Three years in California [1851-54]

CHAPTER VI.

The diggings here had been exceedingly rich—men used to pick the chunks of gold out of the crevices of the rocks in the ravines with no other tool than a bowie-knife; but these days had passed, and now the whole surface of the surrounding country showed the amount of real hard work which had been done. The beds of the numerous ravines which wrinkle the faces of the hills, the bed of the creek, and all the little flats alongside of it, were a confused mass of heaps of dirt and piles of stones lying around the innumerable holes, about six feet square and five or six feet deep, from which they had been thrown out. The original course of the creek was completely obliterated, its waters being distributed into numberless little ditches, and from them conducted into the “long toms” of the miners through canvass hoses, looking like immensely long slimy sea-serpents.

The number of bare stumps of what had once been gigantic pine trees, dotted over the naked hill-sides surrounding the town, showed how freely the axe had been used, and to what purpose was apparent in the extent of the town itself, and in the numerous log-cabins scattered over the hills, in situations apparently chosen at the caprice of the owners, but in reality with a view to be near to their diggings, and at the same time to be within a convenient distance of water and firewood.

Along the whole length of the creek, as far as one could see, on the banks of the creek, in the ravines, in the middle of the principal and only street of the town, and even inside some of the houses, were parties of miners, numbering from three or four to a dozen, all hard at work, some laying into it with picks, some shovelling the dirt into the “long toms,” or with long-handled shovels washing the dirt thrown in, and throwing out the stones, while others were working pumps or baling water out of the holes with buckets. There was a continual noise and clatter, as mud, dirt, stones, and water were thrown about in all directions; and the men, dressed in ragged clothes and big boots, wielding picks and shovels, and rolling big rocks about, were all working as if for their lives, going into it with a will, and a degree of energy, not usually seen among labouring men. It was altogether a scene which conveyed the idea of hard work in the fullest sense of the words, and in comparison with which a gang of railway navvies would have seemed to be merely a party of gentlemen amateurs playing at working pour passer le temps.

A stroll through the village revealed the extent to which the ordinary comforts of life were attainable. The gambling houses, of which there were three or four, were of course the largest and most conspicuous buildings; their mirrors, chandeliers, and other decorations, suggesting a style of life totally at variance with the outward indications of everything around them.

The street itself was in many places knee-deep in mud, and was plentifully strewed with old boots, hats, and shirts, old sardine-boxes, empty tins of preserved oysters, empty bottles, worn-out pots and kettles, old ham-bones, broken picks and shovels, and other rubbish too various to particularise. Here and there, in the middle of the street, was a square hole about six feet deep, in which one miner was digging, while another was baling the water out with a bucket, and a third, sitting alongside the heap of dirt which had been dug up, was washing it in a rocker. Waggons, drawn by six or eight mules or oxen, were navigating along the street, or discharging their strangely-assorted cargoes at the various stores; and men in picturesque rags, with large muddy boots, long beards, and brown faces, were the only inhabitants to be seen.

There were boarding-houses on the table-d’hôte principle, in each of which forty or fifty hungry miners sat down three times a-day to an oilcloth-covered table, and in the course of about three minutes surfeited themselves on salt pork, greasy steaks, and pickles. There were also two or three “hotels,” where much the same sort of fare was to be had, with the extra luxuries of a table-cloth and a superior quality of knives and forks.

The stores were curious places. There was no specialty about them—everything was to be found in them which it could be supposed that any one could possibly want, excepting fresh beef (there was a butcher who monopolised the sale of that article).

On entering a store, one would find the storekeeper in much the same style of costume as the miners, very probably sitting on an empty keg at a rickety little table, playing “seven up” for “the liquor” with one of his customers.

The counter served also the purpose of a bar, and behind it was the usual array of bottles and decanters, while on shelves above them was an ornamental display of boxes of sardines, and brightly-coloured tins of preserved meats and vegetables with showy labels, interspersed with bottles of champagne and strangely-shaped bottles of exceedingly green pickles, the whole being arranged with some degree of taste.

Goods and provisions of every description were stowed away promiscuously all round the store, in the middle of which was invariably a small table with a bench, or some empty boxes and barrels for the miners to sit on while they played cards, spent their money in brandy and oysters, and occasionally got drunk.

The clothing trade was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews, who are very numerous in California, and devote their time and energies exclusively to supplying their Christian brethren with the necessary articles of wearing apparel.

In travelling through the mines from one end to the other, I never saw a Jew lift a pick or shovel to do a single stroke of work, or, in fact, occupy himself in any other way than in selling slops. While men of all classes and of every nation showed such versatility in betaking themselves to whatever business or occupation appeared at the time to be most advisable, without reference to their antecedents, and in a country where no man, to whatever class of society he belonged, was in the least degree ashamed to roll up his sleeves and dig in the mines for gold, or to engage in any other kind of manual labour, it was a very remarkable fact that the Jews were the only people among whom this was not observable.

They were very numerous—so much so, that the business to which they confined themselves could hardly have yielded to every individual a fair average California rate of remuneration. But they seemed to be proof against all temptation to move out of their own limited sphere of industry, and of course, concentrated upon one point as their energies were, they kept pace with the go-ahead spirit of the times. Clothing of all sorts could be bought in any part of the mines more cheaply than in San Francisco, where rents were so very high that retail prices of everything were most exorbitant; and scarcely did twenty or thirty miners collect in any out-of-the-way place, upon newly discovered diggings, before the inevitable Jew slop-seller also made his appearance, to play his allotted part in the newly-formed community.

The Jew slop-shops were generally rattletrap erections about the size of a bathing-machine, so small that one half of the stock had to be displayed suspended from projecting sticks outside. They were filled with red and blue flannel shirts, thick boots, and other articles suited to the wants of the miners, along with Colt’s revolvers and bowie-knives, brass jewellery, and diamonds like young Koh-i-Noors.

Almost every man, after a short residence in California, became changed to a certain extent in his outward appearance. In the mines especially, to the great majority of men, the usual style of dress was one to which they had never been accustomed; and those to whom it might have been supposed such a costume was not so strange, or who were even wearing the old clothes they had brought with them to the country, acquired a certain California air, which would have made them remarkable in whatever part of the world they came from, had they been suddenly transplanted there. But to this rule also the Jews formed a very striking exception. In their appearance there was nothing whatever at all suggestive of California; they were exactly the same unwashed-looking, slobbery, slip-shod individuals that one sees in every seaport town.

During the week, and especially when the miners were all at work, Hangtown was comparatively quiet; but on Sundays it was a very different place. On that day the miners living within eight or ten miles all flocked in to buy provisions for the week—to spend their money in the gambling rooms—to play cards—to get their letters from home—and to refresh themselves, after a week’s labour and isolation in the mountains, in enjoying the excitement of the scene according to their tastes.

The gamblers on Sundays reaped a rich harvest; their tables were thronged with crowds of miners, betting eagerly, and of course losing their money. Many men came in, Sunday after Sunday, and gambled off all the gold they had dug during the week, having to get credit at a store for their next week’s provisions, and returning to their diggings to work for six days in getting more gold, which would all be transferred the next Sunday to the gamblers, in the vain hope of recovering what had been already lost.

The street was crowded all day with miners loafing about from store to store, making their purchases and asking each other to drink, the effects of which began

to be seen at an early hour in the number of drunken men, and the consequent frequency of rows and quarrels. Almost every man wore a pistol or a knife—many wore both—but they were rarely used. The liberal and prompt administration of Lynch law had done a great deal towards checking the wanton and indiscriminate use of these weapons on any slight occasion. The utmost latitude was allowed in the exercise of self-defence. In the case of a row, it was not necessary to wait till a pistol was actually levelled at one’s head—if a man made even a motion towards drawing a weapon, it was considered perfectly justifiable to shoot him first, if possible. The very prevalence of the custom of carrying arms thus in a great measure was a cause of their being seldom used. They were never drawn out of bravado, for when a man once drew his pistol, he had to be prepared to use it, and to use it quickly, or he might expect to be laid low by a ball from his adversary; and again, if he shot a man without sufficient provocation, he was pretty sure of being accommodated with a hempen cravat by Judge Lynch.

The storekeepers did more business on Sundays than in all the rest of the week; and in the afternoon crowds of miners could be seen dispersing over the hills in every direction, laden with the provisions they had been purchasing, chiefly flour, pork, and beans, and perhaps a lump of fresh beef.

There was only one place of public worship in Hangtown at that time, a very neat little wooden edifice, which belonged to some denomination of Methodists, and seemed to be well attended.

There was also a newspaper published two or three times a-week, which kept the inhabitants “posted up” as to what was going on in the world.

The richest deposits of gold were found in the beds and banks of the rivers, creeks, and ravines, in the flats on the convex side of the bends of the streams, and in many of the flats and hollows high up in the mountains. The precious metal was also abstracted from the very hearts of the mountains, through tunnels drifted into them for several hundred yards; and in some places real mining was carried on in the bowels of the earth by means of shafts sunk to the depth of a couple of hundred feet.

The principal diggings in the neighbourhood of Hangtown were surface diggings; but, with the exception of river diggings, every kind of mining operation was to be seen in full force.

The gold is found at various depths from the surface; but the dirt on the bed-rock is the richest, as the gold naturally in time sinks through earth and gravel, till it is arrested in its downward progress by the solid rock.

The diggings here were from four to six or seven feet deep; the layer of “pay-dirt” being about a couple of feet thick on the top of the bed-rock.

I should mention that “dirt” is the word universally used in California to signify the substance dug, earth, clay, gravel, loose slate, or whatever other name might be more appropriate. The miners talk of rich dirt and poor dirt, and of “stripping off” so many feet of “top dirt” before getting to “pay-dirt,” the latter meaning dirt with so much gold in it that it will pay to dig it up and wash it.

The apparatus generally used for washing was a “long tom,” which was nothing more than a wooden trough from twelve to twenty-five feet long, and about a foot wide. At the lower end it widens considerably, and the floor of it is there a sheet of iron pierced with holes half an inch in diameter, under which is placed a flat box a couple of inches deep. The long tom is set at a slight inclination over the place which is to be worked, and a stream of water is kept running through it by means of a hose, the mouth of which is inserted in a dam built for the purpose high enough up the stream to gain the requisite elevation; and while some of the party shovel the dirt into the tom as fast as they can dig it up, one man stands at the lower end stirring up the dirt as it is washed down, separating the stones and throwing them out, while the earth and small gravel falls with the water through the sieve into the “ripple-box.” This box is about five feet long, and is crossed by two partitions. It is also placed at an inclination, so that the water falling into it keeps the dirt loose, allowing the gold and heavy particles to settle to the bottom, while all the lighter stuff washes over the end of the box along with the water. When the day’s work is over, the dirt is taken from the “ripple-box” and is “washed out” in a “wash-pan,” a round tin dish, eighteen inches in diameter, with shelving sides three or four inches deep. In washing out a panful of dirt, it has to be placed in water deep enough to cover it over; the dirt is stirred up with the hands, and the gravel thrown out; the pan is then taken in both hands, and by an indescribable series of manœuvres all the dirt is gradually washed out of it, leaving nothing but the gold and a small quantity of black sand. This black sand is mineral (some oxide or other salt of iron), and is so heavy that it is not possible to wash it all out; it has to be blown out of the gold afterwards when dry.

Another mode of washing dirt, but much more tedious, and consequently only resorted to where a sufficient supply of water for a long tom could not be obtained, was by means of an apparatus called a “rocker” or “cradle.” This was merely a wooden cradle, on the top of which was a sieve. The dirt was put into this, and a miner, sitting alongside of it, rocked the cradle with one hand, while with a dipper in the other he kept baling water on to the dirt. This acted on the same principle as the “tom,” and had formerly been the only contrivance in use; but it was now seldom seen, as the long tom effected such a saving of time and labour. The latter was set immediately over the claim, and the dirt was shovelled into it at once, while a rocker had to be set alongside of the water, and the dirt was carried to it in buckets from the place which was being worked. Three men working together with a rocker—one digging, another carrying the dirt in buckets, and the third rocking the cradle—would wash on an average a hundred bucketfuls of dirt to the man in the course of the day. With a “long tom” the dirt was so easily washed that parties of six or eight could work together to advantage, and four or five hundred bucketfuls of dirt a-day to each one of the party was a usual day’s work.

I met a San Francisco friend in Hangtown practising his profession as a doctor, who very hospitably offered me quarters in his cabin, which I gladly accepted. The accommodation was not very luxurious, being merely six feet of the floor on which to spread my blankets. My host, however, had no better bed himself, and indeed it was as much as most men cared about. Those who were very particular preferred sleeping on a table or a bench when they were to be had; bunks and shelves were also much in fashion; but the difference in comfort was a mere matter of imagination, for mattresses were not known, and an earthen floor was quite as soft as any wooden board. Three or four miners were also inmates of the doctor’s cabin. They were quondam New South Wales squatters, who had been mining for several months in a distant part of the country, and were now going to work a claim about two miles up the creek from Hangtown. As they wanted another hand to work their long tom with them, I very readily joined their party. For several days we worked this place, trudging out to it when it was hardly daylight, taking with us our dinner, which consisted of beefsteaks and bread, and returning to Hangtown about dark; but the claim did not prove rich enough to satisfy us, so we abandoned it, and went “prospecting,” which means looking about for a more likely place.

A “prospecter” goes out with a pick and shovel, and a wash-pan; and to test the richness of a place he digs down till he reaches the dirt in which it may be expected that the gold will be found; and washing out a panful of this, he can easily calculate, from the amount of gold which he finds in it, how much could be taken out in a day’s work. An old miner, looking at the few specks of gold in the bottom of his pan, can tell their value within a few cents; calling it a twelve or a twenty cent “prospect,” as it may be. If, on washing out a panful of dirt, a mere speck of gold remained, just enough to swear by, such dirt was said to have only “the colour,” and was not worth digging. A twelve-cent prospect was considered a pretty good one; but in estimating the probable result of a day’s work, allowance had to be made for the time and labour to be expended in removing top-dirt, and in otherwise preparing the claim for being worked.

To establish one’s claim to a piece of ground, all that was requisite was to leave upon it a pick or shovel, or other mining tool. The extent of ground allowed to each individual varied in different diggings from ten to thirty feet square, and was fixed by the miners themselves, who also made their own laws, defining the rights and duties of those holding claims; and any dispute on such subjects was settled by calling together a few of the neighbouring miners, who would enforce the due observance of the laws of the diggings. After prospecting for two or three days, we concluded to take up a claim near a small settlement called Middletown, two or three miles distant from Hangtown. It was situated by the side of a small creek, in a rolling hilly country, and consisted of about a dozen cabins, one of which was a store supplied with flour, pork, tobacco, and other necessaries.

We found near our claim a very comfortable cabin, which the owner had deserted, and in which we established ourselves. We had plenty of firewood and water close to us, and being only two miles from Hangtown, we kept ourselves well supplied with fresh beef. We cooked our “dampers” in New South Wales fashion, and lived on the fat of the land, our bill of fare being beefsteaks, damper, and tea for breakfast, dinner, and supper. A damper is a very good thing, but not commonly seen in California, excepting among men from New South Wales. A quantity of flour and water, with a pinch or two of salt, is worked into a dough, and, raking down a good hardwood fire, it is placed on the hot ashes, and then smothered in more hot ashes to the depth of two or three inches, on the top of which is placed a quantity of the still burning embers. A very little practice enables one to judge from the feel of the crust when it is sufficiently cooked. The great advantage of a damper is, that it retains a certain amount of moisture, and is as good when a week old as when fresh baked. It is very solid and heavy, and a little of it goes a great way, which of itself is no small recommendation when one eats only to live.

Another sort of bread we very frequently made by filling a frying-pan with dough, and sticking it up on end to roast before the fire.

The Americans do not understand dampers. They either bake bread, using saleratus to make it rise, or else they make flapjacks, which are nothing more than pancakes made of flour and water, and are a very good substitute for bread when one is in a hurry, as they are made in a moment.

As for our beefsteaks, they could not be beat anywhere. A piece of an old iron-hoop, twisted into a serpentine form and laid on the fire, made a first-rate gridiron, on which every man cooked his steak to his own taste. In the matter of tea I am afraid we were dreadfully extravagant, throwing it into the pot in handfuls. It is a favourite beverage in the mines—morning, noon, and night—and at no time is it more refreshing than in the extreme heat of mid-day.

In the cabin two bunks had been fitted up, one above the other, made of clapboards laid crossways, but they were all loose and warped. I tried to sleep on them one night, but it was like sleeping on a gridiron; the smooth earthen floor was a much more easy couch.

CHAPTER VII.

They are nearly black, and are exceedingly ugly, with long hair, which they cut straight across the forehead just above the eyes. They had learned the value of gold, and might be seen occasionally in unfrequented places washing out a panful of dirt, but they had no idea of systematic work. What little gold they got, they spent in buying fresh beef and clothes. They dress very fantastically. Some, with no other garment than an old dress-coat buttoned up to the throat, or perhaps with only a hat and a pair of boots, think themselves very well got up, and look with great contempt on their neighbours whose wardrobe is not so extensive. A coat with showy linings to the sleeves is a great prize; it is worn inside out to produce a better effect, and pantaloons are frequently worn, or rather carried, with the legs tied round the waist. They seem to think it impossible to have too much of a good thing; and any man so fortunate as to be the possessor of duplicates of any article of clothing, puts them on one over the other, piling hat upon hat after the manner of “Old clo.”

The men are very tenacious of their dignity, and carry nothing but their bows and arrows, while the attendant squaws are loaded down with a large creel on their back, which is supported by a band passing across the forehead, and is the receptacle for all the rubbish they pick up. The squaws have also, of course, to carry the babies; which, however, are not very troublesome, as they are wrapped up in papooses like those of the North American Indians, though of infinitely inferior workmanship.

They are very fond of dogs, and have always at their heels a number of the most wretchedly thin, mangy, starved-looking curs, of a dirty brindled colour, something the shape of a greyhound, but only about half his size. A strong mutual attachment exists between the dogs and their masters; but the affection of the latter does not move them to bestow much food on their canine friends, who live in a state of chronic starvation; every bone seems ready to break through the confinement of the skin, and their whole life is merely a slow death from inanition. They have none of the life or spirit of other dogs, but crawl along as if every step was to be their last, with a look of most humble resignation, and so conscious of their degradation that they never presume to hold any communion with their civilised fellow-creatures. It is very likely that canine nature cannot stand such food as the Indians are content to live upon, and of which acorns and grasshoppers are the staple articles. There are plenty of small animals on which one would think that a dog could live very well, if he would only take the trouble to catch them; but it would seem that a dog, as long as he remains a companion of man, is an animal quite incapable of providing for himself.

A failure of the acorn crop is to the Indians a national calamity, as they depend on it in a great measure for their subsistence during the winter. In the fall of the year the squaws are all busily employed in gathering acorns, to be afterwards stored in small conical stacks, and covered with a sort of wicker-work. They are prepared for food by being made into a paste, very much of the colour and consistency of opium. Such horrid-looking stuff it is, that I never ventured to taste it; but I believe that the bitter and astringent taste of the raw material is in no way modified by the process of manufacture.

As is the case with most savages, the digger Indians show remarkable instances of ingenuity in some of their contrivances, and great skill in the manufacture of their weapons. Their bows and arrows are very good specimens of workmanship. The former are shorter than the bows used in this country, but resemble them in every other particular, even in the shape of the pieces of horn at the ends. The head of the arrow is of the orthodox cut, the three feathers being placed in the usual position; the point, however, is the most elaborate part. About three inches of the end is of a heavier wood than the rest of the arrow, being very neatly spliced on with thin tendons. The point itself is a piece of flint chipped down into a flat diamond shape, about the size of a diamond on a playing-card; the edges are very sharp, and are notched to receive the tendons with which it is firmly secured to the arrow.

The women make a kind of wicker-work basket of a conical form, so closely woven as to be perfectly water-tight, and in these they have an ingenious method of boiling water, by heating a number of stones in the fire, and throwing a succession of them into the water till the temperature is raised to boiling point.

We had a visit at our cabin one Sunday from an Indian and his squaw. She was such a particularly ugly specimen of human nature, that I made her sit down, and proceeded to take a sketch of her, to the great delight of her dutiful husband, who looked over my shoulder and reported progress to her. I offered her the sketch when I had finished, but after admiring herself in the bottom of a new tin pannikin, the only substitute for a looking-glass which I could find, and comparing her own beautiful face with her portrait, she was by no means pleased, and would have nothing to do with it. I suppose she thought I had not done her justice; which was very likely, for no doubt our ideas of female beauty must have differed very materially.

Not many days after we had settled ourselves at Middletown, news was brought into Hangtown that a white man had been killed by Indians at a place called Johnson’s Ranch, about twelve miles distant. A party of three or four men immediately went out to recover the body, and to “hunt” the Indians. They found the half-burned remains of the murdered man; but were attacked by a large number of Indians, and had to retire, one of the party being wounded by an Indian arrow. On their return to Hangtown there was great excitement; about thirty men, mostly from the Western States, turned out with their long rifles, intending, in the first place, to visit the camp of the Middletown tribe, and to take from them their rifles, which they were reported to have bought from the storekeeper there, and after that to lynch the storekeeper himself for selling arms to the Indians, which is against the law; for however friendly the Indians may be, they trade them off to hostile tribes.

It happened, however, that on this particular day a neighbouring tribe had come over to the camp of the Middletown Indians for the purpose of having a fandango together; and when they saw this armed party coming upon them, they immediately saluted them with a shower of arrows and rifle-balls, which damaged a good many hats and shirts, without wounding any one. The miners returned their fire, killing a few of the Indians; but their party being too small to fight against such odds, they were compelled to retreat; and as the storekeeper, having got a hint of their kind intentions towards him, had made himself scarce, they marched back to Hangtown without having done much to boast of.

When the result of their expedition was made known, the excitement in Hangtown was of course greater than ever. The next day crowds of miners flocked in from all quarters, each man equipped with a long rifle in addition to his bowie-knife and revolver, while two men, playing a drum and a fife, marched up and down the street to give a military air to the occasion. A public meeting was held in one of the gambling rooms, at which the governor, the sheriff of the county, and other big men of the place, were present. The miners about Hangtown were mostly all Americans, and a large proportion of them were men from the Western States, who had come by the overland route across the plains—men who had all their lives been used to Indian wiles and treachery, and thought about as much of shooting an Indian as of killing a rattlesnake. They were a rough-looking crowd; long, gaunt, wiry men, dressed in the usual old-flannel-shirt costume of the mines, with shaggy beards, their faces, hands, and arms, as brown as mahogany, and with an expression about their eyes which boded no good to any Indian who should come within range of their rifles.

There were some very good speeches made at the meeting; that of a young Kentuckian doctor was quite a treat. He spoke very well, but from the fuss he made it might have been supposed that the whole country was in the hands of the enemy. The eyes of the thirty States of the Union, he said, were upon them; and it was for them, the thirty-first, to avenge this insult to the Anglo-Saxon race, and to show the wily savage that the American nation, which could dictate terms of peace or war to every other nation on the face of the globe, was not to be trifled with. He tried to rouse their courage, and excite their animosity against the Indians, though it was quite unnecessary, by drawing a vivid picture of the unburied bones of poor Brown, or Jones, the unfortunate individual who had been murdered, bleaching the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, while his death was still unavenged. If they were cowardly enough not to go out and whip the savage Indians, their wives would spurn them, their sweethearts would reject them, and the whole world would look upon them with scorn. The most common-sense argument in his speech, however, was, that unless the Indians were taught a lesson, there would be no safety for the straggling miners in the mountains at any distance from a settlement. Altogether he spoke very well, considering the sort of crowd he was addressing; and judging from the enthusiastic applause, and from the remarks I heard made by the men around me, he could not have spoken with better effect.

The Governor also made a short speech, saying that he would take the responsibility of raising a company of one hundred men, at five dollars a-day, to go and whip the Indians.

The Sheriff followed. He “cal’lated” to raise out of that crowd one hundred men, but wanted no man to put down his name who would not stand up in his boots, and he would ask no man to go any further than he would go himself.

Those who wished to enlist were then told to come round to the other end of the room, when nearly the whole crowd rushed eagerly forward, and the required number were at once enrolled. They started the next day, but the Indians retreating before them, they followed them far up into the mountains, where they remained for a couple of months, by which time the wily savages, it is to be hoped, got properly whipped, and were taught the respect due to white men.

We continued working our claim at Middletown, having taken into partnership an old sea-captain whom we found there working alone. It paid us very well for about three weeks, when, from the continued dry weather, the water began to fail, and we were obliged to think of moving off to other diggings.

It was now time to commence preparatory operations before working the beds of the creeks and rivers, as their waters were falling rapidly; and as most of our party owned shares in claims on different rivers, we became dispersed. A young Englishman and myself alone remained, uncertain as yet where we should go to.

We had gone into Hangtown one night for provisions, when we heard that a great strike had been made at a place called Coon Hollow, about a mile distant. One man was reported to have taken out that day about fifteen hundred dollars. Before daylight next morning we started over the hill, intending to stake off a claim on the same ground; but even by the time we got there, the whole hillside was already pegged off into claims of thirty feet square, on each of which men were commencing to sink shafts, while hundreds of others were prowling about, too late to get a claim which would be thought worth taking up.

Those who had claims, immediately surrounding that of the lucky man who had caused all the excitement by letting his good fortune be known, were very sanguine. Two Cornish miners had got what was supposed to be the most likely claim, and declared they would not take ten thousand dollars for it. Of course, no one thought of offering such a sum; but so great was the excitement that they might have got eight hundred or a thousand dollars for their claim before ever they put a pick in the ground. As it turned out, however, they spent a month in sinking a shaft about a hundred feet deep; and after drifting all round, they could not get a cent out of it, while many of the claims adjacent to theirs proved extremely rich.

Such diggings as these are called “coyote” diggings, receiving their name from an animal called the “coyote,” which abounds all over the plain lands of Mexico and California, and which lives in the cracks and crevices made in the plains by the extreme heat of summer. He is half dog, half fox, and, as an Irishman might say, half wolf also. They howl most dismally, just like a dog, on moonlight nights, and are seen in great numbers skulking about the plains.

Connected with them is a curious fact in natural history. They are intensely carnivorous—so are cannibals; but as cannibals object to the flavour of roasted sailor as being too salt, so coyotes turn up their noses at dead Mexicans as being too peppery. I have heard the fact mentioned over and over again, by Americans who had been in the Mexican war, that on going over the field after their battles, they found their own comrades with the flesh eaten off their bones by the coyotes, while never a Mexican corpse had been touched; and the only and most natural way to account for this phenomenon was in the fact that the Mexicans, by the constant and inordinate eating of the hot pepper-pod, the Chili Colorado, had so impregnated their system with pepper as to render their flesh too savoury a morsel for the natural and unvitiated taste of the coyotes.

These coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay, from the great amount of labour necessary before any pay-dirt can be obtained. They are generally worked by only two men. A shaft is sunk, over which is rigged a rude windlass, tended by one man, who draws up the dirt in a large bucket while his partner is digging down below. When the bed rock is reached on which the rich dirt is found, excavations are made all round, leaving only the necessary supporting pillars of earth, which are also ultimately removed, and replaced by logs of wood. Accidents frequently occur from the “caving-in” of these diggings, the result generally of the carelessness of the men themselves.

The Cornish miners, of whom numbers had come to California from the mines of Mexico and South America, generally devoted themselves to these deep diggings, as did also the lead-miners from Wisconsin. Such men were quite at home a hundred feet or so under ground, picking through hard rock by candlelight; at the same time, gold mining in any way was to almost every one a new occupation, and men who had passed their lives hitherto above ground, took quite as naturally to this subterranean style of digging as to any other.

We felt no particular fancy for it, however, especially as we could not get a claim; and having heard favourable accounts of the diggings on Weaver Creek, we concluded to migrate to that place. It was about fifteen miles off; and having hired a mule and cart from a man in Hangtown to carry our long tom, hoses, picks, shovels, blankets, and pot and pans, we started early the next morning, and arrived at our destination about noon. We passed through some beautiful scenery on the way. The ground was not yet parched and scorched by the summer sun, but was still green, and on the hillsides were patches of wildflowers growing so thick that they were quite soft and delightful to lie down upon. For some distance we followed a winding road between smooth rounded hills, thickly wooded with immense pines and cedars, gradually ascending till we came upon a comparatively level country, which had all the beauty of an English park. The ground was quite smooth, though gently undulating, and the rich verdure was diversified with numbers of white, yellow, and purple flowers. The oaks of various kinds, which were here the only tree, were of an immense size, but not so numerous as to confine the view; and the only underwood was the mansanita, a very beautiful and graceful shrub, generally growing in single plants to the height of six or eight feet. There was no appearance of ruggedness or disorder; we might have imagined ourselves in a well-kept domain; and the solitude, and the vast unemployed wealth of nature, alone reminded us that we were among the wild mountains of California.

After travelling some miles over this sort of country, we got among the pine trees once more, and very soon came to the brink of the high mountains overhanging Weaver Creek. The descent was so steep that we had the greatest difficulty in getting the cart down without a capsize, having to make short tacks down the face of the hill, and generally steering for a tree to bring up upon in case of accidents. At the point where we reached the Creek was a store, and scattered along the rocky banks of the Creek were a few miners’ tents and cabins. We had expected to have to camp out here, but seeing a small tent unoccupied near the store, we made inquiry of the storekeeper, and finding that it belonged to him, and that he had no objection to our using it, we took possession accordingly, and proceeded to light a fire and cook our dinner.

Not knowing how far we might be from a store, we had brought along with us a supply of flour, ham, beans, and tea, with which we were quite independent. After prospecting a little, we soon found a spot on the bank of the stream which we judged would yield us pretty fair pay for our labour. We had some difficulty at first in bringing water to the long tom, having to lead our hose a considerable distance up the stream to obtain sufficient elevation; but we soon got everything in working order, and pitched in. The gold which we found here was of the finest kind, and required great care in washing. It was in exceedingly small thin scales—so thin, that in washing out in a pan at the end of the day, a scale of gold would occasionally float for an instant on the surface of the water. This is the most valuable kind of gold dust, and is worth one or two dollars an ounce more than the coarse chunky dust.

It was a wild rocky place where we were now located. The steep mountains, rising abruptly all round us, so confined the view that we seemed to be shut out from the rest of the world. The nearest village or settlement was about ten miles distant; and all the miners on the Creek within four or five miles living in isolated cabins, tents, and brush-houses, or camping out on the rocks, resorted for provisions to the small store already mentioned, which was supplied with a general assortment of provisions and clothing.

There had still been occasional heavy rains, from which our tent was but poor protection, and we awoke sometimes in the morning, finding small pools of water in the folds of our blankets, and everything so soaking wet, inside the tent as well as outside, that it was hopeless to attempt to light a fire. On such occasions, raw ham, hard bread, and cold water was all the breakfast we could raise; eking it out, however, with an extra pipe, and relieving our feelings by laying in fiercely with pick and shovel.

The weather very soon, however, became quite settled. The sky was always bright and cloudless; all verdure was fast disappearing from the hills, and they began to look brown and scorched. The heat in the mines during summer is greater than in most tropical countries. I have in some parts seen the thermometer as high as 120° in the shade during the greater part of the day for three weeks at a time; but the climate is not by any means so relaxing and oppressive as in countries where, though the range of the thermometer is much lower, the damp suffocating atmosphere makes the heat more severely felt. In the hottest weather in California, it is always agreeably cool at night—sufficiently so to make a blanket acceptable, and to enable one to enjoy a sound sleep, in which one recovers from all the evil effects of the previous day’s baking; and even the extreme heat of the hottest hours of the day, though it crisps up one’s hair like that of a nigger’s, is still light and exhilarating, and by no means disinclines one for bodily exertion.

We continued to work the claim we had first taken for two or three weeks with very good success, when the diggings gave out—that is to say, they ceased to yield sufficiently to suit our ideas: so we took up another claim about a mile further up the creek; and as this was rather an inconvenient distance from our tent, we abandoned it, and took possession of a log cabin near our claim which some men had just vacated. It was a very badly-built cabin, perched on a rocky platform overhanging the rugged pathway which led along the banks of the creek.

A cabin with a good shingle-roof is generally the coolest kind of abode in summer; but ours was only roofed with cotton cloth, offering scarcely any resistance to the fierce rays of the sun, which rendered the cabin during the day so intolerably hot, that we cooked and eat our dinner under the shade of a tree.

A whole bevy of Chinamen had recently made their appearance on the creek. Their camp, consisting of a dozen or so of small tents and brush-houses, was near our cabin on the side of the hill—too near to be pleasant, for they kept up a continual chattering all night, which was rather tiresome till we got used to it.

They are an industrious set of people, no doubt, but are certainly not calculated for gold-digging. They do not work with the same force or vigour as American or European miners, but handle their tools like so many women, as if they were afraid of hurting themselves. The Americans called it “scratching,” which was a very expressive term for their style of digging. They did not venture to assert equal rights so far as to take up any claim which other miners would think it worth while to work; but in such places as yielded them a dollar or two a-day they were allowed to scratch away unmolested. Had they happened to strike a rich lead, they would have been driven off their claim immediately. They were very averse to working in the water, and for four or five hours in the heat of the day they assembled under the shade of a tree, where they sat fanning themselves, drinking tea, and saying “too muchee hot.”

On the whole, they seemed a harmless, inoffensive people; but one day, as we were going to dinner, we heard an unusual hullaballoo going on where the Chinamen were at work; and on reaching the place we found the whole tribe of Celestials divided into two equal parties, drawn up against each other in battle array, brandishing picks and shovels, lifting stones as if to hurl them at their adversaries’ heads, and every man chattering and gesticulating in the most frantic manner. The miners collected on the ground to see the “muss,” and cheered the Chinamen on to more active hostilities. But after taunting and threatening each other in this way for about an hour, during which time, although the excitement seemed to be continually increasing, not a blow was struck nor a stone thrown, the two parties suddenly, and without any apparent cause, fraternised, and moved off together to their tents. What all the row was about, or why peace was so suddenly proclaimed, was of course a mystery to us outside barbarians; and the tame and unsatisfactory termination of such warlike demonstrations was a great disappointment, as we had been every moment expecting that the ball would open, and hoped to see a general engagement.

It reminded me of the way in which a couple of French Canadians have a set-to. Shaking their fists within an inch of each other’s faces, they call each other all the names imaginable, beginning with sacré cochon, and going through a long series of still less complimentary epithets, till finally sacré astrologe caps the climax. This is a regular smasher; it is supposed to be such a comprehensive term as to exhaust the whole vocabulary; both parties then give in for want of ammunition, and the fight is over. I presume it was by a similar process that the Chinamen arrived at a solution of their difficulty; at all events, discretion seemed to form a very large component part of Celestial valour.

CHAPTER VIII.