About the middle of December, Number Four obtained a situation as
clerk in the store already mentioned, on the hill behind our tent;
but, as he still continued to live with us, this step produced but
little change in our household economy.
According to our calculations, it now rained about one-third of the
time, though Colonel Oldbuck insisted that the proportion was at
least one-half. The river, like all mountain streams, generally rose
with great rapidity, and we were not always prepared for these sudden
freshets. Going early one morning, after a gentle rain that had fallen
interruptedly for several days, to look after our rocker, I found the
spot where we had left it, deep under water, while the river, now
swollen to a frightful extent, was fretting itself furiously against
the jutting rocks that formed its banks. Hundreds of rockers were
swept away, and one man below the island took out forty that had found
a harbour in an eddy near which he was at work. Our own, though of
iron, was forced to the surface by the violence of the current, and
lodged against a snag not far below; but the unconscionable wreckers
that saved it charged us an ounce for salvage.
As the waters subsided, the impatient miners hastened to resume
their operations on the island from which they had been several days
excluded. The fierce flood that had swept over it had produced a
wonderful change in its surface, and in some cases almost obliterated
the ancient landmarks; so that the different claimants were not a
little perplexed to settle the boundaries of this disputed territory.
Some also maintained that a fresh deposit of gold had been distributed
over the bar; and a single incident that produced a great excitement,
seemed for a time to favour this supposition. A young fellow, at work
on the upper end of the island, took out several hundred dollars, in
a few buckets full of earth, from a part of his claim that he swore
positively was entirely bare before the freshet. The gold, however,
was much coarser than the minute scales universally characteristic of
those diggings, so that the curious were for some time at a loss to
account for its mysterious appearance. It was at length recollected
that a man at work the preceding summer, on a dam just above the
island, had lost a purse containing five hundred dollars; and the
conclusion was irresistible that this was the treasure so curiously
brought to light. The lucky finder celebrated his good fortune by
having a complete "blow out," or jollification, and went roystering
about at the head of a party of good fellows, till he had not a
particle of his luck remaining.
Our diggings on the bank were now nearly exhausted. We had spent
nearly half the working days of the last two months in prospecting--O
word of fear!--had dived into the ravines--run up and down the
river--tried the bank to-day, and the island to-morrow--and, in fact,
fairly reduced ourselves to the verge of desperation. To confess the
truth, if the reader has not discovered it beforehand, we were sadly
lacking in faith, hope, energy, and perseverance, and, indeed, all
those qualities that are capable of being converted into ready money.
No one could work harder than we with a certainty of success, but
deprive us of that, and our heads hung down like a bulrush.
It was easy enough to work in a hole already opened, but to start
a new one in gravel, clay, or loam, all alike dumb, mysterious,
inscrutable--to dig five or twenty feet through unsympathizing sand
when it was so improbable that there was any thing there--it was
really unworthy of a rational being.
But working on the bank was attended with another inconvenience
arising from the difficulty of avoiding the poison-oak. This is a
small shrub generally not more than a foot in height, though sometimes
as tall as a man's head, with dark venomous looking leaves resembling
in shape those of the oak. Its poison is of the most subtile and
diffusive nature, approaching more nearly, perhaps, to that of the
fabled upas than any other in the vegetable kingdom. Some, indeed, can
handle it with impunity, while with others not only the merest touch
but even holding it a few inches from the hands or face is followed
by most painful consequences. The hands, as being most exposed, are
usually the first to discover its presence. Numerous little swellings
make their appearance between the fingers and on the wrist, causing
an intolerable itching; and the least contact being sufficient to
communicate the infection, it soon spreads to the face and other parts
of the body. In a few days, with proper precaution, these symptoms
commonly disappear, but are sometimes followed by others yet more
unfavourable. The parts affected swell to a prodigious size, and
become exquisitely painful; pustules form and break until the whole
surface becomes an offensive sore, and in some cases death even has
ensued. As we were both unusually sensitive to this poison, we were
unwilling to expose ourselves to its influence for any thing less than
eight dollars a day, and we were once more driven to the island.
This now presented a truly formidable appearance. Imagine an irregular
field of about ten acres, with the stones that would rightfully
belong to ten thousand acres of the stoniest pasture, collected on
its surface in piles of every conceivable form and relative position.
The whole had been already turned topsy-turvy, and many parts two or
three times in succession yet scattered parties of miners were still
at work;--our neighbours Browne and Oldbuck among them--and we heard
now and then of their making fifteen or twenty dollars in a day,
though the average would not have exceeded six or seven. They began,
it hardly mattered where, by throwing out the stones with their hands
till they reached the bottom of rotten granite, and had thus made
what is called a good face for their hole; and then, scraping off a
few inches of the surface, they washed it together, with the smaller
stones and the trifling quantity of earth that still remained. We went
to work in the same manner, and after a hard day's labour, found we
had made just ten dollars.
It rained gently and at intervals all the next day and night.
Wednesday morning I rose early, and stepping to the door of the tent,
looked down towards the island. To my great surprise, hardly space
enough remained uncovered to pitch a tent on--in twelve hours the
river had risen fifteen feet--our rocker was again submerged, and this
was the last we ever saw of it. I walked a short distance up the bank,
and though I had been over the same ground a hundred times, I was
almost bewildered by the novelty of the scene. The usually rapid river
now rushed along with the speed of a mill race, and a multitudinous,
deafening shout. The rocks among which we had worked, and the path
where we had walked, were now all far below the surface. The waters
continued to rise until the whole island was covered, but the next
morning, though it was still raining, it again heaved its broad back
above the waves.
In the evening we received letters from home announcing that a third
brother was on his way to join us, and was, perhaps, even then in San
Francisco; pleasant news, though we had so little encouragement to
give him on his arrival.
Monday, Jan. 20th, we received a visit from our old friend and
shipmate, Capt. Fayreweather, now on his way home. It is impossible to
imagine a greater contrast than he now presented to his former self.
When we sailed from N. I remembered him in a long camlet cloak, all
chirping and officious good humour--not even the ignominy of being
hauled up a steep plank, like a beerbarrel in a nightgown, was able
to ruffle his abiding complacency. But now, his humour was dry and
sarcastic, and had that peculiar tone that persons of his character
are apt to assume when they wish to show that they consider themselves
slighted or in any way ill-used. Between him and the smallest man in
the ship there existed the same sort of antipathy as between the cat
and the mouse, or the elephant and the pig. As this sentiment was
instinctive on both sides, and such as often manifests itself between
two such opposites, I was not a little amused at the manner in which
he referred to his puny antagonist--"little Flanders," with a jerking
emphasis on the first syllable. It really seemed as if I could hear
the bones crack as he mumbled him in his month.
We could not help pitying the old man, and fancying--I hope it was
only fancy--that he was not quite so stout and comely as he had been;
we invited him to stay all night, and I gladly gave up my bed for
his accommodation. As the evening advanced, he waxed more merry and
genial, and some faint flashes of his wonted spirit showed what he
must have been ere age and disappointment had chilled his blood; but
in the morning all his fire was exhausted, or had retired inward to
warm and strengthen his heart. He left us immediately after breakfast,
and we soon saw him toiling up the steep hill on the other side of the
village, on his way to Sacramento.
A scalded dog, says the Italian proverb, fears cold water; though
possibly the case might be altered if the scalding were administered
on sufficiently scientific principles, or if the said dog should
happen to be blest with a taste for scientific investigation. However,
it may still be thought that our recent experience with the Burke
rocker should have deterred us from any further experiment of a
similar nature; but the same burning zeal, or zeal for burning,
that impels that humble victim of science, the moth, already singed
by the blaze, again to venture within the charmed circle, and the
thrice-escaped navigator to intrude again within the polar seas, was
now urging us on to the same fatal catastrophe.
It was but too evident that by the commonplace methods of mining
we should never achieve that brilliant fortune our hopes had
promised--five dollars a day was only fifteen hundred a year, by all
the known rules of arithmetic, and it was therefore incumbent upon us
to strike out some bold and original plan of operations, which should
at once declare our genius and secure its reward. If we could only
get at the beds of the rivers without the slow, painful and uncertain
process of damming, and lay our hand upon the riches that had been
accumulating there for a hundred generations, as the busy waters
winnowed away the chaff, we should have nothing more to ask; but how
to accomplish this important object was now the question. Damming, as
we have just seen, was attended with the greatest uncertainty--after
months of profitless and unremitting toil, the miner often discovered
that the portion of the channel thus laid bare was absolutely
worthless, and that all his labour had been expended in vain. Our
first thought was to convert a hogshead into a diving bell, and
invade the possessions of the river gods in this moving citadel; but
the difficulties that beset the construction and the use of such an
awkward contrivance left no reasonable hope of success. I remembered
to have read, years before, of some experiments made in the harbour of
New York with a curious invention called a submarine armour, and from
my recollection of its operation on that occasion it seemed exactly
what was wanted for our present purpose. The more I thought of this
project the more pleasing it became--doubt slowly gave way to hope,
and hope rapidly ripened into full assurance of success. So I sat down
and wrote a letter with trembling fingers to a friend in New York,
requesting him to send me out one of these Fortunatus dresses without
delay.
In the mean time, though with so brilliant a prospect before us,
we continued to work on the island for the contemptible pittance I
have mentioned, and with the merest apology for a rocker, which I
had patched up out of the wreck of one we found on the shore nearly
embedded in sand. We were thus occupied one afternoon about the
beginning of February, Tertium being at the rocker, while I was on my
knees scraping up the rotten granite with an iron spoon, when, hearing
a voice behind me that sounded tolerably familiar, I threw as much
of the California stoop out of my shoulders as possible, to welcome
my brother from whom I had parted just a year, and a week, and a day
before, and who now recognised us, somewhat to my disappointment,
without difficulty, in spite of our rude dress and unshaven faces.
As the day was nearly spent, we resisted his importunity to fall at
once to work, assuring him that he would soon be able to gratify his
natural ardour and curiosity to his heart's content, and in the mean
time we were devoured with eagerness to hear what he had to say of
friends at home, and of the incidents of his journey.
He finally submitted with a good grace, considering how sore a
disappointment such a delay must necessarily be to one just arrived
in the mines, and who, like all in that situation, is burning with
impatience to make his first dive into the treasures that lie strewn
around him.
We took him captive therefore, and led him in triumph to our tent,
where it afforded us infinite delight to exhibit our housekeeping,
and to listen to his simple questions on matters that had long since
lost all mystery to us. His feverish desire to be employed at first
occasioned us considerable perplexity--I shuddered when I saw his
profane hand thrust into our treasured deposit, and laughed at the
scrupulous care with which he cleaned his finger nails of the minute
particles that adhered to them; but I did not feel easy till I had
settled him quietly in one corner near the stove, while I proceeded
to furnish forth such a supper as befitted the occasion, pleasing
myself all the while at the thought of the agreeable surprise that was
awaiting him.
The next morning we went all together, a mile up the river, to
consider a claim that had lately been offered for sale. As this placer
played quite an important part in our mining operations, and was at
that time considered an exception to all established rules, scientific
or otherwise, it will be necessary to describe it more particularly.
About thirty feet above the river, and separated from it by still
higher rocks, ran a short ravine or gully, through which, ages before,
a portion of the stream probably flowed. The path along the river led
directly through this little valley, and hundreds of miners had walked
over it without a thought of the riches that lay under their feet.
At length came the first great freshet I have mentioned, burying at
once, all the river diggings, and driving the miners every where in
search of others. Curiosity led one to prospect in this ravine, when
he found, to his equal surprise and gratification, that it paid as
much as three or four ounces a day. The news spread like wild-fire,
and the whole ground was instantly divided among a dozen claimants;
and though it did not all prove equally rich, it continued for several
months to yield a better return than almost any other in the vicinity.
At the time of our visit the richer portions in the bottom had been
exhausted, and the miners had advanced several feet into the face of
the bank which was here about ten feet high, and extended back from
the river in a level plain several hundred yards. This bank, like
those on the immediate edge of the water, grew constantly poorer the
farther it was explored; but a considerable portion yet remained
that we thought would yield us each half an ounce a day. Our former
experience in buying holes had made us rather shy of this sort of
merchandize, but as the price was insignificant, and the prospect
satisfactory, we, after some hesitation, paid the money, and took
possession in the usual manner by placing a shovel in the hole, which
was thus held by as inviolable a tenure as if it had been locked up in
an iron safe.
But all this while the reader should have seen the rapturous novelty
with which St. John, like a new-fledged butterfly in a flower garden,
was disporting him among the rocks. While I was washing one panful of
earth after another, in order to be sure we were getting the worth of
our money, he also having obtained a pan, went rushing here and there,
thrusting his head into all sorts of odd-shaped crevices, and scraping
out, to the infinite detriment of his fingers, the few handfuls of
dirt and stones that had lodged in them; till having at length filled
his pan, he spent another quarter of an hour in washing it out, and
then, with an air worthy of some great discoverer, presented it for
our inspection.
"Ah! yes," we replied coldly, for we considered it a duty to dash his
enthusiasm somewhat, "that is very fair certainly, but is there any
more dirt like it?"
"Oh yes!" cried St. John with the utmost animation, "there is plenty
more, only see here!" and with these words, he fished out three or
four spoonfuls of gravel from a narrow cleft in the ledge.
On his way home his inexperience was continually leading him into
fresh vagaries, and I was very glad that neither of the scientific
miners happened to be present, as such shocking perversity could not
have failed to arouse their most virtuous indignation. He walked with
his eyes fixed on the ground, like a man looking for lost treasure,
and trod softly, as if he expected to come upon it by surprise. The
yellow mica that glittered among the sand was a never-ending source
of deception. At every step he discovered a spot that he was sure
must have gold in it, or, at any rate, it would do no harm to try. It
was in vain that we assured him that we had tried it already--that
we even pointed out to him the very holes we had dug, as indeed they
might be seen at intervals of three or four rods all up and down the
river; wherever there was room for another hole between two already
existing, his ignorant faith and ardour, now in their newest gloss,
insisted upon making the experiment. We spared no pains to convince
him of his mischievous error--we knew that the unpalatable truth
must sooner or later be forced upon him, and the sooner the nauseous
draught was swallowed the better for his peace.
We well remembered "with what compulsion and laborious flight we sunk
thus low," and would gladly have spared him the same lingering painful
process. But instead of gratefully receiving our well meant ridicule
and friendly expostulation, he only hardened himself the more, and we
were at length compelled to let the disease run its natural course.
The passing gleam of sunshine that shone on us immediately after his
arrival, confirmed him in his heretical opinion, and it was not till
he had spent several days in prospecting that any change for the
better was discernible in his behaviour.
Having thus enlarged our business, a single rocker was no longer
sufficient, and we commenced the construction of another that same
afternoon. I finished it during the whole of Monday, while Tertium and
St. John went up the river to make their first experiment in our new
territory. Their report was not very encouraging--they brought back
at night only eight dollars; but as St. John attributed this result
entirely to the rocker, which was indeed a wretched affair, and I
attributed it, in part at least, to my not being there to see, Tertium
was the only one seriously disturbed by their ill fortune.
The next day fully justified my expectations. The earth was a most
tenacious clay mixed with stones and gravel; the whole forming a solid
mass of concrete that yielded slowly and painfully only to repeated
blows. In spite, however, of this extraordinary hardness, and the
distance of the bank from the river, one of us found little difficulty
in digging and carrying as fast as the other two could wash, the
clayey nature of the soil impeding this operation even more than the
first. We had now discarded the raisin box, with a hoop nailed to its
sides for a handle, which had hitherto served us for carrying earth,
and had substituted a couple of aristocratic wooden buckets, and a
very convenient implement known in some parts of the country as a sap
yoke, which if not very flattering in its associations, at least made
our labour a good deal easier. We rested at noon only long enough to
eat the luncheon we had brought with us, and returned home at an early
hour, where, on weighing the proceeds of our day's labour, we found we
had just an ounce and a half.
Our bank continued to pay larger and larger dividends all the rest of
the week till Saturday, when from one hundred and eighty buckets we
washed out nearly three ounces, more than we had ever obtained before.
After this the tide began to ebb, and our earnings gradually fell
off from forty to thirty, from thirty to twenty, and from twenty to
fifteen, when, it being near the end of March, we finally abandoned
the place to go up into the mountains.
The month of February was unusually cold, rainy, and disagreeable; the
sky was smooched with clouds, and there were one or two thick flights
of snow, which melted, however, as soon as it reached the earth. On
the 18th, Dr. Browne, accompanied by the snuffy Scotchman, and several
others from the neighbourhood, set out for the mountains; but they
encountered a violent snow storm soon after leaving Coloma, and
California Hat, who went with them, became disheartened and returned
to Mormon Island to wait for a more favourable season. Oldbuck, who
had in vain dissuaded his companions from their enterprise, and
still remained inactive in his snug quarters, could not conceal his
gratification at the turn things had taken, both because he was vexed
that they had not, as usual, been governed by his advice, and because
his superior sagacity had been so signally illustrated. He now invited
Number Four to lodge at his tent, and we were thus relieved from that
horror of all saving housewives, the necessity of making up a spare
bed every night, as we had done since St. John's arrival.
One Sunday, about the middle of March, while we were sunning ourselves
in front of our tent, our attention was attracted by a sudden
commotion under the bank, a little to the right of the village, and
which was the same so emphatically denounced by the second scientific
miner. Hurrying to the spot, we found a large crowd desperately at
work digging out two men who had just been buried beneath a large
mass of earth. The unfortunate victims of their own guilty imprudence
had been picking out the thin stratum of rubble at the bottom of the
bank, when the overhanging cliff, which was composed of a fine sand,
some twenty feet in depth, fell in sudden ruin on their heads. In
about fifteen minutes a shout from one of the workmen proclaimed that
one of the bodies had been found. It was a shocking spectacle--blood,
and dirt, and death--the head first, falling on the breast, then the
nerveless arm, and at last, the whole poor, deserted body--how swift
had been the flight of the startled garrison, at that dread alarm,
along the winding ways of the heart and veins.
This incident confirmed the remark so often made as to the
insensibility of the miner to the fate of his companions. Though there
were of course some exceptions, the indifference generally manifested
on such occasions seemed to argue that charity and humanity are not
the natural spontaneous growth of the human heart, but a forced and
artificial production that can exist only in the hot-bed of permanent
society. After satisfying their curiosity to hear the name and
residence of the deceased, the crowd disperses, and the whole matter
is speedily forgotten amid more exciting interests, or remembered
only as a bit of gossip a little out of the common course. If the
sufferers have any friends to perform for them the last sad offices,
they are carried to their final resting-place with little of that
solemnity that seems inseparable from such a ceremony; and if not,
they are hurried into the ground with still more indecent haste.
Spring was now rapidly advancing. The air, except during rainy
weather, was the most delightful that can be imagined, and far warmer
than in corresponding latitudes on the Atlantic; the mercury standing
at noon on the 25th of March, at 82° in the shade. Flowers of the
greatest beauty and variety sprung up, as if by magic, in a single
night; there were here no masses of snow and ice whose gradual thaw
keeps back the tardy, lingering spring long after the sun has passed
the equator; he looked upon the earth with gladsome eye, and every ray
was the birth of a flower.
As we lay in our tent, in listless idleness, through the sultry hours
of noon, the uninterrupted buzzing of the flies that already heralded
the approach of summer, fell on the ear like the murmur of a brook
over its pebbly bed, or the sighing of the wind among the trees;
no sight, no unassisted effort of the imagination could recall so
delightfully the varied pleasures of that delicious season--closed
blinds, open windows, watered streets, white dresses, ices, and
fruits, and new-made hay. But we did not go to California for any such
purpose as this; it was another shine and another glitter than of sun
or flowers that we had come so far to seek; we could not turn them
into coin, nor bottle them up for future enjoyment.
Accordingly the second week in April we prepared, with many
misgivings, to leave our present comfortable, and even luxurious
quarters, to encounter the hardships and privations of a nomadic life
among more rude and uncivilised regions. The difficulty attending
the choice of a location, and the doubt that clouded the whole
undertaking, inclined St. John to remain where we were; but this
counsel was overruled by a majority of the company, and after some
hesitation we fixed upon the Middle Fork of the American River as the
scene of our summer campaign.