The stage coach was of American manufacture, and of the class known as “Concord� coaches. It carried nine inside and two out. Our driver was a colonel, and his name was Reed. He was one of the best of whips, and, as proprietor of the line by which we were now travelling, he was making money very fast. Having been forestalled in the box seat by a very hairy miner, I completed, in company with Mr. Joe Bellow, the complement inside, after paying the gallant colonel an “ounce� for passage money. This was a “reduced fare,� occasioned by an opposition having lately made its appearance on the Sonora road; the bare mention of this emulative vehicle raised the colonel’s “dander.� With a crack of the whip we started at a good pace, behind four well-built, active beasts, not over-groomed, or “turned out� very expensively as to harness, but famous goers, and good for ten miles an hour over the plain.
Lines of stages now traverse the country in every direction, and there is scarcely a canvass mining village that is debarred from communication in this way with the principal towns. The horses used by these lines are of the best quality, for a Yankee stage driver knows wherein true economy lies; but the capital required to start a line is very considerable, and as soon as the profits begin to “tumble in pretty freely,â€� as Colonel Reed remarked, up starts an opposition; for stage-driving is a favourite speculation! Our inside passengers consisted of a young Canadian woman, who travelled under the protection of an ill-looking dog, a kind of Irish Yankee, who was very quarrelsome and bumptious, and carried his revolver in a very prominent position. We had two or three miners, who, as a matter of course, brought their rifles and blankets with them into the coach, and who squirted their juice at passing objects on the road with astonishing accuracy. We had, however, one decided character. This was a man who, as he gratuitously informed us, was professionally a bear hunter, bear trapper, and bear fighter; who, in fact, dealt generally in grizzly bears. When he shot bears—and it appeared he lived in the mountains—he sold the meat and cured the skins; but when he was fortunate enough to trap a fine grizzly alive, a rich harvest generally awaited him. The grizzly was immediately transferred, bound head and foot, to a large and strong cage; and this, being mounted on the bed of a waggon, the animal was despatched to some large mining town in the vicinity, where notice was given, by means of handbills and posters, that “on the Sunday following the famous grizzly bear, ‘America,’ would fight a wild bull, &c., &c. Admission, five dollars.â€�
A bull and bear fight is, of all exhibitions of this description, the most cruel and senseless. The bear, cramped in his limbs by the strict confinement that his strength and ferocity have rendered necessary, is placed in the arena; and attached to him by a rope is a bull, generally of fine shape and courage, and fresh from the mountains. Neither animal has fair play, and indeed, in most instances, each one avoids the other. The bull’s power of attack is weakened by the shortness of the tether, whilst the bear, as above mentioned, has scarcely the free use of his muscles.
The bull invariably commences the attack, and the immense power of the bear’s fore-arm is then exemplified; for, raising himself on his hams, he meets the coming shock by literally boxing the bull’s ears; but this open-handed blow saves his entrails, and the bull swerves half stunned, whilst his horns graze Bruin’s skin. But if the bull approaches in a snuffing, inquisitive kind of manner, the bear will very probably seize his enemy’s nose and half suffocate him in his grip. The fight generally ends without much damage on either side, for the simple reason that neither of the combatants means mischief.
I was sleeping one night at Campo Seco, a mining village in the southern mines, the houses of which were, for the most part, composed of canvass, the “balance,� as they say here, being of muslin. The camp was very full, as on the day previous, Sunday, a long-expected fight had come off between a grizzly bear and a cinnamon bear. I had heard that, after an uninterrupted embrace between the two of about four hours, the grizzly had been declared the victor, which was not so extraordinary, considering that he weighed about 1200 lbs., and that you could not have driven a tenpenny nail through his hide, whilst the cinnamon’s weight was quoted at 400 lbs. I was “putting up� with an acquaintance who kept a store in a small canvass house, and he having, with true mining generosity, opened a bale of new red blankets for my temporary accommodation, I was soon asleep. About daylight I was awoke by what I imagined to be the moaning of a man in pain, and the occasional disturbance of the canvass wall nearest my sleeping-place satisfied me as to the locality. The moaning soon became deeper, and occasionally the canvass yielded to some heavy weight that pressed against it. Presently was heard a smash of crockery and a tremendous roar; upon which my host started up, and, placing a revolver in my hand and seizing his rifle, he rushed out of the tent, vociferating, “Come on.� Following him into the adjoining room, which formed his kitchen and occasionally a stable for his old mule, my eyes at once lit upon the cinnamon bear, whom my host had provided with lodging at the nightly charge of one dollar. The bear was fortunately chained to a strong stake in the centre of the hut, otherwise, “all smarting, with his wounds being cold,� he looked, judging from as much of his eyes as one could distinguish in his swollen face, as if it would be grateful to him to set-to with something as much smaller than himself as he was smaller than his late antagonist. Upon an after inspection of his chain I ascertained that its length would have admitted his gratifying this desire on my carcase, had he tumbled through the canvass partition which had separated us for the night.
The weather being at this time fine and the roads in good order, we passed, throughout the whole length of our journey, innumerable waggons laden with winter provisions for the mines; and droves of mules—patient little brutes, some as small as donkeys, staggering under barrels of liquor and cases as big as themselves; each drove led, as a matter of course, by an old white mare with a bell.
As we neared the Stanislaus River, distant thirty miles from Stockton, every one inside became sociable, except the Irishman, whose jealousy had been aroused to a fearful pitch by J. Bellow, who entertained the fair Canadian in French, a language unknown to her protector. During our journey J. B. had not been inactive, having already disposed, conditionally, of sundry bags of sugar to the miners, and a box or two of German cigars to the bear hunter; samples of these articles having been extracted from his capacious pocket. Crossing the river Stanislaus at a fordable spot, we pulled up at a large wooden house, and alighted to dine and wash off the dust with which we were covered.
The immense traffic carried on on the roads that lead to the mining regions affords an extensive field for the profitable management of houses of entertainment. These may be encountered at almost every mile throughout the whole country, and they vary in size from a wooden two-story house to the very smallest kind of canvass shanty.
There seems to be a certain hour of the day for every traveller in California to breakfast, dine, or sup; and should he not arrive at a roadside house at one of these specified hours, he will get no meal; and could the traveller by any possibility be present at each and every hostel at the same moment, he would find a stereotyped bill of fare, consisting, with little variation, of a tough beefsteak, boiled potatoes, stewed beans, a nasty compound of dried apples, and a jug of molasses. He would then sit down at the summons of a bell in company with all the tagrag and bobtail of the road who might have congregated for the repast in question: and, if inclined to follow the custom of the country, he would, with the point of his knife, (made blunt for this purpose) taste of the various condiments, butter included, that were ranged before him, and, selecting as many of these as were suited to his taste, he would pile them on his plate, demolish them with relish, and depart on his way in peace. Travel where you will in California, you may rest assured that of the foregoing will your meal be composed, and in nearly such a manner must you eat it.
Dinner over, we mounted a strong spring waggon in exchange for our covered coach, which had too much top hamper for the mountain trail we had before us. We had now six horses, all American, good sound cattle, that had come to California across the plains, and were well broken in to crossing gulches and mud-holes. We were soon in a different style of country. Hitherto we had been crossing a level track across the Stockton plain, interrupted by an occasional dive into a dry gulch; now we commenced at once to ascend the hilly country which first indicates the approach to the mining regions. The road to Sonora, as indeed to most places in this country, has never been laid out by Government, but is, in fact, a natural trail or path marked out by the first pioneer waggons that passed that way, deviated from, from time to time, as experience indicated a shorter cut; receiving no assistance from the hand of man, and encountering a vast number of obstacles from the hand of nature.