CHAPTER XI.

PINE-TREES--SUGAR-PINES--WOODPECKERS AND ACORNS--QUARTZ VEINS--COYOTE DIGGINGS--SPECULATIVE MINING--HIRING OUT--AVERAGE YIELD OF THE MINES--LOAFERS--AN OLD SAILOR ON A SPREE--START FOR THE YUBA--VEGETABLES--AN OLD FRIEND--“PACKING”--MEXICAN PACKERS AND PACK-MULES.

In this part of the country the pine-trees are of an immense size, and of every variety. The most graceful is what is called the “sugar pine.” It is perfectly straight and cylindrical, with a comparatively smooth bark, and, till about four-fifths of its height from the ground, without a branch or even a twig. The branches then spread straight out from the stem, drooping a good deal at the extremities from the weight of the immense cones which they bear. These are about a foot and a half long, and under each leaf is a seed the size of a cherrystone, and which has a taste even sweeter than that of a filbert. The Indians are very fond of them, and make the squaws gather them for winter food.

A peculiarity of the pine-trees in California is, that the bark, from within eight or ten feet of the ground up to where the branches commence, is completely riddled with holes, such as might be made with musket-balls. They are, however, the work of the woodpeckers, who, like the Indians, are largely interested in the acorn crop. They are constantly making these holes, in each of which they stow away an acorn, leaving it as tightly wedged in as though it were driven in with a sledge-hammer.

There were several quartz veins in the neighbourhood of Nevada, some of which were very rich, and yielded a large amount of gold; but, generally speaking, they were so unscientifically and unprofitably worked that they turned out complete failures.

Quartz mining is a scientific operation, of which many of those who undertook to work the veins had no knowledge whatever, nor had they sufficient capital to carry on such a business. The cost of erecting crushing-mills, and of getting the necessary iron castings from San Francisco, was very great. A vast deal of labour had to be gone through in opening the mine before any returns could be received; and, moreover, the method then adopted of crushing the quartz and extracting the gold was so defective that not more than one half of it was saved.

There is a variety of diggings here, but the richest are deep diggings in the hills above the town, and are worked by means of shafts, or coyote holes, as they are called. In order to reach the gold-bearing dirt, these shafts have to be sunk to the depth of nearly a hundred feet, which requires the labour of at least two men for a month or six weeks; and when they have got down to the bottom, perhaps they may find nothing to repay them for their perseverance.

The miners always calculate their own labour at five dollars a-day for every day they work, that being the usual wages for hired labour; and if a man, after working for a month in sinking a hole, finds no pay-dirt at the bottom of it, he sets himself down as a loser of a hundred and fifty dollars.

They make up heavy bills of losses against themselves in this way, but still there are plenty of men who prefer devoting themselves to this speculative style of digging, in hopes of eventually striking a rich lead, to working steadily at surface diggings, which would yield them, day by day, sure though moderate pay.

But mining of any description is more or less uncertain, and any man “hiring out,” as it is termed, steadily throughout the year, and pocketing his five dollars a-day, would find at the end of the year that he had done as well, perhaps, as the average of miners working on their own hook, who spend a considerable portion of their time in prospecting, and frequently, in order to work a claim which may afford them a month’s actual washing, have to spend as long a time in stripping off top-dirt, digging ditches, or performing other necessary labour to get their claim into working order; so that the daily amount of gold which a man may happen to be taking out, is not to be taken in itself as the measure of his prosperity. He may take a large sum out of a claim, but may also have spent as much upon it before he began to wash, and half the days of the year he may get no gold at all.

There were plenty of men who, after two years’ hard work, were not a bit better off than when they commenced, having lost in working one claim what they had made in another, and having frittered away their time in prospecting and wandering about the country from one place to another, always imagining that there were better diggings to be found than those they were in at the time.

Under any circumstances, when a man can make as much, or perhaps more, by working for himself, he has greater pleasure in doing so than in working for others; and among men engaged in such an exciting pursuit as gold-hunting, constantly stimulated by the success of some one of their neighbours, it was only natural that they should be loth to relinquish their chance of a prize in the lottery, by hiring themselves out for an amount of daily wages, which was no more than any one, if he worked steadily, could make for himself.

Those who did hire out were of two classes--cold-blooded philosophers, who calculated the chances, and stuck to their theory unmoved by the temptations around them; and men who had not sufficient inventive energy to direct their own labour and render it profitable.

The average amount of gold taken out daily at that time by men who really did work, was, I should think, not less than eight dollars; but the average daily yield of the mines to the actual population was probably not more than three or four dollars per head, owing to the great number of “loafers,” who did not work more than perhaps one day in the week, and spent the rest of their time in bar-rooms, playing cards and drinking whisky. They led a listless life of mild dissipation, for they never had money enough to get very drunk. They were always in debt for their board and their whisky at the boarding-house where they lived; and when hard pressed to pay up, they would hire out for a day or two to make enough for their immediate wants, and then return to loaf away their existence in a bar-room, as long as the boarding-house keeper thought it advisable to give them credit. I never, in any part of the mines, was in a store or boarding-house that was not haunted by some men of this sort.

Other men, with more energy in their dissipation, and old sailors especially, would have periodical bursts, more intense but of shorter duration. After mining steadily for a month or two, and saving their money, they would set to work to get rid of it as fast as possible. An old sailor went about it most systematically. For the reason, as I supposed, that when going to have a “spree,” he imagined himself to have come ashore off a voyage, he generally commenced by going to a Jew’s slop-shop, where he rigged himself out in a new suit of clothes; he would then go the round of all the bar-rooms in the place, and insist on every one he found there drinking with him,

[Illustration:

J. D. BORTHWICK, DEL M & N HANHART, LITH.

FARO]

informing them at the same time (though it was quite unnecessary, for the fact was very evident) that he was “on the spree.” Of course, he soon made himself drunk, but before being very far gone he would lose the greater part of his money to the gamblers. Cursing his bad luck, he would then console himself with a rapid succession of “drinks,” pick a quarrel with some one who was not interfering with him, get a licking, and be ultimately rolled into a corner to enjoy the more passive phase of his debauch. On waking in the morning he would not give himself time to get sober, but would go at it again, and keep at it for a week--most affectionately and confidentially drunk in the forenoon, fighting drunk in the afternoon, and dead-drunk at night. The next week he would get gradually sober, and, recovering his senses, would return to his work without a cent in his pocket, but quite contented and happy, with his mind relieved at having had what he considered a good spree. Four or five hundred dollars was by no means an unusual sum for such a man to spend on an occasion of this sort, even without losing much at the gaming-table. The greater part of it went to the bar-keepers for “drinks,” for the height of his enjoyment was every few minutes to ask half-a-dozen men to drink with him.

The amount of money thus spent at the bars in the mines must have been enormous; the system of “drinks” was carried still further than in San Francisco; and there were numbers of men of this description who were fortunate in their diggings, and became possessed of an amount of gold of which they could not realise the value. They only knew the difference between having money and having none; a hundred dollars was to them as good as a thousand, and a thousand was in their ideas about the same as a hundred. It did not matter how much they had saved; when the time came for them to reward themselves with a spree after a month or so of hard work, they made a clean sweep of everything, and spent their last dollar as readily as the first.

I did not remain in Nevada, being anxious to get down to the Yuba before the rainy season should set in and put a stop to mining operations on the river.

Foster’s Bar, about thirty miles off, was the nearest point on the Yuba, and for this place I started. I was joined on leaving the town by a German, carrying his gun and powder-horn: he was a hunter by profession, as he informed me, having followed that business for more than a year, finding ready sale for his game in Nevada.

The principal kinds of game in the mountains are deer, quail, hares, rabbits, and squirrels. The quails, which are very abundant, are beautiful birds, about the size of a pigeon, with a top-knot on their head; they are always in coveys, and rise with a whirr like partridges.

My hunting companion was at present going after deer, and, intending to stop out till he killed one, he carried his blanket and a couple of days’ provisions.

I arrived about noon at a very pretty place called Hunt’s Ranch. It was a large log-house, with several well-cultivated fields around it, in which a number of men were at work. At dinner here there was the most extensive set-out of vegetables I ever saw in the country, consisting of green pease, French beans, cauliflower, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, and water-melons. It was a long time since I had seen such a display, and not knowing when I might have another opportunity, I pitched into them right and left.

I was lighting my pipe in the bar-room after dinner, when a man walked in whom I recognised at once as one of my fellow-passengers from New York to Chagres. I was very glad to see him, as he was one of the most favourable specimens of that crowd; and according to the custom of the country, we immediately ratified our renewed acquaintance in a brandy cocktail. He was returning to his diggings about ten miles off, and our roads being the same, we set out together.

He gave me an account of his doings since he had been in the mines, from which he did not seem to have had much luck on his side, for most of the money he had made he had lost in buying claims which turned out valueless. He had owned a share in a company which was working a claim on the Yuba, but had sold it for a mere trifle before it was ascertained whether the claim was rich or not, and it was now yielding 150 dollars a-day to the man.

We crossed the Middle Yuba, a small stream, at Emery’s Bridge, where my friend left me, and I went on alone, having six or seven miles to go to reach my resting-place for the night.

I was now in a region of country so mountainous as to be perfectly impassable for wheeled vehicles. All supplies were brought to the various trading posts from Marysville on trains of pack-mules.

“Packing,” as it is called, is a large business. A packer has in his train from thirty to fifty mules, and four or five Mexicans to tend them--mule-driving, or “packing,” being one of the few occupations to which Mexicans devote themselves; and at this they certainly do excel. Though generally a lazy, indolent people, it is astonishing what activity and energy they display in an employment which suits their fancy. They drive the mules about twenty-five miles a-day; and in camping for the night, they have to select a place where there is water, and where there is also some sort of picking for the mules, which, in the dry season, when every blade of vegetation is burned up, is rather hard to find.

I came across a train of about forty mules, under charge of four or five Mexicans, just as they were about to unpack, and make their camp. The spot they chose was a little grassy hollow in the middle of the woods, near which flowed a small stream of beautifully clear water. It was evidently a favourite camping-ground, from the numbers of signs of old fires. The mules seemed to know it too, for they all stopped and commenced picking the grass. The Mexicans, who were riding tough little Californian horses, immediately dismounted and began to unpack, working with such vigour that one might have thought they were doing it for a wager.

Two men unpack a mule together. They first throw over his head a broad leathern belt, which hangs over his eyes to blind him and keep him quiet; then, one man standing on each side, they cast off the numerous hide ropes with which the cargo is secured; and when all is cast loose, each man removes his half of the cargo and places it on the ground. Another mule is then led up to the same spot, and unpacked in like manner; the cargo being all ranged along the ground in a row, and presenting a very miscellaneous assortment of sacks of flour, barrels of pork or brandy, bags of sugar, boxes of tobacco, and all sorts of groceries and other articles. When all the cargoes have been unpacked, they then take off the _aparejos_, or large Mexican pack-saddles, examining the back of each mule to see if it is galled. The pack-saddles are all set down in a row parallel with the cargo, the girth and saddle-cloth of each being neatly folded and laid on the top of it. The place where the mules have been unpacked, between the saddles and the cargo, is covered with quantities of raw-hide ropes and other lashings, which are all coiled up and stowed away in a heap by themselves.

Every mule, as his saddle is taken off, refreshes himself by rolling about in the dust; and when all are unsaddled, the bell-horse is led away to water. The mules all follow him, and are left to their own devices till morning.

The bell-horse of a train of mules is a very curious institution. He is generally an old white horse, with a small bell hung round his neck. He carries no cargo, but leads the van in tow of a Mexican. The mules will follow him through thick and thin, but without him they will not move a step.

In the morning the mules are hunted up and driven into camp, when they are tied together in a row behind their pack-saddles, and brought round one by one to be saddled and packed. To pack a mule well, considerable art is necessary. His load must be so divided that there is an equal weight on each side, else the mule works at great disadvantage. If his load is not nicely balanced and tightly secured, he cannot so well pick his way along the steep mountain trails, and, as not unfrequently happens, topples over and rolls down to some place from which no mule returns.