Prentice Mulford's story: life by land and sea

THE WHITE CROSS LIBRARY. ——————
Life by Land and Sea.
BY PRENTICE MULFORD.
NEW YORK: F. J. NEEDHAM, PUBLISHER, 52 West Fourteenth St. 1889.
Copyright, 1889 By F. J. NEEDHAM.

One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that “them stories about finding gold in Californy was all true.” It was “wash day” and our folks and some of the neighbors were gathered in the “wash house” while the colored help soused her fat black arms in the suds of the wash tub.
That was the first report I heard from California. Old Eben had been a man of the sea; was once captured by a pirate, and when he told the story, which he did once a week, he concluded by rolling up his trousers and showing the bullet-scars he had received.
California then was but a blotch of yellow on the schoolboy’s map of 1847. It was associated only with hides, tallow, and Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast.” It was thought of principally in connection with long-horned savage cattle, lassoes, and Mexicans. Very near this in general vacancy and mystery was the entire region west of the Rocky Mountains. What was known as the Indian Territory covered an area now occupied by half a dozen prosperous States. Texas was then the Mecca of adventurers and people who found it advisable to leave home suddenly. The phrase in those days, “Gone to Texas,” had a meaning almost equivalent to “Gone to the ——.” Then California took its place.
The report slumbered during the summer in our village, but in the fall it commenced kindling and by winter it was ablaze. The companies commenced forming. It was not entirely a strange land to some of our people.
Ours was a whaling village. Two-thirds of the male population were bred to the sea. Every boy knew the ropes of a ship as soon if not sooner than he did his multiplication table. Ours was a “travelled” community. They went nearer the North and South Poles than most people of their time and Behring Straits, the Kamschatkan coast, the sea of Japan, Rio Janeiro, Valparaiso, the Sandwich Islands, the Azores and the names of many other remote localities were words in every one’s mouth, and words, too, which we were familiar with from childhood. Many of our whalers had touched at San Francisco and Monterey. There had recently been a great break down in the whale fishery. Whale ships for sale were plentiful. Most of them were bought to carry the “’49” rush of merchandise and men to California.