The gold hunters

Introduction

CALIFORNIA under Spanish and Mexican rule was a lotus-land of lazy, good-natured, hospitable friars, of tame and submissive Indian neophytes, of vast savannas swarming with half-wild herds, of orchards and gardens, vineyards and olive groves. There was no mining, no lumbering, no machinery, no commerce other than a contraband exchange of hides and tallow for clothing, merchandise and manufactures. There was no art, no science, no literature, no news, save at rare intervals, from the outer world. One day was like another from generation to generation. Everyone was content with his mode of life or ignorant of any other. War never harassed the Franciscans' drowsy realm, nor ever threatened, beyond a few opera bouffe affairs that began and ended in loud talk and bloodless gesticulation.

Under the old Spanish law, foreign commerce was prohibited and foreign travelers were excluded from California. But Boston traders managed to evade it by collusion with local officials; and strangers did enter the land ; sailors and merchants of divers nationalities came across seas and settled along the coast, while hunters and trappers crossed overland from the States. Generally they were welcomed and encouraged to establish themselves in California, though in deHance of the Mexican government. The foreigners, being for the most part men of enterprise and energy, were respected and became influential. Many of them married into native California families, were naturalized, and acquired large estates. Among the Americans was John A. Sutter, formerly a Swiss military officer, who, in 1839, was permitted to build a fortified post on the present site of Sacramento. He received a large grant of land around it, and became a Mexican official.

As a result of the Mexican war, California was ceded to the United States on the 2d of February, 1848. Nine days earlier an event occurred that was destined to fix upon this splendid province the fascinated gaze of all the world. On the 24th of January, at Colonel Sutter's mill, near the present Coloma, a workman named James W. Marshall discovered gold.

Within a few months amazingly rich placers were found in river bars, creeks and gulches, of this and the surrounding region. During the first year or two of discovery it was not unusual for a miner to wash or dig up a hundred ounces of gold in a day. Some lucky strikes were made of five to ten times this amount, and nuggets were picked up of from $1,000 to $20,000 value. Within a few hundred yards of a populous town, a man stubbed his toe against a protruding rock; glaring in wrath at the stumblingblock, he was thunderstruck at the sight of more gold than quartz, A market gardener, abusing his sterile soil for producing cabbages that were all stalk, was quickly placated by finding gold adhering to their roots; the cabbage-patch was successfully worked for years, and pieces of gold of many pounds weight were taken from it. Stories went abroad of places where the precious metal was blasted out in chunks, of ledges so rich that it could be picked out of the hssures with a bowie-knife, of men digging up gold as they would potatoes, and of a competence being amassed by a few hours' work with a tin spoon.

For two or three months the tales that came from the diggings were received with incredulity; but when larger and larger shipments of the yellow metal kept coming to the coast there was a wild stampede for the gold-fields. "Settlements were completely deserted; homes, farms and stores abandoned. Ships deserted by their sailors crowded the bay at San Francisco (there were five hundred of them in July, 1850) ; soldiers deserted wholesale, churches were emptied, town councils ceased to sit; merchants, clerks, lawyers and judges and criminals, everybody, flocked to the foothills. Soon, from Hawaii, Oregon and Sonora, from the Eastern States, the South Seas, Australia, South America and China came an extraordinary flow of the hopeful and adventurous. In the winter of '48 the rush began from the States to Panama, and in the spring across the plains. It is estimated that 80,000 men reached the coast in 1849, about half of them coming overland; three-fourths were Americans." By 1851 the number of actual miners had risen to about 140,000. From across the Atlantic there came Britons, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, others speaking strange tongues, until the mines of California were likened to so many towers of Babel, and pantomime often took the part of speech.

Never before had there been brought together, in a far quarter of the earth, a body of men of so varied trades and professions all massed in a twinkling to one common pursuit. Social distinctions vanished at a touch. Soft-handed lawyers and clergymen wielded pick and shovel side-by-side with born navvies, cooked their own meals and washed their own clothes. No honest labor lowered the dignity of a gentleman, since that gentleman needs must wait upon himself and provide for himself with the work of his own hands. Out of this common necessity grew, as it were overnight, a natural democracy in which all men met each other on an equal footing. No deference was paid save to conspicuous ability of such sort as was useful in the work at hand.

The popular notion of a miner is that of a rude and reckless fellow who "works one day with a tin pan and gets drunk the next." There were, indeed, many of this ilk in the gold-diggings; but in the main, the miners of '49 were a picked and superior class of men. It was not as if a bonanza had been struck within easy reach of the riffraff of the nations. California, by the shortest route, was two thousand miles from any well populated part of America, five thousand from a European port. The journey thither was expensive, and most of the men who undertook it were such as had accumulated, by their own industry, a good "stake" at home. They were adventurers, to be sure; but what is an adventurer? One who hazards a chance, especially a chance of danger. That is the spirit which starts almost any enterprise that demands courage, determination and self-reliance. Beyond this, the argonauts were notably capable and intelligent men, as their works soon proved. An unbiased observer said of them: "Perhaps in no other community so limited could one find so many wellinformed and clever men — men of all nations who have added the advantages of traveling to natural abilities and a liberal education." Most of them were charged with spontaneous and persistent energy. Immediately, as by an electric shock, the California of dreaming friars and lazy vaqueros was tossed aside and an amazing industry whirred into action.

When San Francisco was laid in ashes, not a day was wasted in lamentation. Before the debris had fairly cooled the work of rebuilding was started with a rush. Soon the sand-hills were leveled, and rocks were blasted out to make room for a greater city. Brick buildings rose where there had been nothing but shanties or canvas tents. Foundries were built and shops were fitted with machinery brought half around the world. To provide rapid transit to the mines, large river steamers, of the same model as those used on the Hudson, were bought in New York, and, incredible as it may seem, these toplofty and fragile craft were navigated around South America, by way of the Straits of Magellan, and most of them came safe Into the Golden Gate. (The author of this book declares his belief that a premium of 99 per cent, would not have insured them at Lloyd's for a trip from Dover to Calais.) The mines themselves were as so many ant-hills swarming with hurrying workers. Where water was scarce, canals were dug, or flumes were run for miles along mountain sides and carried over gorges or valleys by viaducts; even a large river was borne half a mile by an aqueduct high above Its native bed. So rapid was the development of the country that, as our author says,

California became a full-grown State while one-half the world still doubted its existence.

Gold mining, of course, was a gamble; while some "struck it rich" many others worked hard for nothing. So gambling was in the very air. And so long as common labor commanded at least five dollars a day, so long as ships by the hundred lay idle at their docks because sailors would rather take their chances in the mines than a steady wage of two or three hundred dollars a month, there was bound to be reckless extravagance and wild dissipation. Most of the miners were young men, too active, ebullient, vivacious, for quiet amusements in their hours of leisure. There was no home life nor anything to suggest it. In 1850 only two per cent, of the population of the mining counties were women, and probably most of these were of loose character. There was no standard of respectability to be lived up to. So long as a man did not interfere with the rights of others, he was perfectly free, if he chose, to go to the devil in his own way. Against the toil and hardships of the mining-field, against the gloom of disappointment or the wild elation of success, human nature demanded a counterpoise of some sort — and the only places in all the wide land where the miner could find comfort, luxury, gaiety, were the saloons and gambling-houses.

There being no sheriffs or policemen worthy the name, every man went armed, prepared at an instant's notice to redress his own real or fancied grievances. Shootings and stabbings were frequent, though in much less number actually than such conditions might be expected to provoke — most men think twice before stirring up trouble in a company where everybody carries a loaded gun and knows how to use it. Formal law was powerless, through corrupt or inefficient officers, to keep in check the many scoundrels and desperadoes that infested the cities and the diggings; so the miners themselves administered summary justice by means of extemporized courts, and for high crimes were prompt to inflict the highest punishment after the verdict of Judge Lynch. It is undeniable that, in a pioneer society, such rough-andready justice was a necessity and that its effects were salutary.

Yet when the first fever of excitement had passed away, when the richest placers were exhausted, when men settled down from prospecting and "rushes" to the steady work of mining on a business basis, it is wonderful how quickly the social order changed for the better. Miners returning to San Francisco after a year's absence scarcely recognized the place. Substantial buildings of brick and stone were replacing the tinder-boxes that had been swept away by one "great fire" after another — dressed granite for some of them was even imported from China! Streets that had been rubbish-heaps and quagmires were orderly and clean. A large number of respectable women had arrived in California, and their influence was immediately noticeable in the refinement of dress and decorum of the men. Places of rational amusement had sprung up — clubs, reading-rooms, theaters — which replaced in great measure the gambling-houses. In very many instances a quiet domestic life had supplanted the old-time roistering in saloons. Few, if any, cities ever showed such rapid progress in manners and morals as well as in material things.

Many narratives have been published by men who participated in the stirring events of early California. From among them I have chosen, after long research, one vv^ritten by a British artist, Mr. J. D. Borthwick, and issued in Edinburgh in 1857. The original book is now rare and sought for by collectors of western Americana. It is here reprinted in full, with certain errors corrected. I do not know of another story by an actual miner that is so well written and so true to that wonderful life in the Days of Gold.

Horace Kephart.

October, 1916.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction . S

CHAPTER

Chapter I On To The Gold Fields

ABOUT the beginning of the year 1851, the rage for emigration to California from the United States was at its height. All sorts and conditions of men, old, young, and middle-aged, allured by the hope of acquiring sudden wealth, and fascinated with the adventure and excitement of a life in California, were relinquishing their existing pursuits and associations to commence a totally new existence in the land of gold.

The rush of eager gold-hunters was so great that the Panama Steamship Company's office in New York used to be perfectly mobbed for a day and a night previous to the day appointed for selling tickets for their steamers. Sailing vessels were despatched for Chagres almost daily, carrying crowds of passengers, while numbers went by the different routes through Mexico, and others chose the easier, but more tedious, passage round Cape Horn.

The emigration from the Western States was 15 naturally very large, the inhabitants being a class of men whose lives are spent in clearing the wild forests of the West, and gradually driving the Indian from his hunting-ground.

Of these western-frontier men it is often said, that they are never satisfied if there is any white man between them and sundown. They are constantly moving westward; for as the wild Indian is forced to retire before them, so they, in their turn, shrinking from the signs of civilization which their own labors cause to appear around them, have to plunge deeper into the forest, in search of that wild border-life which has such charms for all who have ever experienced it.

To men of this sort, the accounts of such a country as California, thousands of miles to the westward of them, were peculiarly attractive ; and so great was the emigration, that many parts of the Western States were nearly depopulated. The route followed by these people was overland, across the plains, which was the most congenial to their tastes, and the most convenient for them, as, besides being already so far to the westward, they were also provided with the necessary wagons and oxen for the journey. For the sake of mutual protection against the Indians, they traveled in trains of a dozen or more wagons, carrying the women and children and provisions, accompanied by a proportionate number of men, some on horses or mules, and others on foot.

In May, 1851, I happened to be residing in New York, and was seized with the California fever. My preparations were very soon made, and a day or two afterwards I found myself on board a small barque about to sail for Chagres with a load of California emigrants. Our vessel was little more than two hundred tons, and was entirely devoted to the accommodation of passengers. The ballast was covered with a temporary deck, and the whole interior of the ship formed a saloon, round which were built three tiers of berths: a very rough extempore table and benches completed the furniture. There was no invidious distinction of cabin and steerage passengers — in fact, excepting the captain's room, there was nothing which could be called a cabin in the ship. But all were in good spirits, and so much engrossed with thoughts of California that there was little disposition to grumble at the rough-and-ready style of our accommodation. For my own part, I knev/ I should have to rough it in California, and felt that I might just as well begin at once as wait till I got there.

We numbered about sixty passengers, and a nice assortment we were. The majority, of course, were Americans, and were from all parts of the Union; the rest were English, French, and German. We had representatives of nearly every trade, besides farmers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and nondescript "young men."

The first day out we had fine weather, with just sea enough to afford the uninitiated an opportunity of discovering the difference between the lee and the weather side of the ship. The second day we had a fresh breeze, which towards night blew a gale, and for a couple of daj^s we were compelled to lay to.

The greater part of the passengers, being from the interior of the country, had never seen the ocean before, and a gale of wind was a thing they did not understand at all. Those who were not too sick to be able to form an opinion on the subject, were frightened out of their senses, and imagined that all manner of dreadful things were going to happen to the ship. The first night of the gale, I was awakened by an old fool shouting frantically to the company in general to get up and save the ship, because he heard the water rushing into her, and we should sink in a few minutes. He was very emphatically cursed for his trouble by those whose slumbers he had disturbed, and told to hold his tongue, and let those sleep who could, if he were unable to do so himself.

It was certainly, however, not very easy to sleep that night. The ship was very crank, and but few of the party had taken the precaution to make fast their luggage; the consequence was, that boxes and chests of all sizes, besides casks of provisions, and other ship's stores, which had got adrift, were cruising about promiscuously, threatening to smash up the flimsy framework on which our berths were built, and endangering the limbs of any one who should venture to turn out.

In the morning we found that the cook's galley had fetched way, and the stove was rendered useless; the steward and waiters — landlubbers who were only working their passage to Chagres — were as sick as the sickest, and so the prospect for breakfast was by no means encouraging. However, there were not more than half-a-dozen of us who could eat anything, or could even stand on deck; so we roughed it out on cold beef, hard bread, and brandy-and-water.

ON TO CALIFORNIA 1J>

The sea was not very high, and the ship lay to comfortably and dry; but, in the evening, some of the poor wretches below had worked themselves up to desperation, being sure, every time the ship laid over, that she was never coming up again. At last, one man, who could stand it no longer, jumped out of his Derth, and, going down on his knees, commenced clapping his hands, and uttering the most dismal howls and groans, interspersed with disjointed fragments of prayers. He called on all hands to join him; but it was not a form of worship to which many seemed to be accustomed, for only two men responded to his call. He very kindly consigned all the rest of the company to a place which I 'trust none of us may reach, and prayed that for the sake of the three righteous men — himself and the other two — the ship might be saved. They continued for about an hour, clapping their hands as if applauding, and crj'ing and groaning most piteously — so bereft of sense, by fear, that they seemed not to know the meaning of their incoherent exclamations. The captain, however, at last succeeded in persuading them that there was no danger, and they gradually cooled down, to the great relief of the rest of the passengers.

The next day we had better weather, but the sicklist was as large as ever, and we had to mess again on whatever raw materials we could lay our hands on — red-herrings, onions, ham, and biscuit.

We deposed the steward as a useless vagabond, and appointed three passengers to fill his place, after which we fared a little better — in fact, as well as the provisions at our command would allow. No one grumbled, excepting a few of the lowest class of men in the party, who had very likely never been used to such good livmg ashore.

When we got into the trade-winds we had delightful weather, very hot, but with a strong breeze at night, rendering it sufficiently cool to sleep in comfort. The all-engrossing subject of conversation, and of meditation, was of course California, and the heaps of gold we were all to find there. As we had secured our passage only as far as Chagres, our progress from that pomt to San Francisco was also a matter of constant discussion. We all knew that every steamer to leave Panama, for months to come, was already full, and that hundreds of men were waiting there to take advantage of any opportunity that might occur of reaching San Francisco; but among our passengers there were very few who were traveling in company; they were mostly all isolated individuals, each "on his own hook," and every one was perfectly confident that he at least would have no trouble in getting along, whatever might be the fate of the rest of the crowd.

We added to the delicacies of our bill of fare occasionally by killing dolphins. They are very good eating, and afford capital sport. They come in small shoals of a dozen or so, and amuse themselves by playing about before the bows of the vessel, when, getting down into the martingale under the bowsprit, one takes the opportunity to let drive at them with the "grains," a small five-pronged harpoon.

The dolphin, by the way, is most outrageously and systematically libeled. Instead of being the horrid, big-headed, crooked-backed monster which it is generally represented, it is the most elegant and highly-finished fish that swims.

For three or four days before reaching Chagres, all hands were busy packing up, and firing off and reloading pistols; for a revolver and a bowie-knife were considered the first items in a California outfit. We soon assumed a warlike appearance, and though many of the party had probably never handled a pistol in their lives before, they tried to wear their weapons in a neglige style, as if they never had been used to go without them.

There were now also great consultations as to what sort of hats, coats, and boots, should be worn in crossing the Isthmus. Wondrous accounts constantly appeared in the New York papers of the dangers and difficulties of these few miles of land-and-river travel, and most of the passengers, before leaving New York, had been humbugged into buying all manner of absurd and useless articles, many of them made of india-rubber, which they had been assured, and consequently believed, were absolutely necessary. But how to carry them all, or even how to use them, was the main difficulty, and would indeed have puzzled much cleverer men.

Some were equipped with pots, pans, kettles, drinking-cups, knives and forks, spoons, pocket-filters (for they had been told that the water on the Isthmus was very dirty), india-rubber contrivances, which an ingenious man, with a powerful imagination and strong lungs, could blow up and convert into a bed, a boat, or a tent — bottles of "cholera preventive," boxes of pills for curing every disease to which human nature is liable; and some men, in addition to all this, determined to be prepared to combat danger in every shape, bade defiance to the waters of the Chagres river b}^ buckling on india-rubber life-preservers.

Others of the party, who were older travelers, and who held all such accoutrements in utter contempt, had merely a small valise with a few necessary articles of clothing, an oil-skin coat, and, very probably, a pistol stowed away on some part of their person, which would be pretty sure to go off when occasion required, but not before.

At last, after twenty days' passage from New York, we made Chagres, and got up to the anchorage towards evening. The scenery was very beautiful. We lay about three-quarters of a mile from shore, in a small bay enclosed by high bluffs, completely covered with dense foliage of every shade of green.

We had but little time, however, to enjoy the scenery that evening, as we had scarcely anchored when the rain began to come down in true tropical style ; every drop was a bucketful. The thunder and lightning were terrific, and in good keeping with the rain, which is one of the things for which Chagres is celebrated. Its character as a sickly wretched place was so vv'ell known that none of us went ashore that night; we all preferred sleeping aboard ship.

It was very amusing to watch the change which had been coming over some of the men on board. They seemed to shrink within themselves, and to wish to avoid being included in any of the small parties which were being formed to make the passage up the river. They were those who had provided themselves with innumerable contrivances for the protection of their precious persons against sun, wind, and rain, also with extraordinary assortments of very untempting-looking provisions, and vi^ho were completely equipped with pistols, knives, and other warlike implements. They were like so many Robinson Crusoes, ready to be put ashore on a desert island; and they seemed to imagine themselves to be in just such a predicament, fearful, at the same time, that companionship with any one not provided with the same amount of rubbish as themselves, might involve their losing the exclusive benefit of what they supposed so absolutely necessary. I actually heard one of them refuse another man a chew of tobacco, saying he guessed he had no more than what he could use himself.

The men of this sort, of whom I am happy to say there were not many, offered a striking contrast to the rest in another respect. On arriving at Chagres they became quite dejected and sulky, and seemed to be oppressed with anxiety, while the others were in a wild state of delight at having finished a tedious passage, and in anticipation of the novelty and excitement of crossing the Isthmus.

In the morning several shore-boats, all pulled by Americans, came off to take us ashore. The landing here is rather dangerous. There is generally a very heavy swell, causing vessels to roll so much that getting into a small boat alongside is a matter of considerable difficulty; and at the mouth of the river is a bar, on which are immense rollers, requiring good management to get over them in safety.

We went ashore in torrents of rain, and when landed with our baggage on the muddy bank of the Chagres river, all as wet as if we had swum ashore, we were immediately beset by crowds of boatmen, Americans, natives, and Jamaica niggers, all endeavoring to make a bargain with us for the passage up the river to Cruces.

The town of Chagres is built on each side of the river, and consists of a few miserable cane-and-mud huts, with one or two equally wretched-looking wooden houses, which were hotels kept by Americans. On the top of the bluff, on the south side of the river, are the ruins of an old Spanish castle, which look very picturesque, almost concealed by the luxurious growth. of trees and creepers around them.

The natives seemed to be a miserable set of people, and the few Americans in the town were most sickly, washed-out-looking objects, with the appearance of having been steeped for a length of time in water.

After breakfasting on ham and beans at one of the hotels, we selected a boat to convey us up the river; and as the owner had no crew engaged, we got him to take two sailors who had run away from our vessel, and were bound for California like the rest of us.

There was a great variety of boats employed on the river — whale-boats, ships' boats, skiffs, and canoes of all sizes, some of them capable of carrying fifteen or twenty people. It was still raining heavily when we started, but shortly afterwards the weather cleared up, and we felt in better humor to enjoy the magnificent scenery. The river was from seventy-five to a hundred yards wide, and the banks were completely hidden by the dense mass of vegetation overhanging the water. There was a vast variety of beautiful foliage, and many of the trees were draped in creepers, covered with large flowers of most brilliant colors. One of our party, who was a Scotch gardener, was in ecstasies at such a splendid natural flowershow, and gave us long Latin names for all the different specimens. The rest of my fellow-passengers were a big fat man from Buffalo, two young Southerners from South Carolina, three New Yorkers, and a Swede. The boat was rather heavily laden, but for some hours we got along very well, as there was but little current. Towards the afternoon, however, our two sailors, who had been pulling all the time, began to flag, and at last said they could go no further without a rest. We were still many miles from the place where we were to pass the night, and as the banks of the river presented such a formidable barricade of jungle as to prevent a landing, we had the prospect of passing the night in the boat, unless we made the most of our time; so the gardener and I volunteered to take a spell at the oars. But as we ascended the river the current became much stronger, and darkness overtook us some distance from our intended stopping-place.

It became so very dark that we could not see six feet ahead of us, and were constantly bumping against other boats coming up the river. There were also many boats coming down with the current at such a rate, that if one had happened to run into us, we should have had but a poor chance, and we were obliged to keep shouting all the time to let our whereabouts be known.