USA > California > History of the State of California and biographical record of Coast Counties, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 25
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partment, secret and benevolent societies and as- sociations, with a company of mounted native Californians bearing a banner with thirty-one stars on a blue satin ground with the inscription in gold letters, California, E Pluribus Unum, all these various organizations and orders with their marshals and aids mounted on gaily caparisoned steeds and decked out with their gold and silver trimmed scarfs, made an impos- ing display that has seldom if ever been equaled since in the metropolis of California.
At the plaza a flag of thirty-one stars was raised to the mast head. An oration was de- livered by Judge Nathaniel Bennett and Mrs. Wills recited an original ode of her own compo- sition. The rejoicing over, the people settled down to business. Their unprecedented action in organizing a state government and putting it into operation without the sanction of congress had been approved and legalized by that body.
Like the Goddess Minerva, represented on its great seal, who sprung full grown from the brain of Jupiter, California was born a fully ma- tured state. She passed through no territorial probation. No state had such a phenomenal growth in its infancy. No state before or since has met with such bitter opposition when it sought admission into the family of states. Never before was there such a medley of nation- alities-Yankees, Mexicans, English, Germans, French, Spaniards, Peruvians, Polynesians, Mongolians-organized into a state and made a part of the body politic nolens volens.
The constitutional convention of 1849 did not definitely fix the state capital. San José was designated as the place of meeting for the legis- lature and the organization of the state govern- ment. San José had offered to donate a square of thirty-two acres, valued at $60,000, for cap-, itol grounds and provide a suitable building for the legislature and state officers. The offer was accepted, but when the legislature met there December 15, 1849, the building was unfinished and for a time the meetings of the legislature were held at a private residence. There was a great deal of complaining and dissatisfaction. The first capitol of the state was a two-story adobe building 40x60, which had been intended for a hotel. It was destroyed by fire April 29,
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1853. The accommodations at San Jose were so unsatisfactory that the legislature decided to locate the capital at some other point. Prop- ositions were received from Monterey, from Reed of San José, from Stevenson & Parker of New York of the Pacific and from Gen. M. G. Vallejo. Vallejo's proposition was accepted. He offered to donate one hundred and fifty-six acres of land in a new town that he proposed to lay out on the straits of Carquinez (now Val- lejo) for a capital site and within two years to give $370,000 in money for the erection of pub- lic buildings. He asked that his proposition be submitted to a vote of the people at the next general election. His proposition was accepted by the legislature. At the general election, Octo- ber 7, 1850, Vallejo received seventy-four hun- dred and seventy-seven votes; San José twelve hundred and ninety-two, and Monterey three hundred and ninety-nine. The second legisla- ture convened at San José. General Vallejo ex- erted himself to have the change made in accord- ance with the previous proposition. The cit- izens of San José made an effort to retain the capital, but a bill was passed making Vallejo the permanent seat of government after the close of the session, provided General Vallejo should give bonds to carry out his proposals. In June Governor McDougal caused the gov- ernmental archives to be removed from San José to Vallejo.
When the members of the third legislature met at the new capital January 2, 1852, they found a large unfurnished and partly unfinished wooden building for their reception. Hotel ac- commodations could not be obtained and there was even a scarcity of food to feed the hungry lawmakers. Sacramento offered its new court , house and on the 16th of January the legislature convened in that city. The great flood of
March, 1852, inundated the city and the law- makers were forced to reach the halls of legis- lation in boats and again there was dissatisfac- tion. Then Benicia came to the front with an offer of her new city hall, which was above high water mark. General Vallejo had become financially embarrassed and could not carry out his contract with the state, so it was annulled. The offer of Benicia was accepted and on May 18, 1853, that town was declared the permanent capital.
In the legislature of 1854 the capital question again became an issue. Offers were made by several aspiring cities, but Sacramento won with the proffer of her court house and a block of land betwen I and J, Ninth and Tenth streets. Then the question of the location of the capital got into the courts. The supreme court de- cided in favor of Sacramento. Before the legis- lature met again the court house that had been offered to the state burned down. A new and more commodious one was erected and rented to the state at $12,000 a year. Oakland made an unsuccessful effort to obtain the capital. Finally a bill was passed authorizing the erection of a capitol building in Sacramento at a cost not to exceed $500,000. Work was begun on the foundation in October, 1860. The great flood of 1861-62 inundated the city and ruined the foundations of the capitol. San Francisco made a vigorous effort to get the capital re- moved to that city, but was unsuccessful. Work was resumed on the building, the plans were changed, the edifice enlarged, and, finally, after many delays, it was ready for occupancy in De- cember, 1869. From the original limit of half a million dollars its cost when completed had reached a million and a half. The amount ex- pended on the building and grounds to date foots up $2.600,000.
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CHAPTER XXV.
THE ARGONAUTS.
W V HEN or by whom the name argonaut was first applied to the early Cali- fornia gold seekers I have not been able to ascertain. The earliest allusion to the similarity of Jason's voyage after the Golden Fleece and the miners' rush to the gold fields of California is found in a caricature published in the London Punch in 1849. On the shore of an island is a guide board bearing the inscrip- tion "California;" near it is a miner digging gold and presumably singing at his work. In a boat near the shore is a fat individual, a typical "Johnny Bull." He is struggling desperately with two individuals who are holding him back from leaping into the water, so fascinated is he by the song of the miner. Under the drawing are the words, "The Song of the Sirens."
If we include among the argonauts all who traveled by land or voyaged by sea in search of the golden fleece in the days of '49 we will have a motley mixture. The tales of the fabulous rich- ness of the gold fields of California spread rap- idly throughout the civilized world and drew to the territory all classes and conditions of men, the bad as well as the good, the indolent as well as the industrious, the vicious as well as the virtuous. They came from Europe, from South America and from Mexico. From Australia and Tasmania came the ex-convict and the ticket-of-leave man; from the isles of the sea came the Polynesian, and from Asia the Hindoo and the "Heathen Chinee."
The means of reaching the land of gold were as varied as the character of the people who came. Almost every form of vehicle was pressed into service on land. One individual, if not more, made the trip trundling his impedimenta in a wheelbarrow. Others started out in carriages, intent on making the journey in comfort and ease, but finished on foot, weary, worn and ragged. When the great rushi came old sailing vessels that had long been deemed unseaworthy
were fitted out for the voyage to California. It must have been the providence that protects fools which prevented these from going to the bottom of the ocean. With the desperate chances that the argonauts took on these old tubs, it is singular that there were so few ship- wrecks and so little loss of life. Some of these were such slow sailers that it took them the greater part of a year to round Cape Horn and reach their destination. On one of these some passengers, exasperated at its slowness, landed near Cape St. Lucas and made the long journey up the peninsula of Lower California and on to San Francisco on foot, arriving there a month before their vessel. Another party undertook to make the voyage from Nicaragua in a whale boat and actually did accomplish seven hundred miles of it before they were picked up in the last extremities by a sailing vessel.
The Sierra Nevada region, in which gold was first found, comprised a strip about thirty miles wide and two hundred miles long from north to southi in the basins of the Feather, Yuba, Bear, American, Cosumne, Mokolumne, Stanis- laus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers, between the elevations of one thousand and five thousand feet. In all these streams miners washed gold in 1848. The placer mines on the Upper Sacra- mento and in the Shasta region were discovered and worked late in the fall of 1848. The Kla- math mines were discovered later.
The southern mines, those on the San Joaquin, Fresno, Kern and San Gabriel rivers, were lo- cated between 1851 and 1855. Gold was found in some of the ravines and creeks of San Diego county. Practically the gold belt of California extends from the Mexican line to Oregon, but at some points it is rather thin. The first gold digging was done with butcher knives, the gold hunter scratching in the sand and crevices of the rock to find nuggets. Next the gold pan came into use and the miners became experts
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in twirling the pan in a pool of water, so as to wash out the sand and gravel and leave the gold dust in the pan. Isaac Humphreys, who had mined gold in Georgia, was the first person to use a rocker or gold cradle in California. Al- though a very simple piece of machinery those who reached the mines early found it quite an expensive one. Dr. Brooks in his diary, under date of June II, 1848, writes: "On Tuesday we set to work upon our cradle. We resolved upon the construction of two and for this purpose went down to the store in a body to see about the boards. We found timber extravagantly dear, being asked $40 a hundred feet. The next question was as to whether we should hire a carpenter. We were told there was one or two in the diggings, who might be hired, though at a very extravagant rate. Accordingly Brad- ley and I proceeded to see one of these gentle- men, and found him washing away with a hollow log and a willow branch sieve. He offered to help us at the rate of $35 a day, we finding pro- visions and tools, and could not be brought to charge less. We thought this by far too ex- travagant and left him, determined to undertake the work ourselves. After two days' work of seven men they produced two rough cradles and found that three men with a cradle or rocker could washi out as much gold in a day as six could with pans in the same time."
A rocker or gold cradle had some resemblance to a child's cradle with similar rockers and was rocked by means of a perpendicular handle fastened to the cradle box. The cradle box con- sisted of a wooden trough about twenty inches wide and forty inches long with sides four or five inches high. The lower end was left open. On the upper end sat the hopper, a box twenty inches square with sides four inches high and a bottom of sheet iron or zinc pierced with holes one-half inch in diameter. Where zinc or iron could not be obtained a sieve of willow rods was used. Under the hopper was an apron of canvas, which sloped down from the lower end of the hopper to the upper end of the cradle box. A wooden riffle bar an inch square was nailed across the bottom of the cradle box about its middle, and another at its lower end. Under the cradle box were nailed rockers, and near
the middle an upright handle by which motion was imparted. If water and pay dirt were con- venient two men were sufficient to operate the machine. Seated on a stool or rock the operator rocked with one hand, while with a long handled dipper he dipped water from a pool and poured it on the sand and gravel in the hopper. When the sand and earth had been washed through the holes in the sieve the rocks were emptied and the hopper filled again from the buckets of pay dirt supplied by the other partner. The gold was caught on the canvas apron by the riffle bars, while the thin mud and sand were washed out of the machine by the water.
In the dry diggings a method of separating the gold from the earth was resorted to prin- cipally by Sonorans. The pay dirt was dug and dried in the sun, then pulverized by pounding into fine dust. With a batea or bowl-shaped Indian basket filled with this dust, held in both hands, the Mexican skillfully tossed the earth in the air, allowing the wind to blow away the dust and catching the heavier particles and the gold in the basket, repeating the process until there was little left but the gold.
The Long Tom was a single sluice with a sieve and a box underneath at the end and rif- fle bars to stop the gold. The pay dirt was shov- eled in at the upper end and a rapid current of water washed away the sand and earth, the gold falling into the receptacle below. Ground sluic- ing was resorted to where a current of water from a ditch could be directed against a bank of earth or hill with a sloping bedrock. The stream of water washing against the upper side of the bank caved it down and carried the loose earth through a string of sluices, depositing the gold in the riffle bars in the bottom of the sluices.
In the creeks and gulches where there was not much fall, sluice mining was commonly re- sorted to. A string of sluice boxes was laid, each fitting into the upper end of the one below, and in the lower ones riffle bars were placed to stop the gold. The sluice boxes were placed on trestles four feet from the ground and given an incline of five or six inches to the rod. The gravel from the bedrock up as far as there was any pay dirt was shoveled into the upper boxes and a rapid current of water flowing through the
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boxes carried away the gravel and rocks, the gold remaining in the riffles. Quicksilver was placed between the riffles to catch the fine gold. The gold amalgamated with quicksilver was cleaned out of the boxes at the end of the day's work and separated from the quicksilver in a re- tort. These were the principal methods of mining used by the argonauts. The machinery and ap- pliances were simple and inexpensive. Hy- draulic mining came in later, when larger cap- ital was required and the mines had fallen into the hands of corporations.
When the news spread throughout the states of the wonderful "finds" of gold in California, the crudest ideas prevailed in regard to how the precious metal was to be extracted from the earth. Gold mining was an almost un- known industry in the United States. Only in a few obscure districts of North Caro- lina and Georgia had gold been found, and but very few people outside of these dis- tricts had ever visited the mines. Not one in ten thousand of those who joined the rush to California in 1849 had ever seen a grain of virgin gold. The idea prevailed among the gold seekers that the gold being found in grains it could be winnowed from the sand and earth in which it was found like wheat is separated from chaff. Imbued with this idea Yankee ingenuity set to work to invent labor-saving machines that would accomplish the work quickly and enrich the miner proportionally. The ships that bore the argonauts from their native land car- ried out a variety of these gold machines, all guaranteed to wrest from the most secret re- cesses the auriferous deposits in nature's treasure vaults. These machines were of all varieties and patterns. They were made of cop- per, iron, zinc and brass. Some were operated by means of a crank, others had two cranks, while others were worked with a treadle. Some required that the operator should stand, others allowed the miner to sit in an arm chair and work in comfort.
Haskins, in his "Argonauts of California," describes one of these machines that was brought around the Horn in the ship he came on: "It was in the shape of a huge fanning mill, with sieves properly arranged for sorting
the gold ready for bottling. All chunks too large for the bottle would be consigned to the pork barrel." (The question of bringing home the gold in bottles or barrels had been seriously discussed and decided in favor of barrels be- cause these could be rolled and thus save cost of transportation from the mines.)
"This immense machine which, during our passage, excited the envy and jealousy of all who had not the means and opportunity of se- curing a similar one required, of course, the services of a hired man to turn the crank, whilst the proprietor would be busily engaged in shov- eling in pay dirt and pumping water; the greater portion of the time, however, being required, as was firmly believed, in corking the bottles and fitting the heads in the barrels. This ma- chine was owned by a Mr. Allen of Cambridge, Mass., who had brought with him a colored servant to manage and control the crank por- tion of the invaluable institution.
"Upon landing we found lying on the sand and half buried in the mud hundreds of similar machines, bearing silent witness at once to the value of our gold saving machines without the necessity of a trial."
Nor was it the argonaut alone who came by sea that brought these machines. Some of these wonderful inventions were hauled across the plains in wagons, their owners often sacri- ficing the necessities of life to save the prized machine. And, when, after infinite toil and trou- ble, they had landed their prize in the mines, they were chagrined to find it the subject of jest and ridicule by those who had some experience in mining.
The gold rush came early in the history of California placer mining. The story of a rich strike would often depopulate a mining camp in a few hours. Even a bare rumor of rich dig- gings in some indefinite locality would send scores of miners tramping off on a wild goose chase into the mountains. Some of these rushes originated through fake stories circu- lated for sinister purpose; others were caused by exaggerated stories of real discoveries.
One of the most famous fakes of early days was the Gold Lake rush of 1850. This wonder- ful lake was supposed to be located about two
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hundred miles northeast of Marysville, on the divide between the Feather and the Yuba rivers. The Sacramento Transcript of June 19, 1850, says: "We are informed by a gentleman from Marysville that it is currently reported there that the Indians upon this lake use gold for their commonest purposes; that they have a ready way of knocking out square blocks, which they use for seats and couches upon which to place their beds, which are simply bundles of wild oats, which grow so profusely in all sections of the state. According to report also they use for fishhooks crooked pieces of gold and kill their game with arrows made of the same material. They are reported to be thunderstruck at the movements of the whites and their eagerness to collect and hoard the materials of the very ground upon which they tread.
"A story is current that a man at Gold Lake saw a large piece of gold floating on the lake which he succeeded in getting ashore. So clear are the waters that another man saw a rock of gold on the bottom. After many ef- forts he succeeded in lassoing the rock. Three days afterward he was seen standing holding on to his rope."
The Placer Times of Marysville reports that the specimens brought into Marysville are of a value from $1.500 down. Ten ounces is re- ported as no unusual yield to the pan. The first party of sixty which started out under guidance of one who had returned successful were assured that they would not get less than $500 cach per day. We were told that two hun- dred had left town with a full supply of pro- visions and four hundred mules. Mules and horses have doubled in value. Many places of business are closed. The diggings at the lake are probably the best ever discovered." The Times of June 19 says: "It is reported that up to last Thursday two thousand persons had taken up their journey. Many who were work- ing good claims deserted them for the new dis- covery. Mules and horses were about impos- sible to obtain. Although the truth of the re- port rests on the authority of but two or three who have returned from Gold Lake, yet few are found who doubt the marvelous revelations. A party of Kanakas are said to have wintered
at Gold Lake, subsisting chiefly on the flesh of their animals. They are said to have taken out $75,000 the first week. When a conviction takes such complete possession of a whole com- munity, who are fully conversant with all the exaggerations that have had their day, it is scarcely prudent to utter even a qualified dissent from what is universally believed."
The denouement of the Gold Lake romance may be found in the Transcript of July 1. 1850. "The Gold Lake excitement, so much talked of and acted upon of late, has almost subsided. A crazy man comes in for a share of the re- sponsibility. Another report is that they have found one of the pretended discoverers at Marysville and are about to lynch him. In- deed, we are told that a demonstration against the town is feared by many. People who have returned after traveling some one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles say that they left vast numbers of people roaming between the sources of the Yuba and the Feather rivers."
Scarcely had the deluded argonauts returned from a bootless search for the lake of gold when another rumored discovery of gold fields of fabulous richness sent them rushing off toward the sea coast. Now it was Gold Bluff that lured them away. On the northwest coast of Califor- nia, near the mouth of the Klamath river, precipitous bluffs four hundred feet high mark the coast line of the ocean. A party of pros- pectors in the fall of 1850, who had been up in the Del Norte country, were making their way down to the little trading and trapping sta- tion of Trinidad to procure provisions. On reaching the bluffs, thirty miles above Trinidad, they were astonished to find stretching out be- fore them a beach glittering with golden sands. They could not stop to gather gold; they were starving. So, scraping up a few handfuls of the glittering sands, they hastened on. In due time they reached San Francisco, where they exhibited their sand, which proved to be nearly half gold. The report of the wonderful find was spread by the newspapers and the excitement began. Companies were formed and claims lo- cated at long range. One company of nine locators sent an expert to examine their claims. IIc, by a careful mathematical calculation, as-
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certained that the claim would yield forty-three million dollars to each partner. As there were fifteen miles of gold beach, the amount of gold in the sands was sufficient to demonetize the precious metal. A laudable desire to benefit the human race possessed some of the claim owners. They formed joint stock companies with shares at $100 each. Gold Bluff mining stock went off like the proverbial hot cakes and pros- pectors went off as rapidly. Within two days after the expert's wonderful story was spread abroad nine ships were fitted out for Gold Bluff. The first to arrive off the Bluff was the vessel containing a party of the original discoverers. In attempting to land in a boat, the boat was upset in the breakers and five of the six occu- pants were drowned, Bertram, the leader of the party making the discovery, alone escaping. The vessel put back to Trinidad and the gold l:unters made their way up the coast to the Bluff. But alas for their golden dreams! Where they had hoped to gather gold by the ship load no gold was found. Old ocean had gathered it back into his treasure vaults.
The bubble burst as suddenly as it had ex- panded. And yet there was gold at Gold Bluff and there is gold there yet. If the ocean could be drained or coffer dammed for two hundred miles along the gold coast of northern Califor- nia and Oregon, all the wealth of Alaska would be but the panning out of a prospect hole com- pared to the richness that lies hidden in the sands of Gold Beach. For years after the bursting of the Gold Bluff bubble, when the tide was low, the sands along Gold Beach were mined with profit.
The Kern river excitement in the spring of 1855 surpassed everything that had preceded it. Seven years of mining had skimmed the rich- ness of the placers. The northern and central gold fields of California had been thoroughly prospected. The miners who had been accus- tomed to the rich strikes of early years could not content themselves with moderate returns. They were on the qui vive for a rich strike and ready for a rush upon the first report of one. The first discoveries on the Kern river were made in the summer of 1854, but no excitement followed immediately. During the fall and win-
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