After the first day, etiquette and display were laid aside; the ladies

resumed their ordinary attire, and superintended their household, then

busy gathering in the silk-harvest. Hundreds of women and children were

engaged in winding off the cocoons, which hung like golden olives upon

sheaves of cut branches piled together in the huts. M. de Nerval soon

found himself at home in the Emir’s hospitable castle, and on friendly

terms with the ladies, who asked him many questions about Europe, and

spoke of several travellers who had visited them. The ideas of the

Syrians concerning the state of France and other European countries are

not generally very clear or correct. Mr Neale, when at Latachia, (a name

of aromatic sound to smokers,) draws a lamentable picture of their

geographical ignorance.

“The chart of the world,” he says, “depicted in their mind’s eye,

consists of Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, and various remote

islands, situated in the centre of a vast ocean. From these islands

all Franks are presumed to come. They consider the nations of the

earth to consist of the Jews, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Syrians,

and the Franks, who, according to their notions, form one empire,

speak one tongue, and are of one religion. As for the different flags,

they ascribe this variety solely to the conflicting tastes of the

different consular agents.”

With respect to politics, the people of Lebanon have derived many

contradictory ideas from their European visitors, a large proportion of

whom are French Legitimists on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The feuds and

divisions of the Franks can have no very strong interest for these

Turk-governed Christians and Druses, engrossed as they are by their own

dissensions. M. de Nerval had passed some time with his mountaineer

friends, hawking, banqueting, and making excursions to convents and

other objects of interest, when one evening, just as he was thinking of

redescending into the plain, news came of an inroad of the Druses into

the districts which had been disarmed by orders of the Pasha of Beyrout.

The province of Kesrawan, which belongs to the pashalik of Tripoli, had

kept its arms, and Prince Abou Miran mustered his men to march to the

assistance of his co-religionists. M. de Nerval accompanied him,

planning exploits which were to immortalise his name. These reduced

themselves, however, to a fierce onslaught upon a cactus-hedge, which he

gallantly cut in pieces with his yataghan, thus opening a passage to

some Maronite horsemen who accompanied him, and who, finding no enemy,

began to wreak their vengeance upon mulberry and olive trees, the chief

wealth of the unfortunate Druses. The Frenchman presently discovered, to

his shame and regret, that the plantations thus ravaged were part of the

very village in which he had been so hospitably treated on his first

arrival in the mountains. The Emir came up and checked the work of

brutal destruction; the alarm proved false; the Druses were quiet and

had made no incursion, and M. de Nerval was defrauded of his anticipated

glory. He returned to Beyrout, and went to call on Madame Carlès, in

whose care he had left the yellow slave. Zeynab was gentle and

contented, but would do little or nothing. She picked up a few words of

French from the children of the school, but would learn nothing useful,

for fear she should be made to work, and thus degraded to the rank of a

servant. Her progress towards the religion of Rome was very slow. When

shown a picture of the Virgin, she reminded her instructor that it had

been written, “Thou shalt not worship images.” M. de Nerval set it down

as a hopeless case. Madame Carlès was still sanguine of success. The

versatile traveller’s attention, however, was quickly distracted from

Zeynab by the fair-haired, taperfingered daughter of a Druse Sheik, then

in prison at Beyrout for refusing to recognise the Turkish government,

and for non-payment of the tribute. His property had been sequestrated,

and all had abandoned him except the beautiful Saléma, who boarded with

Madame Carlès, and went every day to see her father. M. de Nerval, whose

imagination was excited by the romantic and unusual scenes he had lately

passed through, fell in love with this Arab damsel, went to visit her

father, who was an _akkal_, a sort of sage and saint; and after much

conversation, and receiving a long account of Hakem, the founder of the

Druse religion, he embarked for Acre to obtain from the Pasha the pardon

of his future father-in-law. For he had made up his mind to marry

Saléma.

The Levantines are unable to comprehend the squirrel-like restlessness

of the Franks, remarks M. de Nerval, whilst pacing to and fro the deck

of the English brig on which he had taken his passage, and occasionally

stumbling over the legs of a Turk or Bedouin who lay upon his mattress

in the shadow of the bulwarks, and who removed his pipe from his lips to

curse the clumsiness of the Christian. The English missionary was also a

passenger; but M. de Nerval barely tolerates the English, and fancied

that the evangelical gentleman treated him coldly because he consorted

with a second-class passenger, a talkative bagman from Marseilles, who

had got a curious theory, exaggerated but not unfounded, concerning the

very small number of pure Turks remaining in Turkey.

“I have just come from Constantinople,” he said: “one sees nothing

there but Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Marseillese. All the Turks they

can find they make into cadis, ulemas, pashas, or they send them to

Europe to show them. All their children die; it is a race that is

becoming extinguished. People talk of the Sultan’s armies—of what do

they consist? Of Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Kurds; the sailors

are Greeks; only the officers are of Turkish race. You take them out

to fight; they all run away at the first cannon-shot, as has often

been seen—unless the English are behind them with their bayonets, as

in the Syrian affair.”

In Syrian waters, and with the shattered minarets of Acre looming in the

distance, a Frenchman might be excused for showing a little

irritability. M. de Nerval behaves very well upon the occasion, and

spares the unfortunate English, doubtless thinking he is sufficiently

hard upon them in other parts of his book, especially when he excludes

them from the European family, as dwellers “upon an island apart;” a

separation upon which, considering the very turbulent and divided state

of that family, they have certainly of late years had much reason to

congratulate themselves. Fresh from the semi-feudal magnificence of the

Lebanon Emir’s castle, and dreaming of the proud battlements of the

Templars’ famous city, the last rampart of the crusades, M. de Nerval

gazed mournfully on the heaps of ruins revealed to him by the rising sun

a few hours after his arrival in the port of Acre. It may console him to

learn from Mr Neale, who was there last year, that the fortifications

are being rapidly repaired, and that soon there will remain but few

traces of the ravages of British shot and shell. But the French

traveller was too engrossed by the main object of his visit to Acre to

dwell long upon such dry matters as broken battlements. He could not but

feel moved, however, when at daybreak the Marseillese awoke him and

showed him the morning star shining just over the village of Nazareth,

only eight leagues distant. He proposed to his new acquaintance to make

an excursion thither, but the matter-of-fact bagman threw cold water

upon the project. “It is a pity,” he said, “that the Virgin’s house is

no longer there. Of course you know that angels transported it in a

single night to Loretto, near Venice. Here they show its site—that is

all. It is not worth while going so far to see a thing that is no longer

there.” Whilst thus damping his companion’s enthusiasm, the prosaic

child of Provence made himself very useful by his knowledge of Turkish

habits. On learning that M. de Nerval had known the Pasha of Acre at

Paris, and had a letter of recommendation to him, which he was about to

present, he advised him to resume his European dress, as likely to

procure him an earlier audience. In those latitudes, the bagman was as

good as a court-guide. He had known the Pasha at Constantinople, where

he went by the nickname of _Guezluk_, or the spectacle-wearer. And he

begged M. de Nerval to tell him that he had for sale a musical clock,

which played airs out of numerous Italian operas, and which had birds on

the top of it, who sang and flapped their wings. This was exactly the

thing, he said, to delight the Turks. Duly black-coated, but retaining

his Turkish tarbusch to cover his shaven head, M. de Nerval presented

himself at the summer kiosk then occupied by the Pasha. His European

garb drew all eyes upon him; by refusing to take off his boots at the

door, he further increased his importance; his letter was taken in to

the Pasha, and he was at once admitted in preference to a crowd of

persons who were waiting for that honour.

“I expected a European reception, but the Pasha confined himself to

making me sit down near him on a divan which extended round part of

the saloon. He affected to speak only Italian, although I had heard

him speak French at Paris; and, having addressed to me the customary

phrase: ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ that is to say, do you find yourself

well? he ordered the chibouque and coffee to be brought to me. Some

commonplace remarks composed our conversation. Then the Pasha

repeated, ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ and another cup of coffee was brought.

I had been walking the streets of Acre all the morning, and had

crossed the plain without falling in with anything like an

eating-house; I had even refused a piece of bread and a slice of Arles

sausage offered me by the Marseillese, reckoning a little on Mussulman

hospitality; but who shall depend upon the friendship of the great?

Our conversation continued, without the Pasha’s offering me anything

more substantial than tobacco smoke and sugarless coffee. For the

third time he repeated, ‘Is your _kef_ good?’ I rose to take leave.

Just then noon struck upon a clock suspended over my head, and which

forthwith began to play a tune; almost immediately a second clock

struck, and began a different air; a third and a fourth set off in

their turn. The discordant effect may be imagined. Accustomed as I was

to Turkish eccentricities, I could not understand the assemblage of so

many clocks in one room. The Pasha seemed enchanted with the noise,

and proud to show a European his love of progress and civilisation.

The commission given to me by the Marseillese occurred to me, but the

negotiation appeared so much the more difficult that the four clocks

were symmetrically placed, each on one of the four sides of the

apartment. Where could a fifth be put? I said nothing about it.

Neither did I deem it an opportune moment to broach the business of

the captive Sheik, but kept this delicate matter for another visit,

when the Pasha should perhaps receive me less coldly. Alleging

business in the town, I took my leave. As I passed through the court,

an officer came up to me, and said that the Pasha had ordered two

_cavass_ to accompany me whithersoever I went. I did not exaggerate to

myself the value of this attention, which generally amounts to a heavy

_bakshish_ to be given to each of the said attendants.”

Once more in the town, M. de Nerval, feeling ravenous, asked his guard

of honour where he could get breakfast. They stared, and said it was not

yet the hour, but, as he insisted, they asked him for a Spanish dollar

to purchase fowls and rice, which they proposed cooking in the nearest

guard-house. This appeared to him both an expensive and a complicated

manner of obtaining a meal, and he went to the French Consulate; but the

Consul lived on the other side of the bay, on the skirts of Mount

Carmel.

“Acre, during the summer months,” says Mr Neale, “is considered the

most fatal residence for Europeans on the western coast of the

Mediterranean. Its fevers are so pernicious that few survive an attack

for a longer space than forty-eight hours. So trivial are the causes

which give rise to this malignant disease, that the smallest deviation

from a temperate regimen, or the slightest exposure to heat or cold,

renders one liable to an immediate attack, and, as the doctor coolly

told me, _ensuite vous succombez_.”

To avoid which unpleasant eventuality, the European residents have

country houses. Little disposed to go as far as Mount Carmel for a

breakfast, M. de Nerval went to the bazaar, and hunted up the

Marseillese, whom he found in the act of selling to a Greek merchant an

assortment of those old warming-pan watches, now out of fashion in

Europe, but which the Turks greatly prefer to the modern flat ones. With

them the value of a watch is estimated by its size. The Marseillese

produced the never-failing sausage, upon which, and upon unleavened

bread, the only sort obtainable, the hungry Parisian made an indifferent

repast. They offered some sausage to the two _cavass_, who refused, from

a religious scruple. “Poor devils!” said the bagman, contemptuously,

“they think it is pork; they do not know that Arles sausage is made of

mule’s flesh.” A fact which may also be rather novel to some of the

English consumers of the monster sausages sold in Italian warehouses,

into many of which not a morsel of pig enters. Rendered expansive by his

meal, M. de Nerval confided to the Marseillese the story of his love for

the Druse maiden, and the object of his visit to Acre. The dealer in

clocks and watches, who, for common sense, was worth ten of his

companion, evidently thought him a fool for his pains, and, with a view

to discourage his folly, told him curious anecdotes of the religious

practices of certain Druse sects, practices certainly well calculated to

scandalise a European. The day wore on, and when the hour of dinner

approached, M. de Nerval was informed by his attendants that he was

expected at the Pasha’s table. This was unexpected by him, but a matter

of course—so his bagman informed him—since the Pasha had given him an

escort. When he reached the kiosk the levee had long been over. Passing

through the clock-room, he found the Pasha smoking, seated upon the

window-ledge of the apartment beyond. The Turk rose on his approach,

held out his hand, and asked him how he was, in excellent French. M. de

Nerval could not conceal his surprise. “You must excuse me,” said his

host, “if I received you this morning _en pasha_. Those worthy people

who were waiting for an audience would never have forgiven me had I been

wanting in etiquette with a Frangi. At Constantinople, every one would

understand it; but here we are in a country town.” Méhmet Pasha had

studied at the artillery school at Metz, and spoke French exceedingly

well. He was amiable, affable, and courteous. He and his guest dined

tête-à-tête, at a table, and seated on chairs, in the European fashion.

M. de Nerval, in his passion for Orientalism, would rather have squatted

on a cushion upon the floor. After dinner, instead of the introduction

of dancing-girls, or some other Eastern amusement, he was taken down

stairs to a billiard-room, where the Pasha made him play till one in the

morning.

“I let myself be beaten as much as I could, amidst the shouts of

laughter of the Pasha, who was delighted at this return to the

amusements of Metz. ‘A Frenchman—a Frenchman who lets himself be

beaten!’ cried he. ‘I admit,’ said I, ‘that St Jean d’Acre is not

favourable to our arms; but here you fight alone, and the former Pasha

of Acre had the cannons of England.’ At last we separated. They

conducted me into a very large apartment, lighted by a wax-candle,

fixed in an enormous candlestick, and placed upon the ground in the

centre of the room. This was a return to local customs. The slaves

made me a bed with cushions upon the ground; upon which they spread

sheets, sewn on one side to the blankets. I was moreover accommodated

with a great nightcap of yellow quilted silk, with quarters like a

melon.”

Greatly diverted was the good natured Pasha on being made acquainted

with his guest’s matrimonial designs, and with the countless annoyances

he had brought upon his head by the imprudent purchase of a yellow

slave, whom he now scrupled to send away, to sell, or to abandon to her

fate. To evade these scruples, the Pasha proposed a barter: he would

give him a horse for Zeynab. Even this would not do. The fate of the

Druse Sheik depended more upon the governor of Beyrout than upon Méhmet

Pasha, who, however, interposed his good offices, and the saintly father

of Saléma was released and allowed to return to his country. He was

informed, at the same time, that he owed his liberty to M. de Nerval’s

intercession with the Pasha of Acre. His manner of returning thanks

struck his deliverer as strange. “If you wished to be useful,” he said,

“you have done but what is every man’s duty; if you had an interested

motive, why should I thank you?” This was grateful and encouraging.

Nevertheless, M. de Nerval accompanied the old gentleman and his

daughter to their abode, a village embowered in vines and mulberry

trees, within a day’s journey of Damascus. He is kind enough to suppress

the history of his courtship, merely mentioning that the amiable Saléma

presented him with a red tulip, and planted in her father’s garden an

acacia sapling, which was to have some mysterious connection with their

loves. The period of their marriage was fixed, and not very remote, when

the future bridegroom was attacked by one of those Syrian fevers which,

if they do not carry off the patient in less time, often last for months

and even for years. In hopes of regaining his health, he went to

Beyrout, which enjoys the reputation of one of the least feverish places

in Syria, without on that account, according to Mr Neale, having much to

boast of in the way of salubrity. It did not restore M. de Nerval, who

with difficulty mustered sufficient strength to proceed, by an Austrian

packet, to Smyrna and Constantinople. There he gradually recovered his

health. Profiting by the opportunities for cool reflection afforded by a

long convalescence, he weighed the advantages and disadvantages of his

projected marriage, and finally wrote to the Sheik to declare off. A

narrow escape, cheaply purchased at the price of a fever.

Whilst tracing the vagaries of this fantastical Frenchman, we have given

less than his share of space to Mr Neale, whose experience of Syria is

more recent, and his acquaintance with the country more general and

complete. Travel in Syria is not without its perils and inconveniences,

even for Englishmen, to whom the events of 1840 have secured, especially

along the sea-board, a peculiar degree of civility and consideration.

“The general opinion of an English traveller,” says Mr Neale,

referring particularly to the lower classes, “is, that he is either a

lunatic or a magician;—a lunatic, if on closely watching his

movements, they discover that he pays little attention to anything

around him;—a confirmed lunatic, if he goes out sketching, and spends

his time in spoiling good paper with scratches and hieroglyphics;—and

a magician, when inquisitive about ruins, and given to picking up

stones and shells, gathering sticks and leaves of bushes, or buying up

old bits of copper, iron, and silver. In these cases he is supposed,

by aid of his magical powers, to convert stones and shells into

diamonds of immense price; and the leaves and sticks are charms, by

looking at which he can bestow comforts upon his friends, and snakes

and pestilence upon his luckless enemies. If a traveller pick up a

stone, and examine it carefully, he will be sure to have at his heels

a host of malapert little boys deriding him, though keeping at a very

respectful distance, in deference to his magical powers. Should he,

indeed, turn round suddenly, and pursue them a few steps, they fly in

an agony of fear, the very veins in their naked little legs almost

bursting; and they never stop to look back till they have got well

amongst the crowd again, where, panting for breath, they recount to

their auditors the dreadful look that devil of a Frank gave them,

making fire come out of his eyes, and adders out of his mouth.”

There are places in Syria where Europeans are subject to far more

serious annoyances than these. At Latachia, for instance, although it is

a place of considerable intercourse with Europe, in the way both of

trade and travellers, the Turkish inhabitants are furious fanatics, and

have several times assembled in mobs, and attacked and maltreated

European and native Christians, compelling them to seek safety in

flight. Not more than three years ago, the Roman Catholic inhabitants

were besieged within the walls of the Latin monastery, whilst hearing

mass in its chapel, by a mob of bigoted Turks, who were escorting a

renegade Christian to the mosque. At this fellow’s instigation a plan

was formed to storm the convent, and put to death all its inmates. The

gates were not strong enough long to resist the desperate assault made

upon them; so the congregation, by means of a ladder, got through a

window of the adjacent French Consulate, and through a garden to the

sea-side, where they took boat for the little island of Ruad, the usual

refuge of the Latachia Christians when thus molested. Satisfaction was

demanded and obtained by a French man-of-war, and the ringleaders of the

riot were bastinadoed and sent into exile, which checked for a while the

violence of the Turks; but they are still very insolent to Christians,

and Mr Neale declares he should never feel altogether secure at

Latachia, “so long as many of the Ayans and Effendis are permitted to

carry on their intrigues and machinations with impunity.” But for this

drawback, Latachia would be one of the most desirable residences in

Syria. “The environs are extremely beautiful, and abound with delicious

apricot and peach trees. Mulberry plantations and vineyards are also

very plentiful; and the melon and watermelon here attain great

perfection. The dark-leaved pomegranate, with its deep vermilion

blossoms, intertwines with its fairer neighbour, the orange-tree, and

behind them rises the stately poplar, over which peeps the more stately

minaret, making altogether a charming picture.” Minarets abound. This

little town, of about five thousand inhabitants, “contains upwards of a

dozen mosques, each endeavouring to surpass the other in the beauty of

its architecture and the quaint elegance of its cupolas and minarets.

The other public buildings are also fine structures, and the gardens

teem with rich-scented flowers and shrubs.” Water is very scarce, and to

get it pure the Latachians are compelled to send daily to a distance of

six miles. The climate is excellent, and fever, so general in Syria,

would there scarcely be known, but for the uncleanly ways of the people.

The streets are the receptacle for skins of fruit, decayed vegetables,

dead cats, rats, and dogs. The atmosphere thus generated may be

imagined. In vain has the quarantine doctor endeavoured to work a reform

by urgent representations to the governor of the town. “_Peki_,” (very

good,) says that dignitary, touching the side of his turban with his

hand; but that is the whole extent of his co-operation. The doctor is

approved of, his wishes are acceded to, but the streets remain foul.

Turkish activity seldom gets beyond _peki_. Once, however, some men

really _were_ set to play the scavenger. They swept all the offal into

heaps at the street-crossings; and having thus stirred up the filth, and

concentrated the nuisance, considered their duty done, and retired,

proud of their exertions.

The tobacco commonly known in Europe as Latachia, is shipped at that

port, but grown at or around the pretty little town of Gibili, a short

distance to the south. The Gibili tobacco, and the Aboo Reah, or father

of essences, are renowned all over the East, and esteemed the finest and

most aromatic tobaccoes in the world. The fields in which they are grown

are manured with goats’ dung, and more or less watered according to the

strength of tobacco required. The less the water, the stronger the

flavour of the weed. When gathered, the leaves are exposed for three

nights to the dew, then strung together, hung up to dry, packed in bales

and sent in feluccas to Latachia, where they are stored in dry

warehouses until exported. The port of Latachia, which retains the

town’s ancient name of Laodicea, was once of great capacity, and could

contain, it is said, six hundred vessels; but time and earthquakes,

warfare and neglect, have played havoc with it. Rocks and ruins have

rolled into the basin; and although its surface is still spacious, its

depths are treacherous; and it is not deemed safe and convenient for

more than thirty vessels, averaging two hundred and fifty to three

hundred tons each. The commercial importance of the town would be likely

to increase considerably, were the road from Aleppo less steep and

dangerous for camels, whose drivers consequently demand exorbitant rates

for the carriage of goods to Latachia, and take them on much easier

terms to the more northerly port of Scanderoon or Alexandretta, through

which passes the whole commerce of northern Syria. Independently of the

better road, Scanderoon is nearer than Latachia to Aleppo, and is its

natural port; otherwise its abominable climate would alone suffice to

make commercial residents prefer its rival.

“The first thing that strikes a stranger on arriving at Alexandretta

is the complexion of the inhabitants, natives as well as Europeans.

They have a strange unearthly yellow tinge, with deep sunken eyes and

a shrivelled frame, facts which speak more than volumes for the

pernicious effects of marsh miasma. Fever and ague have set their seal

on every face; and with so indelible a mark, that a Scanderoon is

easily distinguished in any other city, and immediately pointed out.”

The wretched aspect of these “churchyard deserters,” as an English

merchant captain called them, is traceable to the most brutal Turkish

folly and obstinacy. Alexandretta is encircled for miles with

pestilential marshes. On approaching the port from Aleppo, an ancient

Roman road, infamously out of repair, brought Mr Neale and his guide to

“a very rickety old bridge, spanning a canal, filled from a small but

restless spring, whose waters, (which never cease trickling,) finding no

adequate outlet, have created those baneful marshes which surround the

town, extending over nearly the whole plain. The canal was originally

cut by Ibrahim Pasha, at the instigation of an intelligent Italian, who

acted as consul for several European states, Mr Martinelli, and it still

retains his name.” So long as the Egyptian viceroy was paramount in

Syria, this canal was kept in good order, and duly cleansed of mud and

weeds by an English machine. Then came the evacuation of Syria. Before

marching away, the Egyptian soldiery destroyed the machine. The canal,

which had already in great measure drained the marshes, and had proved a

blessing to the feverridden population, was neglected by the Turks, is

now choked up, and will soon altogether disappear. The merchants of

Aleppo and the European consuls have done all in their power to get the

Turkish government to resume the work of drainage. “Some _soi-disant_

engineers were sent to form an estimate of what the cost would be: these

_employés_, the bane of Turkey as far as useful works are concerned,

estimated what ought to be their gains, and the sum frightened the

authorities, who, as they always do upon like occasions, religiously

concealed the estimate under the divan cushions, and there the matter

rested.” In 1844, the European residents in Scanderoon got up a

subscription amongst themselves, and actually began to drain. What did

the Turkish authorities? Threatened the labourers with the bastinado,

which effectually stopped the good work. The motive assigned was that

“the Franks, when the work was completed, would probably lay claim to

the recovered land!” Thus are matters managed in Syria, and thus are

replenished the graveyards of Scanderoon. The self-same Turks, whose

parsimony and paltry jealousy prohibit the sanitary measure so greatly

needed, are martyrs to fever and ague, whilst the poor peasants, thanks

to unwholesome diet, damp lodgings, and the ridiculously long and rigid

fasts prescribed by the Greek church, are subject, in addition to those

two maladies, to dropsy and various other diseases. The unwillingness of

the local authorities to aid or even to sanction any amelioration of the

wretched state of Scanderoon, arises partly from the blundering

arrangement by which that port and Aleppo are in different Pashaliks. As

the custom-dues are paid at Aleppo, the Pasha of Adana, under whose sway

is Scanderoon, takes little interest in the welfare of a port from which

he derives no revenue, great though its trade is. “The whole male

population of Alexandretta are occupied in landing, weighing, and

rolling to the warehouses the cargoes of Manchester bales brought by the

different vessels. It is impossible to imagine a scene more bustling and

discordant.” Clamorous muleteers and camel-drivers load and unload their

beasts, custom-house officers and factors continually dispute, masters

of merchantmen are anxious to land their goods, or eager to settle and

depart; “cadaverous Italian skippers, who have been three months ‘on the

berth’ for Leghorn, and have as yet about as many bales of wool on

board, make frantic inquiries about their Syrian consignee’s intentions,

and being pacified with stout promises, return on board, and catch fish

for the crew till dinner-time.” All are busy, and all foreigners long to

get away from a place where, if they stop but a day too long, they may

remain for ever, tenants of a grave in its marshy and feverish soil. The

loading of the camels is an especially ticklish matter, and leads to

much wrath amongst the drivers. “Two bales must be found of equal

weight; these are not always to be secured, and the struggle that ensues

amongst the cameliers for such a couple defies description.” The

Turkoman camel, a much finer animal than the Syrian, will carry, equally

poised, two bales weighing together half a ton. “I have seen at times as

many as one thousand camels leave Alexandretta for Aleppo in one day,

bearing high aloft upon their backs two thousand Manchester iron-bound

bales of twist and manufactures.” A sight to rejoice the heart of

Cobden, and to reconcile even that peace-loving agitator to the

bombardments and skirmishings by which so important a _débouché_ was

secured for the produce of the city of his affections. It might interest

him to calculate at what rate per quarter, when a loaf of bread costs

twopence at Alexandretta, (Neale’s _Syria_, ii. 212,) Syrian wheat might

be delivered in Liverpool by way of returns for the camel-borne

Manchester cottons. If it is easy to die at Scanderoon, it is certainly

cheap to live there. Mutton costs twopence the pound, fresh butter less

than a penny, and other articles of food are at proportionably low

prices. So says Mr F. A. Neale, who must be held excellent authority,

since he was long resident at Scanderoon, where he was never entirely

free from ague, but passed his time swallowing quinine, and thought

himself the happiest of mortals when he enjoyed three weeks of

uninterrupted health.

No book of the class of Mr Neale’s ought to be issued to the public

unaccompanied by a map. A small one would suffice, and it need comprise

little more than the outline of the coast, the definition of boundaries,

the course of large rivers and mountain ranges, and those towns and

villages referred to in the text. Such means of reference and

elucidation add greatly to the interest and value of a narrative of

travel and description of a country. Only a minority of readers are

likely to have an atlas always at hand, or to possess such great

familiarity with geographical details as may render one unnecessary.

Authors and publishers of books of travels are prone to expend upon

lithographed landscapes and other embellishments—things glanced at for a

moment, and regarded no more—money which might be laid out to the

greater advantage of their readers and of themselves in the engraving of

maps. We cannot make an exception to this general rule, even in favour

of the two pretty sketches of Gaza and Nargheslik, which face the

title-pages of Mr Neale’s agreeable volumes.

DAY-DREAMS OF AN EXILE.

LONGINGS.

I.

TO ——.

Come, love, and seat you here awhile,

Cheer me with your happy smile;

Fast the days of life slip by,

Though each may now seem slow,

Comes swift and irresistibly

The last one, and we go.

This I know, and do but crave

(If I leave a word or two)

After I am in my grave,

They may speak of me to you.

Far away from English things,

Here my spirit folds her wings;

Content if all she looks upon,

Even if neither rare nor strange

Speak of pleasures she has known,

Or hopes that cannot change.

Ever, as I gaze around

Our little chamber’s hallowed ground,

Each familiar sight I see

Speaks aloud of Home to me,

Here, and there beyond the Sea,

And the fair Home that is to be.

Familiar as their faces seem

Do they not minister a dream

Of pasture green, and cool hill-side,

Waving wood and moorland wide,

Distant meadows white with flocks,

Streams that shine among their rocks,

Stormy shadow broadly borne

O’er yellow fields of bending corn,

And sheeny sparklings of the sea

Heaving and murmuring delightedly.

In the long dawn of vernal day

How often have I burst away,—

Fared gaily through the sleeping Town

And wandered to the woods alone.

The Bee hummed in the Eglantine,

And the breeze swayed the curls of the young Woodbine;

The May scented the hedges along,

The Lark was above like a star of song;

Through the hay-hung lanes we go

Over the style, across the meadow,

Where the swift streams whispering flow,

Where the black pools sleep in shadow.

Where the angler seeks his sport,

That Verdurer of Nature’s Court,

Who never lets his occupation

Balk him of happy contemplation.

Look down—the long straight Pike has past,

Like Death’s keen arrow, flying fast,

Where Dace and Minnows, silver-coated fools,

Are playing on the surface of the Pools.

Look up—the thin-winged Dragon-fly

Is insolently gleaming by;

Look up—the Oak-tree stirs, and in it

Floods of sweet song betray the linnet;

Over all the dark blue sky

Overhangs us smilingly,

Flecked with many fleecy wreaths

As the Watery West wind breathes.

Look round—the Primrose peeps at you

From a nest of crumpled leaves;

The Periwinkle, bathed in dew,

Is like a maiden’s eye of blue

Turned to the Moon from under alien eaves.

The sword-grass, and the mimic rye,

The clover, and the lucerne sweet,

And the chamomiles, that die,

Spent in fragrance at your feet;

Every herb, wind-stirred, or shaking

With some insect’s tiny weight,

(Such as all around are making

Myriad noises delicate)

Swells the universal tone

That Summer sings—a music of her own.

False season! she has brought the shower!

Away to yonder trellised bower

Of clematis and vine;

The skies may weep ten times an hour,

As oft they’ll smile and shine.

Here sit secure; or, sweeter still,

Seek the hospitable mill,

Where the clattering cog-wheels ply,

And the clouds of white dust fly,

There, leaning at the casement, look

On the fresh and fragrant scene:

The drops flash in the eddying brook,

The grass puts on a tender green;

The soft rain whispers to the leaves—

Ceases, the shower is done;

The big drops hang upon the eaves,

And sparkle in the sun.

The images that Memory yields

Are crowding on my mind

Of ruined Abbeys, lone in fields

With purple hills behind.

Of Churchyards, with their tombs and yews,

Seen in a night of June,

What time the fertilising dews

Are falling in the Moon.

The little Church, five hundred years

Has seen the spring of hopes and fears

To all the lowly villagers;

Who with ancestral tombs around

Meet weekly on the holy ground.

They seat them orderly within,

Purging their hearts from taint of sin;

They see the tables of the Law,

The Altar that their fathers saw,

The war-worn banners, full of rents,

The helmets with their stains and dents

That hang above the monuments;

The squire’s great pew, the lackeys tall,

A stately, well-fed band,

Who mock the manners of the Hall,

Vicariously grand.

They hear the minister’s calm voice,

The tinklings of a grazing flock,

The whispering trees, the runnel’s noise,

The pulses of the ancient clock;

The which, like well according parts

Sound harmony to happy hearts.

And even when the misery

Of loved ones having ceased to be

Had brought the black and hushed procession

To see the friend they could not save

Take imperturbable possession

Of his last tenement—the grave—

And when the Sun was dim and red

That shone above that earthy bed,

Throwing a watery noon and brief

On autumn’s worn and wind-beat leaf;

And, for the fog that wrapped the land,

The trees were like a spectral band;

Even then the lichen-covered tower,

The yew-trees and the monuments,

Consoled them, howsoe’er the hour

Heaped up their withering discontents;

Save that nor Hope nor Memory,

Nor thought of “sure and certain trust,”

Could quell the sob of Agony,

As fell those handfuls audibly,

Gross Earth, dead Ashes, kindred dust.

Ah come to me! the dream is flown,

Thank God, I am not all alone;

Thank God, no burthen on me lies,

More than the homeless heart can bear;

For sadness, and tear-darkened eyes,

And visions vague, and Memories,

Are sweeter than oblivious Despair.

II.

Where Summer is, there ’tis fresh and fair,

For forest and field are gay,

When the Sun looks down on tower and town

That smile beneath his ray.

Upon the hills the morning breeze

Still whispers in the yellow broom;

The poplar throws a quivering shade,

The oak-tree sheds a broader gloom;

And in the hazel-thicket hangs

The silence of a tomb.

A shade comes o’er the face of day,

Tempering afresh the genial May;

The light air softly drops,

And nestles in the tall tree-heads,

And stirs the violets in the glades,

The spraylets in the copse.

In such an hour as this,

The earth-impeded soul,

Entranced with Nature’s bliss,

Surmounts the Bear-watched Pole,

And the great space wherein the firm spheres roll;

Knows of a brighter Sun,

Basks in his beams,

Sees crystal waters run,

And drinks their streams,

And spreads her wings, and floats into the land of dreams—

Dreams vague, uncomprehended.

Fold again

Those unfledged wings, poor Captive of the clay!

The flesh has need of thee, thy moans are vain,

Vain thy forebodings of the Coming Day;

Only the World’s fair beauty bids thee hope

That none more dark may lie beyond the Cope.

And the Beam, unsaddened

Is on the wood,

And the Soul is gladdened,

And sways her mood

Into a chastened mirth, the joy of Solitude.

Now the hushed noon,

Growing broad and bright,

Like the painless swoon

Of a deep delight,

Slumbers as calmly as a moonlit Night.

The Memories of Childhood cannot pass

The Joy of such an hour of Nature’s Joy;

The brawling of the brook, the lisping grass

Should charm the Man more than they charmed the Boy.

They do, they do, I feel their influence

With fresh delight to-day, and unpolluted sense.

Sickness may bend the weak corporeal frame,

And Grief anticipate the work of years:

Beautiful Nature’s sighs would still the same

Delight mine eye, even through the mist of tears.

The fountains of our pleasures need not change,

—Though Inexperience cease to veil the Truth;

The Senses’ strength not circumscribe their range

Nor the Heart’s impulses have Age and Youth.

O Sun, Earth, Water, all-embracing sky,

May it be mine to see you smiling when I die!

III.

“Death cannot be an evil, for it is universal.”—_Last words of

Schiller._

Earth is the realm of Death, who reigns,

—No King of Shadows he—

O’er towers, and towns, and sacred fanes,

On land, and ships at Sea.

His subjects all avoid his Court,

Small love they bear to him;

For when he mingles in their sport,

The business waxes grim.

They make alliances with life,

And fear to be alone;

Flushed with the brilliancy and strife

Which round their path is thrown.

Yet some can wander up and down,

Where daisies hide the sod;

Far from the turmoil of the Town,

They own that Death is God.

Yes, without Death our Life were nought;

Death consummates our hopes—

The one bright Day-beam softly brought

Above the misty slopes.

IV.

“God said, Let us make man in our own image.”

Stand by the Ocean:

Behold its undulating shelves,

How they alternately uplift themselves—

Their ceaseless motion!

Turn to the Sky:

Night after night, the golden-visaged crowds

Peep at us through the clouds,

Till royal Morning ope her dreaded eye.

Earth’s days and hours,

Seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, remain,

And bring forth fruit, by sunshine and by rain,

After the flowers.

Unchanging laws

This brute Creation’s pulses sway;

Contented, they obey

No self-originated cause.

That power is given,

Of all created things, to Man alone,

Who is, if he will only take his own,

Made free of Heaven.

H. G. K.

_India_, 1851.

A VOICE FROM THE DIGGINGS.[4]

The scapegrace Michael Lambourne, fresh from the Spanish Main, made the

mouths of his uncle’s guests to water by stories of lands where the

precious metals grew, and might be had for the gathering; where the very

pantiles were of purest gold, and the paving-stones of virgin silver.

The smug mercer of Abingdon, greedily swallowing these traveller’s

tales, thought contemptuously of his moderate but certain gains, and

dreamed of rich argosies and of sudden wealth, amassed at will upon a

gold-encumbered shore. Many are the changes since Queen Elizabeth’s day,

but human nature is ever the same. Instead of the exaggerated reports of

roving adventurers, a thousand newspapers trumpet authentic tidings of

golden discoveries. The mine is on the farthest shore of a far distant

continent; yet, whilst the marvel is still young, and the first ring of

the metal still echoes in our ears, we obtain ocular confirmation of the

scarcely credible intelligence. The pioneers of enterprise—those who, by

accident or activity, were first upon the spot—come straggling,

wealthladen, from the glittering strand. Scarcely had the first

shovelful of golden sand been thrown up from the bed of the mill-stream

at Coloma, when these men, favoured by chance, and well suited to the

work, were toiling, delving, washing. Now they are in our streets—rich,

comparatively; for less than twelve months ago they were penniless. And

see, in the refiners’ windows are heaps of the precious dust, and lumps

of the quartz-mingled metal. Forgetting past hardships in the excitement

of success, the gold-seekers—their first-fruits safely bestowed—plan a

return to El Dorado, and fire the imaginations of eager listeners by

glowing accounts of a certain fortune to be made at small pains. No

wonder if many snap at the bait—if husbandmen quit their plough, traders

their till, publicans their taproom, and if California suddenly becomes

a word of daily occurrence upon English shipping-lists. Three thousand

miles nearer to the golden vein dwells the most restless, ambitious,

speculative, and aggressive of civilised nations; and soon there can be

no doubt that to it will fall the lion’s share of the newly-found

treasure. Where hundreds sail from Europe, thousands quit the States,

for California bound. By land and by sea, across the Isthmus and up the

coast, or by the long and dangerous route over the Rocky Mountains,

armies of energetic Yankees swarm to the _placeres_. Buoyant and

confident, they quit their homes—many to leave their bones in the wide

prairies and hungry solitudes of the Far West, others to perish of

Californian fever and ague, a few, and but a few, to realise the wealth

they so sanguinely anticipate.

Nearly two years ago[5] we noticed the proceedings of a member of the

adventurous mob of gold-seekers. Mr Theodore Johnson, of New York, was

pretty early in the field; but even in the spring of 1849 the cream had

been taken off, and he returned home disheartened, disgusted, and poorer

than when he started. Since then, California has filled countless

newspaper columns and scores of books in many languages. The latest of

these, proceeding from an English pen, has opportunely appeared at the

very moment that, from the far south, intelligence has reached us of the

discovery of another gold region. Intending gold-seekers, whether in

California or Australia, will find much to interest and instruct them in

Mr Shaw’s eventful record.

The great majority of the emigrants to California, whether from Europe

or from other parts of the globe, has been hitherto composed of needy

and reckless adventurers. We trace one proof of this in the terrific

amount of crime and immorality of which the new American State has been

the constant scene, up to the date of the most recent advices. Mr Shaw

belongs to the respectable but exceedingly limited class who contrived

to pass through the ordeal with clean hands and a good conscience,

enduring much suffering, but preserving an unstained reputation. As a

boy, he followed the sea, and sailed for India as a midshipman in 1845,

but left the service three years later, and emigrated to Adelaide.

Finding no suitable occupation there, he was about to return to England,

when news reached South Australia of the golden harvest then reaping in

California. He was still a lad—about nineteen, as we infer from his

narrative; and in the distant colony where he found himself, he had

friends to advise, but none to control him. Of a sanguine spirit, and

lured by the hope of fortune, he disregarded remonstrances, dangers, and

uncertainties, and embarked as a steerage passenger by the clipper-built

ship Mazeppa, manned by a Malay crew, and chartered for San Francisco.

This was the first vessel that left South Australia for the gold

regions. She took one-and-twenty passengers—five in the cabin at sixty

pounds, sixteen in the steerage, who paid but twenty, and included

bushmen and blacksmiths, a carpenter and a shoemaker, and some Germans.

“The steerage measured only sixteen feet square by four feet ten

inches high—close packing for sixteen passengers. Our scale of

provisions, however, was exceedingly liberal—far superior to any given

out of English ports—and no ship-regulations were imposed upon us:

each one was left to his own discretion, and the greatest good feeling

and harmony prevailed on board. In the steerage we were very social;

and though, being for the first time in my life thrown amongst such a

rough lot, I felt somewhat embarrassed, yet, being of a flexible

disposition, I soon got accustomed to my companions, and found them a

very good set of fellows.”

On entering the tropics, things became rather less pleasant in the

narrow crib, owing to cockroaches and other vermin, to the effluvia from

the Malays, and to the visits of rats, who bit the passengers in their

sleep, carrying their audacity so far as to browse upon an emigrant’s

eyebrows. So the occupants of the steerage were driven to sleep upon

deck. A narrow escape from a waterspout was the only incident worth

noticing between the Mazeppa’s departure from Adelaide and arrival at

San Diego in Lower California, where she cast anchor for a few days, and

took on board more passengers—

“Yankee backwoodsmen, some of whom had travelled over the Rocky

Mountains, others through Central America. One of those who had come

the latter route was half crazy from drink and dissipation; he had not

shaved or washed for two months, and had altogether a most repulsive

appearance. The other overlanders looked equally miserable; their

cadaverous features bearing marks of recent suffering; their long

beard and hair clotted into knots, and their clothes and boots

tattered and wayworn. The only articles they possessed were blankets,

wallets, and firearms.”

The exhausting fatigues of a journey by land across the American

continent are manifestly a bad prelude to labour in the diggings.

Neither weariness, poverty, nor sickness could abate the indomitable

national vanity of these Americans. Some of them had agreed only for a

deck passage, but when the weather grew wet and squally, the inmates of

the steerage were too compassionate to refuse them shelter. They

requited the kindness by raising violent political discussions, and

continually asserting the immeasurable inferiority of the Britishers to

the free and enlightened citizens of the States. Were it only for the

release from such ill-conditioned society, Mr Shaw might well rejoice

when, at the beginning of September 1849, the Mazeppa dropped her anchor

in the bay of San Francisco. Scarcely had she done so, when the

anomalies entailed by the strange state of things in the gold regions

became apparent to her passengers. The first boat that boarded her was

rowed by the doctor and mate of a Sydney vessel, who were plying for

hire as watermen, their usual occupations, we are left to infer, being

gone in consequence of the desertion of the Sydneyman’s crew. This

example, then common enough, was quickly followed by the Malays of the

Mazeppa. In the course of the very first night a party of them stole the

gig, and ran from the ship. The captain, as yet a novice in Californian

ways, went ashore next morning, pulled by four of his men, “saying _that

he should pay his respects to the authorities, and bring back the

deserters in irons_.” Authorities, indeed, at San Francisco, and in

1849, when, even in 1851, the only real authority is exercised by a

revolver-bearing rabble! The captain returned on board in a waterman’s

boat, and in a towering passion, minus his four oarsmen, who had

followed their comrades. The next night the ship’s boats were hauled on

board, but the rest of the crew attempted to float ashore on strong

planks. Some were drowned, the remainder reached the land, and the

Mazeppa was left to the guardianship of captain, mate, and supercargo.

The reports of visitors from the shore had already somewhat damped the

ardour of the treasure-seekers from Adelaide, when they landed at

Miller’s Point. Above high-water mark the beach was strewed with

quantities of baggage and merchandise, and hard by stood some three

hundred fellows, unshaven and disreputable-looking, with knives in their

belts, awaiting employment. It was Sunday; but nothing is sacred in

California. No Sabbath stillness prevailed amidst the canvass booths and

wooden frame-houses of the infant city of San Francisco. Hammers sounded

on all sides, and work of every description actively went on.

“Skirting the beach was a vast collection of tents, called the ‘Happy

Valley,’ since more truly designated the ‘Sickly Valley,’ where filth

of all kinds and stagnant pools beset one at every stride. In these

tents congregated the refuse of all nations, crowded together—eight

people occupying what was only space for two. Blankets, firearms, and

cooking utensils were the only worldly property they possessed. Scenes

of depravity, sickness, and wretchedness shocked the moral sense as

much as filth and effluvia did the nerves; and such was the state of

personal insecurity, that few ‘citizens’ slept without firearms at

hand.”

Of course, many fatal broils and accidents arose from the universal

practice of carrying arms; but there, where law and justice were alike

disregarded, a loaded revolver was the only security from personal

outrage and oppression. The extraordinary activity of all, and the

immense amount of business transacted, were what chiefly struck Mr Shaw

during his first day’s ramble in San Francisco.

“Looking at the rude signboards inscribed in various languages,

glancing at the chaos of articles exposed for sale, and listening to

the various dialects spoken, the city seemed a complete Babel. Gold

was evidently the mainspring of all this activity. Tables, piled with

gold, were seen under tents, whence issued melodious strains of music;

and the most exaggerated statements were current respecting the

auriferous regions. But amid scenes of profusion and extravagance, no

sign of order or comfort was perceptible, nor did any one appear

happy: wan, anxious countenances, and restless, eager eyes, met you on

every side. The aspect of personal neglect and discomfort, rags and

squalor, combined with uneasiness, avidity, and recklessness of

manner—an all-absorbing selfishness, as if each man were striving

against his fellow-man—were characteristics of the gold-fever, at once

repulsive and pitiable; and, notwithstanding the gold I saw on every

side, a feeling of despondency crept insensibly over me.”

An allowance made to Mr Shaw by his friends, and payable in Australia,

had been lost by his departure from that colony. In the uncertainty of

his movements, he had not written for remittances; and here he was, in

California, cast entirely on his own resources. He could not afford to

despond, unless he also made up his mind to perish. He had a hard battle

to fight; and although little more than a boy, he fought it like a

man—with temper, pluck, and judgment. His first move was to get rid of

superfluous baggage. Superfluity in California means bare necessaries

anywhere else. Warehouse room was scarce and dear, and change of raiment

little in vogue. As for luxuries—varnished boots, satin waistcoats, and

the like—they strewed the beach. Mr Shaw realised seventy dollars by the

sale of part of his kit. This done, one of his shipmates asked his

assistance to retail a few barrels of spirits. A tent being

unobtainable, they drove posts into the ground, nailed quilts over them,

and opened their grog-store. At night his partner, who had been drinking

overmuch, went to sleep with his pipe in his mouth, and set fire to the

flimsy edifice. Mr Shaw extinguished the flames, and dissolved the

partnership in disgust. Thenceforward, until he started for the

diggings, he often passed his nights in lodging-houses. Of these there

were too few for the numerous lodgers, and sheds, stables, and

skittle-alleys were put in requisition. Nasty dens the very best of them

were.

“The one I sometimes resorted to was about sixty feet long by twenty

in width; it had no windows, and the walls, roof, and floor were

formed of planks, through the seams of which the rain dripped. Along

the sides were two rows of ‘bunks,’ or wooden shelves, and at the end

was some boarding, serving as a bar for liquors: here the proprietor

slept. From about ten till twelve at night, men flocked in with their

blankets round them, for no mattress or bedding was furnished by this

establishment; and a dollar being paid, your sleeping-place was

pointed out to you.”

Out of consideration for the more squeamish of our readers, we abstain

from transcribing Mr Shaw’s vivid account of this abominable

caravanserai. On a wet night, the bunks and the floor would be crowded

with lodgers of all nations—Yankees, Europeans, Chinese, South

Americans—all sleeping in their clothes and boots, many smoking and

chewing tobacco, and indulging in the Transatlantic practice which these

two enjoyments provoke. The atmosphere was doubtless unfavourable to

tranquil repose, for restless sleepers abounded, and kicks in the ribs,

or on the head, were no uncommon occurrences. Sometimes, Mr Shaw

relates, he awoke with the toe of a boot in his mouth; at others he was

so oppressed with heat, that he was glad to rush out into the rain, to

inhale fresh air at any price. When the night was fine, he much

preferred a bivouac to a dollar’s worth of plank in such company, and

under such unpleasant circumstances. If he was disgusted at the sleeping

accommodation, he was not much better pleased at meal-times. Plenty of

good eating was there in San Francisco—for those who could pay the

price. Food was cheaper than it had been a few months previously; but

still ten dollars were easily spent by one person, if very hungry or

rather dainty, at a Californian eating-house. The _table d’hôtes_ were

more economical, varying from one to three dollars a head. Here less

fault was to be found with the fare than with the manners of the guests.

“It is not uncommon to see your neighbour coolly abstract a quid from

his jaw, placing it for the time being in his waistcoat pocket or hat,

or sometimes beside his plate even: then commences, on all sides, a

fierce attack on the eatables, and the contents of the dishes rapidly

disappear. Lucky is the man who has a quick eye and a long arm; for

every one helps himself indiscriminately, and attention is seldom paid

to any request. The nature of the _fixing_ (as a viand is called) is

perfectly immaterial; whichever is nearest commonly has the

preference; and as they generally confine themselves to one dish, it

is difficult to get that from their grasp. Molasses is a favourite

_fixing_, and eaten with almost everything.”

Ten minutes sufficed for the Americans to gorge themselves. If slower

feeders were behindhand, the worse for them, for it was customary for

all to rise together, and the table was cleared and replenished for a

second gang of gormandisers. The “free and enlightened,” who had eaten

their dinner with their knives, then picked their teeth with their

forks, resumed their quids, lit cigars or pipes, and rambled off to

liquor and gamble.

“In almost every part of San Francisco there are gaming-houses,

chiefly spacious ‘frame-houses,’ imported from the States. The

interior is hung with coloured calico, and paintings and mirrors

decorate the walls. There is usually a bar at the farther end. It is

very exciting to enter these Pandemoniums: loud music resounds, amidst

which is heard the chinking of money; and the place is redolent of the

fumes of wines, spirits, and tobacco. From the twanging of guitars,

and scraping of violins, to the clashing of cymbals and banging of

drums, musical sounds of all kinds attract the ear of the passer-by.

In the Aguila d’Oro, a band of Ethiopian serenaders beat their banjos,

rattled their bones, and shouted their melodies. In some

gaming-houses, fascinating belles, theatrically dressed, take their

stand at the roulettetables, purposely to allure men to play; and,

there being a scarcity of the fair sex in this country, these syrens

too often prove irresistible.”

In convenient and appropriate proximity to some of the principal hells

was the “suicide shop,” a hardware stall, kept by a “Down-Easter,” who

sold pistols, bowie-knives, and other weapons. Self-murder was no

uncommon occurrence. The desperate character of a large proportion of

the crowd that continually thronged the gaming-houses rendered

precautions necessary for the safety of the bank of doubloons and gold

eagles heaped in the centre of the tables. “In some rooms loaded

revolvers garnish the table on each side of the banker; he generally,

however, secretes a small one in his breast. On the slightest

disturbance, his rigid countenance becomes agitated, and without

inquiring into the cause of tumult, the ring of a pistol-ball commonly

suppresses the confusion.” In California everything is managed by the

trigger.

Mr Shaw cast in his lot with the second mate of the Mazeppa, whom he

designates as Mac. Having provisioned themselves with biscuit, ham, and

brandy, they embarked on board a small cutter, and sailed up the San

Joachim to the new town of Stockton. Their suite consisted of two

Chinese (Celestials they are called in California) and a Malay boy. Mac,

who spoke Malay, had great influence over all three. Stockton, whatever

it may since have become, was then a very primitive-looking place, with

few wooden buildings, the stores and taverns being chiefly of canvass

nailed on frames, whilst quantities of merchandise lay exposed to the

weather. There was great bustle and activity: the gambling was even more

extravagant than at San Francisco, and everything was awfully dear—Mac

having to pay a dollar for a shave. Mr Shaw arrived just in time to

witness two flagrant examples of Californian justice. An emancipated

convict, from Van Diemen’s Land, had stolen some trifles from a tent.

The usual punishment for such petty offences was the loss of an ear. He

was condemned to death and executed within twelve hours of the

commission of the theft. The prejudice is strong against emigrants from

Australia, who are all set down as convicts. A young man of respectable

family, from the States, had shot a German dead with a revolver, for

having made some severe remarks on America. An American jury acquitted

him of guilt, influenced partly by the feeling address of his counsel,

who represented him as “a martyr, who endangered his life in defending

the reputation of the republic,” and partly by fear of a lawless mob

assembled round the hulk of a superannuated brig, in which this curious

and impartial tribunal held its sittings. Stockton was evidently an

undesirable abode for Britishers, who might be pistoled without redress,

or hung for a petty larceny. Shouldering their “possibles,” Mr Shaw and

Mac hastened to quit, with a party of twenty persons bound for the

diggings.

“The company was composed mostly of Americans of different grades, two

Chilians, a Frenchman, two Germans, and two Cornish miners. Our

followers, the two Chinese and the Malay boy, stuck pertinaciously to

us: one of them, the cook, we persuaded to return, which he very

reluctantly did; the other two persisting in following us, we

consented, thinking they might be useful. Mahomet, the Malay boy,

carried, strapped to his back, a brass bowl for gold-washing—a utensil

somewhat similar to the barber’s basin that Don Quixote mistook for

Mambrino’s helmet, an appellation which it consequently bore.”

Five mules, loaded with provisions for the storekeepers at some remote

diggings, accompanied the party, in charge of two guides. The first

day’s march began late, and lasted but four hours. At seven in the

evening they halted hard by a band of fifty Americans, who had just

arrived at Stockton by the overland route. These emaciated, wayworn men

were the remnant of a party of settlers from the backwoods of Illinois.

A glance at the map of North America gives the best idea of the immense

length of their pilgrimage to Mammon’s new shrine. “The difficulties

they had encountered were indescribable—ascending and descending

mountains, and crossing rivers, dogged by Indians and wild beasts. Many

had died on the way; and the latter part of the track, they said,

resembled the route of a retreating army: the road was strewed with

abandoned goods and broken-down waggons; funereal mounds were raised by

the wayside; whilst carcasses of bullocks and skeletons of men bleached

in the sun.”

The next day the start was at sunrise, and until ten o’clock the road

lay through woodlands. Then the party entered the plain. As far as they

could see were sandhills, without a trace of vegetation; the ground,

parched and fissured by the sun, glowed beneath their feet; gigantic

columns of dust stalked majestically over the monotonous level. Wearily

the travellers proceeded, sinking, at every step, ankle-deep in sand,

their eyes inflamed and irritated by the glare and dust, with the

thermometer at 120°. A scorching wind closed their pores, and excited

intense and unquenchable thirst.

“Most of the party had water-kegs and bottles, which, as joint

property, they carried alternately; the muleteers had skins of water

for themselves and animals. Mac and I luckily had each an India-rubber

bag, which contained a gallon of water, sparing us much suffering and

no little peril: we drank from them very moderately, however, being

uncertain when they would be again replenished.”

This abstinence was most judicious. That day they came to no water. They

were promised some for the next morning, but on reaching the water-hole

it was found dry. Digging was in vain; not a drop was obtainable.

Terrible now was the situation of those who, relying on a supply in the

morning, had expended their store during the night. “I thought of the

parable of the foolish virgins, as I looked on the flushed faces and

glazing eyes of the unfortunates.” But “Forward” was the word, and every

man for himself. If any compassionate hearts there were amongst those

who had husbanded the precious element, they had to repress their

impulses, for generosity would have been suicidal; and resolution was

necessary not to swallow at one eager gulp the small remaining supply.

Even with occasional moistening of the lips and throat, “my vitals

seemed on fire,” says Mr Shaw. Those whose improvidence had forestalled

that alleviation soon began to lag behind.

“By degrees they divested themselves of their burdens and their

clothes, which they left strewed on the plain. Two of them actually

licked the bodies of the mules, for the sake of the animal exudations,

to relieve their thirst; but a thick coating of dust prevented their

deriving any beneficial effects. In vain they beseeched us to halt;

our lives were at stake. One man, in his desperation, seized hold of

the water-skin hanging to the mule. ‘Avast there, stranger!’ cried the

muleteer, and a loaded pistol intimidated the sufferer.”

Some had recourse to brandy, which made them almost delirious. At last,

in the afternoon, four remained behind; keeping together, as their last

slender chance of safety from wolves and Indians. It seemed barbarous to

leave them, but what could be done? The life of all depended on their

speed. The Stanislaus river was the nearest water, and when they halted,

at nightfall, it still was twenty miles distant. That evening, at

supper, the majority finished their water, and the muleteer hinted to

the fortunate minority the possibility of theirs being forcibly taken

from them. Too fatigued to keep watch, they slept together in a group,

rolled in their blankets, with pistol in hand and the water-bags tied to

them. Their rest was broken by the howling of wolves, and still more by

the imploring cries and angry exclamations of the waterless. Before

daybreak some of the party were afoot, striding forward at a desperate

pace. On reaching the river, “the mules were disencumbered, and,

throwing down our burthens, we ran to the banks, and, without doffing

our clothes, eagerly rushed into the cooling stream, mules and men

indiscriminately, up to the neck.” One can imagine the luxury of such a

bath, after such a journey. The river was wide but shallow, the water

clear as crystal and full of salmon, the bank fringed with trees. Their

bodies cooled, and their clothes washed in the current, the next impulse

of the party, it might have been thought, would be to retrace their

steps, with good store of water, in search of the companions they had

left behind. With Arabs or Indians the expectation might be well

founded, but not with gold-hunters. All the worse for stragglers if they

could not keep up. Time was precious; the diggings were ahead. Forward!

to gather gold!

That evening the camp was at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, whose

summits rose, snow-crowned, before the wanderers. Wood and water were

plentiful; a blazing fire cheered the bivouac; the mules, luxuriating in

abundant herbage, recovered from the exhaustion of the previous day. On

the morrow a narrow river was crossed, and the steep ascent of the

mountains began. The scenery grew wild and picturesque, and there was

evidence of some great convulsion of nature having occurred there. The

travellers passed cataracts, ravines, and water-courses, pyramids of

rocks piled on each other, and chasms of unfathomable depth. At the

extremity of a beautiful valley they came to a singular tumulus, which

it was proposed to open, the Germans of the party being particularly

desirous of its scientific investigation; but the guides scoffed at

archæology. “You will have digging enough,” said they, “when you get to

the _placer_, without rummaging in old tombs.” So the progress was

uninterrupted; and, before noon upon the following day, the promised

land, its golden river and clusters of tents, were in sight.

“The ‘digging’ was in a deep valley, having an abrupt mountain

acclivity eight hundred feet high on one side, and on the other a

plain bounded by mountains. On the evening of our arrival we walked

along the bank of the river for two miles; on each side were diggers,

working at distances apart, or congregated together, according to the

richness of deposit. About twenty feet is the space generally allowed

to a washingmachine. The majority of diggers excavated close to the

bank; others partially diverted the river’s course to get at its bed,

which was considered the richest soil. At a bend of the river a

company of eighty were digging a fresh channel to turn its course; on

the sides of the mountain, in ‘gulches’ formed by torrents and

water-courses, men were likewise at work.”

After taking a survey of the diggings—“prospecting” as it is called in

miner’s phrase—Mr Shaw and his comrade Mac fixed upon a likely spot to

commence operations. With the assistance of the Chinese, who was a

carpenter by trade, they quickly constructed a bush hut, and slept in it

the first night of their arrival. The settlement consisted of numerous

tents, accommodating from six to twelve men each, and of a few larger

ones, serving as stores. At one of the latter, on the following morning,

the partners opened an account for provisions and implements. Prices

were exorbitant. A frying-pan, a saucepan, and two tin mugs, cost twelve

dollars—L.2, 8s. Four-and-thirty pounds weight of coarse provisions

(biscuit, salt-junk, &c.) cost fifty dollars! In short, twenty-two

pounds sterling were expended for the merest necessaries before they

could begin work, which they did in the following manner:—

“Commencing within a few feet of the water’s edge, I handled a pick

and spade, shovelling out the earth to Mac, whose shoulders were best

able to carry a burden; he delivered the soil to the Celestial, who

stood in the water shaking to and fro the rocker; he then handed the

auriferous sediment to the inspection of the sharp-eyed Malay boy, who

washed it in Mambrino’s helmet till nothing but pure gold dust

remained. For the first few days the arduous labour very sensibly

affected our limbs; but when we became more accustomed to our tools it

wore off. Unremitting labour from sunrise to sunset was necessary, our

very existence depending on the day’s produce. Indeed, but for the

excitement, and the hope of great gain, gold digging might be

pronounced the severest and most monotonous of all labour. We changed

our digging occasionally, but we generally obtained sufficient gold

dust to procure us the necessaries of life. Twenty-five dollars’ worth

was the most we ever secured in a day, and that only on one occasion:

from fifteen to eighteen dollars seemed to be the usual average of

daily findings, not only with us, but with most others; and our

station seemed to be considered by old hands as prolific as any

other.”

This is surely a most suggestive quotation. Here are three able-bodied

men and a boy toiling, from daybreak till dusk, as hard as any

journeyman stone-mason or railway navigator, to earn—what? a bare

subsistence. For the privilege of doing this they had performed an

immense journey, undergone cruel hardships and sufferings, and risked

themselves in a climate which, for part of the year at least, is most

unwholesome and pernicious. No matter that the nominal amount of their

gains was ten times as much as they could have obtained in Europe, by

digging or other unskilled labour; in a region where junk and biscuit

averaged a dollar and a half a pound, this was of little advantage. “_We

generally obtained sufficient gold dust to procure us the necessaries of

life._” Without care for the morrow, the Celestial and the Malay might

have been sure of that much by sticking to their berths as carpenter and

boy on board the Mazeppa. Was it for no better than this that Mac, the

second mate, had abandoned his ship, to the astonishment and disgust of

the skipper, when the cargo was but half discharged? As yet, however,

there were no signs of regret for the rash step taken. “_Excitement and

hope of great gain_” kept up the hearts of the gold-diggers. In defiance

of experience, they persisted, expectant of some sudden stroke of good

luck. Such things _had_ been, certainly, but only when the gold store

was first developed, and afterwards at very long intervals; and the few

persons who have obtained what might be considered important amounts of

the precious metal in California, have done so by barter with the

Indians (who at first were willing enough to work and trade for gold)

rather than by their own unassisted exertions. Mr Theodore Johnson and

many other writers have deposed to this. Of course, there can be no

doubt that large fortunes have been and will be amassed in California,

but that is done by crafty and grasping traders, and by the unscrupulous

keepers of the countless gamblingtables, who squeeze from the toiling

miner his hard-earned dust and ingots. “The storekeeper, or the

gaming-house keeper,” says Mr Shaw, “is the ravenous shark who swallows

up all. The majority of gold-finders, if they avoid the demon of the

hells, are at the mercy of the ogre of the store, who crams them first

and devours them afterwards.” In a pamphlet now before us—the _Report on

California_, dated from Washington, 22d March 1850, and addressed by the

United States Government Agent, T. Butler King, to the Honourable John

Clayton—we find statistics of the gains of the gold-diggers confirmatory

of the passages we have quoted from Mr Shaw. The first discovery of the

gold took place late in May or early in June 1848; authentic

intelligence of it did not reach the States till late in the autumn—too

late for emigration that year. “The number of miners,” says Mr King,

“was consequently limited to the population of the territory—some five

hundred men from Oregon, Mexicans or other foreigners who happened to be

in the country, or came into it during the summer and autumn, and the

Indians, who were employed by, or sold their gold to, the whites. It is

supposed there were not far from five thousand men employed in

collecting gold during that season.” One thousand dollars a head is

considered a low estimate of what they amassed per man upon an average.

The total amount—of about a million pounds sterling—which this would

make, must, however, have been unequally divided. The Indians would take

trifles in exchange for their gold, and no doubt many of the whites got

together important sums. At the commencement of the dry season of 1849,

foreigners came pouring in from all quarters, and by the month of July

it is estimated that fifteen thousand men were at work in the

mines—increased to twenty thousand by the beginning of September; that

is to say, during the first half of that season which permits successful

search for gold in the rivers. “Very particular and extensive inquiries

respecting the daily earnings and acquisitions of the miners,” says Mr

King, “led to the opinion that they averaged an ounce a-day. This is

believed by many to be a low estimate; but from the best information I

was able to procure, I am of opinion it approaches very near actual

results.” With provisions, it must be borne in mind, at worse than

famine prices, a slender breakfast—as recorded by Mr Johnson, who was

there during this first half of the season of 1849—costing three

dollars, and other things in proportion. During the last half of the

same season, the American emigration had come in by land and sea, and Mr

King calculates that there were forty or fifty thousand United States

citizens in California, whose average gains, owing to their inexperience

in mining, did not exceed eight dollars a-day per man. This was the

period of Mr Shaw’s abode in the diggings, and the estimated rate very

nearly tallies with the gains of himself and companions. A comparison of

his narrative with that of other Californian adventurers inclines us to

think that provisions, at least of some kinds, had rather fallen in

price during the latter part of the 1849 season—at least in San

Francisco and its vicinity, although up at the diggings, owing to

monopoly and expense of carriage, there was probably but little

difference. “Where I was,” he says, “on the setting-in of the winter

season, the storekeeper paid four shillings for every pound-weight of

goods, these being transported on mules to the settlement. Retailing

almost everything at the rate of from _six to twelve shillings a pound_,

the storekeepers gave credit; but the digger, unless he had a continuous

supply of gold, soon fell into arrears.” As a specimen of the

extravagant prices paid in particular cases, he mentions the arrival

from the Sandwich Islands of two casks of potatoes, “a most welcome

supply, as many, from eating salt provisions, were suffering from

scurvy. These potatoes had a rapid sale _at four shillings a-piece_, and

were eaten raw, like apples!” This is a match for Mr Johnson’s story of

the boxes of raisins which were sold, also as anti-scorbutics, for their

weight in gold dust.

To revert, however, to Mr Shaw’s adventures. Gradually were disclosed to

him the various advantages of gold digging, and he experienced the

amenities of American enlightenment. “Prospecting” one morning for a

likely spot, he and Mac had just pitched upon one, remote from any other

diggers, when down came three Americans, and coolly took possession of

the ground. “They were very indifferent about giving an explanation,

merely saying that we were within their limits, and they ‘guessed we had

better remove.’ As it would have been a matter of contest _vi et armis_,

we beat a retreat.” A small thing produced a deadly encounter at the

diggings. The company of eighty men, already mentioned, who had been

excavating a channel to divert the river’s course, and get at its bed,

where they hoped to find a great accumulation of gold, at last completed

their work. The stream, dammed up, and driven into the new cutting,

overflowed the banks, and flooded other people’s diggings.

“Indemnification was asked, but refused; the inundated diggers,

therefore, commenced digging in the old river-bed, exclusively

appropriated for those who belonged to the company; when a murderous

attempt to eject them ensued: knives and picks, rifles and pistols,

were freely used. The company, being strongest, were triumphant;

though not before deadly wounds had been inflicted on both sides. I

viewed the barbarous encounter from an eminence; at its termination,

when I visited the field of battle, I was horror-struck at the

sanguinary atrocities which had been committed. Some men lay with

their entrails hanging out; others had their skulls smashed with the

pickaxe, and bodies lopped with the axe; whilst a few lay breathing

their last, seemingly unscathed, but shot to death with bullets.”

The prospect of gain should be very great, to compensate civilised men

for the disgust and many disagreeables inevitable from the proximity of

Americans of a certain stamp. None appreciate the better qualities of

our Transatlantic cousins more highly than ourselves. It has been our

good fortune to meet with Americans who would do honour to any nation.

We willingly believe that such men are numerous in the United States.

But we regard with aversion a class of Americans which we much fear is

both large and increasing—that restless, reckless, offensive class, who

lay down for others laws which they themselves disregard; who use

license and exact submission; and who, themselves childishly

susceptible, affect astonishment when others take umbrage at their

encroachments. These are the men who fill the ranks of usurping armies,

to despoil feeble neighbours; who man piratical expeditions against the

possessions of an allied and friendly country; and who, when the pirates

have met their deserts—as richly earned as was the fate of any

freebooter and murderer who ever hung in chains on bank of Thames or

West Indian key—muster by twenties of thousands in the great cities of

the States, utter frantic yells for vengeance, set police and order at

defiance, destroy the property of innocent traders, and drive diplomatic

agents to seek safety for their lives within prison walls. To this

disreputable class, and to its worst specimens, belonged, as will easily

be imagined, a great majority of the American immigrants into

California. Their two chief characteristics were the grossest

selfishness and the most unwarrantable interference in their neighbours’

concerns. A party of these men, including two of the three who had

accused Shaw and Mac of trespassing, paid them a visit, fully armed, one

night after dark, as the two Englishmen, weary with the day’s work, lay

smoking their pipes beneath their roof of leaves and branches. The

Yankee diggers came to grumble and bully. Their pretext was, the

presence of the Chinese and Malay, whom they either believed, or

pretended to believe, were serfs to the others, working for their

benefit.

“We assured the men that we exercised no compulsion over the blacks,

who might leave us at pleasure; and, notwithstanding they had

previously declared that coloured men were not privileged to work in a

country intended only for American citizens, some of them were

inconsistent enough to ask the Celestial and Malay to work for them

for pay; but nothing would shake their allegiance to us. Some time

afterwards, this feeling against the coloured races rose to a pitch of

exasperation.... The mines becoming more thickly populated by

Americans, these, relying on their numerical strength, commenced acts

of hostility and aggression on any _placer_ inhabited by coloured

people, if it were worth appropriating, or excited their cupidity:

ejectments constantly occurred, and thousands, driven from the

_placeres_, left the country, whilst others penetrated farther into

the hill ranges.”

The wet season in California is usually from November till March; but in

1849 it set in unusually early. Mr Shaw and his partner had been but

three weeks at the diggings when a flood of rain descended. Their

habitation was a delightful one for hot weather—a sort of sylvan bower

in a clump of trees, with a park-like tract in the rear, and the bright

stream about a hundred paces in front. Now the rain poured in through

their bower of foliage, soaking everything in an instant. They tried to

keep it off with blankets, but in vain; the weight of the torrent

overwhelmed everything. They continued their search after gold. The

labour had been hard at first; it now was painful and desperate.

“At mid-day it was a July heat, of an evening and morning the chill of

January. In the dry season we had not minded, when in a profuse

perspiration, and oppressed with heat, taking a turn in the water;

but, now that the river was filling, none liked standing long up to

the waist in snow-water from the mountains. When we thought of former

exposures, and contemplated our present position, the terrors of ague,

rheumatism, fever, dysentery, and other accompaniments of a

Californian winter, occurred to our minds.”

Ominous forebodings, speedily to be fulfilled. As fast as they built up

their hut, it was knocked down again, until at last they almost gave up

hopes of shelter, wrapped themselves in their blankets, and cowered

round the fire, the teeth of Mahomet and the Celestial chattering dismal

duets. Again they tried to work, and again desisted, deterred by

symptoms of sickness, which the Chinese was the first to feel. Anything

more dreary and wretched than their situation, as described by Mr Shaw,

can hardly be conceived. The whole country was becoming deluged; a

chilly south-east wind blew through their hut, which resembled a

shower-bath, and Mac, applying his nautical experience to the

consideration of the Californian clouds, predicted much foul weather. In

the midst of all this misery and discomfort, provisions ran low. Mr Shaw

and the Malay volunteered to fetch a small supply, and, making their way

through bush and swamp, at last reached the ford. This was hard by the

place where the cutting had been made which had caused the desperate

fight between the two parties of miners. Labour and blood had alike been

fruitlessly expended; for want of due precaution, the mountain torrents

had carried away the embankments. The waters at the ford were agitated

and dangerous. “Mahomet looked sagaciously at the current, then, picking

pebbles from the bank, sat himself down, and pitched them successively

into different portions of the river, complacently watching the results:

this, he told me, was his country fashion of finding out the depth of

water, as, by the bubbles produced by the falling stones, the depth of

water was ascertained.”

Having at length got across, “we went to our customary store, kept by a

knowing ‘Down-East’ youth, whom we found seated astride on the top of a

sugar cask, chewing lustily at a plug of tobacco. He was a good natured

fellow, for when he saw the plight we were in, (both of us wet up to the

waist, and Mahomet rueful and shivering,) he pulled from his pocket a

brandy bottle, and handed it to us to drink.” Most rare generosity at

the diggings! Provisions procured, they returned to the hut; but next

morning Mahomet awoke with spasms, and the Celestial was very bad.

Brandy there was none; the poor fellows’ funds were running low; and as

the Malay’s case was urgent, Mr Shaw went to the nearest tent where

spirits were. “Christian men wanted liquor,” was the reply of the humane

and Christianlike Americans, “and they would be darned if they would

give any to black cattle.” So Mr Shaw made another trip to the store,

and then he and Mac, defying the weather, went down to dig, and were so

fortunate as to get a full ounce of gold. A little encouraged by this

success, Mr Shaw took his gun and walked off “in search of something

suitable for an invalid.” After rambling far and finding nothing, he

espied a flock of crows, clustered on the decayed carcasses of some

oxen, and knocked over three. The very picking them out of the putrid

mass amongst which they had fallen was a most disgusting task; but he

bagged them with a shudder, and, on returning with his loathsome prize,

so eager were the party to eat something that was fresh—or rather, not

salt—that it was decided, _nem. con._, to make a supper on the crows.

“They actually smelt of carrion, but were very plump; and when plucked

and boiled by the Celestial, they ate much better than I anticipated.”

After such a repast, no wonder that “the following day both Mac and

myself experienced a shivering sensation; the Chinese and Mahomet were

also worse.” Indeed, it was the wretched condition into which the two

Asiatics now fell that partly detained their masters at the diggings. As

to remaining there in hope of profit, Mr Shaw and his messmate were

getting daily more persuaded of the fallacy of any such expectation.

Hard work, frugality and economy, had as yet done little towards

enriching them; and here they were, with five or six months’ rain before

them, during which they would necessarily gain less and spend more.

Themselves were now so poorly, and the pains in their limbs so severe,

that it was all they could do to keep up the fire and dress their food.

But the Malay and the Chinese were in a terrible state, and lay moaning

dismally, to the consternation of the others. And all this time the

party of sufferers may be said to have lived in water, for they had been

refused admittance into a tent, and the roof of branches kept out no

rain. “On one occasion, after an agitated sleep, the boy sprang up

shrieking in a fit, and fell into the fire. _Luckily his clothes were

too wet to catch a light_, and we pulled him out instantly; but after

this occurrence we thought it prudent to bind him by the feet.” When

things are at the worst they must mend, says the proverb; and certainly

it were difficult to imagine anything worse than the condition of the

four unfortunates in the ruined hut. But one day a man was seen coming

over the hill; they hailed him, and he approached them. It was the

Down-Easter from the store. That jewel of a fellow, who deserved to be

put under a glass-case as an unparalleled specimen of a humane Yankee at

the diggings, offered them shelter in his store. How joyfully they

accepted it needs hardly to be said. Poor Mahomet could not walk; but he

was by this time a mere skeleton, and easily carried. The two Englishmen

were quartered in the store itself; their coloured dependants were

sheltered in an adjoining tent. A German—self-dubbed a surgeon, but who

in his own country had been more accustomed to dress hair than

wounds—now came to see them, at the moderate rate of five dollars a

visit, and insisted upon bleeding Mac, who unwisely submitted, although

already extremely weak, and in greater need of nourishment than

blood-letting. Mr Shaw mistrusted the quack-salver, suffered no lancet

to approach his veins, and his health rapidly mended. “In the morning I

took a stroll round the tents: a most ominous silence prevailed; of the

busy crowds not one was to be seen at work; all was as still as an

hospital. We had not been the only sufferers; sickness universally

prevailed, seeming as infectious as the plague. In every tent lay

sufferers in various stages of disease; out of two hundred, at least

twenty had died, and not more than sixty were able to move. Those

convalescent would be seen gathered together in the stores,” gambling

the gold dust for which they had toiled all summer, knocking the necks

off champagne bottles, devouring turtle, lobsters, and other delicacies,

preserved in tins and sold at fabulous prices. Idleness and ostentation

were the motives of this lavish expenditure of their hard-gotten wealth,

and Mr Shaw believes “that the majority wished themselves again in the

backwoods, preferring beef-broth and spruce-beer there to champagne and

turtle in the diggings.” Meanwhile, the sick “lay huddled together in

tents, moaning and cursing, many of them dying, with no one to attend to

their spiritual or bodily wants; and I cannot but think that many died

from sheer starvation or mere want of attendance.” California is the

place for contrasts. In one tent revelry, gambling and drunkenness; in

the next, disease, delirium, despair: a reckless life terminated by a

godless death.