The voyage up the Pacific was a delightful one. The water was as smooth as glass with not a ripple to break its mirror-like surface—nothing but an undulating, regular swell, like the pulsations of the human heart. We were in sight of land nearly all the way. The mountain scenery, although so distant, was grand with the coast range of mountains, rising skyward thousands of feet, peak after peak, occasionally a nearly extinct volcano belching forth smoke, and all covered with a forest of dark, perpetual green. My only fear was that being so near the coast, we might run onto a sunken rock.

Aside from the view of the coast the voyage was devoid of interest. Occasionally whales were seen at a distance, blowing water as they came to the surface to breathe. We had a fine view of one which came alongside the vessel, within 30 feet, as I remember it. He played around the ship several minutes, finally diving and throwing his tail high in the air. A number of blackfish—a fish weighing I judged from 600 to 1000 pounds—followed in the wake of the vessel, for several days, apparently seeking the refuse as it was thrown overboard.

Three days before the trip ended it was announced that our provisions were giving out and we would have to submit to close rations. The coal was also giving out; in fact everything that would burn, oil, pork, resin and every surplus spar, was used up. We were reduced to sour krout for the last meal we had on board, the morning we entered San Francisco Bay. I have often wondered why I escaped death from eating that meal. I was very hungry from the short rations, and I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal better. I must have stowed away at least a quart with no bad result.

The only stop we made was at San Diego where the Bay is quite large, but I judged shallow, the entrance so narrow that one could almost have jumped ashore from the vessel. Cape St. Lucas is usually a very windy locality, similar to Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic; it blew very strong when we rounded it and at that point we passed through what appeared to be oil, very offensive and foul smelling, covering a large area of water—and supposed to have come from a burned whale ship.

The entrance of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate and the bay itself, are marvelous works of nature. The “gate” is narrow, perhaps 200 feet wide—just a gap out of solid rock, rising perpendicularly upon each side perhaps some hundreds of feet. When we passed through, the tide was going out with a velocity, bewildering and frightful to behold. It did not seem possible that our vessel could move in the current but she proudly walked through, like a strong sea monster. As she was entering the bay what a marvelous scene was presented to the eye—a vast expanse of fathomless water running sixty miles north and sixty south from the gate and thus one hundred and twenty miles in length and having an average of ten miles of width. This reservoir of two mighty rivers—the Sacramento and San Juaquin—draining the entire country west of the Sierra Nevada range of mountains, has all to be emptied into the ocean through that narrow “gate,” and is truly one of the greatest marvels on the globe. The entire floating war vessels of the world could find anchorage with room for more. How strange that all this wonderful arrangement of nature for the benefit of man should have lain idle, and comparatively of no benefit, until it came into the possession of Yankee enterprise and of a nation the youngest in history and then hardly out of its teens. With what rapidity it has arisen in importance within the past forty years. Has blind chance caused this marvelous advancement?

The Bristol and California Co. the name of our mining association was made up of the following members: George W. Bartholomew, manager, Wellington Winston and Isaac Pierce of Bristol, Conn., Jared Goodrich, Andrew Jackson Norton, A. L. Dodge, Geo. W. Dresser, Eldridge Atkins, and the writer, all of Plainville, Conn. Bartholomew, Pierce, Goodrich, Norton, Dodge, with the writer are still alive, the writer being the youngest except Dodge. To Norton I am doubtless indebted for my life and ability thus to make a public record of our story; further history of this fact in detail will be given later on and I will simply say here that a more noble-hearted, self-sacrificing man never lived. May the declining years of “Capt. Dick” be as peaceful and happy, as he deserves to have them.

Large vessels, like the “Panama,” had to anchor three miles from shore in the bay; passengers and freight were sent ashore in lighters. This shallow water has now been done away with by filling in and docking out to deep water so that the business portion of the city of San Francisco stands now where then was water.

V.
SAN FRANCISCO AND SACRAMENTO.
1849.

The city of San Francisco[98] then had perhaps a hundred board shanties and cloth tents scattered about. We arrived the fourth day of June and when we returned from the gold diggings the next October there were blocks of buildings, three and four stories high, a busy city of 15,000 inhabitants as estimated. The most prominent business was gambling. Thousands of dollars, yes hundreds of thousands, in gold dust, I have seen lying upon the table awaiting the turn of a single card or the wheel.[99]