USA > California > The California pilgrim: a series of lectures > Part 16
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The drinking shops, too, were full of people, talking, drinking, lounging. These shops had fanciful names, and were hung around with paintings of nude forms, with gandy Drinking shops pictures, of scenes in the life of a flash man, a and their orna- ments, and fre- quenter. fancy man, a sporting man, a gay man of the world, a jolly good fellow, and so on. Here were public men, come to unbend themselves. Judges, magistrates, constables, lawyers, clerks, politicians, men that sponge their living, somehow, out of the public offices, and have the largest liberty, and the most assurance; all were here for potations. And here judge and culprit drank
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together, with a very knowing wink of recognition. The justice smiled satisfaction, over his glass, at the pettifogger,
Promoters
of who got men by the ears, about pretty much
the public peace,
and men of nothing, and so managed to put fees into his vigilance. own pocket, while giving the Court a chance to foot up a handsome bill of costs. Here the constable drank success to long difficulties and many witnesses; and the sheriff's deputy tried, in vain, to seem strange and cokl toward the man, whom he had once had under arrest, but who had managed to slip out of his hands, while he slipped an "adobe" in. And here were all dignitaries, on a level Dignity unbent. with the undignified, and the great were become like vulgar men ; and, in their cups, they slapped each others' shoulders, in fraternal union, and were known only as Tom, Dick, and Harry, Joe, Sam, and Jerry.
As the hours passed on, there were other buildings sought, which were not the least imposing in their size and appearance, and which were more splendidly and gaudily finished and provided than any others in the town. Here were gilded bottles, colored drinks, and enticing cordials. The haunts of Here were music, and voluptuous dancing. the shameless. Here were painted women, in flaunting and costly attire, and here were bold looks, honied words, blandishing attentions, and enticing smiles, and simple men went straightway after such as hired them to their inner halls, and lavished food and drink upon them, in the place " The dead are of luxury, and wooed them to their ruin in the
there." false embrace of death and the grave. Hour after hour, the song, dance, and music went on ; and still the sound was in the ears of the travelers, both waking and sleeping, long after the noon of night was gone. And the grey of the morning saw many a haggard, pale, man going
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to his rooms, who fain would have concealed from all the world, from the circle at his distant home, especially, " A bird of the the truth concerning his revels, and the place
air shall carry the voice. and that which bath wings shall telt
where his manliness succumbed, and he was robbed of his youth, strength, beauty, and the matter."
all the glory of his golden years, and maturing promise.
These things Pilgrim and his companions saw, or heard from the lips of their host, as they passed the evening together, in his small chamber. And together they bemoaned the dissolute habits, shocking morals, and utter lack of high principle, so common in many of the mountain districts; and together they prayed, that the day might soon come for a steady preaching of the gospel, for quiet Sabbaths, houses of prayer, and pious house- Things altogeth-
er desirable. holds, and all the genial power and influences of divine grace, and human excellence, as these had been known in former years, and in regions afar.
The morning dawned auspiciously. The mountain air was fresh, and bracing ; and there was a charm abroad in the sunny light, that could not be resisted. Dr. Impulsate took them abont the hills and ravines near the town. They
" Devil's can-
- went across the mouth of that one, which
yon." commemorates the name of a notorious vagrant, going up and down in the earth, that, perchance, was no stranger in those parts. For, there as almost everywhere, some, when themselves got high, seemed quite as intent to raise the " Ancient Henry," if at any time he might seem to be reclining, as to put down ali other spirits. The doctor also had them down into the bottom of that one,
" Shirt tail deriving its name from the extremity of an canyon."
under garment ; where, indeed, thore was very
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little to surprise them, and not much to compensate then for their trouble.
They went, afterwards, into shafts and tunnels, visited slides, mounted up to the Georgia Bluffs, and saw where those many, many pounds of gold were obtained, by five
men in a few weeks; which so surprised the
A
famous
"' lead."
whole region, and brought thither such anxious, cager crowds in hope to find their fortunes, with like expedition ; none of whom had been more than partially successful. And thus they spent the day ; making obser. vations of the region and people, and preparing for a continuation of their journey. They did not return to Dr. Impulsate's again; for that gentleman had been called over to the Middle Fork to patch up the bruised face of a piece of humanity, given to bruising grog; and had gone thence to the village of Sarah, to find a place for one of his dependents. They were left, therefore, to look out for themselves ; as, by this time, they were quite able to do, in almost any circumstances.
Now it came to pass, as they were going to a place, where they expected to find shelter for the night, that they came A man of chemi- upon a man, behind a large cabin, busily cal knowledge, and practical ap- plication. engaged with a fire and a retort. He was distilling the mercury from an amalgam he had been forming, in order to test the quality of certain parcels of black sand, and some specimens of quartz rock. Mr. Antiquary recognized this person as a certain Professor, but not the one whom he had known in Embankment as a doer of various kinds of business, not belonging to his curriculum. Like other learned men in the land, this one had turned his attention to trading, speculating in city lots, making new towns, taking up public lands, wonder finding,
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hill exploring, political aspiring, and science mongering, in How he looked general. Hle was the very impersonation of behind the cabin. endurance and toughness, as he stood there in his calico shirt. His hands, large, hard, and somewhat discolored, were very huge paws, as compared with the soft, white, little, dumpy things, often appended to the arms of a University scholar. He looked up in amazement at Mr. Antiquary and his company ; but he was too much a man of self direction to be taken aback. So he finished his distillation, strained the residuum through rags and buckskin, and finally brought it to a hard consistence, and turned it over to dry. Having learned the story of the travelers, he could do neither less nor more than to ask They stop for the them to share his cabin, and they could do no
night. better than to accept his hospitality ; although it was a shabby building which they were by the side of, and the prospect within was not the most charming.
So soon as it was dark, in came three or four other regu- lar occupants, and learned men all. Supper cooking began. They all took seats on boards and boxes, and a large box served for a table ; and in behind it were stowed away the View by candle dishes. A couple of tallow candles, that light. guttered badly, stuck in dirty catsup bottles, shed their feeble glimmer over the scene; and the sheet iron stove smoked when it pleased, and the frying and burning fat on the top could do no less.
At length they had supper, around the big box, of pork, water slap jacks, and molasses, rinsed down with oak leaf, shilling tea, sweetened with extra brown sugar, and drank from tin eups, and far enough from any milk market. It A supper not for was not a board spread for epicures, but bonvivants. appetite and much chewing worked the
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materials into a diet, if not into a severe and solid luxury. After this substantial fare, when the dishes had been stowed away, all guiltless of hot water and towels, the feast of reason and flow of words began.
The conversation turned on the natural sciences, the gold formation, and the various sorts of diggings. For, besides Professor X., there were Dr. H, Geologist Y., Engineer C., and Millwright A. Prof. X. had been in other gold regions of America, and he was sure they were all alike in their general features, and were alike ranged and disposed, keeping ever the same company, and were never found out of place. He believed that the common veiws, concerning the origin and place of gold, taught in our colleges, were right ; and they were confirmed by all his observations in The regular and this land. He was in favor of the learned and learned school of geologists. regular school. Keep Faith said he read about all the books published before he came, but was never able to tell, exactly, what were the views of the regular and learned school.
Millwright A. said, the doctors never would agree. ITe did'nt believe any of them. He knew nothing about talcose, quartzose, gneiss, veins, laminæe, fissures, strata, tertiary, and such things. He did'nt want to know, because he would know less than he did now. He said the country was volcanic. Old and extinct craters could be found ; and The volcanic there was no use in going further to find out theory of Mill- wright A. where the gold came from. The volcanoes had melted and mixed it up with the rocks, had scattered it here and there, had thrown it out in lumps, sprinklings, and fluid masses, and poured it helter skelter, in all directions. That told the whole story.
When Mr. Antiquary asked him to tell how there came
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to be any gold down in the bowels of these volcanoes, to be thrown out, when there were so many volcanoes in action that threw out none whatever, and never had, though active An unanswered for centuries ; he looked somewhat blank.
question.
But, at length, he said, be never went behind the scenes ; he was only telling how the gokl got out ; he did not pretend to be learned enough to tell how it got into the mountains. He was not learned at all.
Mr. Antiquary begged his pardon, but said he had supposed that a gentleman who knew that old volcanoes had thrown up and dispersed the gold over these vast fields, might also be able to tell, from his own knowledge, how the An explanatory volcanoes in this country came to have any remark.
gold to throw out, and why they had not kept at it till the present time. It certainly would have been so very fine to have had the supply kept up by such powerful agencies.
Geologist Y. believed that the gold was formed from its elementary gases, if elements it had, in the bowels of the carth, ages ago ; that, when in a fluid state, it was mingled with molten quartz, and so thrown up by heaving agents to the surface, and toward the surface, and into fissures and openings ; where it was cooled. Thus the quartz veins were The theory of formed. As the centuries went by, the geologist Y. continent, before submerged, was lifted out of the waters, gradually, and then the elements above went to work, disintegrating the rocks, and grinding down the hills, with icebergs and boulders, with cold, heat, and storms, laying bare the veins, breaking them through, crushing them to atoms, rubbing the atoms and fragments down, in tor- rents, rivers, and among rocks, and spreading the finer portions over vast surfaces, or depositing them in old chan-
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nels, and ancient eddies ; these places being constantly in a changing condition, as the continent rose out of the sea, so that old channels and places of deposit were A long sentence
ended. often filled up with drift and dirt, and new ones were gullied out. Thus, in the progress of untold centuries, the ground came to be what it is, and the gold to be where it is, and all the time, nature was at work, doing more than hundreds of men, to reveal the rich treasures she had been cycles in preparing.
Dr. II. saw insuperable difficulties in these theories. They were not satisfactory. They made the whole process of gold production an awkward, clumsy, piece of business, A theory more with no poetry about it; and being so prosy, poetical is in re- quest. it was not at all like nature. Nature was poetical always. He did not think there was any gold in the bowels of the earth, or ever was. Gold, and its kindred metals, came to the earth from without, from the regions of meteors, comets, and the like. Iron had often come, in hot masses and cold, down through the atmosphere. Other mineral substances, also, had come thus, as well as stones, of some kinds; and all these, in very recent times. There always had been a region somewhere in space that furnished the world with acrolites, meteors, and comets. .
In that region he presumed these substances existed in their elemental gases. There were periods when these gases entered into new combinations, came into new relations, under their own laws, of course, and when meteors and comets were severed from the great mass, and flew off toward the sun, but were sometimes stopped by coming into the sphere of the earth's attraction, and so were intercepted, and sometimes brought down to the surface. In this way he thought a comet had brushed the world, in its flight, had 16
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left large portions of itself on the world, in gaseous forms, The rationale of and had, at the same time, set our atmosphere the poetical the- ory. on fire, creating a heat, compared with which, Nebuchadnezzar's furnace was only a hotel fire, fusing all the friable rocks, burning the whole soil to a einder, or into red clay and brick dust, and melting down the tops of hills into the likeness of cones and craters.
And thus he conceived that the gold was deposited by the comet, and introduced into the melted quartz, and other rocks, into the soil, all along the track, and made to take on such forms and shapes as we found it in; though, of course the water and weather had acted on it since. And thus, also, he accounted for the presence of nickel, cobalt, and divers other minerals, so inseparable from a gold region. In this way, too, he accounted for the unique appearance of the hills, soil, and rocks; and for the crumbled quartz, and the baked aspect of so many acres of the ground.
Keep Faith said it was a beautiful theory; and the fire of A brief comment. an atmosphere, so much of it oxygen, and, at least, twenty five miles high, must have been a most magnificent affair. Some people he had known, who were always in terror at the appearing of a comet, lest it should come in contact with terra firma. But if this theory were true, and the space burnt over were not too large, hercatter, none would be apprehensive concerning it, but rather, glad to have a brush with a comet. It was, too, a most capital way of restoring the world's wealth ; for, although the material came through the air, it was better than castles in Something finer that region ; and, though it was once all gas, than castles, in the air. it became none the less anrum purum, on getting cold. In other days, people thanked their stars for their successful fortunes ; in later times, and in Bus-
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tledom, it would seem that the same sort of people ought to thank their comets, for such a wide "streak of good luck," as ran along these ribs of the continent; ribs that were enriched and mottled with yellow, by being roasted.
Engineer C. said he could not see as there was any use in trying to learn how gold was manufactured, and where it The engineer came from, unless they could also learn where delivers himself. to get it, and how to manufacture it for them- selves. For his part, if he could learn where the best pickings of the old batch were, he should be well satisfied, and would never ask how the stuff came to be gold, and not pyrites, nor how it got where he found it, nor when the next supply would be furnished to mankind. He knew of a legend, extant in many rocky parts of the world, to account for the existence of "awful stony spots," purporting that, once on a time, a notorious ancient rebel there broke his apron strings, and left a large pocket full of flint rocks. He Shaken from ce- thought, after the same general method, that lestial wings. some much better personage, or good angel, might have emptied his purse, or shaken his wings over this region, and thence came the deposits and sprinklings of gold. This, if true, would account for the facts, and, for aught he could see, it was as fine a theory of the gold origin, as any body's he knew.
Thus the discussion went on for a long time ; and each was, at the hour of retiring, of much the same opinion as Who shall de- when the talk began. And then I saw, that cide when doc-
tors disagree? Pilgrim, having heard all the sayings of these earned doctors, was very pleasurable anticipated in his wish to retire, by the nod and start of Mr. Antiquary, who had long been asleep, while the talkers supposed he was gra ciously bowing assent. The beds they slept on were
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not down, except on the ground ; but they slept well and comfortably, after so hard a day's tramp, and so solid a supper, and so soporific a discussion.
They awoke to repeat the same operation, in making a breakfast, as in taking their supper ; and all this, before sunrise. For the professor was wide awake at the cock crowing, although no cock crew ; and the sheet
Early hours
amung miners. iron stove began smoking before the miners' pipes, and before the hills in the sunshine. In due time, the travelers took formal leave of the literary group, at this focus of the learned, and of their cabin with its greasy dishes, smoky books, empty boxes, and lowly beds, and took their way, by the compass, for On Hand and Rugged, Herb vale, and the city of Nivalis. There was a trail, some of the way, they hoped to strike, and bars, villages, and diggings to be found, as they might happen upon them.
They journeyed now into the wild regions. Such hills as they came to, such valleys, such ravines, such
The mountain scenery. arbor vitæ, such pines, such moss, such rocks, such cataracts, and such sublimity, ruggedness, grotesque- ness, and wierd wonders of land, water, and vegetation, no mortal ever came upon elsewhere. They would get them- selves down, down, down into a narrow gorge, leap a little, dashing stream, pull themselves, by roots and branches, when they could not crawl, up an almost perpendicular three miles, and then find that they were on the back of a hill, as sharp as that of a skeleton horse, whence they must go down again, by a like weary descent, into the gloom and darkness of a canyon still deeper, in the bottom of which were grow- ing stalwart pines, that seemed to them but stinted shrubs. At such moments they would stop to rest, and gaze where no sign of human presence was, beyond themselves, and no
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trace of man had been left, and no sound was heard above In the wilds, and the music of the breeze in the pine boughs. among rocks. Jagged, cragged, broken, abrupt, fissured, seamed, tossed, jumbled, stacked, thrown helter skelter, were all the materials around them, which scenery is made of, and it was a strange sight to look on them, left in such a chaos of order.
Thus they pursued their way through the land of trial, the regions of ups and downs, which Chrysochron, the king of the country, had appointed for trying the patience and the pluck of all prospectors and travelers. At length, when it was toward night, they came suddenly down upon a miner, at work in a ravine. He was by himself, though others were in sight below. His was the only strange face they had
A solitary mi-
seen, in some hours, and it was pleasant to look
ner, doing well. on it, all unshaven as it was, for it had lines of thought in it, and the eyes beamed with intelligence. Their surprise was mutual; but Pilgrim broke the silence by inquiring about his health and success. He said he never was heartier in his life, and in respect to his digging, he had nothing to complain of. He was making fair wages, and he was anxious for nothing more. Gold was good ; but there A mine yielding was something far better than gold, which he something better
than gold. also searched for, daily, in the sacred mine of the scriptures ; and he pointed to a well worn Bible, lying by his gold dust box, water cup, and pan.
Pilgrim asked, if he found no difficulty in trying to lead a christian life, in such a region, and in such circumstances. Yes ! he found obstacles ; but not greater ones than he had often encountered before, though of a different sort. But, he did not measure his obligation to lead a christian
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life, by the kind, or number, of the difficulties in the way. A christian life One ought to be, and could be, a christian, any practicable in the mines. where, who really meant to be one, and was constant and earnest in his endeavors.
Pilgrim inquired if he found any to sympathize with him, and if he were favored with christian companions. He said there were a few in the region. Some of them were the best, and most exemplary men he had ever known. They
Some true men were all the better, he thought, for their trials to be found.
and exposures ; and all men believed it was so in their case. But, too often, what once seemed good- ness in men, had vanished like the morning mist. He was alone, yet not alone. In respect to habits, he did his trading, prospeeting, visiting, cleaning up, and so on, of a Saturday afternoon, and kept his Sabbathis quietly, and rigidly; and he believed he had enjoyed more comfort, and had more gold, at the end of a month, than most of his neighbors, in other circumstances, similar. He could send home, at least, a hundred dollars a month, and that sum would What is done support his son at college, and his daughter with gold, some- times. at school; and when they were through, lie should have nothing more to stay in California for, unless he sent and brought them hither.
Pilgrim said, he thought he must be a happy man in his contentment. He replied, that he could not be otherwise. He was gratifying some of the dearest wishes of his heart, and believed he was serving God, in the way of his duty. By this time, he had gathered up his tools, and was ready to go with his guests, as he was about to make all three of them, toward his log cabin, on the hill side,
The good man's under a pine, and near a clear spring of çabin, water. It was small and lowly, but could
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hold all. It was floored and neat ; and there was an armed chair in it made of natural crooks and unshaven sticks, with a sack bottom. It was rude and simple, yet queer, and almost handsome, for its oddity. There was a table, of the same fashion, in one corner. There was a Its furniture. shelf of books and daguerreotypes, up high. A mirror hung on the wall ; and also files of the Pacific and other papers. There was a stone fire place and chim ney, at the end, and a cupboard over the fire place, where was crockery ware, instead of tin.
Mr. Antiquary said he had seen, in new countries, a whole family stowed away in a house far less comfortable. Keep Faith said he never thought to find such a man and such a house together, in that wild region, and after all he had heard of the life that miners led. When their supper was finished, homely though it had been, of coarse fare, and no large variety, a keen appetite supplying the
Condiments in place of many condiments, and giving a relish
the hills. that no delicacies could, they went down a mile, with their host, to a bar on the main stream, where were many miners and traders, and something like a village.
It was evening ; and the tall, dark pines, that grew around, added a gloom as well as a grandeur to the scene. Lights were dancing thickly about, as they looked from the height down upon the scene, and men were passing to and fro, in Village on the all directions. As they went along the narrow bar, by night. street, the principal gambling saloon threw a glare of light upon it ; and the drinking shops were all wide open, though the night was chill, and somewhat damp.
As they were passing, a noise and outery drew them to the farthest quarter, close under the hill side. Here was one of the stateliest buildings the place could boast, Two
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rooms took up the whole of the lower story. The front one Evening walk. was a lounging, or sitting room, with a bar in it ; and the back one was a dancing room. There was also a sort of piazza, in front of the building, where seats were arranged. There were scores of men here, as lookers on, or revellers in dissipation.
In that rear apartment, were miners and others, with no gay clothing on, nor thin slippers, with unkempt hair, and long beards, stamping through the dance with perfect wildness and abandon, amid clouds of dust, and with such companions as vulgar, smoking, spitting, painted, swearing, females can make. They were cheered on by dinning, Things seen by crashing music, and the bravos of spectators. night ; not un-
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