START FOR FOSTER’S BAR--A HARD ROAD TO
TRAVEL--PORTRAIT-PAINTING--FLATTERING LIKENESSES--FOSTER’S
BAR--SLEEPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--CAMPING OUT--CAMP OF A FLAMING
COMPANY--DANGERS OF SKETCHING--TAKEN FOR A HIGHWAYMAN, AND RAISED
TO THE RANK OF COLONEL--A LONG JOURNEY FOR NOTHING--A SOIREE
MUSICALE IN THE FOREST.
I arrived about dusk at a ranch called the “Grass Valley House,”
situated in a forest of pines. It was a clapboard house, built round an
old log-cabin which formed one corner of the building, and was now the
private apartment of the landlord and his wife. I was here only six
miles from Foster’s Bar, and set out for that place in the morning; but
I made a mistake somewhere, and followed a wrong trail, which led me to
a river, after walking six or seven miles without meeting any one of
whom I could ascertain whether I was going right or not. The descent to
the river was very steep, and as I went down I had misgivings that I was
all wrong, and should have to come up again, but I expected at least to
find some one there who could put me right. After scrambling down the
best way I could, and reaching the river, I was disappointed to find
nothing but the remains of an old tent; there was not even a sign of any
work having been done there. The river flowed among huge masses of rock,
from which the banks rose so steep and rugged, that to follow the course
of the stream seemed out of the question. I thought, however, that I
could distinguish marks here and there on the rocks, as if caused by
travelling over them, and these I followed with considerable difficulty
for about half a mile, when they stopped at a place where the blackened
rocks, the remains of burned wood, and a lot of old sardine-boxes,
showed that some one had been camped. Here I fancied I could make out a
trail going straight up the face of the hill, on the same side of the
river by which I had come down. It looked a hard road to travel, but I
preferred trying it to retracing my steps, especially as I judged it
would be a shorter way back to the house I had started from.
I got on very well for a short distance, but very soon lost all sign of
a trail. I was determined, however, to make my way up, which I did by
dint of catching hold of branches of trees and bushes; and on my hands I
had to place my greatest dependence, for the loose soil was covered with
large stones, which gave way under my feet, and which I could hear
rolling down far below me. Sometimes I came to a bare face of rock, up
which I had to work my passage by means of the crevices and projecting
ledges. It was useless to consider whether more formidable obstacles
were still before me; my only chance was to go ahead, for if I had
attempted to go down again, I should have found the descent rather too
easy, and probably have broken my neck. It was dreadfully hot, and I was
carrying my blankets slung over my shoulder, which, catching on trees
and rocks, impeded my progress considerably; and though I was in pretty
good condition for this sort of work, I had several times to get astride
of a tree and take a spell.
At last, after a great deal of scrambling and climbing, my shins barked,
my clothes nearly torn off my back, and my eyes half scratched out by
the bushes, completely blown, and suffocated with the heat, I arrived at
a place where I considered that I had got over the worst of it, as the
ascent seemed to become a little more practicable. I was dying of
thirst, and would have given a very long price for a drink of water; but
the nearest water I expected to find was at a spring about five miles
off, which I had passed in the morning. I could not help thinking what a
delightful thing a quart pot of Bass’s pale ale would be, with a lump of
ice in it; then I thought I would prefer a sherry cobbler, but I could
not drink that fast enough; and then it seemed that a quart pot of ale
would not be enough, that I would like to drink it out of a bucket. I
quaffed in imagination gigantic goblets, one after another, of all sorts
of delicious fluids, but none of them did me any good; and so I
concluded that I had better think of something else till I reached the
spring.
The rest of the mountain was not very hard travelling, and when once on
the top of the range, I struck off in a direction which I thought would
hit my old trail. I very soon got on to it, and after half an hour’s
walking, I found the spring, where, as the Missourians say, “you may
just bet _your_ life,” I did drink.
It was about three o’clock, and I thought my safest plan was to return
to the house I had started from in the morning, about six miles off,
where, on my arrival, I learned that I had been misled by an Indian
trail, and had travelled far out of the right direction. It was too late
to make a fresh start that day, so I was doomed to pass another night
here, and in the evening amused myself by sketching a train of
pack-mules which had camped near the house.
I was just setting off in the morning, when two or three men, who had
seen me sketching the evening before, came and asked me to take their
likenesses for them. As they were very anxious about it, I made them sit
down, and very soon polished them all off, improving so much on their
personal appearance, that they evidently had no idea before that they
were such good-looking fellows, and expressed themselves highly
satisfied. As I was finishing the last one, an old fellow came in, who,
seeing what was up, was seized with a violent desire to have his sweet
countenance “pictur’d off” likewise, to send to his wife. It struck me
that his wife must be a woman of singular taste if she ever wished to
see his face again. He was just about the ugliest man I ever saw in my
life. He wanted to comb his hair, poor fellow, and make himself look as
presentable as possible; but I had no mercy on him, and, making him sit
down as he was, I did my best to represent him about fifty per cent
uglier than he really was. He was in great distress that he had not
better clothes on for the occasion; so, to make up for caricaturing his
features, I improved his costume, and gave him a very spicy black coat,
black satin waistcoat, and very stiff stand-up collars. The fidelity of
the likeness he never doubted, being so lost in admiration of his dress,
that he seemed to think the face a matter of minor importance
altogether.
I did not take many portraits in the mines; but, from what little
experience I had, I invariably found that men of a lower class wanted to
be shown in the ordinary costume of the nineteenth century--that is to
say, in a coat, waistcoat, white shirt and neckcloth; while gentlemen
miners were anxious to appear in character, in the most ragged style of
California dress.
I went to Foster’s Bar after dinner with a man who was on his way there
from Downieville, a town about thirty miles up the river. He told me
that he and his partner had gone there a few months before, and had
worked together for some time, when they separated, his partner joining
a company which had averaged a hundred dollars a-day to each man ever
since, while my friend had bought a share in another company, and, after
working hard for six weeks, had not, as he expressed it, made enough to
pay for his grub. Such is mining.
Foster’s Bar is a place about half a mile long, with the appearance of
having slipped down off the face of the mountains, and thus formed a
flat along the side of the river. The village or camp consisted of a few
huts and cabins; and all around on the rocks, wherever it suited their
convenience, were parties of miners camping out.
I could only see one place which purported to be a hotel, and to it I
went. It was a large canvass-house, the front part of which was the
bar-room, and behind it the dining-room. Alongside of the former an
addition had been made as a sleeping-apartment, and here, when I felt
inclined to turn in about ten o’clock, I was accommodated with a cot.
A gambling-room in San Francisco is a tolerably quiet place, where
little else is heard but good music or the chinking of dollars, and
where, if it were necessary, one could sleep comfortably enough. But a
gambling-room in a small camp in the mines is a very different affair.
There not so much ceremony is observed, and the company are rather more
apt to devote themselves to the social enjoyment of drinking,
quarrelling, and kicking up a row generally. In this instance the uproar
beat all my previous experience, and sleeping was out of the question.
The bar-room, I found, was also the gambling-room of the diggings. Four
or five monte tables were in full blast, and the room was crowded with
all the rowdies of the place. As the night wore on and the brandy began
to tell, they seemed to be having a general fight, and I half expected
to see some of them pitched through the canvass into the sleeping
apartment; or perhaps pistols might be used, in which case I should have
had as good a chance of being shot as any one else.
I managed to drop off asleep during a lull in the storm; but when I
awoke at daylight, it was only then finally subsiding. I found that some
man had broken a monte bank, and, on the strength of his good fortune,
had been treating the company to an unlimited supply of brandy all
night, which fully accounted for the row; but I did not fancy such
sleeping-quarters, and made up my mind to camp out while I remained in
those diggings.
I selected a very pretty spot at the foot of a ravine, in which was a
stream of water; and, buying a tin coffee-pot and some tea and sugar, I
was completely set up. There was a baker and butcher in the camp, so I
had very little trouble in my cooking arrangements, having merely to
boil my pot, and then raking down the fire with my foot, lay a steak on
the embers.
The weather was very hot and dry; but it was getting late in the season,
and I generally awoke in the morning like the flowers the Irishman sings
about to Molly Bawn, “with their rosy faces wet with dew.” At least as
far as the dew is concerned--for a rosy face is a thing not seen in the
mines, the usual colour of men’s faces being a good standard leathery
hue, a very little lighter than that of a penny-piece--all rosiness of
cheek, where it ever existed, is driven out by the hot sun and dry
atmosphere.
I found camping out a very pleasant way of living. With my blankets I
made a first-rate awning during the day; and if I could not boast of a
bed of roses, I at least had one of dahlias, for numbers of large
flowers of that species grew in great profusion all round my camp, and
these I was so luxurious as to pluck and strew thickly on the spot where
I intended to sleep.
I remained here for about three weeks; and for two or three mornings
before I left, I woke finding my blankets quite white with frost. On
such occasions I was more active than usual in lighting my fire and
getting my coffee-pot under a full head of steam; but as soon as ever
the sun was up, the frost was immediately dispelled, and half an hour
after sunrise one was glad to get into the shade.
On leaving Foster’s Bar, I went to a place a few miles up the river,
where some miners were at work, who had asked me to visit their camp.
The river here flowed through a narrow rocky gorge (a sort of place
which, in California, is called by its Spanish name a “cañon”), and was
flumed for a distance of nearly half a mile; that is to say, it was
carried past in an aqueduct supported on uprights, being raised from its
natural bed, which was thus laid bare and rendered capable of being
worked. It was late when I arrived, and the party of miners had just
stopped work for the day. Some were taking off their wet boots, and
washing their faces in the river; others were lighting their pipes or
cutting up tobacco; and the rest were collected round the fire, making
bets as to the quantity of gold which was being dried in an old
frying-pan. This was the result of their day’s work, and weighed four or
five pounds. The banks of the river were so rough and precipitous that,
for want of any level space on which to camp, they had been obliged to
raise a platform of stone and gravel. On this stood a tent about twenty
feet long, which was strewed inside with blankets, boots, hats, old
newspapers, and such articles. In front of the tent was a long rough
table, on each side of which a young pine-tree, with two or three legs
stuck into it here and there, did duty as a bench, some of the bark
having been chipped off the top side, by way of making it an easy seat.
At the foot of the rocks, close to the table, an immense fire was
blazing, presided over by a darky, who was busy preparing supper; for
where so many men messed together, it was economy to have a professional
cook, though his wages were frequently higher than those paid to a
miner. A quarter of beef hung from the limb of a tree; and stowed away,
in beautiful confusion, among the nooks and crannies of the rocks, were
sacks, casks, and boxes containing various articles of provisions.
Within a few feet of us, and above the level of the camp, the river
rushed past in its wooden bed, spinning round, as it went, a large
water-wheel, by means of which a constant stream of water was pumped up
from the diggings and carried off in the flume. The company consisted of
eight members. They were all New Yorkers, and had been brought up to
professional and mercantile pursuits. The rest of the party were their
hired men, who, however, were upon a perfect social equality with their
employers.
When it was time to turn in, I was shown a space on the gravelly floor
of the tent, about six feet by one and a half, where I might stretch out
and dream that I dwelt in marble halls. About a dozen men slept in the
tent, the others lying outside on the rocks.
My intention was from this camp to go on to Downieville, about forty
miles up the river; but I had first to return to Foster’s Bar for some
drawing-paper which I had ordered from Sacramento.
On my way I passed a most romantic little bridge, formed by two pine
trees, which had been felled so as to span a deep and thickly wooded
ravine. I sat down among the bushes a short distance off the trail, and
was making a sketch of the place, when presently a man came along riding
on a mule. I was quite aware that I should have a very suspicious
appearance to a passer-by, and I was in hopes he might not observe me. I
had no object in speaking to him, especially as, had I hailed him from
my ambuscade, he might have been apt to reply with his revolver.
Just as he was passing, however, and when all I could see of him was his
head and shoulders, his eyes wandered over the bank at the side of the
trail, and
[Illustration:
J. D. BORTHWICK DEL^{T.} M & N HANHART, IMP^T
A “FLUME” ON THE YUBA RIVER.]
he caught sight of my head looking down on him over the tops of the
bushes. He gave a start, as I expected he would, and addressed me with
“Good morning, Colonel.” My promotion to the rank of colonel I most
probably owed to the fact that he thought it advisable, under the
circumstances, to be as conciliatory as possible until he knew my
intentions. I saw a good deal of the same man afterwards, but he never
again raised me above the rank of captain. I replied to his salutation,
and he then asked the very natural question, “What are ye a-doin of over
there?” I gave an account of myself, which he did not seem to think
altogether satisfactory, but, after making some remark on the weather,
he passed on.
About an hour later, when I arrived at Foster’s Bar, I found him sitting
in a store with some half-dozen miners, to whom he had been recounting
how he had seen a man concealed in the bushes off the trail. He
expressed himself as having been “awful skeered,” and said that he had
his pistol out, and was thinking of shooting all the time he was
speaking to me. I told him I had mine lying by my side, and would have
returned the compliment, when, by way of showing me what sort of a
chance I should have stood, he stuck up a card on a tree at about twenty
paces, and put six balls into it one after another out of his heavy navy
revolver. I confessed I could not beat such shooting as that, and was
very well pleased that he had not taken it into his head to make a
target of me.
It seemed that he was an express carrier, and as his partner had been
robbed but a few days before, very near the place of our meeting, his
suspicions of me were not at all unreasonable.
I was very desirous of seeing a friend of mine who was mining at a place
about twenty miles off, so, having hired a mule for the journey, I set
off early next morning, intending to return the same night. My way was
through a part of the country very little travelled, and the trails were
consequently very indistinct, but I got full directions how to find my
way, where to leave the main trail, which side to take at a place where
the trail forked, where I should cross another, and so on; also where I
should pass an old cabin, a forked pine-tree, and other objects, by
which I might know that I was on the right road.
The man who gave me my directions said he hardly expected that I would
be able to keep the right trail. I had some doubts about it myself, but
I was determined to try at all events, and for seven or eight miles I
got along very well, knowing I was right by the landmarks which I had
passed.
The numbers of Indian trails, however, branching off to right and left
were very confusing, being not a bit less indistinct than the trail I
was endeavouring to follow. At last I felt certain that I had gone
wrong, but as I fancied I was not going far out of the right direction,
I kept on, and shortly afterwards came upon a small camp called Toole’s
Diggings. I was told here that I had only come five miles out of my
way; and after dining and getting some fresh directions, I set out
again. Having ridden for nearly an hour, I came to an Indian camp,
situated by the side of a small stream in a very dense part of the
forest. At first I could see no one but some children amusing themselves
with a swing hung from a branch of an oak tree, but as I was going past,
a number of Indians came running out from their brush huts. They were
friendly Indians, and had picked up a few words of English from loafing
about the camps of the miners. The usual style of salutation to them is,
“How d’ye do?” to which they reply in the same words; but if you repeat
the question, as if you really wanted to know the state of their health,
they invariably answer “fuss-rate.” Accordingly, having ascertained that
they were all “fuss-rate,” I mixed up a little broken English, some
mongrel Spanish, and a word or two of Indian, and made inquiries as to
my way. In much the same sort of language they directed me how to go;
and though they seemed disposed to prolong the conversation, I very
quickly bade them adieu and moved on, not being at all partial to such
company.
I followed the dim trail up hill and down dale for several hours without
seeing a human being, and I felt quite satisfied that I was again off my
road, but I pushed on in hopes of reaching some sort of habitation
before dark. At last, in travelling up the side of a small creek, just
as the sun was taking leave of us, I caught sight of a log-cabin among
the pine-trees. It seemed to have been quite recently built, so I was
pretty sure it was inhabited, and on riding up I found two men in it,
from whom I learned that I was still five miles from my destination.
They recommended me to stop the night with them, as it was nearly dark,
and the trail was hard enough to find by daylight.
I saw no help for it; so, after staking out the mule where he could pick
some green stuff, I joined my hosts, who were just sitting down to
supper. It was not a very elaborate affair--nothing but tea and ham.
They apologised for the meagreness of the turn-out, and especially for
the want of bread, saying that they had been away for a couple of days,
and on their return found that the Indians had taken the opportunity to
steal all their flour.
We made the most of what we had, however, and putting a huge log on the
fire, we lighted our pipes, and my entertainers, producing two violins,
favoured me with a selection of Nigger melodies.
They had been mining lately at the place which I had been trying to
reach all day, and in the course of conversation I found that I had had
all my trouble for nothing, as the man whom I was in search of had a few
days before left the diggings for San Francisco.
The next morning I returned to Foster’s Bar, my friends putting me on a
much shorter trail than the roundabout road I had travelled the day
before.