CHAPTER XXV.

THE FOURTH OF JULY--THE PROCESSION--THE CELEBRATION--THE ORATION--A BULL-FIGHT--A LADY BULL-FIGHTER--NATURAL BRIDGES.

On the 4th of July I went over to Columbia, four miles distant from Sonora, where there were to be great doings, as the latter place had hardly yet recovered from the effects of the fire, and was still in a state of transition. So Columbia, which was nearly as large a town, was to be the place of celebration for all the surrounding country.

Early in the forenoon an immense concourse of people had assembled to take part in the proceedings, and were employing themselves in the mean time in drinking success to the American Eagle, in the numerous saloons and bar-rooms. The town was all stars and stripes; they fluttered over nearly every house, and here and there hung suspended across the street. The day was celebrated in the usual way, with a continual discharge of revolvers, and a vast expenditure of powder in squibs and crackers, together with an unlimited consumption of brandy. But this was only the overflowing of individual enthusiasm; the regular programme was a procession, a prayer, and an oration.

The procession was headed by about half-a-dozen ladies and a number of children--the teachers and pupils of a school--who sang hymns at intervals, when the brass band which accompanied them had blown themselves out of breath. They were followed by the freemasons, to the number of a hundred or so, in their aprons and other paraphernalia; and after them came a company of about the same number of horsemen, the most irregular cavalry one could imagine. Whoever could get a four-legged animal to carry him, joined the ranks; and horses, mules, and jackasses were all mixed up together. Next came the Hook and Ladder Company, dragging their hooks and ladders after them in regular firemen fashion; and after them came three or four hundred miners, walking two and two, and dragging, in like manner, by a long rope, a wheelbarrow, in which were placed a pick and shovel, a frying-pan, an old coffee-pot, and a tin cup. They were marshalled by half-a-dozen miners, with long-handled shovels over their shoulders, and all sorts of ribbons tied round their old hats to make a show.

Another mob of miners brought up the rear, drawing after them a long-tom on a pair of wheels. In the tom was a lot of “dirt,” which one man stirred up with his shovel, as if he were washing, while a number of others alongside were hard at work throwing in imaginary shovelfuls of dirt.

The idea was pretty good; but to understand the meaning of this gorgeous pageant, it was necessary to be familiar with mining life. The pick and shovel in the wheelbarrow were the emblems of the miners’ trade, while the old pots and pans were intended to signify the very rough style of his domestic life, particularly of his _cuisine_; and the party of miners at work around the long-tom was a representation of the way in which the wealth of the country is wrested from it by all who have stout hearts and willing hands, or stout hands and willing hearts--it amounts to much the same thing.

The procession paraded the streets for two or three hours, and proceeded to the bull-ring, where the ceremonies were to be performed. The bull-ring here was neither so large nor so well got up as the one at Sonora, but still it could accommodate a very large number of people. As the miners entered the arena with their wheelbarrow and long-tom, they were immensely cheered by the crowds who had already taken their seats, the band in the mean time playing “Hail Columbia” most lustily.

The Declaration of Independence was read by a gentleman in a white neckcloth, and the oration was then delivered by the “orator of the day,” who was a pale-faced, chubby-cheeked young gentleman, with very white and extensive shirt-collars. He indulged in a great deal of bunkum about the Pilgrim Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, the “Blarney-stone of America,” as the Americans call it. George the Third and his “red-coated minions” were alluded to in not very flattering terms; and after having exhausted the past, the orator, in his enthusiasm, became prophetic of the future. He fancied he saw a distant vision of a great republic in Ireland, England sunk into insignificance, and all the rest of it.

The speech was full of American and local phraseology, but the richness of the brogue was only the more perceptible from the vain attempt to disguise it. Many of the Americans sitting near me seemed to think that the orator was piling up the agony a little too high, and signified their disapprobation by shouting “Gaas, gaas!” My next neighbour, an old Yankee, informed me that, in his opinion, “them Pilgrim Fathers were no better than their neighbours; they left England because they could not have everything their own way, and in America were more intolerant of other religions than any one had been of theirs in England. I know all about ’em,” he said, “for I come from right whar they lived.”

In the middle of the arena, during the ceremonies, was a cage containing a grizzly bear, who had fought and killed a bull by torchlight the night before. His cage was boarded up, so that he was deprived of the pleasure of seeing what was going on, but he could hear all that was said, and expressed his opinion from time to time by grunting and growling most savagely.

After the oration, the company dispersed to answer the loud summons of the numerous dinner-bells and gongs, and in the afternoon there was a bull-fight, which went off with great _éclat_.

It was announced in the bills that the celebrated lady bull-fighter, the Señorita Ramona Perez, would despatch a bull with the sword. This celebrated señorita, however, turned out to be only the chief _matador_, who entered the arena very well got up as a woman, with the slight exception of a very fine pair of mustaches, which he had not thought it worth while to sacrifice. He had a fan in his hand, with which he half concealed his face, as if from modesty, as he curtseyed to the audience, who received him with shouts of laughter--mixed with hisses and curses, however, for there were some who had been true believers in the señorita; but the infidels were the majority, and, thinking it a good joke, enjoyed it accordingly. The señorita played with the bull for some little time with the utmost audacity, and with a great deal of feminine grace, whisking her petticoats in the bull’s face with one hand, whilst she smoothed down her hair with the other. At last the sword was handed to her, which she received very gingerly, also a red flag; and after dodging a few passes from the bull, she put the sword most gracefully into the back of his neck, and, hardly condescending to wait to see whether she had killed or not, she dropped both sword and flag, and ran out of the arena, curtseying, and kissing her hand to the spectators, after the manner of a ballet-dancer leaving the stage.

It was a pity the fellow had not shaved off his mustache, as otherwise his acting was so good that one might have deluded oneself with the belief that it was really the celebrated señorita herself who was risking her precious life by such a very ladylike performance.

I had heard from many persons of two natural bridges on a small river called Coyote Creek, some twelve miles off; and as they were represented as being very curious and beautiful objects, I determined to pay them a visit. Accordingly, returning to M‘Lean’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, at the point where Coyote Creek joins that river, I travelled up the Creek for some miles, clambering over rocks and winding round steep overhanging banks, by a trail so little used that it was hardly discernible. I was amply repaid for my trouble, however, when, after an hour or two of hard climbing in the roasting hot sun, I at last reached the bridges, and found them much more beautiful natural curiosities than I had imagined them to be.

Having never been able to get any very intelligible account of what they really were, I had supposed that some large rocks rolling down the mountain had got jammed over the creek, by the steepness of the rocky banks on each side, which I fancied would be a very easy mode of building a natural bridge. My idea, however, was very far from the reality. In fact, bridges was an inappropriate name; they should rather have been called caves or tunnels. How they were formed is a question for geologists; but their appearance gave the idea that there had been a sort of landslip, which blocked up the bed of the creek for a distance of two or three hundred feet, and to the height of fifty or sixty above the bed of the stream. They were about a quarter of a mile apart, and their surface was, like that of the hills, perfectly smooth, and covered with grass and flowers. The interiors were somewhat the same style of place, but the upper one was the larger and more curious of the two. The faces of the tunnel were perpendicular, presenting an entrance like a church door, about twelve feet high, surrounded by huge stony fungus-like excrescences, of a dark purple-and-green colour. The waters of the creek flowed in here, and occupied all the width of the entrance. They were only a few inches in depth, and gave a perfect reflection of the whole of the interior, which was a lofty chamber some hundred feet in length, the straight sides of which met at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. At the further end was a vista of similarly arched small passages, branching off into darkness. The walls were deeply carved into pillars and grotesque forms, in which one could trace all manner of fanciful resemblances; while at the base of some of the columns were most symmetrically-formed projections, many of which might be taken for fonts, the top of them being a circular basin containing water. These projections were of stone, and had the appearance of having congealed suddenly while in a boiling state. There was a beautiful regularity in the roughness of their surface, some of the rounded forms being deeply carved with circular lines, similar to the engine-turning on the back of a watch, and others being rippled like a shirt of mail, the rippling getting gradually and regularly finer, till at the top the surface was hardly more rough than that of a file. The walls and roof seemed to have been smothered over with some stuff which had hardened into a sort of cement, presenting a polished surface of a bright cream-colour, tinged here and there with pink and pale-green. The entrance was sufficiently large to light up the whole place, which, from its general outline, gave somewhat the idea of a church; for, besides the pillars, with their flowery ornaments, the Gothic arches and the fonts, there was at one side, near the entrance, one of these stone excrescences much larger than the others, and which would have passed for a pulpit, overhung as it was by a projection of a similar nature, spreading out from the wall several feet above it.

The sides of the arches forming the roof did not quite meet at the top, but looked like the crests of two immense foaming waves, between which were seen the extremities of numbers of pendants of a like flowery form.

There was nothing rough or uncertain about the place; every part seemed as if it were elaborately finished, and in strict harmony with the whole; and as the rays of the setting sun fell on the water within the entrance, and reflected a subdued light over the brilliant hues of the interior, it looked like a gorgeous temple, which no art could improve, and such as no human imagination could have designed. At the other end of the tunnel the water emerged from a much smaller cave, and which was so low as not to admit of a man crawling in.

The caves, at each end of the other tunnel, were also very small, though the architecture was of the same flowery style. The faces of it, however, were extremely beautiful. To the height of fifty or sixty feet they presented a succession of irregular overhanging projections, bulging out like immense mushrooms, of which the prevailing hue was a delicate pink, with occasional patches of bright green.

In any part of the Old World such a place would be the object of a pilgrimage; and even where it was, it attracted many visitors, numbers of whom had, according to the established custom of snobhood, acknowledged their own insignificance, and had sought a little immortality for their wretched names by scratching them on a large smooth surface by the side of the entrance to the cave.

While I was there, an old Yankee miner came to see the place. He paid a very hurried visit--he had not even time to scratch his initials; but he was enthusiastic in his admiration of this beautiful object of nature, which, however, he thought was quite thrown away in such an out-of-the-way part of creation. It distressed him to think that such a valuable piece of property could not be turned to any profitable account. “Now,” said he, “if I had this here thing jist about ten miles from New York city, I’d show it to the folks at twenty-five cents a-head, and make an everlastin’ pile of money out of it.”