"All's not Gold that Glitters;" or, The Young Californian

by Alice B. Haven

The clothes that Mrs. Gilman so carefully prepared, were reduced to a very small compass, when they selected what they could carry to the mines. Where every thing had to be paid for at the rate of twenty cents a pound, and provisions and mining tools were indispensable, ordinary baggage was not to be thought of. Many boys of Sam’s age think it impossible to leave home for a quarter at boarding-school, without at least “five changes of raiment”—not to mention dressing case, desk and carpet bag, including a silver fork and spoon. The catalogue of the young miner’s outfit was very brief. The clothes he wore—two shirts, and a huge jack-knife, with a common share in the pans, pick-axes and shovels, a tin cup, frying-pan, and coffee-pot. Boarding-school fare, much as it is berated, would be considered a feast in comparison to the crackers, jerked and salt beef—packed with their “assorted cargo”—the stock of provisions that was to last them to the mines.

Sam felt very dignified and Robinson Crusoe-ish, as he stuck his knife in a new leather belt, and slung a coarse blue blanket that was to serve as a bed,—mattress, quilts, pillows, and all,—over his shoulder. He found the last slightly uncomfortable when the sun beat down upon the narrow deck, and was obliged to deposit it ignobly beneath him. He was ready for any kind of adventure in the morning, Indians, coyotes or bears, but such an unworthy foe as a mosquito cloud damped his ardor very considerably. He was not at all prepared for the early advances these tormenting little insects made, nor the perseverance with which the attack was followed up. He could readily believe the stories some of the passengers told, of men who had gone mad from their torments, and especially of a thief, who could not be made to confess by the lash, or any threat of death, but came to terms very suddenly when tied to a tree, where he was exposed, defenceless, to a swarm of mosquitoes. Some of these men had already been to the mines, and were returning with supplies from San Francisco. Their marvellous stories of the increasing abundance of the gold, the great yield of the gulches on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, and the ease with which it was attained, elated Mr. Gilman wonderfully. He was in better humor all through the trip than he had been since leaving New-York, and talked more to Sam of home. To have listened to him, any one would have thought he had always been a most loving and considerate husband, and was now exiled from all that he cared for, a martyr for their sakes; when the truth was, he had wasted all that belonged to them, and came away when his wife would willingly have worked twice as hard, rather than have him and her son exposed to the hardships and temptations they were now encountering.

The low, foliage-covered banks of the Sacramento looked pleasant, late as it was in the season, to those who had been so long on ship-board. Sometimes they had a distant glimpse of the mountainous country they were approaching, through the glades and openings along the bank. Then the river spread through the tule-marshes, all overflowed in the rainy season, but now only beds of rank coarse rushes. The voyage to Sacramento City, which lasted three days, was on the whole monotonous and uncomfortable, varied only by a succession of mosquito battles, or going on shore as the sloop warped slowly through the cut-away, a kind of canal, made by a turn in the river, which had forced its way through, instead of winding around a jutting point of land.

Sacramento City, like San Francisco, they found to be a collection of temporary houses, half the population living in tents, which were pitched under the old forest trees, so recently standing there in solitude. The streets were more regularly laid out, and filled with a motley crowd, the teams of emigrants and miners arriving and departing constantly. The canvas-covered stores were as busy as if they had been the most respectable brick warehouses, quick sales and large profits being the order of the day. The cattle market and auction sales going on in the open air, called together the oddest looking people Sam had ever seen; genuine miners, with their faces and hands like leather, their long beards and careless dress being the most noticeable. It was certainly a great contrast to the quiet routine of New England village life, more so even than the narrow, crowded streets of Rio; and Sam sometimes thought he must be dreaming over Gulliver’s Travels in the great barn chamber. What had altered him most of any thing since leaving home, was having no companion his own age. He had lived among men, and listened to their conversation, until he had almost lost the fresh simplicity of boyhood. When he first comprehended his father’s faults, it took away his simple faith, and the care which his mother impressed on him, had changed the ordinary feeling between father and son. Painfully sensitive to every weakness in his father’s habits and disposition, he could not bear any one else to notice them, and never thought for a moment that there was any less claim on his obedience. Yet the first love and devotion of his heart was his mother’s. It was the same everywhere; up aloft on the Swiftsure, watching for a sail, toiling on the hot beach at San Francisco, or lying in a dream of home, as the sloop glided up the Sacramento, the thought of his mother brought a glow to his heart, and often tears to his eyes. She should not be disappointed in him at any rate, he said to himself, a hundred times, as he remembered the troubled, anxious look he had seen at times steal over her cheerful face.

CHAPTER IX.
THE PLAINS.

Sam did wish Ben could have seen them, as they started across the plains in the wake of the team on which their cooking and mining utensils were carried. Several of the sloop’s passengers had joined the party, so that the wagon was heavily loaded, and the oxen toiled patiently along. Before them stretched an endless reach of level country, the road winding through it past clumps of oaks, that dotted the plain like islands, for miles and miles, with scarcely a shrub or rock to break the uniformity. The only danger to be dreaded was a scarcity of food for the oxen, and water for themselves. The springs and wayside pools had all disappeared in the heat of the dry season, and every person carried their bottle of water, as carefully as if it had been some costly luxury. If water had been the only liquid that the party carried, it would perhaps have been better for many of them, Mr. Gilman included.

The afternoon shadows were stretching from the tents pitched on the outskirts of Sacramento, when they left it, and the first stage of their journey lengthened to midnight. The owner of the oxen, a fortune in themselves at this time, took good care to guide them to a spring, and here they halted for the night. The cattle were turned loose to graze, fires were built of dry twigs and branches, kettles boiled, and beef hissed in the frying-pan. Sam was installed the cook for their party. His father stretched himself on the grass as soon as possible, and Colcord knew very little about the matter. It was no hardship to the young cook, who watched the rest of the party, and practised on his recollections of the galley of the Swiftsure. Never had beef or coffee tasted like that to him, though he was no more remarkable for a bad appetite than most boys of his age, at any time. He was so delighted with his success, that he thought it was useless to try to go to sleep. And so it was. He found it the very easiest thing in the world, once rolled in his blanket, watching the moonlight flicker through the leaves on the queer figures stretched around him.

Long before daylight the little camp was again in motion, the remnants of the last night’s supper made them a hurried meal, the kettles were slung to the wagon, the oxen driven in and harnessed, the water bottles filled, and they were miles on their journey when the sun rose. This early start was to avoid the great heat of the unsheltered road at mid-day, and halting as before, at a clump of low scrub oaks, they lolled around in what shade they could find, cooked their dinners, and waited until almost nightfall to recommence their journey.

The fourth day they were not so successful in finding water. They were later in starting, as the cattle had strayed some distance, and the sun came out hot and red. Neither the men nor animals were fresh, the loose gravelly ridges of the road impeded them, and their flasks were all empty, from the lengthened merry-making of the night before. The straggling party dragged slowly along, their steps impeded by as little clothing as it was possible to wear. The patient oxen lolled their parched tongues, and the jokes and snatches of negro melodies, with which the men beguiled the time, died away in an ominous quiet. They had not breath to waste even in complaining. It was almost noon when they came to a shallow stagnant pool, mantling with green mould, and the driver tried in vain to make them pass it without halting. He expected to find a spring by digging in the dry hollows, through which the road sometimes ran; but they would not listen to him in their frantic thirst. Some of the party threw themselves on the ground, and drank where the oxen themselves turned away, and then sickened of the nauseous draught. Others tried in vain to conquer their disgust, and but moistened their parched lips.