The wooden wharves had for the most part been converted into charcoal, and the steamer was crowded with those who like ourselves were anxious to leave behind them so much desolation.
The mail steamer had come in from Panama, and ladies who had just arrived to find their husbands, houseless and ruined, were hurrying careworn from their toilsome journey sorrowfully to seek a temporary shelter in Sacramento. There were troupes of actors, who, forgetting all rivalry in their common adversity, felt the reality of tragedy. The fire bell had arrested their performances, and though they worked ever so manfully at the breaks, the temples of Thespis had been swept away in the storm, and with them their wardrobes and arrears of pay. There were professional gamblers for whom the losing card had now turned up, who, burnt out of their tinsel saloons, were starting for the mines, to commence life again in a thimble-rigging tent, until growing prosperous they could work gradually back again to San Francisco, where the tinsel saloons were already being rebuilt.
There were speculators who had a “snug lot� of flour or pork up country, and who were off to fetch it down and lock it up in store-ships, until the wants of the community should make it worth its weight in gold almost. There were small traders, whose debtor and creditor accounts had been, fortunately for them, buried in oblivion by the general ruin, and who talked furiously of their losses, and bespattered their hard fate with curses of the loudest and deepest character. And there were many who like myself had come to satisfy their curiosity, just as we go to the sea-shore and view the wreck of a noble ship; and these grew hilarious upon the strength of having lost nothing, and returned to their homes in famous good humour with themselves and all the world.
Passing Benicia we entered Suisun Bay, on the shores of which a city was attempted—New York by name—but failed. There is something to admire in the audacity of speculators, who finding themselves possessed of a few acres of swamp, wave their wands and order a city to appear. The working human tide of California ebbed and flowed past New York with great regularity, but all commands to arrest it, and direct it from its natural course were futile as regarded that city, which really presented no advantage that I could see. It is now dusk, and we enter the Sacramento river. Presently we pass a large steamboat going down, who gives us a close shave, and complimentarily strikes three bells, upon which we strike three bells; and in a few minutes we pass a small steamboat also going down, who gives us a closer shave, and shrieks three times out of something connected with her steam-pipe, upon which we groan three times out of something connected with our steam-pipe. These salutes are invariably observed, and the greater the rivalry between the boats, the louder they scream at each other.
The banks of the river are for the most part marshy, but in the fading light we catch glimpses here and there of small cultivated enclosures, with comfortable-looking shanties peeping between the oak trees. After supper everybody turns in, and at daylight we arrive at Sacramento.
Sacramento is built on the banks of the river, from the encroachments of which it is as often drowned as its sister city is burnt. The houses are gaily painted, and the American flag waves in every direction; the streets are wide, and some trees that have been left standing in the town give it a cheerful appearance.
It is an American town at the first glance; an immense quantity of sign-boards stare at you in every direction, and if anything would induce a man to purchase “Hay and Grain,� “Gallego Flour,� “Goshen Butter,� or any other article for which he has no want, it would be the astounding size of the capital letters, in which these good things are forced upon his notice.
Every other house is an hotel or boarding-house, for with few exceptions every one is put out to “livery,� as it were, in Sacramento; and in hard times, when cash is scarce, one half of the population may be said to feed the other half gratuitously, or on credit, which often amounts to the same thing, thus affording a beautiful illustration of mutual support and confidence.
Sacramento is terribly dusty; the great traffic to and from the mines grinds three or four inches of the top soil into a red powder, that distributes itself everywhere; it is the dirtiest dust I ever saw, and is never visited by a shower until the rainy season sets in, and suddenly converts it into a thick mud.
I was introduced to a club of Sacramento gentlemen, who had formed themselves into what they called a literary society. In their rooms was to be found what in those days was scarce, a tolerable collection of books and the periodicals of the day. They were very jovial fellows, well-informed, not so literary as I expected, and certainly quite free from pedantry. The most important ceremony at their meetings consisted in the members standing in a circle, upon which a Chinese hat of teetotum shape was spun in the centre, and the “literary savant,� who was indicated by a black mark on the hat when it ceased to spin, stood “drinks for the crowd.�