In this age, when so many of our countrymen are emigrating, it becomes almost the duty of a traveller to recount any experience that may tend to the benefit of those who go after him; and therefore I trust that in remarks similar to the foregoing, which may or may not affect a peculiar branch of trade, I may be exonerated from any other intention than that of benefiting others by my experience. I have seen so many metal and wooden houses thrown away (I have seen in one heap of rubbish the value of ten thousand pounds), that I would recommend to the emigrant of moderate means not to purchase either the one or the other. If new gold fields are discovered, as most probably they will be, and reports are rife of house room commanding enormous prices there, never for all that let him take his shell out, snail-like, on his back; let him take the money that would buy the house—the cash will be the scarcest article there, and will find him house-room and a profit too. Perhaps nowhere has my argument been better proved than in California. Large numbers of iron houses were shipped to that country when first reports arrived of the scarcity of building materials. Had they been capable of resisting fire they would perhaps have been less generally condemned, but of those that were erected, not only did the thin corrugated houses first expand and then collapse, and tumble down with astonishing rapidity before the flames, but in the fire I have just recorded the American iron house of Taeffe and M’Cahill, of which the plates were nearly an inch in thickness, and the castings of apparently unnecessary weight, collapsed like a preserved-meat can, and destroyed six persons, who, believing it to be fire-proof, remained inside. And, in connection with this subject, it is worthy of mention that when these houses arrived in California there was no one to be found who could put them together; not but that the method is very simple, but simple things, as we all know, present great difficulties at times in their solution.
A friend of mine employed a man for a long time at four pounds a day, merely to superintend the erection of an iron hotel; it was completed at last, and, although it had a somewhat lopsided appearance it looked pretty well under the influence of light-green paint; but the fire came and it “caved in,� as the Americans say.
This discussion on iron buildings would have found no place here, had not these cheerless tenements been connected with a speculation into which I was at this time induced to enter: nor would the speculation have been alluded to, particularly as it turned out a failure, were it not again inseparably connected with a peculiar feature of the country.
It appeared that the state was looking about at this time for a site on which to erect a capital, where, free from the busy hum of men, the representatives of the people might meet and do their country’s work. Upon the condition that General Vallejo would expend a large amount in the erection of public buildings, a part of this gentleman’s property was selected by the then Governor as the “seat of government,� and upon that, a few scrubby-looking hills that bordered on the bay, were surveyed and staked off, and there was your town of “Vallejo.�
About this time a store-ship, laden with iron houses, belonging to a friend of mine, sunk at her moorings during a heavy gale. When raised she was so full of mud, clay, and small crabs that there was no possibility of rendering her cargo fit for sale at San Francisco. The bright idea occurred to me of landing these muddy materials at Vallejo, and, after allowing the tide to clean them, to convert them to some use in assisting to erect this capital that was to be “made to order.� Landing my cargo on Vallejo beach at low water mark, Canute-like, I ordered the tide to complete the very dirty work I had set before it, which it did, and, to finish the story here, in the course of six months I erected a very handsome hotel out of the materials. I felt rather pleased when it was finished, and painted, and handsomely furnished, to think what a butterfly I had turned out of the very dirty grub I had found in the hold of the old hulk. But the moral of the story lies in the fact that at this juncture the government altered their minds relative to the site of the capital, and selected Benicia in preference.
The city “made to order� was then pulled down and sold for old materials, to the great delight, as may be imagined, of myself and the other speculators who had worked so assiduously to raise it, and who had received no compensation. It is quite like the story of the Enchanted City, that was up one day and down the next; but somehow I don’t find so much pleasure in recalling the history of Vallejo as I did as a boy in reading the fairy tale.
The hills of Vallejo are destitute of game, but abound in coyotes, who lead a predatory life, not altogether, I suspect, free from care or anxiety, as, excepting in the calving season, they are dependent for food on the chance carcase of some poor mired bull or over-driven mule; and, as these casualties are not of very frequent occurrence, I feel satisfied that hunger and the coyote know each other. And indeed he has, in a great measure, himself alone to blame that his stomach is always either too empty or too full; for this fellow, when he gets a meal, raises such a hue and cry in the dead of night as effectually warns all savoury animals to avoid his presence.
In the calving season the coyotes are in clover, and the little veals fall an easy prey to a pack of these nocturnal robbers. In winter, when the wild geese cover the hills, I doubt if the coyote gains much permanent benefit, judging from the fact that I have seldom found feathers. The geese encamp in vast armies, and at times perhaps outlying picquets and sentries asleep on their post get cut off by the enemy; but the wild goose, fool as he may be, has just so much keen relish for a good joke as to allow the coyote to reach a point where expectation has resolved itself into certainty, and then the goose decamps, harassed undoubtedly, but whole in body. The coyote has more of the dog than the fox in his composition, and is a bungling poacher at any time; one feature alone of his character proves this, inasmuch that, when suddenly disturbed, he runs but a few yards, then stops, turns round and looks at you. A Norfolk poaching lurcher knows better than that, he would never turn his face to you for fear you should identify him, at least so Barnes tells me, and he ought to know; but the most satisfactory proof that the coyote is a weak forager exists in the conclusive fact that you seldom shoot one that has anything in his stomach.
As, therefore, there was no employment for my rifle at Benicia, I was thrown on my resources for amusement. Fortune again favoured me; fortune, by the way, always has favoured me when I have been in pursuit of amusement, but she snubs me amazingly whenever my designs are in the least degree mercenary, which leads me to infer that that divinity is of rather a jovial disposition than otherwise.
In one day’s search I secured two horses, one gig, three well-formed Australian kangaroo dogs, and three blood-hound whelps, just arrived from Hobart Town; these being shipped in a small schooner, in company with my iron shooting box, I started for San Luis, and called on Ramsey, who had probably forgotten me. I urged him at once to come and be a Vallejo-ite; he demurred at first, but, alas, we are all mortal; pointing with one hand to his buckskins and hunting saddle, rotting from disuse, with the other I directed his attention to my greyhounds, then I uttered one word, “coyotes,â€� and Ramsey struck his flag in passive submission to his destiny—and followed me.