SAN FRANCISCO--EARLY CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCES--LIFE ON THE PACIFIC COAST
--PROMOTED CAPTAIN--FLUSH TIMES IN CALIFORNIA.
San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging
as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San
Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the
southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines by
Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf--there
was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852--was alive with people
crowding to meet the miners as they came down to sell their "dust" and
to "have a time." Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding
houses or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious
adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on the
alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means, in the
hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men
of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents
had been able to support them during their minority, and to give them
good educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853
there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the class described.
All thought that fortunes were to be picked up, without effort, in the
gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine
expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of
whom now fill unknown graves; others died wrecks of their former selves,
and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts.
Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness
and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist.
Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way
off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape
Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass of pioneers crossed the
plains with their ox-teams. This took an entire summer. They were very
lucky when they got through with a yoke of worn-out cattle. All other
means were exhausted in procuring the outfit on the Missouri River. The
immigrant, on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a strange land, far
from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be realized
from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not support a man
long at California prices. Many became discouraged. Others would take
off their coats and look for a job, no matter what it might be. These
succeeded as a rule. There were many young men who had studied
professions before they went to California, and who had never done a
day's manual labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once and
went to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some
supplied carpenters and masons with material--carrying plank, brick, or
mortar, as the case might be; others drove stages, drays, or baggage
wagons, until they could do better. More became discouraged early and
spent their time looking up people who would "treat," or lounging about
restaurants and gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily.
They were welcomed at these places because they often brought in miners
who proved good customers.
My regiment spent a few weeks at Benicia barracks, and then was ordered
to Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, then in Oregon Territory.
During the winter of 1852-3 the territory was divided, all north of the
Columbia River being taken from Oregon to make Washington Territory.
Prices for all kinds of supplies were so high on the Pacific coast from
1849 until at least 1853--that it would have been impossible for
officers of the army to exist upon their pay, if it had not been that
authority was given them to purchase from the commissary such supplies
as he kept, at New Orleans wholesale prices. A cook could not be hired
for the pay of a captain. The cook could do better. At Benicia, in
1852, flour was 25 cents per pound; potatoes were 16 cents; beets,
turnips and cabbage, 6 cents; onions, 37 1/2 cents; meat and other
articles in proportion. In 1853 at Vancouver vegetables were a little
lower. I with three other officers concluded that we would raise a crop
for ourselves, and by selling the surplus realize something handsome. I
bought a pair of horses that had crossed the plains that summer and were
very poor. They recuperated rapidly, however, and proved a good team to
break up the ground with. I performed all the labor of breaking up the
ground while the other officers planted the potatoes. Our crop was
enormous. Luckily for us the Columbia River rose to a great height from
the melting of the snow in the mountains in June, and overflowed and
killed most of our crop. This saved digging it up, for everybody on the
Pacific coast seemed to have come to the conclusion at the same time
that agriculture would be profitable. In 1853 more than three-quarters
of the potatoes raised were permitted to rot in the ground, or had to be
thrown away. The only potatoes we sold were to our own mess.
While I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian
wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity
of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory.
They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none
of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson's Bay Company
had held the North-west with their trading posts for many years before
the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still
retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when
I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better
qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to
supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle
and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the
farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always
gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.
Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the
Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If
an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not
an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for
American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his
purchases, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would
not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that
day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were
common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.
The Indians, along the lower Columbia as far as the Cascades and on the
lower Willamette, died off very fast during the year I spent in that
section; for besides acquiring the vices of the white people they had
acquired also their diseases. The measles and the small-pox were both
amazingly fatal. In their wild state, before the appearance of the
white man among them, the principal complaints they were subject to were
those produced by long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit
of game, and over-eating. Instinct more than reason had taught them a
remedy for these ills. It was the steam bath. Something like a
bake-oven was built, large enough to admit a man lying down. Bushes were
stuck in the ground in two rows, about six feet long and some two or
three feet apart; other bushes connected the rows at one end. The tops
of the bushes were drawn together to interlace, and confined in that
position; the whole was then plastered over with wet clay until every
opening was filled. Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was
scooped out so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of
water. These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big
spring, or pool of water. When a patient required a bath, a fire was
built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it. The cavity at the
front was then filled with water. When the stones were sufficiently
heated, the patient would draw himself into the oven; a blanket would be
thrown over the open end, and hot stones put into the water until the
patient could stand it no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam
bath and doused into the cold stream near by. This treatment may have
answered with the early ailments of the Indians. With the measles or
small-pox it would kill every time.
During my year on the Columbia River, the small-pox exterminated one
small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced others
materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery among them,
until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and
established a hospital. Nearly every case he treated recovered. I
never, myself, saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph,
but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it. The
decimation among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital,
established for their benefit, was a Hudson's Bay building not a stone's
throw from my own quarters.
The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which
occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then
stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in
September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new
command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to
take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red
wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place
filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt
Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber
for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to
market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and
the balance of the world.
I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found
a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San
Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been
but one wharf in front of the city in 1852--Long Wharf. In 1853 the
town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf
when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles
where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at
anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or
houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year
before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous
for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor, with
doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the
streets, the eye was regaled, on every block near the water front, by
the sight of players at faro. Often broken places were found in the
street, large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but
little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in
the early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard from
since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write, found
watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco
Bay.
Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger scale in
city lots. These were sold "On Change," much as stocks are now sold on
Wall Street. Cash, at time of purchase, was always paid by the broker;
but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the
rate of two or three per cent. a month on the difference, besides
commissions. The sand hills, some of them almost inaccessible to
foot-passengers, were surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots--a
vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices,
but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many
thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and so did many
such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final
crash came. As the city grew, the sand hills back of the town furnished
material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still
further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the
harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part
of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest
class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in
1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had
become staid and orderly.