CHAPTER V.

START FOR THE MINES--THE SACRAMENTO RIVER--AMERICAN RIVER-STEAMBOATS IN CALIFORNIA--NATURAL FACILITIES FOR INLAND NAVIGATION, AND PROMPTNESS OF THE AMERICANS IN TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THEM--SACRAMENTO CITY--APPEARANCE OF THE HOUSES--STREET NOMENCLATURE--STAGING--FOUR-AND-TWENTY FOUR-HORSE COACHES START TOGETHER--THE PLAINS--THE SCENERY--THE WEATHER--THE MOUNTAINS--MOUNTAIN ROADS AND AMERICAN DRIVERS--FIRST SIGHT OF GOLD-DIGGING--ARRIVAL AT HANGTOWN.

I remained in San Francisco till the worst of the rainy season was over, when I determined to go and try my luck in the mines; so, leaving my valuables in charge of a friend in San Francisco, I equipped myself in my worst suit of old clothes, and, with my blankets slung over my shoulder, I put myself on board the steamer for Sacramento.

As we did not start till five o’clock in the afternoon, we had not an opportunity of seeing very much of the scenery on the river. As long as daylight lasted, we were among smooth grassy hills and valleys, with but little brushwood, and only here and there a few stunted trees. Some of the valleys are exceedingly fertile, and all those sufficiently watered to render them available for cultivation had already been “taken up.”

We soon, however, left the hilly country behind us, and came upon the vast plains which extend the whole length of California, bounded on one side by the range of mountains which runs along the coast, and on the other side by the mountains which constitute the mining districts. Through these plains flows the Sacramento river, receiving as tributaries all the rivers flowing down from the mountains on either side.

The steamer--which was a very fair specimen of the usual style of New York river-boat--was crowded with passengers and merchandise. There were not berths for one-half of the people on board; and so, in company with many others, I lay down and slept very comfortably on the deck of the saloon till about three o’clock in the morning, when we were awoke by the noise of letting off the steam on our arrival at Sacramento.

One of not the least striking wonders of California was the number of these magnificent river steamboats which, even at that early period of its history, had steamed round Cape Horn from New York, and now, gliding along the California rivers at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour, afforded the same rapid and comfortable means of travelling, and sometimes at as cheap rates, as when they plied between New York and Albany. Every traveller in the United States has described the river steamboats; suffice it to say here, that they lost none of their characteristics in California; and, looking at these long, white, narrow, two-storey houses, floating apparently on nothing, so little of the hull of the boat appears above water, and showing none of the lines which, in a ship, convey an idea of buoyancy and power of resistance, but, on the contrary, suggesting only the idea of how easy it would be to smash them to pieces--following in imagination these fragile-looking fabrics over the seventeen thousand miles of stormy ocean over which they had been brought in safety, one could not help feeling a degree of admiration and respect for the daring and skill of the men by whom such perilous undertakings had been accomplished. In preparing these steamboats for their long voyage to California, the lower storey was strengthened with thick planking, and on the forward part of the deck was built a strong wedge-shaped screen, to break the force of the waves, which might otherwise wash the whole house overboard. They crept along the coast, having to touch at most of the ports on the way for fuel; and passing through the Straits of Magellan, they escaped to a certain extent the dangers of Cape Horn, although equal dangers might be encountered on any part of the voyage.

But besides the question of nautical skill and individual daring, as a commercial undertaking the sending such steamers round to California was a very bold speculation. Their value in New York is about a hundred thousand dollars, and to take them round to San Francisco costs about thirty thousand more. Insurance is, of course, out of the question (I do not think 99 per cent would insure them in this country from Dover to Calais); so the owners had to play a neck-or-nothing game. Their enterprise was in most cases duly rewarded. I only know of one instance--though doubtless others have occurred--in which such vessels did not get round in safety: it was an old Long Island Sound boat; she was rotten before ever she left New York, and foundered somewhere about the Bermudas, all hands on board escaping in the boats.

The profits of the first few steamers which arrived out were of course enormous; but, after a while, competition was so keen, that for some time cabin fare between San Francisco and Sacramento was only one dollar; a ridiculously small sum to pay, in any part of the world, for being carried in such boats two hundred miles in ten hours; but, in California at that time, the wages of the common deck hands on board those same boats were about a hundred dollars a-month; and ten dollars were there, to the generality of men, a sum of much less consequence than ten shillings are here.

These low fares did not last long, however; the owners of steamers came to an understanding, and the average rate of fare from San Francisco to Sacramento was from five to eight dollars. I have only alluded to the one-dollar fares for the purpose of giving an idea of the competition which existed in such a business as “steamboating,” which requires a large capital; and from that it may be imagined what intense rivalry there was among those engaged in less important lines of business, which engrossed their whole time and labour, and required the employment of all the means at their command.

Looking at the map of California, it will be seen that the “mines” occupy a long strip of mountainous country, which commences many miles to the eastward of San Francisco, and stretches northward several hundred miles. The Sacramento river running parallel with the mines, the San Joaquin joining it from the southward and eastward, and the Feather river continuing a northward course from the Sacramento--all of them being navigable--present the natural means of communication between San Francisco and the “mines.” Accordingly, the city of Sacramento--about two hundred miles north of San Francisco--sprang up as the depôt for all the middle part of the mines, with roads radiating from it across the plains to the various settlements in the mountains. In like manner the city of Marysville, being at the extreme northern point of navigation of the Feather river, became the starting-place and the depôt for the mining districts in the northern section of the State; and Stockton, named after Commodore Stockton, of the United States navy, who had command of the Pacific squadron during the Mexican war, being situated at the head of navigation of the San Joaquin, forms the intermediate station between San Francisco and all the “southern mines.”

Seeing the facilities that California thus presented for inland navigation, it is not surprising that the Americans, so pre-eminent as they are in that branch of commercial enterprise, should so soon have taken advantage of them. But though the prospective profits were great, still the enormous risk attending the sending of steamboats round the Horn might have seemed sufficient to deter most men from entering into such a hazardous speculation. It must be remembered that many of these river steamboats were despatched from New York, on an ocean voyage of seventeen thousand miles, to a place of which one-half the world as yet even doubted the existence, and when people were looking up their atlases to see in what part of the world California was. The risk of taking a steamboat of this kind to what was then such an out-of-the-way part of the world, did not end with her arrival in San Francisco by any means. The slightest accident to her machinery, which there was at that time no possibility of repairing in California, or even the extreme fluctuations in the price of coal, might have rendered her at any moment so much useless lumber.

In ocean navigation the same adventurous energy was manifest. Hardly had the news of the discovery of gold in California been received in New York, when numbers of steamers were despatched, at an expense equal to one-half their value, to take their place on the Pacific in forming a line between the United States and San Francisco _via_ Panama; so that almost from the first commencement of the existence of California as a gold-bearing country, steam-communication was established between New York and San Francisco, bringing the two places within twenty to twenty-five days of each other. It is true the mail line had the advantage of a mail contract from the United States government; but other lines, without any such fostering influence, ran them close in competition for public patronage.

The Americans are often accused of boasting--perhaps deservedly so; but there certainly are many things in the history of California of which they may justly be proud, having transformed her, as they did so suddenly, from a wilderness into a country in which most of the luxuries of life were procurable; and a fair instance of the bold and prompt spirit of commercial enterprise by which this was accomplished, was seen in the fact that, from the earliest days of her settlement, California had as good means of both ocean and inland steam-communication as any of the oldest countries in the world.

Sacramento City is next in size and importance to San Francisco. Many large commercial houses had there established their headquarters, and imported direct from the Atlantic States. The river is navigable so far by vessels of six or eight hundred tons, and in the early days of California, many ships cleared directly for Sacramento from the different ports on the Atlantic; but as the course of trade by degrees found its proper channel, San Francisco became exclusively the emporium for the whole of California, and even at the time I write of, sea-going vessels were rarely seen so far in the interior of the country as Sacramento.

The plains are but very little above the average level of the river, and a “levée” had been built all along the front of the city eight or ten feet high, to save it from inundation by the high waters of the rainy season. With the exception of a few handsome blocks of brick buildings, the houses were all of wood, and had an unmistakably Yankee appearance, being all painted white turned up with green, and covered from top to bottom with enormous signs.

The streets are wide, perfectly straight, and cross each other at right angles at equal distances, like the lines of latitude and longitude on a chart. The street nomenclature is unique--very democratic, inasmuch as it does not immortalise the names of prominent individuals--and admirably adapted to such a rectangular city. The streets running parallel with the river are numbered First, Second, Third Street, and so on to infinity, and the cross streets are designated by the letters of the alphabet. J Street was the great central street, and was nearly a mile long; so the reader may reckon the number of parallel streets on each side of it, and get an idea of the extent of the city. This system of lettering and numbering the streets was very convenient, as, the latitude and longitude of a house being given, it could be found at once. A stranger could navigate all over the town without ever having to ask his way, as he could take an observation for himself at the corner of every street.

My stay in Sacramento on this occasion was limited to a few hours. I went to a large hotel, which was also the great staging-house, and here I snoozed till about five o’clock, when, it being still quite dark, the whole house woke up into active life. About a hundred of us breakfasted by candlelight, and, going out into the bar-room while day was just dawning, we found, turned out in front of the hotel, about four-and-twenty four-horse coaches, all bound for different places in the mines. The street was completely blocked up with them, and crowds of men were taking their seats, while others were fortifying themselves for their journey at the bar.

The coaches were of various kinds. Some were light-spring-waggons--mere oblong boxes, with four or five seats placed across them; others were of the same build, but better finished, and covered by an awning; and there were also numbers of regular American stage-coaches, huge high-hung things which carry nine inside upon three seats, the middle one of which is between the two doors.

The place which I had intended should be the scene of my first mining exploits, was a village rejoicing in the suggestive appellation of Hangtown; designated, however, in official documents as Placerville. It received its name of Hangtown while yet in its infancy from the number of malefactors who had there expiated their crimes at the hands of Judge Lynch. I soon found the stage for that place--it happened to be one of the oblong boxes--and, pitching in my roll of blankets, I took my seat and lighted my pipe that I might the more fully enjoy the scene around me. And a scene it was, such as few parts of the world can now show, and which would have gladdened the hearts of those who mourn over the degeneracy of the present age, and sigh for the good old days of stage-coaches.

Here, certainly, the genuine old mail-coach, the guard with his tin horn, and the jolly old coachman with his red face, were not to be found; but the horses were as good as ever galloped with her Majesty’s mail. The teams were all headed the same way, and with their stages, four or five abreast, occupied the whole of the wide street for a distance of sixty or seventy yards. The horses were restive, and pawing, and snorting, and kicking; and passengers were trying to navigate to their proper stages through the labyrinth of wheels and horses, and frequently climbing over half-a-dozen waggons to shorten their journey. Grooms were standing at the leaders’ heads, trying to keep them quiet, and the drivers were sitting on their boxes, or seats rather, for they scorn a high seat, and were swearing at each other in a very shocking manner, as wheels got locked, and waggons were backed into the teams behind them, to the discomfiture of the passengers on the back-seats, who found horses’ heads knocking the pipes out of their mouths. In the intervals of their little private battles, the drivers were shouting to the crowds of passengers who loitered about the front of the hotel; for there, as elsewhere, people will wait till the last moment; and though it is more comfortable to sit than to stand, men like to enjoy their freedom as long as possible, before resigning all control over their motions, and charging with their precious persons a coach or a train, on full cock, and ready to go off, and shoot them out upon some remote part of creation.

On each waggon was painted the name of the place to which it ran; the drivers were also bellowing it out to the crowd, and even among such a confusion of coaches a man could have no difficulty in finding the one he wanted. One would have thought that the individual will and locomotive power of a man would have been sufficient to start him on his journey; but in this go-ahead country, people who had to go were not allowed to remain inert till the spirit moved them to go; they had to be “hurried up;” and of the whole crowd of men who were standing about the hotel, or struggling through the maze of waggons, only one half were passengers, the rest were “runners” for the various stages, who were exhausting all their persuasive eloquence in entreating the passengers to take their seats and go. They were all mixed up with the crowd, and each was exerting his lungs to the utmost. “Now then, gentlemen,” shouts one of them, “all aboard for Nevada City! Who’s agoin? only three seats left--the last chance to-day for Nevada City--take you there in five hours. Who’s there for Nevada City?” Then catching sight of some man who betrays the very slightest appearance of helplessness, or of not knowing what he is about, he pounces upon him, saying “Nevada City, sir?--this way--just in time,” and seizing him by the arm, he drags him into the crowd of stages, and almost has him bundled into that for Nevada City before the poor devil can make it understood that it is Caloma he wants to go to, and not Nevada City. His captor then calls out to some one of his brother runners who is collecting passengers for Caloma--“Oh Bill!--oh Bill! where the ---- are you?” “Hullo!” says Bill from the other end of the crowd. “Here’s a man for Caloma!” shouts the other, still holding on to his prize in case he should escape before Bill comes up to take charge of him.

This sort of thing was going on all the time. It was very ridiculous. Apparently, if a hundred men wanted to go anywhere, it required a hundred more to despatch them. There was certainly no danger of any one being left behind; on the contrary, the probability was, that any weak-minded man who happened to be passing by, would be shipped off to parts unknown before he could collect his ideas.

There were few opposition stages, excepting for Marysville, and one or two of the larger places; they were all crammed full--and of what use these “runners” or “tooters” were to anybody, was not very apparent, at least to the uninitiated. But they are a common institution with the Americans, who are not very likely to support such a corps of men if their services bring no return. In fact, it is merely part of the American system of advertising, and forcing the public to avail themselves of certain opportunities, by repeatedly and pertinaciously representing to them that they have it in their power to do so. In the States, to blow your own horn, and to make as much noise as possible with it, is the fundamental principle of all business. The most eminent lawyers and doctors advertise, and the names of the first merchants appear in the newspapers every day. A man’s own personal exertions are not sufficient to keep the world aware of his existence, and without advertising he would be to all intents and purposes dead. Modest merit does not wait for its reward--it is rather too smart for that--it clamours for it, and consequently gets it all the sooner.

However, I was not thinking of this while sitting on the Hangtown stage. I had too much to look at, and some of my neighbours also took up my attention. I found seated around me a varied assortment of human nature. A New-Yorker, a Yankee, and an English Jack-tar were my immediate neighbours, and a general conversation helped to beguile the time till the “runners” had succeeded in placing a passenger upon every available spot of every waggon. There was no trouble about luggage--that is an article not much known in California. Some stray individuals might have had a small carpet-bag--almost every man had his blankets--and the western men were further encumbered with their long rifles, the barrels poking into everybody’s eyes, and the buts in the way of everybody’s toes.

At last the solid mass of four-horse coaches began to dissolve. The drivers gathered up their reins and settled themselves down in their seats, cracked their whips, and swore at their horses; the grooms cleared out the best way they could; the passengers shouted and hurraed; the teams in front set off at a gallop; the rest followed them as soon as they got room to start, and chevied them up the street, all in a body, for about half a mile, when, as soon as we got out of town, we spread out in all directions to every point of a semicircle, and in a few minutes I found myself one of a small isolated community, with which four splendid horses were galloping over the plains like mad. No hedges, no ditches, no houses, no road in fact--it was all a vast open plain, as smooth as a calm ocean. We might have been steering by compass, and it was like going to sea; for we emerged from the city as from a landlocked harbour, and followed our own course over the wide wide world. The transition from the confinement of the city to the vastness of space was instantaneous; and our late neighbours, rapidly diminishing around us, and getting hull down on the horizon, might have been bound for the uttermost parts of the earth, for all we could see that was to stop them.

To sit behind four horses tearing along a good road is delightful at any time, but the mere fact of such rapid locomotion formed only a small part of the pleasure of our journey.

The atmosphere was so soft and balmy that it was a positive enjoyment to feel it brushing over one’s face like the finest floss silk. The sky was clear and cloudless, the bright sunshine warmed us up to a comfortable temperature; and we were travelling over such an expanse of nature that our progress, rapid as it was, seemed hardly perceptible, unless measured by the fast disappearing chimney tops of the city, or by the occasional clumps of trees we left behind us. The scene all round us was magnificent, and impressed one as much with his own insignificance as though he beheld the countries of the earth from the summit of a high mountain.

Out of sight of land at sea one experiences a certain feeling of isolation: there is nothing to connect one’s ideas with the habitable globe but the ship on which one stands; but there is also nothing to carry the imagination beyond what one does see, and the view is limited to a few miles. But here, we were upon an ocean of grass-covered earth, dotted with trees, and sparkling in the sunshine with the gorgeous hues of the dense patches of wild flowers; while far beyond the horizon of the plains there rose mountains beyond mountains, all so distinctly seen as to leave no uncertainty as to the shape or the relative position of any one of them, and fading away in regular gradation till the most distinct, though clearly defined, seemed still to be the most natural and satisfactory point at which the view should terminate. It was as if the circumference of the earth had been lifted up to the utmost range of vision, and there melted into air.

Such was the view ahead of us as we travelled towards the mines, where wavy outlines of mountains appeared one above another, drawing together as they vanished, and at last indenting the sky with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. On either side of us the mountains, appearing above the horizon, were hundreds of miles distant, and the view behind us was more abruptly terminated by the coast range, which lies between the Sacramento river and the Pacific.

It was the commencement of spring, and at that season the plains are seen to advantage. But after a few weeks of dry weather the hot sun burns up every blade of vegetation, the ground presents a cracked surface of hard-baked earth, and the roads are ankle-deep in the finest and most penetrating kind of dust, which rises in clouds like clouds of smoke, saturating one’s clothes, and impregnating one’s whole system.

We made a straight course of it across the plains for about thirty miles, changing horses occasionally at some of the numerous wayside inns, and passing numbers of waggons drawn by teams of six or eight mules or oxen, and laden with supplies for the mines.

The ascent from the plains was very gradual, over a hilly country, well wooded with oaks and pines. Our pace here was not so killing as it had been. We had frequently long hills to climb, where all hands were obliged to get out and walk; but we made up for the delay by galloping down the descent on the other side.

The road, which, though in some places very narrow, for the most part spread out to two or three times the width of an ordinary road, was covered with stumps and large rocks; it was full of deep ruts and hollows, and roots of trees spread all over it.

To any one not used to such roads or to such driving, an upset would have seemed inevitable. If there was safety in speed, however, we were safe enough, and all sense of danger was lost in admiration of the coolness and dexterity of the driver as he circumvented every obstacle, but without going one inch farther than necessary out of his way to save us from perdition. He went through extraordinary bodily contortions, which would have shocked an English coachman out of his propriety; but, at the same time, he performed such feats as no one would have dared to attempt who had never been used to anything worse than an English road. With his right foot he managed a break, and, clawing at the reins with both hands, he swayed his body from side to side to preserve his equilibrium, as now on the right pair of wheels, now on the left, he cut the “outside edge” round a stump or a rock; and when coming to a spot where he was going to execute a difficult manœuvre on a piece of road which slanted violently down to one side, he trimmed the waggon as one would a small boat in a squall, and made us all crowd up to the weather side to prevent a capsize.

When about ten miles from the plains, I first saw the actual reality of gold-digging. Four or five men were working in a ravine by the roadside, digging holes like so many grave-diggers. I then considered myself fairly in “the mines,” and experienced a disagreeable consciousness that we might be passing over huge masses of gold, only concealed from us by an inch or two of earth.

As we travelled onwards, we passed at intervals numerous parties of miners, and the country assumed a more inhabited appearance. Log-cabins and clapboard shanties were to be seen among the trees; and occasionally we found about a dozen of such houses grouped together by the roadside, and dignified with the name of a town.

For several miles again the country would seem to have been deserted. That it had once been a busy scene was evident from the uptorn earth in the ravines and hollows, and from the numbers of unoccupied cabins; but the cream of such diggings had already been taken, and they were not now sufficiently rich to suit the ambitious ideas of the miners.

After travelling about thirty miles over this mountainous region, ascending gradually all the while, we arrived at Hangtown in the afternoon, having accomplished the sixty miles from Sacramento city in about eight hours.