_THE WHITE CROSS LIBRARY._
PRENTICE MULFORD’S STORY
_Life by Land and Sea._
BY
PRENTICE MULFORD.
NEW YORK:
F. J. NEEDHAM, PUBLISHER,
52 WEST FOURTEENTH ST.
1889.
COPYRIGHT, 1889
BY F. J. NEEDHAM.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Shadows of Coming Events, 5
II. Going to Sea, 14
III. Getting My Sea Legs On, 20
IV. Much Water and Mutiny, 31
V. San Francisco in 1856, 43
VI. As a Sea Cook, 51
VII. Sights while Cooking, 61
VIII. Whaling in Marguerita Bay, 71
IX. Our Butter Fiends, 82
X. Guadalupe, 86
XI. At the Gold Mines, 90
XII. Swett’s Bar, 99
XIII. One Day’s Digging, 105
XIV. The Miner’s Rainy Day, 114
XV. The Miner’s Sunday, 122
XVI. The Cow Fever, 129
XVII. Red Mountain Bar, 135
XVIII. My California School, 145
XIX. “Jimtown,” 157
XX. Romance of Ah Sam and Hi Sing, 168
XXI. On a Jury, 174
XXII. Some Culinary Reminiscences, 178
XXIII. The Copper Fever, 186
XXIV. Rise and Fall of Copperhead City, 193
XXV. Prospecting, 199
XXVI. High Life, 207
XXVII. Leaving High Life, 217
XXVIII. The Last of High Life, 226
XXIX. On the Rostrum, 237
XXX. Running for Office, 246
XXXI. An Early California Canvass, 254
XXXII. Another Change, 262
XXXIII. Editing vs. Writing, 266
XXXIV. Opinions Journalistic, 275
XXXV. Recent Antiquity, 279
XXXVI. Going Home, 287
PRENTICE MULFORD’S STORY.
CHAPTER I.
SHADOWS OF COMING EVENTS.
One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our
house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that “them stories about
finding gold in Californy was all true.” It was “wash day” and our folks
and some of the neighbors were gathered in the “wash house” while the
colored help soused her fat black arms in the suds of the wash tub.
That was the first report I heard from California. Old Eben had been a
man of the sea; was once captured by a pirate, and when he told the
story, which he did once a week, he concluded by rolling up his trousers
and showing the bullet-scars he had received.
California then was but a blotch of yellow on the schoolboy’s map of
1847. It was associated only with hides, tallow, and Dana’s “Two Years
Before the Mast.” It was thought of principally in connection with
long-horned savage cattle, lassoes, and Mexicans. Very near this in
general vacancy and mystery was the entire region west of the Rocky
Mountains. What was known as the Indian Territory covered an area now
occupied by half a dozen prosperous States. Texas was then the Mecca of
adventurers and people who found it advisable to leave home suddenly.
The phrase in those days, “Gone to Texas,” had a meaning almost
equivalent to “Gone to the ----.” Then California took its place.
The report slumbered during the summer in our village, but in the fall
it commenced kindling and by winter it was ablaze. The companies
commenced forming. It was not entirely a strange land to some of our
people.
Ours was a whaling village. Two-thirds of the male population were bred
to the sea. Every boy knew the ropes of a ship as soon if not sooner
than he did his multiplication table. Ours was a “travelled” community.
They went nearer the North and South Poles than most people of their
time and Behring Straits, the Kamschatkan coast, the sea of Japan, Rio
Janeiro, Valparaiso, the Sandwich Islands, the Azores and the names of
many other remote localities were words in every one’s mouth, and words,
too, which we were familiar with from childhood. Many of our whalers had
touched at San Francisco and Monterey. There had recently been a great
break down in the whale fishery. Whale ships for sale were plentiful.
Most of them were bought to carry the “’49” rush of merchandise and men
to California.
By November, 1848, California was the talk of the village, as it was all
that time of the whole country. The great gold fever raged all winter.
All the old retired whaling captains wanted to go, and most of them did
go. All the spruce young men of the place wanted to go. Companies were
formed, and there was much serious drawing up of constitutions and
by-laws for their regulation. In most cases the avowed object of the
companies, as set forth in these documents, was “Mining and trading with
the Indians.” Great profit was expected to be gotten out of the
California Indian. He was expected to give stores of gold and furs in
exchange for gilt watches, brass chains, beads, and glass marbles. The
companies bought safes, in which to keep their gold, and also strange
and complex gold-washing machines, of which numerous patterns suddenly
sprang up, invented by Yankees who never saw and never were to see a
gold mine. Curious ideas were entertained relative to California. The
Sacramento River was reported as abounding in alligators. Colored prints
represented the adventurer pursued by these reptiles. The general
opinion was that it was a fearfully hot country and full of snakes.
Of the companies formed in our vicinity, some had more standing and
weight than others, and membership in them was eagerly sought for. An
idea prevailed that when this moral weight and respectability was
launched on the shores of California it would entail fortune on all
belonging to the organization. People with the lightning glance and
divination of golden anticipation, saw themselves already in the mines
hauling over chunks of ore and returning home weighed down with them.
Five years was the longest period any one expected to stay. Five years
at most was to be given to rifling California of her treasures, and then
that country was to be thrown aside like a used-up newspaper and the
rich adventurers would spend the remainder of their days in wealth,
peace, and prosperity at their Eastern homes. No one talked then of
going out “to build up the glorious State of California.” No one then
ever took any pride in the thought that he might be called a
“Californian.” So they went.
People who could not go invested in men who could go, and paid half the
expense of their passage and outfit on condition that they should remit
back half the gold they dug. This description of Argonaut seldom paid
any dividends. I doubt if one ever sent back a dollar. Eastern
shareholders really got their money’s worth in gilded hopes, which with
them lasted for years. But people never put such brilliant anticipations
on the credit side of the account; and merely because that, at the last,
they are not realized.
As the winter of “’48” waned the companies, one after another, set sail
for the land of gold. The Sunday preceding they listened to farewell
sermons at church. I recollect seeing a score or two of the young
Argonauts thus preached to. They were admonished from the pulpit to
behave temperately, virtuously, wisely, and piously. How seriously they
listened. How soberly were their narrow-brimmed, straight-up-and-down,
little plug hats of that period piled one atop the other in front of
them. How glistened their hair with the village barber’s hair oil. How
pronounced the creak of their tight boots as they marched up the aisle.
How brilliant the hue of their neck-ties. How patiently and resignedly
they listened to the sad discourse of the minister, knowing it would be
the last they would hear for many months. How eager the glances they
cast up to the church choir, where sat the girls they were to marry on
their return. How few returned. How few married the girl of that
period’s choice. How little weighed the words of the minister a year
afterward in the hurry-scurry of the San Francisco life of ’49 and ’50.
What an innocent, unsophisticated, inexperienced lot were those forty
odd young Argonauts who sat in those pews. Not one of them then could
bake his own bread, turn a flapjack, re-seat his trousers, or wash his
shirt. Not one of them had dug even a post-hole. All had a vague sort of
impression that California was a nutshell of a country and that they
would see each other there frequently and eventually all return home at
or about the same time. How little they realized that one was to go to
the Northern and one to the Southern mines and one to remain in San
Francisco, and the three never to meet again! What glittering gold mines
existed in their brains even during the preaching of that sermon! Holes
where the gold was put out by the shovelful, from which an occasional
boulder or pebble was picked out and flung away.
The young Argonaut, church being dismissed, took his little stiff, shiny
plug and went home to the last Sunday tea. And that Sunday night, on
seeing her home from church for the last time, he was allowed to sit up
with her almost as long as he pleased. The light glimmered long from the
old homestead front parlor window. The cold north wind without roared
among the leafless sycamores and crashed the branches together. It was a
sad, sad pleasure. The old sofa they sat upon would be sat upon by them
no more for years. For years? Forever in many cases. To-day, old and
gray, gaunt and bent, somewhere in the gulches, “up North” somewhere,
hidden away in an obscure mining camp of the Tuolumne, Stanislaus, or
Mokelumne, up in Cariboo or down in Arizona, still he recollects that
night as a dream. And she? Oh, she dried her eyes and married the
stay-at-home five years after. A girl can’t wait forever. And besides,
bad reports after a time reached home about him. He drank. He gambled.
He found fair friends among the señoritas. And, worse than all, he made
no fortune.
By spring most of the Argonauts had departed. With them went the flower
of the village. Their absence made a big social gap, and that for many a
day. The girls they left behind tried for a time to live on hope, and
afterward “took up” and made the most of the younger generation of boys.
They remembered that after all they were not widows. Why should their
mourning be permanent? ’Twere selfish for the departed Argonaut to
demand it. And who knew how these Args might console themselves on
arriving in San Francisco?
After many months came the first letters from San Francisco, and then
specimens of gold dust and gold pieces. The gold dust came in quills or
in vials, mixed with black sand. But this dust was not always dug by the
moral Argonauts, from whom the most was expected. It was often the
gathering of some of the obscurer members of our community. Fortune was
democratic in her favors.
In the course of two years a few of the “boys” came straggling back. The
first of these arrivals, I remember, walked up our main street, wearing
on his shoulders a brilliant-hued Mexican serape. It created a
sensation. All the small boys of the village “tagged on behind him” a
sort of impromptu guard of honor. The serape was about all he did bring
home. He talked a great deal of gold and brought specimens, but not in
sufficient quantity to pay all outstanding bills. The next of the
returned was a long, gaunt, yellow case of Chagres fever. He brought
only gloom. Along in 1853-54 came a few of the more fortunate who had
made a “raise.” Two returned and paid up their creditors in full who had
been by creditors given over. But few came to remain. They “staid
around” home a few weeks, turned up their noses at the small prices
asked for drinks, cigars, and stews, treated everybody, grew restless
and were off again. Relatives of the not returned beset them with
inquiries which they found it difficult to answer, because there was an
idea prevalent in the village that a man in California ought to make
money, and why didn’t he?
Up to 1860 a “returned Californian” was an object of curiosity and of
some importance if he brought any money with him, or rather as long as
the money he brought with him lasted. But “the war” wiped them out in
this respect. The California fortune of that time was a mere pimple
compared with the fortunes made by the war. A generation now exists to
whom the whole Argonaut exodus is but an indifferent story.
Sometimes on visiting my native village I stand before one of those
old-fashioned houses, from whose front door thirty-four years ago there
went forth for the last time the young Argonaut on his way to the ship.
There is more than one such house in the village. The door is double,
the knocker is still upon it, the window panes are small, the front
gate is the same and up to the door the same stones lie upon the walk.
But within all are strangers. The father and mother are past anxious
inquiry of their son. The sisters are married and live or have died
elsewhere. A new generation is all about. They never heard of him. The
great event of that period, the sailing of that ship for California, is
sometimes recalled by a few--a few rapidly diminishing. His name is all
but forgotten. Some have a dim remembrance of him. In his time he was an
important young man in the village. He set the fashion in collars and
the newest style of plugs. Oh, fame, how fleeting! What is a generation?
A puff. A few old maids recollect him. What a pity, what a shame that we
do all fade as a leaf!
What a sad place; what a living grave is this for him to return to!
Where would he find the most familiar names? In the cemetery. Who would
he feel most like? Like “Rip Van Winkle.” Who are these bright and
blooming lasses passing by? They are her grown-up children--she with
whom he sat up that last Sunday night in the old-fashioned front parlor
on the old-fashioned sofa. Where is she? That is she, that stout,
middle-aged woman across the street. Is she thinking of him? No; she is
thinking whether there shall be cabbage or turnips for dinner. Who is
that codgery-looking man going up the street. That is the man she didn’t
wait for and married. Should the Argonaut return home if he could? No.
Let him stay where he is and dream on of her as she was, bright, gay,
lively, blooming, and possibly romantic. The dream is solid happiness
compared with the reality.
The recollections treated in this chapter are to me as a commencement
and an ending of the shadows of a series of coming events.