CHAPTER XIII.
FIRE.
“Well, what now?” one of his neighbors called out, as Sam struck his shovel into the ground and turned over his pan face downwards, one fine April morning. The men were in high spirits, for the rains were nearly over, and every thing promised a successful season.
“I’m going to the States—that’s all—off in the first boat, and want to sell out cheap.—What’ll you give for every thing as it stands, tent and all—give us a bid.”
“Two ounces; they ain’t much use now, the dry season’s coming,” said the man, concisely. He had been sharing the tent and accommodating himself with its kitchen department, for a weekly sum, since his arrival at Free Man’s Diggings, a month before, and did not mind becoming proprietor instead of boarder. It did not need much time or many words to make a bargain in those early days of California.
“I’ll take it,” from Sam was all that was necessary, and with this, in addition to his careful winter’s work, he was the possessor of nine hundred dollars. It was very little,—but it would take him home, and they could hire the old place, which he had hoped to buy back again. This hope had helped him through many a hard day’s work. Never mind—it was not the first disappointment he had met with. He could help his mother along somehow—and see her he must. The feeling was not exactly home-sickness; it was a hearty disgust of every thing around him. The monotony of a miner’s life seemed unbearable that morning, with the bright sunshine and perfumed foliage reminding him of the spring at home. No such intention as starting for it had crossed his mind when he went out as usual. The fresh wind made him think of what the farmers were doing on the hill sides of New England. The lowing of oxen, the tinkle of bells from the pasture, seemed to sound in his ears. He thought of the brown earth, turning up with its fresh smell, in long unbroken furrows,—the children going to school along the road, with their books and dinner baskets!
He struck down his shovel, and said to himself, he would go home to civilized life, that was the end of it. He had enough to take him there and hands to work with afterwards.
In two hours more he was on the road to San Francisco; his gold dust, sewn up in a little canvas bag, was not a very heavy burden. He whistled as he went along with a lighter heart than he had had for many a day; and found himself once more floating on the Sacramento, before he had time to change his mind. Perhaps it was just as well,—many a man worked on and on, to find himself without the means to come home when health and strength gave out.
Sam did not “rub his eyes” at this first glimpse of San Francisco,—as his favorite princes in the Arabian Nights always used to when things astonished them; but it seemed quite as much like the change of magic, as any thing in those enchanted pages. He had left, not a year ago, a crowd of tents scattered along an open beach, with a few old frame houses, looking like any thing but a city. Now a flourishing metropolis, with streets, and stores, and hotels, invaded the hills and extended into Happy Valley, where the smoke of manufactories was going steadily up. Warehouses stood beside the bay, and a wharf stretched out at the very spot where he had landed, on an empty beach, with vessels discharging their cargoes, as he had seen on the piers and docks of New-York. When he landed and went into the hurry of the crowd, it seemed stranger still. The rough dress of the miners was conspicuous among them, and he saw shops, with every article of use and luxury for sale as in the States. Hotels had grown up around the old Plaza, now re-named as Portsmouth Square; and merchants collected in the piazzas and talked of business, and “the markets,” the day’s transactions being over, as they would have done on the steps of the Astor or the Tremont House.
It was, indeed, “magic,” but the magic of industry and enterprise, such as never has been heard of in the history of the world. San Francisco seemed to reverse the meaning of the old proverb, “Rome was not built in a day.”
Sam went to bed that night, one among twenty tenants of a large room in a lodging house, near Portsmouth Square; the first time he had slept under a roof, since leaving the coast. He was completely bewildered with all he had seen and heard, and so tired that he fell asleep, in the midst of the talking and confusion around him five minutes after he had placed his travelling companion, the canvas bag, under his head for safe keeping.