SWETT’S BAR.
I think and hope that these attempts of mine to portray the history of
the camps on one California gold-bearing river will touch a responsive
chord in the hearts of some old Californian, for the life and incident
of the bars I describe reflect, in certain respects, the life, history,
and incident of hundreds and thousands of places settled in “’49,” and
perhaps abandoned by “’60,” which have now no name or place on the later
maps of the State. Your genuine old miner likes to revisit the camp
where first he dug for gold, in thought if not in person. It was no
common affection they entertained for these places. If the “boys” moved
away to other diggings, they had always to make a yearly pilgrimage
back, so long as the camp lasted. So, yearly from Vallecito, thirty
miles distant, used Jake Yager to revisit Swett’s, and he tramped the
whole distance, too. What was it that so drew them back? Perhaps the
memory of the new and exciting life they experienced from “’49” say till
“’58” or “’60,” with its “ups and downs,” its glittering surprises in
the shape of “strikes,” its comradeship so soon developed among men who,
meeting as strangers, so soon found out each other’s better qualities,
its freedom from the restraints of older communities, its honesty and
plainness in the expression of opinion, engendered by such freedom; all
these thought over and over again during absence brought about that
strong desire to see the old Bar again, the scene of so much experience
and private history. Then the visitor always met a hearty welcome. He
was an old “residenter.” Cabin-owners contended for the pleasure of
entertaining him. No wives or families were in the way. Conviviality was
uninterrupted.
If a black bottle could be produced it could be worshipped undisturbed
until long past midnight. And such was always produced on the return of
the old acquaintance. When the “boys” at last tumbled into their bunks
and smoked a night-cap pipe abed, there was no wife in special charge of
husband to molest or make them afraid or disturb their internal peace by
reason of her near presence. Those were the golden seasons of masculine
domestic tranquillity on the banks of the Tuolumne. Woman never
disturbed the Bar proper with her presence. It was always a masculine
Bar, at least on the right bank of the river. On the left, at a later
date, on a flat, where I enjoyed the privilege of digging for next to
nothing for two years, there did live for a time three foreign
households glorified by woman’s presence. But this was after the palmy
days of Swett’s Bar proper right bank. I have heard that Swett’s Bar was
named after John Swett, once Superintendent of Public Instruction in
California. If so, he never there left any relics or reminders of
himself--not even a grammar. Swett’s lies equidistant from Hawkins’ and
Indian Bars. When last I passed through it the floods had washed out
every trace of man’s presence on one side of the river, leaving there an
enormous heap of logs and brush-wood. The Bar proper had been smoothed
down by the flood, every hole or boulder heap, or heap of “headings” or
“tailings,” or the deep pits dug and laboriouly kept free of water by
machinery, or heavily rock-freighted crib of logs, the work of miners in
the river’s bed, had been planed away. The pebbles and boulders had all
been rearranged, the sands were smooth, white, and glistening as though
“fresh from the Creator’s hands;” and none save those conversant with
the river’s history could have guessed that every foot of the bank
adjoining the river had been turned over and over again in the search
for gold.
We elected one member of the Legislature from Swett’s. When he left the
Bar he distributed his cabin, blankets, and household effects among the
remaining miners. He confidently thought never to need these articles
again. That was as great a miscalculation as when a Swett’s Bar or any
other bar miner would resolve and swear violently that never again would
he “strike a pick” in the river. We came to regard such an oath with a
superstitious credulity that he certainly would strike such pick again,
for never did such a case occur in my recollection but that the mad
resolver was back next season, ignoring his vow and striking his pick on
some claim generally poorer than the one he worked the season previous.
So at the end of four months, after cumbering the law books of the State
of California with statutes, whose very existence was forgotten eight
months after their passage, our Swett’s Bar legislator was seen one
evening coming down the hill, bearing in one hand two whiskey bottles
tied together by one string--one being empty and the other full. “Silver
and gold have I none,” said he, as he came to my cabin door, “but what
I have give I unto thee,” which he did. Next day came his trunk. The
principal accession to the legislative wardrobe were three new shirts
and a blue coat with brass buttons. That, the session I think of 1859,
was known as the “Legislature of ten thousand drinks.” Our law-maker
said it had been the “Star Winter” of his existence, and he never
expected to see such another. Three days after his arrival at the Bar he
borrowed a pair of blankets, “cabined” with a chum and contentedly
resumed his pick and shovel. Did Cincinattus do more when he buckled
once more to the plough? But our Swett’s Bar Cincinattus was never
hunted for to save his country. There were too many other country savers
on hand, even in our immediate locality.
Generally speaking, Swett’s was divided in two portions. There was the
old bar on the right bank of the river, settled in “’49,” and there was
the flat on the other side, whose golden store was not discovered until
1859. Attempts were made to give this flat a distinct name. Various
settlers and miners craved the immortality which they supposed might
thus be conferred. For a time it was called “Frazier’s Flat,” from a
diabolical Scotchman of that name who lived there. Only one of these
names would stick, and finally everybody settled down on the old
appellation, “Swett’s.” I do not believe that John Swett, if he did
confer his name on this Bar, ever realized the local fame and reputation
of his name. When first we struck the diggings at Swett’s left bank, we
had great expectations. It was a later discovery, a “back river
channel.” Consequent on the discovery of pay ground 1,000 feet back of
the river, and the definite fixing of the boundary lines between the
various claimants, there ensued the usual series of disputes, rows, bad
blood, assaults, and threatened shootings. Nobody was shot. Not even a
mining law-suit came of it. A local capitalist threw a flume across the
river and brought to bear on the flat the upland muddy water, which came
down from Columbia diggings, twenty-five miles away, through Wood’s
Creek. That flume was being talked of, being planned, being hoped for
and very gradually being erected, during the years of “’59” and “’60,”
while the rest of the nation was agitated by “Bleeding Kansas,” “John
Brown,” “Squatter Sovereignty,” “The Douglas Party,” “The Little Giant”
and all that foreboding series of watchword and motto which preceded
“The War.” But the Swett’s Bar mind, the Swett’s Bar hope, the Swett’s
Bar expedition, was concentrated principally on a wire cable, two
uprights on either side of the river, and some 400 feet of rough wooden
flume thereby supported, all of which was to bring us water to wash out
the expected gold. At last the suspension flume was finished. We had
water. We commenced washing. The dirt did not pay as we expected. We
averaged week in and week out about three dollars per day, and one
dollar of this went for water money.
After the suspension flume was finished and water was on the Flat our
claim cleaned up for the first week’s work about fifty dollars a piece.
We used quicksilver plentifully in the sluices; and the amalgam was
taken to my cabin in a gold-pan and put on the hot coals to drive off
the mercury, which it did, and salivated the four of us besides. The
sublimated mineral covered walls, tables and chairs with a fine,
frost-like coating, and on rubbing one’s finger over any surface a
little globule of quicksilver would roll up before it. Then we went to
Chinese Camp and gave the doctor about half our individual week’s
dividends to get the mercury out of us. Three weeks of sore mouths and
loosened teeth followed this intelligent exposure. It was through such
experiences as these that we became in California practical
mineralogists. However, it’s an easy way of taking “blue mass.” The
claim from which great gains had been expected eventually settled down
to an average of two dollars and a half to three dollars per day.
Break-downs of the flume, failure of water from up country, very stormy
weather, building and repairing reservoirs, cutting tail races through
rock--all caused numerous delays, and every such delay lessened the
average per diem. It was necessary to build reservoirs, to store the
water for washing, and these reservoirs broke with the ease and facility
of a Bowery savings bank.