Friday, August 10th, we arrived at Natoma, neither richer nor
poorer than when we left that place four months before, but yet
congratulating ourselves that it was no worse. Hundreds, who had
like us illustrated the fable of the Dog and the Shadow, had not
escaped half so easily, having lost not only the whole summer, but all
their previous earnings. Nowhere else is it so true that a rolling
stone gathers no moss; and nowhere else has the said stone the same
temptation to roll as in California.
We found Tertium domiciliated with Number Four in a tent which the
latter had erected with such taste and elegance as might in the mines
fairly be termed magnificent. The interior was decorated with bright
blankets of different colours, and festoons of cedar;--the floor
covered with a carpet of snowy canvass; and the cot bedsteads standing
on opposite sides seemed to promise the highest possible amount of
single blessedness. Some Vandal had applied a torch to our former
camp, and nothing now remained but a black unsightly blot. We pitched
our tent hard by, and having concocted a savoury lobster salad, fell
to thinking most vigorously what we should do next. By the time we had
discussed the salad, we had come to the conclusion to make another
attack upon the bank we had deserted in the spring, where we hoped
to find work enough to last till winter, and gold enough to take us
home, and buy a suit of clothes in which to present ourselves to our
admiring friends. We had long before this been compelled to abandon
our original purpose of returning home like princes in disguise,
clothed in rags and tatters, but having a royal ransom hidden beneath
every patch.
The spot we now selected for our encampment was in the centre of
the short ravine already described, and a little beyond the part we
proposed to work. Close by the side of the tent the bank rose abruptly
to the height of ten or twelve feet, and leaning over it, on its very
verge, stood a gigantic pine, with long heavy branches,--its roots,
bare and knotted, seeming, like the barky claws of the Arabian roc, to
gripe fast hold of the soil. Between the ravine and the river rose a
small rocky island, or what would have been such ages before, with a
few bushes resembling the horse-chestnut growing on the scanty patches
of earth among bald masses of polished granite. Directly in front of
this island a party of miners called the South Fork Damming Company
were making preparations to drain the river; and among its numbers we
found the same ubiquitous individual so often mentioned as the Judge.
Between this point and Mormon Island several other companies were
occupied in the same manner, and large piles of lumber, to be used in
constructing their various flumes, were already scattered here and
there along the banks.
Our old claim still remained as we left it, no one having had the
hardihood to assail its impregnable front now baked into yet greater
hardness by a five months' drought. It was easy to see at a single
glance that there was work enough there for a hundred men; as to the
gold, that remained to be decided. We were in no hurry, however,
to commence the attack; it was necessary first to reconnoitre the
bank; digging with the pick was very laborious, and we might perhaps
devise some easier way; the heat was excessive, and in the mean time
we had enough to do in making our home more comfortable. We built a
bower before the door to serve as a dining-room, and drove a number
of stout stakes into the ground to support the smooth stone slab
that furnished us with a table. At a little distance we built a rude
fireplace of stones. The pine-cones that covered the ground made an
excellent fuel; our frying-pan and coffee-pot set up their wonted song
as cheerfully as ever, and once more our little Lares and Penates came
frisking and capering round our hearthstone. We now made up our minds
to remain another winter.
On Mormon Island, standing like a goose on one leg in the edge of the
river, was a tall awkward water-wheel, turning round with the current,
and dipping up with its long arms a quantity of water, which falling
into a wide spout was thence conducted into a shallow trough fifteen
feet long and as many inches in width. A miner standing by the side of
the trough threw into it, from time to time, several buckets of earth,
which being carried along by the water to a riddle or sieve at the
lower end, fell in a hundred little streams into a shallow box below.
Its contents were thus kept in a constant state of agitation, and the
gold working its way beneath the surface was saved, while the greater
part of the sand and gravel was floated off by the water. This simple
apparatus was called by the imposingly suggestive title of Long Tom.
The advantage it possessed over the common cradle in enabling us to
wash a larger quantity of earth was more than counterbalanced by the
difficulties that would beset the use of so cumbrous an ally as the
wheel. Yet the wheel was with us the principal attraction,--the splash
of its paddles made a pleasing concert, and it performed its task so
easily and cheerfully that it was a comfort to look at it.
My urgency having at length prevailed over the wiser counsels of St.
John, Tertium maintaining a strict neutrality, we were yet obliged
to wait several weeks for the big-bellied carpenter to construct the
apparatus, and for the South Fork company to turn the river into their
canal, on the edge of which we proposed to set up our works.
In the mean time we were led to embark in an enterprise more weighty
than any of our previous operations, and which, after various
disappointments, was at length, and in the most unexpected manner,
crowned with success.
A quarter of a mile above our tent, a party of miners were engaged in
repairing a dam that had been built the preceding summer, and had paid
its original proprietors over fifty thousand dollars. The new-comers,
who had taken the name of the Washington Damming and Mining Company,
had already made considerable headway in the undertaking, and expected
in another week to get to work in the bed of the river. One of the
members, intending to leave the mines, offered us his share for one
hundred and fifty dollars; after some hesitation, we paid the money;
and the next day I listened, with becoming gravity, to the reading
of the constitution and by-laws, signed my name to that important
document, and went to work with the rest.
The company consisted, chiefly, of English sailors and adventurers
from Australia, hard-workers and hard-drinkers, but possessing little
Yankee adaptation. Their names were generally Tom, Dick, and Harry;
the three more prominent members who alternated through the different
offices alone rejoicing in the dignity of a surname. Yet in the
division of our labour we maintained strict republican equality, each,
in turn, wielding the shovel and the pick, and in due time exchanging
them for the more laborious task of carrying earth and stones in
buckets along the narrow pathway of the dam.
The dam itself was an immense structure, and its massive solidity
had enabled it partially to withstand the freshets of the preceding
winter. Half the foundation was formed by a pine three feet in
diameter and a hundred feet in length, which had been drawn into the
river by oxen, and was now held firmly in its place by the jagged
rocks against which it rested. On this were laid, at right angles,
their blackened butts projecting like a close array of pikes, a large
number of stout saplings; and on these, again, a second timber, much
smaller, however, than the first. Large stones were then thrown in
on the upper side of this rude breastwork; other logs successively
added--and, when the whole had thus attained a sufficient elevation,
it was made tight with stones and gravel, and, finally, the finest
earth we could procure. When I joined the company, about half the
dam was completed, but a large part of the river still found its way
through the farther extremity. The dam was here ten feet high, and
twelve feet wide at the base; and all this mass of earth and stones
had to be carried to the spot in buckets, a distance of two hundred
and fifty feet, the labour being but slightly relieved by a small
flatboat that was employed to bring earth from the opposite bank.
As the long forenoon dragged slowly on, many a chiding look was cast
towards two towering pines that stood just one hour apart, high
up on the hillside. When the sun at last had reached his meridian
tower above the southernmost pine, the buckets and picks and shovels
fell from our willing hands; the rest of the party got into the
boat and paddled slowly across the river, while I, wearily and with
long breaths, picked my way over the rocks--crossed one or two deep
ravines--till, reaching the Red Bank, I descended with a bound, and,
stretching myself on my blankets, lay in cloddish immutability till
called to dinner. At two our long afternoon commenced, and, ah!
how earnestly we desired the shadow, bringing with it health and
refreshing. Slowly but gently our work went on, like the coral island
rising from the deep Pacific. As we hemmed in the headstrong river,
the pond above our dam continually enlarged, and more of the water was
compelled to find its way through the canal.
But now my companions were impatient to obtain the reward of their
labour, and they all said, "Let's go to work in the river bed and earn
a little money."
We dug holes here and there in the gravel, but the water filled them
like so many wells, and we were compelled to work higher on the bank.
Still we made little or nothing, and again returned to the dam.
There were several ugly leaks that defied all our efforts; boat-load
after boat-load of earth was emptied on the spot--bushels of old
clothes, enough to make the fortune of all the rag merchants of
Little Germany, collected in the neighbourhood, and carefully stowed
away at the bottom by the most amphibious of our party, who used to
emerge from his bath, dripping like a river-god and shivering as in an
ague--all was in vain. It was really too bad; we had stopped the whole
river, but we could not stop that trifling leak.
And just now, too, our boat was sunk. Pushing heedlessly off from the
shore, it went down, full of earth, in ten feet of water; and when
we reproached the crew for their clumsiness, we received no other
consolation than that of knowing they had lost their boots.
The next day was cold and cloudy--a few wild geese flying south,
dripped upon us some drops of rain.
"Well, boys," cried our democratic president, "and what shall we do
now?"
"The rainy season is coming! we must go to work, and make what we can,
each one for himself!" cried half the members.
We made, during the forenoon, fifty dollars. "This will never do,"
said the president; "we must have another meeting." We sat round on
stones--the surnames argued with a deal of heat and acrimony, to which
Tom, Dick, and Harry, opposed an impregnable front of sullen disdain.
The president, by far the ablest man in the company,--though, like all
the rest, hasty and passionate,--resigned his office in disgust; and
all my persuasive flattery could not induce him to resume it. They
_would_ go to work in the river, in spite of my remonstrances; so I
left them, and returned to assist in working the Long Tom.
The wheel, some eight feet in diameter, was attached to the end of a
long, heavy shaft, projecting two or three feet over the current, and
supported at a single point by an iron bolt passing through a stout
post set firmly among the rocks at the edge of the canal into which
the river had been diverted. By means of this shaft, we could raise or
depress the wheel at pleasure. The earth we proposed first to wash was
a gentle slope, rising from the river towards our bank, and consisting
of a fine sand almost free from stones, and paying from three to ten,
or even twenty cents to the bucket.
Thursday morning, September 12, we commenced operations. Round goes
the restless wheel, scooping up the dizzy water. The canvass hose
rises and falls with its frequent pulse, like the great artery of
a whale. The thirsty sand drinks eagerly the cooling stream that
dissolves and sweeps it away, leaving bright grains of gold sticking
here and there on the bottom of the trough. So, if nothing happens, we
shall get rich, after all.
"But seems to me, the river is rising," cries St. John.
"So it is, I declare; what in the world is to pay now, I wonder; there
comes Cameron; perhaps he can tell us."
"Well, Mr. Raven," cried Cameron, as well as he could for want of
breath, "the dam's gone."
"Dam gone! how? where? when?"
"Just now, down the river, swept away. The Missouri Dam has burst, and
the flood has swept the top of ours clean off; I just saved the tools
and that's all."
"That's what made the river rise?"
"Yes, it has so."
There was our two thousand vanished into thin air; we all looked
rather foolish, and then and there decided that damming was a very
unprofitable business, and we would have nothing more to do with it.
It was now twelve o'clock; so raising the wheel out of the water, we
walked up to our tent; where we spent an hour or two very pleasantly
in forming a comparison between our own situation and that of the
great mass of our fellow adventurers. It was of course highly
gratifying to find that we belonged to that numerous and respectable
class whose praises have been sung in all ages from Solomon to Dr.
Franklin; and if half of our acquaintance had more, the other half had
even less than had fallen to our share.
Full of this consolatory reflection, and strong in faith, we resumed
our labours in the afternoon; but had hardly washed a dozen buckets
when suddenly the water in the canal fell two feet or more--the wheel
ceased its revolutions--St. John dropped the uplifted shovel--Tertium
rested on the handles of the wheelbarrow--and we all stared with open
mouth at this new wonder. The flume just above had burst, letting half
the river back into its original channel, and we could do nothing
until the breach was stopped. I laid my hand on the shaft, intending
to raise the wheel, when the whole fabric slowly toppled over into the
water. We at once threw off our nether garments, and wading out into
the rapid current, which rose nearly to our shoulders, succeeded by
a violent effort in restoring the post to its upright position. The
cause of this accident was the water undermining a large stone that
supported the post.
We worked like beavers all Friday morning in repairing damages, and
in the afternoon succeeded in washing two hundred buckets, when the
spout that received the water from the dippers, getting entangled in
the wheel, was instantly torn from its position, and tossed scornfully
into the stream. The wheel itself suffered severely in this encounter,
and on setting it in motion the next morning its dizzy efforts to
perform its stated task were pitiable to behold, and we found it
necessary to strengthen it by passing a strip of hoop iron round its
whole circumference.
Sunday, the 15th, there was a slight shower, accompanied by heavy
thunder, the first we had ever heard in California. Monday, our wheel
worked to our entire satisfaction, but not so with the Tom. A hundred
wheelbarrows, equal to six hundred buckets, yielded only sixteen
dollars instead of thirty; Tertium and St. John were out of all
patience, and it was as much as I could do to persuade them to another
trial. We raised the trough so as to increase the fall of water into
the box several inches, and now our receipts were nearly doubled.
For several days we went on swimmingly, and I began to exult over my
companions; when on the 22d we were alarmed by a few drops of rain,
followed the same night by a violent tempest. The wind, and the rain
that soaked our blankets through and through, kept us awake till long
after midnight; the next morning, however, was unusually pleasant--the
river showed no signs of the rain, and after a hard day's work, we
retired to rest with minds unprophetic of danger.
I was awaked about midnight by a whistle coming along the ravine. It
stopped just at our door, and informed us in few words that the river
had risen and swept every thing away. Hurrying down to the shore, the
scene of ruin and uproar that presented itself was so appalling, that
we rubbed our eyes to make sure that we were awake. The moon then
riding high shone upon a proud and angry flood ten times as large as
the placid stream we had parted from a few hours before, and bearing
helplessly along the mingled wreck of the dams and flumes that had
presumed to arrest its course. Our wheel, still standing on its one
leg far out in the stream, dipped its paddles into the taller waves as
they shot beneath--the other articles had floated away, and we found
them lying quietly at anchor in an eddy not far below.
Thus disastrous was the termination of this experiment. "I told you
so," cried Tertium--"Just what I expected," said St. John; while I had
not a word to offer in defence.