Chapter IX (2)

"We soon became quite sociable, and, after a hearty supper of
fried beef and biscuit, by some miraculous dispensation a five
gallon keg of whisky was uncorked, and, after a thirty days'
thirst, our new-found friends slaked away unremittingly. Many
were the marvellous adventures narrated of huntings, fightings,
freezings, snowings, and starvations; and one stalwart, bronzed
trapper beside me, finding an attentive listener, began:--'The
last time, captin, I cleared the Oregon trail, the Ingens fowt
us amazin' hard. Pete,' said he, addressing a friend smoking a
clay pipe by the fire, with a half pint of corn-juice in his
hand, which served to moisten his own clay at intervals between
every puff--'Pete, do you notice how I dropped the Redskin who
put the poisoned arrow in my moccasin! Snakes, captin! the
varmints lay thick as leaves behind the rocks; and, bless ye,
the minit I let fall old Ginger from my jaw, up they springs,
and lets fly their flint-headed arrers in amongst us, and one
on 'em wiped me right through the leg. I tell yer what it is,
hoss, I riled, I did, though we'd had tolerable luck in the
forenoon;--for I dropped two and a squaw, and Pete got his good
six--barrin' that the darned villains had hamstrung our mule,
and we were bound to see the thing out. Well, captin, as I tell
ye, I'm not weak in the jints, but it's no joke to hold the
heft of twenty-three pounds on a sight for above ten minits on
a stretch; so Pete and me scrouched down, made a little smoke
with some sticks, and then we moved off, a few rods, whar we got
a clar peep. For better than an hour we see'd nothin'; but on a
suddin I see'd the chap--I know'd him by his paintin'--that driv
the arrer in my hide: he was peerin' round quite bold, thinkin'
we'd vamosed; I jist fetched old Ginger up and drawed a bee line
on his cratch, and, stranger, I giv him sich a winch in the
stomach that he dropped straight into his tracks: he did! In
five jumps I riz his har, and Pete and me warn't troubled again
for a week.'"

After two months passed at Monterey, the American squadron assembled and a new commodore arrived, whereupon Lieut. Wise's captain was not sorry to be allowed to lift his anchors, and avoid playing second fiddle to the new commander-in-chief by transferring his pennant to the waters of the San Francisco. On the way thither his lieutenant treats us to some yarns of extraordinary toughness. Speaking of the lasso, in the use of which the Californians are particularly skilful--catching a bull by the tail and making him fling a somerset over his horns, or dragging a grizzly bear for miles to the baiting place--he calls to mind having once seen a troop of horses "at General Rosas' quinta, near Buenos Ayres, trained to run like hares, with fore and hind legs lashed together by thongs of hide: it was undertaken to preserve the animals from being thrown by the Indian _bolas_, and the riders, as a consequence, lanced to death. But I was far more amused one afternoon, when passing a fandango, near Monterey, to see a drunken cattle-driver, mounted on a restive, plunging beast, hold at arm's length a tray of glasses, brimming with aguardiente, which he politely offered to everybody within reach of his curvettings, without ever once spilling a drop." These marvellous feats are nothing, however, compared to the cannibal exploits of some unfortunate emigrants, who, having loitered on their way, were overtaken by the snow in the Californian mountains, and compelled to encamp for the winter. Their provisions and cattle consumed, even to the last horse hide, famine and insanity ensued. Those who starved to death were eaten by the survivors, whose appetites, if we may believe Mr Wise, were quite prodigious. A Dutchman, he gravely assures us, actually ate a full-grown body in thirty-six hours; and another boiled and devoured, in a single night, a child, nine years of age. We cannot venture to extract the revolting details that follow. The lieutenant's facetiousness upon this horrible subject is rather ghastly; and the particulars supplied by a young Spaniard, who "ate a baby," are abominable in the extreme, although possibly true. At least Mr Wise assures us he had them from the lad's own lips. And, whilst his strength lasted, poor Baptiste was drudge to the whole party, doing his duty well, fetching fuel and water, until at last, as he told Mr Wise, "very hungry, sir; eat anything."

On the wild and dreary track from the States to California, frightful disasters occur to caravans of emigrants, which, encumbered with women and children, and sometimes under incompetent leaders, lose precious time by the way, and are caught and crushed by the terrible winter of those desolate regions. Journeying near the Sacramento, Mr Johnson came upon the house of "old Keysburg the cannibal, who revelled in the awful feast on human flesh and blood, during the sufferings of a party of emigrants near the pass of the Sierra Nevada, in the winter of 1847. It is said that the taste which Keysburg then acquired has not left him, and that he often declares, with evident gusto, 'I would like to eat a piece of you;' and several have sworn to shoot him, if he ventures on such _fond_ declarations to them. We therefore looked upon the den of this wild beast in human form with a good deal of disgusted curiosity, and kept our bowie-knives handy for a slice of him if necessary."

Sailor though he is, Mr Wise troubles his reader very little with nautical matters. During a few weeks he was a good deal afloat, having succeeded to the command of the Rosita, a forty ton schooner, with a crew of fifteen sailors, a small boy, and a mulatto cook, who had once been "head bottle-washer of a Liverpool liner, with glass nubs on de cabin doors;" but otherwise most of his time seems to have been spent on shore, riding, shooting, dancing, and love-making, doing military duty in garrison at Mazatlan, throwing up fortifications, and surprising parties of Mexicans, whose fear of the Gringos was most intense and ludicrous. In their civil wars, and when contending with the Spaniards for their independence, the Mexicans have occasionally fought doggedly, although never skilfully; but when opposed to combatants of the Anglo-Saxon race, they have invariably shown themselves arrant cowards. Although the soldiers of the States have even less military discipline than those of Mexico, the bodily strength, skill with the rifle, intrepidity, and self-reliance of the former, would render them formidable opponents even to well-drilled European troops. As to the Mexicans, no matter how great the numerical odds in their favour, they never could or would stand against the hardy Yankee volunteers. In the summer of 1846, Mr Parkman met, upon the wild and lonely banks of the Upper Arkansas, Price's Missouri regiment, on its way to Santa Fé.

"No men ever embarked upon a military expedition with a greater
love for the work before them than the Missourians; but if
discipline and subordination be the criterion of merit, these
soldiers were worthless indeed. Yet when their exploits have
rung through all America, it would be absurd to deny that they
were excellent irregular troops. Their victories were gained
in the teeth of every established precedent of warfare; they
were owing to a singular combination of military qualities
in the men themselves. Without discipline or a spirit of
subordination, they knew how to keep their ranks, and act as
one man. Doniphan's regiment marched through New Mexico more
like a band of Free Companions than like the paid soldiers of
a modern government. When General Taylor complimented Doniphan
on his success at Sacramento and elsewhere, the colonel's reply
very well illustrates the relations which subsisted between the
officers and men of his command. 'I don't know anything of the
manoeuvres. The boys kept coming to me to let them charge; and
when I saw a good opportunity, I told them they might go. They
were off like a shot, and that's all I know about it.'

"The backwoods lawyer was better fitted to conciliate the
good-will than to command the obedience of his men. There were
many serving under him, who both from character and education,
could better have held command than he. At the battle of
Sacramento, his frontiersmen fought under every possible
disadvantage. The Mexicans had chosen their own position; they
were drawn up across the valley that led to their native city
of Chihuahua; their whole front was covered by intrenchments,
and defended by batteries of heavy cannon; they outnumbered the
invaders five to one. An eagle flew over the Americans, and
a deep murmur rose along their lines. The enemy's batteries
opened; long they remained under fire, but when at length the
word was given, they shouted and ran forward. In one of the
divisions, when midway to the enemy, a drunken officer ordered
a halt; the exasperated men hesitated to obey. 'Forward, boys!'
cried a private from the ranks; and the Americans, rushing like
tigers upon the enemy, bounded over the breastwork. Four hundred
Mexicans were slain upon the spot, and the rest fled, scattering
over the plain like sheep. The standards, cannon, and baggage
were taken, and among the rest a waggon laden with cords, which
the Mexicans, in the fulness of their confidence, had made ready
for tying the American prisoners."

A curious picture of military _un_discipline--of egregious cowardice on the one hand, and fortunate audacity on the other. It is evident that the Doniphan mode of carrying on the war--consulting the men's pleasure, with officers drunk before the enemy, and privates giving the word of command--however successful it may prove against the wretched Mexicans, or in mountain and guerilla warfare, would never answer in the open field against a regular and skilfully commanded army. The question, then, follows,--How far could these staunch and gallant American riflemen be trained to the strict discipline and military exercises and manoeuvres essential to the efficiency of large bodies of troops, without impairing the very qualities, the feelings of independent action and self-reliance, which render them so valuable as irregular warriors? This inquiry, however, is not worth pursuing; for we suppose there is little chance of Uncle Sam meddling in European quarrels, and sincerely trust he will so curb his annexing mania as to avoid all risk of European armaments encountering him in his own hemisphere. Touching these Missourian volunteers, however, Mr Parkman's account of their appearance, and of his interview with them, is most graphic and characteristic. One forenoon he and his companion, Mr Shaw, turned aside to the river bank, half-a-mile from the trail, to get water and rest. They put up a kind of awning, and whilst seated under it upon their buffalo robes, and smoking, they saw a dark body of horsemen approaching.

"'We are going to catch it now,' said Shaw: 'look at those
fellows; there'll be no peace for us here.' And, in good truth,
about half the volunteers had straggled away from the line of
march, and were riding over the meadow towards us.

"'How are you?' said the first who came up, alighting from his
horse, and throwing himself upon the ground. The rest followed
close, and a score of them soon gathered about us, some lying at
full length, and some sitting on horseback. They all belonged
to a company raised in St Louis. There were some ruffian faces
among them, and some haggard with debauchery; but, on the whole,
they were extremely good-looking men, superior beyond measure
to the ordinary rank and file of an army. Except that they
were booted to the knees, they wore their belts and military
trappings over the ordinary dress of citizens. Besides their
swords and holster pistols, they carried, slung from their
saddles, the excellent Springfield carbines, loaded at the
breech. They inquired the character of our party, and were
anxious to know the prospect of killing buffalo, and the chance
that their horses would stand the journey to Santa Fé. All this
was well enough, but a moment after a worse visitation came upon
us.

"'How are you, strangers? Whar are you going, and whar are you
from?' said a fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw
hat on his head. He was dressed in the coarsest brown homespun
cloth. His face was rather sallow, from fever and ague, and his
tall figure, although strong and sinewy, was quite thin, and
had, besides, an angular look, which, together with his boorish
seat on horseback, gave him an appearance anything but graceful.
Plenty more of the same stamp were close behind him. Their
company was raised in one of the frontier counties, and we soon
had abundant evidence of their rustic breeding: dozens of them
came crowding round, pushing between our first visitors, and
staring at us with unabashed faces.

"'Are you the captain?' asked one fellow.

"'What's your business out here?' inquired another.

"'Whar do you live when you're at home?' said a third.

"'I reckon you're traders,' surmised a fourth; and, to crown the
whole, one of them came confidently to my side, and inquired, in
a low voice, 'What is your partner's name?'

"As each new comer repeated the same questions, the nuisance
became intolerable. Our military visitors were soon disgusted at
the concise nature of our replies, and we could overhear them
muttering curses against us. Presently, to our amazement, we saw
a large cannon with four horses come lumbering up behind the
crowd; and the driver, who was perched on one of the animals,
stretching his neck so as to look over the rest of the men,
called out,--

"'Whar are you from, and what's your business?'

"The captain of one of the companies was amongst our visitors,
drawn by the same curiosity that had attracted his men.

"'Well, men,' said he at last, lazily rising from the ground
where he had been lounging, 'it's getting late; I reckon we had
better be moving.'

"'I shan't start yet, anyhow,' said one fellow, who lay half
asleep, with his head resting on his arm.

"'Don't be in a hurry, captain,' added the lieutenant.

"'Well, have it your own way, we'll wait awhile longer,' replied
the obsequious commander.

"At length, however, our visitors went straggling away as they
had come, and we, to our great relief, were left alone again."

A most mirth-provoking specimen of American character. But we must return to our friend and favourite, Lieutenant Wise, who is truly a Yankee Crichton in a pea-jacket. Besides his nautical skill, and the lingual accomplishments already adverted to, he is a Nimrod in the hunting-field, a Centaur on horseback, a Vestris in the mazes of the dance. Lovers of wild sports in the West will luxuriate in his descriptions of hunting exploits, of his combats with grizzly bears fourteen hundred pounds weight, and his chase of an antelope whose fore-leg he had nearly severed from its shoulder with a rifle bullet, but which still managed to run four leagues, the wounded member "traversing round in its flight like a wheel," before receiving its death-wound. Unable to extract a tithe of the passages that tempt us, we hurry on to his departure for the Mexican capital, whither he was sent early in the month of May, as bearer of a despatch, and in company with a Mexican officer, with whom the lieutenant was at first disposed to be most friendly and sociable, but who forfeited his esteem by the cool proposal of a plan to cheat the government, and whom he soon managed to leave behind--no difficult matter, for the Mexican was cumbered with portmanteau and sumpter mule, whereas the Yankee's sole baggage, as he himself informs us, consisted of two shirts and a toothbrush. Thus lightly equipped, his pace was very rapid; not so much so, however, as to prevent his noting down all that occurred by the way. After La Barca and Ruxton, it is a difficult task to give novelty to an account of Mexican travel and peculiarities. Mr Wise has surmounted the difficulty; and so great is the freshness and originality of his narrative, that we read it with as much zest and enjoyment as if it were the first instead of the twentieth book relating to Mexico which we have perused within the last few years. His anecdotes are most racy and piquant; his sketches of Mexican women, officers, _leperos_, and of his own countrymen in Mexico, are taken from the life with a truthful and vivid pencil. With the class of leperos he had already made acquaintance on the threshold of the country. Turning, one day, into a bowling alley at Mazatlan, with the officers of a British frigate, he gave a fine horse to hold to one of those Mexican mendicants. The fellow's hatred of the _gringos_ was stronger than his love of gain; for no sooner was he left alone than he drew a pistol from the holsters, shot the horse, and ran for his life, which certainly would not have been worth a maravedi had he tarried for the arrival of the enraged lieutenant. "Oh, Mr Smithers!" exclaims the disconsolate mariner thus cruelly dismounted--"Oh, Mr Smithers! you keep a good ten-pin alley, sing a good song, and your wife prepares good chocolate; you are, together, good fellows; but you should never, O Smithers! transform your establishment into a knacker's yard. And you, my cruel _lepero_! had I ever got a sight of you along that weapon you handled so well--ah! I wellnigh wept for sorrow that night, and did not recover my spirits for a fortnight." The leperos, we need hardly explain, are the pest of Mexico--ragged, dirty, often disgusting with disease or deformity, born idlers, beggars, and thieves--in the latter capacity so especially skilful, that Mr Wise inclines to the belief that a man, standing open-mouthed in a crowd of them, could hardly escape having the gold picked from his molars. They reaped a rich harvest at the time of the American invasion. It was a case of "_nos amis les ennemis_." The conquerors were preyed upon by the conquered. Iron bars were unavailing against the cunning rogues. "One evening some expert practitioner contrived to entice a valuable pair of pistols, clothing, and other articles, from my table in the centre of a large apartment, by introducing a pole and hook through the iron _grille_ of the window; and the same night, my friend Molinero was robbed of his bed-clothes, while sleeping, by the same enterprising method." By a strange tolerance, these leperos are admitted everywhere; and in the splendid coffee and gambling houses of the large cities, they are found rubbing their filthy rags against officers' embroideries and the fine broadcloth of wealthy burgesses. At Guanaxato, Mr Wise gives a lively description of a scene of this kind in the handsome saloons of the _Gran Sociedad_, recalling to our memory, though at a long interval, some striking pages of the first volume of Sealsfield's gorgeous Mexican romance, _Der Virey and die Aristocraten_. The lepero's chief pastimes are thieving, sleeping, and gambling for copper coins. By way of variety, he occasionally gets up a mortal combat. We think the following the best account of a knife-duel we ever read:--

"A lepero was purchasing a bit of chocolate; it fell in the
dirt, when another, probably thinking it a lawful prize, seized
it and took a large bite; whereupon the lawful owner swung a
mass of heavy steel spurs attached to his wrist, jingling, with
some force, on the offender's head. In a second down dropped the
spurs, and _serapas_ (a kind of blanket) were wound round the
left arms. With low deep curses and flashing eyes, their knives
gleamed in the light; the spectators cleared a ring, and to work
they went. I sprang upon a stone pillar to be out of harm's way,
and thus had a clear view of the fray. Their blades were very
unequally matched: one was at least eight inches, and the other
not half that measurement; but both appeared adepts at the game,
watching each other like wild cats, ready for a spring--moving
cautiously to and fro, making feints by the shielded arm, or
stamp of the foot, for a minute or two; when, quick as a flash,
I saw two rapid passes made by both: blood spirted from an ugly
wound in the spur-vender's throat, but at the same moment his
short weapon sealed the doom of his antagonist, and he lay upon
the ground, lifeless as the bloody steel that struck him. I
glanced at the wounds after the affair had terminated, and found
the knife had been plunged twice directly in the region of the
heart. There was no effort or attempt made by the beholders to
arrest the parties; and the survivor caught up his spurs--a
bystander quickly folded a handsome kerchief to his neck--and
threading the crowd he was soon out of sight. The corpse was
laid upon a liquor-stand, with a delf platter upon the breast."

The Mexican capital was not a little Americanised at the period of Mr Wise's visit. The account he gives of the state of affairs there, is not very creditable to the morals and tastes of the victorious volunteers; and he expresses a natural doubt whether the scenes there enacted will have been beneficial to the thousands of young men whom the war had called to Mexico. The great hotels and coffee-houses were all under Yankee dominion, with Yankee ice, and drinks, signs, manners, customs, and habits, "as if the city had been from time immemorial Yankeefied all over, instead of being only occupied a short twelvemonth by the troops." Debauchery of every kind was rife, but gambling was the vice that took the strongest hold. In the large tavern or _restauration_, where Mr Wise usually dined, in every nook from hall to attic, with the exception of the eating-room, in the corridors and on the landing-places, gaming-tables were displayed.

"Such a condensed essence of worldly hell, in all its glaring,
disgusting frightfulness, never existed. And there never
was lack of players either--no! not a table but was closely
surrounded by officers and soldiers--blacklegs and villains
of all sorts--betting uncommonly high, too--many of the banks
having sixty and eighty thousand dollars in gold alone on the
tables--and once I saw a common soldier stake and win two
hundred ounces at a single bet. Other saloons were filled with
Mexican girls, with music and dancing, attended by every species
of vice, all going on unceasingly, day and night together."

This is an American's account. Of course most of this lavish expenditure and gambled gold had their origin in the plunder of Mexico. Indeed, Lieutenant Wise does not mince the matter at all, but informs us how he himself, after a night-excursion in the vicinity of Mazatlan, returned laden with spoil, and felt such an itching to search people's pockets that he made no doubt of soon becoming as good a freebooter as ever drew sword. He was then, however, but a novice in the science of pillage, for he afterwards learned that a saddle, which he had appropriated, contained six golden ounces, whereby the saddler, to whom he intrusted it for renovation, was much benefited. When an officer holding the United States commission saw nothing derogatory in plunder, there can be no doubt of the rapacity of the dissipated and reckless desperadoes of which the American expeditionary force was notoriously in part composed. And in an army where discipline was lax, and a spirit of anti-military equality prevailed amongst officers and men, the contagion would rapidly spread. Doubtless this was an aggravating cause of Mexican hatred to the _Gringos_. Nevertheless, when the fighting was over, kindness and attention were shown to the invaders, and some of the Mexican officers appear to have been thrashed into a most affectionate regard for their conquerors. One fine fellow, a colonel of cavalry, all gold and glitter, with richly chased sabre scabbard, and spurs of a dazzling burnish, insisted upon giving a breakfast to a large party of American officers. There were a number of Mexican _militaires_ present, all decorated, some with emblems of battles in which they had been defeated; and as the repast was in some degree public, (being held in a large billiard-room,) a number of casual observers assembled round the table, and helped to drink the numerous toasts, pocketing their glasses after each, to be ready for the next. The banquet began with a bumper of brandy, by way of whet; a most miscellaneous collection of edibles was then placed upon the board, and claret and sherry circulated rapidly to the health and memory of a host of living and dead generals, both Mexican and American, beginning with Washington and Hidalgo, and gradually arriving at Santa Anna and "Skote," (Scott,) for which last-named pair of warriors Mr Wise estimates that at least eighty or ninety cheers were given. The Mexicans, habitually temperate, got exceedingly drunk, and, like most southerns when in that state, furiously excited; the chief characteristics of their intoxication being unbounded affection for their guests, and admiration of their own prowess.

"Our gallant host, in a few disjointed observations, assured us
that he was not only brave himself, and loved bravery in others,
but that his horse was brave, and had been wounded in divers
battles. '_Io soy valiente!_' said the fierce colonel, pounding
the orders on his capacious breast, and forthwith proclaimed to
the audience his intention to pay for everything that anybody
could possibly eat or drink for a fortnight; and, seizing me by
the arms, he impressively remarked that I was the most intimate
friend he ever had except his wife, and requested me to throw
his huge shako up to the ceiling, solely for _amistad_, and for
the good-fellowship of the thing--which I instantly did, and
made the bearskin and golden plates ring against the rafters.
Thereupon he called for more wine, and desired all who loved
him to break a few glasses, commencing himself with a couple of
decanters."

At which period of the action the landlord cut off the supplies of liquor, anticipating, doubtless, the entire demolition of his establishment; and the revellers got to horse, and went for a turn in the Alameda, then thronged by all the fashion of Queretaro, in which city these jovial proceedings occurred. After galloping round the promenade, at a pace that terrified the natives, Lieutenant Wise ran a "jouist," as he calls it, with one of his Mexican friends, who was still under the influence of his unwonted libations.

"In true Californian style, he shook his bridle, gave spur, and
came leaping like a flash towards me. I was no novice at the
sport, and, touching one of the finest horses in the army with
my heel, the gallant sorrel sprang forward to meet him. We met
in full career; my charger stood like the great pyramid, but the
shock rolled my antagonist into the street. I should in courtesy
have got down from the saddle to his assistance, but, reflecting
that without a ladder I never should be able to get on my high
steed again, I remained quiet. Being a sailor, I gained great
reputation by this feat, and gave an entertainment on the
strength of it."

Surely there never was a jollier fellow than Lieutenant Wise of the United States navy. A rare good companion he must be, a real _bonus socius_ across a julep, a very storehouse of fun, frolic, and adventure. So well do we like his society, that we are only sorry we cannot at present accompany him further on his rambles, or return with him to Mazatlan, where he arrived at a flying gallop, after a ride of 2500 miles on horseback--the last 112 leagues in fifty-three hours, (said to be the quickest trip on record,) to be received by a host of friends, and by a Yankee band playing, "Hail, Columbia!" and sail with him to Polynesia, and revisit Valparaiso and Lima, and many other places, in all of which he manages heartily to amuse both himself and his reader, till he finally drops anchor in the waters of the Chesapeake, arriving, with equal satisfaction to both parties, at the end of 450 pages, and 55,000 miles. His book richly deserves an independent notice; but as we started by associating it with others, we are compelled to lay it aside, whilst we visit the glittering coast of California, in company with Mr Theodore Johnson, who arrived on the 1st of April 1849 in Sancelito Bay, and proceeded forthwith to look for the city of the same name, whose wide and elegant streets he had frequently traced upon the map. After some search, he found the city. "It consisted of one board-shed and one tent, holding on to the hill-side like a woodpecker against a tree." Thus was his first illusion dissipated. A few other Californian castles were speedily to crumble. "The latitude of Richmond, and climate of Italy, the gold of Ophir, the silver, red wood and cedar of Solomon's temple, the lovely valley of the Sacramento, the vineyards of France, indigo of Hindostan, and wheat of America, golden rocks, and rivers flowing over the same metal," such were a few of the bright promises that had lured him, "in company with thousands of his go-ahead countrymen," to the Eldorado of the Pacific. These were the things he expected; let us collect, from his first week's experience in California, those that he really found. Ugly barren hills, a miserable sandy-clay soil, producing a weed which a starving jackass will scorn, and a fine dust, against which the most impenetrable eyelids are not proof, a repulsive and disagreeable climate in the month of April, (growing worse as the summer advances,) the extremes of heat and cold following each other in constant succession, water often extremely scarce, and impregnated with quicksilver, platina, and other minerals, killing the fish, and giving Christians the Sacramento fever, "a slow, continual fever, which men go about with for months; but in its more violent forms soon mortal, always affecting the brain, and, in case of recovery, leaving the mind impaired. The lung fever and rheumatism are brought on by working in the cold water, and stooping continually under the burning sun." The scurvy, too, was prevalent, from the use of salt provisions, for none could find time to procure fresh ones, to hunt or tend cattle; and if they did leave their eternal digging for such pursuits, the prices they expected were preposterous. Wild cattle and game are plenty in the valley of the Sacramento and adjacent mountains, but in California the hours are truly golden, and not to be wasted on kitchen considerations; to say nothing of the hardship of driving wild oxen or carrying a gun across a rugged country with the thermometer at 109° to 112° in the shade--the usual temperature in June and July, and one fully justifying the derivation of the name California from two Spanish words signifying a hot oven, _caliente horno_. "The thermometer stood at 90° Fahrenheit, at noon, in the shade of Culloma valley, on the 16th of April; and at night we slept cold in our tent with our clothing on, and provided with abundant blankets." With such a climate, and with no grass in the mountains fit to sustain them, it is no wonder that the best pack-horses can carry but one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds weight across the mountains, and frequently fall down and die if overladen. At the time referred to--that is to say, in the month of April last--Mr Johnson "continually saw old miners departing for the cañons[6] of the middle and north Forks, with one month's supply of provisions, consisting of seventy-five lb. of pork and seventy-five lb. of pilot bread, for which they paid respectively at the rates of one hundred and fifty and one hundred and twenty dollars per hundred pounds! Now, although the prices of these articles were rapidly declining on the sea-board, by reason of the immense importation, yet the price of fresh beef was twenty-five dollars per hundred pounds in San Francisco, and must farther enhance there, the supply then being quite insufficient. Fresh provisions will therefore be consumed at the seaport and trading towns, and not in the mining region. The humbug of preserved meats was already exploded, great quantities having been spoiled." All this was very different from the promised vineyards and corn-fields; and Mr Johnson, who had not come to California to feed on salt junk at six shillings a pound, and to drink mercurial water, began to wish himself back again almost as soon as arrived.

[6] "A cañon is the narrow opening between two mountains, several
hundred and sometimes a thousand feet in depth; rising, some of
them, like perpendicular cliffs on either hand, as if torn asunder
by a violent convulsion of nature. Through these pour the rushing
mountain torrents of the _wet diggins_ of the gold regions of
California."--_Sights in the Gold Regions_, p. 180.

In countries where a large majority of the men are content to give, year after year, their skill, energy, and time, in exchange for a few hundred pieces of gold, or even of silver, the reports of a land where the most precious of these metals turns up under the ploughshare, abounds in the rivers, mingles with the highway-dust, and is picked from the bricks of the houses, are naturally at first received with doubt and misgiving, and suspected of exaggeration, if not condemned as fiction. We confess, for our part, that we attached little weight to the first accounts of Californian marvels, and that long after the wise men of the East had begun to debate, in the shadow of the grasshopper, the possible effect upon the currency of the anticipated influx of the produce of the diggings, we still were sceptics as to the magnitude of the newly-found treasure. But even those who gave readiest credence to the tale of wonder, could hardly, we should have thought, have expected that the ingots were to be gathered without trouble or pain beyond that of performing a long journey and filling a big bag. Evidently this was Mr Johnson's notion, and that of not a few others of his sanguine countrymen, "who left their homes and families, and the decencies of civilisation, with the expectation of acquiring an adequate competency by the efforts of a single year." At what figure Mr Johnson rates an "adequate competency" we know not; but it is evident he expected to be placed on pretty nearly the same footing as those Oriental princes who, after wandering through the desert to the enchanted gardens, had the free pick of trees whose fruits were diamonds and rubies. The real state of affairs proved very different. A few persons, dwellers in California when the golden richness of the soil was first discovered in 1848,[7] may have made large fortunes on easy terms, by being early in the field, and through barter with the Indians, who (before they were frightened and soured by the shooting and scalping practices of the Oregonians and others) were willing enough to labour and trade, and to give gold-dust weight for weight for glass beads and other baubles. We read of one man, a western farmer, owner and occupier of a loghouse, known as the Blue Tent, who arrived in California before the gold discoveries, treated the Indians well, learned their language, employed them to dig, and realised, it is said, two hundred thousand dollars. Another old settler, we are told, accumulated, in the season of 1848, also by help of the Indians, nearly two bushels of gold-dust. Our arithmetic is not equal to the reduction of this into pounds sterling, but at a rough estimate we should take it to represent a very pleasing sum--possibly the competency Mr Johnson aspired to. But those palmy days of gold-gathering have fled, violently driven away; the Indians, welcomed with bullets instead of beads, will work no more, and every man must dig for himself. And so did Mr Johnson--but only for a very short time, and with no very prosperous result. The gold fever, under whose influence he and his companions started for the diggings, was still burning in their veins when, on the second day after leaving San Francisco, they halted for the night on the river bank, and one of them, "thrusting his bowie-knife into the ground, revealed innumerable shining yellow particles, immediately announced gold discoveries on the Sacramento, and claimed the _placer_." But it was mica, not gold. They had much further to go, and worse to fare, before reaching the right metal. It was the interest of the United States' government and of certain speculators to tempt emigrants to the distant territory on the shore of the Pacific; and accordingly, says Mr Johnson, "the wonders of the gold region were trumpeted to the world, with unabating, but by no means unforeseeing zeal. Glowing accounts were sent to the United States of the result of all the most successful efforts in the mines. To these were added a delicious climate and wonderful agricultural fertility. The inaccessibility of the _placeres_, the diseases, the hardships, &c. &c., were quite forgotten or omitted." And thus a certain number of ambitious young men, (many of them wholly unfitted, by their previous mode of life for roughing it in a new country,) were lured from their comfortable homes in New York and elsewhere, in the confident expectation that, on arriving in California, they would ascend beauteous rivers in commodious ships, sleep on board at night, and pleasantly pass a few hours of each day in collecting the wealth that lay strewn upon the shore. Such is the account given of the matter by poor Johnson, who denounces the journey across the mountainous and roadless country as most toilsome, and the whole adventure as disappointing and unsatisfactory. At last he and his companions reached the lower bar[8] on the south fork of American River, shouldered shovels, buckets, and washing-machine, and applied themselves to the task.

[7] At Sutter's saw-mill, from which the Culloma valley takes its
second name, Mr Johnson saw and conversed with Mr Marshall, a
proprietor of the mill, and one of the first discoverers of the
gold. The discovery was made when cutting out the mill-race, across
a portion of the former bed of a stream. "He pointed out to us the
particular location of the first discoveries. This is some fifty
yards below the mill, where a large fir-tree extends across the
race. He stated that they threw up a good deal of gold, mixed with
the sand and clay, before they seriously examined it, or ascertained
its character." It must have struck many as singular, that gold
mines so near the surface should so long have been unobserved.
California was explored as far back as the year 1700 by the Jesuit
Eusebio Kino, who first ascertained it to be part of the great
American continent, and not an island, as was previously believed:
Soon afterwards, missionary stations were established there, paving
the way for the Spanish conquest of the country. Some of the
_padres_ still remain, but their mission-houses are dilapidated,
and their influence is gone. To them Mr Johnson attributes the
long concealment of the metallic wealth of California. "That these
priests were cognisant of the abundance of the precious metal at
that period, (a century ago,) is now well known; but they were
members of the extraordinary society of the Jesuits, which, jealous
of its all-pervading influence, and dreading the effect of a large
Protestant emigration to the western, as well as to the eastern
shores of America, applied its powerful injunctions of secrecy to
the members of the order; and their faithful obedience, during so
long a period, is another proof both of the strength and the danger
of their organisation."--_Sights in the Gold Regions_, p. 111.

[8] "This '_placer_,' or _bar_, is simply the higher portion of
the sandy and rocky bed of the stream which, during the seasons
of high water, is covered with the rushing torrent, but was now
partially or entirely exposed. This is covered with large stones
and rocks, or, on the smooth sand, with clumps of stunted bushes or
trees."--_Sights in the Gold Regions_, 177.

"The scene presented to us was new indeed, and not more
extraordinary than impressive. Some, with long-handled shovels,
delved among clumps of bushes, or by the side of large rocks,
never raising their eyes for an instant; others, with pick and
shovel, worked among stone and gravel, or with trowels searched
under banks and roots of trees, where, if rewarded with small
lumps of gold, the eye shone brighter for an instant, when the
search was immediately and more ardently resumed. At the edge
of the stream, or knee-deep and waist-deep in water, as cold as
melted ice and snow could make it, some were washing gold with
tin pans, or the common cradle-rocker, while the rays of the
sun poured down on their heads with an intensity exceeding any
thing we ever experienced at home, though it was but the middle
of April. The thirst for gold and the labour of acquisition
overruled all else, and totally absorbed every faculty. Complete
silence reigned among the miners: they addressed not a word to
each other, and seemed averse to all conversation."

After digging and washing twenty bucketfuls of earth, Mr Johnson's party had obtained but four dollars' worth of gold. At noon, the sun's heat being intolerable, they knocked off from work; not much encouraged by the result. This, however, they admit, was a poor digging, the stream being yet too high, and the bar not sufficiently exposed--to say nothing of their being novices at the work. They persisted little, however: another trial was made with no better result; and, in short, a week's effort and observation sickened them of a toil so far less lucrative than they had anticipated. Two of the party (Mr Johnson was one of them) resolved to return to San Francisco till the healthier season of winter; a third, having some goods, took to trading; the fourth and last, a hardy little down-easter from Maine, stuck to the diggings.

By this time, we are not entirely dependent on American books or newspaper correspondence for intelligence from the Californian mines. Some portion of the gold that has come to this country has been brought by the finders; and only the other day, a party of them reached England, having left the diggings as lately as the beginning of October. The details obtained from these men, who are of various European countries, confirm, in all important particulars, the statements of Mr Johnson, with merely the difference of tint imparted by failure and success. Either easily discouraged or physically unequal to encounter the hardships inseparable from the search for and extraction of the gold, Mr Johnson, disappointed in his sanguine expectations, makes a sombre report of the speculation; whereas these more persevering and prosperous miners, having safely returned to Europe, their pockets full of "chunks," scales and dust of the most undeniable purity and excellence, naturally give a more rose-coloured view of the enterprise. They admit, however, (to use the words of one of them,) that "it takes a smart lad to do good in California," and that it is useless for any one to go thither unless prepared to rough it, in the fullest sense of the word. At first, they inform us the amount of theft and outrage was very great; but summary and severe punishment checked this. Mr Johnson deplores the existence of Lynch-law. It really appears to us that California is the very place where such a system is not only justifiable, but indispensable. One miner stated that he belonged to a band or club, thirty in number, who threw together all the gold they found, and shared alike; sharp penalties being denounced against any member of the society who attempted to divert his findings from the common stock. The amount obtained by each member of this joint-stock company during the season of eight or nine months was equivalent to thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds sterling. Not quite the "adequate competency" anticipated by Mr Theodore T. Johnson, but still a very pretty gain for men, most of whom would probably have found it impossible, in any other way, and in the same time, to earn a tithe of the amount. More than one of them proposed, after depositing his treasure safely in Europe, to augment it by a second trip to the gold region; and held the time occupied by the voyage to and fro as little loss, digging being impeded by the winter snows. The winter of 1848-9 was very severe, the snow lying four feet deep on the mountains, and having fallen even on the coast; a circumstance unprecedented in California, whose Spanish and Indian inhabitants attributed the disagreeable phenomenon to the American intruders. Notwithstanding this unwonted rigour, however, we learn from Mr Johnson that "large numbers of hardy and industrious Oregonians spent the last _winter_ in the mines of California, generally with success commensurate with their perseverance, prudence, and sobriety." The lumps of gold, according to the account of the miners already referred to, (and which tallies exactly in this particular with Mr Johnson's statement) are found in what are called the dry diggings, in the red sandy clay of the ravines on the mountain sides; whilst the dust and scales are obtained by washing the earth and sand from the rivers. Lumps of pure gold, with a greater or less admixture of quartz, are also found in the crevices of a white-veined rock.

Whilst denouncing the expense of health and labour at which the Californian gold is obtained, Mr Johnson admits the vast quantity of the metal that has been and still is being collected. In town, fort, and settlement,--in every place, in short, where a score or two of men were congregated, he beheld astonishing evidence of its abundance. "Quarts of the dust or scale gold were to be seen on the tables or counters, or in the safes of all classes of men; and although the form of small scales was most common, yet pieces or lumps of a quarter to three ounces were to be seen everywhere; and among several _chunks_ one was shown us by C. L. Ross, Esq., weighing _eighty-one ounces_. This was solid pure gold with only the appearance of a little quartz in it." In one day he saw bushels of gold, most of it too pure for jewellery or coin, without alloy. Although the price of the metal was maintained at sixteen dollars per ounce, its depreciation in comparison with labour and merchandise was enormous; and in the mines, during the winter of 1848, "a good deal of gold was sold for _three or four dollars the ounce_." Carpenters and blacksmiths received an ounce a-day. Lumber was at six hundred dollars per thousand feet. A lot of land, purchased two years previously for a cask of brandy, fetched eighteen thousand dollars. At a French _café_, a cup of coffee, bit of ham, and two eggs, cost three dollars, or 12s. 6d. A host of details of this kind are added, most of which have already been given in the American and English newspapers. Captain Sutter's saw-mill was earning a thousand dollars a-day. At the Stanislaus diggings, in the winter of 1848-9, a box of raisins, greatly needed for the cure of scurvy, then raging there without remedy, sold for its weight in gold dust, or four thousand dollars! Reckless expenditure is the natural consequence of easily-acquired wealth. The diggers, after a brief period of severe labour, would come into town for what they called "a burst," and scatter their gold dust and ingots like sand and pebbles, keeping "upon the ball" for three or four days and nights, or even for a week together, drinking brandy at eight and champagne at sixteen dollars the bottle, often getting helplessly drunk and losing the whole of their gains. One fellow, during a three days' drunken fit, got rid of sixteen thousand dollars in gold. Two hopeful youths, known as Bill and Gus, who took an especial liking to Mr Johnson and his party, had come in for "a particular, general, and universal burst;" and they carried out their intentions most completely. They were tender in their liquor, and, in the excess of their drunken philanthropy, they purchased a barrel of ale at three dollars a bottle, and a parcel of sardinas at eight dollars a box, and patrolled the district, forcing every one to drink. In paying for something, Bill dropped a lump of gold, worth two or three dollars, which Mr Johnson picked up, and handed to him. "Without taking it, he looked at us with a comical mixture of amazement and ill-humour, and at length broke out with--'Well, stranger, you _are_ a curiosity; I guess you hain't been in the diggins long, and better keep that for a sample.'" Even in all sobriety, miners would not be troubled with anything less than dollars, and often scattered small coins by handfuls in the streets, rather than count or carry them. And as neither exorbitant prices nor drunken bursts sufficed to exhaust the resources of the gold-laden diggers, gambling went on upon all sides. "Talk of _placers_," cried an American, who had just cleared his thousand dollars in ten minutes, at a _monte_-table in San Francisco; "what better _placer_ need a man want than this?" At Sutter's Fort, a halting-place of the miners, gambling prevailed without limit or stint, men often losing in a single night the result of many months' severe toil. Drunkenness and fighting diversified the scene. "Hundreds of dollars were often spent in a night, and thousands on Sunday, _when Pandemonium was in full blast_." Such iniquities were no more than might be expected amongst the ragamuffin crew assembled in California, and which included discharged convicts from New South Wales, Mexicans, Kanakas, Peruvians, Chilians, representatives of every European nation, and thousands of the more dissolute and reckless class of United States men.

It is not surprising that some of the minority of honest and respectable men, who found themselves mingled with the mob of ruffians and outlaws assembled in California, thought the prospect of wealth dearly purchased by a prolonged residence in vile society and a most trying climate, and by labour and exposure destructive to health. Mr Johnson assures us that, among the miners who had been long at the diggings, he saw very few who were not suffering from disease--emaciated by fever till they were mere walking shadows, or tormented by frequently recurring attacks of scurvy and rheumatism. If there was a constant stream of adventurers proceeding to the diggings, there was also a pretty steady flow of weary and sickly men returning thence. It would seem, from Mr Johnson's account, that no previous habit of hard labour qualifies the human frame to follow, without injury, the trying trade of a gold-grubber. "We met a party of six sailors, of the Pacific whalers, who were returning to go before the mast again, swearing, sailor-fashion, that they would rather go a whaling at half wages than dig gold any more." Mr Johnson was somewhat of the same way of thinking. He sums up a general review of California in the following words:--

"So large an emigration of the American people, as have gone
to that territory, must make something of the country. They
will make it one of the states of this Union, at all events,
and speedily, too: and although the country is only adapted
by nature for mining and grazing, yet a constant trade must
result from the former, and more or less agriculture be added
to the latter, from the necessity of the case. A few have made,
and will hereafter make fortunes there, and very many of those
who remain long enough will accumulate something; but the
great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of
gold in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. The
writer visited California to dig gold, but chose to abandon
that purpose rather than expose his life and health in the
mines; and as numbers were already seeking employment in San
Francisco without success, and he had neither the means nor the
inclination to speculate, he concluded to return to his family
and home industry."

Finally, the disappointed gold-seeker addresses to his readers a parting hint, apprehensive, seemingly, of their supposing that his own ill-success has warped his judgment, or induced him to calumniate the country. "If you think," he says, "we have not shown you enough of _the elephant_, but got on the wrong way and slid off backwards, please to mount him and take a view for yourself." By which metaphorical phrase, if the worthy Johnson means that we are to go to the diggings, and judge for ourselves, we can only say we had much rather take his word than his advice, and read his book by our fireside than tread in his footsteps amongst the mountains of California.