Eldorado; or, Adventures in the path of Empire: comprising a voyage to California, via Panama, life in San Francisco and Monterey, pictures of the gold region, and experiences of Mexican travel. With illustrations by the author

Front matter

LITH OF SAXONY ± MAJOA - SAN FRANCISCO IN N OV E M BE R . 1 84 8 FftOM A StffrCHly J.C.&AflO. ESQ. ELDORADO; OR, ADVENTURES IN THE PATH OF EMPIRE : COMPRISING A VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA, VIA PANAMA; LIFE IN SAN FRANCISCO AND MONTEREY PICTURES OF THE GOLD REGION, AND EXPERIENCES OF MEXICAN TRAVEL. BY BAYARD TAYLOR, AUTHOR OF " VIEWS A-FOOT," " RHYMES OF TRAVEL," &C WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON .STREET ] S50. LONOON t Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street. TO EDWARD F. BEALE, LIEUT., U. S. N. THIS WORK IS DEDICATED WITH THE AUTHOR'S ESTEEM AND AFFECTION. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. SAN FRANCISCO IN NOVEMBER, 1848 Frontispiece LOWER BAR, MOKELUMNE RIVER Pase 70 MONTEREY " 121 THE VOLCANO DIGGINGS "

Preface

This work requires but few words in the way of introduction. Though the author's purpose in visiting California was not to write a book, the circumstances of his journey seemed to impose it upon him as a duty, and all his observations were made with this end in view. The condition of California, during the latter half of the year 1849, was as transitory as it was marvellous ; the records which were then made can never be made again. Seeing so much that was worthy of being described — so many curious and shifting phases of society — such examples of growth and progress, most wonderful in their first stage — in a word, the entire construction of a new and sovereign State, and the establishment of a great commercial metropolis on the Pacific coast — the author suffered no opportunity to pass, which might qualify him to preserve their fleeting images.

As he was troubled by no dreams of gold, and took no part in exciting schemes of trade, he has hoped to give an impartial coloring to the picture. His impressions of Califor nia are those of one who went to sec and write, and who sought yiii

PREFACE.

. to do both faithfully. Whatever may be the faults of his work, he trusts this endeavor will be recognized. A portion, only, of the pages which follow, were included in the original letters which appeared in the columns of the New-York Tribune. Many personal incidents, and pictures of society as it then existed in California, noted down at the time, have been added, and a new form given to the materials obtained. The account of the author's journey across Mexico, is now published for the first time. The Report of Hon. T. Butler King, on Cali fornia Affairs, has been added as an Appendix, since many of the author's own statements receive from it additional confirmation, and since those wishing to learn something of California, will desire to possess it in a permanent form. If, when a new order of things has been established and what has occurred is looked upon as a phenomenon of the Past, some of these pages should be preserved as a record and remembrance thereof, the object of this work will be fully accomplished. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Page

Chapter I. From New York To Chagres

On the 28th of June, 1S49, I sailed from New York, in the U. S. Mail steamship Falcon, bound for Chagres. About eight months had elapsed since the tidings of an Eldorado in the West reached the Atlantic shore. The first eager rush of adventurers was over, yet there was no cessation to the marvellous reports, and thousands were only waiting a few further repetitions, to join the hordes of emigration. The departure of a steamer was still something of an incident. The piers and shipping were crowded with spectators, and as the Falcon moved from her moorings, many a cheer and shout of farewell followed her. The glow and excitement of adventure seemed to animate even those who remained behind, and as for our passengers, there was scarcely one who did not feel himself more or less a hero. The deck rang with songs, laughter and gaily-spoken anticipations of roving life and untold treasure, till we began to feel the heavy swell rolling inward from Sandy Hook.

Rough weather set in with the night, and for a day or two we were all in the same state of torpid misery. Sea-sickness — next to Death, the greatest leveler — could not, however, smooth down the striking contrasts of oharacter exhibited among the pas- ELDORADO. sengers. Nothing less than a marvel like that of California could have brought into juxtaposition so many opposite types of human nature. We had an officer of the Navy, blunt, warm hearted and jovial ; a captain in the merchant service, intelligent and sturdily-tempered ; Down-Easters, with sharp-set faces — men of the genuine stamp, who would be sure to fall on their feet wherever they might be thrown ; quiet and sedate Spaniards ; hilarious Germans ; and some others whose precise character was more difficult to determine. Nothing was talked of but the land to which we were bound, nothing read but Fremont's Expedition, Emory's Report, or some work of Rocky Mountain travel.

After doubling Cape Hatteras, on the second day out, our mo notonous life was varied by the discovery of a distant wreck. Captain Hartstein instantly turned the Falcon's head towards her, and after an hour's run we came up with her. The sea for some distance around was strewed with barrels, fragments of bulwarks, stanchions and broken spars. She was a schooner of a hundred tons, lying on her beam ends and water-logged. Her mainmast was gone, the foremast broken at the yard and the bowsprit snapped off" and lying across her bows. The mass of spars and - rigging drifted by her side, surging drearily on the heavy sea. Not a soul was aboard, and we made many conjectures as to their fate. We lay to off Charleston the fourth night, waiting for the mails, which came on board in the morning with a few forlorn-looking passengers, sick and weary with twenty-four hours' tossing on the swells.

In the afternoon we saw Tybee Lighthouse, through the veil of a misty shower. The sunset among the jagged piles of a broken thunder-cloud, and ribbon-like streaks of lightning darted all round the horizon. Our voyage now began to have a real in- THE SHORES OF FLORIDA. 3 terest. With the next sunrise, we saw the Lighthouse of St. Augustine and ran down the shores of Florida, inside the Grulf Stream, and close to the edges of the banks of coral. The pas sengers clustered on the bow, sitting with thenfeet hanging over the guards, and talking of Ponce de Leon, De Soto, and the early Spanish adventurers. It was unanimously voted that the present days were as wonderful as those, and each individual emigrant en titled to equal credit for daring and enterprise. I found it delighful to sit all day leaning over the rails, watching the play of flying-fish, the floating of purple nautili on the water, or looking off to the level line of the shore.

Behind a beach of white sand, half a mile in breadth and bordered by dense thickets, rise the interminable forests of live oak, mangrove and cypress. The monotony of this long extent of coast is only broken by an occasional lagoon, where the deep green of the woods comes down upon the lighter green of the coral shoals, or by the huts of wreckers and their trim, duck-like crafts, lying in the offings. The temperature was delicious, with a light, cloudy sky, and a breeze as soft and balmy as that of our northern May. The afternoons commenced with a heavy thunder-shower, after which the wind came fresh from the land, bringing us a rank vegetable odor from the cypress swamps. On the morning of July 5th, I took a station on the wheel house, to look out for Cuba. We had left Florida in the night, and the waves of the Gulf were around us.

The sun, wheeling near the zenith, burned fiercely on the water. I glowed at my post, but not with his beam. I had reached the flaming boundary of the Tropics, and felt that the veil was lifting from an unknown world. The far rim of the horizon seemed as if it would never break into an uneven line. At last, towards noon, Capt. Hartstein handed me the ship's glass. I swept the southern dis- ELDORADO. tance, and discerned a single blue, conical peak rising from the water — the well-known Pan of Matanzas. As we drew nearer, the Iron Mountains — a rugged chain in the interior — rose, then the green hills along the coast, and finally the white beach and bluffs, the coral reefs and breakers. The shores were buried in vegetation. The fields of young sugar-cane ran along the slopes ; palms waved from the hill-tops, and the country houses of plant ers lay deep in the valleys, nestling in orange groves.

I drank in the land-wind — a combination of all tropical perfumes in one full breath of cool air — with an enjoyment verging on intoxication, while, point beyond point, we followed the enchanting coast. We ran under the battlements of the Moro at six o'clock, and turning abruptly round the bluff of dark rock on which it is built, the magnificent harbor opened inland before us. To the right lay the city, with its terraced houses of all light and brilliant colors, its spacious public buildings, spires, and the quaint, half-oriental pile of its cathedral, in whose chancel repose the ashes of Christo pher Columbus. The immense fortress of the Moro crowned the height on our left, the feathery heads of palm-trees peering above its massive, cream-colored walls. A part of the garrison were going through their evening exercises on the beach.

Numberless boats skimmed about on the water, and a flat ferry-steamer, painted green and yellow, was on its way to the suburb of Regoles. Around the land-locked harbor, two miles in width, rose green hills, dotted with the country palaces of the nobility. Over all this charming view glowed the bright hues of a southern sunset. On account of the cholera at New York, we were ordered up to the Quarantine ground and anchored beside the hulk of an old frigate, filled with yellow-fever patients. The Health Officers received the mail and ship's papers at the end of a long pole, and NIGHT IN HAVANA HARBOR. 5 dipped them in a bucket of vinegar. The boats which brought us water and vegetables were attended by Cuban soldiers, in white uniform, who guarded against all contact with us. Half-naked slaves, with the broad, coarse features of the natives of Congo, worked at the pump, but even they suffered the rope-end or plank which had touched our vessel, to drop in the water before they handled it.

After sunset, the yellow-fever dead were buried and the bell of a cemetery on shore tolled mournfully at intervals. The steamer Isabel, and other American ships, were anchored beside us, and a lively conversation between the crews broke the stillness of the tropical moonlight resting on the water. Now and then they struck into songs, one taking up a new strain as the other ceased — in the style of the Venetian gondoliers, but with a different effect. " Tasso's echoes" are another thing from "the floating scow of old Virginny." The lights of the city gleamed at a distance, and over them the flaming beacon of the Moro. Tall palms were dimly seen on the nearer hills, and the damp night-air came heavy with the scent of cane-fields, orange groves and flowers. A voyage across the Gulf is the perfection of sea-traveling.

After a detention of eighteen hours at Havana, we ran under the frowning walls of the Moro, out on its sheet of brilliant blue wa ter, specked with white-caps that leaped to a fresh north-easter. The waves are brighter, the sky softer and purer, the sunsets more mellow than on the Atlantic, and the heat, though ranging from 88° to 95° in the shade, is tempered by a steady and de licious breeze. Before catching sight of land, our approach to the Mississippi was betrayed by the water. Changing to a deep, then a muddy green, which, even fifteen or twenty miles from shore, rolls its ELDORADO. stratum of fresh water over the bed of denser brine, it needed no soundings to tell of land ahead. The light on the South Pass was on our starboard at dusk. The arm of the river we entered seemed so wide in the uncertain light, that, considering it as one of five, my imagination expanded in contemplating the size of the single flood, bearing in its turbid waves the snows of mountains that look on Oregon, the ice of lakes in Northern Minesota and the crystal springs that for a thousand miles gush from the west ern slope of the Alleghanies.

When morning came, my excited fancies seemed completely at fault. I could scarcely recognize the Father of Waters in the tortuous current of brown soap-suds, a mile in width, flowing between forests of willow and cypress on one side and swamps that stretched to the horizon on the other. Everything exhibited the rank growth and speedy decay of tropical vegetation The river was filled with floating logs, which were drifted all along the shore. The trees, especially the cypress, were shrouded in gray moss, that hung in long streamers from the branches, and at intervals the fallen thatch of some deserted cabin was pushed from its place by shrubbery and wild vines. Near the city, the shores present a rich and cultivated aspect. The land is perfectly flat, but the forest recedes, and broad fields of sugar cane and maize in ear come down to the narrow levee which protects them from the flood.

The houses of the planters, low, balconied and cool, are buried among orange trees, acacias, and the pink blossoms of the crape myrtle. The slave-huts ad joining, in parallel rows, have sometimes small gardens attached, but are rarely shaded by trees. I found New Orleans remarkably dull and healthy. The city was enjoying an interregnum between the departure of the cholera NEW ORLEANS. and the arrival of the yellow fever. The crevasse, by which half the city had lately been submerged, was closed, but the effects of the inundation were still perceptible in frequent pools of stand ing water, and its scenes daily renewed by incessant showers. The rain came down, " not from one lone cloud," but as if a thousand cisterns had been stove in at once. In half an hour after a shower commenced, the streets were navigable, the hack-horses splashing their slow way through the flood, carrying home a few drenched unfortunates.

The Falcon was detained four days, which severely tested the temper of my impatient shipmates. I employed the occasional gleams of clear weather in rambling over the old French and Spanish quarters, riding on the Lafayette Railroad or driving out the Shell Road to the cemetery, where the dead are buried above ground. The French part of the city is unique and interesting. All the innovation is confined to the American Municipalities, which resemble the business parts of our Northern cities. The curious one-storied dwellings, with jalousies and tiled roofs, of the last century, have not been disturbed in the region below Canal street. The low houses, where the oleander and crape myrtle still look over the walls, were once inhabited by the luxurious French planters, but now display such signs as " Magazin des Modes," " Au bon marche," or " Perrot, Coiffeur."

Some of the more pretending mansions show the porte cochere and heavy barred windows of the hotels of Paris, and the common taverns, with their smoky aspect and the blue blouses that fill them, are exact counterparts of some I have seen in the Rue St. Antoine. The body of the Cathedral, standing at the head of the Place d' Armes, was torn down, and workmen were employed in building a prison in its stead ; but the front, with its vensrabb tower and ELDORADO. refreshing appearance of antiquity, will remain, hiding behind its changeless face far different passions and darker spectacles than in the Past. The hour of departure at length arrived. The levee opposite our anchorage, in Lafayette City, was thronged with a noisy mul titude, congregated to witness the embarcation of a hundred and fifty additional passengers.

Our deck became populous with tall, gaunt Mississipians and Arkansans, Missouri squatters who had pulled up their stakes yet another time, and an ominous number of professed gamblers. All were going to seek their fortunes in California, but very few had any definite idea of the country or the voyage to be made before reaching it. There were among them some new varieties of the American — long, loosely-jointed men, with large hands and feet and limbs which would still be awkward, whatever the fashion of their clothes. Their faces were lengthened, deeply sallow, overhung by straggling locks of straight black hair, and wore an expression of settled melancholy. The corners of their mouths curved downwards, the upper lip drawn slightly over the under one, giving to the lower part of the face that cast of destructiveness peculiar to the Indian.

These men chewed tobacco at a ruinous rate, and spent their time either in dozing at full length on the deck or going into the fore-cabin for ' drinks.' Each one of them carried arms enough for a small company and breathed defiance to all foreigners. We had a voyage of seven days, devoid of incident, to the Isthmus. During the fourth night we passed between Cuba and Yucatan. Then, after crossing the mouth of the Gulf of Hon duras, where we met the south-eastern trades, and runninothe gauntlet of a cluster of coral keys, for the navigation of which no chart can be positively depended upon, we came into the deep CHAGRES, FROM THE SEA water of the Caribbean Sea. The waves ran high under a dull rain and raw wind, more like Newfoundland weather than the tropics. On the morning of the eighth day, we approached land.

All hands gathered on deck, peering into the mist for the first glimpse of the Isthmus. Suddenly a heavy rain-cloud lifted, and we saw, about five miles distant, the headland of Porto Bello — a bold, rocky promontory, fringed with vegetation and washed at its foot by a line of snowy breakers. The range of the Andes of Darien towered high behind the coast, the further summits lost in the rain. Turning to the south-west, we followed the magnificent sweep of hills toward Chagres, passing Navy Bay, the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Railroad. The entrance is narrow, be tween two bold bluffs, opening into a fine land-locked harbor, surrounded by hills. Chagres lies about eight miles to the west of this bay, but the mouth of the river is so narrow that the place is not seen till you run close upon it.

The eastern shore is high and steep, cloven with ravines which roll their floods of tropical vegetation down to the sea. The old castle of San Lorenzo crowns the point, occu pying a position somewhat similar to the Moro Castle at Havana, and equally impregnable. Its brown battlements and embrasures have many a dark and stirring recollection. Morgan and his buccaneers scaled its walls, took and leveled it, after a fight in which all but thirty-three out of three hundred and fourteen de fenders were slain, some of them leaping madly from the precipice into the sea. Strong as it is by nature, and would be in the hands of an enterprising people, it now looks harmless enough with a few old cannon lying lazily on its ramparts. The other side of the river is flat and marshy, and from our place of anchorage we could onlv see the tops of some huts among the trees.

I ELDORADO. We came to anchor about half past four. The deck was already covered with luggage and everybody was anxious to leave first. Our captain, clerk, and a bearer of dispatches, were pulled ashore in the steamer's boat, and in the meantime the passengers formed themselves into small companies for the journey up the river. An immense canoe, or " dug-out," manned by half-naked natives shortly came out, and the most of the companies managed to get agents on board to secure canoes for them. The clerk, on his return, was assailed by such a storm of questions — the passengers leaning half-way over the bulwarks in their eagerness for news — that for a few minutes he could not make himself heard. When the clamor subsided, he told us that the Pacific steamer would sail from Panama on the 1st of August, and that the only canoes to be had that night were already taken by Captain Hartstein, who was then making his way up the Rio Chagres, in rain and thick darkness.

The trunks and blankets were therefore taken below again and we resigned ourselves to another night on board, with a bare chance of sleep in the disordered state-rooms and among the piles of luggiige. A heavy cloud on the sea broke out momently into broad scarlet flashes of lightning, surpassing any celestial pyrotechnics I ever witnessed. The dark walls of San Lorenzo, the brilliant clusters of palms on the shore and the green, rolling hills of the interior, leaped at intervals out of the gloom, as vividly seen as under the noon-day sun.

Chapter II. Crossing The Isthmus

I left the Falcon at day-break in the ship's boat. We rounded the high bluff on which the castle stands and found beyond it a shallow little bay, on the eastern side of which, on low ground, stand the cane huts of Chagres. Piling up our luggage on the shore, each one set about searching for the canoes which had been engaged the night previous, but, without a single exception, the natives were not to be found, or when found, had broken their bargains. Everybody ran hither and thither in great excitement, anxious to be off before everybody else, and hurrying the naked boatmen, all to no purpose. The canoes were beached on the mud, and their owners engaged in re-thatching their covers with split leaves of the pahn. The doors of the huts were filled with men and women, each in a single cotton garment, composedly smoking their cigfirs, while numbers of children, in Nature's own clothing, tumbled about in the sun.

Having started without breakfast, I went to the " Crescent City" Hotel, a hut with a floor to it, but could get nothing. Some of my friends had fared better at one of the native huts, and I sat down to the remains of their meal, which was spread on a hen-coop beside the door. The pigs of the vicinity and several lean dogs surrounded me to offer their ELDORADO. services, but maintained a respectful silence, which is more than could be said of pigs at home. Some pieces of pork fat, with fresh bread and a draught of sweet spring water from a cocoa shell, made me a delicious repast. A returning Californian had just reached the place, with a box containing $22,000 in gold-dust, and a four-pound lump in one hand. The impatience and excitement of the passengers, already ■it a high pitch, was greatly increased by his appearance.

Life ;,nd death were small matters compared with immediate departure from Chagres. Men ran up and down the beach, shouting, gestiulating, and getting feverishly impatient at the deliberate habits of the natives ; as if their arrival in California would thereby be at all hastened. The boatmen, knowing very well that two more steamers were due the next day, remained provokingly cool and unconcerned. They had not seen six months of emigration with out learning something of the American habit of going at full speed. The word of starting in use on the Chagres River, is " go ahead !" Captain C — — and Mr. M — — , of Baltimore, and myself, were obliged to pay $15 each, for a canoe to Cruces. We chose a broad, trimly-cut craft, which the boatmen were covering with fresh thatch. We stayed with them until all was ready, and they had pushed it through the mud and shoal water to the bank before Ramos's house.

Our luggage was stowed away, we took our seats and raised our umbrellas, but the men had gone off for provisions and were not to be found. All the other canoes were equally in limbo. The sun blazed down on the swampy shores and visions of yellow fever came into the minds of the more timid travelers. The native boys brought to us bottles of fresh water biscuits and fruit, presenting them with the words : " bit !" " picayune !" " Your bread is not good," I said to one of the shirt- QUARREL with a native. less traders. "Si, Senor /" was his decided answer, while he tossed back his childish head with a look of offended dignity which charmed me. While sitting patiently in our craft, I was much diverted by seeing one of our passengers issue from a hut with a native on each arm, and march them resolutely down to the river.

Our own men appeared towards noon, with a bag of rice and dried pork, and an armful of sugar-cane. A few strokes of their broad paddles took us from the excitement and noise of the landing-place to the seclusion and beauty of the river scenery. Our chief boatman, named Ambrosio Mendez, was of the mixed Indian and Spiinish race. The second, Juan Crispin Bega, be longed to the lowest class, almost entirely of negro blood. He was a strong, jovial fellow, and took such good care of some of our small articles as to relieve us from all further trouble about them. This propensity is common to all of his caste on the Isthmus. In addition to these, a third man was given to us, with the assurance that he would work his passage ; but just as we were leaving, we learned that he was a runaway soldier, who had been taken up for theft and was released on paying some sub-alealde three bottles of liquor, promising to quit the place at once.

We were scarcely out of sight of the town before he demanded five dollars a day for his labor. We refused, and he stopped working. Upon our threatening to set him ashore in the jungle, he took up the paddle, but used it so awkwardly and perversely that our other men lost all patience. We were obliged, however, to wait until we could reach Gatun, ten miles distant, before settling matters. Juan struck up " Oh Susanna !" which he sang to a most ludicrous imitation of the words, and I lay back under the palm leaves, looking out of the stern of the canoe on the forests of the Chagres River. ELDORADO. There is nothing in the world comparable to these forests. No description that I have ever read conveys an idea of the splendid overplus of vegetable life within the tropics. The river, broad, and with a swift current of the sweetest water I ever drank, winds between walls of foliage that rise from its very surface.

All the gorgeous growths of an eternal Summer are so mingled in one impenetrable mass, that the eye is bewildered. From the rank jungle of canes and gigantic lilies, and the thickets of strange shrubs that line the water, rise the trunks of the mango, the ceiba, the cocoa, the sycamore and the superb palm. Plaintains take root in the banks, hiding the soil with their leaves, shaken and split into immense plumes by the wind and rain. The zapote, with a fruit the size of a man's head, the gourd tree, and other vegetable wonders, attract the eye on all sides. Blossoms of crimson, purple and yellow, of a form and magnitude unknown in the North, are mingled with the leaves, and flocks of paroquets and brilliant butterflies circle through the air like blossoms blown away. Sometimes a spike of scarlet flowers is thrust forth like the tongue of a serpent from the heart of some convolution of un folding leaves, and often the creepers and parasites drop trails and streamers of fragrance from boughs that shoot half-way across the river.

Every turn of the stream only disclosed another and more magnificent vista of leaf, bough and blossom. All outline of the landscape is lost under this deluge of vegetation. No trace of the soil is to be seen ; lowland and highland are the same ; a mountain is but a higher swell of the mass of verdure. As on the ocean, you have a sense rather than a perception of beauty. The sharp, clear lines of our scenery at home are here wantino-. What shape the land would be if cleared, you cannot tell. You gaze upon the scene before you with a never-sated delight, till vour THE VILLAGE OF GATUN. brain aches with the sensation, and you close your eyes, over whelmed with the thought that all these wonders have been from the beginning — that year after year takes away no leaf or blossom that is not replaced, but the sublime mystery of growth and decay is renewed forever.

In the afternoon we reached Gatun, a small village of bamboo huts, thatched witli palm-leaves, on the right bank of the river. The canoes which preceded us had already stopped, and the boat men, who have a mutual understanding, had decided to remain all night. We ejected our worthless passenger on landing, not withstanding his passive resistance, and engaged a new boatman in his place, at $8. I shall never forget the forlorn look of the man as he sat on the bank beside his bag of rice, as the rain be gan to fall. Ambrosio took us to one of the huts and engaged hammocks for the night. Two wooden drums, beaten by boys, in another part of the village, gave signs of a coming fandango, and, as it was Sunday night, all the natives were out in their best dresses. They are a very cleanly people, bathing daily, and changing their dresses as often as they are soiled.