CHAPTER XX.

WANT OF WATER--CANALS--ENGINEERING DIFFICULTIES--VOLCANO DIGGINGS--BOILING DIRT--NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN MINES--DIFFERENCE IN SCENERY, GOLD, AND INHABITANTS--VISIT TO A CAVE--WHIST AND CHESS--MEXICAN HORSE-THIEVES--CROSSING THE MOQUELUMNE--CHILIAN MINERS--AN INDIAN CAVALCADE.

The want of water was the great obstacle in the way of mining at Moquelumne Hill. As it stood so much higher than the surrounding country, there were no streams which could be introduced, and the only means of getting a constant supply was to bring the water from the Moquelumne River, which flowed past, three or four thousand feet below the diggings. In order to get the requisite elevation to raise the waters so far above their natural channel, it was found necessary to commence the canal some fifty or sixty miles up the river. The idea had been projected, but the execution of such a piece of work required more capital than could be raised at the moment; but the diggings at Moquelumne Hill were known to be so rich, as was also the tract of country through which the canal would pass, that the speculation was considered sure to be successful; and a company was not long after formed for the purpose of carrying out the undertaking, which amply repaid those embarked in it, and opened up a vast extent of new field for mining operations, by supplying water in places which otherwise could only have been worked for two or three months of the year.

This was only one of many such undertakings in California, some of which were even on a larger scale. The engineering difficulties were very great, from the rocky and mountainous nature of the country through which the canals were brought. Hollows and valleys were spanned at a great height by aqueducts, supported on graceful scaffoldings of pine-logs, and precipitous mountains were girded by wooden flumes projecting from their rocky sides. Throughout the course of a canal, wherever water was wanted by miners, it was supplied to them at so much an inch, a sufficient quantity for a party of five or six men costing about seven dollars a-day.

I remained a few days at Moquelumne Hill in a holey old canvass hotel, which freely admitted both wind and water; but in this respect it was not much worse than its neighbours. A French physician resided on the opposite side of the street in a tent not much larger than a sentry-box, on the front of which appeared the following promiscuous announcement, in letters as large as the space admitted of--

“PHARMACIEN DE PARIS. DRUGS AND MEDICINES. BOTICA. DOCTOR--DENTISTE. COLD CREAM. DESTRUCTION TO RATS. MORT AUX SOURIS.”

From Moquelumne I went to Volcano Diggings, a distance of eighteen miles, but which I lengthened to nearly thirty by losing my way in crossing an unfrequented part of the country where the trails were very indistinct.

The principal diggings at Volcano are in the banks of a gulch, called Soldiers’ Gulch, from its having been first worked by United States’ soldiers, and were of a peculiar nature, differing from any other diggings I had seen, inasmuch as, though they had been worked to a depth of forty or fifty feet from the surface, they had been equally rich from top to bottom, and as yet no bed-rock had been reached. It was seldom such a depth of pay-dirt was found. The gold was usually only found within a few feet of the bottom, but in this case the stiff clay soil may have retained the gold, and prevented its settling down so readily as through sand or gravel. The clay was so stiff that it was with difficulty it could be washed, and lately the miners had taken to boiling it in large boilers, which was found to dissolve it very quickly.

To mineralogists I should think that this is the most interesting spot in the mines, from the great variety of curious stones found in large quantities in the diggings. One kind is found, about the size of a man’s head, which when broken appears veined with successive brightly-coloured layers round a beautifully-crystallised cavity in the centre, the whole being enveloped in a rough outside crust an inch in thickness. The colours are more various and the veins closer together than those of a Scotch pebble, and the stone itself is more flinty and opaque. Quantities of lava were also found here, and masses of limestone rock appeared above the surface of the ground.

This place lay north of Moquelumne Hill, and might be called the most southern point of the northern mines.

Between the scenery of the northern mines and that of the south there is a very marked difference, both in the exterior formation of the country, and in the kind of trees with which it is wooded. In both the surface of the country is smooth--that is to say, there is an absence of ruggedness of detail--the mountains appear to have been smoothed down by the action of water; but, both north and south, the country, as a whole, is rough in the extreme, the mountain-sides, as well as the table-lands, being covered with swellings, and deeply indented by ravines. An acre of level land is hardly to be found. The difference, however, exists in this, that in the north the mountains themselves, and every little swelling upon them, are of a conical form, while in the south they are all more circular. The mountains spread themselves out in hemispherical projections one beyond another; and in many parts of the country are found groups of eminences of the same form, and as symmetrical as if they had been shaped by artificial means.

There is just as much symmetry in the conical forms of the northern mines, but they appear more natural, and the pyramidal tops of the pine-trees are quite in keeping with the outlines of the country which they cover; and it is remarkable that where the conical formation ceases, there also the pine ceases to be the principal tree of the country. There are pines, and plenty of them, in the southern mines, but the country is chiefly wooded with various kinds of oaks, and other trees of still more rounded shape, with only here and there a solitary pine towering above them to break the monotony of the curvilinear outline.

As might be expected from this circular formation, the rivers in the south do not follow such a sharp zigzag course as in the north; they take wider sweeps: the mountains are not so steep, and the country generally is not so rough. In fact, there is scarcely any camp in the southern mines which is not accessible by wheeled vehicles.

Besides this great change in the appearance of the country, one could not fail to observe also, in travelling south, the equally marked difference in the inhabitants. In the north, one saw occasionally some straggling Frenchmen and other European foreigners, here and there a party of Chinamen, and a few Mexicans engaged in driving mules, but the total number of foreigners was very small: the population was almost entirely composed of Americans, and of these the Missourians and other western men formed a large proportion.

The southern mines, however, were full of all sorts of people. There were many villages peopled nearly altogether by Mexicans, others by Frenchmen; in some places there were parties of two or three hundred Chilians forming a community of their own. The Chinese camps were very numerous; and besides all such distinct colonies of foreigners, every town of the southern mines contained a very large foreign population. The Americans, however, were of course greatly the majority, but even among them one remarked the comparatively small number of Missourians and such men, who are so conspicuous in the north.

There was still another difference in a very important feature--in fact, the most important of all--the gold. The gold of the northern mines is generally flaky, in exceedingly small thin scales; that of the south is coarse gold, round and “chunky.” The rivers of the north afford very rich diggings, while in the south they are comparatively poor, and the richest deposits are found in the flats and other surface-diggings on the highlands.

In the north there were no such canvass towns as Moquelumne Hill. Log-cabins and frame-houses were the rule, and canvass the exception; while in the southern mines the reverse was the case, excepting in some of the larger towns.

It is singular that the State should be thus divided by nature into two sections of country so unlike in many important points; and that the people inhabiting them should help to heighten the contrast is equally curious, though it may possibly be accounted for by supposing that Frenchmen, Mexicans, and other foreigners, preferred the less wild-looking country and more temperate winters of the southern mines, while the absence of the Western backwoodsmen in the south was owing to the fact that they came to the country across the plains by a route which entered the State near Placerville. Their natural instinct would have led them to continue on a westward course, but this would have brought them down on the plains of the Sacramento Valley, where there is no gold; so, thinking that sunset was more north than south, and knowing also there was more western land in that direction, they spread all over the northern part of the State, till they connected themselves with the settlements in Oregon.

In the neighbourhood of Volcano there is a curious cave, which I went to visit with two or three miners. The entrance to it is among some large rocks on the bank of the creek, and is a hole in the ground just large enough to admit of a man’s dropping himself into it lengthways. The descent is perpendicular between masses of rock for about twenty feet, and is accomplished by means of a rope; the passage then takes a slanting direction for the same distance, and lands one in a chamber thirty or forty feet wide, the roof and sides of which are composed of groups of immense stalactites. The height varies very much, some of the stalactites reaching within four or five feet of the ground; and there are several small openings in the walls, just large enough to creep through, which lead into similar chambers. We brought a number of pieces of candle with us, with which we lighted up the whole place. The effect was very fine; the stalactites, being tinged with pale blue, pink, and green, were grouped in all manner of grotesque forms, in one corner giving an exact representation of a small petrified waterfall.

Coming down into the cave was easy enough, the force of gravity being the only motive power, but to get out again we found rather a difficult operation. The sides of the passage were smooth, offering no resting-place for the foot; and the only means of progression was to haul oneself up by the rope hand over hand--rather hard work in the inclined part of the passage, which was so confined that one could hardly use one’s arms.

At the hotel I stayed at here I found very agreeable company; most of the party were Texans, and were doctors and lawyers by profession, though miners by practice. For the first time since I had been in the mines I here saw whist played, the more favourite games being poker, eucre, and all-fours, or “seven up,” as it is there called. There were also some enthusiastic chess-players among the party, who had manufactured a set of men with their bowie-knives; so what with whist and chess every night, I fancied I had got into a civilised country.

The day before I had intended leaving this village, some Mexicans came into the camp with a lot of mules, which they sold so cheap as to excite suspicions that they had not come by them honestly. In the evening it was discovered that they were stolen animals, and several men started in pursuit of the Mexicans; but they had already been gone some hours, and there was little chance of their being overtaken. I waited a day, in hopes of seeing them brought back and hung by process of Lynch law, which would certainly have been their fate had they been caught; but, fortunately for them, they succeeded in making good their escape. The men who had gone in chase returned empty-handed, so I set out again for Moquelumne Hill on my way south.

I was put upon a shorter trail than the one by which I had come from there; and though it was very dim and little travelled, I managed to keep it: and passing on my way through a small camp called Clinton, inhabited principally by Chilians and Frenchmen, I struck the Moquelumne River at a point several miles above the bridge where I had crossed it before.

The river was still much swollen with the rains and snow of winter, and the mode of crossing was not by any means inviting. Two very small canoes lashed together served as a ferry-boat, in which the passenger hauled himself across the river by means of a rope made fast to a tree on either bank, the force of the current keeping the canoes bow on. When I arrived here, this contrivance happened to be on the opposite side, where I saw a solitary tent which seemed to be inhabited, but I hallooed in vain for some one to make his appearance and act as ferryman. There seemed to be a trail from the tent leading up the river; so, following that direction for about half a mile, I found a party of miners at work on the other side--one of whom, in the obliging spirit universally met with in the mines, immediately left his work and came down to ferry me across.

On the side I was on was an old race about eighteen feet wide, through which the waters rushed rapidly past. A pile of rocks prevented the boat from crossing this, so there was nothing for it but to wade. Some stones had been thrown in, forming a sort of submarine stepping-stones, and lessening the depth to about three feet; but they were smooth and slippery, and the water was so intensely cold, and the current so strong, that I found the long pole which the man told me to take a very necessary assistance in making the passage. On reaching the canoes, and being duly enjoined to be careful in getting in and to keep perfectly still, we crossed the main body of the river; and very ticklish work it was, for the waves ran high, and the utmost care was required to avoid being swamped. We got across safe enough, when my friend put me under additional obligations by producing a bottle of brandy from his tent and asking me to “liquor,” which I did with a great deal of pleasure, as the water was still gurgling and squeaking in my boots, and was so cold that I felt as if I were half immersed in ice-cream.

After climbing the steep mountain-side and walking a few miles farther, I arrived at Moquelumne Hill, having, in the course of my day’s journey, gradually passed from the pine-tree country into such scenery as I have already described as characterising the southern mines.

I went on the next morning to San Andres by a road which winded through beautiful little valleys, still fresh and green, and covered with large patches of flowers. In one long gulch through which I passed, about two hundred Chilians were at work washing the dirt, panful by panful, in their large flat wooden dishes. This is a very tedious process, and a most unprofitable expenditure of labour; but Mexicans, Chilians, and other Spanish Americans, most obstinately adhered to their old-fashioned primitive style, although they had the example before them of all the rest of the world continually making improvements in the method of abstracting the gold, whereby time was saved and labour rendered tenfold more effective.

I soon after met a troop of forty or fifty Indians galloping along the road, most of them riding double--the gentlemen having their squaws seated behind them. They were dressed in the most grotesque style, and the clothing seemed to be pretty generally diffused throughout the crowd. One man wore a coat, another had the remains of a shirt and one boot, while another was fully equipped in an old hat and a waistcoat: but the most conspicuous and generally worn articles of costume were the coloured cotton handkerchiefs with which they bandaged up their heads. As they passed they looked down upon me with an air of patronising condescension, saluting me with the usual “wally wally,” in just such a tone that I could imagine them saying to themselves at the same time, “Poor devil! he’s only a white man.”

They all had their bows and arrows, and some were armed besides with old guns and rifles, but they were doubtless only going to pay a friendly visit to some neighbouring tribe. They were evidently anticipating a pleasant time, for I never before saw Indians exhibiting such boisterous good-humour.

A few miles in from San Andres I crossed the Calaveras, which is here a wide river, though not very deep. There was neither bridge nor ferry, but fortunately some Mexicans had camped with a train of pack-mules not far from the place, and from them I got an animal to take me across.