belong to a foreign vessel.
Consequently, Americans and English, who intend to reside here,
become Papists,-- the current phrase among them being, ``A man
must leave his conscience at Cape Horn.''
But, to return to Monterey. The houses here, as everywhere else in
California, are of one story, built of adobes, that is, clay made
into large bricks, about a foot and a half square, and three or
four inches thick, and hardened in the sun. These are joined
together by a cement of the same material, and the whole are of a
common dirt-color. The floors are generally of earth, the windows
grated and without glass; and the doors, which are seldom shut,
open directly into the common room, there being no entries. Some
of the more wealthy inhabitants have glass to their windows and
board floors; and in Monterey nearly all the houses are
whitewashed on the outside. The better houses, too, have red tiles
upon the roofs. The common ones have two or three rooms which open
into each other, and are furnished with a bed or two, a few chairs
and tables, a looking-glass, a crucifix, and small daubs of
paintings enclosed in glass, representing some miracle or
martyrdom. They have no chimneys or fireplaces in the houses, the
climate being such as to make a fire unnecessary; and all their
cooking is done in a small kitchen, separated from the house. The
Indians, as I have said before, do all the hard work, two or three
being attached to the better house; and the poorest persons are
able to keep one, at least, for they have only to feed them, and
give them a small piece of coarse cloth and a belt for the men,
and a coarse gown, without shoes or stockings, for the women.
In Monterey there are a number of English and Americans (English
or Ingles all are called who speak the English language) who have
married Californians, become united to the Roman Church, and
acquired considerable property. Having more industry, frugality,
and enterprise than the natives, they soon get nearly all the
trade into their hands. They usually keep shops, in which they
retail the goods purchased in larger quantities from our vessels,
and also send a good deal into the interior, taking hides in pay,
which they again barter with our ships. In every town on the coast
there are foreigners engaged in this kind of trade, while I
recollect but two shops kept by natives. The people are naturally
suspicious of foreigners, and they would not be allowed to remain,
were it not that they conform to the Church, and by marrying
natives, and bringing up their children as Roman Catholics and
Mexicans, and not teaching them the English language, they quiet
suspicion, and even become popular and leading men. The chief
alcaldes in Monterey and Santa Barbara were Yankees by birth.
The men in Monterey appeared to me to be always on horseback.
Horses are as abundant here as dogs and chickens were in Juan
Fernandez. There are no stables to keep them in, but they are
allowed to run wild and graze wherever they please, being branded,
and having long leather ropes, called lassos, attached to their
necks and dragging along behind them, by which they can be easily
taken. The men usually catch one in the morning, throw a saddle
and bridle upon him, and use him for the day, and let him go at
night, catching another the next day. When they go on long
journeys, they ride one horse down, and catch another, throw the
saddle and bridle upon him, and, after riding him down, take a
third, and so on to the end of the journey. There are probably no
better riders in the world. They are put upon a horse when only
four or five years old, their little legs not long enough to come
half-way over his sides, and may almost be said to keep on him
until they have grown to him. The stirrups are covered or boxed up
in front, to prevent their catching when riding through the woods;
and the saddles are large and heavy, strapped very tight upon the
horse, and have large pommels, or loggerheads, in front, round
which the lasso is coiled when not in use. They can hardly go from
one house to another without mounting a horse, there being
generally several standing tied to the door-posts of the little
cottages. When they wish to show their activity, they make no use
of their stirrups in mounting, but, striking the horse, spring
into the saddle as he starts, and, sticking their long spurs into
him, go off on the full run. Their spurs are cruel things, having
four or five rowels, each an inch in length, dull and rusty. The
flanks of the horses are often sore from them, and I have seen men
come in from chasing bullocks, with their horses' hind legs and
quarters covered with blood. They frequently give exhibitions of
their horsemanship in races, bull-baitings, &c.; but as we were
not ashore during any holiday, we saw nothing of it. Monterey is
also a great place for cock-fighting, gambling of all sorts,
fandangos, and various kinds of amusement and knavery. Trappers
and hunters, who occasionally arrive here from over the Rocky
Mountains, with their valuable skins and furs, are often
entertained with amusements and dissipation, until they have
wasted their opportunities and their money, and then go back,
stripped of everything.
Nothing but the character of the people prevents Monterey from
becoming a large town. The soil is as rich as man could wish,
climate as good as any in the world, water abundant, and situation
extremely beautiful. The harbor, too, is a good one, being subject
only to one bad wind, the north; and though the holding-ground is
not the best, yet I heard of but one vessel's being driven ashore
here. That was a Mexican brig, which went ashore a few months
before our arrival, and was a total wreck, all the crew but one
being drowned. Yet this was owing to the carelessness or ignorance
of the captain, who paid out all his small cable before he let go
his other anchor. The ship Lagoda, of Boston, was there at the
time, and rode out the gale in safety, without dragging at all, or
finding it necessary to strike her top-gallant-masts.
The only vessel in port with us was the little Loriotte. I
frequently went on board her, and became well acquainted with her
Sandwich Island crew. One of them could speak a little English,
and from him I learned a good deal about them. They were well
formed and active, with black eyes, intelligent countenances, dark
olive, or, I should rather say, copper complexions, and coarse
black hair, but not woolly, like the negroes. They appeared to be
talking continually. In the forecastle there was a complete Babel.
Their language is extremely guttural, and not pleasant at first,
but improves as you hear it more; and it is said to have
considerable capacity. They use a good deal of gesticulation, and
are exceedingly animated, saying with their might what their
tongues find to say. They are complete water-dogs, and therefore
very good in boating. It is for this reason that there are so many
of them on the coast of California, they being very good hands in
the surf. They are also ready and active in the rigging, and good
hands in warm weather; but those who have been with them round
Cape Horn, and in high latitudes, say that they are of little use
in cold weather. In their dress, they are precisely like our
sailors. In addition to these Islanders, the Loriotte had two
English sailors, who acted as boatswains over the Islanders, and
took care of the rigging. One of them I shall always remember as
the best specimen of the thoroughbred English sailor that I ever
saw. He had been to sea from a boy, having served a regular
apprenticeship of seven years, as English sailors are obliged to
do, and was then about four or five and twenty. He was tall; but
you only perceived it when he was standing by the side of others,
for the great breadth of his shoulders and chest made him appear
but little above the middle height. His chest was as deep as it
was wide, his arm like that of Hercules, and his hand ``the fist
of a tar-- every hair a rope-yarn.'' With all this, he had one of
the pleasantest smiles I ever saw. His cheeks were of a handsome
brown, his teeth brilliantly white, and his hair, of a raven
black, waved in loose curls all over his head and fine, open
forehead; and his eyes he might have sold to a duchess at the
price of diamonds, for their brilliancy. As for their color, every
change of position and light seemed to give them a new hue; but
their prevailing color was black, or nearly so. Take him with his
well-varnished black tarpaulin, stuck upon the back of his head,
his long locks coming down almost into his eyes, his white duck
trousers and shirt, blue jacket, and black kerchief, tied loosely
round his neck, and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty. On his
broad chest was stamped with India ink ``Parting moments,''-- a
ship ready to sail, a boat on the beach, and a girl and her sailor
lover taking their farewell. Underneath were printed the initials
of his own name, and two other letters, standing for some name
which he knew better than I. The printing was very well done,
having been executed by a man who made it his business to print
with India ink, for sailors, at Havre. On one of his broad arms he
had a crucifix, and on the other, the sign of the ``foul anchor.''
He was fond of reading, and we lent him most of the books which we
had in the forecastle, which he read and returned to us the next
time we fell in with him. He had a good deal of information, and
his captain said he was a perfect seaman, and worth his weight in
gold on board a vessel, in fair weather and in foul. His strength
must have been great, and he had the sight of a vulture. It is
strange that one should be so minute in the description of an
unknown, outcast sailor, whom one may never see again, and whom no
one may care to hear about; yet so it is. Some persons we see
under no remarkable circumstances, but whom, for some reason or
other, we never forget. He called himself Bill Jackson; and I know
no one of all my accidental acquaintances to whom I would more
gladly give a shake of the hand than to him. Whoever falls in with
him will find a handsome, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate.
Sunday came again while we were at Monterey; but, as before, it
brought us no holiday. The people on shore dressed and came off in
greater numbers than ever, and we were employed all day in boating
and breaking out cargo, so that we had hardly time to eat. Our
former second mate, who was determined to get liberty if it was to
be had, dressed himself in a long coat and black hat, and polished
his shoes, and went aft, and asked to go ashore. He could not have
done a more imprudent thing; for he knew that no liberty would be
given; and besides, sailors, however sure they may be of having
liberty granted them, always go aft in their working clothes, to
appear as though they had no reason to expect anything, and then
wash, dress, and shave after the matter is settled. But this poor
fellow was always getting into hot water, and if there was a wrong
way of doing a thing, was sure to hit upon it. We looked to see
him go aft, knowing pretty well what his reception would be. The
captain was walking the quarter-deck, smoking his morning cigar,
and Foster went as far as the break of the deck, and there waited
for him to notice him. The captain took two or three turns, and
then, walking directly up to him, surveyed him from head to foot,
and, lifting up his forefinger, said a word or two, in a tone too
low for us to hear, but which had a magical effect upon poor
Foster. He walked forward, jumped down into the forecastle, and in
a moment more made his appearance in his common clothes, and went
quietly to work again. What the captain said to him, we never
could get him to tell, but it certainly changed him outwardly and
inwardly in a surprising manner.