Our Log Cabin--Pi-pita-tua--Increase of our Party--The Dry Diggings
of Weaver’s Creek--The “Pockets” and “Nests”--Theory of the Gold
Region--My First Day’s Labour in the _Placers_--Extravagant Reports
from the Middle Fork--Start for Culoma--Approach of the Rainy
Season--The “Devil’s Punch-Bowl.”
The day after our arrival, in anticipation of the immediate commencement
of the rainy season (a time dreaded by strangers in all California, and
particularly in the northern region), we determined to build a log
house, and were about to commence operations, when we received an offer
for the sale of one. We examined it, and found a little box of unhewn
logs, about twenty feet long by ten wide, which was offered us at the
moderate price of five hundred dollars. The terms, however, were
accommodating, being ten days’ credit for the whole amount. With the
reasonable expectation that we could pay for our house by gold-digging
in a less time than it would require to build one, we purchased it, and
ere nightfall were duly installed in the premises.
Our party now consisted of ten, viz.: Higgins and a Marquesas Islander
he had picked up somewhere, and who had changed his heathenish
appellation of _Pi-pita-tua_ to the more Christian and civilized name of
“Bob;” five of our disbanded volunteers; a man by the name of Russell,
the same of whom Dana speaks in his “Two Years before the Mast,” and
who had persuaded us to allow him to join us; the captain of the little
launch “Ann,” who had determined to leave the sea to try his fortune at
gold-hunting, and myself. We were a queer-looking party. I had thrown
aside all the little ornaments of dress, and made my best bow before the
gold-digging public in red flannel and corduroy. Bob was the only member
of the concern who retained what he had always in his own land
considered his peculiar ornament. Right glad would he have been to rid
himself of it now, poor fellow, but it was too indelibly stamped to
allow of removal. It was a broad piece of blue tattooing that covered
his eye on one side, and the whole cheek on the other, and gave him the
appearance of a man looking from behind a blue screen. Our partnership
did not extend to a community of labour in gold-digging, but only to a
sharing of the expenses, trials, and labours of our winter life.
The “dry diggings” of Weaver’s Creek being a fair specimen of dry
diggings in all parts of the mining region, a description of them will
give the reader a general idea of the various diggings of the same kind
in California. They are called “dry” in contradistinction to the “wet”
diggings, or those lying directly on the banks of streams, and where all
the gold is procured by washing. As I before said, the stream coursed
between lofty tree-clad hills, broken on both sides of the river into
little ravines or gorges. In these ravines most of the gold was found.
The loose stones and top earth being thrown off, the gravelly clay that
followed it was usually laid aside for washing, and the digging
continued until the bottom rock of the ravine was reached, commonly at a
depth of from one to six feet. The surface of this rock was carefully
cleared off, and usually found to contain little crevices and holes, the
hitter in miner’s parlance called “pockets,” and in which the gold was
found concealed, sparkling like the treasures in the cave of Monte
Cristo. A careful examination of the rock being made, and every little
crevice and pocket being searched with a sharp pointed-knife, gold in
greater or less quantities invariably made its appearance. I shall never
forget the delight with which I first struck and worked out a crevice.
It was the second day after our installation in our little log hut; the
first having been employed in what is called “prospecting,” or searching
for the most favourable place at which to commence operations. I had
slung pick, shovel, and bar upon my shoulder, and trudged merrily away
to a ravine about a mile from our house. Pick, shovel, and bar did their
duty, and I soon had a large rock in view. Getting down into the
excavation I had made, and seating myself upon the rock, I commenced a
careful search for a crevice, and at last found one extending
longitudinally along the rock. It appeared to be filled with a hard,
bluish clay and gravel, which I took out with my knife, and there at the
bottom, strewn along the whole length of the rock, was bright, yellow
gold, in little pieces about the size and shape of a grain of barley.
Eureka! Oh how my heart beat! I sat still and looked at it some minutes
before I touched it, greedily drinking in the pleasure of gazing upon
gold that was in my very grasp, and feeling a sort of independent
bravado in allowing it to remain there. When my eyes were sufficiently
feasted, I scooped it out with the point of my knife and an iron spoon,
and placing it in my pan, ran home with it very much delighted. I
weighed it, and found that my first day’s labour in the mines had made
me thirty-one dollars richer than I was in the morning.
The gold, which, by some great volcanic eruption, has been scattered
upon the soil over an extensive territory, by the continual rains of the
winter season has been sunk into the hills, until it has reached either
a hard clay which it cannot penetrate, or a rock on which it rests. The
gold in the hills, by the continual rains, has been washing lower and
lower, until it has reached the ravines. It has washed down the ravines
until it has there reached the rock, and thence, it has washed along the
bed of the ravines until it has found some little crevice in which it
rests, where the water can carry it no farther. Here it gathers, and
thus are formed the “pockets” and “nests” of gold, one of which presents
such a glowing golden sight to the eye of the miner, and such a field
for his imagination to revel in. How often, when I have struck one of
these, have I fondly wished that it might reach to the centre of the
earth, and be filled as it was at its mouth with pure, bright, yellow
gold.
Our party’s first day’s labour produced one hundred and fifty dollars, I
having been the most successful of all. But we were satisfied, although
our experience had not fulfilled the golden stories we had heard
previous to our reaching the _placers_. Finding the average amount of
gold dug on Weaver’s Creek at that time to be about an ounce per day to
a man, we were content so long as we could keep pace with our
neighbours. There is a spirit of emulation among miners which prevents
them from being ever satisfied with success whilst others around them
are more successful. We continued our labours for a week, and found, at
the end of that time, our whole party had dug out more than a thousand
dollars; and after paying for our house, and settling between ourselves
our little private expenses, we were again on a clear track,
unencumbered by debt, and in the heart of a region where treasures of
unknown wealth were lying hidden in the earth on which we daily trod.
About this time, the most extravagant reports reached us from the Middle
Fork, distant in a northerly direction about thirty miles from Weaver’s
Creek. Parties who had been there described the river as being lined
with gold of the finest quality. One and two hundred dollars was not
considered a great day’s labour, and now was the time to take advantage
of it, while in its pristine richness. The news was too blooming for me
to withstand. I threw down my pickaxe, and leaving a half-wrought
crevice for some other digger to work out, I packed up and held myself
in readiness to proceed by the earliest opportunity, and with the first
party ready to go for the Middle Fork. An opportunity soon offered
itself, as a party of three who had already been there and returned,
were about proceeding thither again. We considered it a great act of
generosity on their part to allow us to accompany them on their second
trip, as during their first exploration on the river they had found a
place where no white man had ever before trod, and where gold was said
to exist in large pockets and huge bulky masses. One of my companions
and myself determined to go, and if successful inform our whole party,
who were then to follow.
It was now near the middle of December, and the dreaded rainy season we
knew must soon commence. Occasional black clouds dimming the clearness
of that mountain sky gave us warning of it; but strong in health, and
stronger still in hope and determination, we heeded no warning; put our
instruments of labour on the backs of two sorry-looking mules, and
shouldering our rifles started away from Weaver’s Creek on a fine
afternoon, the clear sunshine and cooling autumn breeze playing through
the lofty oak and cypress trees, giving us new vigour and new hope.
Our road for the first three miles lay across a lofty hill, which formed
the dividing line (although that hill was anything but an “imaginary
point extended”) between our little community at Weaver’s Creek and the
“Dry Diggings” _par excellence_ of that vicinity. On descending the
hill, we found the dry diggings in a pretty little valley surrounded by
hills, and forming a town of about fifty log houses. Very little was
doing there, however, at that time, as the gold was so intermixed with a
clayey soil, that water was necessary to separate it, and the miners
were patiently waiting for the rainy season to set in. Many had thrown
up huge mountain-like piles of earth, and making thereby a large
excavation intended, when the rain came, to catch the water in which the
golden earth was to be washed. I will give a history of the discovery
and progress of these “diggings” in another part of the volume.
Passing to the northward of the Dry Diggings, we encamped at dusk in a
little oak grove about three miles from Sutter’s Mill, killed a deer,
ate a hearty supper, spread our blankets on the ground, and slept
quietly and peacefully beneath a star-studded and cloudless heaven. Next
morning we went into Culoma, the Indian name for the territory around
Sutter’s Mill, and here we were to purchase our provisions previous to
going to the river. Three stores only, at that time, disputed the trade
at what is now the great centre of the northern mining region; and where
now are busy streets, and long rows of tents and houses, was a beautiful
hollow, which, in our romantic version, we named as we were entering it,
“The Devil’s Punch-Bowl.” Surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains,
its ingress and egress guarded by an ascent and descent through narrow
passes, it seemed like a huge bowl which some lofty spirit might seize,
and placing it to his lips, quaff the waters of the golden stream that
circled through it. Here it was that gold was first discovered in
California; this was the locality where was commenced a new era, and
where a new page was opened in the history of mankind; and it is proper
that I should turn out my mules to browse on the sunny hill-side
shrubbery, while I stop to tell how, from this remote corner of the
globe, a secret was revealed to the eyes of a wondering world.