USA > California > History of California, Volume VI > Part 43
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5 Fossil wood and animals are found here, and occasionally layers of lava and tufa often sedimentary, and some superimposed, others in alternation. The deposits at La Grange, Stanislaus, in a distance of 1} miles cross 4 widely varying formations, with elephant remains embedded. Some of these dead rivers present peculiar features; instance the Tuolumne table mountain, 30 miles long by half a mile in width, which consists of a lava flow upon the rich gravel of an ancient river-bed. The waters forced aside by this flow washed away the banks on either side, leaving the lava isolated above the surrounding soil, with steep sides and a bare level top.
6 The smaller and smoother the gold, so the gravel, and nearer the bottom lands.
" The driftwood in it, the course of the tributary gravel currents, the position of the bowlders, etc., indicate a stream, and one of mighty force, to judge by the size of the bowlders; yet some scientists object to the river-bed theory. A line of towns stands along its course through Sierra and Placer counties, 65 miles, which shows a descent from 4,700 to 2,700 feet, or 37 feet per mile. But subterranean upheavals may have effected it. North of Sierra county it is covered by lava, and south of Placer it has been washed away or covered by later alluvium.
385
PROSPECTING.
gold in payable quantities, even in the upper portions of high banks, which can be washed by cheap hy- draulic process.8
The miners were a nomadic race, with prospectors for advance guard. Prospecting, the search for new gold-fields, was partly compulsory, for the over-crowded camp or district obliged the new-comer to pass on ward, or a claim worked out left no alternative. But in early days the incentive lay greatly in the cravings of a feverish imagination, excited by fanciful camp-fire tales of huge ledges and glittering nuggets, the sources of these bare sprinkling of precious metals which cost so much toil to collect. Distance assists to conjure up mirages of ever-increasing enchantment, encircled by the romance of adventure, until growing unrest makes hitherto well-yielding and valued claims seem unworthy of attention, and drives the holder forth to rove. He bakes bread for the requirements of several days, takes a little salt, and the cheering flask, and with cup and pan, pick and shovel, attached to the
8 Fine gold has frequently been found in grass roots, as observed also in Walsh's Brazil, ii. 122. At Bath a stratum 100 feet above the bed-rock was drifted profitably, and the top dirt subsequently washed by hydraulic method. In Nevada county the bulk of pay dirt is within 30 feet of the bottom. The deposits at French Hill, Stanislaus, show that an undulating bed-rock gathers richer dirt, yet in certain currents bars and points catch the gold rather than pools and bends, as proved also in Australia. Gold Fields of Victoria, 134. The sand layers of the Sierra Nevada drifts contain little gold. In the gravel strata at Malakoff, Nevada county, a shaft of 200 feet yielded from 2.9 to 3.8 cents per cubic yard from the first 120 feet, from the remainder 32.9 cents, the last 8 feet producing from 5 to 20 cents per pan. Bowie's Hydraulic Mining, 74-5. There are also instances of richer strata lying some distance above a poor bed-rock. The dead rivers are richer in gold than the present streams, and when these have cut through the former they at once reveal greater wealth. In addition to Cal. Geol. Survey, see Browne's Min. Res., 1867; Whitney's Aurif. Gravels, 516, etc .; Laur. Gisement de l'Or. Cal., Ann. des Mines, iii. 412, etc .; Silliman's Deep Placers; Phillip's Mining, 37 et seq .; Bowie's Hydraul. Mining, 53 et seq .; Hittell's Mining, 66 et seq .; Bulch's Mines, 159 et seq .; Trask's Geol. of Coast Mts, 42-68; Hoyes' Mining, v. 393, 398; ix. 6 et seq .; Cal. Jour. Sen., 1853, ap. 59; 1856, ap. 14; Sac. Union, Mar. 12, 27-9, Aug. 10, Oct. 13, 27, 1855; Tyson's Geol. Cal .; Cal. Geol. Survey, Rept Com., 1852. Blake, in Pac. R. R. Rept, v. 217 etc., classified the placers as coarse bowlder-like drifts, river drifts, or coarse alluvium, alluvial deposits on flats and locustrine de- posits made at the bottom of former lakes, all of which have been greatly changed by upheavals, transformed river systems, and the erosion of currents. Additional geologie points are given in connection with the districts and counties.
HIST. CAL., VOL. VI. 25
386
ANATOMY OF THE MINES.
blanket strapped to his back, he sallies forth, a trusty rifle in hand for defence and for providing meat. If well off he transfers the increased burden to a pack- animal; but as often he may be obliged to eke it out with effects borrowed from a confiding friend or store- keeper.9
Following a line parallel to the range, northward or south, across ridges and ravines, through dark gorges, or up some rushing stream, at one time he is seized with a consciousness of slumbering nuggets beneath his feet, at another he is impelled onward to seek the parent mass; but prudence prevails upon him not to neglect the indications of experience, the hy- pothetical watercourses and their confluences in dry tracts, the undisturbed bars of the living streams, where its eddies have thrown up sand and gravel, the softly rounded gravel-bearing hill, the crevices of ex- posed rocks, or the out-cropping quartz veins along the bank and · hillside. Often the revelation comes by accident, which upsets sober-minded calculation; for where a child may stumble upon pounds of metal, human nature can hardly be content to toil for a piti- ful ounce.
Rumors of success are quickly started, despite all care by the finder to keep a discovery secret, at least for a time. The compulsion to replenish the larder is sufficient to point the trail, and the fox-hound's scent for its prey is not keener than that of the miner for gold. One report starts another; and some morning an encampment is roused by files of men hurrying away across the ridge to new-found treasures.
Then spring up a camp of leafy arbors, brush huts, and peaked tents, in bold relief upon the naked bar, dot- ting the hillside in picturesque confusion, or nestling
9 In Valle, Doc., 72 et seq., are several agreements for repayment of outfits and advances in money or in shares of the expected discoveries. Advice for outfits in Placer Times and Alta Cal., Aug. 2, 1849. Wheaton, Stat., MS., 9, and other pioneers testify to the honesty with which such loans were repaid. Later the ' tenderfoot,' or new-comer, would be greeted by weather-beaten and dilapidated prospectors who offered to find him a dozen good claims if provided with a 'grub-stake,' that is, an outfit of provisions and tools.
387
EVOLUTION OF THE MINING CAMP.
beneath the foliage. The sounds of crowbar and pick reëcho from the cliffs, and roll off upon the breeze mingled with the hum of voices from bronzed and hairy men, who delve into the banks and hill-slope, coyote into the mountain side, burrow in the gloom of tunnels and shafts, and breast the river currents. Soon drill and blast increase the din; flumes and ditches creep along the cañon walls to turn great wheels and creaking pumps. Over the ridges come the mule trains, winding to the jingle of the leader's bell and the shouts of arrieros, with fresh wanderers in the wake, bringing supplies and consumers for the stores, drinking-saloons, and hotels that form the solitary main street. Here is the valve for the pent-up spirit of the toilers, lured nightly by the illumined canvas walls, and the boisterous mirth of revellers, noisy, oath- breathing, and shaggy; the richer the more dissolute, yet as a rule good-natured and law-abiding.10 The chief cause for trouble lay in the cup, for the general display of arms served to awe criminals by the intima- tion of summary punishment; yet theft found a certain encouragement in the ease of escape among the ever- moving crowds, with little prospect of pursuit by pre- occupied miners.11
The great gathering in the main street was on Sun- days, when after a restful morning, though unbroken by the peal of church bells, the miners gathered from hills and ravines for miles around for marketing and relaxation. It was the harvest day for the gamblers, who raked in regularly the weekly earnings of the improvident, and then sent them to the store for credit to work out another gambling stake. Drinking-
10 Conspicuous arms add to the unfavorable impression of language and ap- pearance, 'but strange to say, I never saw a more orderly congregation, or such good behavior in such bad company,' writes Coke, Ride, 360. Gov. Riley reported in similar commendatory strains. U. S. Gov. Doc., Cong. 31, Sess. 1, H. Ex. Doc. 17, p. 786-9. Borthwick, Cal., 171-4, found camp hotels in 1851 charging from $12 to $15 per week. Meals were served at a long table, for which there was generally a scramble. With 1850 crockery, table-cloths, and other signs of refinement began to appear. Delano's Life, 290.
11 See the testimony of Borthwick, 63, Randolph, Stat., MS., 10, and others, and details of crime in my Popular Tribunals, i. 143, 435, 521-3, 586, etc.
3S8
ANATOMY OF THE MINES.
saloons were crowded all day, drawing pinch after pinch of gold-dust from the buck-skin bags of the miners, who felt lonely if they could not share their gains with bar-keepers as well as friends. And enough there were of these to drain their purses and sustain their rags. Besides the gambler, whose abundance of means, leisure, and self-possession gave him an influence second in this respect only to that of the store-keeper, the general referee, adviser, and provider, there was the bully, who generally boasted of his prowess as a scalp-hunter and duellist with fist or pistol, and whose following of reckless loafers acquired for him an unenviable power in the less reputable camps, which at times extended to terrorism.12 His opposite was the effeminate dandy, whose regard for dress sel- dom reconciled him to the rough shirt, sash-bound, tucked pantaloons, awry boots, and slouchy bespattered hat of the honest, unshaved miner, and whose gin- gerly handling of implements bespoke in equal con- sideration for his hands and back. Midway stood the somewhat turbulent Irishman, ever atoning for his weakness by an infectious humor; the rotund Dutch- man ready to join in the laugh raised at his own expense; the rollicking sailor, widely esteemed as a favorite of fortune. This reputation was allowed also to the Hispano Californians, and tended here to cre- ate the prejudice which fostered their clannishness.13 Around flitted Indians, some half-naked, others in gaudy and ill-assorted covering, cast-off like then- selves, and fit subjects for the priests and deacons, who, after preaching long and fervently against the root of evil, had come to tear it out by hand.14
12 Borthwick, Cal., 134, makes most of these ruffians western border men. Lambertie, Voy., 259, declaims against the roughness and brutal egotism of certain classes of Americans.
13 Letts, Cal., 103-4, remarks on the luck attending sailors, etc. Military deserters abounded. Riley appealed to people to aid in restoring deserters from the war and merchant vessels, partly to insure greater protection and cheapness. S. D. Arch., iv. 349; Willey's Mem., 86; Carson's Rec., 17-19; Rerere's Keel, 16-24; Unbound Doc., 327-8; Fisher's Cal., 42-9; Barry and Pat- ten's Men, 263, 287-98, with comments on Spanish American traits.
14Their open-air meetings attracted some by their novelty, others as a means for easy penance.
389
CABIN ROUTINE.
On week days dulness settled upon the camp, and life was distributed among clusters of tents and huts, some of them sanctified by the presence of woman,15 as indicated by the garden patch with flow- ers For winter, log and clapboard houses replaced to a great extent the precarious tent and brush hut, 16 although frequently left with sodded floor, bark roof, and a split log for the door. The interior was scantily provided with a fixed frame of sticks supporting a stretched canvas bed, or bolster of leaves and straw. A similarly rooted table was at times supplemented by an old chest, with a bench or blocks of wood for seats. A shelf with some dingy books and papers, a broken mirror and newspaper illustrations adorned the walls, and at one end gaped a rude hearth of stones and mud, with its indispensable frying-pan and pot, and in the corner a flour-bag, a keg or two, and some cans with preserved food. The disorder indicated a batch- elor's quarters, the trusty rifle and the indispensable flask and tobacco at times playing hide and seek in the scattered rubbish.17
The inmates were early astir, and the cabin stood deserted throughout the day, save when some friend or wanderer might enter its unlocked precincts, wel- come to its comforts, or when the owners could afford to return for a siesta during the midday heat.18 Toward sunset the miners came filing back along the ravines, gathering sticks for the kitchen fire, and merrily speeding their halloos along the cliffs, whatso- ever may have been the fortune of the day. If sev- eral belonged to the mess, each took his turn as cook,
15 Not a few joined their husbands in gold-washing. Cal. Courier, Dec. 7, 1850; Grass Val. Directory, 1856, 44; Burnett's Rec., MS., ii. 150-3; S. J. Pioneer, Nov. 23, 1878; Santa Rosa Democ., Aug. 29, 1876.
16 The latter made of four corner posts covered with leafy brushwood, the sides at times with basket-work filling. Others erected a sort of brush tent with a ridge-pole upheld at one end by a tree and supporting sloping sticks upon which the brush was piled.
17 The kitchen fire was in summer as often kindled beneath a tree, in the smoke of which dangled the ham bone. No sooner was a cabin erected than a large black species of rat nestled beneath it, to make raids on food and clothing.
18 We returned to work at 3 P. M. Wheaton's Stat., MS., 6.
390
ANATOMY OF THE MINES.
and preceded the rest to prepare the simple food of salt pork and beans, perhaps a chop or steak, tea or coffee, and the bread or flapjack, the former baked with saleratus, the latter consisting of mere flour and water and a pinch of salt, mixed in the gold-pan and fried with some grease.19 Many a solitary miner de- voted Sunday to prepare supplies of bread and coffee for the week. Exhausted nature joined with custom in sustaining a change of routine for this day,20 and here it became one for renovation, bodily and mental, foremost in mending and washing, brushing up the cabin, and preparing for the coming week's campaign, then for recreation at the village. Every evening also, the camp fire, replenished by the cook, drew convivial souls to feast on startling tales or yarns of treasure- troves, on merry songs with pan and kettle accom- paniment, on the varying fortunes of the cards. A few found greater interest in a book, and others, lulled by the hum around, sank into reverie of home and boyhood scenes.
The young and unmated could not fail to find allurement in this free and bracing life, with its nature environment, devoid of conventionalisms and fettering artificiality, with its appeal to the roving instinet and love of adventure, and its fascinating vistas of enrich- ment. Little mattered to them occasional privations 21 and exposure, which were generally self-imposed and soon forgotten midst the excitement of gold-hunting. Even sickness passed out of mind like a fleeting night-
19 The Australian 'damper,' formed by baking the dough beneath a thick layer of hot ashes, prevailed to some extent. While heavy, it retained an appetizing moisture for several days. Americans preferred to use saleratus, for which sedlitz and other powders were at times substituted. Low's Stat., MS., 3-4. The flapjack was also roasted by placing the pan upright before the fire. Borthwick's Cal., 152-6; Helper's Land, 156-7. Coffee could be ground by crushing a small bagful between stones.
20 Perry, Travels, 90-1, observes that fines were sometimes good-humoredly exacted from workers on this day. In some districts a briefer season con- verted Sunday into a cleaning-up day, when the sluice washing was panned out. There were no laundries in the camps, and had there been their prices would not have suited the miner.
21 With scanty supplies, as when rain or snow held back the trains. Pac. News, Dec. 22, 1849; Armstrong's Explor., MS., 13.
391
FATE OF THE MINER.
mare.22 And so they kept on in pursuit of the will-o'- the-wisp of their fancy, neglecting moderate prospects from which prudent men were constantly getting a competency. At times alighting upon a little 'pile,' which too small for the rising expectation was lav- ishly squandered, at times descending to wage-working for relief. Thus they drifted along in semi-beggary, from snow-clad ranges to burning plain, brave and hardy, gay and careless, till lonely age crept up to confine them to some ruined hamlet, emblematic of their shattered hopes-to find an unnoticed grave in the auriferous soil which they had loved too well.23 Shrewder men with better directed energy took what fortune gave, or combining with others for vast enter- prises, in tunnels and ditches, hydraulic and quartz mining,24 then turning, with declining prospects, to different pursuits to aid in unfolding latent resources, introducing new industries, and adding their quota to progress, throwing aside with a roaming life the loose habits of dress and manner. This was the American adaptability and self-reliance which, though preferring independence of action, could organize and fraternize with true spirit, could build up the greatest of mining commonwealths, give laws to distant states, import fresh impulse to the world's commerce, and foster the development of resources and industries throughout the Pacific. 25
22 Nature and causes in the chapters on society and population. See also Rivere's Keel, 251-4; Carson's Rec., 39; Brooks' Four Mo., 183. Buffum, Six Mo., 97, refers to early scurvy from lack of vegetables and acids. Burnett's Rec., MS., ii. 237; Alta Cal., Dec. 15, 1849; Colton's Three Years, 339.
23 The incident of finding a corpse on Feather River, and by its side a plate with the inscription, 'Deserted by my friends, but not by God ' .-- Cal., Misc. Hist. Pap., 26, p. 10-applies to many of these Wandering Jews of the gold region. Parsons, Life of Marshall, 157-61, gives a characteristic sketch of a miner's burial. Woods, Pioneer, 108, tells of a miner crazed by good for- tune. The habit of Americans to 'rap-dement depunser l'or quils recueill- eront' is a blessing as compared with the hoarding of the Russians, observes the Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 1, 1849.
24 It is a not uncommon story where the poor holders of a promising claim divided forces, some to earn money as wage-workers wherewith to supply means for the rest to develop the mines.
2º From Chile to Alaska, from the Amur to Australia. For traits, see Bonwick's Mormons, 350-1, 370-1, 379, 391: Hutchings' Mag., i. 218, 340; iii. 343, 469, 506-19; iv. 452, 497; King's Mountaineering, 285; Buffum and Brooks,
392
ANATOMY OF THE MINES.
The broader effect of prospecting, in opening new fields, was attended by the peculiar excitement known as rushes, for which Californians evinced a remarkable tendency, possessed as they were by an excitable tem- perament and love of change, with a propensity for speculation. This spirit, indeed, had guided them on the journey to the distant shores of the Pacific, and perhaps one step farther might bring them to the glit- tering goal The discoveries and troves made daily around them were so interesting as to render any tale of gold credible. An effervescing society, whose day's work was but a wager against the hidden treasure of nature, was readily excited by every breeze of rumor. Even men with valuable claims, yielding perhaps $20 or $40 a day, would be seized by the vision and follow it, in hopes of still greater returns. Others had ex- hausted their working-ground, or lay under enforced inactivity for lack or excess of water, according to the nature of the field, and were consequently prepared to join the current of less fortunate adventurers.26
So that the phenomenon of men rushing hither and thither for gold was constant enough within the dis- tricts to keep the population ever ready to assist in extending the field beyond them. The Mariposa region received an influx in 1849,27 which two years later flitted into Kern, yet left no impression to guard against the great Kern River excitement of 1855, when the state was disturbed by the movement of
passim; Merrill's Stat., MS., 5, 10; Cassin's Stat., MS., 18; Miscet. Stat., MS., 10, etc .; Wide West., Jan. 1855; Pioneer Mag., i. 273, 347; Capron's Cal., 236; S. F. Bulletin, Jan. 4, 1858; Borthwick's Cal., passim; Polynesian, vi. 78, S2; St Amant, Voy., 575-9; Overland, May 1872, 457-8; xiv. 321-8; Northern Enterprise, March 20, 1874; Nouv. Annales Voy., cxxix. 121-4, 225-46; Kip's Cal. Sketches, 36-52. Frignet, Cal., 109, comments on the absence of organi- zations among Europeans and Spanish Americans for great enterprises. Woodward's Stat., MS., 3-38, and Tyler's Bidwell's Bar, MS., 5-8, contain personal reminiscences of mining life.
26 Ignorance of geologic laws fostered a belief in a vast mother lode, per- haps deposited by a volcanic eruption, from which the metal could be shovelled or chiselled off by the cart-load. Instances of theories in Woods' Pioneer, 64-5; Dean's Stat., MS., 3; Buffum's Six Mo., 74-5; Simpson's Cal., 11-13; Orerland Mo., i. 141; Hayes' Mining, i, 86.
27 Carson's Recol., 9
393
RUSHES FOR NEW FIELDS.
nearly 5,000 disappointed fortune-hunters.28 An ex- amination of the encircling ranges led to more or less successful descents upon Walker River and other dig- gings,29 which served to build up the counties of Mono, Inyo, and San Bernardino,30 while several smaller de- tachments of miners at different periods startled the staid old coast counties, from Los Angeles to Monte- rey and Sonoma, with delusive statements based on faint auriferous traces. Eastward the fickle enchan- tress led her train on a wild-goose chase to Truckee Lake,31 in 1849, and in the following year she raised a mirage in the form of a silver mountain,32 while opening the gate at Carson Valley to Nevada's silver land, which was occupied by the multitude in 1860 and the following years. The same eventful 1850 saw considerable northern extensions arising from the Gold Lake fiction, which drew a vast crowd toward the headwaters of Feather River. Although the gold- lined lake presented itself, a fair compensation was offered at the rich bars of the stream. 33 Another
28 The disappointing rush of 1851 sought for Kern under the Rio Blanco of Indian reports. Alta Cal., July 22, 1851. In 1853 a flutter occurred here. Visalia Delta, Aug. 6, 1874; Dean's Stat., MS., 15. Yet the rush of 1855 proved not wholly a delusion.
29 Denounced by the Placerville Index and S. F. Bulletin, May 27, 1858.
30 Entries had been made here already in 1850. Sac. Transcript, Nov. 29, 1850; Soule's Stat., MS., 3-4. In 1858 an exploring party found diggers in different parts of the Sierra, on the way from Los Angeles to Mono. S. F. Bulletin, Sept. 15, 1858.
31 Based on the stories of one Greenwood, about gold pebbles on its strand. Six weeks of hardships rewarded the expedition.
32 Through the instrumentality of Redmond of Stockton, who led 24 men by the 'Tulare Valley in Nov. 1850. Account in Alta Cal., Jan. 27, 1850. Yet Carson Valley was opened successfully this year. Puc. News, Aug. 21, Oct. 10, 1850.
33 Notably Nelson Creek. Alta Cal., June 13-14, July 1, 1850, and contem- poraries described the excitement, especially at Marysville, and the depopu- lation of many camps. It had been started by one Stoddard on the vague stories of others, and he narrowly escaped lynching at the hands of his dis- appointed party. Kane's Stat., Miscel. Stat., MS., 9-10; Delano's Life, 332-3; Ballon's Adren., MS., 25; Overland, xiv. 324. Versions of the story vary, as in S. F. Bulletin, July 20, 1858; Feb. 20, 1880; Nevada D. Gaz., June 26, 1866; Shasta Courier, March 31, 1SS6, which latter states that Greenwood had once lived on the lake, where his children played with the nuggets. He died before the searching party started, but a negro overheard their plan and profited by it. Mt Messenger, of July 1865, and Oct. 4, 1873, identified the lake with a spot 12 miles from Downieville; but contemporary accounts show that diggers on the North Fork were then looking toward Feather River for it, as the Territ. Enterprise, of July 1865, points out, in refutation of the Messenger.
394
ANATOMY OF THE MINES
widely current story placed the once fabulously rich mine of 1850, known as the Lost Cabin, in the region of the upper Sacramento or McLeod River, and kept hundreds on a mad chase for years.3 North-eastward on the overland route a party of emigrants of 1850 invested Black Rock with a silver-spouting volcano, although long searches failed to reveal anything better than obsidian.35 More stupendous was the Gold Bluff excitement of 1850-1, an issue of the chimerical ex- pedition to Trinidad Bay,36 the originators of which blazoned before San Francisco that millions' worth of gold lay ready-washed upon the ocean beach, disinte- grated by waves from the speckled bluffs. The diffi- culty was to wrest from the sand the little gold actually discovered.37 Some of the deluded parties joined in the recent Trinity River movement, and par- ticipated in the upper Klamath rush, which in its turn led to developments on Umpqua and Rogue rivers. 38
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