PIONEER LIFE
To be successful and popular among the Pioneers was something really to a
man's credit. Men were thrown upon their own resources, and, as in
Mediaeval times, were their own police and watchmen, their own firemen, and
in most cases their own judge and jury. There was no distribution of the
inhabitants into separate classes: they constituted a single class, the
only distinction being that between individuals. There was not even the
broad distinction between those who worked with their heads and those who
worked with their hands. Everybody, except the gamblers, performed manual
labor; and although this condition could not long prevail in San Francisco
or Sacramento, it continued in the mines for many months. In fact, any one
who did not live by actual physical toil was regarded by the miners as a
social excrescence, a parasite.[27]
An old miner, after spending a night in a San Francisco lodging house,
paid the proprietor with gold dust. While waiting for his change he seemed
to be studying the keeper of the house as a novel and not over-admirable
specimen of humanity. Finally he inquired of him as follows: "Say, now,
stranger, do you do nothing else but just sit there and take a dollar from
every man that sleeps in these beds?" "Yes," was the reply, "that is my
business." "Well, then," said the miner after a little further
reflection, "it's a damned mean way of making your living; that's all I
can say."
Even those who were not democratic by nature became so in California. All
men felt that they were, at last, free and equal. Social distinctions were
rubbed out. A man was judged by his conduct, not by his bank account, nor
by the set, the family, the club, or the church to which he belonged.[28]
All former records were wiped from the slate; and nobody inquired whether,
in order to reach California, a man had resigned public office or
position, or had escaped from a jail.
"Some of the best men," says Bret Harte, "had the worst antecedents, some
of the worst rejoiced in a spotless, Puritan pedigree. 'The boys seem to
have taken a fresh deal all round,' said Mr. John Oakhurst one day to me,
with the easy confidence of a man who was conscious of his ability to win
my money, 'and there is no knowing whether a man will turn out knave or
king.'"
This, perhaps, sounds a little improbable, and yet here, as always, Bret
Harte has merely stated the fact as it was. One of the most accurate
contemporary historians says: "The man esteemed virtuous at home becomes
profligate here, the honest man dishonest, and the clergyman sometimes a
profane gambler; while, on the contrary, the cases are not few of those
who were idle or profligate at home, who came here to be reformed."[29]
"It was a republic of incognitos. No one knew who any one else was, and
only the more ill-mannered and uneasy even desired to know. Gentlemen took
more trouble to conceal their gentility than thieves living in South
Kensington would take to conceal their blackguardism."[30]
[Illustration: THE FIRST HOTEL AT SAN FRANCISCO
Copyright, Century Co.]
"Have you a letter of introduction?" wrote a Pioneer to a friend in the
East about to sail for California. "If you have, never present it. No one
here has time to read such things. No one cares even to know your name. If
you are the right sort of a man, everything goes smoothly here." "What is
your partner's last name?" asked one San Francisco merchant of another in
1850. "Really, I don't know," was the reply; "we have only been acquainted
three or four weeks." A miner at Maryville once offered to wager his old
blind mule against a plug of tobacco that the company, although they had
been acquainted for some years, could not tell one another's names; and
this was found upon trial to be the case.
Men were usually known, as Bret Harte relates, by the State or other place
from which they came,--with some prefix or affix to denote a salient
characteristic. Thus one miner, in a home letter, speaks of his friends,
"Big Pike, Little Pike, Old Kentuck, Little York, Big York, Sandy, and
Scotty." Men originally from the East, and long supposed to be dead,
turned up in California, seeking a new career. In fact, there seems to
have been a general inclination among the Pioneers to strike out in new
directions. "To find a man here engaged in his own trade or profession,"
wrote a Forty-Niner, "is a rare thing. The merchant of to-day is to-morrow
a doctor; lawyers turn bankers, and bankers lawyers. The miners are almost
continually on the move, passing from one claim to another, and from the
Southern to the Northern mines, or _vice versa_."
Bret Harte was startled by meeting an old acquaintance in a strange
situation. "At my first breakfast in a restaurant on Long Wharf I was
haunted during the meal by a shadowy resemblance which the waiter who took
my order bore to a gentleman to whom in my boyhood I had looked up as to a
mirror of elegance, urbanity, and social accomplishment. Fearful lest I
should insult the waiter--who carried a revolver--by this reminiscence, I
said nothing to him; but a later inquiry of the proprietor proved that my
suspicions were correct. 'He's mighty handy,' said this man, 'and can talk
elegant to a customer as is waiting for his cakes, and make him kinder
forget he ain't sarved.'"
Bret Harte relates another case. "An Argonaut just arriving was amazed at
recognizing in the boatman who pulled him ashore, and who charged him the
modest sum of fifty dollars for the performance, a classmate at Oxford.
'Were you not,' he asked eagerly, 'Senior Wrangler in '43?' 'Yes,' said
the other significantly, 'but I also pulled stroke against Cambridge.'"
A Yale College professor was hauling freight with a yoke of oxen; a Yale
graduate was selling peanuts on the Plaza at San Francisco; an ex-governor
was playing the fiddle in a bar-room; a physician was washing dishes in a
hotel; a minister was acting as waiter in a restaurant; a lawyer was
paring potatoes in the same place. Lawyers, indeed, were doing a great
deal of useful work in California. One kept a mush and milk stand; another
sold pies at a crossing of the American River; a third drove a team of
mules.
John A. McGlynn, one of the best known and most successful Forty-Niners,
began by hitching two half-broken mustangs to an express wagon, and acting
as teamster. He was soon chosen to enforce the rules regulating the
unloading of vessels and the cartage of goods. All the drivers obeyed him,
except one, a native of Chili, a big, powerful man, with a team of six
American mules. McGlynn ordered him into line; he refused; and McGlynn
struck him with his whip. In an instant both men had leaped from their
wagon-seats to the ground. The Chileno rushed at McGlynn, with his
bowie-knife in his hand; but the American was left-handed, for which the
Chileno was not prepared; and with his first blow McGlynn stretched his
antagonist on the ground. There he held him until the fellow promised good
behavior. On regaining his feet the defeated man invited all hands to
drink, and became thenceforth a warm friend of the victor.
The judge of the Court for Santa Cruz County kept a hotel, and after court
adjourned, he would take off his coat and wait on the table, serving
jurors, attorneys, criminals and sheriffs with the same impartiality which
he exhibited on the bench. A brief term of service as waiter in a San
Francisco restaurant laid the foundation of the highly successful career
of another lawyer, a very young man. One day a merchant upon whom he was
waiting remarked to a companion: "If I only had a lawyer who was worth a
damn, I could win that suit." "I am a lawyer," interposed the waiter, "and
I am looking for a chance to get into business. Try me." The merchant did
so; the suit was won; and the former waiter was soon in full legal
practice.
Acquaintances were formed, and the beginning of a fortune was often made,
by chance meetings and incidents. Men got at one another more quickly than
is possible in an old and conservative society. One who became a
distinguished citizen of California began his career by accepting an offer
of humble employment when he stepped into the street on his first morning
in San Francisco. "Look here, my friend," said a merchant to him, "if you
won't get mad about it, I'll offer you a dollar to fill this box with
sand." "Thank you," said the young fellow, "I'll fill it all day long on
those terms, and never become angry in the least." He filled the box, and
received payment. "Now," he said, "we'll go and take a drink with this
dollar." The merchant acquiesced with a laugh, and thus began a life-long
connection between the two men.
There were some recognitions of old acquaintances as remarkable as the
making of new friends. Two brothers, Englishmen from the Society Islands,
met in a mining town, and were not aware of their relationship until a
chance conversation between them disclosed it. A merchant from Cincinnati
arrived in San Francisco with the intention of settling there. One of the
first persons whom he met was a prosperous business man who had absconded
some years before with ten thousand dollars of his money. He recovered the
ten thousand dollars and interest, without making the matter public, and
went back to Ohio well satisfied.
A lawyer of note in San Francisco remarked, in 1850, that the last time he
saw Ned McGowan, previous to his arrival in California, McGowan stood in
the criminal dock of a Philadelphia court where he was receiving a
sentence to the State prison for robbery. Subsequently he was pardoned by
the Governor of Pennsylvania, on condition that he should leave the State.
When this lawyer settled in San Francisco, he was employed to defend some
persons who had been arrested for drunkenness; and upon entering the court
room he was thunderstruck by the appearance of the magistrate upon the
bench. After a careful survey of the magistrate and a pinch of the flesh
to make sure that he was not dreaming, he exclaimed:--
"Ned McGowan, is that you?"
"It is," was the cool reply.
"Well, gentlemen," said the lawyer, turning to his clients, "you had
better toll down heavy, for I can do you no good with such a judge."
Tolling down heavy was probably a practice which the judge encouraged,
for, a year later, upon the organization of the Vigilance Committee, Ned
McGowan fled from San Francisco, if not from California.
California, from 1849 to 1858, was a meeting ground for all the nations of
the earth. One of the first acts of the Legislature was to appoint an
official translator. The confusion of languages resulted in many
misunderstandings and some murders. A Frenchman and a German at Moquelumne
Hill had a controversy about a water-privilege, and being unable to
understand each other, they resorted first to pantomime, and then to
firearms, with the unfortunate result that the German was killed.
A trial which occurred at San Jose illustrates the multiplicity of tongues
in California. A Spaniard accused a Tartar of assaulting him, but as the
Tartar and his witnesses could not speak English the proceedings were
delayed. At last another Tartar, called Arghat, was found who could speak
Chinese, and then a Chinaman, called Alab, who could speak Spanish; and
with these as interpreters the trial began. Another difficulty then arose,
namely, the swearing of the witnesses. The court, having ascertained that
the Tartar mode of swearing is by lifting a lighted candle toward the sun,
adopted that form. The judge administered the ordinary oath to the English
and Spanish interpreters; the latter then swore Arghat as Tartar and
Chinese interpreter, and he, in turn, swore Alab, by the burning candle
and the sun, as Chinese and Spanish interpreter; and the trial then
proceeded in four languages.
The first newspaper was printed half in English, half in Spanish. Sermons
were preached by Catholic priests both in English and in Spanish. The
Fourth of July was celebrated at San Jose in 1850 by one oration in
English and another in Spanish. German and Italian weekly papers were
published in San Francisco. The French population of the city was
especially large. They made _rouge-et-noir_ the fashion. "Where there are
Frenchmen," remarks a Pioneer, "you will find music, singing and gayety."
A French benevolent society was established at San Francisco in 1851.
Many of the best citizens of California were Englishmen. There was a
famous ale-house in San Francisco, called the Boomerang, where sirloins of
beef could be washed down with English ale, and followed by Stilton
cheese; where the London "Times," "Punch" and "Bell's Life" were taken in.
Australia and New South Wales contributed a considerable and by no means
the best part of the population. The "Sydney Ducks" who infested the dark
lanes and alleys of San Francisco, and lurked about the wharves at night,
lived mainly by robbery; and they often murdered in order to rob. An
English traveller said of them: "I have seen vice in almost every form,
and under almost every condition in the Old World, but never did it appear
to me in so repulsive and disgusting a shape as it exists among the lower
orders of Sydney, and generally in New South Wales."[31]
But not all of the immigrants from English colonies were of this
character. Many were respectable men, and succeeded well in California. An
Australian cabman, for example, brought a barouche, a fine pair of horses,
a tall hat and a livery coat all the way across the Pacific, and made a
fortune by hiring out at the rate of twenty dollars an hour.
There were many Jews in San Francisco, but none in the mines;--they alone
of all the nations gathered in California kept to their ordinary
occupations, chiefly the selling of clothes, and never looked for gold.
Even their dress did not change. "They are," writes a Pioneer, "exactly
the same unwashed-looking, slobbery, slipshod individuals that one sees in
every seaport town." But the Jew prospered, and was a good citizen.
Another Pioneer, who could look beneath the surface, said, "The Jew does
honor to his name here. The pressure which elsewhere bows him to the earth
is removed."[32]
The variety and mixture of races in California were without precedent, and
San Francisco especially prided itself upon the barbaric aspect of its
streets. Perhaps the Chinese were the most striking figures. The low-caste
Chinamen wore full jackets and breeches of blue calico, and on their heads
a huge wicker-work hat that would have made a good family clothes-basket.
The aristocratic Chinaman displayed a jacket of gay-colored silk, yellow
satin breeches, a scarlet skull-cap with a gold knob on top, and, in cold
weather, a short coat of Astrakhan fur.
There was, of course, a Chinese quarter, and a district known as little
Chili, where South Americans of every country could be found, with a
mixture of Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands, and negroes from the South
Seas. In July, 1850, there arrived a ship-load of Hungarian exiles, and
somewhat later a company of Bayonnais from the south of France, the men
wild and excitable in appearance, the women dark-skinned, large-eyed, and
graceful in their movements.
There was a Spanish quarter where, as Bret Harte said, "three centuries of
quaint customs, speech and dress were still preserved; where the proverbs
of Sancho Panza were still spoken in the language of Cervantes, and the
high-flown allusions of the La Manchian knight still a part of the Spanish
Californian hidalgo's dream."
The Spanish women were usually attended by Indian girls, and their dress
was coquettish and becoming. Their petticoats, short enough to display a
well-turned ankle, were richly laced and embroidered, and striped and
flounced with gaudy colors, of which scarlet was the most common. Their
tresses fell in luxuriant plaits down their backs; and, in all the little
accessories of dress, such as earrings, and necklaces, their costume was
very rich. Its chief feature, the _reboso_, was a sort of scarf, like the
mantilla of old Spain. This was sometimes twined around the waist and
shoulders, and at other times hung in pretty festoons about the figure.
It was only in respect to their diversions that the Spanish had any
influence upon the Americans. The gambling houses and theatres were
largely in Spanish hands at first, and the _fandango_ was the national
amusement in which the American miners soon learned to join.[33]
And yet the fundamental gravity of the Spanish nature, a gravity which is
epitomized and immortally fixed in the famous portrait of Admiral Pareja
by Velasquez, was as marked in California as at home. It is thus that Bret
Harte describes Don Jose Sepulvida, the Knight Errant of the Foot-Hills:
"The fading glow of the western sky through the deep, embrasured windows
lit up his rapt and meditative face. He was a young man of apparently
twenty-five, with a colorless, satin complexion, dark eyes, alternating
between melancholy and restless energy, a narrow, high forehead, long
straight hair, and a lightly pencilled mustache."
One is struck by the resemblance between Don Jose Sepulvida, and Culpeper
Starbottle, the Colonel's nephew, whose tragic death the Reader will
remember. Bret Harte thus depicts him: "The face was not an
unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and lank and bilious to be
altogether pleasant. The cheek-bones were prominent, and the black eyes
sunken in their orbits. Straight black hair fell slantwise off a high but
narrow forehead, and swept part of a hollow cheek. A long, black mustache
followed the perpendicular curves of his mouth. It was on the whole a
serious, even quixotic face, but at times it was relieved by a rare smile
of such tender and even pathetic sweetness, that Miss Jo is reported to
have said that, if it would only last through the ceremony, she would have
married the possessor on the spot. 'I once told him so,' added that
shameless young woman; 'but the man instantly fell into a settled
melancholy, and has not laughed since.'"[34]
[Illustration: MINERS' BALL
A. Castaigne, del.]
There were, in fact, many things in common between the Southerner and the
Spaniard. They lived in similar climates, and the fundamental ideas of
their respective communities were very much the same. The Southerner was
almost as deeply imbued as the Spaniard with extreme, aristocratic notions
of government and society; and he, like the Spaniard, was conservative,
religious, dignified, courteous, chivalrous to women, brave, narrow-minded
and indolent.
In _The Secret of Sobriente's Well_, this resemblance suddenly occurs to
Larry Hawkins, who, in describing to Colonel Wilson, from Virginia, the
character of his Spanish predecessor, the former owner of the _posada_ in
which the Colonel lived, said: "He was that kind o' fool that he took no
stock in mining. When the boys were whoopin' up the place and finding the
color everywhere, he was either ridin' round lookin' up the wild horses he
owned, or sittin' with two or three lazy peons and Injuns that was fed and
looked after by the priests. Gosh! Now I think of it, it was mighty like
you when you first kem here with your niggers. That's curous, too, ain't
it?"
The hospitality of the Spanish Californian was boundless. "There is no
need of an orphan asylum in California," wrote the American Alcalde at
Monterey. "The question is not who shall be burdened with the care of an
orphan, but who shall have the privilege of rearing it. An industrious man
of rather limited means applied to me to-day for the care of _six_ orphan
children. He had fifteen of his own;" and when the Alcalde questioned the
prudence of his offer, the Spaniard replied, "The hen that has twenty
chickens scratches no harder than the hen that has one."
A Pioneer, speaking from his own experience, said: "If you are sick there
is nothing which sympathy can divine which is not done for you. This is as
true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her
guitar, as of the cottage-girl wringing from her laundry the foam of the
mountain stream; and all this from the heart!"[35]
Generosity and pride are Spanish traits. "The worst and weakest of them,"
remarks an English Pioneer, "has that indefinable something about him that
lifts so immeasurably the beggar of Murillo above the beggar of
Hogarth."[36] The Reader will remember how cheerfully and punctiliously
Don Jose Sepulvida paid the wagers of his friend and servant, Bucking Bob.
A gambling debt was regarded by the Spaniards in so sacred a light that if
he who incurred it was unable to pay, then, for the honor of the family,
any relative, a godfather, or even one who had the misfortune to be
connected by marriage with the debtor, was bound to discharge the
obligation. Some Americans basely took advantage of this sentiment; and,
in one case, an old Spanish lady was deprived of a vineyard, her only
means of support, in order to preserve the reputation of a scapegrace
nephew who had lost to an American at faro a greater sum than he
possessed.
Some convenient and becoming articles of Spanish dress were adopted by
the Americans, notably the sombrero and the serape, or horseman's cloak.
Jack Hamlin, as the Reader will remember, sometimes went a little further.
Thus, when he started on his search for the Sappho of Green Springs, he
"modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful combination
of a roquero's costume, and in loose white bullion-fringed trousers, red
sash, jacket and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing and picturesque
than his original."
The profuse wearing of jewelry, even by men, was another foreign fashion
which Americans adopted in the early years; so much so, in fact, that to
appear in a plain and unadorned state was to be conspicuous. The jewelry
thus worn was not of the conventional kind, but a sort of miner's jewelry,
significant of the place and time. Ornaments were made from the gold in
its native state by soldering into one mass many small nuggets, without
any polish or other embellishment. Everybody carried a gold watch, and
watch-chains were constructed upon a massive plan, the links sometimes
representing dogs in pursuit of deer, horses at full speed, birds in the
act of flight, or serpents coiled and hissing. Scarf-pins were made from
lumps of gold retaining their natural form and mixed with quartz,
rose-colored, blue-gray, or white, according to the rock from which they
were taken. The big "specimen ring" worn by the hero of _A Night on the
Divide_ was an example.
Some Americans adhered to their usual dress which, in the Eastern States,
was a sober suit of black; but usually the Pioneers discarded all
conventional clothes, and appeared in a rough and picturesque costume much
like that of a stage pirate. Indeed, it was impossible for any man in '49
to make his dress sufficiently bizarre to attract attention. The
prevailing fashion included a red or blue flannel shirt, a "wide-awake"
hat of every conceivable shape and color, trousers stuffed into a huge
pair of boots coming up above the knee, and a belt decorated with pistols
and knives. More than one Pioneer landed in San Francisco with a rifle
slung on his back, a sword-cane in his hand, two six-shooters and a
bowie-knife in his belt, and a couple of small pistols protruding from his
waistcoat pockets.
In the rainy season of '49, long boots were so scarce, and so desirable on
account of the mud, that they sold for forty dollars a pair in San
Francisco, and higher yet in Stockton. Learning of this, Eastern merchants
flooded the market with top-boots a year later; but by that time the
streets had been planked, the miner's costume was passing out of fashion,
and long boots were no longer in demand. These changes were greatly
regretted by unconventional Pioneers, and even so early as 1850 they were
lamenting "the good old times,"--just one year back,--before the tailor
and the barber were abroad in the land.
Local celebrations were marked by more color and display than are usually
indulged in by Americans. In 1851, on Washington's Birthday, there was a
procession in San Francisco headed by the Mayor in a barouche drawn by
four white horses. Next came the fire engines of the city, each with a
team of eight gray horses, and followed by a long train of firemen in
white shirts and black trousers. Then came a company of teamsters mounted
on their draught horses, and carrying gay banners; and finally a
delegation of Chinamen, preceded by a Chinese band and bearing aloft a
huge flag of yellow silk.
Horsemen, more or less intoxicated, and shouting like wild Indians,
charged up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night, to the
great discomfort of many and the fatal injury of some pedestrians. "On
Sundays especially, one would imagine," a local newspaper remarks, "that a
horde of Cossacks or Tartars had taken possession of the city."
"The Spaniard," Bret Harte says, "taught the Americans horsemanship, and
they rode off with his cattle." The Americans usually adopted the Spanish
equipment, consisting of a huge saddle, with cumbrous leather
saddle-flaps, stirrups carved from solid oak, heavy metal spurs, a bridle
jingling with ornaments, and a cruel curb bit,--the whole paraphernalia
being designed to serve the convenience and vanity of the rider without
the least regard to the comfort of his beast. The Spanish manner of abrupt
stopping, made possible by the severe bit, was also taken up by young
Americans who loved to charge down upon a friend, halting at the last
possible moment, in a cloud of dust, with the horse almost upon his
haunches. This was Jack Hamlin's habit.
A popular figure in the streets of San Francisco was a black pony, the
property of a constable, that stood most of the day, saddled and bridled,
in front of his master's office. The pony's favorite diversion was to have
his hoofs blacked and polished, and whenever a coin was placed between his
lips, he would carry it to a neighboring boot-black, put, first, one
fore-foot, and then the other, on the foot-rest, and, after receiving a
satisfactory "shine," would walk gravely back to his usual station. Even
the dumb animals felt that something unusual was expected of them in
California.
There were no harness horses or carriages in San Francisco in the early
part of '49; and when they were introduced toward the end of that year, a
touch of barbaric splendor marked the fashionable equipage of the hour. A
pair of white horses with gilt trappings, drawing a light, yellow-wheeled
buggy, was once a familiar sight in the streets of the city. The
_demi-monde_ rode on horseback, in parties of two or three, and even of
six or more, and the pace which they set corresponded with that of
California life in general. The appearance of one of the most noted of
these women is thus described by a Pioneer, the wife of a sea-captain: "I
have seen her mounted on a glossy, lithe-limbed race-horse, one that had
won for her many thousands on the race-course, habited in a close-fitting
riding-dress of black velvet, ornamented with one hundred and fifty gold
buttons, a hat from which depended magnificent sable plumes, and over her
face a short, white lace veil of the richest texture, so gossamer-like one
could almost see the fire of passion flashing from the depths of her dark,
lustrous eyes."[37]
Even the climate, the dry, bracing air, the cool nights, the aromatic
fragrance of the woods, tended to quicken the pulse of the Argonauts, and
to heighten the general exuberance of feeling.
Central California, the scene of Bret Harte's stories, is a great valley
bounded on the west by the Coast Range of hills or mountains, which rise
from two thousand to four thousand, and in a few places to five thousand
feet, and on the east by the Foot-Hills. After the immigration, this
valley furnished immense crops of wheat, vegetables and fruit; but in '49
it was a vast, uncultivated plain, free from underbrush or other small
growth, and studded by massive, spreading oaks, by tall plane trees, and
occasionally by a gigantic redwood, sending its topmost branches two and
even three hundred feet into the air. In the dry season, the surface was
brown and parched, but as soon as the rains began, the wild grasses and
wild oats gave it a rich carpet of green, sparkling with countless field
flowers. The resemblance of the valley, in the rainy season at least, to
an English park, was often spoken of by Pioneers who found in it a
reminder of home.
On the eastern side this great central valley gradually merges into the
Foot-Hills, the vanguards of the lofty mountain range which separates
central California from Nevada. The Foot-Hills form what is perhaps the
most picturesque part of the State, watered in the rainy season by
numerous rocky, swift-flowing streams, the tributaries of the Sacramento
and the San Joaquin, and broken into those deep, narrow glens so often
described in Bret Harte's poetry and prose. This was the principal
gold-bearing region. The Foot-Hills extend over a space about five hundred
miles long and fifty wide, and from them arise, sometimes abruptly, and
sometimes gradually, the snow-crowned Sierras.
Such is central California. A region extending from latitude 32 deg. 30' in
the South to 42 deg. in the North, and rising from the level of the Pacific
Ocean to mountain peaks fifteen thousand feet high, must needs present
many varieties of weather; but on the whole the State may be said to have
a mild, dry, breezy, healthy climate. Except in the mountains and in the
extreme northeast, snow never lies long, the earth does not freeze, and
Winter is like a wet Spring during which the cattle fare much better than
they do in Summer. The passing of one season into the other was thus
described by Bret Harte: "The eternal smile of the California Summer had
begun to waver and grow fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry
hills were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the
south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer, and the rains
would be here."
San Francisco has a climate of its own. Ice never forms there, and
geraniums bloom throughout the Winter; but during the dry season, which
lasts from May or June until September or October, a strong, cold wind
blows in every afternoon from the ocean, dying down at sunset. The mercury
falls with the coming of the wind, the rays of the sun seem to have no
more warmth than moonbeams, the sand blows up in clouds, doors and windows
rattle, and the city is swept and scourged. But fifty miles inland the
air is still and balmy, and residents of San Francisco leave the city in
Summer not to escape unpleasant heat, but to enjoy the relaxation of a
milder and less stimulating climate. "In the interior one bright, still
day follows another, as calm, as dreamy, as disconnected from time and
space as was the air which lulled the lotus-eaters to rest."[38] This
evenness of temperature was amazing and delightful to the weather-beaten
Pioneers from New England.
The Midsummer days are often intensely hot in the interior, but the nights
are cool, and the atmosphere is so dry that the heat is not enervating.
Men have been seen hard at work digging a cellar with the thermometer at
125 deg. F. in the shade; and sunstrokes, though not unknown, are extremely
rare. Nothing decays or becomes offensive. Fresh meat hung in the shade
does not spoil. Dead animal or vegetable matter simply dries up and wastes
away.
In 1849 the rains were uncommonly severe, to the great discomfort of the
Pioneers; and Alvarado, the former Spanish governor, explained the fact in
all sincerity by saying that the Yankees had been accompanied to
California by the devil himself. This explanation was accepted by the
natives generally, without doubt or qualification. The streets of San
Francisco, in that year, were like the beds of rivers. It was no uncommon
thing to see, at the same time, a mule stalled in the middle of the
highway, with only his head showing above the road, and an unfortunate
pedestrian, who had slipped off the plank sidewalk, in process of being
fished out by a companion. At the corner of Clay and Kearney Streets there
once stood a sign, erected by some joker, inscribed as follows,--
This street is impassable,
Not even jackassable!
But the rainy season is usually neither long nor constant. The fall of
rain on the Pacific Slope is only about one third of the rainfall in the
Atlantic States; and, before water was supplied artificially, the miner
was often obliged to suspend operations for want of it. Frequently a day's
rain would have been cheaply bought at the price of a million dollars; and
even a good shower gave an impetus to business which was felt by the
merchants and gamblers of San Francisco and Sacramento. It was observed
that after a long drought dimes took the place of gold slugs upon the
roulette and faro tables. Thus, even the weather was a speculation in
Pioneer times.
And yet, notwithstanding the general mildness of the climate, extremes of
cold, at high levels, are close at hand. Snow often falls to a depth of
one or two feet within fifty miles of San Francisco. Near the head-waters
of the Feather River the snow is sometimes twelve and even fifteen feet
deep; and in December, 1850, eighteen men out of a party of nineteen, and
sixty-eight of their seventy mules froze to death in one night. A
snow-storm came up so suddenly, and fell with such fury, that their
firewood became inaccessible, and they were obliged to burn their cabin;
but even that did not save them.
Bret Harte has described a California snow-storm not only in _The Outcasts
of Poker Flat_, but in several other stories, notably in _Gabriel Conroy_,
_Snow-Bound at Eagle's_, and _A Night on the Divide_. It is interesting to
know, as Mr. Pemberton tells us, that the description of the snow-storm in
_Gabriel Conroy_ was written on a hot day in August.
Poker Flat was in Sierra County, and in March, 1860, the snow was so deep
in that county that tunnels were dug through it as a picturesque and
convenient means of access to local saloons. The storm which overwhelmed
the Outcasts was no uncommon event. But when these storms clear off, the
cold, though often intense, is not disagreeable, owing to the dryness of
the air. "We are now working every fair day," wrote a miner in January,
1860, "and have been all the Winter without inconvenience. The long,
sled-runner Norwegian snow-shoes are used here by nearly everybody. I have
seen the ladies floating about, wheeling and soaring, with as much grace
and ease of motion as swans on the bosom of a placid lake or eagles in the
sun-lit air."
On the summit of the mountains the snow is perpetual, and on the easterly
slopes it often attains the almost incredible depth, or height, of fifty
feet. In _A Tale of Three Truants_, Bret Harte has described an avalanche
of snow, carrying the Three Truants along with it, in the course of which
they "seemed to be going through a thicket of underbrush, but Provy Smith
knew that they were the tops of pine trees."
On the whole, the climate of California justified the enthusiasm which it
aroused in the Pioneers, and which sometimes found an amusing expression.
The birth of twins to an immigrant and his wife, who had been childless
for fifteen years, was triumphantly recorded by a San Jose paper as the
natural result of even a short residence on the Pacific Slope. Large
families and long life marked not only the Spaniards, but also the
Mexicans and Indians. Families of fifteen, twenty, and even twenty-five
children excited no surprise and procured no rewards of merit for the
parents. In 1849 there was a woman living at Monterey whose children, all
alive and in good health, numbered twenty-eight.
We read of an Indian, blind but still active at the age of one hundred and
forty; and of a squaw "very active" at one hundred and twenty-six. Mr.
Charles Dudley Warner[39] a speaks of "Don Antonio Serrano, a tall, spare
man, who rides with grace and vigor at ninety-three," and of an Indian
servant "who was a grown man, breaking horses, when Don Antonio was an
infant. This man is still strong enough to mount his horse and canter
about the country. He is supposed to be about one hundred and eighteen."
This wonderful longevity was ascribed by Mr. Warner to the equable climate
and a simple diet.
Ancient Mexicans and Indians figure occasionally in Bret Harte's stories.
There is, for example, Concepcion, "a wrinkled Indian woman, brown and
veined like a tobacco leaf," who acts as servant to the Convert of the
Mission; and, at the Mission of San Carmel, Sanchicha, in the form of a
bundle, is brought in and deposited in a corner of the room. "Father Pedro
bent over the heap, and distinguished in its midst the glowing black eyes
of Sanchicha, the Indian centenarian of the Mission. Only her eyes lived.
Helpless, boneless, and jelly-like, old age had overtaken her with a mild
form of deliquescence."
But it was not length of days,--it was feverish energy that the climate
produced in the new race which had come under its influence. The amount of
labor performed by the Pioneers was prodigious. "There is as much
difference," wrote the Methodist preacher, Father Taylor, "between the
muscular action of the California miner and a man hired to work on a farm,
as between the aimless movements of a sloth and the pounce of the
panther."
"We have," declared a San Francisco paper, "the most exhilarating
atmosphere in the world. In it a man can do more work than anywhere else,
and he feels under a constant pressure of excitement. With a sun like that
of Italy, a coast wind as cool as an Atlantic breeze in Spring, an air as
crisp and dry as that of the high Alps, people work on without let or
relaxation, until the vital cord suddenly snaps. Few Americans die
gradually here or of old age; they fall off without warning."
So late as 1860 it was often said that there were busy men in San
Francisco who had never taken a day's vacation, or even left the city to
cross the Bay, from the hour of their arrival in 1849 until that moment.
Even this record has been eclipsed. A Pioneer of German birth, named Henry
Miller, who accumulated a fortune of six million dollars, is said to have
lived, or at least to have existed, in San Francisco for thirty-five years
without taking a single day's vacation.
It was even asserted at first that the climate neutralized the effect of
intoxicating liquor, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to get
really drunk in California. Possibly a somewhat lax definition of
drunkenness accounted in part for this theory. A witness once testified in
a San Francisco court that he did not consider a man to be drunk so long
as he could move. But the crowning excellence of the California climate
remains to be stated. It was observed by the Pioneers,--and they had ample
opportunity to make observations upon the subject,--that in that benign
atmosphere gunshot wounds healed rapidly.
With a climate exhilarating and curative; with youth, health, courage, and
the prospect of almost immediate wealth; with new and exciting
surroundings, it is no wonder that the Pioneers enjoyed their hour. In San
Francisco, especially, a kind of pleasant madness seized upon every
newcomer. "As each man steps his foot on shore," writes one adventurer,
"he seems to have entered a magic circle in which he is under the
influence of new impulses." And another, in a letter to a friend says, "As
soon as you reach California you will think every one is crazy; and
without great caution, you will be crazy yourself."
Still another Pioneer wrote home even more emphatically on this point:
"You can form no conception of the state of affairs here. I do believe, in
my soul, everybody has gone mad,--stark, staring mad."[40]
To the same effect is the narrative of Stephen J. Field, afterward, and
for many years, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr.
Field, who arrived in San Francisco as a very young man, thus describes
his first experience:--
"As I walked along the streets, I met a great many persons whom I had
known in New York, and they all seemed to be in the highest spirits. Every
one in greeting me said, 'It is a glorious country!' or 'Isn't it a
glorious country?' or 'Did you ever see a more glorious country?' In every
case the word 'glorious' was sure to come out.... I caught the infection,
and though I had but a single dollar in my pocket, no business whatever,
and did not know where I was to get my next meal, I found myself saying to
everybody I met, 'It is a glorious country!'"[41]
"The exuberance of my spirits," Judge Field continues, "was marvellous";
and the readers of his interesting reminiscences will not be inclined to
dispute the fact when they learn that four days after his arrival, having
made the sum of twenty dollars by selling a few New York newspapers, he
forthwith put down his name for sixty-five thousand dollars' worth of town
lots, and received the consideration due to a capitalist bent upon
developing the resources of a new country.
The most extravagant acts appeared reasonable under the new dispensation.
Nobody was surprised when an enthusiastic miner offered to bet a friend
that the latter could not hit him with a shotgun at the distance of
seventy-eight yards. As a result the miner received five shots, causing
severe wounds, beside losing the bet, which amounted to four drinks. After
the first State election, a magistrate holding an important office
fulfilled a wager by carrying the winner a distance of three miles in a
wheelbarrow.
A characteristic scene in a Chinese restaurant is described as follows in
the "Sacramento Transcript" of October 8, 1850:--
"One young man called for a plate of mutton chops, and the waiter, not
understanding, asked for a repetition of the order.
"'Mutton chops, you chuckle head,' said the young gentleman.
"'Mutton chops, you chuckle head,' shouted the Chinaman to the kitchen.
"The joke took among the customers, and presently one of them called out,
'A glass of pigeon milk, you long-tailed Asiatic.'
"'A glass of pigeon milk, you long-tailed satic,' echoed the waiter.
"'A barrel of homoeopathic soup, old smooth head,' shouted another.
"'Arrel homepatty soup, you old smooth head,' echoed the waiter.
"'A hatful of bricks,' shouted a fourth.
"'Hatter bricks,' repeated the waiter.
"By this time the kitchen was in a perfect state of confusion, and the
proprietor in a stew of perplexity rushed into the dining-room. 'What you
mean by pigeon milk, homepatty soup, and de brick? How you cooking,
gentlemen?'
"A roar burst from the tables, and the shrewd Asiatic saw in a moment that
they were hoaxing his subordinates. 'The gentlemen make you all dam
fools,' said he, rushing again into the smoky recess of the kitchen."
At a dinner given in San Francisco a local orator thus discoursed upon the
glories of California: "Look at its forest trees, varying from three
hundred to one thousand feet in height, with their trunks so close
together [drawing his knife and pantomiming] that you can't stick this
bowie-knife between them; and the lordly elk, with antlers from seventeen
to twenty feet spread, with their heads and tails up, ambling through
these grand forests. It's a sight, gentlemen"--
"Stop," cried a newcomer who had not yet been inoculated with the
atmosphere. "My friend, if the trees are so close together, how does the
elk get through the woods with his wide-branching horns?"
The Californian turned on the stranger with a look of thorough contempt
and replied, "That's the elk's business"; and continued his unvarnished
tale, no more embarrassed than the sun at noonday.
"There was a spirit of off-hand, jolly fun in those days, a sort of
universal free and easy cheerfulness.... The California Pioneer that could
not give and take a joke was just no Californian at all. It was this
spirit that gives the memory of those days an indescribable fascination
and charm."[42]
The very names first given to places and situations show the same
exuberant spirit; such, for example, as Murderer's Alley, Dead Man's Bar,
Mad Mule Canon, Skunk Flat, Whiskey Gulch, Port Wine Diggins, Shirt-Tail
Hollow, Bloody Bend, Death Pass, Jackass Flat, and Hell's Half Acre.
Even crime took on a bold and original form. A scapegrace in Sacramento
stole a horse while the owner still held the bridle. The owner had stepped
into a shop to ask a question, but kept the end of the reins in his hand,
when the thief gently slipped the bridle from the horse's head, hung it
on a post, and rode off with steed and saddle.
Bizarre characters from all parts of the world, drawn as by a magnet, took
ship for California in '49 and '50 and became wealthy, or landed in the
Police Court, as fate would have it. The latter was the destination of one
Murphy, an Irishman presumably, and certainly a man of imagination, who
described himself as a teacher of mathematics, and acknowledged that he
had been drunk for the preceding six years. He added, for the benefit of
the Court, that he had been at the breaking of every pane of glass from
Vera Cruz to San Francisco, that he had smoked a dozen cigars in the halls
of the Montezumas, and that there were as many persons contending for his
name as there were cities for the birth of Homer. The Court gave him six
months.
Two residents of San Francisco, one a Frenchman, the other a Dutchman,
were so enthusiastic over their new and republican surroundings that they
slept every night under the Liberty Pole on the Plaza; and seldom did they
fail to turn in patriotically drunk, shouting for freedom and equality.
Prize-fighters, as a matter of course, were attracted to a place where
sporting blood ran so high. In June, 1850, news came that Tom Hyer (of
whose celebrity the Reader is doubtless aware) was shortly expected with
"his lady" at Panama; and he must have arrived in due course, for in
August, Tom Hyer was tried in the Police Court of San Francisco for
entering several saloons on horseback, in one case performing the classic
feat of riding up a flight of steps. The defence set up that this was not
an uncommon method of entering saloons in San Francisco, and the Court
took "judicial notice" of the fact, his honor having witnessed the same
thing himself on more than one occasion. However, as Mr. Hyer was somewhat
intoxicated, and as the alleged offence was committed on a Sunday, the
Judge imposed a small fine.
In the same year, Mr. T. Belcher Kay, another famous prize-fighter from
the East, narrowly escaped being murdered while returning from a ball
before daylight one Sunday morning; and subsequently Mr. Kay was tried,
but acquitted, on a charge of burglary.
In that strange collection of human beings drawn from all parts of the
earth, for the most part unknown to one another, but almost all having
this fundamental trait in common, namely, that they were close to nature,
it was inevitable that incidents of pathos and tragedy, deeds of rascality
and cruelty, and still more deeds of unselfishness and heroism, should
continually occur.
Some Pioneers met good fortune or disaster at the very threshold. One
young man, upon landing in San Francisco, borrowed ten dollars, went
immediately to a gambling saloon, won seven thousand dollars, and with
rare good sense took the next steamer for home. Another newcomer, who
brought a few hundred dollars with him, wandered into the gambling rooms
of the Parker House soon after his arrival, won twenty thousand dollars
there, and went home two days later.
A Pioneer who had just crossed the Plains fell into a strange experience
upon his arrival at Placerville. He was a poor man, his only property
being a yoke of oxen which he sold almost immediately for one hundred
dollars in gold dust. Shortly before that a purse containing the same
quantity of gold had been stolen; and when, a few hours later, the
newly-arrived teamster took out his pocket-book to pay for a small
purchase, a man immediately stepped forward and accused him of the
robbery. He was, of course, arrested, and a jury to try him was impanelled
on the spot. The quality of the gold in his purse corresponded exactly
with the quality of the stolen gold. It was known that he had only just
arrived from the Plains and could not have obtained the gold dust by
mining. The man to whom he sold his cattle had gone, and he was unable to
prove how he had come by the treasure. Under these circumstances, the jury
found him guilty, and sentenced him to receive thirty lashes on the bare
back, which were thereupon administered, the unfortunate man all the time
protesting his innocence.
After he was whipped, he procured a pistol, walked deliberately up to the
person who first accused him, placed the pistol at his head, and declared
that he believed him to be the guilty man, and that if he did not then and
there confess that he had stolen the money he would blow his brains out.
The fellow could not stand the power of injured innocence. He became
frightened, acknowledged that he was the thief, and drew the identical
stolen money out of his pocket. The enraged crowd instantly set upon him,
bore him to the nearest tree, and hung him. A subscription was then
started, and about eighteen hundred dollars were raised in a few minutes
for the sagacious teamster, who departed forthwith for his home in the
East.[43]
Of the many thousand Pioneers at work in the mines very few reaped a
reward at all commensurate with their toils, privations and
sufferings,--much less with their expectations. The wild ideas which
prevailed in some quarters as to the abundance of the gold may be gathered
from the advice given to one young Argonaut by his father, on the eve of
his departure from Illinois. The venerable man urged his son not to work
too hard, but to buy a low chair and a small iron rake, and, taking his
seat comfortably, to rake over the sand, pick up the nuggets as they came
to view, and place them in a convenient box.
In reality, the miners' earnings, after deducting necessary living
expenses, are computed to have averaged only about three times the wages
of an unskilled day-laborer in the East. Few of them saved anything, for
there was every temptation to squander their gains in dissipation; and men
whose income is subject to wide fluctuations are notoriously unthrifty.
The following is a typical experience: "Our diet consists of hard bread,
flour which we eat half-cooked, and salt pork, with occasionally a salmon
which we purchase of the Indians. Vegetables are not to be procured. Our
feet are wet all day, while a hot sun shines down upon our heads, and the
very air parches the skin like the hot air of an oven. Our drinking water
comes down to us thoroughly impregnated with the mineral substances washed
through the thousand cradles above us. The hands and feet of the novice
become painfully blistered and the limbs are stiff. Besides all these
causes of sickness, many men who have left their wives and children in
far-distant States are homesick, anxious and despondent."[44]
Many a family in the East was desolated and reduced to poverty by the
untimely death of a husband and father; and in other cases long absence
was as effectual in this respect as death itself. The once-common
expression "California widow" is significant. Some Eastern men took
informal wives on the Pacific Slope; others, who had succeeded, put off
their home-coming from month to month, and even from year to year, hoping
for still greater success; others yet, who had failed, were ashamed to go
home in poverty, and lingered in California until death overtook them.
This phase of Pioneer life is treated by Bret Harte in the stories _How
Old Man Plunkett went Home_, and _Jimmy's Big Brother from California_. Of
those who were lucky enough to find gold in large quantities, many were
robbed, and some of these unfortunates went home, or died, broken-hearted.
But as a rule, the Pioneers rose superior to every blow that fate could
deal them. Men met misfortune, danger, even death with composure, and yet
without bravado. A traveller being told that a man was about to be
lynched, proceeded to the spot and found a large gathering of miners
standing around in groups under the trees, and quietly talking. Seeing no
apparent criminal there, he stepped up to one person who stood a little
apart from the others, and asked him which was the man about to be hung.
The person addressed replied, without the slightest change of countenance,
"I believe, Sir, it's me." Half an hour later he was dead.
There was a battle at Sacramento in 1850 between a party of "Squatters" on
one side, and city officials and citizens on the other. Among the latter
was one J. F. Hooper from Independence in Missouri. Hooper, armed only
with a pistol, discharged all his cartridges, then threw the weapon at his
advancing opponents, and calmly faced them, crossing his hands over his
breast as a protection. They fired at him, notwithstanding his defenceless
situation, and one ball piercing his right hand inflicted a wound, but not
a mortal one, in his side. Four men were killed and several others badly
wounded in this fight.
When a father and son were arrested by a vigilance committee at Santa
Clara for horse-stealing, and were sentenced to receive thirty-six lashes
apiece, the son begged that he might take his father's share as well as
his own.
Men died well in California. In November, 1851, two horse-thieves were
hung by a vigilance committee at Stockton. One of them, who was very
young, smoked a cigar up to the last moment, and made a little speech in
which he explained that the act was not dictated by irreverence, but that
he desired to die like a man. When Stuart, a noted robber and horse-thief
was being tried for his life by the Vigilance Committee in San
Francisco, he complained that the proceedings were "tiresome," and asked
for a chew of tobacco.
[Illustration: THE TWO OPPONENTS CAME NEARER
From "The Iliad of Sandy Bar"
Frederic Remington, del.]
The death of this man was one of the most impressive scenes ever witnessed
upon this blood-stained earth. Sentence having been passed upon the
prisoner the Committee, numbering one thousand men, came down from the
hall where they met and formed in the street, three abreast. They
comprised, with some exceptions, the best, the most substantial, the most
public-spirited citizens of San Francisco. In the centre was Stuart,
handcuffed and pinioned, but perfectly self-possessed and cool. A gallows
had been erected some distance off, and the procession moved up Battery
Street, followed by a great throng of men. There was no confusion, no
outcry, no apparent excitement,--not a sound, indeed, except the tread of
many feet upon the planked streets, every footfall sounding the prisoner's
knell.
It was of this event that Bret Harte wrote in his _Bohemian Days in San
Francisco_: "Under the reign of the Committee the lawless and vicious
class were more appalled by the moral spectacle of several thousand
black-coated, serious-minded business men in embattled procession than by
mere force of arms."
When they reached the gallows, a rope was placed around the prisoner's
neck, and even then, except for a slight paleness, there was no change in
his appearance. Amid the breathless silence of the whole assemblage
Stuart, standing under the gallows, said, "I die reconciled. My sentence
is just." His crimes had been many, and he seemed to accept his death as
the proper and almost welcome result of his deeds. He was a man of
intellect, and, hardened criminal though he was, the instinct of expiation
asserted itself in his breast.
In July, 1851, a Spanish woman was tried and condemned by an impromptu
vigilance committee for killing an American who, she declared, had
insulted her. Being sentenced to be hanged forthwith, she carefully
arranged her dress, neatly coiled her hair, and walked quietly and firmly
to the gallows. There she made a short speech, saying that she would do
the same thing again if she were permitted to live, and were insulted in
the same way. Then she bade the crowd farewell, adjusted the noose with
her own hands, and so passed bravely away.
A few years later at Moquelumne Hill, a young Welshman, scarcely more than
a boy, met death in a very similar manner, and for a similar offence. On
the scaffold he turned to one of the by-standers, and said, "Did you ever
know anything bad of me before this affair occurred?" The answer was, "No,
Jack." "Well," said the youth, "tell those Camp Saco fellows that I would
do the same thing again and be hung rather than put up with an insult."
Men like these died for a point of honor, as much as did Alexander
Hamilton.
But far higher was the heroism of those who suffered or died for others,
and not for themselves. No event, not even the discovery of gold, stirred
California more profoundly than did the death of James King. In 1856,
King, the editor of the "Bulletin," was waging single-handed a vigorous
warfare against the political corruption then rife in California, and
especially against the supineness of the city officials in respect to
gambling and prostitution. He had given out that he would not accept a
challenge to a duel, but he was well aware of the risk that he ran. San
Francisco, even at that time, indulged in an easy toleration of vice, and
only some striking, some terrible event could have aroused the conscience
of the public.
Among the city officials whose hatred Mr. King had incurred was James
Casey, a typical New York politician, and a former convict, yet not wholly
a bad man. The two men, King and Casey, really represented two stages of
morality, two kinds of government. Their personal conflict was in a
condensed form the clashing of the higher and the lower ideals. Casey,
meeting King on the street, called upon him to "draw and defend himself";
but King, being without a weapon, calmly folded his arms and faced his
enemy. Casey fired, and King fell to the ground, mortally wounded.
"It was expedient that one man should die for the people"; and the death
of King did far more than his life could have done to purify the political
and social atmosphere of California. On the day following the murder, a
Vigilance Committee was organized, and an Executive Committee, consisting
chiefly of those who had managed the first Vigilance Committee in 1851,
was chosen as the practical ruler of the city. It was supported by a band
of three thousand men, distributed in companies, armed, officered and well
drilled. For two months and a half the Executive Committee remained in
office, exercising its power with marked judgment and moderation. Four men
were hung, many more were banished, and the city was purged. Having
accomplished its work the Committee disbanded, but its members and
sympathizers secured control of the municipal government through the
ordinary legal channels, and for twenty years administered the affairs of
the city with honesty and economy.
The task in 1851 had been mainly to rid the city of Australian convicts;
in 1856 it was to correct the political abuses introduced by professional
politicians from the East, especially from New York; and in each case the
task was successfully accomplished, without unnecessary bloodshed, and
even with mercy.
Nor was Casey's end without pathos, and even dignity. On the scaffold he
was thinking not of himself, but of the old mother whom he had left in New
York. "Gentlemen," he said, "I stand before you as a man about to come
into the presence of God, and I declare before Him that I am no murderer!
I have an aged mother whom I wish not to hear that I am guilty of murder.
I am not. My early education taught me to repay an injury, and I have done
nothing more. The 'Alta California,' 'Chronicle,' 'Globe,' and other
papers in the city connect my name with murder and assassination. I am no
murderer. Let no newspaper in its weekly or monthly editions dare publish
to the world that I am one. Let it not get to the ears of my mother that I
am. O God, I appeal for mercy for my past sins, which are many. O Lord
Jesus, unto thee I resign my spirit. O mother, mother, mother!"
The sinking of the steamer, "Central America," off the coast of Georgia,
in 1857, is an event now almost forgotten, and yet it deserves to be
remembered forever. The steamer was on her way from Aspinwall to New York,
with passengers and gold from San Francisco, when she sprang a leak and
began to sink. The women and children, fifty-three in all, were taken off
to a small brig which happened to come in sight, leaving on board, without
boats or rafts, five hundred men, all of whom went down, and of whom all
but eighty were drowned. Though many were armed, and nearly all were rough
in appearance, they were content that the women and children should be
saved first; and if here and there a grumble was heard, it received little
encouragement. Never did so many men face death near at hand more quietly
or decorously.[45]
And yet the critic tells us about the "perverse romanticism" of Mr. Bret
Harte's California tales!
One incident more, and this brief record of California heroism, which
might be extended indefinitely, shall close. Charles Fairfax, the tenth
Baron of that name,[46] whose family have lived for many years in
Virginia, was attacked without warning by a cowardly assassin, named Lee.
This man stabbed Fairfax twice, and he was raising his arm for a third
thrust when his victim covered him with a pistol. Lee, seeing the pistol,
dropped his knife, stepped back, and threw up his hands, exclaiming, "I am
unarmed!"
"Shoot the damned scoundrel!" cried a friend of Fairfax who stood by.
Fairfax, holding the pistol, with the blood streaming from his wounds,
said: "You are an assassin! You have murdered me! Your life is in my
hands!" And then, after a moment, gazing on him, he added, "But for the
sake of your poor sick wife and of your children, I will spare you." He
then uncocked the pistol, and fell fainting in the arms of his friend.
All California rang with the nobility of the deed.