57. CHAPTER LVII.
It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of
the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may
still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered
and disfigured by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty
years ago. You may see such disfigurements far and wide over
California—and in some such places, where only meadows and
forests are visible—not a living creature, not a house, no stick or
stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a sound, not even a whisper to
disturb the Sabbath stillness—you will find it hard to believe that
there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing little city, of two
thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper, fire
company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth
of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with
tobacco smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations
and colors, with tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the
revenues of a German principality—streets crowded and rife with
business—town lots worth four hundred dollars a front foot—labor,
laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing—a
bloody inquest and a man for breakfast every
morning—everything that
delights and adorns existence—all the appointments and
appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and promising young
city,—and now nothing is left
of it all but a lifeless, homeless solitude. The men
are gone, the houses have vanished, even
the name of the
place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, have
towns so
absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of
California.
It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It
was a curious population.
It was the only population
of the kind that the world has ever seen gathered
together, and it is not likely that the world will ever see its like
again. For observe, it was an assemblage of two hundred thousand
young men—not simpering, dainty,
kid-gloved weaklings, but stalwart,
muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of push and energy, and
royally endowed with every attribute that goes to make up a
peerless and magnificent manhood—the very pick and choice of the
world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and
stooping veterans,—none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving,
strong-handed young giants—the strangest population, the finest
population, the most gallant host that ever trooped down the
startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. And where are they now?
Scattered to the ends of the earth—or prematurely aged and
decrepit—or shot or stabbed in street affrays—or dead of
disappointed hopes and broken hearts—all gone, or nearly
all—victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf—the noblest
holocaust that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is
pitiful to think upon.
It was a splendid population—for all the slow, sleepy,
sluggish-brained sloths staid at home—you never find that sort of
people among pioneers—you cannot build pioneers out of that sort
of material. It was that population that gave to California a name
for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through
with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or
consequences, which she bears unto this day—and when she
projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says
"Well, that is California all over."
But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in
gold, whisky, fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy.
The honest miner raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out
of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and the other
entertainments, he hadn't a
cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked
their own bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed
their own shirts—blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on
his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to
appear in public in a white shirt or a stove-pipe hat, and he would
be accommodated. For those people hated aristocrats. They had a
particular and malignant animosity toward what they called a
"biled shirt."
It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque
society! Men—only
swarming hosts of stalwart men—nothing
juvenile, nothing feminine, visible anywhere!
In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse
of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell
how, in a certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning
that a woman was come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out
of a wagon down at the camping-ground—sign of emigrants from
over the great plains. Everybody went down there, and a shout
went up when an
actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the wind! The
male emigrant was visible. The miners said:
"Fetch her out!"
He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen—she is sick—we have been
robbed of money, provisions, everything, by the Indians—we want
to rest."
"Fetch her out! We've got to see her!"
"But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she—"
"FETCH HER OUT!"
He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up
three rousing cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and
gazed at her, and touched her dress, and listened to her voice with
the look of men who listened to
a memory rather than a present
reality—and then they collected twenty-five
hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung their
hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home
satisfied.
Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer,
and talked with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience
in San Francisco was an adventure, though she herself did not
remember it, as she was only two or three years old at the time.
Her father said that, after landing from the ship, they were walking
up the street, a servant leading the party with the little girl in her
arms. And presently
a huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly
weapons—just down from a long campaign in the mountains,
evidently-barred the way, stopped the servant, and stood gazing,
with a face all alive with gratification and astonishment. Then he
said, reverently:
"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather
sack out of his pocket and said to the servant:
"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give
it to you to let me kiss the child!"
That anecdote is true.
But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table,
listening to that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the
privilege of kissing the same child, I would have been refused.
Seventeen added years have far more than doubled the price.
And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star
City, in the Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long,
post-office single file of miners, to patiently await my chance to
peep through a crack in the cabin and get a sight of the splendid
new sensation—a genuine, live Woman! And at the end of half of
an hour my turn came, and I put my eye to the crack, and there she
was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing flap-jacks in a frying-pan
with the other.
And she was one hundred and sixty-five*
years old, and hadn't a tooth in her head.
[*]
Being in calmer mood, now, I
voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.—M.T.