off by a loud whistling for aid, from some other officer over on the
Barbary Coast. My companions fell in with a Chinese merchant with whom
they were acquainted, and we went with him to his store on Dupont
Street. He gave us some scalding hot black tea in little China cups,
and offered to help us in any way he could. O, yes, of course he was
acquainted with the location of many “opium houses;” the Chinese
quarter is full of them! Opium smoking is the great curse of China,
and four fifths of the Chinese in San Francisco indulge in it to a
greater or less extent. Some use it merely as a sedative, and in
moderate quantities. Others use it as commonly as American tobacco
chewers use the nicotian weed, consuming a dollar and a quarter’s
worth every day, and being more or less under the influence of it
all the time. The poorer class of opium smokers patronize the opium
lodging-houses, where they frequently sleep all night, paying fifteen
cents for a few grains of prepared opium and a raised couch to lie on,
while inhaling the smoke and sleeping off its effects.
[Sidenote: EFFECT AND EXTENT OF OPIUM SMOKING.]
Perhaps a quarter of the whole number of opium smokers use it to
the extent of producing stupefaction habitually; these are all old
smokers. The habit grows upon one steadily, and it soon becomes a
terrible tyrant. When once the habit has become fixed upon a man,
there is no possibility of its being thrown off. He daily requires
more and more of the drug, while his strength slowly fails him;
his appetite for ordinary food disappears; he becomes lean and
attenuated; his brain becomes so affected, that it refuses to act
unless the stimulant is furnished, and sooner or later consumption
sets in, and the victim dies by inches, as it were, sometimes
suffering horribly, while at others he is hardly conscious of
suffering at all.
The importation of opium into the Pacific states amounts to millions
annually, and the great bulk of it is consumed in smoking by the
Chinamen. The women never smoke it; are not allowed to visit the opium
houses, in fact. The wealthier Chinamen have accommodations for opium
smoking in the upper or back rooms of the buildings which they occupy
as stores and dwellings, and do not associate with the common herd who
patronize the public opium dens. One Chinese friend thought it a very
bad thing, this opium smoking, but admitted that he occasionally took
a whiff at it himself, when he felt unsettled, and wanted to quiet his
nerves for a night’s sleep.
[Sidenote: DRINKING SAMSHOO.]
While we were talking, the colonel suggested that I was a stranger,
and had never tasted “Samshoo.” Our merchant friend at once took down
a curious looking black bottle,—something like those that Curacoa
comes in, wound with some kind of straw string from top to bottom, and
having a label in white and vermilion, with Chinese characters,—drew
the cork, and poured out a quantity of a dark-brown liquor, something
like arrack in appearance, into a little china bowl, which he passed
to me, assuring me that it was a very superior article, and pressing
me to drink it.
I tasted it, and found it not very strong, but with a curious flavor,
something between old Madeira wine and bottled ale, with a marked
unpleasant smell, as of decaying vegetable matter. What is it made
from? “Licey!” was his prompt response. The doctor explained that
it was distilled from rice—mainly the cold rice and refuse from the
restaurants, he said—flavored and colored with dried peas, or some
similar fruit, and strengthened and enriched with a fine old nutty
taste by the addition of a piece of fat roasted pork before bottling.
The Chinese consider this a great luxury, and have their private
stocks of it, which they regard with as much pride as is felt by
a fine old English gentleman for his cellar of “old crusted port;
vintage of 1803.” A little of it satisfied me. I think the taste for
it must be an acquired one.
Some months afterwards I drank some samshoo, in Northern China,
that was far worse than that furnished to me in San Francisco. It
was served hot, in small glasses about as large as a thimble. It
burned like nitric acid; and I half believed that I had swallowed a
torch-light procession with all its lamps trimmed and blazing. I was
dining with a Chinese official, and the etiquette of the occasion
required me to swallow the vile stuff. By the time I had disposed of
a gill or so, my head felt like the paddle-box of a steamer, and my
throat was as raw as a freshly cut beefsteak. No more samshoo for me,
if you please.
Our new-found friend gave us a card, on which he wrote some characters
in Chinese by way of an introduction, and pointed out the entrance to
an opium house on the other side of the street. We went over and found
the establishment located on the second story adjoining a Chinese
restaurant. The proprietor of the house, or “gentlemanly clerk,”
looked at our card, and at once offered us the hospitalities of the
place.
It was, of course, a very poor place, but he would do the best he
could for us. There were half a dozen small rooms on the one floor,
divided by rough partitions. We entered one of them, and found three
raised platforms or beds, with bamboo framework; and in place of
our usual mattress, a flat surface of braided cane, like one of our
cane-seated chairs, on which to sleep. This is the usual bed of
the Chinaman. He does not fancy spring mattresses, curled hair, or
feathers to repose upon, and instead of stripping himself and crawling
under a pile of woollen blankets, as we do, he lies down in his
ordinary clothing, and rarely has anything else over him, unless it
is a single blanket when the weather is unusually cool, or the room
is open and subject to drafts. He does not destroy his lustrous black
hair by burying his head in a hot feather or curled hair pillow, as
we do, but has a block of wood or a cylindrical pillow, of braided
cane open at both ends for ventilation, which he places just under
the top of his neck. This keeps him from becoming bald-headed, and is
uncomfortable enough to make him an early riser; but like all other
systems, it has its disadvantages. In time it throws his neck out of
line, giving it a permanent forward bend, not graceful in itself,
and rather unpleasant for an outside barbarian to look upon. When he
travels he usually carries his favorite pillow with him, and at his
death his head rests upon it in his coffin.
[Sidenote: OPIUM SMOKERS IN BED.]
Two of the beds in this room were occupied when we came in, the
other was vacant. On one a Chinese was stretched at full length upon
his back, in utter unconsciousness; his eyes were wide open, but
apparently receiving no impression from the objects before them, and
there was a vacant, meaningless smile upon his sallow countenance.
His opium pipe or stick lay on the couch beside him, having fallen
from his hand, and near his head stood the small, nut-oil lamp, with
a glass cover like an inverted tumbler with a hole in the bottom, the
tiny taper burning low in the socket.
The other Chinese, who was well dressed, and probably a merchant or
manufacturer of the second class, was just preparing to indulge in his
nightly dissipation. He did not appear to relish our intrusion, but
said nothing, and went on with his smoking. Each guest who pays his
fifteen cents receives from the clerk in attendance a small oyster
or clam shell, on which there is a little dab of prepared opium, in
a semi-fluid condition, resembling, in appearance, thick treacle or
partially dissolved “stick licorice,” such as we used to buy with our
odd pennies at the grocery store at the corner, in the happy days of
youth, when we had a terrible cold, and obtained permission to remain
at home from school and indulge in the luxury of medicine of our own
choice. A slender bamboo stick about three feet in length, hollow down
nearly to the largest end, where a little tunnel-shaped brass bowl is
inserted, which is the usual opium pipe, a bit of wire about a foot in
length, and a nut-oil lamp such as I have described, are also given
him, and his “outfit” is complete.
The man who was about to indulge in the luxury stretched himself at
full length on the couch, turned on his left side, placed the end of
the wire in the opium, twirled it around so as to take up a mass about
the size of an ordinary garden pea, formed the mass with his finger
into a ball, held the end of the bamboo pipe to his mouth, placed the
brass bowl at the other end against the flame of the lamp, slipped the
ball of opium off the wire dexterously into the bowl, and as it burned
he inhaled the smoke slowly into his lungs, allowing it to escape in
little jets at long intervals from his nostrils.
[Sidenote: DREAMS CAUSED BY OPIUM.]
By the time he had taken the third or fourth whiff he was evidently
affected. His eyes began to grow dull, his breathing was slow and
heavy, and his grasp on the pipe relaxed little by little. In two or
three minutes his muscles appeared to relax, his head fell back, and
he was in a condition half sleep, half stupor. The doctor explained
that the effect of this first smoke would wear off in half an hour
or so, when the man would repeat the dose once or twice, and finally
become wholly insensible for several hours. We spoke to him, but
he did not answer, and it was hard to tell whether he was really
unconscious of our presence or merely indifferent to it. It is
asserted that the opium smoker sees nothing of what is going on around
him, but revels in the most blissful creations of the imagination,
his soul sailing away, as it were, from the dull and common-place
surroundings of his body, to walk hand in hand with the “black-eyed
girls in green” through the fair gardens, among the palm groves, by
the banks of the rivers of Paradise. I said as much: the colonel
characteristically denounced this practical version of the matter as
“all blamed stuff, rot, and humbug. It makes them drunk, just simply
blind, stupid drunk, and nothing else!” He had tried it and knew.
The doctor said one dose would not produce any serious effects, and
against my better judgment I permitted them to persuade me into making
the experiment.
The landlord started off to bring my allowance of opium, lamp, pipe,
etc., and the colonel improved the opportunity to illustrate his
theory that the opium smoker is not absolutely insensible to pain,
like the patient who inhales chloroform, but simply too drunk to
resent the imposition which produces it. Tearing off a little slip of
cane from the edge of one of the couches, he went up to the wholly
insensible customer on the couch, and inserting it in his nostril
twirled it swiftly around. A sharp sneeze and a convulsive winking of
the dull eyes followed, but no other movement was made by the sleeper.
“There, you see now that I am right! If he had taken chloroform he
would not even sneeze; his nerves would be utterly incapable of
receiving a sensation.”
[Sidenote: WAKING THE WRONG PASSENGER.]
Turning to the other customer, who now lay like a log on his couch, he
drew his penknife, opened it, then, changing his mind, put it back,
and taking a pin from his vest, inserted it quickly in the calf of
his victim’s leg. The other leg, which was hanging half over the side
of the couch, straightened out with a quick, convulsive movement,
and the toe of the heavy felt and wooden-soled shoe on the foot came
in contact with the colonel’s shin with a vicious energy, which sent
him dancing back to the doorway with a remark which did not sound
like a blessing, just as the proprietor came in with the opium and
its accessories. “Why the —— don’t you make your customers take their
boots off when they go to bed?” the colonel demanded savagely of the
smiling and obsequious master of the house, as he rubbed his shin and
cast a glance of hatred at the recumbent form of the lodger who had
proved such a poor subject for experiments. “Me no shabbee!” was the
non-committal reply.
I lay down on the bed and placed myself in the orthodox position,
the doctor resting himself at my head, and the colonel rolling a
cigarito and settling down on the edge of the couch at my feet. The
host prepared the opium, placed it in the pipe, presented the end of
the stick to my lips, and told me, after his own fashion, to pull
away. I pulled, and began choking and coughing. The first experiment
was a dead failure; the next was more nearly a success, and I felt my
head rapidly assuming the dimensions of a sugar-barrel while my body
and legs appeared to be shrinking proportionately, all their bulk
being drawn up towards and into my head. I felt as I imagine drowning
people feel, and gasped convulsively for breath. I could not recognize
anything around me for a moment, and then I saw the dark eyes and long
mustachios of the colonel coming out of a cloud of smoke and making
directly for me at lightning speed, like a hairy comet flying through
the air. The idea flashed through my brain that he was about to burn
a match under my nose, or commit some similar atrocity by way of an
experiment “in the interest of science,” and as one struggling in a
horrible nightmare I sprang off the bed, staggering around without
being able to feel my feet under me, and groping blindly about for
something to seize in order to steady myself.
[Sidenote: EXPERIENCE OF A NOVICE.]
There was a low, dull humming in my ears, a giddiness in my head, and
a general sense of faintness and nausea pervading my entire system.
“For God’s sake, take me out of this!” I cried, at last; and some time
after I realized that I was being walked up and down the sidewalk,
the doctor and the colonel supporting me on either side. My head was
getting clearer, but I felt deadly ill. The faint, sickening odor of
the opium fumes clung around me and oppressed me, and I said as much
at last, as I leaned heavily against a lamp-post.
The colonel with his usual enthusiasm exclaimed, “O, yes, I see it;
you want a good strong stimulant of some kind to help you get rid of
it. Now, I know a Mexican over on the corner of Vallejo Street, who
has got some double refined _Mescal_, which will dissolve a gun-flint
in half an hour; one good drink of that will set you all right.”
“Not if I know myself aright!” I remarked, emphatically. “You are
the most hospitable people I have ever fallen in with. Your good
intentions are unbounded, and your kindness I never can forget, but I
don’t want any _Mescal_ to-night. I have made a sufficient number of
new acquaintances for one evening. Pisco, Cocomongo, Betel, Samshoo,
and Opium, are all very fine in their way, but the new things are
crowding each other a little too fast. We will omit the _Mescal_ on
this occasion; I want to go home!”
They called a hack, and we rode back to the Occidental in silence.
This was my first experience in a San Francisco opium den.
It will also be my last!
Next morning the colonel called on me and said he had forgotten
something—an opium den worse than the one we had seen.
“How’s that?” I asked.
[Sidenote: LIVING IN A SEWER.]
“Why,” said the colonel, “it is an opium den of a very romantic
character. Some years ago the line of Jackson Street was changed by
the city authorities, and it became necessary to build new sewers.
The old sewer was given up, and in the new arrangements it was under
some of the buildings occupied by the Chinese. They took possession
of it, and hollowed out galleries on either side. The enterprising
proprietors converted it into an opium palace, at the popular
admission fee of two cents. The accommodations and odors are a
hundred-fold worse than those of the place where we were last night.
For two cents you can get smells enough to last you a lifetime. Do you
want to go?”
I concluded that I wanted nothing more in the opium line, and declined
to go. I may have been too fastidious, but I had not then travelled as
much as I have in later years, and novices, you know, are inclined to
be particular.
A sewer, whether abandoned or not, has few charms. At St. Louis there
are, or were when I was last there, some of the smaller sewers that
are so broken at their mouths, near the river’s edge, as to present
the appearance of natural springs where the water oozes up through the
sand. One day a gentleman was standing near one of these sewer mouths,
when two countrymen came strolling along the bank, one of them thirty
feet ahead of the other. As the foremost of the twain spied the water
slowly pouring from the earth, he shouted to his friend,—
“Hullo, Jim; here’s another spring!”
“Well, Gaul darn it,” answered the other, “if tain’t no better water
than the last we found I don’t want none of it.”
LV.
GOLD AND ITS USES.
ANTIQUITY OF GOLD.—ITS WORSHIP.—ANCIENT GOLD MINES.—KING
SOLOMON.—GOLD IN AMERICA.—STORY OF A HUNTER.—THE SHEPHERD AND
THE CHILD.—HOW PIZARRO EUCHRED THE PERUVIAN KING.—SUTTER’S FORT
AND SAW-MILL.—MARSHALL’S DISCOVERY IN THE MILL-RACE.—ROMANCE AND
REALITY.—SPREADING THE NEWS.—NAVIGATION UNDER DISADVANTAGES.—THE
GOLD EXCITEMENT.—THE PAN AND ROCKER.—THE AUTHOR AS A
GOLD MINER.—HOW HE WORKED THE ROCKER.—HARRY AND HIS TIN
DIPPER.—DISAPPOINTMENT AND DINNER.—VICISSITUDES OF GOLD MINING.
The most valuable metal generally known is gold, and it is likewise
one of the most ancient. It is found in various parts of the globe,
and is sufficiently scarce, and sufficiently hard to obtain, to make
it precious. No doubt there is enough of it in the composition of this
globe, if it could be easily obtained, to make it a very common metal.
An Irishman once said, speaking of the gold mines of California, that
there was sufficient of the precious metal there, but it was terribly
mixed up with dirt. If it were not for this mixing with dirt, and the
difficulty of separating it, all of us might have gold enough and to
spare, though it is quite possible that it might be of no more value
than tin or brass.
The peculiarity of gold is, that it is never obtained entirely pure.
Silver is always alloyed with it, but in no definite proportions.
One of the purest specimens ever obtained gave, when analyzed,
ninety-eight hundredths of gold, while the remaining two hundredths
were about equally divided between silver and copper. Sometimes gold
is found alloyed with silver in about equal proportions.
[Sidenote: GOLD IN ANCIENT TIMES.]
Gold is frequently referred to in the Scriptures, both in the Old
Testament and in the New; in one of the earliest books of the Old
Testament many applications of gold are described similar to those of
the present day. It was beaten into plates, drawn into wires, and even
woven with threads of linen for priestly robes. It was fashioned into
breastplates, wrought into chains, and used as a setting for precious
stones.
Sometimes it was made into gods and idols, and in some parts of the
world it is worshipped as an idol up to the present day. A great many
men and women in this nineteenth century worship gold more earnestly
and more devotedly than they worship anything else.
The ancients, when they wrought their gold into idols, evidently had a
keen perception of human nature.
An idol of iron or of wood may be of little account; but let one be
made of gold, especially of solid gold, and with diamonds for eyes,
and the whole world will fall down and worship it.
Where the ancients obtained their gold is not positively known, but it
is supposed that it was brought from Africa or the East Indies, for
the reason that the fleet of Solomon, in addition to gold, brought
back ivory, spices, precious stones, ebony, peacocks, apes, and
sandal wood. The cargoes of King Solomon were evidently of a widely
assorted character, and doubtless found a good market. Gold mines were
evidently worked in the desert of Gobi in the early days, and along
the Ural Mountains there are now found the traces of ancient mining
operations supposed to date back to the time of King Solomon.
In the time of the Romans gold was not so abundant, and in the middle
ages the production was very small. At the date of the discovery of
America, it was estimated that the whole amount of gold and silver in
the old world was about one hundred and seventy millions of dollars,
and that the supply obtained each year did not exceed the loss by wear
and other forms of destruction.
[Sidenote: THE RICHEST GOLD MINES.]
To enumerate all the gold mines of the world would require much more
space than I have at my disposal. Nearly all parts of Europe contain
deposits of the precious metal, though in many places where the
ground is known to be auriferous the deposits are too poor to pay the
expenses of working. The richest gold mines of Europe are in Russia,
particularly along the Ural Mountains. The eastern slope of the Ural
Mountains is more productive than the western, and the richest portion
of Northern Asia, so far as gold is concerned, is in Eastern Siberia.
Gold mining in that region, although not productive, is comparatively
in its infancy, and great results may be looked for before many
years. Until quite recently all mines in Russia were owned by the
government, and were operated by officers in the interest of the
crown. The result was, that there was very little enterprise displayed
in mining operations. The officer in charge of a mining district would
be unwilling to take any active steps, or run great risks in the
explorations in the interest of the gold mines, as he would know that
if he failed to return a profit to the government he would very likely
lose his place. Consequently nearly all the mining operations were
conducted on a sure basis.
Some years ago the Russian government changed its policy, and began
throwing open its mining works to private enterprise, exacting from
the miners a liberal percentage of the gross amount of gold and silver
which they had obtained. The result was, that under the stimulus of
the enterprise,—in which private organizations will always excel the
government,—the mining interest in Russia increased rapidly, and
the government now obtains from its percentage a much larger annual
revenue than it had obtained before from the gold.
The discoveries of gold in America date from a very early period.
There were large quantities of gold and silver in the hands of the
Peruvians and the Aztecs at the time of the famous expedition of
Pizarro and Cortes. A story is told of one of the captured kings of
Peru, who, in order to secure his ransom, agreed to bring together
in two months gold and silver enough to fill his room. This would
have been a sufficiently great undertaking had he been confined in
an ordinary prison cell; but his captor, with an eye to business,
had put him in a large apartment, suited to his royal state. The room
is said to have been twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet wide, and
nine feet high. Such was the richness of Peru in the precious metals,
that the old king had no doubt of his ability to meet his contract;
and he did fill the room in the time. When his work was finished, and
the metal was melted, it was found that he had collected over fifteen
millions of dollars—a very handsome sum to pay for his liberty, which
he did not get after all.
[Sidenote: DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN AMERICA.]
From the time of the discovery in America until 1520, there was more
gold than silver exported to Europe; but about that time Mexico was
conquered, and large quantities of silver were obtained. In the
first three hundred years succeeding the discovery of America, the
receipts of American gold were estimated at three and a half times
the production of the old world, and those of silver at twelve times
the amount of this metal produced outside of America. Gold was dug
in America many hundreds of years ago. In some portions of Georgia
the ruins of ancient huts and utensils were uncovered a few years ago
in working some of the mines, and they are supposed to have belonged
to a race of men now extinct, though it is contended by some persons
that these gold works belonged to the period of Ferdinand de Soto. In
the early part of this century gold mines were successfully worked in
the Carolinas, Georgia, and other states; but latterly the yield from
these mines has greatly declined, and the returns of gold are quite
small.