Three years in California [1851-54]

The miners on the creek were nearly all Americans, and exhibited a great variety of mankind. Some, it was very evident, were men who had hitherto only worked with their heads; others one would have set down as having been mechanics of some sort, and as having lived in cities; and there were numbers of unmistakeable backwoodsmen and farmers from the Western States. Of these a large proportion were Missourians, who had emigrated across the plains. From the State of Missouri the people had flocked in thousands to the gold diggings, and particularly from a county in that state called Pike County.

The peculiarities of the Missourians are very strongly marked, and after being in the mines but a short time, one could distinguish a Missourian, or a “Pike,” or “Pike County,” as they are called, from the natives of any other western State. Their costume was always exceedingly old and greasy-looking; they had none of the occasional foppery of the miner, which shows itself in brilliant red shirts, boots with flaming red tops, fancy-coloured hats, silver-handled bowie-knives, and rich silk sashes. It always seemed to me that a Missourian wore the same clothes in which he had crossed the plains, and that he was keeping them to wear on his journey home again. Their hats were felt, of a dirty-brown colour, and the shape of a short extinguisher. Their shirts had perhaps, in days gone by, been red, but were now a sort of purple; their pantaloons were generally of a snuffy-brown colour, and made of some woolly home-made fabric. Suspended at their back from a narrow strap buckled round the waist they carried a wooden-handled bowie-knife in an old leathern sheath, not stitched, but riveted with leaden nails; and over their shoulders they wore strips of cotton or cloth as suspenders—mechanical contrivances never thought of by any other men in the mines. As for their boots, there was no peculiarity about them, excepting that they were always old. Their coats, a garment not frequently seen in the mines for at least six months of the year, were very extraordinary things—exceedingly tight, short-waisted, long-skirted surtouts of home-made frieze of a greyish-blue colour.

As for their persons, they were mostly long, gaunt, narrow-chested, round-shouldered men, with long, straight, light-coloured, dried-up-looking hair, small thin sallow faces, with rather scanty beard and moustache, and small grey sunken eyes, which seemed to be keenly perceptive of everything around them. But in their movements the men were slow and awkward, and in the towns especially they betrayed a childish astonishment at the strange sights occasioned by the presence of the divers nations of the earth. The fact is, that till they came to California many of them had never in their lives before seen two houses together, and in any little village in the mines they witnessed more of the wonders of civilisation than ever they had dreamed of.

In some respects, perhaps, the mines of California were as wild a place as any part of the Western States of America; but they were peopled by a community of men of all classes, and from different countries, who, though living in a rough backwoods style, had nevertheless all the ideas and amenities of civilised life; while the Missourians, having come direct across the plains from their homes in the backwoods, had received no preparatory education to enable them to show off to advantage in such company.

And in this they laboured under a great disadvantage, as compared with the lower classes of people of every country who came to San Francisco by way of Panama or Cape Horn. The men from the interior of the States learned something even on their journey to New York or New Orleans, having their eyes partially opened during the few days they spent in either of those cities en route; and on the passage to San Francisco they naturally received a certain degree of polish from being violently shaken up with a crowd of men of different habits and ideas from their own. They had to give way in many things to men whose motives of action were perhaps to them incomprehensible, while of course they gained a few new ideas from being brought into close contact with such sorts of men as they had hitherto only seen at a distance, or very likely had never heard of. A little experience of San Francisco did them no harm, and by the time they reached the mines they had become very superior men to the raw bumpkins they were before leaving their homes.

It may seem strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that the majority of men in whom such a change was most desirable became in California more humanised, and acquired a certain amount of urbanity; in fact, they came from civilised countries in the rough state, and in California got licked into shape, and polished.

I had subsequently, while residing on the Isthmus of Nicaragua, constant opportunities of witnessing the truth of this, in contrasting the outward-bound emigrants with the same class of men returning to the States after having received a California education. Every fortnight two crowds of passengers rushed across the Isthmus, one from New York, the other from San Francisco. The great majority in both cases were men of the lower ranks of life, and it is of course to them alone that my remarks apply. Those coming from New York—who were mostly Americans and Irish—seemed to think that each man could do just as he pleased, without regard to the comfort of his neighbours. They showed no accommodating spirit, but grumbled at everything, and were rude and surly in their manners; they were very raw and stupid, and had no genius for doing anything for themselves or each other to assist their progress, but perversely delighted in acting in opposition to the regulations and arrangements made for them by the Transit Company. The same men, however, on their return from California, were perfect gentlemen in comparison. They were orderly in their behaviour; though rough, they were not rude, and showed great consideration for others, submitting cheerfully to any personal inconvenience necessary for the common good, and showing by their conduct that they had acquired some notion of their duties to balance the very enlarged idea of their rights which they had formerly entertained.

The Missourians, however, although they acquired no new accomplishments on their journey to California, lost none of those which they originally possessed. They could use an axe or a rifle with any man. Two of them would chop down a few trees and build a log-cabin in a day and a half, and with their long five-foot-barrel-rifle, which was their constant companion, they could “draw a bead” on a deer, a squirrel, or the white of an Indian’s eye, with equal coolness and certainty of killing.

Though large-framed men, they were not remarkable for physical strength, nor were they robust in constitution; in fact, they were the most sickly set of men in the mines, fever and ague and diarrhœa being their favourite complaints.

We had many pleasant neighbours, and among them were some very amusing characters. One man, who went by the name of the “Philosopher,” might possibly have earned a better right to the name, if he had had the resolution to abstain from whisky. He had been, I believe, a farmer in Kentucky, and was one of a class not uncommon in America, who, without much education, but with great ability and immense command of language, together with a very superficial knowledge of some science, hold forth on it most fluently, using such long words, and putting them so well together, that, were it not for the crooked ideas they enunciated, one might almost suppose they knew what they were talking about.

Phrenology was this man’s hobby, and he had all the phrenological phraseology at his finger-ends. His great delight was to paw a man’s head and to tell him his character. One Sunday morning he came into our cabin as he was going down to the store for provisions, and after a few minutes’ conversation, of course he introduced phrenology; and as I knew I should not get rid of him till I did so, I gave him my permission to feel my head. He fingered it all over, and gave me a very elaborate synopsis of my character, explaining most minutely the consequences of the combination of the different bumps, and telling me how I would act in a variety of supposed contingencies. Having satisfied himself as to my character, he went off, and I was in hopes I was done with him, but an hour or so after dark, he came rolling into the cabin just as I was going to turn in. He was as drunk as he well could be; his nose was swelled and bloody, his eyes were both well blackened, and altogether he was very unlike a learned professor of phrenology. He begged to be allowed to stay all night; and as he would most likely have broken his neck over the rocks if he had tried to reach his own home that night, I made him welcome, thinking that he would immediately fall asleep without troubling me further. But I was very much mistaken; he had no sooner laid down, than he began to harangue me as if I were a public meeting or a debating society, addressing me as “gentlemen,” and expatiating on a variety of topics, but chiefly on phrenology, the Democratic ticket, and the great mass of the people. He had a bottle of brandy with him, which I made him finish in hopes it might have the effect of silencing him; but there was unfortunately not enough of it for that—it only made him worse, for he left the debating society and got into a bar-room, where, when I went to sleep, he was playing “poker” with some imaginary individual whom he called Jim.

In the morning he made most ample apologies, and was very earnest in expressing his gratitude for my hospitality. I took the liberty of asking him what bumps he called those in the neighbourhood of his eyes. “Well, sir,” he said, “you ask me a plain question, I’ll give you a plain answer. I got into a ‘muss’ down at the store last night, and was whipped; and I deserved it too.” As he was so penitent, I did not press him for further particulars; but I heard from another man the same day, that when at the store he had taken the opportunity of an audience to lecture them on his favourite subject, and illustrated his theory by feeling several heads, and giving very full descriptions of the characters of the individuals. At last he got hold of a man who must have had something peculiar in the formation of his cranium, for he gave him a most dreadful character, calling him a liar, a cheat, and a thief, and winding up by saying that he was a man who would murder his father for five dollars.

The natural consequence was, that the owner of this enviable character jumped up and pitched into the phrenologist, giving him the whipping which he had so candidly acknowledged, and would probably have murdered him without the consideration of the five dollars, if the bystanders had not interfered.

Very near where we were at work, a party of half-a-dozen men held a claim in the bed of the creek, and had as usual dug a race through which to turn the water, and so leave exposed the part they intended to work. This they were now anxious to do, as the creek had fallen sufficiently low to admit of it; but they were opposed by a number of miners, whose claims lay so near the race that they would have been swamped had the water been turned into it.

They could not come to any settlement of the question among themselves; so, as was usual in such cases, they concluded to leave it to a jury of miners; and notice was accordingly sent to all the miners within two or three miles up and down the creek, requesting them to assemble on the claim in question the next afternoon. Although a miner calculates an hour lost as so much money out of his pocket, yet all were interested in supporting the laws of the diggings; and about a hundred men presented themselves at the appointed time. The two opposing parties then, having tossed up for the first pick, chose six jurymen each from the assembled crowd.

When the jury had squatted themselves all together in an exalted position on a heap of stones and dirt, one of the plaintiffs, as spokesman for his party, made a very pithy speech, calling several witnesses to prove his statements, and citing many of the laws of the diggings in support of his claims. The defendants followed in the same manner, making the most of their case; while the general public, sitting in groups on the different heaps of stones piled up between the holes with which the ground was honeycombed, smoked their pipes and watched the proceedings.

After the plaintiff and defendant had said all they had to say about it, the jury examined the state of the ground in dispute; they then called some more witnesses to give further information, and having laid their shaggy heads together for a few minutes, they pronounced their decision; which was, that the men working on the race should be allowed six days to work out their claims before the water should be turned in upon them.

Neither party were particularly well pleased with the verdict—a pretty good sign that it was an impartial one; but they had to abide by it, for had there been any resistance on either side, the rest of the miners would have enforced the decision of this august tribunal. From it there was no appeal; a jury of miners was the highest court known, and I must say I never saw a court of justice with so little humbug about it.

The laws of the creek, as was the case in all the various diggings in the mines, were made at meetings of miners held for the purpose. They were generally very few and simple. They defined how many feet of ground one man was entitled to hold in a ravine—how much in the bank, and in the bed of the creek; how many such claims he could hold at a time; and how long he could absent himself from his claim without forfeiting it. They declared what was necessary to be done in taking up and securing a claim which, for want of water, or from any other cause, could not be worked at the time; and they also provided for various contingencies incidental to the peculiar nature of the diggings.

Of course, like other laws they required constant revision and amendment, to suit the progress of the times; and a few weeks after this trial, a meeting was held one Sunday afternoon for legislative purposes. The miners met in front of the store to the number of about two hundred; a very respectable-looking old chap was called to the chair; but for want of that article of furniture he mounted an empty pork-barrel, which gave him a commanding position; another man was appointed secretary, who placed his writing materials on some empty boxes piled up alongside of the chair. The chairman then, addressing the crowd, told them the object for which the meeting had been called, and said he would be happy to hear any gentleman who had any remarks to offer; whereupon some one proposed an amendment of the law relating to a certain description of claim, arguing the point in a very neat speech. He was duly seconded, and there was some slight opposition and discussion; but when the chairman declared it carried by the ayes, no one called for a division, so the secretary wrote it all down, and it became law.

Two or three other acts were passed, and when the business was concluded, a vote of thanks to the chairman was passed for his able conduct on the top of the pork-barrel. The meeting was then declared to be dissolved, and accordingly dribbled into the store, where the legislators, in small detachments, pledged each other in cocktails as fast as the storekeeper could mix them. While the legislature was in session, however, everything was conducted with the utmost formality, for Americans of all classes are particularly au fait at the ordinary routine of public meetings.

After working our claim for a few weeks, my partner left me to go to another part of the mines, and I joined two Americans in buying a claim five or six miles up the creek. It was supposed to be very rich, and we had to pay a long price for it accordingly, although the men who had taken it up, and from whom we bought it, had not yet even prospected the ground. But the adjoining claims were being worked, and yielding largely, and from the position of ours, it was looked on as an equally good one.

There was a great deal to be done, before it could be worked, in the way of removing rocks and turning the water; and as three of us were not sufficient to work the place properly, we hired four men to assist us, at the usual wages of five dollars a-day. It took about a fortnight to get the claim into order before we could begin washing, but we then found that our labour had not been expended in vain, for it paid uncommonly well.

When I bought this claim, I had to give up my cabin, as the distance was so great, and I now camped with my partners close to our claim, where we had erected a brush-house. This is a very comfortable kind of abode in summer, and does not cost an hour’s labour to erect. Four uprights are stuck in the ground, and connected with cross pieces, on which are laid heaps of leafy brushwood, making a roof completely impervious to the rays of the sun. Sometimes three sides are filled in with a basketwork of brush, which gives the edifice a more compact and comfortable appearance. Very frequently a brush-shed of this sort was erected over a tent, for the thin material of which tents were usually made, offered but poor shelter from the burning sun.

When I left my cabin, I handed it over to a young man who had arrived very lately in the country, and had just come up to the mines. On meeting him a few days afterwards, and asking him how he liked his new abode, he told me that the first night of his occupation he had not slept a wink, and had kept candles burning till daylight, being afraid to go to sleep on account of the rats.

Rats, indeed! poor fellow! I should think there were a few rats, but the cabin was not worse in that respect than any other in the mines. The rats were most active colonisers. Hardly was a cabin built in the most out-of-the-way part of the mountains, before a large family of rats made themselves at home in it, imparting a humanised and inhabited air to the place. They are not supposed to be indigenous to the country. They are a large black species, which I believe those who are learned in rats call the Hamburg breed. Occasionally a pure white one is seen, but more frequently in the cities than in the mines; they are probably the hoary old patriarchs, and not a distinct species.

They are very destructive, and are such notorious thieves, carrying off letters, newspapers, handkerchiefs, and things of that sort, with which to make their nests, that I soon acquired a habit, which is common enough in the mines, of always ramming my stockings tightly into the toes of my boots, putting my neckerchief into my pocket, and otherwise securing all such matters before turning in at night. One took these precautions just as naturally, and as much as a matter of course, as when at sea one fixes things in such a manner that they shall not fetch way with the motion of the ship. As in civilised life a man winds up his watch and puts it under his pillow before going to bed; so in the mines, when turning in, one just as instinctively sets to work to circumvent the rats in the manner described, and, taking off his revolver, lays it under his pillow, or at least under the coat or boots, or whatever he rests his head on.

I believe there are individuals who faint or go into hysterics if a cat happens to be in the same room with them. Any one having a like antipathy to rats had better keep as far away from California as possible, especially from the mines. The inhabitants generally, however, have no such prejudices; it is a free country—as free to rats as to Chinamen; they increase and multiply and settle on the land very much as they please, eating up your flour, and running over you when you are asleep, without ceremony.

No one thinks it worth while to kill individual rats—the abstract fact of their existence remains the same; you might as well wage war upon mosquitos. I often shot rats, but it was for the sport, not for the mere object of killing them. Rat-shooting is capital sport, and is carried on in this wise: The most favourable place for it is a log-cabin in which the chinks have not been filled up, so that there is a space of two or three inches between the logs; and the season is a moonlight night. Then when you lie down for the night (it would be absurd to call it “going to bed” in the mines), you have your revolver charged, and plenty of ammunition at hand. The lights are of course put out, and the cabin is in darkness; but the rats have a fashion of running along the tops of the logs, and occasionally standing still, showing clearly against the moonlight outside; then is your time to draw a bead upon them and knock them over—if you can. But it takes a good shot to do much at this sort of work, and a man who kills two or three brace before going to sleep has had a very splendid night’s shooting.

CHAPTER IX.

I had always been in the habit of amusing myself by sketching in my leisure moments, especially in the middle of the day, for an hour or so after dinner, when all hands were taking a rest—“nooning,” as the miners call it—lying in the shade, in the full enjoyment of their pipes, or taking a nap. My sketches were much sought after, and on Sundays I was beset by men begging me to do something for them. Every man wanted a sketch of his claim, or his cabin, or some spot with which he identified himself; and as they all offered to pay very handsomely, I was satisfied that I could make paper and pencil much more profitable tools to work with than pick and shovel.

My new pursuit had the additional attraction of affording me an opportunity of gratifying the desire which I had long felt of wandering over the mines, and seeing all the various kinds of diggings, and the strange specimens of human nature to be found in them.

I sent to Sacramento for a fresh supply of drawing-paper, for which I had only to pay the moderate sum of two dollars and a half (ten shillings sterling) a sheet; and finding my old brother-miners very liberal patrons of the fine arts, I remained some time in the neighbourhood actively engaged with my pencil.

I then had occasion to return to Hangtown. On my arrival there, I went as usual to the cabin of my friend the doctor, which I found in a pretty mess. The ground on which some of the houses were built had turned out exceedingly rich; and thinking that he might be as lucky as his neighbours, the doctor had got a party of six miners to work the inside of his cabin on half shares. He was to have half the gold taken out, as the rights of property in any sort of house or habitation in the mines extend to the mineral wealth below it. In his cabin were two large holes, six feet square and about seven deep; in each of these were three miners, picking and shovelling, or washing the dirt in rockers with the water pumped out of the holes. When one place had been worked out, the dirt was all shovelled back into the hole, and another one commenced alongside of it. They took about a fortnight in this way to work all the floor of the cabin, and found it very rich.

There was a young Southerner in Hangtown at this time, who had brought one of his slaves with him to California. They worked and lived together, master and man sharing equally the labours and hardships of the mines.

One night the slave dreamed that they had been working the inside of a certain cabin in the street, and had taken out a great pile of gold. He told his master in the morning, but neither of them thought much of it, as such golden dreams are by no means uncommon among the miners. A few nights afterwards, however, he had precisely the same dream, and was so convinced that their fortune lay waiting for them under this particular cabin, that he succeeded at last in persuading his master to believe it also. He said nothing to any one about the dream, but made some pretext for wishing to become the owner of the cabin, and finally succeeded in buying it. He and his slave immediately moved in, and set to work digging up the earthen floor, and the dream proved to be so far true, that before they had worked all the ground they had taken out twenty thousand dollars.

There were many slaves in various parts of the mines working with their masters, and I knew frequent instances of their receiving their freedom. Some slaves I have also seen left in the mines by their masters, working faithfully to make money enough wherewith to buy themselves. Of course, as California is a free State, a slave, when once taken there by his master, became free by law; but no man would bring a slave to the country, unless one on whose fidelity he could depend.

Niggers, in some parts of the mines, were pretty numerous, though by no means forming so large a proportion of the population as in the Atlantic States. As miners they were proverbially lucky, but they were also inveterate gamblers, and did not long remain burdened with their unwonted riches.

In the mines the Americans seemed to exhibit more tolerance of negro blood than is usual in the States—not that negroes were allowed to sit at table with white men, or considered to be at all on an equality, but, owing partly to the exigencies of the unsettled state of society, and partly, no doubt, to the important fact, that a nigger’s dollars were as good as any others, the Americans overcame their prejudices so far that negroes were permitted to lose their money in the gambling rooms; and in the less frequented drinking-shops they might be seen receiving drinks at the hands of white bar-keepers. In a town or camp of any size there was always a “nigger boarding-house,” kept, of course, by a darky, for the special accommodation of coloured people; but in places where there was no such institution, or at wayside houses, when a negro wanted accommodation, he waited till the company had finished their meal and left the table before he ventured to sit down. I have often, on such occasions, seen the white waiter, or the landlord, when he filled that office himself, serving a nigger with what he wanted without apparently doing any violence to his feelings.

A very striking proof was seen, in this matter of waiting, of the revolution which California life caused in the feelings and occupations of the inhabitants. The Americans have an intense feeling of repugnance to any kind of menial service, and consider waiting at table as quite degrading to a free and enlightened citizen. In the United States there is hardly such a thing to be found as a native-born American waiting at table. Such service is always performed by negroes, Irishmen, or Germans; but in California, in the mines at least, it was very different. The almighty dollar exerted a still more powerful influence than in the old States, for it overcame all pre-existing false notions of dignity. The principle was universally admitted and acted on, that no honest occupation was derogatory, and no question of dignity interfered to prevent a man from employing himself in any way by which it suited his convenience to make his money. It was nothing uncommon to see men of refinement and education keeping restaurants or roadside houses, and waiting on any ragamuffin who chose to patronise them, with as much empressement as an English waiter who expects his customary coppers. But as no one considered himself demeaned by his occupation, neither was there any assumption of a superiority which was not allowed to exist; and whatever were their relative positions, men treated each other with an equal amount of deference.

After being detained a few days in Hangtown waiting for letters from San Francisco, I set out for Nevada City, about seventy miles north, intending from there to travel up the Yuba River, and see what was to be seen in that part of the mines.

My way lay through Middletown, the scene of my former mining exploits, and from that through a small village, called Cold Springs, to Caloma, the place where gold was first discovered. It lies at the base of high mountains, on the south fork of the American River. There were a few very neat well-painted houses in the village; but as the diggings in the neighbourhood were not particularly good, there was little life or animation about the place; in fact, it was the dullest mining town in the whole country.

The first discovery of gold was accidentally made at this spot by some workmen in the employment of Colonel Sutter, while digging a race to convey water to a saw-mill. Colonel Sutter, a Swiss by birth, had, some years before, penetrated to California, and there established himself. The fort which he built for protection against the Indians, and in which he resided, is situated a few miles from where Sacramento City now stands.

I dined at Caloma, and proceeded on my way, having a stiff hill to climb to gain the high land lying between me and the middle fork of the American River. Crossing the rivers is the most laborious part of California travelling; they flow so far below the average level of the country, which, though exceedingly rough and hilly, is comparatively easy to travel; but on coming to the brink of this high land, and looking down upon the river thousands of feet below one, the summit of the opposite side appears almost nearer than the river itself, and one longs for the loan of a pair of wings for a few moments to save the toil of descending so far, and having again to climb an equal height to gain such an apparently short distance.

Some miles from Caloma is a very pretty place called Greenwood Valley—a long, narrow, winding valley, with innumerable ravines running into it from the low hills on each side. For several miles I travelled down this valley: the bed of the creek which flowed through it, and all the ravines, had been dug up, and numbers of cabins stood on the hill-sides; but at this season the creek was completely dry, and consequently no mining operations could be carried on. The cabins were all tenantless, and the place looked more desolate than if its solitude had never been disturbed by man.

At the lower end of Greenwood Valley was a small village of the same name, consisting of half-a-dozen cabins, two or three stores, and a hotel. While stopping here for the night, I enjoyed a great treat in the perusal of a number of late newspapers—among others the Illustrated News, containing accounts of the Great Exhibition. In the mines one was apt to get sadly behind in modern history. The Express men in the towns made a business of selling editions of the leading papers of the United States, containing the news of the fortnight, and expressly got up for circulation in California. Of these the most popular with northern men was the New York Herald, and with the southerners the New Orleans Delta. The Illustrated News was also a great favourite, being usually sold at a dollar, while other papers only fetched half that price. But unless one happened to be in some town or village when the mail from the States arrived, there was little chance of ever seeing a paper, as they were all bought up immediately.

I struck the middle fork of the American River at a place called Spanish Bar. The scenery was very grand. Looking down on the river from the summit of the range, it seemed a mere thread winding along the deep chasm formed by the mountains, which were so steep that the pine trees clinging to their sides looked as though they would slip down into the river. The face of the mountain by which I descended was covered with a perfect trellice-work of zigzag trails, so that I could work my way down by long or short tacks as I felt inclined. On the mountain on the opposite side I could see the faint line of the trail which I had to follow; it did not look by any means inviting; and I was thankful that, for the present at any rate, I was going down hill. Walking down a long hill, however, so steep that one dare not run, though not quite such hard work at the time as climbing up, is equally fatiguing in its results, as it shakes one’s knees all to pieces.

I reached the river at last, and, crossing over in a canoe, landed on the “Bar.”

What they call a Bar in California is the flat which is usually found on the convex side of a bend in a river. Such places have nearly always proved very rich, that being the side on which any deposit carried down by the river will naturally lodge, while the opposite bank is generally steep and precipitous, and contains little or no gold. Indeed, there are not many exceptions to the rule that, in a spot where one bank of a river affords good diggings, the other side is not worth working.

The largest camps or villages on the rivers are on the bars, and take their names from them.

The nomenclature of the mines is not very choice or elegant. The rivers all retain the names given to them by the Spaniards, but every little creek, flat, and ravine, besides of course the towns and villages which have been called into existence, have received their names at the hands of the first one or two miners who have happened to strike the diggings. The individual pioneer has seldom shown much invention or originality in his choice of a name; in most cases he has either immortalised his own by tacking “ville” or “town” to the end of it, or has more modestly chosen the name of some place in his native State; but a vast number of places have been absurdly named from some trifling incident connected with their first settlement; such as Shirt Tail Cañon, Whisky Gulch, Port Wine Diggins, Humbug Flat, Murderer’s Bar, Flapjack Canon, Yankee Jim’s, Jackass Gulch, and hundreds of others with equally ridiculous names.

Spanish Bar was about half a mile in length, and three or four hundred yards wide. The whole place was honeycombed with the holes in which the miners were at work; all the trees had been cut down, and there was nothing but the red shirts of the miners to relieve the dazzling whiteness of the heaps of stones and gravel which reflected the fierce rays of the sun, and made the extreme heat doubly severe.

At the foot of the mountain, as if they had been pushed back as far as possible off the diggings, stood a row of booths and tents, most of them of a very ragged and worn-out appearance. I made for the one which looked most imposing—a canvass edifice, which, from the huge sign all along the front, assumed to be the “United States” Hotel. It was not far from twelve o’clock, the universal dinner-hour in the mines; so I lighted my pipe, and lay down in the shade to compose myself for the great event.

The American system of using hotels as regular boarding-houses prevails also in California. The hotels in the mines are really boarding-houses, for it is on the number of their boarders they depend. The transient custom of travellers is merely incidental. The average rate of board per week at these institutions was twelve or fifteen dollars, and the charge for a single meal was a dollar, or a dollar and a half.

The “United States” seemed to have a pretty good run of business. As the hour of noon (feeding time) approached, the miners began to congregate in the bar-room; many of them took advantage of the few minutes before dinner to play cards, while the rest looked on, or took gin cocktails to whet their appetites. At last there could not have been less than sixty or seventy miners assembled in the bar-room, which was a small canvass enclosure about twenty feet square. On one side was a rough wooden door communicating with the salle à manger; to get as near to this as possible was the great object, and there was a press against it like that at the pit door of a theatre on a benefit night.

As twelve o’clock struck the door was drawn aside, displaying the banqueting hall, an apartment somewhat larger than the bar-room, and containing two long tables well supplied with fresh beef, potatoes, beans, pickles, and salt pork. As soon as the door was opened there was a shout, a rush, a scramble, and a loud clatter of knives and forks, and in the course of a very few minutes fifty or sixty men had finished their dinner. Of course many more rushed into the dining-room than could find seats, and the disappointed ones came out again looking rather foolish, but they “guessed there would be plenty to eat at the second table.”

Having had some experience of such places, I had intended being one of the second detachment myself, and so I guessed likewise that there would be plenty to eat at the second table, and “cal’lated” also that I would have more time to eat it in than at the first.

We were not kept long waiting. In an incredibly short space of time the company began to return to the bar-room, some still masticating a mouthful of food, others picking their teeth with their fingers, or with sharp-pointed bowie-knives, and the rest, with a most provokingly complacent expression about their eyes, making horrible motions with their jaws, as if they were wiping out their mouths with their tongues, determined to enjoy the last lingering after-taste of the good things they had been eating—rather a disgusting process to a spectator at any time, but particularly aggravating to hungry men waiting for their dinner.

When they had all left the dining-room, the door was again closed while the table was being relaid. In the mean time there had been constant fresh arrivals, and there were now almost as many waiting for the second table as there had been for the first. A crowd very quickly began to collect round the door, and I saw that to dine at number two, as I had intended, I must enter into the spirit of the thing; so I elbowed my way into the crowd, and secured a pretty good position behind a tall Kentuckian, who I knew would clear the way before me. Very soon the door was opened, when in we rushed pell-mell. I laboured under the disadvantage of not knowing the diggings; being a stranger, I did not know the lay of the tables, or whereabouts the joints were placed; but immediately on entering I caught sight of a good-looking roast of beef at the far end of one of the tables, at which I made a desperate charge. I was not so green as to lose time in trying to get my legs over the bench and sit down, and in so doing perhaps be crowded out altogether; but I seized a knife and fork, with which I took firm hold of my prize, and occupying as much space as possible with my elbows, I gradually insinuated myself into my seat. Without letting go the beef, I then took a look round, and had the gratification of seeing about a dozen men leaving the room, with a most ludicrous expression of disappointment and hope long deferred. I have no doubt that when they got into the bar-room they guessed there would be lots to eat at table number three; I hope there was. I know there was plenty at number two; but it was a “grab game”—every man for himself. If I had depended on the waiter getting me a slice of roast beef, I should have had the hungry number threes down upon me before I had commenced my dinner.

Good-humour, however, was the order of the day; conversation, of course, was out of the question; but if you asked a man to pass you a dish, he did do so with pleasure, devoting one hand to your service, while with his knife or fork, as it might be, in the other, he continued to convey the contents of his plate to their ultimate destination. I must say that a knife was a favourite weapon with my convives, and in wielding it they displayed considerable dexterity, using it to feed themselves with such things as most people would eat with a spoon, if eating for a wager, or with a fork if only eating for ordinary purposes.

After dinner a smart-looking young gentleman opened a monte bank in the bar-room, laying out five or six hundred dollars on the table as his bank. For half an hour or so he did a good business, when the miners began to drop off to resume their work.

CHAPTER X.

The ground undulated like the surface of the ocean after a heavy gale of wind, and as I rose over the top of one of the waves, I got a glimpse of a log-cabin a few hundred yards ahead of me, which, seen through the lofty colonnade of stately pines, appeared no bigger than a rat-trap.

As I approached, I found it was the Grizzly-Bear House. There could be no mistake about it, for a strip of canvass, on which “The Grizzly-Bear House” was painted in letters a foot and a half high, was stretched along the front of the cabin over the door; and that there might be no doubt as to the meaning of this announcement, the idea was further impressed upon one by the skin of an enormous grizzly bear, which, spread out upon the wall, seemed to be taking the whole house into its embrace.

I found half-a-dozen men standing before the door, amusing themselves by shooting at a mark with their rifles. The distance was only about a hundred yards, but even at that distance, when it comes to hitting a card nailed to a pine-tree nine times out of ten, it is pretty good shooting.

Before dark, four or five other travellers arrived, and about a dozen of us sat down to supper together. The house was nothing more than a large log-cabin. At one end was the bar, a narrow board three feet long, behind which were two or three decanters and some kegs of liquor, a few cigars in tumblers, some odd bottles of champagne, and a box of tobacco.

A couple of benches and a table occupied the centre of the house, and sacks of flour and other provisions stood in the corners. Out in the forest, behind the cabin, was a cooking-stove, with a sort of awning over it. This was the kitchen; and certainly the cook could not complain of want of room; but, judging from our supper, he was not called upon to go through any very difficult manœuvres in the practice of his art. He knocked off his rifle practice about half an hour before supper to go and light the kitchen fire, and the fruits of his subsequent labours appeared in a large potful of tea and a lot of beefsteaks. The bread was uncommonly stale, from which I presumed that, when he did bake, he baked enough to last for about a week.

After supper, every man lighted his pipe, and though all were sufficiently talkative, the attention of the whole party became very soon monopolised by two individuals, who were decidedly the lions of the evening. One of them was a man from Illinois, who had been in the Mexican war, and who no doubt thought he might have been a General Scott, if he had only had the opportunity of distinguishing himself. He commented on the tactics of the generals as if he knew more of warfare than any of them; and the awful yarns he told of how he and the American army had whipped the Mexicans, and given them “particular hell,” as he called it, was enough to make a civilian’s hair stand on end. Some of his hearers swallowed every word he said, without even making a wry face at it; but as he tried to make out that all the victories were gained by the Illinois regiment, in which he served as full private, two or three of the party, who knew something of the history of the war, and came from other States of the Union, had no idea of letting Illinois have all the glory of the achievements, and disputed the correctness of his statements. Illinois, however, was too many for them; he was not to be stumped in that way; he had a stock of authentic facts on hand for any emergency, with which he corroborated all his previous assertions. The resistance he met with only stimulated him to greater efforts, and the more one of his facts was doubted, the more incredible was the next; till at last he detailed his confidential conversations with General Taylor, and made himself out to be a sort of a fellow who swept Mexicans off the face of the earth as a common man would kill mosquitoes.

He did not have all the talking to himself, however. One of the men who kept the house was a bear-hunter by profession, and he had not hunted grizzlies for nothing. He had tales to tell of desperate encounters and hairbreadth escapes, to which the adventures of Baron Munchausen were not a circumstance. He was a dry stringy-looking man, with light hair and keen grey eyes. His features were rather handsome, and he had a pleasing expression; but he was so dried up and tanned by exposure and the hard life he led, that his face conveyed no idea of flesh. One would rather have expected, on cutting into him, to find that he was composed of gutta-percha, or something of that sort, and only coloured on the outside. He and Illinois listened to each other’s stories with silent contempt; in fact, they pretended not to listen at all, but at the same time each watched intently for the slightest halt in the other’s narrative; and while the Illinois man was only taking breath during some desperate struggle with the Mexicans, the hunter in a moment plunged right into the middle of a bear-story, and was half eaten up by a grizzly before we knew what he was talking about; and as soon as ever that bear was disposed of, Illinois immediately went on with his story as if he had never been interrupted.

The hunter had rather the best of it; his yarns were uncommonly tough and hard of digestion, but there were no historical facts on record to bring against him. He had it all his own way, for the only witnesses of his exploits were the grizzlies, and he always managed to dispose of them very effectually by finishing their career along with his story. He showed several scars on different parts of his gutta-percha person which he received from the paws of the grizzlies, and he was not the sort of customer whose veracity one would care to question, especially as implicit faith so much increased one’s interest in his adventures. One man nearly got into a scrape by laughing at the most thrilling part of one of his best stories. After firing twice at a bear without effect, the bear, infuriated by the balls planted in his carcass, was rushing upon him. He took to flight, and, loading as he ran, he turned and put a ball into the bear’s left eye. The bear winked a good deal, but did not seem to mind it much—he only increased his pace; so the hunter, loading again, turned round and put a ball into his right eye; whereupon the bear, now winking considerably with both eyes, put his nose to the ground, and began to run him down by scent. At this critical moment, a great stupid-looking lout, who had been sitting all night with his eyes and mouth wide open, sucking in and swallowing everything that was said, had the temerity to laugh incredulously. The hunter flared up in a moment. “What are you a-laafin’ at?” he said. “D’ye mean to say I lie?”

“Oh,” said the other, “if you say it was so, I suppose it’s all right; you ought to know best. But I warn’t laafin’ at you; I was laafin’ at the bar.”

“What do you know about bars?” said the hunter, “Did you ever kill a bar?”

The poor fellow had never killed a “bar,” so the hunter snuffed him out with a look of utter contempt and pity, and went on triumphantly with his story, which ended in his getting up a tree, where he sat and peppered the bear as he went smelling round the stump, till he at last fell mortally wounded, with I don’t know how many balls in his body.

The grizzlies are the commonest kind of bear found in California, and are very large animals, weighing sometimes sixteen or eighteen hundred pounds.

Hunting them is rather dangerous sport, as they are extremely tenacious of life, and when wounded invariably show fight. But unless molested they do not often attack a man; in fact, they are hardly ever seen on the trails during the day. At night, however, they prowl about, and carry off whatever comes in their way. They had walked off with a young calf from this ranch the night before, and the hunter was going out the next day to wreak his vengeance upon them. A grizzly is well worth killing, as he fetches a hundred dollars or more, according to his weight. The meat is excellent, but it needs to be well spiced, for in process of cooking it becomes saturated with bear’s grease. In the mines, however, pomatum is an article unknown, and so no unpleasantly greasy ideas occur to one while dining off a good piece of grizzly bear.

About ten o’clock, at the conclusion of a bear story, there was a general move towards one corner of the cabin where there were a lot of rifles, and where every man had thrown his roll of blankets. The floor was swept, and each one, choosing his own location, spread his blankets and lay down. Some slept in their boots, while others took them off, to put under their heads by way of pillows. I was one of the latter number, being rather partial to pillows; and selecting a spot for my head, where it would be as far from other heads as possible, I lay down, and stretching out my feet promiscuously, I was very soon in the land of dreams, where I went through the whole Mexican campaign, and killed more “bars” than ever the hunter had seen in his life.

People do not lie a-bed in the morning in California; perhaps they would not anywhere, if they had no better beds than we had; so before daylight there was a general resurrection, and a very general ablution was performed in a tin basin which stood on a keg outside the cabin, alongside of which was a barrel of water. Over the basin hung a very small looking-glass, in which one could see one eye at a time; and attached to it by a long string was a comb for the use of those gentlemen who did not travel with their dressing-cases.

Some of the party, the warrior among the number, commenced the day by taking a gin cocktail, the hunter acting as bar-keeper, while his partner the cook, who had been up an hour before any of us chopping wood and lighting a fire, was laying the table for breakfast.

Breakfast was an affair of but very few moments, and as soon as it was over, I set out in company with three or four of the party, who were going the same way.

We crossed the north fork of the American River at Kelly’s Bar, a very rocky little place, covered with a number of dilapidated tents. We had the usual mountains to descend and ascend in crossing the river, but on gaining the summit we found ourselves again in a beautiful rolling country. Not far from the river was a very romantic little place called Illinoistown, consisting of three shanties and a saw-mill. The pine-trees in the neighbourhood were of an enormous size, and were being fast converted into lumber, which was in great demand for various mining operations, and sold at 120 dollars per thousand feet. We fared sumptuously on stewed squirrels at a solitary shanty in the forest a few miles farther on.

These little wayside inns, or “ranches,” as they are usually called in the mines, are generally situated in a spot which offers some capabilities of cultivation, and where water, the great desideratum in the mountains, is to be had all the year. The owners employ themselves in fencing-in and clearing the land, and by degrees give the place an appearance of comfort and civilisation. One finds such places in all the different stages of improvement, from a small tent or log cabin, with the wild forest around it as yet undisturbed, to good frame-houses with two or three rooms, a boarded floor, and windows, and surrounded by several acres of cleared land under cultivation.

Oats and barley are the principal crops raised in the mountains. In some of the little valleys a species of wild oats, which makes excellent hay, grows very luxuriantly. In passing through one such place, where the grasshoppers were in clouds, we found a number of Indian squaws catching them with small nets attached to a short stick, in the style of an angler’s landing-net. I believe they bruise them and knead them into a paste, somewhat of the consistency of potted shrimps; it may be as palatable also, but I cannot speak from experience on that point. My companions, as we travelled on, branched off one by one to their respective destinations, and I was again alone when I got to the ranch where I intended to pass the night. It was somewhat the same style of thing as the Grizzly-Bear House, but the house was larger, and the accommodation more luxurious, inasmuch as we had canvass bunks or shelves to sleep upon.

I went on next day along with a young miner from Georgia, who was also bound for Nevada. We dined at a place where we crossed Bear River; and a villanous bad dinner it was—nothing but bad salt pork, bad pickled onions, and bad bread.

On resuming our journey, we were joined by a man who said he always liked to have company on that road. Several robberies and murders had been committed on it of late, and he very kindly pointed out to us, as we passed it, the exact spot where, a few days before, one man had been shot through the head, and another through the hat. One was robbed of seventy-five cents, the other of eight hundred dollars.

It was a very romantic place, and well calculated for the operations of the gentlemen of the road, being a little hollow darkened by the spreading branches of a grove of oak-trees; the underwood was thick and very high, and as the trail twisted round trees and bushes, a traveller could not see more than a few feet before or behind him. We had our revolvers in readiness; but I was not very apprehensive, as three men, all showing pistols in their belts, are rather more than those ruffians generally care to tackle.

We arrived at Nevada City between five and six o’clock, when I took a look round to find the most likely place for a good supper, being particularly ravenous after the long walk and the salt-pork dinner. I found a house bearing the sign of “Hôtel de Paris,” and my choice was made at once. As I had half an hour to wait for supper, I strolled about the town to see what sort of a place it was. It is beautifully situated on the hills bordering a small creek, and has once been surrounded by a forest of magnificent pine-trees, which, however, had been made to become useful instead of ornamental, and nothing now remained to show that they had existed but the numbers of stumps all over the hill-sides. The bed of the creek, which had once flowed past the town, was now choked up with heaps of “trailings”—the washed dirt from which the gold has been extracted—the white colour of the dirt rendering it still more unsightly. All the water of the creek was distributed among a number of small troughs, carried along the steep banks on either side at different elevations, for the purpose of supplying various quartz-mills and long-toms.

The town itself—or, I should say, the “City,” for from the moment of its birth it has been called Nevada City—is, like all mining towns, a mixture of staring white frame-houses, dingy old canvass booths, and log-cabins.

The only peculiarity about the miners was the white mud with which they were bespattered, especially those working in underground diggings, who were easily distinguished by the quantity of dry white mud on the tops of their hats.

The supper at the Hôtel de Paris was the best-got-up thing of the kind I had sat down to for some months. We began with soup—rather flimsy stuff, but pretty good—then bouilli, followed by filet-de-bœuf, with cabbage, carrots, turnips, and onions; after that came what the landlord called a “god-dam rosbif,” with green pease, and the whole wound up with a salad of raw cabbage, a cup of good coffee, and cognac. I did impartial justice to every department, and rose from table powerfully refreshed.

The company were nearly all French miners, among whom was a young Frenchman whom I had known in San Francisco, and whom I hardly recognised in his miner’s costume.

We passed the evening together in some of the gambling rooms, where we heard pretty good music; and as there were no sleeping quarters to be had at the house where I dined, I went to an American hotel close to it. It was in the usual style of a boarding-house in the mines, but it was a three-decker. All round the large sleeping-apartment were three tiers of canvass shelves, partitioned into spaces six feet long, on one of which I laid myself out, choosing the top tier in case of accidents.

Next door was a large thin wooden building, in which a theatrical company were performing. They were playing Richard, and I could hear every word as distinctly as if I had been in the stage-box. I could even fancy I saw King Dick rolling his eyes about like a man in a fit, when he shouted for “A horse! a horse!” The fight between Richard and Richmond was a very tame affair; they hit hard while they were at it, but it was too soon over. It was one-two, one-two, a thrust, and down went Dick. I heard him fall, and could hear him afterwards gasping for breath and scuffling about on the stage in his dying agonies.

After King Richard was disposed of, the orchestra, which seemed to consist of two fiddles, favoured us with a very miscellaneous piece of music. There was then an interlude performed by the audience, hooting, yelling, whistling, and stamping their feet; and that being over, the curtain rose, and we had Bombastes Furioso. It was very creditably performed, but, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, it did not sound to me nearly so absurd as the tragedy.

Some half-dozen men, the only occupants of the room besides myself, had been snoring comfortably all through the performances, and now about a dozen more came in and rolled themselves on to their respective shelves. They had been at the theatre, but I am sure they had not enjoyed it so much as I did.

CHAPTER XI.