CHAPTER XV.

RAPID GROWTH OF CALIFORNIA--AMOUNT OF LABOUR PERFORMED--LUXURY AND HARDSHIP--A RAGGED MAN--THE FLYING DUTCHMAN--FOPPERY IN RAGS--A STUDY--THE TOWER OF BABEL--FRENCHMEN--A “KESKYDEE”--“DUTCHMEN”--CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN--AN EXTENSIVE VIEW.

Without having visited some distant place in the mountains, such as Downieville, it was impossible to realise fully the extraordinary extent to which the country had, in so short a time, been overrun and settled by a population whose energy and adaptive genius had immediately seized and improved every natural advantage which presented itself, and whose quickly acquired wealth enabled them to introduce so much luxury, and to afford employment to so many of those branches of industry which usually flourish only in old communities, that in some respects California can hardly be said to have ever been a new country, as compared with other parts of the world to which that term is applied.

The men who settled the country imparted to it a good deal of their own nature, which knows no period of boyhood. The Americans spring at once from childhood, or almost from infancy, to manhood; and California, no less rapid in its growth, became a full-grown State, while one-half the world still doubted its existence.

The amount of labour which had already been performed in the mines was almost incredible. Every river and creek from one end to the other presented a busy scene; on the “bars,” of course, the miners were congregated in the greatest numbers; but there was scarcely any part of their course where some work was not going on, and the flumes were so numerous, that for about one-third of their length the rivers were carried past in those wooden aqueducts.

The most populous part of the mines, however, was in the high mountain-land between the rivers, and here the whole country had been ransacked, every flat and ravine had been prospected; and wherever extensive diggings had been found, towns and villages had sprung up.

Young as California was, it was in one respect older than its parent country, for life was so fast that already it could show ruins and deserted villages. In out-of-the-way places one met with cabins fallen into disrepair, which the proprietors had abandoned to locate themselves elsewhere; and even villages of thirty or forty shanties were to be seen deserted and desolate, where the diggings had not proved so productive as the original founders had anticipated.

Labour, however, was not exclusively devoted to mining operations. Roads had in many parts been cut in the sides of the mountains, bridges had been built, and innumerable saw-mills, most of them driven by steam power, were in full operation, many of them having been erected in anticipation of a demand for lumber, and before any population existed around them. Every little valley in the mountains where the soil was at all fit for cultivation, was already fenced in, and producing crops of barley or oats; and canals, in some cases forty or fifty miles long, were in course of construction, to bring the waters of the rivers to the mountain-tops, to diggings which were otherwise unavailable.

Life for the most part was hard enough certainly, but every village was a little city of itself, where one could live in comparative luxury. Even Downieville had its theatre and concerts, its billiard-rooms and saloons of all sorts, a daily paper, warm baths, and restaurants where men in red flannel shirts, with bare arms, spread a napkin over their muddy knees, and studied the bill of fare for half an hour before they could make up their minds what to order for dinner.

I was sitting on a rock by the side of the river one day sketching, when I became aware that a most ragamuffinish individual was looking over my shoulder. He was certainly, without exception, the most tattered and torn man I ever saw in my life; even his hair and beard gave the idea of rags, which was fully realised by his costume. He was a complete caricature of an old miner, and quite a picture of himself, seen from any point of view.

The rim of his old brown hat seemed ready to drop down on his shoulders at a moment’s notice, and the sides, having dissolved all connection with the crown, presented at the top a jagged circumference, festooned here and there with locks of light brown hair, while, to keep the whole fabric from falling to pieces of its own weight, it was bound round with a piece of string in lieu of a hat-band. His hair hung all over his shoulders in large straight flat locks, just as if a handkerchief had been nailed to the top of his head and then torn into shreds, and a long beard of the same pattern fringed a face as brown as a mahogany table. His shirt had once been red flannel--of course it was flannel yet, what remained of it--but it was in a most dilapidated condition. Half-way down to his elbows hung some shreds, which led to the belief that at one time he had possessed a pair of sleeves; but they seemed to have been removed by the action of time and the elements, which had also been busy with other parts of the garment, and had, moreover, changed its original scarlet to different shades of crimson and purple. There was enough of his shirt left almost to meet a pair of--not trousers, but still less mentionable articles, of the same material as the shirt, and in the same stage of decomposition. He must have had trousers once on a time, but I suppose he had worn them out; and I could not help thinking what extraordinary things they must have been on the morning when he came to the conclusion that they were not good enough to wear. I daresay he would have put them on if he could, but perhaps they were so full of holes that he did not know which to get into. His boots at least had reached this point, and to acknowledge that they had been boots was as much as a conscientious man could say for them. They were more holes than leather, and had no longer any title to the name of boots.

He was a man between thirty and forty, and, notwithstanding his rags, there was nothing in his appearance at all dirty or repulsive; on the contrary, he had a very handsome, prepossessing face, with an air about him which at once gave the idea that he had been used to polite society. I was, consequently, not surprised at the style of his address. He talked with me for some time, and I found him a most amusing and gentlemanly fellow. He was a German doctor, but it was hard to detect any foreign accent in his pronunciation.

The claim he was working was a mile or two up the river, and his company, he told me, was one of the greatest curiosities in the country. It consisted of two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Italians, two Mexicans, and my ragged friend, who was the only man in the company who spoke any language but his mother tongue. He was captain of the company, and interpreter-general for the crowd. I quite believed him when he said it was hard work to keep them all in order, and that when he was away no work could be done at all, and for that reason he was now hurrying back to his claim. But before leaving me he said, “I saw you sketching from the trail, and I came down to ask a favour of you.”

There is as much vanity sometimes in rags as in gorgeous apparel; and what he wanted of me was to make a sketch of him, rags and all, just as he was. To study such a splendid figure was exactly what I wanted to do myself, so I made an appointment with him for the next day, and begged of him in the meantime not to think of combing his hair, which, indeed, to judge from its appearance, he had not done for some time.

I found afterwards that he was a well-known character, and went by the name of the Flying Dutchman.

I passed by his claim one day, and such a scene it was! The Tower of Babel was not a circumstance to it. The whole of the party were up to their waists in water, in the middle of the river, trying to build a wing-dam. The Americans, the Frenchmen, the Italians, and the Mexicans, were all pulling in different directions at an immense unwieldy log, and bestowing on each other most frightful oaths, though happily in unknown tongues; while the directing genius, the Flying Dutchman, was rushing about among them, and gesticulating wildly in his endeavours to pacify them, and to explain what was to be done. He spoke all the modern languages at once, occasionally talking Spanish to a Frenchman, and English to the Italians, then cursing his own stupidity in German, and blowing them all up collectively in a promiscuous jumble of national oaths, when they all came to a stand-still, the Flying Dutchman even seeming to give it up in despair. But after addressing a few explanatory remarks to each nation separately, in their respective languages, he persuaded them to try once more, when they got along well enough for a few minutes, till something went wrong, and then the Tower-of-Babel scene was enacted over again.

What induced the Flying Dutchman to form a company of such incongruous materials, and to take so much trouble in trying to work it, I can’t say, unless it was a little of the same innocent vanity which was apparent in his exaggerated style of dress.

There was a considerable number of Frenchmen in the neighbourhood of Downieville, but they kept very much to themselves. So very few of them, even of the better class, could speak English, and so few American miners knew anything of French, that scarcely ever were they found working together.

In common intercourse of buying and selling, or asking and giving any requisite information, neither party were ever very much at a loss; a few words of broken English, a word or two of French, and a large share of pantomime, carried them through any conference.

When any one capable of acting as interpreter happened to be present, the Frenchman, in his impatience, was constantly asking him “Qu’est ce qu’il dit?” “Qu’est ce qu’il dit?” This caught the ear of the Americans more than anything else, and a “Keskydee” came at last to be a synonyme for a “Parleyvoo.”

The “Dutchmen” in the mines, under which denomination are included all manner of Germans, showed much greater aptitude to amalgamate with the people around them. Frenchmen were always found in gangs, but “Dutchmen” were usually met with as individuals, and more frequently associated with Americans than with their own countrymen. For the most part they spoke English very well, and there were none who could not make themselves perfectly intelligible.

But in making such a comparison between the Germans and the French, it would not be fair to leave unmentioned the fact, that the great majority of the former were men who had the advantage of having lived for a greater or less time in the United States, while the Frenchmen had nearly all immigrated in ship-loads direct from their native country.

About thirty miles above Downieville is one of the highest mountains in the mines. The view from the summit, which is composed of several rocky peaks in line with each other, like the teeth of a saw, was said to be one of the finest in California, and I was desirous of seeing it; but the mountain was on the verge of settlement, and there was no camp or house of accommodation nearer to it than Downieville. However, the Frenchman in whose house I was staying told me that a friend of his, who was mining there, would be down in a day or two, and that he would introduce me to him. He came down the next day for a supply of provisions, and I gladly took the opportunity of returning with him.

The trail followed the river all the way, and was very rough, many parts of it being nearly as bad as “Cape Horn.” The Frenchman had a pack-mule loaded with his stock of provisions, which gave him an infinity of trouble. He was such a bad packer that the cargo was constantly shifting, and requiring to be repacked and secured. At one spot, where there was a steep descent from the trail to the river of about a hundred feet, the whole cargo broke loose, and fell to the ground. The only article, however, which rolled off the narrow trail was a keg of butter, which went bounding down the hill till it reached the bottom, where at one smash it buttered the whole surface of a large flat rock in the middle of the river. The Frenchman climbed down by a circuitous route to recover what he could of it, while I remained to repack the cargo. Without further accident we arrived about dark at my companion’s cabin, where we found his partners just preparing supper;--and a very good supper it was; for, with only the ordinary materials of flour, ham, and beef, it was astonishing what a very superior mess a Frenchman could get up.

After smoking an infinite number of pipes, I stretched out on the floor, with my feet to the fire, and slept like a top till morning, when, having got directions from the Frenchman as to my route, I set out to climb the mountain. The cabin was situated at the base of one of the spurs into which the mountain branched off, and was about eight miles distant from the summit.

When I had got about half-way up, I came in sight of a quartz-grinding establishment, situated on an exceedingly steep place, where a small stream of water came dashing over the rocks. In the face of the hill a step had been cut out, on which a cabin was built, and immediately below it were two “rasters” in full operation.

These are the most primitive kind of contrivances for grinding quartz. They are circular places, ten or twelve feet in diameter, flagged with flat stones, and in these the quartz is crushed by two large heavy stones dragged round and round by a mule harnessed to a horizontal beam, to which they are also attached.

The quartz is already broken up into small pieces before being put into the raster, and a constant supply of water is necessary to facilitate the operation, the stuff, while being ground, having the appearance of a rich white mud. The Mexicans, who use this machine a great deal, have a way of ascertaining when the quartz is sufficiently ground, by feeling it between the finger and thumb of one hand, while with the other they feel the lower part of their ear; and when the quartz has the same soft velvety feel, it is considered fine enough, and the gold is then extracted by amalgamation with quicksilver.

A considerable amount of work had been done at this place. The quartz vein was several hundred yards above the rasters, and from it there was laid a double line of railway on the face of the mountain, for the purpose of bringing down the quartz. The loaded car was intended to bring up the empty one; but the railway was so steep that it looked as if a car, once started, would never stop till it reached the river, two or three miles below.

The vein was not being worked just now; and I only found one man at the place, who was employed in keeping the two mules at work in the “rasters.” He told me that the ascent from that point was so difficult that it would be dark before I could return, and persuaded me to pass the night with him, and start early the next morning.

The nights had been getting pretty chilly lately, and up here it was particularly so; but with the aid of a blazing fire we managed to make ourselves comfortable. I lay down before the fire, with the prospect of having a good sleep, but woke in the middle of the night, feeling it most bitterly cold. The fact is, the log-cabin was merely a log-cage, the chinks between the logs having never been filled up, and it had come on to blow a perfect hurricane. The spot where the cabin stood was very much exposed, and the gusts of wind blew against it and through it as if it would carry us all away.

This pleasant state of things lasted two days, during which time I remained a prisoner in the cabin, as the force of the wind was so great that one could scarcely stand outside, and the cold was so intense that the pools in the stream which ran past were covered with ice. The cabin was but poor protection, the wind having full play through it, even blowing the tin plates off the table while we were at dinner; and heavy gusts coming down the chimney filled the cabin with smoke, ashes, and burning wood. Two days of this was rather miserable work, but with the aid of my pencil and two or three old novels I managed to weather it out.

The third day the gale was over, and though still cold, the weather was beautifully bright and clear. On setting out on my expedition to the summit of the mountain, I had first to climb up the railway, which went as far as the top of the ridge, where the quartz cropped out in large masses. From this there was a gradual ascent to the summit, about four miles distant, over ground which was stony, like a newly macadamised road, and covered with wiry brushwood waist-high. This was rendered a still more pleasant place to travel over by being infested by grizzly bears, whose tracks I could see on every spot of ground capable of receiving the impression of their feet. At last I arrived at the foot of the immense masses of rock which formed the summit of the mountain, and the only means of continuing the ascent was by climbing up long slides of loose sharp-cornered stones of all sizes. Every step I took forward, I went about half a step backward, the stones giving way under my feet, and causing a general commotion from top to bottom. On reaching the top of this place, after suffering a good deal in my shins and shoe-leather, I found myself on a ledge of rock, with a similar one forty or fifty feet above me, to be gained by climbing another slide of loose stones; and having spent about an hour in working my passage up a succession of places of this sort, I arrived at the foot of the immense wall of solid rock which crowned the summit of the mountain. To reach the lowest point of the top of the perpendicular wall above me, I had some fifteen or twenty feet to climb the best way I could, and the prospect of any failure in the attempt was by no means encouraging, as, had I happened to fall, I should have been carried down to the regions below with an avalanche of loose rocks and stones. Even as I stood studying how I should make the ascent by means of the projecting ledges, and tracking out my course before I made the attempt, I felt the stones beginning to give way under my feet; and seeing there was no time to lose, I went at it, and after a pretty hard struggle I reached the top. This, however, was not the summit--I was only between the teeth of the saw; but I was enabled to gain the top of one of the peaks by means of a ledge, about a foot and a half wide, which slanted up the face of the rock. Here I sat down to enjoy the view, and certainly I felt amply repaid for all the labour of the ascent, by the vastness and grandeur of the panorama around me. I looked back for more than a hundred miles over the mountainous pine-clad region of the “Mines,” where, from the shapes of some of the mountains, I could distinguish many of the places which I had visited. Beyond this lay the wide plains of the Sacramento Valley, in which the course of the rivers could be traced by the trees which grew along their banks; and beyond the plains the coast range was distinctly seen.

On the other side, from which I had made the ascent, there was a sheer precipice of about two hundred feet, at the foot of which, in eternal shade, lay heaps of snow. The mountains in this direction were more rugged and barren, and beyond them appeared the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The atmosphere was intensely clear; it was as if there were no atmosphere at all, and the view of the most remote objects was so vivid and distinct that any one not used to such a clime would have been slow to believe that their distance was so great as it actually was. Monte Diablo, a peculiarly shaped mountain within a few miles of San Francisco, and upwards of three hundred miles from where I stood, was plainly discernible, and with as much distinctness as on a clear day in England a mountain is seen at a distance of fifty or sixty miles.

The beauty of the view, which consisted chiefly in its vastness, was greatly enhanced by being seen from such a lofty pinnacle. It gave one the idea of being suspended in the air, and cut off from all communication with the world below. The perfect solitude of the place was quite oppressive, and was rendered still more awful by the occasional loud report of some piece of rock, which, becoming detached from the mass, went bounding down to seek a more humble resting-place. The gradual disruption seemed to be incessant, for no sooner had one fragment got out of hearing down below, than another started after it. There was a keen wind blowing, and it was so miserably cold, that when I had been up here for about an hour, I became quite benumbed and chilled. It was rather ticklish work coming down from my exalted position, and more perilous a good deal than it had been to climb up to it; but I managed it without accident, and reached the cabin of my quartz-grinding friend before dark.

Here I found there had arrived in the mean time three men from a ranch which they had taken up in a small valley, about thirty miles farther up in the mountains. There were no other white men in that direction, and this cabin was the nearest habitation to them. They had come in with six or seven muleloads of hay for the use of the unfortunate animals who were kept in a state of constant revolution in the “rasters.”