CHAPTER XXIV
MEXICAN METHODS OF CULTIVATION—FIRST STEAMSHIP THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE—"THE ARGONAUTS" OR "BOYS OF '49"—A LETTER FROM THE STATES—JOHN BAPTISTE—JAKIE LEAVES US—THE FIRST AMERICAN SCHOOL IN SONOMA.
By the first of March, 1849, carpenters had the frame of grandma's fine new two-story house enclosed, and the floors partly laid. Neighbors were hurrying to get their fields ploughed and planted, those without farming implements following the Mexican's crude method of ploughing the ground with wooden prongs and harrowing in the seed by dragging heavy brush over it.
They gladly turned to any tool that would complete the work by the time the roads to the mountains should be passable, and the diggings clear of snow. Their expectations might have been realized sooner, if a bluff old launch captain, with an eye to business for himself and San Francisco, had not appeared on the scene, shouting, "Ahoy" to everybody.
"I say, a steamship anchored in the Bay of San Francisco two days ago. She's the California. Steamed out of New York Harbor with merchandise. Stopped at Panama; there took aboard three hundred and fifty waiting passengers that had cut across country—a mixture of men from all parts of the United States, who have come to carry off the gold diggings, root and branch! Others are coming in shiploads as fast as they can. Now mark my words, and mark them well: provisions is going to run mighty short, and if this valley wants any, it had better send for them pretty damn quick!"
By return boat, farmers, shopkeepers, and carpenters hastened to San Francisco. All were eager for supplies from the first steamship that had entered the Golden Gate—the first, it may be added, that most of them, even those of a sea-going past, had ever seen.
During the absence of husbands, we little girls were loaned separately nights to timid wives who had no children to keep them company. Georgia went earlier and stayed later than I, because grandma could not spare me in the evenings until after the cows were turned out, and she needed me in the mornings before sunrise. Those who borrowed us made our stays so pleasant that we felt at home in many different houses.
Once, however, I encountered danger on my early homeward trip.