and the second over five dollars. Almost all, though, that was found
was like beans or small seeds or in fine dust. No one tried to weigh
or measure such gold more correctly than to call a pinch between the
finger and thumb a dollar's worth, while a teaspoonful was an ounce,
or sixteen dollars' worth. A wineglassful meant a hundred dollars,
and a tumblerful a thousand. Miners carried their "dust" in a buckskin
bag, and this was put on the counter, and the storekeeper took out
what he thought enough to pay for the things the miner bought. A large
thumb to take a large pinch of the gold-dust meant a good many extra
dollars to the storekeeper in '48 and '49. Yet nearly every one was
honest, and gold might be left in an open tent untouched, for there
was plenty more to be had for the picking up. Those who would rather
steal than work were driven out of camp.
Some of the "sand bars," or banks of gravel and earth, washed down by
the Yuba River were so rich that the men could pick out a tin cupful
of gold day after day for weeks. One place was called Tin-cup Bar for
this reason. Spanish Bar, on the American River, yielded a million
dollars' worth of dust, and at Ford's Bar, a miner, named Ford, took
out seven hundred dollars a day for three weeks. At Rich Bar, on the
Feather River, a panful of earth gave fifteen hundred dollars.
Yet the miners were seldom satisfied, but were always prospecting for
richer claims. A man would shoulder his roll of blankets, his pick and
shovel, with a few cooking things, and start off hoping to find some
rich nugget, leaving a fairly good claim untouched.
The most extravagant prices were charged the miner for everything he
had to buy. Ten dollars apiece for pick and shovel, fifty more for a
pair of long boots, with bacon and potatoes at a dollar and a half a
pound, soon took all his gold-dust to pay for. A dozen fresh eggs cost
ten dollars, and a box of sardines half an ounce of gold-dust, which
was eight dollars. There was no butter to buy, for any milk was
quickly sold at a dollar a pint. The hotels charged three dollars a
meal, or a dollar for a dish of pork and beans, and a dollar for two
potatoes.
Lumber cost a dollar and a half a foot, but carpenters would not build
houses when they could make fifty dollars a day by mining. As there
was no lumber for the cabin floors, the ground was beaten hard and
really made a good floor. In Placerville the houses were built along
the bed of a ravine, and in sweeping these earthen floors some one saw
gold-dust glittering, and found that rich diggings were under foot.
Thereupon many of the miners dug up their cabin floors, and one man
took about twenty thousand dollars in nuggets and gold-dust from the
small space his cabin covered.
Very few women and children came to the mines in early days, and the
first white woman to arrive in a camp had all sorts of attentions.
Sometimes the town was named for the woman first in the place as
Sarahsville and Marietta. If a lady visited a mining-camp, the men far
and near would drop work and come in just to look at the visitor. One
lady, who sang for the miners on her arrival in their town, was given
about five hundred dollars' worth of gold-dust.
A child was a great curiosity, and any pretty little girl was sure to
have a collection of nuggets or a quantity of gold-dust presented to
her. The theatre and circus companies who visited mining-camps soon
found out that a little child who could sing or dance was a great
attraction. The miners used to throw a shower of money or nuggets at
the feet of such little favorites as we throw flowers now.
As there were no women living here for some time, the men having left
their families at home in the Eastern states, miners had to wash
and cook and make bread for themselves. Men who had been lawyers
or ministers at home, when there was no one else to do such things,
washed their dishes or their red flannel shirts. On Sunday no one
worked at mining, and the men baked bread and cleaned house, and
Sunday afternoons they dried, patched, and mended their clothes. If a
minister was in town, he held services on a hillside, or in the dining
room of some shanty called a hotel, and all the camp came to hear him
speak, or sang the hymns with him.
So the miners lived and worked and wandered along rivers and rough
mountain trails on the west side of the Sierras, gathering up gold
washed down by mountain streams. These Argonauts, or gold-seekers of
fifty years ago, are almost all dead now, but the treasures they found
made California known throughout the world. Their golden harvest has
made the state richer than they found it, for they used the wealth to
build cities, to cultivate farming-lands, and to plant orchards and
vineyards where the mining-camps used to be.
HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS
This is the story of a little girl who in 1849 rode all the way
from Ohio to California in an emigrant wagon. Polly Elliott has
grandchildren of her own now, but she remembers very well the spring
morning when her father came home and said to her mother, "Lizzie,
can you get ready to start for the land of gold next week?" She hears
again her mother saying, "Oh, John, with all these little children?"
She says her father answered by swinging her, the eleven-year-old
Polly, up to his shoulder and calling out, "Here's papa's little
woman; she'll help you take care of them," as he carried her round the
room, laughing.
This was "back East," as Polly Elliott, now Mrs. Davis, says,--in
Ohio, where they had a pretty white house set round with apple and
peach orchards all white and pink that May day. Her mother cried
because they must leave the house, and because they had to sell all
their furniture and the stock except Daisy, the pet cow, and Buck and
Bright, the oxen, who were to draw the wagon. A round-topped cover of
white cloth was fixed on the big farm-wagon. Then they piled into it
their bedding in calico covers, a chest or two holding clothes and
household goods, a few dishes and cooking things, and plenty of flour,
corn meal, beans, bacon, dried apples and peaches, tied up in sacks.
Polly says she supposed the trip would just be one long picnic, while
the four children thought it fine fun to "sit on mother's featherbed
and go riding," as they said. So they started off for California.
A long, long ride these emigrants had before them; a weary trip,
plodding along day after day with the patient oxen walking slowly and
the burning sun or pelting rain beating down on the wagon cover. There
was a train of other wagons with them, some pulled by horses but more
by yoked oxen, and the men walked beside the animals and cracked long
whips. A few men were on horseback, but all kept together, for Indians
were plenty and were often hiding near the road, watching for a chance
to cut off and capture any wagons lagging behind the party.
Day after day, Polly told me, they travelled westward to the setting
sun. They left the orchards and shady woods of Ohio and Indiana far
behind them, and crossed the wide prairies of Illinois and
Missouri also. When they came to rivers they drove through shallow
fording-places, where Polly and the children used to laugh to see the
little fishes swimming round the wagon wheels. Sometimes the rivers
were deep, and the wagons were ferried over on a flatboat that was
fastened to a wire rope, while oxen and horses swam through the water
behind them. If it did not rain, the children and all were happy, and
it did seem like a picnic. But Polly says she never hears the rain
pouring nowadays as it did then, and that there were many times when
they were wet and cold and miserable, and because the wood and ground
were wet they could not even have a fire.
At night the teams were unhitched and the wagons left in a circle
round a big camp-fire, where supper was cooked. Polly says her mother
used to bake biscuits in an iron spider with red-hot coals heaped on
its iron cover, and these biscuits with fried bacon and tea made
their meal. They always cooked a big potful of corn-meal mush for
the children, and this, with Daisy's milk and a little maple sugar or
molasses, was supper and breakfast too. Then the women and children
cuddled up in the wagons for the night, while men slept, wrapped in
blankets, around the camp-fire or under the wagons, with one always on
guard against danger from prowling Indians or wolves.
Every man or boy carried a rifle or shotgun, and killed plenty of
game. Deer and antelope were always in sight after they crossed the
Missouri River, and the meat was broiled or roasted over the coals of
their campfire. Wild turkeys and prairie-chicken tasted much better
than bacon, Polly said, and she learned to cook them herself.
When the emigrants reached Nebraska, they were in the "buffalo
country," and great herds of big, shaggy, brown or black buffaloes
were feeding on the grassy plains. The animals were larger than oxen,
and the Indians depended upon the flesh for food and the thick, warm
skins for robes or blankets. The emigrants shot thousands of buffalo
cows and calves, and what meat could not be eaten at once was cut
into long strips and hung in the sun or over the fire to dry. This
was called "jerking" the meat. On jerked buffalo or venison and flour
pancakes many emigrants lived all the way across. Game was so plenty
and so easy to shoot, that by stopping a few days, a good stock of
meat could be laid in while the oxen were resting. So they travelled
through Nebraska, and for weeks and weeks saw nothing but long grass
waving in the summer winds, and yellow sunflowers--miles and miles of
sunflowers. Polly grew very tired of the hot sun blazing down on the
close-covered wagon, and of the dust raised by the long wagon-train.
About this time she remembers that her father bought her a little
Indian pony, and from that happy day the child rode beside the wagon,
and could keep out of the dusty trail, or ride a little way off on the
prairie, if she liked. The pony carried double very well, so a small
sister or brother was often lifted on behind for a ride. One night
the Indians, who were always prowling round and coming as near the
wagon-train as they dared, frightened the horses and got away with ten
of them. All the women and children cried, Polly says, for they were
afraid the redskins would come back and kill them. In the morning
Polly's father and some of the men found the Indians' trail and
tracked them to a wooded cañon. The hungry thieves had killed one
horse and were so busy feasting on it that the white men surprised
them and shot all the Indians but two or three. The lost horses and
Polly's pony whinnied to their masters from a thicket, where they were
tied, and were taken back to camp.
On and on over the great plains of Wyoming the wagons carried these
emigrants. Many found the trip grow tiresome, while the oxen and mules
would often lie down in their traces and refuse to go any farther. A
few days' rest, and the rich bunch-grass to crop soon set the stock
all right, and the white-topped wagons crawled ahead again. Soon the
emigrants saw blue, hazy mountains, far off at first, then nearer and
nearer, till at last their road led through a pass between the peaks.
Then Polly remembers riding through Utah, with its queer red cliffs
and high rocks carved in strange shapes by winds and weather; the
stretches of sandy desert; and beyond those, grassy meadows and
streams fringed with green willows. After a while Great Salt Lake lay
sparkling in the sun and looking cool and blue. All around it were
alkali deserts or wide plains, hot and dusty and white with salt or
soda. The "prairie schooners," with their covers faded and burnt by
the sun, went very slowly over these desert wastes, Polly thought,
and Nevada, with its dusty gray sage-brush land on either side of the
road, seemed not much better.
"Papa's little woman" had her hands full now; for her mother was so
ill she seldom left the wagon. All the cooking fell to Polly's share,
and then she would ride along for hours with a little sister on her
lap and fat brother "Bub" behind her on the saddle-blanket, so that
her mother might rest and be quiet.
But soon the clear green Truckee River ran foaming and fretting beside
the road, and off in the west rose the snowy peaks of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. Then the people began to laugh and to sing, for they
knew that California, the land of gold, was almost in sight and that
their weary journey was nearly ended.
And one day they said joyfully to each other, "We are in California
at last;" and it was a happy company that travelled down through the
pines of the mountain sides and the oak trees of the foot-hills. Many
emigrants left the train when they got to the great Sacramento River
valley, and settled here and there to farming. Polly's father with
others kept on to the gold-diggings and camped there. He built a
log-cabin soon, for it was almost winter and time for the rains, and
Polly says she was glad to have a house at last. They finally took up
farming land near what is now Stockton, as gold-mining did not pay.
Mrs. Davis, who is straight and strong, and still a hard worker, says
her five months' trip across the plains was almost like a long picnic
after all, for she has forgotten many of the trying and disagreeable
things.
THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD
The army of emigrants and gold-hunters who crossed the plains to
California found it was a long and tiresome trip by wagon-train or on
horseback. The oxen or mules would sometimes get so tired that they
could go no farther; and because the food often ran short, there was
much suffering from hunger.
The longest way of all to California was by sailing vessel from New
York round Cape Horn, nearly nineteen thousand miles to San Francisco.
The passengers paid high prices and were six months on the way. Those
who came by the Panama route had trouble crossing the isthmus, where
it was so hot and unhealthy that many died of fevers and cholera. The
Pacific mail steamers connecting with a railroad across the isthmus
at last shortened the time of this trip of six thousand miles to
twenty-five days. For ten years all the Eastern mail came this way
twice a month.
It was thought a wonderful thing when the "pony express" carried mail
twice a week between St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Eastern railroads
ended, and Sacramento. To do this a rider, with the mail-bag slung
over his shoulder, rode a horse twenty-four miles to the next station,
where a fresh pony was ready. Hardly waiting to eat or sleep, the
rider galloped on again. Five dollars was often charged at that time
to bring the letter railroads carry now for two cents.
So you will see that a railroad to join California to the Eastern
states was a great necessity and had often been talked of. Several
ways to bring the iron horse puffing across the plains and up the
mountains with his long train of cars had been laid out on paper. The
emigrants had found that the best highway from the Missouri River
to California was to keep along the Platte River in Nebraska to Fort
Laramie and the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, then by Salt Lake,
and along the Humboldt and Truckee rivers, crossing the Sierras
at Donner Pass. Other roads were talked of, and Senator Benton of
Missouri favored a nearly straight line between St. Louis and San
Francisco. Some one, in objecting to this, said that only engineers
could lay out a railroad, and such men did not believe a straight line
possible. The senator answered: "There are engineers who never learned
in school the shortest and straightest way to go, and those are the
buffalo, deer, bear, and antelope, the wild animals who always find
the right path to the lowest passes in the mountains, to rich pastures
and salt springs, and to the shallow fords in the rivers. The Indians
follow the buffalo's path, and so does the white man for game
to shoot. Then the white man builds a wagon-road and at last his
railroad, on the trail the buffalo first laid out."
For two or three years surveyors and explorers tried to find the
easiest way to build this great overland road. Several railroad acts
or bills were passed by Congress, and the California Legislature gave
the United States the right of way for a road to join the two oceans.
The first railway in the state was opened in '56 from Sacramento to
Folsom, a distance of twenty-two miles. This was built by T.D.
Judah, an engineer who had thought and studied a great deal about the
overland road so much needed to bring mail and passengers quickly from
East to West.
A railroad convention, made up of men from the Pacific states and
territories, was held in San Francisco in '59, with General John
Bidwell, a pathfinder of early days, as the chairman. Here Mr. Judah
gave such a clear and full account of the central way he had
planned, that the convention sent him to Washington, D.C., to see the
President, and to try to get Congress to pass a Pacific Railroad
Bill. He had very little help in the East, but at last four men
of Sacramento, Leland Stanford, C.P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and
Charles Crocker, took an interest in Judah's plans, and in '61 the
Central Pacific Railroad Company was formed. Mr. Judah went back
to the mountains and studied the pines in summer and the winter
snowbanks, to make sure of the easiest grades and the shortest and
best way for the track-layers. He found that to follow the Truckee
River from near Lake Donner to the Humboldt Desert, would mean the
least work. The tunnels would be through rock, and he believed that
snow might easily be kept off the track with a snow-plough.
His report pleased the company, and they sent him again to present the
case at Washington. In '62 President Lincoln signed an act or bill to
allow the Union and Central Pacific companies to build a railroad and
a telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific. In California
the land for fifteen miles on each side of the way laid out was given
to the railroad company, and two years was allowed them to build the
first hundred miles of track.
Ground was broken for the Central Pacific the next year in Sacramento,
and Governor Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. Then the
work went steadily on, but it was hard to raise money. Stanford
and his company carried the line forward as fast as possible. More
land-grants were given, which doubled the company's holdings, and in
'65 the road was fifty-five miles past Sacramento and had climbed over
much difficult work.
The steamship owners, the express and stage companies were all against
the railroad, and tried in every way to make people think that an
engine could never cross the Sierras. Yet the grading went on, while
an army of five thousand men and six hundred horses was at work
cutting down trees and hills and filling up the low places. A bridge
was built over the American River, and slowly but surely the track
climbed the steep mountain-sides. Most of the laborers were Chinese,
as white men found mining or farming paid them better.
In '67 the iron horse had not only climbed the mountains but had
reached the state line, and the Union Pacific, which had been laying
its tracks over the plains of the Platte River, began to hasten
westward. The two railroads were racing to meet each other, and the
Central sometimes laid ten miles of rails in one day.
Ogden was made the meeting-point, though at Promontory, fifty miles
west of Ogden, the last spike was driven. A thousand people met at
that place in May, '69, to see the short space of track closed and the
road finished. A Central train and locomotive from the Pacific came
steaming up, and an engine and cars from the Atlantic pulled in on
the other side. Both engines whistled till the snow-capped mountains
echoed. The last tie was of polished California laurel wood, with
a silver plate on which the names of the two companies and their
officers were engraved. It was put under the last two rails, and all
was fastened together with the last spike. This spike, made of solid
gold, Governor Stanford hammered into place with a silver hammer. East
and west the news was flashed over the long telegraph line, that the
overland railroad had been finished and that two oceans were joined by
iron rails.
Now, while flying along in the cars so fast that the trip from Chicago
to San Francisco takes but three days, it is hard to believe that
little more than thirty years ago travellers in the slow-moving
"prairie-schooner" took over five months to cover this same distance.
STORY OF THE WHEAT FIELDS
The Spanish Padres, as the Mission priests were called, taught the
Indians to plough and seed with wheat the lands belonging to the
church or Mission. They used a simple wooden plough, which oxen
pulled. When the warm brown earth was turned up, the Indians broke the
clods by dragging great tree branches over them. After the fall rains
they scattered tiny wheat kernels and covered them snugly for their
nap in the dark ground.
More rain fell, and soon the soaked seeds waked, and started in
slender green shoots to find the sunshine, and day by day the stalks
grew stronger and the fields greener. Higher and ever higher sprang
the wheat, till summer winds set the tall grain waving in a sea
of green billows. Have you ever watched the wind blow across a
wheat-field? Over and over the long rollers bend the tops of the
grain, that rise as the breeze goes on and bend low again at the next
breath of wind.
When the hot sun had ripened the grain, and all round the
white-walled, red-roofed Mission the fields stretched golden and ready
for harvest, the Indians cut the wheat, and scattering the bundles
over a spot of hard ground, drove oxen round and round on the sheaves
till the wheat was threshed out from the straw. Then Indian women
winnowed out the chaff and dirt by tossing the grain up in the wind,
or from basket to basket, till in this slow way the yellow kernels
were made clean and ready to grind.
A curious mill, called an arrastra, ground the grain between two heavy
stones. A wooden beam was fastened to the upper stone, and oxen or a
mule hitched to this beam turned the stone as they walked round. The
first flour-mill worked by water was put up at San Gabriel Mission,
and it was thought a wonderful thing indeed.
Even in those early days California wheat was known to be excellent,
and many ships came on the South Sea, as they then called the Pacific
Ocean, to load with grain for Mexico or Boston or England. Since that
time our state has fed countless people, and over a million acres of
valley and hill lands are green and golden every year with food for
the world. To Europe, to the swarming people of China, Japan, and
India, to South Africa and Australia, our grain is carried in great
ships and steamers, and hungry nations in many lands look to us for
bread.
For a long time after the Mission days, all the grain had to be hauled
to the rivers or sea-coast for shipping. Then the overland railroad
was finished, and within the next fifteen years an additional two
thousand miles of railways were built in California, and nearly every
mile opened up rich wheat land that had never been cultivated. Soon
great wheat ranches stretched far over the dry, hot valley plains.
The ground is ploughed and seeded after November rains, and all winter
the tender blades of grain grow greener and stronger day by day March
and April rains strengthen the crop wonderfully, and June and July
bring the harvest-time. As no rain falls then, the ripe wheat stands
in the field till cut, and afterward in sacks without harm. All the
work except ploughing is done by machinery, and this makes the wheat
cost less to raise, since a machine does the work of many men and the
expense of running it is small.
Some of the ranches have three or four thousand acres in wheat, and
it may interest you to know how such large farms are managed. The
ploughing is done by a gang-plough, as it is called, which has four
steel ploughshares that turn up the ground ten inches deep. Eight
horses draw this, and as a seeder is fastened to the plough, and back
of the plough a harrow, the horses plough, seed, harrow, and cover up
the grain at one time. There the seed-wheat lies tucked up in its warm
brown bed till rain and sunshine call out the tiny green spears, and
coax them higher and stronger, and the hot sun of June and July ripens
the precious grain.