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Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities

by George Payson · English · Gutenberg #49039 · 667,014 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities

Author: George Payson


        
Release date: May 24, 2015 [eBook #49039]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLDEN DREAMS AND LEADEN REALITIES ***

GOLDEN DREAMS

AND

LEADEN REALITIES.




GOLDEN DREAMS

AND

LEADEN REALITIES.

BY

RALPH RAVEN.

WITH AN

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER,

BY

FRANCIS FOGIE, SEN., ESQ.

New York:
G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE.
M.DCCC.LIII.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853,

BY G. P. PUTNAM AND COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.

BILLIN & BROTHERS, Printers and Stereotypers,
20 North William street, N. Y.




INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.


So! I have come to be an old man at last! and I hav'n't been a
great while about it either. No one is a great while about anything
nowadays. Where is my life? heighho! here I am holding tight on to the
little end, and it slipping all the while faster and faster out of my
fingers. And no wonder; sixty-nine years all taking hold of the rope,
and all pulling together, walk it off as fast as two engines racing
to a fire, and here is the seventieth running to join them. By the
way, what a strange dream that was I had the other night! if I were
superstitious, I should suppose it meant something, for I never had
any like it before--the world on fire! ten thousand bells ringing the
alarm! hurry up the engines! pour on water! but the ocean is burning
too! Payne's problem is solved at last. Hark to those volcanoes! great
guns, double shotted, there goes Mount Etna, and there's Vesuvius,
and that, that must be Cotapaxi; what a tremendous burst there'll be
when the fire reaches the great central magazine! but where are the
mourners? do the stars miss one of their number? will its ashes reach
their sphere?

Well, I have seen a great deal--magnetic telegraph railroads, woman's
rights, crystal palaces, California, Australia, and now, ships of
twelve thousand tons, the Atlantic turned into a horse-pond: what is
the world coming to? There was no such thing when I was young--we
didn't profess then to be wiser than all before us. I'm glad I shall
soon be out of the way. And yet I should like to see the end. The end,
when will that be? and who can tell what it will be? Heighho! it racks
my old heart all to pieces, like a locomotive on a corduroy road. No
wonder man's life has been shortened to three score-years and ten.
How poor old Methusalah would have stared! why we live as long in a
year as he did in one of his sleepy centuries. He never could have
stood the racket, unless he had first been dried in an oven. It would
have fretted the skin off him, as it did off that big juicy apple I
had in my pocket when I rode Squire Smith's old trotting horse. Let me
see, that was forty, fifty, yes, fifty-one years ago--strange how I
remember such a trifle.

Well, well, I have overlapped my time, I don't seem to belong here.
That was what that young fire-brain, what's his name, said this
morning. He and I were like an ox yoked with a locomotive. I'm the ox;
yes, yes, he's right; I can't keep up with their new-fangled ways; nor
I don't want to either, they are too fast altogether. All I want is to
die and be buried before they harness their steam to the hearses; and
yet they've done that already. What was that railroad train the other
day at Norwalk but a train of hearses, a great funeral procession?
only that they put the folks into them before they were dead.

Yes, yes, the dead ride fast--tramp, tramp, along the land they go;
splash, splash, along the sea; and why shouldn't they, if they like
it, as well as their betters?

And I won't be buried in the city neither, nor in Greenwood. I've been
crowded enough in my life-time--I'll have room enough after I'm dead.
But where shall I go? There are places a plenty now, but in fifty
years, or ten, who can tell that there won't be a hundred thousand
trampling over my grave? Five dollars a square foot, let me see, that
would be thirty dollars. Alas, poor Yorick! who would give thirty
dollars to secure you a quiet sleep?

That was a glorious idea of that world-weary old Goth to be buried
under a river, forever sounding his funeral dirge; but it's no sort
of use now--that's the very place to be turned topsey-turvey. I'll
be sunk in the very middle of the Atlantic--yes, that'll do--I shall
be safe enough there, in an iron coffin. But wait a minute. They are
talking already of laying their wires to Europe--yes, and then I shall
hardly have settled myself for a nap of a thousand years or so, when
they'll be sure to come foul of me, and perhaps fish me up again, or
at least give me a confounded shock.

I used to think I would be buried by my old mother, under the old
elm in the quiet churchyard. But it's no use: the churchyard is quiet
no longer; the old elm is as dusty and worried as I; and the old
tombstones have stopped mourning for the dead, to stare, and gape, and
gossip over the living. No, I'll not be buried there, to be waked up
every hour by that infernal whistle.

Heighho! what a strange thing it is to grow old all alone, and when
everything else is so young! I used to think the world would grow
old with me, but I believe it's younger than ever. But it's no such
thing--it's only paint and varnish; the older it grows, the thicker
they lay it on. Wash that off, and what is there but a withered,
wrinkled old hag? Faugh! I'd as lieve sit down to dinner with a
skeleton. There's nothing old but the hills. They're not ashamed to be
grey, God bless 'em! They never can paint Mr. Washington.

How I love the sight of their conscious yet unpretending majesty,
their quiet, self-reliant strength! With what grand and noble pity
they seem to look down on our fretting, bustling insignificance!

But stop. Where am I? right in the middle of the nineteenth
century--the last of my race--the last of the old fogies. There's
something in that. There'll never be another after me. Noah, he was
the first, and I'm the last. Who is there to mourn for Logan?

But, no matter. They've enough to do to mourn for themselves. From
my soul I pity them, poor helpless creatures! stuffed full of
self-sufficiency, they've no longer any occasion for our services;
they're no longer sensible of any obligation. When I was young it was
the fashion to respect old age for what it had done, if not for what
it could do; but we have changed all that.

     [_He turns over some old papers and reads._]

"July, 1812. Some reflections on the exceeding folly of growing old."
Let me see: what is this? Oh, ha, ha, [_laughing feebly_] I remember
now. It's that paper I wrote for my grandfather when I was younger
and not so wise as I am now; and sister Mary--where is she now, I
wonder--she wouldn't let me put it in his way.

     [_He reads here and there._]

"What a fine thing it is to be young, and in this time of the world
too! We are the cream of all that have gone before us. We really live
their life; we begin where they ended; we stand on their shoulders;
their whole learning is only our alphabet; they laid the foundation,
we build the superstructure. But poor old fogies! they would never
have got any farther if they had lived a thousand years. It's a
lucky thing for the world that they didn't--useless lumber, withered
stubble, trees dead at the root--cut, burn, and bury them out of the
way: they have done all the good in the world they ever can do, and
the world wants them no longer."

"They are a clog on its machinery--dirt in its wheels--rust in its
joints--a pebble in its shoe--it's never been a merry world since old
men came into fashion."

"If a man must grow old, if he will be so unreasonable and
unseasonable, let him keep it to himself and not infect everything
about him. If his hair is grey, is that any reason why the sunshine
should be so too?--if he walks with crutches, must the brooks stop
running?--if his eyes are dim, must we put out the stars or clap a
pair of spectacles on to the nose of the moon?"

"Heaven bless the mark! nothing grows old but man and his
inventions--the sky is as blue--the sun's eye, though he has but one,
is as bright--the wind is as frolicsome, as when they first shone and
danced through Eden; the very flowers, though they fade and go out,
yet keep their heart young to the last--who ever heard of a decrepit
rose, a superannuated violet, or a greyheaded butterfly?"

"_I_ never mean to grow old. I can ride as fast and as far as any of
them--my heart beats as many beats to a minute as the best, no one
shall ever ride over me, or cry to me to get out of his way.--My last
pulsation shall be as vigorous as any that preceded it."

[_He lays down the paper with a cold shudder._] Who said I was old?
who was that talking about being buried? away with such idle fancies!
I shant be buried these twenty years. I'm not old--I'm as vigorous
and active as ever I was in my life--there's as much strength in that
arm [_here he stretches out his right arm, and clasps it with his
left hand_] as when I was thirty, and my limbs are as light, [_he
gets up and dances_] I should like to see the young man that could
tire me out, [_he sits down rather suddenly_] only I want practice to
strengthen my wind; and as for my mind, I believe it is capable of
greater exertion than ever, [_he knits his brow, and appears to be
solving some knotty question in state or finance_] yes, I have twenty
years yet as good as the best; hurrah boys! never say die! [_he swings
his hat feebly round his head, then sits down in a tremor of shame and
indignation at being detected by his youngest clerk in such outrageous
fashion_].

In this state he takes his pen and with infinite labour writes these
brief observations, as if all the fog of all the Fogies were in his
veins.

If the author of the following narrative had taken my advice, he
would never have gone to California in the first place, nor written
this book afterwards. It is obvious to the dullest capacity that he
wouldn't have written the book if he hadn't gone; and as for the
other, he allows himself in the very first chapter that I did all I
could to prevent it. It may be gratifying to the reader to know that
I am the very person there mentioned in such flattering terms, and I
can assure him that that account is by no means exaggerated. I believe
I am, at least I have always enjoyed the reputation of being as sober
and prudent as my neighbors; and it was therefore no more than natural
that I should express the unalterable conviction there referred to.
I added moreover my reasons for that conviction which the author has
seen fit not to mention, possibly because his folly and obstinacy
would thereby appear still more inexcusable than they do now; but he
shall not escape so easily, as I am determined to set the whole matter
in the clearest possible light.

My first and principal reason then was that I did not believe there
was any such place as California.

"No such place as California! Well, you have found out your mistake by
this time I suppose."

Not at all, I don't believe it now any more than I did then.

"What! not with all the gold that's pouring into the country, and the
thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of men that have gone
there!"

Softly, my young friend, all this proves nothing. Indeed, if you
have seen California, you of course are justified in believing, but
not otherwise. I remember a great many people used to believe in the
existence of such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte, and the papers were
full of the subject, just as they are now of California. In fact, (I
was younger then than I am now,) I used to believe in him myself, and
dare say I should have gone on believing to this day if it hadn't
been for that little book of the Bishop of Berkshire proving to a
mathematical certainty that such a series of events was clearly
impossible according to the world's history. But I'm sure California
is just as improbable, just as much out of the common course, and
we've no more proof, in fact not so much, of its existence, for it's a
good deal further off, and though it is a little bigger, it can't make
half so much noise; so that is about equal. To be sure, as you say,
any number of men and ships have set sail for California, but that's
no sign that they ever got there. They say so of course, for no one
likes to be humbugged, but for all we know, they might just as well
have gone to India, or China, or Japan. I have noticed they are never
very fond of talking about their adventures, and when they are, they
say very little about the gold they have brought home, though that
after all is the only real proof; and they are sure to go into a huff
if any one asks them how much they made, or to give some ridiculous
and impertinent answer. So you see that, reasoning _à priori_, the
balance of probability is decidedly opposed to the existence of any
such country.

But supposing that there is such a country, it doesn't follow that
there is any gold in it. In fact this is even more improbable than
the other. There is no gold in New York--why should there be any in
California? Is it because it is so far off? or because it lies on the
Pacific? or because it is good for nothing else? None of these reasons
will answer. There are other countries equally distant, equally
valueless, and in the same ocean, but they contain no gold; why then,
I say, should California?

But a simple proposition will set the matter at rest at once. The
world has now existed, according to the strictest calculation,
six thousand years; which being multiplied by three hundred and
sixty-five, the number of days in a year, will give over two millions
of days, on any of which the gold might have been discovered. The
chances then that it would not be discovered on the first day of the
six thousand and first year are as two millions to one. If we then
take into the account, that during all this time the population of
the globe has averaged about five hundred millions, and that all this
immense number has never made this discovery, the improbability that
it should be made by a single individual, and one too that nobody ever
heard of, is as five hundred millions to one; and these two chances
multiplied together, ought surely to satisfy any reasonable man that
there is no gold there, and never has been.

Besides, even supposing California really to be, and to be as full
of gold as it is represented, my acquaintance with the character of
the late author, was enough to convince me that he would never get a
morsel of it. I was not very well acquainted with him, to be sure,
having only known him twenty years or so, and his character being of
that shallow order, that one could read it at a glance if he would
only take sufficient trouble; but as far as I did know, he was always
an idle shiftless fellow, with an education he had not the capacity to
improve, nor the courage entirely to disown, so he used to say, though
I must confess I never could discover why it should require such a
prodigious effort. He had waited a long time in hopes something would
turn up, and used to justify himself in this particular by reference
to one Mr. Wilkins Micawber, who, according to his account, had
amassed a considerable fortune in that way; though for my own part I
never heard of such an individual before, and always believed that to
be one of his own inventions.

He was fond too of talking, in his barbarous and senseless fashion,
about his having been engaged, at such an early age that he really
had no voice in the matter, to one Clio or Chloe, some person of
colour I suppose, though nobody to my knowledge ever saw her, and he
declared that now he was arrived at years of discretion, (discretion
indeed!) as the laws of society, which he was pleased in his wisdom
to pronounce foolish and absurd, rendered a divorce difficult, he
was determined to run away from her altogether; and the California
fever breaking out just then, he was one of the first to be taken.
But though California seems expressly designed by Providence for the
accommodation and relief of just such good-for-naughts, lazy clerks,
runaway apprentices, men without professions, and professions without
practice--he was really as unfit for anything of the kind as could
possibly be imagined or conceived of. He has seen fit to indulge in
much unseemly and unbecoming mirth over the misfortunes of some of
his acquaintances, but I will venture on my own authority to maintain
that among them all there was not one but was better calculated to
make his way in the world, and in California too, for that matter,
than himself. He might have walked right over a lump of gold weighing
a hundred pounds every day for six months, and would have been sure to
tumble into the hole after it had been taken out, and wonder he had
not seen it before.

As for faith and energy, he hadn't as much as could ride on a
thistledown; and though he could dream fast enough, I warrant you, of
thousands and of millions, yet when it came to the actual, downright,
wide-awake necessity, he was of no more account than a child or a
philosopher.

It was in view of these various reasons that I declared my unalterable
conviction, that he would not get gold enough to carry on his
thumb-nail. Of course, being unalterable, I have never thought of
altering it. And there has been no reason. He did, indeed, for some
time after his return, carry about with him a snuff-box, half full
of an ugly yellow dust he called gold, and some folks were credulous
enough to believe him; but I was too old a bird to be caught with such
chaff. It looked as much like brass as it did like gold. Besides,
nobody knew, nobody could know where it came from, and like enough he
had it manufactured for the occasion. Anything was more probable than
that it came from California.

I could forgive him anything, however, even his good fortune, easier
than his inconsequential, illogical mode of reasoning. It is very
evident that he did not meet with that success he had expected; but
instead of giving the true reasons for his disappointment, he seeks
to conceal his weakness by a variety of evasions equally futile,
ridiculous, and absurd.

In the first place, he was sick! When I was young no one ever thought
of being sick except women and old men; but, I suppose, now the case
is different. But see the folly of the thing! For why? I've known him,
as I said, any time these twenty years, and, to my certain knowledge,
he was never sick in his life; and then, to go and be sick just then,
at the most critical and important crisis, as it were, when so much
was at stake, his whole future prosperity, as one may say, hanging on
it, that is, on his being sick or well--to be sick at such a time, I
say, argues the most deplorable folly and shortsightedness. Why in
the world wasn't he sick during the voyage, when he had nothing else
to do? or why not wait till he got home, when he could have things
comfortable about him?

But the Burke rocker? surely that was a most grievous misfortune.
Not if he had known how to use it. For they employ the Burke rocker
to this very day in the enlightened States of Virginia and North
Carolina; and, of course, it is good enough for such a semi-barbarous
country as California. But, for my part, I wonder at his ever thinking
of anything so plainly unfit for the purpose.

Then there is the loss he sustained by the submarine armour. All I can
say is, served him right. I never saw one of those machines myself,
and know nothing at all about it, but I should as soon think of
ploughing with a balloon, as of digging under water, or out of water,
with a feather bed on my back, a bolster on each leg, a pillow on each
arm, and a great copper kettle on my head.

The project, then, of going to California was conceived with
rashness--determined upon with obstinacy--and executed with folly. He,
to be sure, sets up in defence the fact that the scheme was finally
successful, as if that were enough to silence all objections. Now,
I am an old man, and may perhaps be growing a little crotchety and
whimsical in my old age, but I must and will protest against any such
dangerous and heretical doctrine. Success has here nothing to do with
the matter; in fact he had no business to succeed; his success was and
must be a positive insult to all who are in the habit of governing
their conduct by judgment and right reason. If this plea is to be
received in vindication, there is no crime or blunder that may not be
excused in the same way; we have no longer any use for our boasted
reason, and are at once plunged from the firm ground of induction and
analogy into the quagmire of chance and conjecture. He was always a
sort of wildfire, and knew no more about logic than Will-o'-the-Wisp
does of straight walking. But as even a Will-o'-the-Wisp is sometimes
very useful, in pointing out to the benighted traveller the marshy and
dangerous ground over which it hovers, so the reader may, perhaps, in
like manner, take warning from the example here set before him; and if
so, the author, like a piece of rotten wood,--I cannot stop to perfect
the simile,--will have shed more light from his folly, than he ever
could have produced by his wisdom.




Golden dreams and leaden realities




CHAPTER I.


Early in 1849, the unwilling ship in which I had taken passage for
California, was dragged away from the wharf in the sooty hug of a
remorseless steamtug, like a struggling, kicking schoolboy in the
arms of a hated master. Such an event was not then so common as it
has since become, and an immense crowd had assembled to witness our
departure, with some such feelings as if we had been bound on a voyage
of discovery to the moon, or, at the very least, in search of the
Northwest Passage.

It was a cold grey day; the deck of the Leucothea was sloppy with
melting snow, and littered with chaotic little piles of luggage, among
which the passengers wandered up and down like a hundred cats smelling
about in a strange garret. Some were still crouched, shiveringly, on
the high piles of lumber amid ships, to which they had ascended to
take their last view of home; others jostled in the gangways, as they
revolved in their uneasy orbits from stem to stern; while a third
party, without any ostensible motive, kept running up and down the
cabin-stairs. Everybody looked cross and out of sorts, as if he would
like nothing so well as to get into a quarrel with everybody else.

After proceeding a few miles down the bay, we put back and anchored,
for the night, just out of sight of the city; and the deck being now
almost entirely deserted, I groped my way down the winding stairs
and into the little cabin. At first, I could see nothing but the
misty light of a lantern swinging amidships, faintly illuminating
the white-washed beams, and oil-cloth covered table; but, as my eyes
became used to the darkness, I discovered a small party gathered round
the unsocial airtight, and conversing in a sort of subterranean tones,
of their present dismal condition. Sitting down among them, I was not
so much occupied with my own bitter and thick-coming fancies, as to
take no note of their broken dialogue.

"Ah," said one, with an abortive laugh, "Charley feels bad enough
to-night."

"Yes, he wishes he was up to M----, I guess," returned another, whose
faltering vivacity plainly declared he wished so himself at any rate.

"Humph," retorted Charley, with something between a whine and a growl,
"I think we were all a set of darned fools; if I was only safe back,
you'd never catch me in such a scrape again; you'd better believe it."

"Well," said his companion, "there's a chance left yet; you can go
back in the pilot-boat to-morrow."

"I ain't quite such a fool as all that comes to" sneered Charley;
"we're in for it now, and I mean to put her through."

This speech was followed by a melancholy laugh, and then by a profound
silence, in the midst of which, they, one by one, dropped off to bed
in the adjoining staterooms; leaving me alone in the dingy little
cabin, with the ungenial airtight,--the puffy lantern, with one big,
drunken eye in its belly,--and the greasy table, whose pinching,
miserly face said, as plainly as words could speak, that if it
had ever witnessed one generous feast, it was so long ago that it
remembered nothing about it. I was unable to resist these combined
influences, and soon slunk away to my berth, with a heart heavy as
the gold I was pursuing.

In refitting the Leucothea for a passenger ship, eight supplemental
staterooms had been built on deck, covered, as well as the space
between, with what is called a poop deck, extending from the stern
several feet forward of the mizenmast. My berth was an upper one,
and its already alarming elevation was aggravated by a miscellaneous
collection of boots, shovels, and pickaxes, which I had stored under
the mattrass, partly to economize space, and partly to prepare myself,
by this sort of hardening process, for the privations I expected
to encounter in the mines. Owing to the hurry of my departure, and
the crowded state of my trunks, I had been obliged to resort to a
very ingenious expedient to transport my superfluous wardrobe. When
one shirt became soiled, I hid it with a second, and this process I
repeated till I had no less than six lying one above another. I then
improved upon this invention by adding two vests, a frock, a sack,
a great coat, and a pea-jacket, so that I might easily have been
mistaken for one of those early Dutch navigators immortalized by
Irving, who thought it a great hardship to be obliged to go aloft with
only five coats apiece. Thus fortified, and having my feet encased
in a huge pair of boots, I climbed with infinite difficulty into my
berth, where I slept about as securely as an elephant on the roof of a
house.

The next morning we stood out to sea, which somewhat revived our
drooping courage; as, in battle, it is easier to advance boldly
against the enemy, than to remain, a long time, passively exposed to
his attacks. But our fortitude was soon to be subjected to a still
severer test. Very few of our number had ever been to sea before, and
some had never seen any larger body of water than the pond or river
in which they had fished and bathed in boyhood. All, however, had
heard of the ocean, of its grandeur and sublimity, and, of course,
had already made up their minds to be duly affected, as every one
possessing the least share of sensibility must be, by its mighty
attributes. Accordingly, the sharp outline of the horizon was still
broken on one side by the gradually sinking land, when they went to
work with most commendable ardour and perseverance to raise their
imaginations to the proper level.

I confess, for my own part, to an entire inability to enter into
these emotions. I have no affection or admiration for the ocean, _per
se_. I love it in our winding bays dotted with sails, and reflecting
the flickering shadows of green banks or populous cities, and have
been, once or twice in my life, awe-and-wonder-struck on beholding it
swelling from afar against the rock-bound coasts of New England. Here
its beauty is multiplied by contrast, and its power thoroughly aroused
by opposition.

It is pleasant to lie on some lofty promontory and gaze away off into
the illimitable blue, and dream that so it goes on forever, without
any opposing shore. I am even willing to make short excursions with
it, to meet it half way, as it were, on this neutral ground; but I
care not to go home with it, or to venture into its own undisputed
domain. As Shylock says to Bassanio, "I will buy with you, sell with
you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following,--but I will not
eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you"--there is such a
thing as too great intimacy. The sea itself suffers by this undecent
familiarity. Instead of that mysterious and salutary dread we formerly
entertained towards it, we come to regard it, in a manner, as our
bond-servant, or beast of burden. Its sublimity is gone--its vastness
becomes wearisome monotony--its royal pomp and power sink into peevish
ill-humour or sullen bravado. It is not so very big either. A circular
disc of salt water, thirty or forty miles across, is all you can
see. If its waves were indeed mountains--if one sailed among Alps,
in valleys lighted only by the mid-day sun, or along the face of a
precipice, towering as high towards heaven as it sunk sheer down to
the abyss--then, indeed, the naked, melancholy ocean would not need to
borrow any element of sublimity from the continent earth.

This was the nature of the reflections produced by the first view of
the rounded ocean; if I should hereafter take just the opposite side
of the question, I hope not to be charged with inconsistency;--in a
long voyage one's opinions change almost as often as the winds. The
revolution, however, is seldom as sudden or as ludicrous as in the
case of our unlucky enthusiasts. While they were even yet expatiating
on the grandeur and sublimity of the scene, they became aware of
certain uneasy and mysterious sensations, the precise locality of
which it was hard to determine, but which seemed to have their capital
seat somewhere in the region of the diaphragm. Strange horrors seized
them, and pangs unfelt before. But it is the nature of this malady to
dispose its victims to conceal their weakness as long as possible.
They shrink from the mortifying disclosure, and obstinately persist,
to the last moment, in declaring they never felt so well in their
lives.

The little party of Vermonters, the same that had collected in the
cabin the preceding evening, were among the first to feel the advances
of the insidious foe.

"I say, boys," cried Charley, "isn't this--ugh--worth going to
California for?"

"Grand!" "splendid!" "magnificent!" echoed the three boldest of the
party, with sundry unaccountable grimaces, while the rest thought it
more prudent at that moment, to keep their mouths shut as tight as
possible.

"I hope, a--ugh--you ain't a going to be--a--ugh--sick," returned
Charley, glancing doubtfully at the pale faces of his followers, as
if to satisfy himself how many he could rely upon in the approaching
struggle. "I--a-a--ugh--don't feel sick in the least," and away he
hurried to lee-ward, where, for the next hour, the whole party might
be seen, hanging like so many dish-clouts, over the bulwarks.

"What do yer see--a whale?" drily inquires an old salt, with a
cold-blooded cruelty, of which no one with the heart even of the
most magnanimous mouse, would be guilty. But they are too sick to be
angry--contempt, that pierces the shell of the tortoise, touches them
not,--there is a dignity, springing from the very depths of their
abasement, that sets them above the reach of injury or insult--their
ridiculous, indeed, reaches to the sublime. Solomon and Dr. Johnson
are commonly considered the highest authority on the vanity of
life--but was there ever a sufferer from sea-sickness who did not
moralize, by the hour together, in a far more affecting strain? Every
sigh is a book of Ecclesiastes, and is there any other philosophy like
his? so sudden and effectual in its operations? that dives down so
deep to the very root of pride and self-laudation?

For three days and nights I lay in my berth, dressed as I have said,
parched by thirst, and tantalized by waking dreams of every cooling
and delicious draught. Meanwhile, the Leucothea had reached the
Gulf-stream, and in that region of storms, encountered one of the
most terrific. Huge waves came foaming in over the bows, sending
their crests even to my door, and pouring down the forehatch into the
steerage, drowned out the frightened passengers in the very dead of
night. The alarm was so sudden that some had time only to snatch their
clothes; and, with them in their hands, they came running aft as to a
place of comparative safety. When reproached for their pusillanimity,
they offered the paltry excuse, that the water came down the hatch as
big as a hogshead, and that it was already deep enough in the steerage
for a man to swim in. This might have touched my healthy sympathies,
but it now gave me no concern. I believe I may say without vanity,
that at that moment I felt perfectly reconciled to the idea, thus
suggested, of thirty or forty of our fellow-passengers being drowned
like so many rats; though, for my own part, so great was my thirst,
I doubted whether there was water enough in the ocean to drown me.
Through the open door of my stateroom I could see the white tops of
the waves, as the ship leaned over to embrace them; and I thought it
no great thing to make my throat a passage for the whole Atlantic.

But I had still no relentings of purpose; through storm, and thirst,
and burning fever, I was sustained by dreams of golden joy. At the
period of our departure, what is commonly called the sober and prudent
part of the community, regarded California as a mischievous humbug.
None of my friends favoured my going; and one, still more sober and
prudent than the rest, had emphatically declared his conviction,
adding considerately that he did not wish to discourage me, that I
should not find gold enough to lay on my thumb-nail. Few, however, who
had set their hearts on going, were ever dissuaded, I apprehend, by
such arguments; even the last pleasant and ingenious comparison failed
to convince me: having once made up my mind, I fixed my eyes on the
mark and overlooked all intervening objects. Yet my calculations, so I
thought, were by no means extravagant; the simple brevity of argument
with which I silenced all opposition was $2,000 certain--$20,000
probable--$100,000 possible. I now saw these numbers printed in
glaring ciphers, with all the lifelike, seductive reality of a lottery
placard, all over the walls of my stateroom. Who would not, for such
reward, endure the discomforts of a four months' voyage, even though
every week should be like the first?

The idea of a life in the mines was rather agreeable. It had about it
a smack of Robinson Crusoe; and then, it would be so exciting to bring
our gains home at night, and, every two or three days, to light upon
a whole nestful of ingots--hunting birds' nests would be nothing to
it. If the first discoverers, I said to myself again and again, have
met with such astonishing success, with their pans and wash-bowls,
what may I not expect, with my improved machines, and the experience I
have gained by reading of their adventures? As I said this, I glanced,
with a look of complacency, upon the ingenious fabric of our invention
which was stowed piecemeal just above my head, and was destined, in
spite of its humble pretensions, to work out such astounding results.

It consisted simply of a roll of wire-webbing, with meshes about
one-sixth of an inch in diameter, and several rough boards six or
seven feet long, with which we proposed to construct three huge
sieves, one for each of our company. If these implements failed of
their intended purpose, or indeed were never constructed, it was not
owing to any fault in them, but entirely to the unexpected, and,
if I may be allowed to coin a word, unexpectable nature of that
perverse country whither we were going. I saw, in my mind's eye, an
immense sandy plain, intersected by rivers, and sentinelled about by
lofty mountains. The auriferous sands were to be sifted through our
wire-webbing, while the bit of gold would be caught in the meshes.
When some meddling adviser suggested that these were too large, and
that we should thus lose the finer particles, I, magnanimously, and
rather disdainfully, replied, that I intended to leave something for
those who should come after me, and that, for my part, I cared for
nothing smaller than peas.

Thus, three days and nights I lay; while day dreams, as bright as
those of Alnaschar, and oh, too like in sad event! alternated in my
sea-sick brain with visions of a darkened chamber--of a spacious
bed covered with soft white sheets--of women's voices soft and
low--of cool sherbet and fragrant lemonade--and all the "monarchal
prerogatives" attendant on a sick man's state at home. Here there
was nothing but the casual attendance of the cabin-boy bringing me
an occasional cup of gruel, and the querulous sympathy of others
as helpless as myself. In a week, however, most were sufficiently
recovered to take their meals in the cabin, though in a few
instances, the sickness was much more prolonged. A German from
Hamburg was the greatest sufferer, the experience he had gained in
once crossing the Atlantic seeming not to assist him on the present
occasion. For weeks after the rest of us had almost forgotten our
trials, he still lay hoaning and moaning to himself in his berth.

"Well, John," asked one, with as much sympathy as could be expected to
remain in his oblivious stomach, "how do you feel this morning?"

"Oh!" he replied, with a dolorous shake of the head, "if I live two
week, I shall die!"

The ladies on board were almost equally unfortunate--and here I beg
their pardon and that of the reader for not having sooner introduced
them to each other. It was not every ship in those days that was
blessed with female society; and the owners of the Leucothea had
taken care to make the most of this important distinction. In setting
forth the advantages of the "good ship Leucothea, of superior
accommodations," this had been the brightest star in the glorified
galaxy that was to dazzle the eyes of the genteel adventurer. The
library, the piano, and the ladies,--learning, song and beauty were to
shed their benign and humanizing influence over our rude and savage
natures, and prevent us from sinking back into worse than heathen
darkness and barbarism. It must be confessed that the piano was sadly
out of tune, and that the library consisted mainly of such books as
everybody had read, or else nobody ever does read; and, furthermore,
the proportion of ladies was small, only three or four to a hundred;
but then it is well known that a drop of certain substances can be
detected in a whole hogshead of water, and I have no doubt that the
sight of a bonnet or lady's slipper hung in some conspicuous position
about the ship, nailed to the mainmast, for example, would exert a
most salutary influence; in the same way as a horseshoe nailed to a
barndoor is a most effectual scarecrow to all predatory ghosts and
witches.

Be that as it may, the presence of the ladies, considered simply as
as an abstract idea, was highly edifying and satisfactory to all on
board; and it was no fault of theirs, if we failed to derive from
their society all the benefits we had expected.

Mr. Tape, our supercargo, was a man of infinite good nature; he smiled
easily, and made promises with equal facility. "Do you think we had
better lay in any private stores, Mr. Tape?" we inquired, after
settling more important matters with that smiling functionary.

"Oh, no sir, no sir; there's no need of anything of the sort. You'll
find everything you want aboard the ship."

"But," we persisted, "we might take a few preserves or crackers,
or----"

"No; save your money. You'll want it more when you get to San
Francisco. You'll eat at the same table with Mrs. Tape and the other
ladies, and I suppose you don't want to live any better than they do."

"Oh dear! no, sir! not we! no indeed!"

"Well, then, it's all right," and away bustled little Mr. Tape to go
through the same form with another applicant.

A few weeks sufficed to dispel the pleasing illusions which these
assurances had produced. As the cabin was too small to accommodate us
all, we divided into two messes; or, as we styled them in our amateur
nautical phraseology, the starboard and larboard watches. But when
all had recovered from sea-sickness, even this expedient was found
insufficient, and here arose a plausible pretext for a third division.
The captain, the supercargo, and the doctor retired with their wives
into the after-cabin, already dignified by the presence of the library
and piano; and thus, at one "unexpected blow, worse than of death,"
annihilated all our hopes of that feminine grace and propriety
that was to preside over our meals, converting the salt junk into
delicatest beef, the muddy coffee into nectar, and the ship-biscuit
into ambrosian cates.

To be sure, we were still allowed to behold them at long intervals,
sitting on deck in chairs lashed to the mizenmast, or to hear their
dulcet voices, rising like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, through
the skylight of the after-cabin; but our former state and dignity were
departed forever. We no longer basked in the sunshine of royal favour,
but resembled rather a capital city from which the seat of empire has
been removed, and which is left to languish in obscurity and neglect.
The steerage passengers regarded us with commiseration, or made odious
comparisons in our hearing. The delicacies in which we should have
shared, were borne past our door into the after-cabin, and their place
supplied with lobscouse and dunderfunk--the first, a detestable hash
or ragout of everything edible in the ship--the second, a johnnycake
constructed on the same principle, except that the beef and pork
were commonly excluded. I always looked with suspicion upon the man
who professed a fondness for lobscouse; and if, in our expressive
phrase, he was able "to go" dunderfunk, I avoided him as if he had the
leprosy. It was impossible to reconcile such tastes with the least
twinkle of high or generous feeling; one might as well associate with
a cannibal or a ghoule.

In order to add the pleasures of anticipation to those of actual
fruition, or to cheat our imaginations with the semblance of more
terrene banquets, a bill of fare was duly provided, calculated,
apparently, with the far-reaching accuracy of an almanac, for the
whole duration of our voyage, and for any meridian. Here, each dish
had its own peculiar day, to which it returned, from its hebdomedal
revolution, with all the punctuality of Encke's comet. Two days--I
remember them well--Monday and Thursday, were allotted to baked
beans--three to salt beef, pork, and potatoes--one each to salt
fish and ham. The names of Tuesday and Wednesday were lost in the
more alluring and alliterative appellation of Dough-days; the first
syllable being made, by a double analogy, to rhyme with tough. Some
do even spell it Duff, but this is a manifest cacography, and of the
most pernicious description, since it loses sight of the etymology of
the word, which would otherwise at once explain its meaning to the
most cursory reader.

For breakfast and supper, there were tea and coffee, most "pitiful
hearted butter," pilot bread, lobscouse, and dunderfunk. Two or
three times a week we had hot bread; once a week we had gingerbread;
and, on one occasion, a nondescript article about which there was a
good deal of curious speculation, till at length one, more ingenious
than the rest, suggested that it was intended for an apple-pie. This
solution was hailed with shouts of applause, and it was at once
voted to present the article, with the thanks of the company, to the
lucky discoverer, who happened to be the identical Charley so often
mentioned; who being naturally of a philosophic and inquisitive
temper, wished to add this unique specimen of naval architecture to
a list of curiosities he was then engaged in collecting; and which
already consisted of a shark's left eye "kep in spirits in a bottle,"
and a set of very ingenious checkers made out of his back bone.

The third week of our voyage a terrible feud arose among the
passengers, something like that recorded by Gulliver as having existed
between the Lilliputians and Blefuscians as to the proper method of
eating eggs. The cause of quarrel in our case, however, was even more
mighty and important, since it involved the nicest casuistry, and
furnished the most unfailing test of character. The question at issue
concerned the lobscouse, and the warcries of the contending parties
were "onions" and "no onions." The two factions were almost equally
divided; and, though the onionists had the captain on their side as
well as most of the old fogies, the revolutionists, or liberals, as
they styled themselves, by help of the doctor and supercargo, still
upheld the war. As this dissension finally threatened the most serious
consequences, a compromise was effected, and it was agreed to settle
the difficulty by a division; when the parties being drawn up on
either side of a seam in the deck, the disonionists were found to
have a majority of one, and thus the matter was brought to a peaceful
termination.




CHAPTER II.


In a few weeks we had run through every variety of climate, and at
the end of February, while our friends at home were still shivering
in great-coats and cloaks, or rubbing their hands over coal fires, we
were basking beneath the sky of June. I had thrown off, one by one,
my outer garments, within which I had shrunk (the effects of long
sickness and starvation) like a silkworm in its cocoon; and now, like
the same insect, I came out light and airy, in a summer suit of bright
calico and nankeen.

There is something very pleasant in thus anticipating summer, in
forestalling the all too-punctual sun returning leisurely from the
south, and in bartering a certain quantity of snow and ice for the
unadulterated sunshine of the tropics. Yet I could not help thinking
that we were intruders, interlopers, in thus presuming to thrust
ourselves where we had no right, and to snatch her bounty from the
liberal hand of nature, instead of waiting patiently, like good
children, till it was our turn to be served. The baffling winds that
opposed our progress into those golden gardens of the Hesperides,
seemed to favour this idea,--for many days we were unable to head our
course, and were compelled to sail in an easterly direction, and even
north of east. It was little consolation to a landsman, naturally
credulous as he is in all matters pertaining to "sea-ography," to be
told that we were thus making the necessary Easting, and that at sea
it is especially true that the longest way round is the nearest way
home; nor could I bring myself to believe, when the ship's head was
turned towards Europe, that we were actually taking the shortest cut
to Cape Horn. Under the most favourable conditions, the Leucothea was
a dull sailor, a broken down, superannuated cart-horse, jogging along
"the right butter-woman's rank to market," which, in this case, was so
distant, that we sometimes doubted whether we should ever get there at
all.

This was rendered more tolerable, however, by the delicious breeze,
that flowing from the coast of Africa, was tempered by the wide extent
of water that lay between.

                                "With such delay
    Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
    Cheer'd with the grateful smell old ocean smiles."

The last expression is peculiarly significant. Here was indeed the
many-millioned smile of ocean. It seemed impossible that this amiable
monster should be the same we had so lately seen swelling with rage,
and threatening our instant destruction. But the naked ocean, even
when in good humour, is after all a tiresome companion. I had formed
my ideas of a sea-voyage almost entirely from Irving's description of
his voyage to Europe. I remembered reading, in my younger days, of
the many hours of delightful revery in which he had indulged, and of
the amusements he derived from watching the unwieldly monsters of the
deep in their uncouth gambols. It seemed to my boyish fancy as if the
shark, the whale, the porpoise and the dolphin, and perhaps, even the
veritable sea-serpent himself, had come at his bidding, as the beasts
came to Adam in Paradise. But either these noble personages are less
accommodating since his time, or are unwilling to pay their respects
to any less distinguished visitors. Their privacy has been so often
invaded by troops of cockney tourists, that it has now become almost
impossible to obtain an introduction.

But if these dwellers beneath the surface, these aborigines of the
ocean, indigenous, if we may so say, to the soil, failed to gratify
our curiosity, or to answer our extravagant expectations, this was
far from being the case with the comparatively alien but dominant
race of man's introduction. A ship at sea is as different from the
same ship lying at a wharf, as the lion of the desert from the
cringing brute of a menagerie; I no longer wondered that such should
seem to the ignorant savage, beholding them for the first time,
living and intelligent creatures, tamed and subjected to the service
of a superior race of beings, nor did the ancient fable of their
transformation into sea-nymphs seem altogether incredible.

We spoke several ships at this time, bound in different directions.
Such an event never failed to produce the most intense excitement,
and a feverish anxiety to know the name of the vessel, where she was
from, and whither she was bound. To compare great things with small,
it was as if two worlds should cross each other's path in the heavens,
and should "heave to" a moment in their breathless career to hold
brief converse on their state and destiny. It would be an interesting
question what matters should be introduced at so august a meeting;
though it were much to be feared, that in their anxiety to touch upon
none but the most important, the precious, irrecoverable moment would
be altogether lost.

In the present instance, however, the question and answer are both
ready beforehand; and even the order of precedence is determined by
some freemasonary of the high seas, the mystery of which I did not
unravel. A few moments are commonly sufficient for the purpose; the
captain, who has the first words, pours through his trumpet a hoarse
bellow that would be quite unintelligible if its purport were not
already known,--the other courteously replies,--the flags are run
up and down, to take the place of that head and hand shaking that
attends the meeting of two magnates on land, and away go the obedient
vessels, to meet, perhaps, no more during their whole career.

When three weeks out, we spoke an English ship from Madras, which thus
became exalted, in our imaginations, to a place of vast importance.
She sent her boat to obtain a supply of fuel; and we regarded the crew
with almost as much interest as if they had belonged to a different
planet. Charley Bainbridge, who was always on the look-out for such
opportunities, slid down into the boat, and presently returned with
some article he had found in her bottom, mysteriously guarded in his
breeches pocket. On being pressed to exhibit his treasure, he steadily
refused till after the boat had gone; when he drew forth a pebble,
which he said came from Madras, and being obtained in that odd way,
would make a very handsome addition to his cabinet.

A yet more lively interest was awakened by our meeting, soon after,
a ship bound from Calcutta to Boston. She had been in sight all the
afternoon, and, in compliance with our invitation to speak, altered
her course sufficiently to come up with us just after dusk. A lantern
was suspended at our poop, and guided by its light, which seemed quite
absorbed by the immense darkness, she came cautiously feeling her way
along, till, suddenly shooting into our little illuminated horizon,
she hove to and waited to know our pleasure. All the while our ship
was silent as the grave, but more than a hundred pair of eyes were
peeping through the blanket of the night, as if, though the frailest
and softest things, they would really tear it into shreds. We had no
sooner, however, learned the destination of the stranger than our
decks swarmed with sudden life. As a delay of even a few minutes is
regarded as a serious inconvenience, especially by your fast-sailing
Indiaman, there was little time to prepare our letters, but most
on board, in expectation of such an opportunity, had everything in
readiness; and the boat was hardly lowered before the mail-bag
was thrown into it. When our visitor had filled her sails, and her
tall shadow had merged in the surrounding blackness, a feeling of
loneliness settled down upon us, that we had not known since leaving
home. In a few weeks she would be in Boston; while, at the same time,
we should be off the stormy Cape. It seemed like severing the last tie
that bound us to home; as if we had now really begun to slide down the
backside of the world, without any possibility of ever climbing up
again.

We had now become somewhat accustomed to the dull routine of a long
voyage. Sunrise, commonly flat and insipid, even on land, had here the
superadded monotony of life at sea. The sun came bouncing out of bed,
without a rag of a cloud about him, as if in a great hurry to find out
whether we were just where he left us the night before. Soon after we
began, one by one, to drop down from our berths; and having drawn on
our pantaloons, we shuffled along, towel and wash-bowl in hand, to
the waist of the ship, where we were used to perform our ablutions.
A fireman's bucket attached to a stout rope had been considerately
provided for the use of one hundred passengers; or, to speak more
accurately, for the use of the cooks, the passengers having the
benefit of it only by sufferance of those sooty dignities.

In warm weather, and quiet seas, drawing water was no great hardship;
but when the seas and the latitudes both ran high, and the ship was
rolling and pitching at such a rate that it was no easy matter to
stand upright,--I could not help thinking that the old nursery ballad

    What! cry to be washed?
    Not love to be clean?

was not after all quite so orthodox in its irony as I had supposed.

Leaning over the bulwarks, with feet well braced against the slippery
deck, his hair in his eyes, and the crook of his elbow nervously
hooking the rigging, the unlucky ablutor picks up the "superior
accommodation," and throws it over the gunwale into the sea. This is a
simple and facile operation; there is no need of plumping the bucket
up and down in order to fill it, the swift current has already done
that for you, and has at once drawn out the whole length of the rope,
while the bucket, with open mouth, seems ready to burst, like the frog
in the fable, in the vain attempt to swallow the whole ocean. But to
regain possession, or as Dan Carpenter, one of our Vermonters, had it,
"revocare bucketum, hoc labor, hoc opus est."

This important duty being at length accomplished, we proceeded, in
fine weather, to promenade the deck till breakfast. The forenoon was
occupied in a great variety of ways. Some disinterested and inquiring
individuals kept a constant look-out for sails, sharks, and whales,
in order to gratify the universal craving for novelty and excitement.
These were the newsmongers and express agents of our little community.
A shark could not show his dorsal fin within a cable's length of
the ship,--a whale could not wag his tail or blow his nose within
five miles,--and a sail could not steal into the wide horizon of the
masthead, without being at once detected by half a dozen curious eyes,
and straightway reported to all below. Various groups on deck were
occupied in reading, talking, and smoking, or in games of chance or
skill. A few bolder spirits had even the hardihood to attempt "Spanish
without a Master," but they got no farther than the story of the
three travellers, and the ominous moral, "Desgraciado el que aspira a
riquezas,"--miserable is he who aspires after riches.




CHAPTER III.


The party to which I belonged consisted originally of but three
members. Captain Bill was a short, broad-faced, blue-eyed Saxon, who
no sooner felt his sea-legs, as the sailors said, well under him,
than he began to discover an aptitude for naval tactics that might
almost be called genius. Instead of spending his time in those light
and trifling pursuits that engrossed the attention of those about
him, he applied himself with unwearied assiduity to the acquisition
of that knowledge that is usually so distasteful to a landsman; and
had constantly in his mouth some such horrid and uncouth phrases
as, "How's she head?" "Keep her off half a point," "Haul in your
jib-sheets," and others equally portentous. He at length acquired
such a facility in this sort of exercise that he came to be regarded
as a very high authority in such matters, and hence received from
his companions the honorary title of Captain, which his subsequent
fortune strangely confirmed. One of the sailors whom I met by chance
in the maintop, assured me that he, Captain Bill, knew almost as much
as the Captain himself; and that it was a great pity he had not been
sent to sea when he was a boy, as there was no knowing what might have
happened. I assented to all he said, but took care to say nothing
about it to my companion, for fear of inflaming his malady; as his
conversation, even then, was almost wholly made up of the phrases
above mentioned, and it was well nigh impossible to obtain from him an
answer such as a landsman could understand. As Captain Bill, in spite
of this little infirmity, was a very clever fellow, and was reputed
to have a great deal of what is commonly called luck, I felicitated
myself, not a little, on having him for a partner, as I thought I must
surely share in his good fortune.

A younger brother of the author, who having like Captain Bill lost
his proper title, was distinguished by the name of Tertium Quid, or
simply Tertium, and a big bull-dog called Zachary Taylor, completed
our little party.

The most conspicuous person in the ship was Charley Bainbridge; who,
without being acknowledged as such, was generally regarded as the
representative head of the Vermonters. He was the spoilt child of his
parents, just beginning, curiously, to dabble in the great mudpuddle
of the world. Laughing blue eyes, hair brown and curling, a frank,
good-humoured expression, and a fine manly figure, had stamped him
plainly as one of that happy or unhappy class who never do anything
for themselves, but are always sure to find others ready to do for
them. He, as well as his companions, were declared decidedly green,
at the outset of our voyage, by some who had seen a little more of
the world; but, as the same uncomfortable wisdom had pronounced a
similar judgment upon the author, the reader will readily perceive
how much it was worth. Our hero left home with an abundant allowance,
but this being exhausted by the time we arrived at San Francisco, he
was obliged to borrow money in order to reach the mines. The air of
the Yuba, whither he first directed his steps, did not agree with
his health, and we next heard of him in the southern mines, where,
being still unsuccessful, he borrowed money for the fourth time, and
returning to Sacramento went into the business of cleaning tripe on a
very enlarged scale, that plainly declared him intended only for grand
and arduous undertakings. He would undoubtedly have succeeded in this
new enterprise but for one of those unlucky accidents that sometimes
befall the wisest, and would certainly never have entered into the
calculations of Napoleon himself. He was one day backing his cart,
filled with the precious commodity, too near the bank of the river,
which here falls some thirty feet at a very dangerous angle, when the
wheels suddenly passing beyond the brink, the tripe, the cart, and the
horse went rolling over each other down the declivity into the river.
He stood awhile in amaze, such an illustration of the laws of gravity
having probably never been heard of in the halls of old Harvard;
but, finding that there was no hope of an immediate resurrection, he
cast one longing, lingering look behind, and going at once on board
the boat bid a final farewell to the country that had used him so
ungratefully. I was the more interested in the adventures of this
hero, as I thought they discovered a temper, like my own, too noble
for what weaker and more grovelling minds call success.

Dan Carpenter belonged to the same party. He was oftener called "Old
Herculaneum," from an admirable misapprehension of the sense of
that word, which he was wont to use, in connection with grasp, as
synonomous with Herculean. He had studied a little law, and was the
best man at checkers in the ship. His conversation was rather homely
than brilliant, but he sometimes blundered into what were considered
at sea very tolerable jests.

A man of a very different stamp was Thomas Busby, our Manhattan
merchant. He was an admirable representative of his class, and
prouder of the distinction than if he had written "The Reveries of
a Bachelor." He thought a Broadway merchant the greatest man in the
world, and himself the greatest merchant in Broadway. He was the most
respectable man I ever saw,--the valet, I forget his name, in David
Copperfield, was nothing to him,--and this was the more remarkable,
since his figure was too slight to act the character to advantage.
His manner was everything; though really below the medium height, he
had the art ascribed to Louis XIV. of impressing the beholder with a
painful idea of his majestic proportions. Methinks I see him now; his
slight but jaunty figure cased in the finest of broadcloth, his head
thrown back, his chest expanded, as if about to toss a roll of cloth
on to a counter; and then his voice! it seemed impossible it should
proceed from anything less than a giant,--indeed I never believed
it rightfully belonged to him, but was one he had stolen from some
thick-witted Goliah, with whom he had left his own piping notes in
exchange.

His most amusing idiosyncrasy, however, was his contempt for college
learning; it amounted to a positive mania. "When any one," said he,
"applied for a situation at our store, (he was fond of telling how
many clerks he employed at once,) I always asked him if he had been
to college; and, if he had, that was enough--I had nothing more to do
with him." In spite however of this antipathy, he had once studied a
little Latin, and adroitly contrived to be vain of this distinction,
and, at the same time, of having forgotten all he had learned.

The little spice of the ridiculous thus mingled in his composition
only made Busby the more agreeable as a companion; as it is impossible
to feel an affection, I had almost said respect, for one at whom we
cannot sometimes laugh.

Then there was----, that Will-o'-the-wisp, that strange compound
of opposite and seemingly, contradictory qualities, the unwinking,
almost ubiquitous celerity of the lizard, and more than elephantine
clumsiness. He needed to tie up his wits, as Lightfoot in the story
tied up his legs that he might run slow enough to catch the deer. He
walked with a pair of seven-league boots, and stept beyond the mark
continually.

At table, he was the victim of more unlucky accidents than all the
rest of the ship's company. He upset his soup into his lap. He ran his
fork through his cheek. He stept into the slop-pail. He trod on his
own toes. He tript himself up. If it had been possible, he would have
run between his own legs. He was always sure to spit on his own boot,
or on another's. He emptied his wash-bowl on the Captain's head. Off
Cape Horn he fell overboard, and only saved himself by catching his
leg in a rope that lamed him for a week. As he said, nobody else could
have possibly done it; but nobody else would have fallen.




CHAPTER IV.


Nearly two months after leaving home we entered the harbour of Rio;
or, to borrow the spirited lines of Madame W. our poetess,--we were so
fortunate as to possess the species, both male and female,--

    "We crossed the line in cheerful glee,
    And anchored safe in Rio Janee."

We were nearly out of sight of the city; but its scattering suburbs
lay all around in the laps of the mountains, the white walls of the
houses contrasting finely with the deep green of the back ground. The
nearest mountain peaks stood with their naked feet in the very bottom
of the bay, presenting, on the water side, a smooth, and, in many
places, almost perpendicular wall, and enclosing between them long
winding coves, stretching away almost out of sight.

We were obliged to remain on board all the next morning, until the
officers had made their customary visit, but having endured this
formality with what patience we could, and eaten a dinner of "fresh,"
as it is called at sea, we went ashore in a boat manned by four slaves
entirely naked. We landed near the emperor's palace; and having no
particular object in view, strolled through the streets as chance
directed. Partly from thoughtlessness, and partly to obtain a better
view of the buildings, we walked carelessly along, in the middle of
the street, staring about us like a parcel of backcountrymen just
landed in the city of New York; at least so said the respectable
Busby, who never, in any case, forgot his propriety, and even now,
though nobody about him talked with an English tongue, or saw with
English eyes, conducted himself precisely as if he had been in his
favourite Broadway.

But we were too much engrossed with the strange objects about us,
to waste a thought on our own appearance. It was as if we had gone
back to the days of childhood, and recovered, for a season, that
delicious sense of novelty that gave those days their peculiar charm.
We resembled a piece of sponge, from which the last drop had been
squeezed, suddenly plunged into a vessel of water. Every sense, every
pore, seemed made the highway for a whole host of new ideas. We read
volumes at a glance, sucked up knowledge at every breath, and found
sermons in the very stones of the streets. Slaves were crossing the
great square in every direction, carrying on their heads tall jars
of water, baskets of clothes to be washed at the fountain, and large
trays full of fruit and flowers. They moved with a peculiar erect and
springing gait, balancing their awkward burdens with such dexterity as
made them seem rather a natural excrescence than anything they could
lay aside at pleasure. Others were basking in the sun, in the very
middle of the street, like so many bundles of old clothes.

When they were wanted for any purpose, and failed to arouse themselves
at the first signal, the impatient master would run upon them, and,
after an enlivening series of hearty kicks and thumps, hale them
along to their work like a refractory or worn-out horse; and indeed
they performed most of that work assigned to horses in more humane
countries. Every thing whose weight permitted they carried on their
heads or backs, and these burdens were often so heavy, that two or
three men were required to raise them. In other cases they made use of
a rude cart, with two low wheels, which was pushed and pulled along
by a dozen slaves. One usually took his station at each wheel, and
tugged, apparently very hard, at the spokes. But all were evidently
skillful adepts at the art of sogering; and a single horse, with a
properly constructed cart, would have drawn three times their ordinary
load.

As we were walking through a narrow street, about thirty slaves came
suddenly upon us, round a corner, moving at a slow trot, carrying on
their backs bales of sheeting, and keeping time to their step by a
loud, monotonous chant. They threw down their loads at a door we were
passing, and, stopping their music, one by one, hurried away like
the genii of the Arabian tales, who, having performed their master's
bidding, disappeared as mysteriously as they came.

The buildings of Rio are generally heavy and substantial, with little
exterior decoration. Their churches resemble, in this respect,
the shell of an oyster, rough and rude without, but of a metallic
brilliancy within. It was a festival of some sort at the close
of Lent, and the churches were all open, though we saw but few
worshippers. Little boys were dragging effigies of Judas about the
streets, and beating them with sticks, with the most edifying zeal and
devotion.

Having somewhat satiated our curiosity, we returned to the Hotel
Pharoux, to take a supplemental dinner. This was a French café in
spite of its Egyptian title; the cooking was excellent, and the idea
of being served by veritable Parlezvous highly gratifying, at least to
the provincials of our party, who had very likely never seen one of
those animals before.

"Here, garsong" cried Charley Bainbridge, with an air, "donny moy some
pully à potage, and some pang à boottre."

"Oui, monsieur" replied the ready Frenchman, who had acquired by long
practice a marvellous facility in interpreting the _patois_ of his
guests; but as the reader may be less successful, I would explain that
the mysterious substantives above, signified chicken and potatoes,
bread and butter.

Charley's example was, as usual, contagious, and presently there arose
a Babel of English, interspersed with such mongrel French and Spanish
as might have taxed the triple throat of Cerberus himself. Captain
Bill, whose whole stock in foreign languages, if we exclude that in
which we have already shown his proficiency, consisted of three words,
_si_, _monsieur_, and _mademoiselle_, traded upon this slender capital
with unequalled success. "Si monsieur," or "si mademoiselle" he
constantly repeated, whenever any of the waiters approached the table,
sometimes interrogatively, sometimes affirmatively, and sometimes
suggestively, but always with a bland smile, expressive of the highest
self-satisfaction and contentment.

Our dinner consisted of _bifstek_, potatoes, bread and butter, and
coffee, all of the finest quality--but we were somewhat alarmed, when
our bill was presented, at sight of a long row of figures swelling up
to a total of several thousands. A few words, however, soon removed
our apprehensions; the thousands were nothing but reys, twenty of
which make one cent. The milrey, or thousand reys, is a silver coin
equivalent to our half dollar. They have also a copper coin about
equal in value to two cents, of a very clumsy form, and appropriately
called a dump.

The Hotel Pharoux was our favourite lounge while we remained on shore.
It was constantly thronged with a motley crowd of Californians,
man-of-war's men, and others of various nations, presenting altogether
a scene of the most lively and amusing description. We now began, for
the first time, to feel the suck and swing of that mighty maelstrom
into which we had ventured. Sixty ships had been at Rio before
us--and, while we were there, the number of Californians in port was
over a thousand. We naturally regarded all these as, in some sort,
our rivals, and the excitement of competition was thus aggravated a
hundred-fold. It was impossible to get rid of the absurd notion, that
the whole country would be appropriated before we had set foot in it,
and that we should thus be in the awkward predicament of a dilatory
guest, who arrives only in time to be tantalized by sight of the
fragments of the feast.

The next day was Sunday. It was ushered in by the chiming of bells,
bursts of martial music, and the thunder of cannon. Going early
on shore, we found all the shops open as usual, and nothing to
distinguish the day but the increased display in the churches. Hearing
that the Emperor was to be present in the cathedral attached to his
palace, and fronting the great square, we went at an early hour for
the purpose of seeing his Majesty. After we had stood several hours,
he came in at a private entrance, attended by the Empress, and took
his seat on an elevated platform that afforded us a fine view of his
person. He was tall and finely formed, dressed in military uniform,
and was, altogether, just such a figure as one would naturally expect
in an Emperor.

The cathedral shone like a great jewel box, with gold and silver;
a numerous and enthusiastic band played martial airs with all
their might and main; and the Emperor, and the priests, and the
dignitaries of the Empire, and the foreign ambassadors, standing
meekly and foolishly in a row, like a class of school boys--and all
the congregation, save and except some unterrified Californian, and
the saints that stood in gold-and-silvery dignity around the sides of
the cathedral, kept kneeling down and getting up again in the most
unexpected manner.

After some time spent in this way, an ecclesiastic, richly dressed,
climbed up into a sort of martin-house that stood on one side;
and poking his head and shoulders out at the top, somewhat in the
manner of those ingenious bouncing toys with which children are so
deliciously frightened, he began to shout down to us below like
a sweep on top of a chimney. But no one regarded him, though he
doubtless talked very wisely, and in Latin, too; and, in fifteen
minutes, he came down again, very warm and red in the face, and again
the band struck up their music.

The long service being at length over, the Emperor left the cathedral,
and passed through the whole length of his palace to the principal
entrance, where a carriage was in readiness to convey him to his
country-seat. Having handed his empress into the carriage as politely
as if he had been only a private individual, he took his seat beside
her; the door was closed, and the six horses instantly set off at
full gallop, diagonally across the square, to the imminent danger of
his loyal subjects, who had much ado to get out of the royal road.
The whole scene reminded me very pleasantly of a picture I had often
studied, with great interest, in somebody's geography, representing
a nobleman--in Austria, I think--riding over a cripple, who held up
his wooden leg bayonetwise against the frightened horses. When the
emperor has thus swept away like a whirlwind, and his escort had gone
galloping after him on diminutive horses, his suit also got into
carriages, and followed, more soberly, in the same direction.

We spent Monday and Tuesday in wandering about the city, and in
purchasing a few luxuries for use at sea. Wednesday morning, I went,
with a small party, in one of the ship's boats, several miles up into
one of the arms of the bay, for the purpose of buying oranges. Leaving
the boat anchored a short distance from the beach, we struck into a
narrow lane or footpath leading up into the country, and shut in,
on both sides, by the queerest and most eccentric forest I had ever
seen. Every tree, shrub, and flower was a most decided humourist, and
had its own way of growing, entirely different from its neighbours.
Instead of harmonizing with each other, like the twin quakers of a
Northern forest, each one seemed trying to be as odd and outre as
possible.

There were beauties there of every description, but they needed a
cunning hand to sort and arrange them. The effect, though almost
bewildering by its brilliancy, was not, in the end, agreeable to
my plain republican notions. The eye is wearied by so much slovenly
magnificence, such wasted prodigality, and ostentatious vanity; and
would gladly turn to "the sober realm of leafless trees," even of our
own November.

Walking a mile over the deep, fine sand, we came to the plantation to
which we had been directed. The house, which was small and light, like
a huge bird-cage of bamboo, stood in the midst of an orange orchard,
where the fruit was hanging on the trees in the greatest profusion.
The price demanded was twenty-five cents a hundred; we were to gather
the oranges ourselves, and wherever we pleased, with the exception of
half a dozen trees, the fruit of which, being of a higher flavour,
was reserved by the owner for his own use. It was a very pleasant
novelty--this picking oranges as though they had been apples--tasting
one, here and there, and throwing it magnanimously away, if it were
not quite first-rate; but we had little leisure for such pastimes. We
selected the sweetest trees, and stopping only to pick the thickest of
the fruit, we had collected by noon more than five thousand oranges,
which we thought as many as our boat would hold.

After eating the dinner we had brought from the ship, we strolled
off to a neighbouring plantation, where we found a similar bird-cage
perched on a slight elevation, and its owner, a little, squat,
bandy-legged Frenchman, engaged in drying coffee on mats spread before
the door. He received us with the greatest cordiality; and after his
heart was a little warmed by the wine he had compelled us to drink
with him, he began to give us some account of his former history; and
at length informed us that he had served in the armies of the great
Emperor. Stripping up his sleeve, with characteristic vivacity, he
exhibited the wounds he had received in his service, with as much
pride and enthusiasm as if they had been the cross of the Legion of
Honour. It seemed strangely incongruous to find one who had played
a part, even though the humblest, in that stirring drama, mouldering
away, like a forgotten firebrand, in this woody solitude, long after
the fierce flame of battle had gone out on the field of Waterloo.

We were employed the whole afternoon in conveying our booty to the
boat. After working hard all the morning, we found little romance in
carrying one or two hundred oranges, in bags, on our heads, over the
hot yielding sand; and there was a general exclamation of satisfaction
when the last load came heavily down to the beach. We reached the ship
long after sundown, and bid a final farewell to Rio the next morning.




CHAPTER V.


My quiet room-mate went with us no farther. He was disheartened by
the length of the voyage, and perhaps thought Brazil presented quite
as many advantages as California. His place was filled by a young,
red-haired Scotchman, who had formerly lived in Edinburgh, and sat on
the knee of Sir Walter. He had been on one or two whaling voyages,
and had evidently seen the world. He played on the guitar--sang a
variety of songs, some of which were of a very doubtful character--was
an expert boxer--had something of a turn for poetry and light
literature--and, in spite of his unsettled, wandering life, still
possessed, to an unusual degree, that sort of native refinement that
makes one tender of the feelings and weaknesses of others. He seemed,
however, to value these various accomplishments only as passports to
the favour of the other sex. His successes in that line had been very
numerous, according to his own showing, and had confirmed him in the
belief that there was no such thing as virtue in the world.

On leaving port, we plunged at once into the region of storms. The
tropic of Capricorn seemed an actual wall of separation, dividing two
distinct climates as smoothly and evenly as it does the zones upon
the map. On one side, all was bright and serene; on the other, cloudy
and tempestuous. Off the mouth of the La Platte, the mariner is sure
to encounter heavy seas, as if there floated down that magnificent
river, from its mountain birthplace, nothing but miniature Andes to
encumber the smooth surface of the deep. Day after day we climbed up
and down these hills, as slowly and painfully as a man walking over
a ploughed field. We gained, seemingly, not a foot; and I sometimes
thought we were to remain there forever seesawing the same dull wave.
Every morning we found ourselves apparently just where we were the
night before; the same ill-looking wave on our quarter, the same dirty
cloud over head. Drive as hard as we could, there was no getting away
from them; they still, like the headless horseman, preserved the same
relative position.

But the ocean was no longer a solitude; the space around the ship
resembled rather an immense barnyard thronged with a greater variety
of poultry than is often seen, even in the enclosures of the most
successful fancier. There were little bevies of Mother Cary's
Chickens--flocks of Cape pigeons, gonies, hagletts, and mollymocks;
and, largest and noblest of all, the solitary albatross. They followed
us for miles, floating on the water till almost out of sight, then
regaining their position by a hasty flight. We fished for them with
great success, using for bait a bit of pork attached to a stout hook,
which, being suffered to float on a piece of board, far behind the
ship, was eagerly swallowed by these greedy scavengers.

The largest albatross measured nearly twelve feet across his wings,
though his body was no larger than a goose. Their powers of flight
are unrivalled. I used to watch them for hours together, circling
with prying eyes round the ship, now rising, now falling, now coming
up heavily against the wind, then suddenly shooting away before it,
like a kite that has broken its string; and all, apparently, without
any more exertion than is visible in the flight of a thistle down,
their "sail broad vans" remaining constantly motionless, with the
exception, now and then, of a single, almost imperceptible flap, as
they varied their course to one side or the other.

When drawn on board, and placed upon the deck, the albatross lost
at once all this poetry of motion, and became an awkward, ungainly
bird, unable to rise into the air, and in constant danger of tumbling
forward on to its ugly nose. I was rather disappointed by the
indifference of our sailors on this interesting subject. They viewed
the death of their patron bird with as little concern as if it had
been a turkey; they had no superstitious fears about ill-luck thence
arising; and, indeed, I am sorry to say, were as little given to
superstition of any kind as the stoutest enlightener of the masses
could desire.

Some of the smaller birds were also killed for food; but their
feathers were so disproportioned to the flesh, that they were not
worth the trouble of picking. A far more abundant and grateful repast
was furnished by a porpoise, that was harpooned as he frolicked past
the bows. No sooner was the approach of these playful creatures
discovered, than the inspiriting cry of "porpoise," "porpoise,"
was echoed through the ship, and all hands were instantly on the
alert. They generally made their first appearance on our quarter;
and speedily overtaking us, rolled, in broken files, and with many
an awkward bound and splash, directly under the bowsprit. A harpoon
was always kept in readiness for such an emergency, and the second
mate, who was an old hand at the business, taking his station on the
martingal, waited a favourable opportunity to hurl his weapon into the
back of one of the plunging monsters. This was the first time he had
succeeded, and now twenty or thirty of the passengers, bowsing away on
the rope to the tune of Uncle Ned, soon landed our game on deck. He
weighed several hundred pounds, and the flesh, which was remarkably
sweet, closely resembling beef, furnished an excellent dinner for all
on board.

The sight of a strange sail in these lonely seas aroused our most
eager speculation. She was bound in the same direction as ourselves,
and we had no difficulty in conjecturing that she was seeking the
same golden gate. She proved to be the ship Sweden; had left port
three weeks after us, and partly by not stopping at any port, and
partly by her superior sailing, had gained so decided an advantage.
We raced with her two days in succession, but, as the wind freshened,
she slowly crept ahead, and our captain gave orders to put on more
sail. The Sweden followed our example, and both vessels, crowded with
all the canvass they could bear, staggered, like a drunken man with
a barrel of whisky on his shoulders, heavily, along their uneven
path, showing many feet of their bright and dripping copper at every
spring. Suddenly the Sweden carried away her foresail, and we began to
recover the ground we had lost. But it was set again with provoking
rapidity, and, ere long, we were compelled to abandon the contest.
Before parting company, however, we endeavoured to find out if her
commander intended to go through the Straits of Magellan, as there was
a great diversity of opinion on board our ship as to the expediency
of attempting the passage. A board was put up in the rigging with the
question printed on it in large letters; but though, as we afterwards
learned, they saw the board, they could not make out the inscription,
and our captain, in his perplexity, finally referred the matter to
the passengers. The majority, knowing nothing of the difficulties of
the undertaking, and naturally desirous to shorten the voyage as much
as possible, were in favour of going through the Straits; but we were
fortunately prevented from making the trial by adverse winds that
drove us wide of the mark, and compelled us to take the longer, but
far safer passage round the Horn.

About the middle of May we arrived off the coast of Patagonia, and
soon after made Staten Island. In these inhospitable latitudes, we
found the serenest weather since leaving Rio; the sea, though heaving
in lazy swells, was almost as smooth as a looking-glass. It was
evident that our coming was unexpected, and that the fierce brood of
storms that infest that region had left home on some distant marauding
expedition. We were so near the coast that we could easily distinguish
the helmets of glittering snow worn by the hills drawn up in solid
phalanx near the shore; but we were unable to catch a glimpse of that
race of giants that had so imposed upon our childish fancy.

Passing Terra del Fuego, and the little island of Cape Horn, at too
great a distance to obtain a view of those famous headlands, we held
steadily on our course into still higher latitudes; till, having
gained a sufficient elevation to avoid all danger of being blown back
into the Atlantic, the ship's head was, at last, turned towards the
west; and on the morning of the twenty-second of May we waked up in
the Pacific, with something of the feeling of those early navigators
when they first burst through into this unknown sea.

The sun off Cape Horn is a very sleepy fellow, with none of that
inconvenient propensity to early rising that elsewhere interferes so
much with our arrangements; he rose about eight, attained a meridian
altitude of some twelve degrees, and retired at four. The weather
was now cold and squally. Spirts of rain or sleet, or what was still
worse, the tops of the waves driven in upon us by the winds, made it
almost as hard to remain upon deck as if it had been swept by the fire
of a battery. The ship seemed almost entirely deserted; a few of the
more resolute sort, their heads drawn into their shoulders, purple
with cold, and half blinded by the spray, still clung to the rigging,
and stared stupidly, with puckered mouth and eyebrows, out into the
immeasurable gloom. The rest had retired, like bats and owls, or a
somnolescent bear, into the most out-of-the-way places they could
find; and it was about as safe and agreeable an operation to disturb
one of them as to stir up the abstracted, meditative gentleman last
mentioned from his hollow tree.

Slinking away to my berth, I wrapped myself in great-coats and
blankets, and strove, by the aid of a feeble lantern and an
entertaining book, to conjure up more pleasing associations; but the
result was a wretched failure. My narrow stateroom, six feet by four,
contained, within its dark green walls, as much that was gloomy and
repulsive as the wet, slippery deck, and melancholy ocean--everything
had the feeling of a "cold, damp, uncomfortable body."

Cooking, in such weather, was well nigh impossible, but fortunately we
had no appetite. We were put on an allowance of water, three quarts
a day; but then we could not have drunk half of it if we had tried.
Everybody, however, was out of sorts; and the dismal weather, the
wretched fare, and the unjustifiable length of the voyage, afforded
sufficient matter, if not cause, for grumbling. In such a state of
mind it is anything but agreeable to be left behind by more successful
rivals. A handsome, gaily-painted ship came up with us one of these
days, and the usual question was propounded, how long she had been
out. "Sixty-one days," was the ready and self-satisfied answer; "how
long have you?" "One hundred and four," very slowly and reluctantly.
We heard the passengers on the Loo Choo repeat the number with jeering
triumph, as she forged ahead, flinging up her heels, and showing her
bright yellow bottom in a very insulting manner. I hurled after them a
wish not of the most amiable character, and looked to see them go down
together; but they held on their course, rejoicing in the successful
flam they had put upon us. The first question we asked, on arriving at
San Francisco, was about the ships we had spoken on the way; and it
gave us no little gratification to learn that the Loo Choo had not yet
come into port. At the time of our meeting, she had really been out
eighty-one days, and her whole passage was even longer than our own.

We then knew nothing of all this, however, and it would be hard to
find a more discontented, distracted set of beings than was on
board the Leucothea after the Loo Choo was fairly out of sight. A
merry party got together round the windlass for the express purpose
of cursing the ship and all concerned in her, the day in which they
ever heard there was such a place as N----, and themselves, most
of all, for having taken passage in what their prompter called
such a lubberly, blubber-hunting craft. They were unfortunately
interrupted, however, in their well meant design, by the cheerful cry
of "porpoise," "porpoise," and hurrying to the bows, we soon had one
of these delicate monsters floundering on deck, which, like a lump of
sugar to a peevish child, put us all, for a time, in good humor.

Early the next morning, before it was light enough to see the ship's
length, a fierce and sudden cry of "put the helm hard down, lower the
boat," pierced every part of the ship, falling on the ears of the
sleeping passengers like their funeral knell. "What's the matter?
is the ship sinking?" cried at once a hundred voices, and a hundred
hearts stood still for the answer. The next moment, "a man overboard"
explained the alarm, and converted the lively apprehensions for our
own safety into a comparatively inert sympathy for another. The
waves were running mountains high, and the boats were all firmly
lashed in their places, so that lowering one was both difficult and
dangerous, yet ten minutes found the man safe in the ship, though so
thoroughly exhausted by the intense cold as to be unable to stand
alone. His escape was almost miraculous; he was stationed just beneath
the bowsprit, trying to harpoon a porpoise, when the ship plunging
heavily, he was swept off by the waves. As he passed along the side,
he uttered the cry that had produced such an excitement, and was thus
the first to announce his own danger. He afterwards contrived to kick
off his boots, and being an excellent swimmer, kept his head above
water till the boat, pulling directly in the wake of the ship, came to
his relief.

The night came on unusually cold and blustering. I was sitting with
Tertium and Captain Bill, in their stateroom, when a faint smell of
fire attracted our attention. As it grew stronger, we became greatly
alarmed, as indeed we well might, for nothing can appear more hideous
to the imagination, than a ship loaded with passengers, on fire of a
dark, stormy, wintry night off Cape Horn. Captain Bill now hastily
descended into the cabin and roused the captain, who was already
asleep, and became almost palsied with fright on hearing the dreadful
tidings.

    "Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
    So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone,
    Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
    And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd."

Before, however, he reached the deck, we had opened the door of the
adjoining stateroom, and discovered the seat of danger. The wife of
one of the seamen, who occupied the room, had incautiously placed a
hot brick between the sheets, to answer the purpose of a warming pan,
and the whole bedding was soon in a light blaze. It was extinguished
without difficulty, and, as I had displayed, through the whole of this
trying occasion, that presence of mind of which I am so justly proud,
I was able to laugh without mercy at my companions for their needless
alarm.

This was the last of Cape Horn. Near the end of May we fell in with
a favourable breeze that bore us, in ten days, farther than we
had sailed in any preceding month, and promised a speedy arrival
at Talcahuano--but, a few hundred miles south of that port, we
encountered a violent head wind, against which we slowly toiled for
nearly a week, and it was not till the 12th of June that we came in
sight of the coast of Chili.

We came to anchor, the same evening, in the little bay, abreast of
the town and a quarter of a mile from the shore. The next morning
we were surrounded by native boats, bringing narrow-necked earthen
vessels full of milk, fine white rolls, and baskets of eggs and
apples; for all which we paid about the same prices as are usual in
our own cities. Going on shore we found ourselves in the dirtiest
little village in the world, except one that I afterwards visited in
Central America, consisting of a few streets of low houses built of
large coarse brick, or rude basket work daubed with clay. Talcahuano,
or Turkeywarner, as it is oddly enough called by sailors, though
hardly known to the civilised world, has long been the favorite resort
of ships engaged in the whale fishery. They generally remain a week
or more in port to recruit and lay in a stock of fresh provisions,
and the town has hence become the very hot bed of vice. As we walked
through the filthy narrow streets, the open doors on each side were
full of women, who kept up an incessant cry of "come in, Californe;"
"Californe, come in;" adding often other allurements of a yet more
unmistakable character.

In the afternoon a large party sat down to dinner in a shambling,
tumbledown edifice called a hotel, and kept by an American. Ascending
a flight of narrow, rickety stairs, we passed through a range of rooms
and galleries presenting the very picture of desolation, till we came
to one a little superior to the rest, and just wide enough for the
long narrow table that by its royal plenty gave the lie to all about
it.

A pig, crispily roasted by some firm yet gentle hand, graced the
upper end, supported, at convenient intervals, by beef, turkeys,
chickens, and pigeon pie; flanked, in their turn, by a small but
delicious species of oysters, potatoes, and string beans, bread and
butter,--the last imported from the States--with a noble array of
pitchers and bottles containing a liberal supply of the cheap wine
of the country--all furnished for the moderate sum of half a dollar.
The reader can but faintly imagine the wholesouled delight with which
our senses, after so long mortification and self-denial, expatiated
over this dainty repast. Yet call it not animal, sensual, that
agreeable titillation, having its principal seat indeed in the palate
and stomach, but thence diffused over the brain and heart, making
the one apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and
delectable shapes,--disposing the other to gentle and kind offices,
and producing, in fine, the most perfect harmony of the whole man.

But a more potent influence was at work to inflame our imaginations.
While we were at sea, that faculty was comparatively quiescent; our
droning, isolated life was by no means favourable to excitement, which
can hardly exist without novelty and frequent contact with others. We
now found both of these in abundance, and the marvellous reports we
heard on every side seemed to acquire a greater degree of credibility
from our near approach to the fountain head. In the inflated language
of our narrators, that portion of Chili was almost exhausted of its
male population. All along the coast they were hastening to the El
Dorado; some in foreign shipping, and others, who could not obtain
a passage, crept along the shore in boats, or set out on a still
more perilous journey by land. Parties had already returned with
sums varying from twenty to two hundred thousand dollars; one woman
in particular was instanced who had dug fifty thousand with her own
hands, and my informant had seen the kegs and boxes that held the
gold. To all these stories we listened with the gravest deliberation,
and having, with a degree of sagacity that did us infinite credit,
rejected one-half as falsehood, we swallowed the remainder without any
further difficulty.

Our little party of three was here converted into a quadrate by the
addition of a fourth member, who had been thus far hesitating between
the mines and San Francisco, but was now determined to try the former.
In honour of this new member we considered it necessary to add
somewhat to our bill of fare for the diggings, and I accordingly went
with him to examine into the merits of some jerked beef, an article
we had heard highly recommended for that purpose. It was in bundles
as big as a flour barrel, and was nearly as tough and unpalatable as
the strips of hide that bound it together; but it contained a deal of
nourishment, there was no doubt about that; and as for troubling our
heads about the quality of our food, while making a hundred dollars
apiece a day, such an extravagance never entered our calculations.

We had brought with us from home an abundant supply of beans, rice,
biscuit, pork, and sugar--cold water we expected to find in the
mines; and on this lenten fare we had no doubt we should be perfectly
content. But this hung beef was peculiarly detestable, and therefore
highly appropriate as an addition to our list of comestibles; the
only thing, in fact, wanting to add the finishing touch to its unique
ugliness. Accordingly we bought the beef, congratulating each other
on our good fortune, carried it with us into the mines, and there
incontinently hung it up on a tree as the only way of getting rid of
so formidable an incumbrance.

Thursday it rained heavily, and the swell that came in from the sea
rendered all communication with the shore extremely difficult. Busby
and Captain Bill attempting, with several others, to come on board,
were caught by a roller that stove their boat against the beach and
drenched them all in salt water, to the serious detriment of their
Old-World hats and chest-wrinkled broadcloth. This being the season
of the winter solstice, we were agreeably disappointed at finding the
sun shining brightly the following morning, which encouraged us to
pass the day on shore. A party even had the hardihood to hire horses
and ride to the city of Concepcion, a distance of ten miles; but they
found the road in a wretched condition, and were horribly scared by
robbers, from whom they escaped only by unparalleled valour, perhaps a
little tempered with discretion.

We met with various delays in obtaining a supply of water, and as it
was not all on board by Saturday night, the crew were set to work the
next morning. They were already dressed to go ashore; and Sunday being
considered a holiday, though anything but a holy day, they at first
declared they would not hoist a cask, but finally pulled off their
coats, and went to work, to the tune of "Bright Canaan, that happy
land!" and the chorus being enthusiastically helped along by some
fifty voices, the casks came in merrily, and the task was finished
in a few hours. In the afternoon I took a long walk into the country
with Busby and Number Four. The flocks of sheep feeding on the hills
and the soft green turf, the absence of which I had noticed at Rio,
reminded us pleasantly of New-England; but the enormous cacti, a foot
in diameter, and the odd little wattled cottages, built in unexpected
situations on the hill sides, at once dispelled the illusion. We put
to sea Monday evening, and will now take leave of Chili in the words
of our gifted poetess:

          "Among the fruits to be found there,
          Are apples, cabbages, onions, and pear.
    The animals is the same with the exception of the mules;
    But in this land of freedom, we oughter be thankful no slaveholder
      rules."




CHAPTER VI.


The Leucothea crept timidly out of the harbour, like a mouse out of
its hole; but had scarcely got to sea, when one of the Northers that
prevail at that season was upon us, and drove us far to the south.
Thus each time, on leaving port, we had met with storms; and each
time I had suffered from a renewal of sea-sickness, though far less
severely on each successive occasion. The young Scot, who had shared
my stateroom since leaving Rio, had now sold his berth to an American
named Lewis, and taken up his quarters with the first mate, of whom he
was an old friend and crony.

Lewis was about thirty-five years of age, of a slender habit,
and a genteel sort of stoop, as if constantly afflicted with
the stomach-ache. He possessed the most remarkable faculty of
exaggeration, which he began to display almost as soon as his foot
touched the deck. It was generally boastful, or egotistical; but,
sometimes, free from the least taint or alloy, as if the habit had
become so confirmed that he continued to indulge in it even when
no motive could be detected. He had been a sailor, and engaged for
many months in the opium trade on the coast of China, but, several
years before, had settled in Chili, where he had since enjoyed great
consideration as a master mechanic.

It was not to be expected that such a stick of drift wood should
remain long in one place, especially in the height of such a freshet
as was now sweeping past. He came on board with a large chest of
sandal wood, a Spanish sarape, and a pick-axe about a foot in length,
that looked more like a plaything for children than an instrument for
the hard hands of a California miner. But he had not been long in the
ship before the little pick-axe was regarded with a sort of mysterious
envy by all those who had been unfortunate enough to provide
themselves with the common two handed implement. In his hands it
seemed the key which was to unlock those sumless and sunless treasures
hidden in the bowels of the earth. It was a nut-picker, with which
he intended to pick out the yellow meat from its stony shell. He was
not going to burden himself with pan or rocker; but, with his pockets
stuffed with provisions, his sarape on his back, a big leathern pouch
in one hand, and his little pick-axe in the other, he would roam
leisurely and pleasantly among the mountains and over the plains for
two or three months; when he should have as much gold, so he said, as
he knew what to do with. He had acquaintance, Chilians, who had been
there before, who had promised to take him to places where there would
be hardly enough difficulty in the work to make it pleasant.

All this seemed, by some strange necromancy, to grow out of that
mysterious instrument; and, as I lay in my berth listening to his
droning narrative of what he had heard, and what he intended to do, I
was sometimes tempted to steal it while he slept. My envy, however,
was somewhat allayed by his consolatory assurances that, even without
such aid, I could make a very handsome fortune. Having hinted to him
one day my modest expectations, "Humph," he said, in a tone that
seemed to imply a degree of contempt for such poverty of spirits,
"Humph! if that's all, there's no danger but what you'll make it fast
enough; the least you can do is to dig fifty thousand this summer."
If any one else had made this assertion, it would have carried no
weight with it; but his manner was so imposing, and then there was
the little pick-axe--it seemed to give a sort of authority in such
matters. I felt grateful to him as if he had said, "I give you, out of
the nobleness and generosity of my disposition, so many thousands."

Such stories, constantly repeated, could not fail to have their
effect; the excitement in the ship visibly increased, and Lewis, by
virtue of his superior knowledge, arrogated to himself prodigious
importance. Meeting him on shore, a few days after we landed at San
Francisco, I asked him when he was going to the mines; when, to my
infinite surprise and consternation, he replied that he had made
up his mind not to go at all. Nothing could have given my faith
such a fearful shock; but just then, when it seemed about to perish
altogether, it was fortunately confirmed in a new and surprising
manner, an account of which will be given hereafter. Lewis, as well
as my last room-mate, was something of a literary character, and the
extent of his acquirements may be inferred from the fact that Lippard,
and Rev. G. Chauncey Burr--I love, as the good vicar says, to give the
whole name--were his favourite authors.

The storm having, at length, blown itself out, the ship began to
present a scene of unusual activity. The hurricane deck was filled
with tent-makers and boat-builders, a carpenter's bench was put up
amidships, and a blacksmith's forge puffed and glowed under the
forward galley. Knapsacks, powder-horns, pick-axes, boatsails,
hammocks, and gold-washers were made or refitted; and those who
were already provided with these various articles, or expected
to have no use for them, caught the busy infection, and began to
schrimpschong with most laudable perseverance. Schrimpschonging
is a word of most varied significance. It is derived from the low
Dutch, and includes all those kinds of labour between the useful
and ornamental, but verging more on the latter. Whittling is the
simplest form of the disease; most kinds of ladies' work, all those
ingenious inventions in silk and worsted, must be regarded as still
more alarming indications. With us, it manifested itself chiefly
in making ornamental dippers out of cocoanut shells, and a certain
necromantic puzzle, for which one of the crew, himself a confirmed
schrimpschonger, had furnished the model.

We began also at this time to compare our different plans for the
approaching struggle, all different, but all alike monstrous and
impossible. From my present advanced position I look back upon our
ignorant simplicity, with smiling pity, as if I possessed a duplicate
personality, and had, in my present self, no concern in any of those
absurd fictions that then imposed themselves upon us for truth.

I have already given some hints of our rude geographical and
geological knowledge of California. The rivers there occupied a very
prominent position. They were broad, placid streams, flowing gently
between green banks. Several parties in the ship were now at work
painting and enlarging the boats they had brought with them for the
purpose of ascending these favourable rivers. They talked, with the
quiet complacency of superior wisdom, of sailing along from point to
point; searching out the richest portions--now shooting a fat buck,
as he stooped to quench his thirst--now digging out a peck of nuggets
like so many clams--now gliding through the unbroken forest--and
anon shooting out into the sun in front of some little encampment
of miners--till, having filled the boat with gold, they would throw
overboard all their tools, and, with colours flying and guns firing,
drop down the river to the bay, and return home.

It was, indeed, a most seductive picture, glowing like an Eastern
tale, or the stories of those old buccaneers rifling a Spanish
galleon--how the word seems to roll in riches--and aroused our desires
to go a gold hunting in the same privateering fashion. Some one
suggested that there might be steamboats or schooners on the rivers,
that would carry us up as far as we wished to go; but this idea met
with little encouragement from any one, and was scouted by all the
boat-builders with the highest indignation.

Another subject of nearly equal interest was the great variety of
gold-washers, from which we had to make a selection. One party brought
out a heavy iron tub, as big as a cartwheel, and exhibited its mode
of operation with a ludicrous mixture of doubt and complacency, as
if they were afraid of it themselves. It worked admirably when there
was nothing in it except a small quantity of sand and shot; and
then, it was so very heavy; surely no one would have made anything
so clumsy, unless for certain advantages not possessed by a simpler
construction. But the name was still more imposing, and was evidently
the cunning device of one who had no faith in Shakspeare. "The patent
centrifugal gold-washer and California chrysolite," stamped in honest
iron letters into the very substance of the machine; could anything
be more satisfactory? On landing at San Francisco, we found the beach
strewed with similar contrivances, that we could have bought "as cheap
as stinking mackerel."

We had expected to celebrate the 4th of July in San Francisco; but
the day came, and found us still south of the equator. Not to lose
entirely, however, the benefit of the occasion, we determined to
show ourselves as patriotic and as independent as our unfavourable
circumstances would allow. In the morning there was the usual military
parade, but on a scale of unusual magnificence. Charley Bainbridge
arrayed himself, as the law directs, in knapsack and cartouch box; and
shouldering a rusty musket, marched with measured step several times
round the ship; looking, all the while, over both shoulders to see the
admiring crowd that followed at his heels.

He included in his single person all the varied pomp of captain,
lieutenant, private, and musicians; his whistling was indeed
extraordinary, and only to be surpassed by that now classic Ethiop who
used to keep a barber's pole, so it was said, just out of the Bowery,
and was wont to entertain his customers by whistling two tunes at
once, one out of each corner of his mouth.

Like the Irishman who surrounded his enemy, or Kehama doing battle
with the king of hell, he seemed to multiply himself for the occasion.
He walked

              Forth without more train
    Accompanied than with his own complete
    Perfections; in himself was all his state,
    More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
    On princes, when their rich retinue long,
    Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
    Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.

"He carried arms, and he presented arms,--he faced to the left, he
faced to the right, and he faced to the right-about;" "he wheeled
forward, and he wheeled backward, and he wheeled into echelon--he
marched and he counter-marched, by grand divisions, by simple
divisions, and by subdivisions--by platoons, by sections, and by
files--in quick time, in slow time, and in no time at all; till having
gone through all the evolutions of two great armies, including the
eighteen manoeuvres of Dundas," and charged bayonets with signal
success upon an unlucky dog that had dared to bark at him, though
as his owner alleged in excuse, not as captain but as private, he
dismissed his company, and we all sat down to dinner.

By clubbing together our scanty resources, we succeeded in getting up
quite a tolerable repast. True, our meats were something old,--our
peas and green corn could hardly be distinguished from each other,
except by sight,--and our patriotism, too, was getting a little
musty; but our wine was sufficiently new to make amends, and we were
none of us disposed to be hypercritical. Toasts were given as usual;
but, though they were received with shouts of laughter, none, that I
remember, would bear repeating. They would suffer by this preserving
process even more than the meats and vegetables that accompanied them.
Lewis, who had not been among us long enough to become imbued with
the prevailing spirit of discontent, offered, for his sentiment, a
wish that we might all find ourselves, on the succeeding anniversary,
again assembled on board the Leucothea, each one with his pile. This
toast was received with a wonderful degree of coolness, considering
the final clause; but not even that could reconcile us to the idea
of repeating such a voyage in such an ill-omened craft--that pill
required more gilding.

But alas for the hopes that mocked us! and of which his words were
but a feeble exponent. Just in proportion to their brilliancy, was
their vanity; as the soap-bubble becomes the brighter the more it is
attenuated. The succeeding anniversary came, and found not a few of
our number in the grave; while a still larger proportion, wasted by
toil and sickness, and harassed by disappointment, cursed the day that
they had ever heard of California.

In the evening a grand shingarnee was held on the quarter-deck, when
an intellectual repast was provided of about the same quality as our
dinner. There was a young fellow among the steerage passengers who,
from some real or fancied resemblance to that individual, had received
the cognomen of Smike, though "the Artful Dodger" would have been
perhaps more appropriate. He seemed afraid that some one was about
to lay hold of him from behind, and hence kept himself in constant
readiness for flight; so that his gait became the debateable ground
between walking and running, where one ends, and the other has not
yet begun. This gave his body a slight inclination forward; and the
agreeable slope thus produced, found a fitting termination in the
short skirts of his fuzzy, blue roundabout, that projected a few
inches from his person as if, like the eaves of a house, intended to
shoot off the rain. The beholder, on seeing this jacket for the first
time, was unavoidably impressed with the belief that it had originally
started with the intention of reaching the knees, but having been
stunted in its growth, had stopped short half-way between that point
and the waist, which gave the wearer somewhat of the appearance of
a rooster who has shed his feathers, and is waiting for his tail to
regain its full dimensions before he ventures to indulge in his wonted
strut. His hat, which he wore on the back of his head as if to restore
his centre of gravity, seemed in truth ill-fitted for the purpose,
both rim and crown having been sadly shorn of their fair proportions.

All Shakspeare's seven ages were huddled together in his face, his
chin being the seventh. To look at that alone, you would affirm he
was a hundred years old; each feature led to a different conclusion,
but all together involved the question in painful uncertainty. If you
paid to his nose the reverence due to old age, a glance at his mouth
made you blush with indignation at having wasted your courtesies on a
boy; but if his mouth tempted you to treat him as an equal, his eyes
frowned reproach upon such unbecoming familiarity. His physiognomy
thus became a perpetual trap to the unwary, as it was an enigma that
defied all the speculations of the curious.

This boy-Methuselah was the first performer, and his part was that
much abused monologue of Hamlet, "To be or not to be." He took his
station on the quarter deck, with the mizen mast at his back; and the
spectators stood, or sat, or leaned, wherever they could find support.
I do not remember whether he decided to be or not to be, but his
effort was received with immense approbation, and in honour of this
achievement, he was henceforth called Hamlet, in addition to his other
titles.

The next performer was a very Hercules of a fellow, who, if he had
been cut into pieces, would have made three of his diminutive rival.
He had formerly been an actor, and it was easy to see that he must
have gained great success. He bellowed, he muttered, he whispered, he
hissed,--he stamped, and the hollow deck resounded; he spread apart
his Colossus-like legs, and raised his arms as if to hold up the sky;
till having run through all those parts so envied by Bully Bottom, he
suddenly broke away in a whirlwind of passion, and resumed his place
among the admiring spectators.

During the remainder of the month little occurred worthy of notice.
Our water again failed, and we were once more put on an allowance of
only three pints a day, and two of these we gave the steward for our
coffee. The beans and rice in which we had luxuriated were no longer
seen on our table, for there was no water to cook them. Once a week we
were summoned into the cabin to receive our hebdomedal allowance of
butter. On the steward's table, in his little pantry, were set out,
in tempting array, on half sheets of letter paper some forty pats of
butter, each weighing exactly four ounces, and, like the candy in a
confectioner's window, exhibiting all the colours of the rainbow. Not
only candy, but many other articles, are all the more pleasing for
this variety, but butter possesses no such versatility; here yellow is
your only colour; blue, and green, and red, though elsewhere highly
becoming, should be rigidly excluded. Yet I remember hearing the
steward trying to convince one young fellow, who rather demurred about
taking the fortieth and sole remaining pat, as being more curiously
coloured than the rest, that it was nothing more than natural, since
streaked and speckled cows always gave butter of the same pattern.




CHAPTER VII.


On the morning of the 13th of August a sail was discovered in the
horizon. She rapidly overhauled us, and when sufficiently near, a boat
was sent to obtain, if possible, a supply of water, our own being now
nearly exhausted. The boat returned after several hours, bringing a
cask of water and a number of papers from Valparaiso, from which we
gleaned a variety of interesting items. The Helena left home a month
later than we, but though their voyage had been thus comparatively
short, her passengers were no better contented than our own. They had
just eaten their last pickled salmon; and the mackerel, fresh beef,
and potatoes, which still remained to them, could not efface from
their tender stomachs the recollection of their recent bereavement.

In view of this afflictive dispensation how unreasonable now seemed
our own ungrateful discontent. Henceforth, if any one grumbled, as
some are sure to do under the most favourable conditions, because our
water looked like soapsuds, or because we were forced to dine seven
days in the week on salt beef and pork, he was sure to be cut short
with, "Why!! they are out of pickled salmon on board the Helena!" and
unless he were a peculiarly obstinate and hardened offender, this
rebuke did not need to be repeated.

The next morning the Helena was out of sight, while, far to leeward
appeared another sail driving hard after us towards the same centre
of attraction. We had now been more than six months at sea, and
every day increased our feverish impatience to be at the end of our
voyage. Every change of wind was watched with intense anxiety, and
"How's she head?" was asked, at least, five hundred times a day. But
there was no hurrying the Leucothea; one ship was passing us after
another, but she would choose her own time, and gang her ain gait. We
seemed like one oppressed by a hideous nightmare, who tries to escape
from some threatening danger, but can hardly move a limb. With some,
this impatience finally gave way to settled apathy; they had been at
sea so long, they didn't care whether they ever saw land again or
not;--they wouldn't take the trouble to look at the compass, or even
to ask "how's she head;" to all such matters they were profoundly
indifferent. The weather sympathized with this class rather than the
other; not that it was indifferent, but it was sullen, sombre, and
peculiarly disagreeable, far colder than in the same latitudes in the
Atlantic, and inconstant as man, or woman either.

August 22d we spoke the Memnon, one hundred and fifteen days from New
York, and asked for a supply of water. While they were getting it out
of the hold, her main and mizzen topsails were hove aback, and she
lay almost motionless on the water, yet apparently trembling with
suppressed eagerness. She was by far the finest ship we had seen--a
clipper of a thousand tons;--her tall rakish masts were crowded
with canvass, and her long, low hull, beneath its rounded softness
of outline, seemed, like the "velvet grace" of a tiger, to promise
muscles of prodigious flexibility and power. I could not help feeling
a sensation something like pity, when I heard of her loss several
years after somewhere on the coast of Africa. The cask of water being
now lowered over her side, the Memnon filled her topsails, and went
off like a racehorse, as docile and highspirited; and the Leucothea
went tumbling after.

Sunday, the 26th, was a day of various excitement. Long lines of
pelicans sailed slowly over head, or dropped, with a sudden plash,
into the water;--herds of fin-backs heaved up their huge bulk on
every side, affording us a better view of their vast proportions than
we had obtained during our whole voyage; and several times we heard
them bellow, a sure sign, according to our old whalers, that they
were aware of our presence. By our reckoning, land could not be far
distant; we could even hear the trampling of the surf upon the shore,
and cannon fired, as we conjectured, from the port;--but a dense fog
shrouded every thing from sight. A bottle of wine was promised to the
first discoverer, but there was no need of any such inducement,--men
were already at the masthead trying to get above the fog, and others
had rowed off some distance in a boat, in hopes of seeing through or
under it.

We were at dinner when the startling sound of "Land, ho!" was heard
through the cabin skylight. Going hastily on deck, I turned my eyes
to the larboard bow, and saw, under the partially lifted fog, cliffs
towering apparently higher than Mt. Washington. The next moment,
however, I perceived my error; instead of being, as I supposed, ten or
fifteen miles off, they were not more than four; and, as I made the
discovery, they suddenly shrank down to their proper altitude of only
a few hundred feet. No one in the ship was familiar with the entrance
to the bay; and as by reckoning we were some distance to the north,
the ship was put on the other tack, and soon, to our infinite chagrin,
land again faded from view.

Late in the afternoon, a sail appeared astern, when our mizzen
topsails were hove aback, and we waited for her to come up in hopes
of obtaining the necessary information. As she toiled sluggishly on,
she seemed alive with men; they swarmed black as ants out on the
bowsprit--they clustered like bees in the rigging,--while the matted
heads that looked at us over the bulwarks, seemed almost as thick as a
pile of cocoanuts.

Every ship that we had thus far spoken seemed to have its own
peculiar character. The Memnon was a decided aristocrat, with,
no doubt, noble blood in her veins,--the Sweden was an honest,
hard-working, mechanic,--the Loo Choo, a swelling coxcomb, and the
Helena a substantial tradesman. The character of the Humboldt, our
new acquaintance, was equally unmistakable. She was an out-and-out
vagrant, a beggar born and bred, with an hereditary taint of mendicity
that all great Neptune's ocean could not wash out, and all the
perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten. She was ninety-eight days from
Panama, having left that port about the time we passed Cape Horn,
so that we had gained on her the whole length of South America. She
had on board three hundred and sixty-five passengers, and a more
squalid set of wretches are seldom seen in so small a compass. When
we exchanged the customary salute, they sent up a shout that fairly
drowned our feeble cry; it seemed as if a voice had come from every
plank and timber in the ship.

As the captain of the Humboldt was equally at a loss with our own,
we held slowly on our way, and Monday morning again came in sight of
land, which many asserted to be the same we had seen the day before.
Standing further on, we passed lofty bluffs against which the sea
roared like distant thunder. They were succeeded by a long table-land
terminating in a point white with foam, the whole agreeing with
tolerable accuracy, with the chart. While we were at supper, the water
suddenly shoaled to four and a half fathoms; and huge rollers lifting
the ship like a feather, filled all with instant apprehension lest
she should be dashed the next moment on the sands. There was a sudden
bustle and trampling over head, and in a twinkling our table was
deserted. The helm was jammed hard down, and we once more stood out to
sea.

When we had got to a safe distance, and had time to think a little, it
was concluded that the cause of alarm was after all nothing but the
bar at the mouth of the harbour, and that if we had kept boldly on, we
should have been by that time quietly at anchor opposite the city. It
was too foggy, however, to repeat the experiment that day, and there
was nothing better to do than to come to anchor where we were.

Tuesday was also very foggy; a boat was sent out on an exploring
expedition, and a gun fired at intervals in hopes of receiving an
answering signal. After a long absence the boat returned with the
information that we were really off the bay; and at the same time a
small brig with a long Moorish name, coming up on our quarter, gave
us directions how to steer. After waiting several hours longer for
the turn of the tide, which here runs with extraordinary rapidity,
we hauled up the anchor, and with a fair wind and clear sky, slid
rapidly into the bay, and round the point that forms the harbour of
San Francisco. One ship, and then another, and another, till we could
count no further; chafing there idle and forgotten, like a horse tied
to the paling, while his master courts away the flying hours within.
Dodging skilfully in among them, our sails were lowered one by one;
the anchor was soon imbedded in the lazy mud, and the Leucothea,
wearily swinging round to her moorings, at length rested from her long
travel of two hundred days.




CHAPTER VIII.


As it was sunset when we came to anchor, we deferred our landing
till the next morning; but one of the owners coming on board brought
a large budget of letters, among which there were several for our
party. Having devoured them with that intensity of interest that can
be understood only by those who have been in similar circumstances, we
laid them aside for a more careful perusal, and gathering round the
two or three old settlers who had come from the shore, listened with
breathless attention, the careless, genteel indifference with which
they talked of hundreds, of thousands, and of millions, affecting the
imagination far more than the wildest excitement. As the old man says
in the play, there is a positive pleasure in simply talking of such
big numbers; they fill the mind with such grand and noble ideas.

The next day boats came from the shore in hopes of obtaining
passengers.

"How much do you charge?" cried Captain Bill, looking suspiciously
down upon the boatman.

"Only one dollar!" he replied, and in a tone that seemed to say that
the rates of fare had recently fallen; but our minds had not yet
sufficiently expanded to receive this information with the gratitude
it deserved. We looked admiringly upon the sturdy knave who dared to
speak thus disrespectfully of the almighty dollar, but preferred to
wait till we could obtain a passage in one of the boats belonging to
the ship. An opportunity soon offered; and in a few minutes we were
gliding across the bows of the vessels that lay in denser phalanx near
the wharf. On the high yellow bank stood groups of men ragged and
miserable. They leered upon us, as we passed, as much as to say, "Now
then, here you are! but wait awhile my hearties, till you've been here
long enough to find out a thing or two; and then,--"

This, however, was only a subsequent interpretation; at the time,
I had no doubt that everybody had his pockets stuffed with gold,
and, like enough, a heavy belt around his waist filled with the same
precious metal; and the rags and tatters that flaunted so boldly
seemed rather to confirm this gratifying supposition.

Strolling, yet that is not the word, buzzing a few hours through the
city was enough to fill us brim full of excitement. To repeat the
figure already employed, we had descended farther and farther into
this worldwide maelstroom, and seemed now each moment about to plunge
into the vortex. Round and round, faster and faster, spun the dizzy
tide; sure such a devil's dance was never danced before.

Everything was on a monstrous and perverted scale. The apparent
simplicity of the means employed was ridiculous compared to the
sublime result. It seemed impossible that a wealth greater than
the Indies should flow through such a narrow channel;--that such
prodigious power should be confined in the one story, wood and canvass
houses of that awkward shambling city. It was as marvellous almost,
and incredible, as that the genie of the Arabian tale should have
shrunk his steeple bulk into the little copper vessel,--or that the
more modern genie of steam, which the other so well symbolized, should
suffer himself to be penned in any other than walls of iron and brass.
Piles of merchandize of every description, bags, barrels, boxes, and
bundles, filled the stores to suffocation, and ran over into the
street. Fat gouty mittens, bursting with gold dust,--the thumb alone
stiff with a hundred dollars,--turned up their round yellow bellies
on the rude counters, like a frog in the last stages of the dropsy;
while bars and lumps of still more seductive unity nestled on the
window seat, or leaned poker-and-shovel-wise against the corners.
Pounds and ounces took the place of dollars and cents,--the appearance
of one of the latter was sure to provoke a laugh, but the dollar,
though a decided parvenu, was gradually working his way into good
society. The time had past when a pinch of gold dust was the lowest
standard of value, and when, for want of silver, the nobler metal was
forced to perform the most menial offices of trade.

Among all this, in the midst of all these symbols of wealth and power,
the miner who had called them into being, moved about with an air
of sturdy independence, which received a fresh accession every time
he squeezed, between his thumb and fingers, the buckskin bag in his
breeches' pocket. Little groups assembled at the corners, and in the
principal stores, each one striving to surpass the last speaker in
his stories of big lumps,--of holes that paid five or ten dollars a
bucket,--and of pockets that made the lucky finder rich in a single
hour.

There was something very attractive in this use of the word pocket.
There was an appropriateness, an harmony about the idea that imposed
upon the understanding. There was such a thing, to be sure, as an
empty pocket,--but the old grandam earth had lived a great many
years,--she had always been a saving sort of a body, and must have
hoarded up quite a handsome pennyworth; it would certainly be a fine
thing to have the ransacking of her chinks and crannies.

But the gambling-houses presented scenes of yet fiercer excitement.
The finest buildings in the city were devoted to this purpose. Wide
doors, standing constantly open, admitted the visitor at once into
spacious apartments, where, for every hour in the twenty-four, except
a short interval in the morning twilight, were heard the chink of gold
and silver, and the confused hum of voices. There is no employment
so thirsty as gambling; and the large and splendidly appointed bar
was the most striking feature in these establishments. Here the
fever-and-aguish gamester sought by one fire to put out another; one
drank because he was hot, another because he was cold,--this one
because he was losing, that because he had gained.

A curious crowd of spectators circled among the little tables,
watching, with an interest second only to that of the principal
performers, the movements of the game; or gazing boldly, or with
modest obliquity of vision, upon the lascivious pictures that hung on
the walls. Little boys of ten or twelve called imperiously for brandy
smashes, and staked their all on the turn of a card, or the rolling
of a ball with hideous nonchalance; while the next moment oaths as
big as cannon balls rolled from their hard lips to testify their
impish malice or exultation. The simple novice from some New England
village, who has never before been farther from home than the nearest
town, proud of his first beard, and champing the ends of his moustache
between his lips, sidles timidly up to the bar, and calls in a low
voice for a glass of lemonade.

"Yes," cries his Mephistopheles, with a patronizing laugh, "and put a
stick in it."

"Well," he replies, laughing in his turn, but more feebly than the
other, "I guess I will have a stick in it."

Delighted with the puzzling novelty of the phrase, that, without
seeming to mean anything, means so much, he soon repeats the
experiment, partly to show he is not afraid, and partly from an
indescribable, often unconscious pleasure of doing what he would
hardly have dared even to think of at home. He thinks of his mother
and sisters and aunt Mary, and wonders what they would say, if they
saw him in such company and drinking brandy, at a bar! and in a
gambling house besides!! The idea of their horror and incredulous
wonder is rather pleasing to his selfish vanity; one is very apt to be
vain of such loving tender pity. He has learned to put a stick in it;
well for him if he does not ere long put in his whole foot.

After several hours thus spent in wandering from one centre of
attraction to another, we returned to the ship, weary of excitement,
and hoping to find there at least one place free from the general
infection. On reaching the deck, however, a hubbub of voices assailed
our ears in which every other word seemed to be diggins, holes, lumps,
pockets, &c., &c. Other parties had been like ours wandering through
the city; each had brought on board its own budget of news, and now
poured them out before us in bewildering confusion.

One had a long story to tell of a lump found in the southern mines.
The man who told him knew the man who saw the lucky fellow that found
it. Most of these stories were in this respect, too much like the
final clause of the story of the house that Jack built.

Others were more interested in the price current of different
articles. Saleratus was eight dollars a pound, and everybody wondered
he had not brought a few barrels; it would have been the easiest thing
in the world, and would have made his fortune at once. Salt, on the
other hand, which we had all taken care to bring with us, was worth
nothing. On hearing this, Charley Bainbridge hastily descended into
the cabin, and presently returning with a bag containing some twenty
or thirty pounds, plunged his knife into its belly, and triumphantly
emptied the salt into the sea.

"What are you doing there?" cried Busby, who had just come aboard.

"Only throwing overboard some salt," returned Charley, with a chuckle,
as if he had been performing some very brilliant action.

"Why," replied Busby, staring very hard as if he did not exactly see
the humour of the thing; "you might have given it away if you didn't
know what else to do with it."

"Oh," said Charley, "'taint worth anything."

"Ain't worth anything!" retorted the other indignantly; "it's worth
twenty-five cents a pound, and I call that something."

This turned out to be the fact; and Charley never heard the last of
this adventure, though he said he didn't care, the fun was worth the
money any day.

Every one vented his delirium in his own fashion. Dan Carpenter, who
was one of the worst affected, clasped his hands on the top of his
head as if afraid it should fly away like a balloon; but in spite of
this precaution he was raised bodily from the deck, and danced up and
down for the space of half an hour, striking his heels three times
against each other at every spring; when thoroughly exhausted he was
dropt with such violence into a campstool, that it gave way, and let
him treacherously down on to his back; whereupon Captain Bill advised
him to keep steady, and haul in his jib-sheets; and every one gave him
a word of counsel and exhortation.

Such being the food of our waking imagination, it is easy to see what
stuff our dreams were made of. All day long we talked and thought of
nothing but gold,

      And then, in dreaming,
    The clouds, we thought, would open, and show riches
    Ready to drop upon us; that when we waked,
    We cried to dream again.

The mines were now all before us where to choose; but there was no
visible Providence for our guide; and among so many conflicting
reports, it was difficult to arrive at any fixed conclusion. The
southern mines abounded more in lumps and rich deposits, but the
gold was distributed more equally in the northern, and the labourer
was accordingly more certain of his reward. In each of these grand
divisions there was an endless variety of creeks and rivers, every
one of which had its advocates, who set forth its advantages to
the best of their ability, till the new comer, weary of weighing
these opposing probabilities, often rested his decision upon the
most trifling coincidence. Twenty dollars a day was said to be the
average earned by the miners, but each man's hope told him a far more
flattering tale.

Under these circumstances it may seem unaccountable that we should
have waited nearly two weeks at San Francisco for our provisions to
be unloaded, when, if our calculations were well grounded, we lost so
much by the delay. The hope that every day would be the last, and the
difficulty of unlearning all at once, that system of pennywise economy
in which we had been educated, are the only explanation of this
anything but a masterly inactivity.

In the mean time, through the agency of Captain Bill, whose good luck
was signally manifest on this occasion, we made the acquaintance
of a Mr. Primrose, said by some to be the most scientific miner in
California. To a digger of any experience, the word scientific would
have indicated nothing but the most besotted ignorance; but, to our
Old-World notions, it sounded grand and imposing.

This scientific miner had a machine,--a scientific machine,--a machine
such as is used in the gold mines of Virginia, and must of course be
equally well adapted to this new territory. The machines had not yet
arrived; but the scientific miner assured us that the vessel in which
they had been shipped had sailed months before, and was now expected
every day. In the meantime he would be happy to show us a drawing,
from which we could form a tolerable idea of the mode of operation.
We accordingly examined the drawing with great attention; we turned
it upside down,--we looked at it straightforward and obliquely,--we
looked at it with both eyes, and squinted at it after the most
approved fashion with only one,--and finally came to the conclusion
that it resembled nothing so much as a patent beehive, and of course
must be a very scientific machine indeed.

"But will it work?" we asked the scientific miner.

The scientific miner, who was by the way a tall and rather comely
personage, in a white neck-cloth, something between a clergyman and
a broker, made no immediate reply, but taking from a table several
hemispherical cakes of gold, looking like so many cakes of beeswax,
and thereby confirming our notion of the patent beehive, placed them
in our hands with a bland smile, and asked if that would do.

"Certainly," we replied, "that would do very well, if we could do it
often enough."

"What do you say to once a week?" inquired the scientific miner.

Captain Bill looked at me, and I looked at Captain Bill, with a smile,
half of satisfaction, half of incredulity, but made no answer.

The scientific miner noticed this telegraphic communication, and went
on with mathematical gravity and precision.

"This gold," said he, "was washed out in a single week by one of these
machines now in operation at Mormon Island; and that, too, from earth
that had already been through the common rocker. With one of these
machines you can make a thousand dollars a week from almost any earth
in California, and ten thousand under favourable circumstances."

Having paused a moment, as if to enable us to digest these assertions,
the scientific miner went on in a pleasant and confidential manner
that was very encouraging.

"You know how it is," said he; "most that come to this country are
ignorant mechanics and labourers, that are not fit to be trusted with
such things; but with such energy and intelligence as you possess, you
cannot help being successful."

At this, we both looked as intelligent as we possibly could; and
Captain Bill, gazing respectfully, almost fearfully, at the drawing,
asked the scientific miner how many men were required to work the
machine; to which he replied that four could work it when everything
was handy, but five or even six might sometimes be necessary. The
price was one thousand dollars, on which a short credit would be
allowed; but as only three hundred machines were expected in the first
vessel, it would be necessary to decide without any great delay. Most
of these were already engaged, but he thought he could manage to
reserve one for us.

As soon as we got into the open air our enthusiasm, which we had
prudently restrained in presence of the scientific miner, at once
burst forth.

"Keep cool, boys, keep cool," cried Captain Bill, slapping his thigh,
as his manner was, his broad, good-humoured face shining like a pewter
platter, "steady your helm and haul in your jib-sheets."

"Look here, Bill!" I began, with a look intended to repress all such
unseasonable mirth, "I'll tell you what we'll do. A thousand dollars
is a good deal, I know, to give for a machine; but what of that? we
can pay for it in a week, and all we make after that will be clear
profit."

"Si," said Captain Bill.

"Well, then, if we find it work, you know, we'll just send down and
order three more, one for each of us; and then, all we'll have to
do will be to oversee the workmen, and attend to the amalgamating
process."

"Si,--si,--si," said Captain Bill, once to each of the three rockers,
but slowly, and at long intervals, as the magnificence of the idea
gradually insinuated itself into his mind, like a boa-constrictor
gorging a buffalo; and he already saw himself sitting lordly on a
stone, engaged in the agreeable occupation of reckoning his gains, and
keeping a sharp lookout on the poor fellows that were toiling for him
at their miserable pittance of eight dollars a day, simply because
they hadn't a scientific machine too; "but I say; this is one of the
machines you read of, isn't it."

"Taking the very lowest calculation," I continued, striving to
quench his fervour by my cool, business-like manner, "that 'ill be
a thousand dollars apiece a week; or we may as well make it twelve
hundred while we are about it, so as to cover all expenses; and, at
that rate, I think I could be content to stay in the mines a year."

"Yes, yes," cried the Captain, now at last driven to the use of his
own vernacular, "so could I."

"But," said I, with inexorable coolness, "we must be cautious--very
cautious. It won't do to be in too much of a hurry. We'll wait and see
the machine at Mormon Island, and then we shall know what we know."

"Mr. Primrose seems a very clever sort of a man," returned Bill, "but,
after all, it's the lumps that does the business."

Number Four had already been to see the scientific miner, but neither
he nor Tertium were aware of the extent of their good fortune; and
now Captain Bill taking them, as was his wont, mysteriously aside,
undertook to enlighten them. He led them along softly, step by step,
touching briefly on the machine, the chief merit of which was that we
knew so little about it,--descanting at some length on the honesty
and uprightness of the scientific miner, of which we knew still
less,--coming down with ever-increasing emphasis on the lumps,--and
finally, seeing them now prepared to receive it, winding up with a
grand flourish on the twelve hundred a week.

The others listened attentively, but Tertium, who was always a
horrible fellow for doubting, was still incredulous.

"Take him to see the lumps," I suggested, somewhat indignantly, for I
must confess I felt hurt at his want of scientific ardour, "for, as
you say, it is the lumps that does the business."

And indeed there was no getting over the lumps,--they were most
weighty arguments, stubborn facts, addressing themselves to sight and
touch with a silent eloquence no words could equal. Tertium saw them,
and hesitated; he lifted them, and was convinced. Still, we determined
to proceed with the utmost caution; and, for my part, I believe I
derived almost as much satisfaction from the contemplation of my
own superior wisdom, as from gloating over the fifty thousand that
only waited my arrival to fall into my hands. We were careful to say
nothing of our discovery to our less fortunate companions, for fear
they should go at once and buy up every one of the thousand machines,
leaving us, when too late, to lament our foolish procrastination.




CHAPTER IX.


After many unlooked for delays, a half-barrel of pork which we had
long sought in vain was got out of the hold; and on the 8th of
September we bid a final farewell to the Leucothea, and transferred
ourselves to the Patuxent, the regular packet for Sacramento. The
Patuxent was a very pretty schooner of about one hundred tons,--had
formerly been engaged in the slave-trade, but now bore at her masthead
a flag showing that she carried the mail for Uncle Sam.

We set sail about four in the afternoon, with a fine breeze that we
hoped would last all night; but it went down with the sun, and we
were obliged to come to anchor before we had gone half across the
bay. Having eaten a frugal supper of boiled ham and biscuit, the ham
costing only forty cents a pound, we began anxiously to look about us
for sleeping accommodations. Picking my way carefully over the bundles
of dead and living lumber that strewed the deck, I at last succeeded
in reaching the spot where I had left my blankets, which I found in
the possession of a most delicate monster, with four legs and two
voices, who had coiled himself in them for the night. Pulling him by
the lesser legs, I presently awakened his forward and backward voices,
which showed at once, by a duet of curses, that they could both utter
foul speeches on occasion.

"Never you mind," I said to myself, "I have not scaped drowning so
long to be afeard now of your four legs;" and then adding a few words
of explanation, I received back my property with many apologies. But
it was a more difficult matter to find six unoccupied feet of plank;
and I was at last obliged to put up with a small chest about three
feet in length; where, half sitting, half lying, I nodded and blinked
till early morning.

Sunday was an extremely dull day; there was but little breeze,--we
began to tire of the stupifying monotony of ham and bread, and to feel
somewhat of the enervating effect of the climate.

I found, however, considerable amusement in studying the peculiarities
of our fellow passengers, nearly all of whom were entire strangers,
and presented a greater variety and novelty than I had yet met with.
There was a fair proportion of old miners, who had been down to San
Francisco to get letters from home, or to have a frolic, and were
now returning to the mines; but a far greater number of newcomers
like ourselves. There were English, Irish, Scotch, French, Germans,
Spaniards, and Chilanos. The captain, who was a Dane, with a nose like
Julius Cæsar's, seemed to have almost entire charge of his little
vessel, and to be in every part of her at once. I never could discover
that he slept at all;--he took his meals holding the tiller under his
arm; and, to save himself the trouble of giving orders, chose often to
haul on the ropes with his own hands.

The individual who sometimes relieved him from charge of the helm was
a laughing, chirruping, little Frenchman, rather gaily dressed, with
a bright red flannel shirt, and a showy scarf round his waist. His
untamed vivacity smacked strongly of the prairie; and, in spite of the
manifest anachronism, I was once or twice on the point of asking him
if he were not the Antoine or Pierre of whom I had read in Astorian
story.

The night was intensely cold, and I fared even worse than before. I
fell asleep several times on my feet; till, towards midnight, some
one gave me a seat on the narrow cabin stairs, where I slept and
shivered in weary alternation. Monday, however, was a glorious, true
California day;--a moderate breeze bore us steadily up the river,
whose banks presented a pleasing panorama. Though it was now near the
end of the dry season, the Sacramento seemed here brimming full; the
trees, and shrubs, and vines crowding so close to the bank that there
was no room for even a footpath between. Ascending into the rigging
I obtained a fine view of the surrounding country. Beyond the narrow
strip of forest that guarded the banks, extended, as far as the eye
could reach, tule marshes,--with here and there an island, like a
gigantic billow, breaking the straight outline of the horizon.

As we advanced, the soil became higher and fit for cultivation. A
narrow clearing running down to the water,--a canoe floating in the
shade of the tree to whose roots it was fastened,--a rude hovel
standing in the midst of a patch of melons or corn, all proclaimed
the adventurous squatter, who, Boonelike, had led the forlorn hope of
civilization.

At length, at a sudden turn in the river, we descried at a distance
the masts of Sacramento mingling with the branches of the primæval
forest. On landing, a scene presented itself of the most novel and
bewildering character. On one side was the lonely river, still
lonely in spite of the numerous ships that lay, side by side, moored
with long ropes to the trees on the bank;--on the other, was the
infant city yet maintaining a precarious struggle for existence with
the surrounding wilderness. The mighty oak that had possessed the
soil alone for centuries, or at least with no other rival than the
wandering Indian, now looked down with wonder upon the audacious
intruder at its feet, and thrust its long, gnarled branches among the
taper, slender spars.

Awnings had been erected over several ships, which were thus converted
into convenient stores and lodgings. The front rank of buildings stood
drawn up in a straight line about two hundred feet from the river;
and the streets, named after the letters of the alphabet, ran back at
right angles from the levee. The canvass walls were ornamented with
painted signs of the same material, which were generally in inverse
proportion to the size of the edifice, so that, in many cases, hardly
anything else was visible. In spite of the sombre presence of half a
dozen wooden buildings, the lighter fabric so far predominated, by the
aid of a thick settlement of miners' tents, as to give the whole place
the unsubstantial, ephemeral appearance of the encampment of a militia
muster, or a gypsy horde.

We took supper in an eating house, a small open tent, with no floor
but the bare ground, and nothing on the table but coffee, bread,
and beefsteak; but the owner said in excuse that he had not yet got
a-going, and should accordingly charge us only a dollar a-piece. We
slept this night on board the Patuxent, and the next morning looked
for a more stylish restaurant, when, in addition to what we had for
supper, they set before us liver, sausages, potatoes, and Indian
pudding, all cooked à la California, that is, fried in pork fat, but
very good, and cheap besides, our bill amounting to only five dollars.

At noon, Capt. Bill and Number Four set out for Mormon Island, to
satisfy themselves by ocular demonstration as to the merits of the
Virginia rocker; while Tertium and myself remained behind to dispose
of some merchandize we had brought out on speculation. We set up our
tent, a tall cone or sugar-loaf, upon the levee, borrowing for that
purpose a wagon-pole that lay, like the Irishman's crowbar, strewed
all over the bank; and erected about it, for greater security, a
frowning fortification of barrels of rice and beans, while we disposed
the lighter articles within.

Our nomade life had now fairly begun; hitherto we had hung, like
puny nurslings, on the dry breasts of a sickly civilization; but
henceforth we were to shift for ourselves. Having kindled a fire and
made some coffee in a bright tin coffee-pot, like a young couple just
setting up housekeeping, I proceeded to the nearest baker's shop, and
having bought a couple of loaves, marched back through the streets,
Franklin-wise, to our camp; when Tertium, who had in the meantime
fried some steaks, arranged the whole very tastily on the top of a
barrel. We had each a new tin plate as bright as a looking-glass, a
pint cup, with an iron spoon, and a big butcher's knife stuck into our
girdle. The supper was excellent--I must except the coffee--and in
fact we had enjoyed nothing so much since leaving Talcahuano.

After supper, as we sat in the door of our tent, with a little bit of
home-feeling already stirring in our hearts, a man passing along the
levee stopped to ask what we had for sale. He had on a monkey jacket,
a pair of heavy cowhide boots drawn over his pantaloons, and coming
well up to his knees, and presented throughout so great a contrast to
his former self, that we were not a little surprised at discovering
his identity with the fine gentleman we had so often seen promenading
the streets of B----.

As we were anxious to dispose of our goods as soon as possible,
without much regard to price, our bargain was soon completed. He paid
us in gold dust, the first that had come into our possession, which,
for want of a more fitting receptacle, we poured into a pewter cup.
When I afterwards emptied it into a vial, a little remained sticking
to the bottom, reminding me of the Forty Thieves, and the gold
measured in a bushel. "Who knows," I said to myself, "but that we may
have, before long, to resort to the same expedient?"

It was now time to go to bed; we carefully examined our
pistols,--stationed a lusty bag of beans as sentinel before the
door, and spreading our blankets in the dust, were soon sleeping as
carelessly as the veteran on the field of battle.

The next morning we sold the remainder of our goods, including a
large portion of our provisions, and were now all ready for a start;
but were obliged to wait until we heard from our companions, as we
were doubtful whether we had better make our first experiment at
Mormon Island, or on the North Fork as we had at first intended.
In the meantime, fearful lest they should let slip the favourable
opportunity, I made haste to write a most pressing letter, urging
them, by all means, to lose no time in securing at least one of those
machines that every day seemed more scientific and more desirable.

Friday, having a few hooks, we amused ourselves with fishing in the
Sacramento. We caught a number of fish about a foot in length, full of
bones as they could hold, but furnishing a very welcome addition to
our scanty bill of fare.

The next day we received a note from Number Four, advising us to join
them at Mormon Island, as they found themselves quite unable to decide
so important a question without our assistance. It was too late,
however, to commence so long a journey, and we very reluctantly waited
till the following week.

Sunday, two other parties from the Leucothea came up the river, Capt.
Fayreweather's, in a flat boat they had built on board the ship, and
the Vermonters in a packet.

The Vermonters pitched their tent among a large number of others
in a thick grove in one corner of the town, and then commenced the
arduous task of transporting thither their provisions; the imperious,
headstrong Charley disputing all the while with his rebellious
satellites, with most amusing pertinacity, as to the amount of labour
performed by each, and the proper method of conducting the simplest
operation.

Monday afternoon they started on a long journey of ninety miles up
on the Yuba; and, at the same time, we set out for Mormon Island,
twenty-five miles from Sacramento, with a mule wagon to transport our
provisions and household stuff, for which we had to pay eight cents
a pound. After passing Sutter's Fort, the road for several miles lay
over an open prairie; the evening was calm, and the solitude and
silence greater even than at sea. A little farther on, the surface
became more undulating; fine old oaks dotted the ground at long
intervals, seeming, like the stars in the sky, set all at an equal
distance in a wide circle, of which we were the centre.

We encamped for the night near the American river,--the sun had long
been set,--we were cold and hungry, but it was too dark to find
materials for a fire, and we were compelled to go supperless to bed.
We spread our tent on the ground, and muffling ourselves in our
blankets, crept in between the folds, in dumb expressive silence,
while our driver, equally unsocial, stretched his length, like a watch
dog, under his wagon. It was a relief to hear the roar of the river
that on one side seemed to furnish a wall of defence, as if it had
weakened the surrounding loneliness by cutting it in halves; it was a
relief even to hear the barking of the coatis as they prowled round
the wagon; but I never recall that night by the American river, and
think of the profoundest desolation that brooded over us, without a
shudder,--a shudder of delight, as children listen to tales of ghosts
and goblins.

We hailed the first dawn of day with intense satisfaction; before the
sun was up our coffee-pot was singing over a crackling blaze, and a
steak sizzling in the frying-pan sent forth a most savoury odour.
There is an immense difference between going to bed darkling and
supperless, and getting up to a hearty breakfast on a bright sunshiny
morning; we were no longer the same persons, and, full of beef and
coffee, felt ready to encounter any difficulty that might present
itself.

We travelled all day through an open forest of oak, passing one or
two houses, or ranches as they were oftener called, and meeting
occasionally an empty wagon returning to Sacramento. We met also a
young fellow dressed in a new calico shirt of the gayest pattern,
with a bright scarf round his waist, galloping carelessly along the
sweeping glades of the forest, and swinging round his head the
long braided lash that forms the end of a Spanish bridle. I looked
after him with envious admiration; for thinks I to myself, there is
a lucky miner who has made his fortune, twenty or thirty thousand
at least, and is now going home to enjoy it. But it was pleasant to
think that in another year we too should be galloping over the same
road, each with just such a horse and painted shirt, and with as well
filled saddle-bags as he. Then how we would exult over any unlucky
pedestrians we might chance to encounter!--with what self-complacent
condescension we would stop to answer their absurd questions! looking
down upon them, all the while, from our twofold elevation, with most
delightful pity,--pitying them, so to speak, as hard as we could, and
then wrapt away from their sight in a cloud of dust.

Solacing ourselves with many such "sugared suppositions," we came at
night to a small roadside inn, called the Willow Spring House, and
built in that place for the sake of the water which is very scarce in
all that region. Several parties were already resting on the little
green slope opposite the house; we joined them, and cooked our supper
at their fire; while, after the fashion of Californians, we gave each
other a brief account of our adventures. Some of our companions we
found had come like ourselves round the Horn, and we were mutually
anxious to learn the names of our respective vessels; some had come
by way of the Isthmus,--and others had travelled across the plains
of Mexico, or over the Rocky Mountains. They came together, at this
secluded spot, for the first and last time, and parted in the morning;
some going down to Sacramento, which they had not yet seen, and others
up into the mountains,--while we continued our march, and in an hour
arrived at Mormon Island, where we found our companions in a state of
great perplexity at our long delay.

With their assistance our goods were soon unloaded at a spot hastily
selected at the side of the street; we counted out eighty dollars on
a stump for our driver,--hung our tent to the overhanging branch of a
small oak to avoid the necessity of a pole, and piled our provisions
round its trunk.

Our next door neighbour, an old man with a loud, good-humoured voice,
and who kept a sort of small eating-house at the farther end of a
monstrous pine that stretched from his door to ours, was cooking
his breakfast at a fire built against the middle of the log. While
our coffee was boiling, he began to sing the praises of some bean
soup he had just concocted; and, on my expressing some doubt of its
excellence, nothing would do but I must taste it. "There," said he,
as I dipped my iron spoon into the shallow tin plate he had provided,
"what do you say to that?" I was forced to acknowledge that it was
very good indeed, and I further flattered the old man's vanity by
asking for the recipe, which he gave me at once, with an infinite deal
of chuckling and gesticulation, flying round all the while among his
pots and kettles with twice his usual dexterity.

Having fortified ourselves with a hearty breakfast, we proceeded
all together, Capt. Bill leading the way, to the island, to see the
machine that had gradually climbed so high in our imaginations.
Mormon Island proper is nothing but a large bar on one side of the
river, converted into an island by a narrow canal dug round it for
the purpose of draining that portion of the channel. The name,
however, has extended itself to the village that has grown up on the
neighbouring bank, and which consisted, at that time, of a single
street nearly as broad as it was long,--lined on three sides with a
few scattered tents and log houses, though several stores and hotels
of much greater pretensions have since been added.

Crossing the canal by a bridge made of a single log, and walking a few
rods over a succession of miniature hills thrown up by the miners,
we came to a small hollow where the machine was at work. A sudden
weakness,--shall I confess it?--now came over me, and I paused a
moment to recover my self-possession before venturing to face this
miracle of science. I then slowly advanced till my eyes, rising above
the stony ridge that surrounded it, peered curiously down into the
hollow.

Three times in my life have I met with severe disappointments--once in
my eighth year, hurrying home from school in the confident expectation
of having apple dumplings for dinner, and finding that, through some
dreadful cook's blunder, there was nothing but salt beef, cabbage, and
potatoes--once in my maturer years, in a still more tender point--and
now, to complete the mighty three, I saw--instead of the cunning
invention possessed of mysterious, almost fearful powers, which I had
imagined--only a big, clumsy rocker, mounted on a frame still bigger
and clumsier than itself, and weighing altogether some five or six
hundred pounds. Underneath the riddle or castiron sieve that extended
the whole length of the machine, was a trough about eight inches deep,
and divided by numerous low partitions into narrow cells intended to
contain the quicksilver used in washing. It was this feature that had
suggested the idea of a patent beehive; and in the last or lowest of
these cells we had expected to find the gold in a state of perfect
purity. We now discovered our mistake--these partitions corresponded
simply to the ripple-bars of the common rocker, which indeed the whole
machine resembled much more closely than we had supposed. Five men
were required to attend to its various wants; one to rock--one to pump
into it a constant stream of water--one to feed it--and two to bring
the earth from the hole.

Several of the owners, members of the company of which the scientific
miner was president, were standing by, watching the operation; and one
of them I thought, from his conversation, must be almost as scientific
as the scientific miner himself. They were all pleasant, gentlemanly
fellows, living in a fine large tent on a breezy hill just above the
island, and in such style and comfort as became the owners of a
thousand thousand-dollar machines, like themselves.

But our hopes were doomed to receive another and still more
overwhelming shock. The scientific miner had assured us that we could
make our thousand a week from almost any earth in California--we
didn't quite believe him, to be sure--but now the second scientific
miner, not indeed so scientific as the first, but horribly scientific
for all that, advised us, by all means, not to remain at Mormon
Island, but to prospect a bar he had himself visited, just below
Coloma, and which he thought from its _formation_ likely to prove
unusually rich.

"But," replied Tertium, shrinking from the idea of another long
journey, and still possessed by the chimerical notion suggested by the
scientific miner, "why wouldn't it be as well to remain here? There's
that hill yonder, to the right of the village; I don't see why that
shouldn't pay as well as any other place."

You should have seen the smile of benevolent pity with which this
audacious speech was received by the miner who was only less
scientific than the scientific miner at San Francisco. It was really
delightful to see how easily his science enabled him to solve a
question which we could have decided only by pickaxe and shovel.

"Ah, my dear sir," he replied, his politeness struggling hard with
that noble disdain he could not help feeling, "there is no gold
there--the geological formation shows that it is impossible. If you
look again, you will see that the river here makes a sudden turn to
the right; and besides, gold is never found in such soil as that hill
is composed of."

Here Capt. Bill looked at me as much as to say, "He's one of the
men you read of;" and we all frowned upon Tertium as a sign that he
should hold his peace; while, in accordance with the second scientific
miner's suggestion, we did look again--saw, as he said we would,
that the river did turn to the right, and of course could never, by
any possibility, have flowed in any other direction; whereby our
opinion of science in general, and of the second scientific miner's in
particular, was marvellously confirmed.

Lest I should forget it, I would here simply mention, that not long
after, some ignoramus, not having the fear of science before his eyes,
and digging stupidly into this identical hill, discovered veins of
such richness as turned half the heads in the village.

This hill in fact seemed one of those awkward exceptions designed by
nature expressly for the discomfiture of just such philosophers; as
if, like the rest of her sex, she would not give her suitors too much
encouragement, lest their presumption should make them forget their
modesty. The good lady, if the truth must be told, seemed in this
matter even more capricious than ordinary, and bestowed her favours
with so little discernment that the least deserving were often the
most successful.

I encountered many other scientific miners during my travels, but
never met with one whose science was worth his salt. It did not seem
so much a means as an end, and was continually leading them astray
from the real object of pursuit. They acted often as foolishly as
the man who in travelling would not take the common highway that
led directly to the spot where he wished to go, but chose, because
he could move a little faster, to get into a railroad car that was
going in just the opposite direction. In short, their science was
like that discriminating salve which, being rubbed slightly on one
eye, disclosed all the treasures of the earth, but being applied to
both, resulted in total blindness. Yet to hear them talk of geological
formations, of strata and deposits, with their primitive and
secondary, it would seem as if they were thoroughly acquainted with
the diagnosis of their patient, and could put their finger on the very
spot in nature's loins where she had hutched the all-worshipped ore,
with as much certainty as a modern Esculapius can determine the seat
of a disease.

However, the second scientific miner had said it, and accordingly the
next morning after our arrival, and before the blisters had dried off
my feet, I set out with Number Four for Coloma, twenty-five miles
farther up the river. Our blankets were slung over our shoulders, and
we carried in our pockets a bit of bread and cheese to beguile the way
somewhat of its weariness. We commenced our journey in high spirits,
but had not walked more than two miles before the stiffening which my
limbs so much needed seemed all to have settled in my boots, where
it was not needed at all; and I found, to my indignant surprise and
consternation, that I, who had never, so to speak, been sick in my
life, was thus shamefully betrayed into a downright fit of dysentery.

It was now the middle of September, a season when the heat, if no
longer quite so intense, is even more oppressive than in summer; all
vegetation was burnt up, and the parched, dusty ground quivered in the
dizzy rays.

Loitering slowly under the scattered trees, and quickening our pace in
the unbroken sunshine, we came at noon to a circular sandy plain about
two miles in diameter, without a leaf in its whole extent, and glowing
under the fierce meridian like the focus of a burning-glass.

Collecting our forces for a desperate rally, we hurried in eager
emulation across this little desert, and found on the other side a
ranch, with a spring, shaded by a few solitary oaks, at some distance
from the roadside, and offering a convenient resting-place. We stopped
here several hours, nibbling at our bread and cheese, and scooping
up water from the spring in a cocoanut shell I had brought from Rio
Janeiro; but the sun playing "bo-peep" with us round the tree made it
impossible to sleep, and at length compelled us to resume our journey.
The country became, as we advanced, more and more hilly and thickly
wooded; and after crossing Weaver's Creek, a small stream four miles
from Coloma, the road seemed entirely made up of a succession of long
steep hills. The degree of exhaustion to which I was now reduced,
exceeded anything of which I had supposed the human frame was capable;
at the top of every hill I hurried forward, hoping to hear the roar
of the river, or to catch a glimpse of the tents of Coloma at the
bottom; more than once I threw myself on the ground with the full
determination to proceed no farther till morning, but the urgency of
my companion prevailed, and again I set forward to encounter the next
ascent.

It was long after dark when we at last saw the lights of the village
far below. Slowly winding down the long hill, we passed the scattered
suburbs of tents, with little groups of miners sitting round their
drowsy fires, and in a few minutes reached the store to which we had
been directed, where I sank onto a bench, as it seemed more dead than
alive.

They gave us for supper some wretched tea, of which I drank eagerly
four or five cups--cold stewed beans, and an apple-sauce of dried
peaches, of which I ate more sparingly, but my stomach, with superior
instinct, refused to retain any such villainous combination. We slept
on the dirty open floor of the dining-room, fanned by the night air
sifting through, cold and dust-laden--and lulled by the beating of
that mill that will henceforth, while the world stands, be more
renowned in story than many a royal palace. Among our companions
were two or three dogs continually running in and out, and smelling
round our faces, and a poor woman who had walked that day twenty-five
miles, with an infant in her arms, to meet her husband, and was now
inconsolable at his delay.

In the morning we walked out to see the place. It stands in a narrow
valley, hemmed in by high rugged hills, among which the South Fork
worms its way, sometimes dark and deep, but oftener widening into a
stream so shallow that it can almost be crossed dryshod. There by
its side was the mill that had made all this stir, worth a hundred
thousand dollars, yet working away ignobly, day and night, like any of
the thousand saw-mills that bestride the streams of New England.

After breakfast we borrowed a pick, pan and shovel of our landlord;
and, striking into a footpath over the hills, walked a mile down the
river to the bar so highly recommended by the second scientific miner.

This bar was much larger and higher than Mormon Island, with many
trees scattered over it; but its surface remained unbroken, and the
merry dash of the miner's rocker was nowhere heard. Near the lower end
a natural dam had formed a romantic little pond, with pebbly beaches
running down between the bushes into the water, where we saw the
fish glancing beneath the surface. A more commodious and delightful
spot for a miner's encampment could hardly be devised. The slender
pines were admirably fitted for a log house--the solitude was like
enchantment, and what could be pleasanter than to sit in some shady
nook, and fish all the long, lazy summer's day in those fairy waters?

But imperious necessity compelled us to shut our eyes to all these
features of delight, and to look simply at the amount of gold that
might be expected to reward our labour.

We selected a spot at the upper end of the bar, as most likely to
contain the precious metal, and at once set vigorously to work
throwing out, like two rampant antlions, the paving-stones and
gravel that came tumbling back upon us in the most vexatious manner.
Occasionally Number Four filled a pan half full of earth, and carried
it down to the river to wash out. The first trial gave nothing, the
second a little more, and at length we were so fortunate as to obtain
a panful that yielded the incredible sum of three cents. We rested an
hour at noon to eat our salt beef and biscuit, and again resumed our
labours, but with no better success; we returned to the attack the
next morning, and at another part of the bar; but three cents was the
best it could do for us, and we finally abandoned it in sore disgust.

Oh, that second scientific miner! and, oh, that "promising formation!"
Promising! yes, it was promising, but it lied consumedly.

In the afternoon, we met a number of our fellow-passengers who were
mining in the vicinity. The account they gave of the Coloma diggings
was not such as to induce us to remain any longer in the place,
and we determined to return to Mormon Island, without any further
explorations; the more especially, as we were somewhat tired of paying
nine dollars a day for such board and lodging as I have described.
As Number Four, however, preferred to wait till the next morning, I
set out alone at half-past four, expecting to finish my journey by
moonlight. To avoid the exquisite torture inflicted by my boots, I
cut off the tops of an old pair I picked up in the street--drew them
up over my feet like a napkin by a string passed through the four
corners--and thus, with my boots in my hand, shuffled along with that
awkward waddle peculiar to all the webfooted tribe. No one would have
had the slightest difficulty in following my trail, which, besides
the elephantine footprint, was marked at regular intervals, as by
mile-stones, by the little piles of dust and gravel I had emptied
out of these gouty appendages. This answered very well for several
miles, but by the time I reached Weaver Creek, the soles of my feet
had become so sore that I was obliged to resume my boots. The sun set
soon after, but I still proceeded very comfortably by aid of the moon,
though the deep shadows of the hills and trees sometimes hid the road
completely from view. About nine I came suddenly upon a piece of bog
that ran directly across the road, and which I had no recollection of
seeing on my way up; at the same moment, as ill luck would have it,
the moon dipped very ill-naturedly beneath the horizon, thus depriving
me of her light just when I could worst do without it.

While I was bewildering myself more and more in my vain attempts to
find a passage, a Will-o'-the-wisp-ish sort of light, dancing about
at no great distance, attracted my attention. I was greatly pleased,
on coming up with it, to find it of a more friendly character; a man
was looking after his cattle, and told me, in answer to my inquiries,
that the road here turned at right angles, and that the black shadow I
saw at a little distance was the Green Spring House, where it will be
recollected we had rested on our way to Coloma.

I should have remained at Green Spring all night, but unfortunately
I had left my blankets behind me, and had no desire to make the
acquaintance of the strange bedfellows one was sure to encounter in
a California inn. I stopped accordingly only long enough to obtain
a glass of water; the bar-keeper scowled because I did not ask for
brandy; and having at length, with some difficulty, found the road,
which ran just before the door, I again set forward. I at first
proceeded very slowly, stooping from time to time to make out my
course by the shimmer of the wheel-tracks; but becoming tired of this
species of locomotion, I pushed on more rapidly, and soon lost the
road altogether.

Fearing at length that I might be going in the wrong direction,
I pulled out my pocket-compass and a box of matches; and having
ascertained the position of the north star, determined to steer my
course as at sea, without turning to the right hand or the left. But
after what seemed many weary miles, no signs of life appearing, I
began to think I had passed the island, and was now perhaps half way
down to Sacramento. I knew, however, that the river was on my right;
I supposed it could not be far distant, and that, if I once succeeded
in reaching it, I should have no difficulty in determining my true
position. There never was a greater blunder--for more than an hour I
toiled on, over hill and valley, stopping now and then to catch the
far-off roar of the river, or any other sound that might prate of my
whereabouts. Suddenly I heard a dog bark far down the stream, and
then the lowing of a cow. These cheerful sounds gave me courage. I
pressed on, and soon saw below, the black-and-white water gliding
under the ghostly starlight, along its rocky channel. I scrambled
down, nearly breaking my neck in my eagerness, by tumbling over a
bank some ten feet high; and sitting on a lump of granite I dipped
my cocoanut again and again into the stream, and drained it with as
feverish relish as if I had been scorching beneath the sun of Sahara.

Finding it impossible to make my way along the craggy shore, I again
ascended the high ground, when I waded for a long time through a deep
sea of hemlock. Emerging from this I wandered on, by trees, and rocks,
and hills--nothing civilised, nothing moving but the coati and the
hare that "from my path fled like a shadow." I stopped and hallooed,
though half frightened at the sound of my own voice, but echo was the
only answer. On I went, further and further into the big blackness of
the night, feeling my way, as it were, by continued shouts, as a blind
man pokes his way with a cane. My efforts were at length successful.

"What in the d---- are you making such a hullabaloo for, at this time
o' night?" said a gruff voice coming out of the darkness. I looked
in the direction of the sound, and saw, close at my elbow where I
wondered I had not seen it before, a large wagon covered with white
cotton. Approaching somewhat nearer, I became aware of a head, to
which apparently the voice belonged, projecting tortoise-like from the
end of the wagon. In answer to my inquiries, the head, that in spite
of its first salutation, seemed a very good sort of a head, informed
me pleasantly enough that Mormon Island was only a mile below, and
that I could not fail to hit it. As I turned away, I heard a woman's
voice, sounding smothered out of the cart's belly, say, "poor fellow;"
and I blessed her with all her sisterhood.

About three in the morning, Capt. Bill suddenly awaking, was
dreadfully startled to perceive a tall figure standing at his feet.
He instantly aroused his companion, who, sitting up on end with most
courageous trembling, began fumbling under his head for a pistol,
while he boldly demanded "who's there?" No answer being returned, his
finger already pressed the fatal trigger, and another moment would
have ended my adventures before they had well begun, if I had not
made haste to relieve their fears by the assurance that I was not the
bloody thief and murderer they had been so quick to imagine.

I have been the more particular in describing this little bit of
travel, as it was our first experience of the varieties of California
life, and a fitting introduction to what was to follow. California
at that time was an almost unbroken wilderness, with a few villages
scattered at long intervals on the principal rivers, and a single
house here and there along the roads. The forests were supposed to
be infested by wild beasts and more savage Indians, and on this very
occasion I was startled more than once by hearing the dead branches
by the road side snapping under the tread of some heavy animal, which
I boldly maintained, gainsay it who will, must have been a grizzly
of the first magnitude; though I will allow that no animal more
formidable than a coati was ever seen in that neighbourhood.




CHAPTER X.


The next day was our first Sunday in the mines. It had not come
any too soon. Through the long sultry hours I lay stretched on my
blankets, watching the coquettish play of the leaves drawn on the
camera obscura of our canvass walls, and dreaming, oh! how dreamily!
of all we had left behind. At noon, Number Four made his appearance,
not at all fatigued by his journey; and, as it was probable that we
should now remain some time at Mormon Island, we determined to remove
to a pleasanter locality. We selected for this purpose the hill on
which the second scientific miner and his party had pitched their
tent, and by Monday night were snugly settled in our new quarters.

Having, as before, hung our tent on the north side of an evergreen
oak, we strewed the floor with pine twigs, and a species of coarse
hummocky grass that grew in great abundance on the rocky hill sides.
Our narrow bedsteads, hastily constructed of rough poles, resting
on low crotches driven into the ground, were made to fit into the
circumference of the tent, so that I could only sleep on my right
side, and Tertium could only sleep on his left, and there was no
turning over except by changing beds. A barrel of biscuit, a half
barrel of sugar, together with sundry bags of beans, and rice, and
pork, filled all the centre of the tent, leaving only room enough to
get in and out.

The hill, on which we had thus encamped, and where we remained several
months, rose directly from the river, and was agreeably shaded by
white and evergreen oaks, not standing close together or in clumps,
but at almost as regular intervals as the trees in an orchard, which
at a short distance they closely resembled. In front, looking down
the river, and towards the sunsetting, was the sleepy little village,
with its scattering suburbs of tents, peeping out among the hills, and
now and then, a heavy baggage-wagon, attended by a party of impatient
miners, slowly creeping down the Sacramento road beyond--the river
more to the right winding round the rocky island, swarming with men
like a great ant-hill--and, far beyond all, and forming a fitting
back-ground to the picture, a hill of surpassing beauty, rising in
successive terraces, as sharp and regular as if formed by art, to a
height of several hundred feet.

Five or six parties were encamped in our neighbourhood, and on the
summit of the hill, a hundred yards behind us, was a large tent,
occupied as a store by the same enterprising individual to whom we had
sold our tinware at Sacramento.

Tuesday, the Captain and Number Four were employed by the second
scientific miner in working his machine, for which they received the
usual wages, eight dollars a day, and also acquired some knowledge of
its operation. At the same time, as Tertium and I did not wish to be
idle, and had not yet obtained a rocker, we set to work on the river
bank with pans, modestly limiting our expectations to an ounce a piece.

Panning is to the beginner a very curious and mysterious operation. An
old miner had initiated my brother in the process, and he now gave me
the result of his experience. "You must do so, and so, and so," said
he, suiting the action to the word. I accordingly did as I was told,
shaking and whirling, and dipping with all my might, though with a
strange mixture of faith and unbelief as to the result.

There was nothing in the appearance of the earth to distinguish it
from what I had seen a thousand times at home. It was simply a mass
of sand, and stones, and gravel, such as is often found on our
sea-shores, and in the beds or along the banks of our more rapid
rivers. Yet this was the earth I had come twenty thousand miles to
seek, and in that earth, unnoticed among the baser substances, but
worth more than all of them, there lurked, so I was told, and so I
partly believed, divers grains of gold.

While I thus wondered, I had gradually thrown out the lighter sand
and gravel, but a portion of black sand still remained; and now, as
with gentle violence I sank the edge of the pan beneath the surface,
the inrushing water brought to view a few brighter grains contrasted,
and in appearance multiplied by this intimate mingling with their
sooty brethren. Good! I said, there must be at least two dollars; but
when the black sand was all floated out by the dipping process just
mentioned, I found, to my great mortification, that there was not more
than twenty-five cents.

That part of the bank which we had selected had already been once
dug over, and most of its riches abstracted; but as the first miners
had done their work in a careless and slovenly manner, contenting
themselves, as I had thought to do, not indeed with the biggest lumps,
but with the richest portions, they had left numerous little patches
scattered among and under the rocks that afforded very good pickings
to their successors. Our labour was not, however, in this instance
very profitable; we made only three dollars, and were glad the next
day to change our employment.

Number Four set out on an expedition of inquiry among the miners on
the North Fork,--Tertium took his place at the Virginia rocker--and I
was engaged to assist as a journeyman carpenter in putting up a small
iron house belonging to a Mr. Mowbray, who had lately arrived in the
diggings in such style as to produce an immense sensation.

He was a young man of good family and rather genteel figure--rich
and well educated--understood thoroughly the art of spending money,
but had probably never earned a dollar in his life. Tired at length
of this barren inactivity, and seized with a dreamy ambition to do
something in the world, he had pitched upon California as a suitable
field for his first essay. His plan of operations was equally bold
and ingenious; he determined to conquer nature, and transport the
comforts of civilization into her rude and rugged fastnesses. He had
no objection to the romance and excitement of a miner's life, but he
would have none of its accompanying hardships.

Naturalists have described a species of spider that, in order to
gratify its amphibious propensity, makes a diving bell of bubble, and
dwells in this palace of light secure beneath the waters. So Mowbray
plunging into an unaccustomed element, still carried about him his
bubble of old associations. In spite of the seeming greatness of the
change, his atmosphere was still the same; his nature had undergone
no transformation, and he walked now over the hills of California as
formerly along the pavements of Broadway. Others might sleep on the
ground, and live on pork and flapjacks, but he would sleep softly and
fare luxuriantly--they might toil for an ounce a day, he sought no
lesser game than thousands.

And if the most lavish expenditure of money had been all that was
wanting, his success would have been placed beyond all doubt. During
the three months of preparation previous to his departure, he had
forgotten nothing, however trifling, necessary to his undertaking.

You would have thought him a second Robinson Crusoe about to embark
voluntarily for his desert island. First and foremost came a chest of
tools, though I grievously fear that our dainty crusader could hardly
have told a chisel from a handsaw. But then, fortunately, he had a
scientific dictionary in two fat volumes, from which he could easily
obtain the necessary information. Next there was a horse-power, a
heavy mass of iron-wheels, so called, I suppose, because nobody but a
horse could move it--india-rubber pontoons, looking marvellously like
the skin of a huge black snake--a large tent of the same material to
use in prospecting--together with a whole army of picks and shovels,
to look at which you would suppose our hero had as many arms as
Briareus.

He had, too, a most knowing belly, and one that evidently abhorred
a vacuum as much as Dame Nature herself. According to the strictest
calculation, and assuming as a standard the most primitive of all
measures, the capacity of the respectable functionary mentioned in the
first line of this paragraph, there was of sugar, three hundred and
fifty--of Stewart's syrup, ditto--of cheese, sixty--of flour, eight
hundred--of tea and coffee, a thousand--of spices, pickles, preserves,
&c., six hundred--of pork, two hundred--and of beans, horresco
referens, not one.

These various luxuries, together with the house already mentioned,
and more than all, two mahogany bedsteads with mattrass and pillow,
excited the unqualified admiration of less fortunate or less sagacious
adventurers.

Certain sturdy miners indeed, who could carry all they owned upon
their backs, shrugged their shoulders at all this, and even laughed
outright at the mahogany bedsteads; but they were poor creatures who
could never by any possibility be made to appreciate an enterprise
conducted with such liberality and magnificence.

To supply his own want of practical knowledge, and thus make assurance
doubly sure, Mowbray had brought with him a companion of a very
different temper, and who seemed by his habits and education fitted
to make as useful an ally as the simple-hearted Friday; that most
delectable of blacks till Uncle Tom came to divide our sympathies. The
idea was a good one, but his selection was unfortunate. Our Friday was
a genuine cockney, who had never been out of the sound of Bow-bells,
or out of sight of St. Paul's. He had lived, to be sure, several
years in the United States, and professed to entertain the highest
admiration of our institutions, but had not really gained a new idea.
Indeed, he was not a man of ideas, but of education, or, to speak more
accurately, of instruction, and had no more to do with the formation
of his own mind than an india-rubber shoe has with that of the mould
that shapes it. He was obsequious to a fault, and even slavish in
his dependence, so that, as Capt. Bill observed, one wanted to kick
him for his humility. He had neither the versatility of a Yankee, or
of a cat in his composition--he could "make the thing, but not the
machine that makes it,"--and every sudden emergency took him entirely
by surprise. In the hands of a master he would undoubtedly have made
an efficient instrument, but in the hands of Mowbray he was worse than
useless.

It was to assist this character in erecting his house, that I was now
employed by Mowbray, who was himself suffering from dysentery, and
therefore unable to attend to it in person. The frame, which was only
ten feet by twelve, had been prepared under Friday's supervision; yet
the work had been done in such a bungling manner, that we were three
whole days in putting it together and fitting in the iron sheets that
formed the walls. When all was done, however, a very comfortable house
was the result, presenting in its air of snugness and security, a
marked contrast to the loose open tents by which it was surrounded.
Mowbray at once took possession, and assumed, by tacit consent of the
pork-and-flapjack democracy about him, some such state and dignity as
usually attaches to the great house of a country village.

Number Four returned on Friday; he had seen a number of our old
shipmates, who were mining on the North Fork, but though they were
generally doing better than with us, the advantage was too slight to
counterbalance the evils of a removal, and we accordingly made up our
minds to remain where we were.

The next Tuesday, which was the second of October, the long-looked
for machine for which we had finally bargained with the scientific
miner, made its appearance in an oblong box somewhat bigger than
a coffin. The omen was unfortunate, but in our infatuation we
disregarded every warning and rushed blindly on our fate. We found
the difficulty of putting the parts together greatly increased by
the carelessness of the construction and the improper nature of the
materials; and our vexation at this delay received a fresh accession
every time we compared the exorbitant price of the machine with its
actual value. Besides, we had insensibly come to regard the unwieldy
monster with doubt, if not with absolute aversion. I can not explain
now any more than I could then the sort of somnambulic process by
which we had arrived at this state of unbelief, but in some way the
conviction had been forcing itself upon us that neither the Virginia
rocker, nor California itself, were all we had so fondly imagined.
We had not yielded even so much as this without a struggle; machines
of a very similar construction were already at work on the island
and their owners were by no means getting rich, but then, as the
second scientific miner said, they were not exactly the same, and on
this apparently unimportant distinction depended the very secret of
success. There was one, however, exactly the same, but it had not
been thoroughly tried. Old miners smiled significantly at us as they
passed, and sneered at the company's expectations. But it was only
envy. Thus we disputed every inch of ground, still hoping against
hope, when our best friend would have been a wise despair.

The whole week was consumed in various operations. After putting
together the machine, and the heavy frame on which it rested, we
erected a stout scaffold ten feet high to support the pump and the
man who worked it, and who was thus raised to a very doubtful dignity
above his fellows. Spouts were also required to convey the water from
the pump to the rocker, and to make these we cut up the coffin already
mentioned, into long strips three or four inches wide. In all this it
is but fair to mention that we derived great advantage from the chest
of tools possessed by our friend Mowbray.

In the meantime we had bought for fifty dollars a claim on the island,
abandoning one that we already held, and which afterwards proved by
far the more valuable; and the first of the week, everything being in
readiness, Tertium mounted the scaffold--Number Four took his station
at the handle of the rocker--I assumed the responsible office of
feeder--and our two hired men, Capt. Bill being sick with dysentery,
were appointed hod carriers; the said hod being a large half-barrel
slung between two poles, and weighing, when full of earth, about as
much as three barrels of flour.

And now began the hardest labour I ever encountered--such labour as
that must be, when man is yoked, as it were, together with a lifeless
piece of mechanism, and compelled to keep time to its undeviating
regularity. Having once started there was no cessation--the rocker
must rock--the pumper must pump--and the digger must dig, as if life
depended upon their exertions,--the only rest was by change of labour.
As one hand left the handle of the machine, another slid into its
place--the one at the pump could not vacate his high office until his
successor had already mounted the scaffold, and the diggers must keep
ahead of us all.

"More dirt, more dirt," cries the feeder, and the next moment two
slender figures are seen rounding the corner of the hole, and
tottering, staggering, half running, half walking under their awkward
burden. Their poor legs, fit only for counter-jumping, seem fairly to
bend and buckle like a whalebone, as they slip and stumble over the
uneven path, and their faces, like our own, shrivel under the fire
that streams from the burning sun above, and burning stones below.

We rested three hours at noon, and finished our day's work of ten
hours about seven. And now for the gold!--a hundred hods of earth had
passed through the machine, and out of that quantity it should have
digested at least a hundred dollars. We should not wonder if there
were two hundred, but should feel satisfied, as it was the first day,
with only one. We gathered round, we three, and put our heads together
over the trough, now drawn part way out of its place, while our hired
men peeped respectfully over our shoulders.

Tipping the rocker first to one side, and then gently reversing the
position, the pure liquid quicksilver ran rapidly across the bottom,
while the amalgam lingered behind. Number Four scraped it up with his
fingers, and having squeezed and moulded it in his hand, disclosed
to our view a lump about as big as a bullet, and worth three or four
dollars.

On further examination we found that several pounds of quicksilver had
escaped from the rocker; and as this was worth quite as much as the
gold we had obtained, our first day's labour left us just one ounce in
debt. None but an Irishman could get rich in this way, so we betook
ourselves at once for consolation to the second scientific miner, who
somewhat reassured us by saying that it was no more than was to be
expected; that it required thirty or forty dollars to saturate the
quicksilver, which it seemed would do nothing until it had gorged
itself to repletion, and that the next day we should do better. He
also sent one of his company, a young gentleman who, either because
he had very long legs, or a good deal of whisker, and that sort of
nobility, was called Count Eggenheim, to discover the secret of our
losing so much quicksilver. The Count directed us to set the rocker
steeper, and rock more rapidly, seventy beats to a minute: and these
various alterations effected such an improvement that we made the
next day twenty dollars. But I will not weary the reader with a more
continued detail; at the end of five days, after paying for our hole
and hired labour, we had left just fifty cents apiece; and though
Capt. Bill still retained something of his early predilection fo

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