Chapter XX

RAT-CATCHERS--DRAYS--CRESTED PARTRIDGE--A MARVELLOUS STORY--SAILORS
IN THE MINES--A VERDICT--THE QUARTZ HAS THE BEST OF IT--I LEAVE
TUTTLE-TOWN.

_January, 1852._

Rats are very numerous in San Francisco, as also are ratting-dogs. The roughest Skyes and most ferocious bull-dogs seem to have congregated in that city; and so much interest do the people take in the destruction of the common enemy, that a crowd is instantly collected if by chance a Scotch terrier, arrested by the flavour of a rat, wags his tail over a heap of shavings. You will one day see a crowd in the street, dense and excited; you try in vain to obtain a glimpse of what is going on in the centre; from expressions that reach you, you feel certain that a horrid murder is being perpetrated, and this opinion is confirmed as you hear re-echoed the cry, “He is dead!--all over!” As the crowd disperses, there issues from it the rejoicing owner of two young prize-fighting quadrupeds, and in his hand is a large rat, now all tail and teeth, “the balance,” as the owner remarks, having been “considerably chawed up.”

Great risk and expense attend the shipment of these little dogs to California; and I was so unfortunate as not to land one of four very useful brutes that I shipped from the London Docks for that country. A good horse or dog is a treasure to a Californian; and he will look upon one or the other as his friend, and treat it with great kindness.

An immense quantity of drays are required in the city for the transport of goods, and the stranger will be at once struck with the superiority of breed of the horses, and the high condition in which they are kept. It has not been worth while of late to send anything commonplace to San Francisco; the horses therefore that are driven across the plains are generally strong and showy animals. “Draying” has paid very well here, and many of the proprietors of these vehicles, although they drive for themselves, are well to do. The dray harness is often mounted in German silver; and you may see any day a respectable-looking quiet man in spectacles carting a load of hay or lumber, with a handsome four-in-hand team, well groomed, and ornamented with bear-skin trappings.

The new machinery being completed, I again started for the mines, and arrived at Tuttle-town without accident.

We had tolerable hunting ground in our vicinity, but the game was wild from having been too much shot at. The deer lived in the mountains, and to reach them required much walking, as the reader will understand if he glances at the background of the sketch that forms my frontispiece. The earth on the side of the red-wood hills is generally friable, and as it gives way to the pressure of the foot, the toil of ascending is very great, when the glass is at ninety.

There was, however, ample employment for the shot-gun, as the crested partridge abounded in our neighbourhood. I have not yet mentioned this bird; it is smaller than our partridge, and has all its habits, with this exception, that it will fly to trees when disturbed. This I imagine arises from an instinctive fear of vermin, with which the country abounds, the silver grey fox being very destructive,--not to speak of coyotes, snakes, and birds of prey. There is also little cover on the ground, with the exception of stones, and when the partridge is undisturbed, it will busk among these. The call of the male is similar to that of the English bird. The crested partridge is hard to put up, being a great runner; harder still to shoot flying, for it is particularly strong on the wing, and flies low on a ground of much its own colour. When shot and cooked it is white, dry, and insipid; still it is a partridge, and as such is much relished.

I will mention a circumstance here in connection with shooting, which has so much of the marvellous in it that I had determined to omit it.

Whilst encamped at Santa Rosa Valley, after leaving Carrillo’s house, we were visited one morning by some Sonorians (probably those who afterwards stole our cattle). As they requested us to fire a few shots with our rifles at a mark, we consented willingly enough, and being in good practice and in good luck, we fired with success at dollars and other small targets.

An hour or two afterwards, the three of us proceeded in search of venison; it was about mid-day, the sun was very powerful and the sky cloudless. Making for a shady thicket where we hoped to find, we unexpectedly started a doe from the long grass; she was out of shot before we could raise a gun, but there still remained a fawn. Pretty innocent! there it stood gazing at us wondrously, and I warrant had there been meat in our larder at home not one of us would have touched a trigger; but lamb is innocent, and yet you eat it, Madam, and the only difference between us is that you have a butcher to take life, and I had not.

The fawn stood motionless as I advanced a few paces and took, as I imagined, deadly aim. I missed, and still it did not move: the others fired, and missed also. From the same distance (about seventy-five yards), we fired each four bullets without success; still the fawn moved but a pace or two, and our rifle ammunition was exhausted. I then crept up to the fawn, and within twenty paces I fired twice at it with my pistol; it then, unharmed, quietly walked away in search of its mother. We looked at each other in some doubt after this, and for a long time I was puzzled to conjecture how to account for this apparently charmed life.

At last I solved the problem in this way, as I thought. The sun was intensely powerful, and had been reflected back to us from the yellow grass on which we had kept our eyes throughout a long walk; either this glare or the rarefaction of the air had, probably, caused an optical delusion, and the fawn appearing nearer to us than in reality it was, we fired under it. Had this struck me at the time, I would have searched in the long grass for the place where the bullets struck, and I have no doubt, considering the practice we were in, that they would all have been found in the same range, and short; but on account of the height of the grass, we were unable to see whilst firing where our balls fell. And this is the sole way I can account for this curious adventure.

This is the sole marvellous story I have to tell, and is a fact; but so capricious is reading man, that I dare say many a one who would have believed me had I related the destruction in one long shot of three buffaloes, two coyotes, and a digger Indian, will smile incredulously at my party firing fourteen barrels within seventy paces of a motionless deer! So be it--and annotators of circulating library books will write “Gammon!” in black-lead pencil on the margin, and I must grin whilst I writhe under this infliction.

About three miles from our camp was the Stanislaus River; and crossing this in a ferry-boat, we would be at once in the vicinity of a famous digging, “Carson’s Hill,” by name. All that we read of that is bright and fairy-like, in connection with reported gold discoveries, has been presented as a Gradgrind fact at Carson’s Hill.

The rivers produced, the hills produced, and even the quartz[23] produced, having previously been rotted by nature, that man might pick the gold out with his penknife. “Rich nests,” “tall pockets,” “big strikes,” lumps and chunks, were the reward of labour at Carson’s Hill; whilst the miserable population elsewhere were content with ounces of gold, or, at the best, pounds.

No one knows how many fortunes have been made at Carson’s Hill, nor how many bloody battles have been fought there for the rich earth--but a great many. Two small armies met once on the brow of the hill, and parleyed, weapons in hand and with savage looks, for as much quartz as you might carry away in a fish-cart.

Mr. James Carson, the discoverer of these diggings, asserts that in 1848 the man who would work could make from fifty to one hundred pounds sterling a day, and I have no doubt of the truth of this.

At the time when this digging was first yielding such immense profits, strict honesty was the characteristic of the miners; and a man need have no fear then, as he has now, relative to keeping his dust after he had found it, for all had enough, and it is astonishing how virtuous we become under such circumstances. A sailor once asked his chum if a bishop was a good man? “He ought for to be,” replies the other, “for he has nothing to do but to eat, drink, and sleep, and altogether he has a deuced fine berth of it!” and Jack hit the truth in his own way.

And sailors are, perhaps, after their manner, tolerable Christians themselves; certainly they swear a little, and are said to devour in a sandwich the banknote that would serve to enrich a hospital, as from Bill Bobstay, Esq.; but whenever there is sickness or poverty among sailors, there Jack is found at the bedside the tenderest of nurses, and sharing--honest heart!--his last copper with a comrade. A sailor in the mines is at best a rough and uncomely fellow to the sight; but will you show me anything more pleasing to contemplate than that sturdy fellow there who plies his pickaxe to the tune of “Oh, Sally Brown!” that he may take at night to his sick friend in the tent hard by the luxuries he needs? The sailors in the mines have been ever distinguished for self-denial; and whenever I see “prim goodness” frown at the rough, careless sailor’s oath that will mingle now and then with his “ye-ho!” I think to myself, “Take out your heart, ‘prim goodness,’ and lay it by the side of Jack’s and offer me the choice of the two, and maybe it won’t be yours I’ll take, for all that you are faultless to the world’s eye.”

Liberality was so great in those days, that if a stranger came to the mines and had but the appearance of one who would work, he had no difficulty in borrowing from any one all that was required for starting him, his muscles and sinews being the sole guarantee for repayment.

It was near Carson’s Hill that poor Boyd worked with a gang of men, though with what success I do not know. Boyd was an English gentleman of independence; and in his yacht, the “Wanderer,” he had visited nearly every place on the globe. He was fitted in every respect for the roving life he had chosen, and was equally at home whether he roughed it in the mountains or played the host on board the “Wanderer.” Shortly after he left San Francisco, he landed at Solomon’s Island to shoot wild fowl, and there was cruelly murdered by the natives. None who knew him heard of his fate without regret; and as a finale to the life of this adventurous man, the “Wanderer” soon after went ashore and was lost.

A gulch which branches off from Carson’s, and which proved very rich, was discovered under circumstances of great solemnity, and I am indebted to Mr. Carson for the anecdote.

One of the miners died, and having been much respected, it was determined to give him a regular funeral. A digger in the vicinity, who, report said,

had once been a powerful preacher in the United States, was called upon to officiate; and after “drinks all round,” the party proceeded, with becoming gravity, to the grave, which had been dug at a distance of a hundred yards from the camp. When this spot was reached, the officiating minister commenced with an extempore prayer, during which all knelt round the grave. So far was well; but the prayer was unnecessarily long, and at last some of those who knelt, began, in an abstracted way, to finger the loose earth that had been thrown up from the grave. It was thick with gold; and an excitement was immediately apparent in the kneeling crowd. Upon this, the preacher stopped, and inquiringly said, “Boys, what’s that? Gold!” he continued, “and the richest kind of diggings,--the congregation are dismissed!” The poor miner was taken from his auriferous grave and was buried elsewhere, whilst the funeral party, with the parson at their head, lost no time in prospecting the new digging.

The population of the diggings, in 1848, was as varied as can be well imagined; every nation and calling was represented there, from an ex-governor to a digger Indian. But amongst this motley crew lawyers predominated; and if we may judge by the fees they received, and the quality of the law they exchanged for them, they had brought their forensic knowledge to a fine market. As magistrates and other officers were required in the different mining districts, they were elected by a majority of the miners, and formed a court of law.

All mining disputes were submitted to these courts, and whatever might be the decision given, _that_ was considered the law, which saved all trouble of appeal. The following incident will convey some idea of law in the diggings at this time.

Two Spaniards, who had amassed a large quantity of gold dust by successful digging, quarrelled over the possession of an old mule that was scarcely worth her keep, and applied to the alcalde or magistrate to

settle the dispute. Before a word was said, however, each “greaser” had to pay three ounces of dust for expenses of the court; and then, both speaking at once, each related his own tale in Spanish, which was a language unintelligible to the court. After this, they were informed by his Honour, through an interpreter, that they had better leave the case to the decision of a jury. To this they agreed, and having paid two ounces more in advance to the sheriff, that officer summoned a jury from the adjacent diggings. After hearing their statements, which were very contradictory, the jury retired, and returned with a verdict that the costs should be shared by the plaintiff and defendant; and as there was not evidence to show who the mule really belonged to, they were to _draw straws_ for her!

The bill of costs amounted to twenty ounces,--the _liquor bill_ to three ounces more. This sum the Spaniards paid, and then they went out to cut for the animal; but some other Spaniard had already settled the dispute, for whilst all were inside he had mounted the mule and rode off with it, nor did it ever, to my knowledge, turn up again. But for the comparative insignificance of the fees, this trial might have taken place, judging by the result, in our own Court of Chancery.

A few digger Indians worked occasionally in our vicinity, having discovered that gold would purchase fine clothes and rum, which was all they cared for. The outfits they procured with their dust varied according to taste. One would prefer half a-dozen shirts, and wear them all at once; another would be content with a gaudy Mexican hat and a pair of jack boots; so that their partial adoption of civilised costume only served to render the uncovered parts of their bodies ridiculously conspicuous.

The Indians of California have a tradition among them which points to the days when volcanic eruptions devastated the country, and destroyed all living things but Indians. No traces of an earlier race are to be found, however, as yet, in Upper California; nor have the Indians the faintest knowledge of pictorial signs or symbols. I am inclined, therefore, to think that the present tribes have been migratory.

It is a peculiarity of California, that although it is so rich in flowers, the wild bee is never found there, nor did I ever hear a singing-bird. Digging in the mines is suspended by general accord on the Sabbath, and that day is usually spent very quietly in camp, particularly as the more boisterous characters go to the nearest town to amuse themselves. A walk over the mountains, rifle in hand, with an eye to business in the shape of “prospecting,” is often the employment of the more sedate; and if the miner sometimes finds on a Sunday what serves him for an honest livelihood on week days, he is, mayhap, no worse, sir, than you whose thoughts, even in a church, are not always separate from the pounds shillings and pence you require for the engagements of the coming week.

During this time the work at the mines progressed steadily; and the new machinery being ready, we started it, fully confident of success.[24] Again was our engine placed under contribution for four horses’ more power than it was built for, and again did our machinery turn out a signal failure: in fact we had iron only where we should have had the hardest of steel, and in consequence, instead of our mill grinding the quartz, the quartz had the best of it and ground the mill; and as it was gold I wanted, and not iron filings, I determined for the present to abandon my third profitless speculation.

Agriculturally, architecturally, and mineralogically, I had been sported with by fate,--and the plough in the north, the steam-engine in the south, and the hotel in the middle, had each been accompanied by pecuniary loss. Yet the days I had passed had been very happy, and Philosophy said: “You have had health, and contentment, and warm friendship; and if these were purchasable, many would buy them of you for twenty times what you have lost in money!” To which I replied, “Very true, oh Philosophy! but had I taken my steam-engine to Russian River, and there applied its power to sawing red-woods, and had I with my plough turned up the fertile hills and valleys at Vallejo, and further, had I erected my hotel at Sonora, where it was much wanted, I might have still had the unpurchasable articles you allude to, and the money too.” Upon which Philosophy, seeing me thus unreasonable, retired from the contest.

Close upon this disaster there arrived a batch of letters for me. My friend in San Francisco had died, and letters from home rendered my return to England necessary. To return again, though--and to Tuttle-town--on that point I was determined, “wind and weather permitting,” as we say afloat.

I sold my steam-engine to some wretched favourites of fortune, who took it to a gulch and made money there and then. I sold Mainspring, and Tiger, and Bevis, with grief. I might have given them away, but I know that a man will often give more care and kindness to the animal he has paid for, than to that he gets for nothing! and many a one who cares little for the comfort of a horse, is mightily particular in respect of the hundred guineas the animal is worth!

The tools and houses I left with Rowe, Barnes, and Thomas. The Mexicans I discharged, and presented them with the bullock hides, and frying-pan, so that they were not altogether homeless; then I bade farewell to my mining village, but not yet to the Virginia men, the carpenter Judge or constable Rowe, for these good fellows accompanied me for the first thirty miles of my journey. Then we parted, and I firmly believe with equal regret on either side--why not? there had never been an unkind word between us in a year of mountain life, and as I reiterated at the last, “I’ll soon be back, boys!” they knew full well that my resolution would be upheld by the memory of kindnesses received from them.

Again I plod down on the “Old Soldier,” who has seen the last of Choctaw, although he does not know it. Is it a wonder that I was sorrowful when I left behind me so much that had contributed to render my life happy? But I should have been more so had I known then that I had seen the last of Tuttle Town and its inhabitants!