RAPID GROWTH OF CALIFORNIA--AMOUNT OF LABOUR PERFORMED--LUXURY AND
HARDSHIP--A RAGGED MAN--THE FLYING DUTCHMAN--FOPPERY IN RAGS--A
STUDY--THE TOWER OF BABEL--FRENCHMEN--A
“KESKYDEE”--“DUTCHMEN”--CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN--AN EXTENSIVE VIEW.
Without having visited some distant place in the mountains, such as
Downieville, it was impossible to realise fully the extraordinary extent
to which the country had, in so short a time, been overrun and settled
by a population whose energy and adaptive genius had immediately seized
and improved every natural advantage which presented itself, and whose
quickly acquired wealth enabled them to introduce so much luxury, and to
afford employment to so many of those branches of industry which usually
flourish only in old communities, that in some respects California can
hardly be said to have ever been a new country, as compared with other
parts of the world to which that term is applied.
The men who settled the country imparted to it a good deal of their own
nature, which knows no period of boyhood. The Americans spring at once
from childhood, or almost from infancy, to manhood; and California, no
less rapid in its growth, became a full-grown State, while one-half the
world still doubted its existence.
The amount of labour which had already been performed in the mines was
almost incredible. Every river and creek from one end to the other
presented a busy scene; on the “bars,” of course, the miners were
congregated in the greatest numbers; but there was scarcely any part of
their course where some work was not going on, and the flumes were so
numerous, that for about one-third of their length the rivers were
carried past in those wooden aqueducts.
The most populous part of the mines, however, was in the high
mountain-land between the rivers, and here the whole country had been
ransacked, every flat and ravine had been prospected; and wherever
extensive diggings had been found, towns and villages had sprung up.
Young as California was, it was in one respect older than its parent
country, for life was so fast that already it could show ruins and
deserted villages. In out-of-the-way places one met with cabins fallen
into disrepair, which the proprietors had abandoned to locate themselves
elsewhere; and even villages of thirty or forty shanties were to be seen
deserted and desolate, where the diggings had not proved so productive
as the original founders had anticipated.
Labour, however, was not exclusively devoted to mining operations.
Roads had in many parts been cut in the sides of the mountains, bridges
had been built, and innumerable saw-mills, most of them driven by steam
power, were in full operation, many of them having been erected in
anticipation of a demand for lumber, and before any population existed
around them. Every little valley in the mountains where the soil was at
all fit for cultivation, was already fenced in, and producing crops of
barley or oats; and canals, in some cases forty or fifty miles long,
were in course of construction, to bring the waters of the rivers to the
mountain-tops, to diggings which were otherwise unavailable.
Life for the most part was hard enough certainly, but every village was
a little city of itself, where one could live in comparative luxury.
Even Downieville had its theatre and concerts, its billiard-rooms and
saloons of all sorts, a daily paper, warm baths, and restaurants where
men in red flannel shirts, with bare arms, spread a napkin over their
muddy knees, and studied the bill of fare for half an hour before they
could make up their minds what to order for dinner.
I was sitting on a rock by the side of the river one day sketching, when
I became aware that a most ragamuffinish individual was looking over my
shoulder. He was certainly, without exception, the most tattered and
torn man I ever saw in my life; even his hair and beard gave the idea of
rags, which was fully realised by his costume. He was a complete
caricature of an old miner, and quite a picture of himself, seen from
any point of view.
The rim of his old brown hat seemed ready to drop down on his shoulders
at a moment’s notice, and the sides, having dissolved all connection
with the crown, presented at the top a jagged circumference, festooned
here and there with locks of light brown hair, while, to keep the whole
fabric from falling to pieces of its own weight, it was bound round with
a piece of string in lieu of a hat-band. His hair hung all over his
shoulders in large straight flat locks, just as if a handkerchief had
been nailed to the top of his head and then torn into shreds, and a long
beard of the same pattern fringed a face as brown as a mahogany table.
His shirt had once been red flannel--of course it was flannel yet, what
remained of it--but it was in a most dilapidated condition. Half-way
down to his elbows hung some shreds, which led to the belief that at one
time he had possessed a pair of sleeves; but they seemed to have been
removed by the action of time and the elements, which had also been busy
with other parts of the garment, and had, moreover, changed its original
scarlet to different shades of crimson and purple. There was enough of
his shirt left almost to meet a pair of--not trousers, but still less
mentionable articles, of the same material as the shirt, and in the same
stage of decomposition. He must have had trousers once on a time, but I
suppose he had worn them out; and I could not help thinking what
extraordinary things they must have been on the morning when he came to
the conclusion that they were not good enough to wear. I daresay he
would have put them on if he could, but perhaps they were so full of
holes that he did not know which to get into. His boots at least had
reached this point, and to acknowledge that they had been boots was as
much as a conscientious man could say for them. They were more holes
than leather, and had no longer any title to the name of boots.
He was a man between thirty and forty, and, notwithstanding his rags,
there was nothing in his appearance at all dirty or repulsive; on the
contrary, he had a very handsome, prepossessing face, with an air about
him which at once gave the idea that he had been used to polite society.
I was, consequently, not surprised at the style of his address. He
talked with me for some time, and I found him a most amusing and
gentlemanly fellow. He was a German doctor, but it was hard to detect
any foreign accent in his pronunciation.
The claim he was working was a mile or two up the river, and his
company, he told me, was one of the greatest curiosities in the country.
It consisted of two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Italians, two
Mexicans, and my ragged friend, who was the only man in the company who
spoke any language but his mother tongue. He was captain of the company,
and interpreter-general for the crowd. I quite believed him when he said
it was hard work to keep them all in order, and that when he was away no
work could be done at all, and for that reason he was now hurrying back
to his claim. But before leaving me he said, “I saw you sketching from
the trail, and I came down to ask a favour of you.”
There is as much vanity sometimes in rags as in gorgeous apparel; and
what he wanted of me was to make a sketch of him, rags and all, just as
he was. To study such a splendid figure was exactly what I wanted to do
myself, so I made an appointment with him for the next day, and begged
of him in the meantime not to think of combing his hair, which, indeed,
to judge from its appearance, he had not done for some time.
I found afterwards that he was a well-known character, and went by the
name of the Flying Dutchman.
I passed by his claim one day, and such a scene it was! The Tower of
Babel was not a circumstance to it. The whole of the party were up to
their waists in water, in the middle of the river, trying to build a
wing-dam. The Americans, the Frenchmen, the Italians, and the Mexicans,
were all pulling in different directions at an immense unwieldy log, and
bestowing on each other most frightful oaths, though happily in unknown
tongues; while the directing genius, the Flying Dutchman, was rushing
about among them, and gesticulating wildly in his endeavours to pacify
them, and to explain what was to be done. He spoke all the modern
languages at once, occasionally talking Spanish to a Frenchman, and
English to the Italians, then cursing his own stupidity in German, and
blowing them all up collectively in a promiscuous jumble of national
oaths, when they all came to a stand-still, the Flying Dutchman even
seeming to give it up in despair. But after addressing a few explanatory
remarks to each nation separately, in their respective languages, he
persuaded them to try once more, when they got along well enough for a
few minutes, till something went wrong, and then the Tower-of-Babel
scene was enacted over again.
What induced the Flying Dutchman to form a company of such incongruous
materials, and to take so much trouble in trying to work it, I can’t
say, unless it was a little of the same innocent vanity which was
apparent in his exaggerated style of dress.
There was a considerable number of Frenchmen in the neighbourhood of
Downieville, but they kept very much to themselves. So very few of them,
even of the better class, could speak English, and so few American
miners knew anything of French, that scarcely ever were they found
working together.
In common intercourse of buying and selling, or asking and giving any
requisite information, neither party were ever very much at a loss; a
few words of broken English, a word or two of French, and a large share
of pantomime, carried them through any conference.
When any one capable of acting as interpreter happened to be present,
the Frenchman, in his impatience, was constantly asking him “Qu’est ce
qu’il dit?” “Qu’est ce qu’il dit?” This caught the ear of the Americans
more than anything else, and a “Keskydee” came at last to be a synonyme
for a “Parleyvoo.”
The “Dutchmen” in the mines, under which denomination are included all
manner of Germans, showed much greater aptitude to amalgamate with the
people around them. Frenchmen were always found in gangs, but “Dutchmen”
were usually met with as individuals, and more frequently associated
with Americans than with their own countrymen. For the most part they
spoke English very well, and there were none who could not make
themselves perfectly intelligible.
But in making such a comparison between the Germans and the French, it
would not be fair to leave unmentioned the fact, that the great majority
of the former were men who had the advantage of having lived for a
greater or less time in the United States, while the Frenchmen had
nearly all immigrated in ship-loads direct from their native country.
About thirty miles above Downieville is one of the highest mountains in
the mines. The view from the summit, which is composed of several rocky
peaks in line with each other, like the teeth of a saw, was said to be
one of the finest in California, and I was desirous of seeing it; but
the mountain was on the verge of settlement, and there was no camp or
house of accommodation nearer to it than Downieville. However, the
Frenchman in whose house I was staying told me that a friend of his,
who was mining there, would be down in a day or two, and that he would
introduce me to him. He came down the next day for a supply of
provisions, and I gladly took the opportunity of returning with him.
The trail followed the river all the way, and was very rough, many parts
of it being nearly as bad as “Cape Horn.” The Frenchman had a pack-mule
loaded with his stock of provisions, which gave him an infinity of
trouble. He was such a bad packer that the cargo was constantly
shifting, and requiring to be repacked and secured. At one spot, where
there was a steep descent from the trail to the river of about a hundred
feet, the whole cargo broke loose, and fell to the ground. The only
article, however, which rolled off the narrow trail was a keg of butter,
which went bounding down the hill till it reached the bottom, where at
one smash it buttered the whole surface of a large flat rock in the
middle of the river. The Frenchman climbed down by a circuitous route to
recover what he could of it, while I remained to repack the cargo.
Without further accident we arrived about dark at my companion’s cabin,
where we found his partners just preparing supper;--and a very good
supper it was; for, with only the ordinary materials of flour, ham, and
beef, it was astonishing what a very superior mess a Frenchman could get
up.
After smoking an infinite number of pipes, I stretched out on the floor,
with my feet to the fire, and slept like a top till morning, when,
having got directions from the Frenchman as to my route, I set out to
climb the mountain. The cabin was situated at the base of one of the
spurs into which the mountain branched off, and was about eight miles
distant from the summit.
When I had got about half-way up, I came in sight of a quartz-grinding
establishment, situated on an exceedingly steep place, where a small
stream of water came dashing over the rocks. In the face of the hill a
step had been cut out, on which a cabin was built, and immediately below
it were two “rasters” in full operation.
These are the most primitive kind of contrivances for grinding quartz.
They are circular places, ten or twelve feet in diameter, flagged with
flat stones, and in these the quartz is crushed by two large heavy
stones dragged round and round by a mule harnessed to a horizontal beam,
to which they are also attached.
The quartz is already broken up into small pieces before being put into
the raster, and a constant supply of water is necessary to facilitate
the operation, the stuff, while being ground, having the appearance of a
rich white mud. The Mexicans, who use this machine a great deal, have a
way of ascertaining when the quartz is sufficiently ground, by feeling
it between the finger and thumb of one hand, while with the other they
feel the lower part of their ear; and when the quartz has the same soft
velvety feel, it is considered fine enough, and the gold is then
extracted by amalgamation with quicksilver.
A considerable amount of work had been done at this place. The quartz
vein was several hundred yards above the rasters, and from it there was
laid a double line of railway on the face of the mountain, for the
purpose of bringing down the quartz. The loaded car was intended to
bring up the empty one; but the railway was so steep that it looked as
if a car, once started, would never stop till it reached the river, two
or three miles below.
The vein was not being worked just now; and I only found one man at the
place, who was employed in keeping the two mules at work in the
“rasters.” He told me that the ascent from that point was so difficult
that it would be dark before I could return, and persuaded me to pass
the night with him, and start early the next morning.
The nights had been getting pretty chilly lately, and up here it was
particularly so; but with the aid of a blazing fire we managed to make
ourselves comfortable. I lay down before the fire, with the prospect of
having a good sleep, but woke in the middle of the night, feeling it
most bitterly cold. The fact is, the log-cabin was merely a log-cage,
the chinks between the logs having never been filled up, and it had come
on to blow a perfect hurricane. The spot where the cabin stood was very
much exposed, and the gusts of wind blew against it and through it as if
it would carry us all away.
This pleasant state of things lasted two days, during which time I
remained a prisoner in the cabin, as the force of the wind was so great
that one could scarcely stand outside, and the cold was so intense that
the pools in the stream which ran past were covered with ice. The cabin
was but poor protection, the wind having full play through it, even
blowing the tin plates off the table while we were at dinner; and heavy
gusts coming down the chimney filled the cabin with smoke, ashes, and
burning wood. Two days of this was rather miserable work, but with the
aid of my pencil and two or three old novels I managed to weather it
out.
The third day the gale was over, and though still cold, the weather was
beautifully bright and clear. On setting out on my expedition to the
summit of the mountain, I had first to climb up the railway, which went
as far as the top of the ridge, where the quartz cropped out in large
masses. From this there was a gradual ascent to the summit, about four
miles distant, over ground which was stony, like a newly macadamised
road, and covered with wiry brushwood waist-high. This was rendered a
still more pleasant place to travel over by being infested by grizzly
bears, whose tracks I could see on every spot of ground capable of
receiving the impression of their feet. At last I arrived at the foot of
the immense masses of rock which formed the summit of the mountain, and
the only means of continuing the ascent was by climbing up long slides
of loose sharp-cornered stones of all sizes. Every step I took forward,
I went about half a step backward, the stones giving way under my feet,
and causing a general commotion from top to bottom. On reaching the top
of this place, after suffering a good deal in my shins and shoe-leather,
I found myself on a ledge of rock, with a similar one forty or fifty
feet above me, to be gained by climbing another slide of loose stones;
and having spent about an hour in working my passage up a succession of
places of this sort, I arrived at the foot of the immense wall of solid
rock which crowned the summit of the mountain. To reach the lowest point
of the top of the perpendicular wall above me, I had some fifteen or
twenty feet to climb the best way I could, and the prospect of any
failure in the attempt was by no means encouraging, as, had I happened
to fall, I should have been carried down to the regions below with an
avalanche of loose rocks and stones. Even as I stood studying how I
should make the ascent by means of the projecting ledges, and tracking
out my course before I made the attempt, I felt the stones beginning to
give way under my feet; and seeing there was no time to lose, I went at
it, and after a pretty hard struggle I reached the top. This, however,
was not the summit--I was only between the teeth of the saw; but I was
enabled to gain the top of one of the peaks by means of a ledge, about a
foot and a half wide, which slanted up the face of the rock. Here I sat
down to enjoy the view, and certainly I felt amply repaid for all the
labour of the ascent, by the vastness and grandeur of the panorama
around me. I looked back for more than a hundred miles over the
mountainous pine-clad region of the “Mines,” where, from the shapes of
some of the mountains, I could distinguish many of the places which I
had visited. Beyond this lay the wide plains of the Sacramento Valley,
in which the course of the rivers could be traced by the trees which
grew along their banks; and beyond the plains the coast range was
distinctly seen.
On the other side, from which I had made the ascent, there was a sheer
precipice of about two hundred feet, at the foot of which, in eternal
shade, lay heaps of snow. The mountains in this direction were more
rugged and barren, and beyond them appeared the white peaks of the
Sierra Nevada. The atmosphere was intensely clear; it was as if there
were no atmosphere at all, and the view of the most remote objects was
so vivid and distinct that any one not used to such a clime would have
been slow to believe that their distance was so great as it actually
was. Monte Diablo, a peculiarly shaped mountain within a few miles of
San Francisco, and upwards of three hundred miles from where I stood,
was plainly discernible, and with as much distinctness as on a clear day
in England a mountain is seen at a distance of fifty or sixty miles.
The beauty of the view, which consisted chiefly in its vastness, was
greatly enhanced by being seen from such a lofty pinnacle. It gave one
the idea of being suspended in the air, and cut off from all
communication with the world below. The perfect solitude of the place
was quite oppressive, and was rendered still more awful by the
occasional loud report of some piece of rock, which, becoming detached
from the mass, went bounding down to seek a more humble resting-place.
The gradual disruption seemed to be incessant, for no sooner had one
fragment got out of hearing down below, than another started after it.
There was a keen wind blowing, and it was so miserably cold, that when I
had been up here for about an hour, I became quite benumbed and chilled.
It was rather ticklish work coming down from my exalted position, and
more perilous a good deal than it had been to climb up to it; but I
managed it without accident, and reached the cabin of my quartz-grinding
friend before dark.
Here I found there had arrived in the mean time three men from a ranch
which they had taken up in a small valley, about thirty miles farther up
in the mountains. There were no other white men in that direction, and
this cabin was the nearest habitation to them. They had come in with six
or seven muleloads of hay for the use of the unfortunate animals who
were kept in a state of constant revolution in the “rasters.”