Our houses faced the main street of Tuttle Town; this at the time was indicated by stakes, there being as yet but three buildings in the place. Higher up the hill and near the main shaft were eight Mexican miners, whom I had hired for the purpose of quarrying the ore; having supplied these with about twenty yards of canvas, half a dozen raw bullock hides, an unlimited quantity of beans and a frying-pan, they made themselves very comfortable in their own way. I must not omit to mention that I had a canvas stable for our four horses, not that these required any shelter during the warm dry nights, but simply because I wished to avoid the inconvenience of losing twelve of my party at once, and finding some morning that my four horses and eight Mexicans had departed in company. Most of the Mexicans of California are from Sonora,[18] and horse-stealing is a characteristic weakness of that country. These people become such adepts at this trade, that I dare say if a party of them were to visit New York, they would steal the woolly colt out of Barnum’s Museum, although to lure a dead horse from a man of that gentleman’s acuteness, would require a great amount of ingenuity and patience.
Having now established myself at the mines, it is incumbent on me to explain to the patient reader my exact position there, as otherwise I shall be accused of having attempted to accomplish that for which I was incapacitated, a censure which I do not wish to be applied to me otherwise than as an author, in which quality I must perforce admit its truth.
My object at Tuttle Town was to test the value of the quartz vein there, and if with the assistance of such miners as I had engaged, I could satisfy myself that the vein held out sufficient promise of remuneration, it had been agreed between myself and a friend at San Francisco (he whose death I have recorded) that sufficient machinery should be erected to give the ore a fair experimental trial.
Amateur performances are seldom successful; and whether he wishes to fatten short-horn bullocks for an agricultural show, or take the helm of his yacht in a race for the cup, your amateur in one way or the other, generally “comes out wrong.� “Chacun a son metier,� is a motto more generally applicable than we are willing to admit, although there are few of us who have not tried something that we had no business with. Still man is emulous and vain, and until the end of the world fat Muggins will waltz, ignorant Foodle will talk, and travellers like myself will appear in print, and let us appear ever so ridiculous to others, we cannot, and will not, acknowledge that “every one to his trade� applies in any degree to us. But where a new course is opened for emulation, all may start in the race, and former experience bore so little on the subject of the quartz mines of California, and the means of extracting the gold therefrom, that I entered upon my new employment with no more difficulties to contend against than others in the same field. And this, be it understood, should always give courage and confidence in a new country, for although a little more retiring modesty would become both Muggins and Foodle (not forgetting myself in a literary capacity), the same diffidence in the mines of California would act as a bar to the research and experience so necessary for that country. And however we may fail in our exertions we ought not on that account, as is too often the case, to be ridiculed, for the failure of one brings experience to the many, and some one must “pioneer� the road. The prudent wait until the track is clear and the way is easy, and when every tree is blazed and every obstacle removed, they advance chuckling, of course, as the miner does who follows the prospecter; thus the pioneer and his follower resemble two boys, one of whom will not enter the river until his companion has tested the temperature of the water and the depth of the stream.
The quartz mines of California were discovered and opened almost entirely by men who had no previous knowledge of gold mining, therefore in many respects they worked in the dark, and from want of capital their hard bought experience served only to benefit others.
But the more fortunate of these bands of pioneers are now receiving an ample compensation for the privation they suffered, the toil they underwent, and the ridicule with which they were assailed. Auriferous quartz has been found in numerous cases to yield a rich return, even to the unscientific miner in California; how great then must be the wealth amassed, one would suppose, by those experienced gentlemen, who, with capital at their command, have been deputed by English companies to do the same work on a larger scale. Yet experience has proved that the great mining captains of the age have nothing to laugh at, even in the unsuccessful efforts of such a worm as I.
Unity and goodwill had been so long established amongst my little party, that we were soon comfortable in every respect, and actively employed. The vein extended for about half a mile, and the three spots I selected for exploration had each its band of men sinking a “prospecting� shaft.
Rowe and I had ample employment in superintending the operations, and testing the samples of ore that were daily selected from each pit; so with windlasses and buckets, crowbars and drills, gunpowder and fuze matches, pestles, mortars, retorts, and quicksilver, we each of us had our occupation, and were happy as the day was long. The quartz was sharp and cut like glass, so we wore deer-skin “trowserloons,� our beards grew, our muscles increased to an alarming extent, our manners were less toned down than was usual, in fact they were swaggering, our appetites were very large, but for all that we were so happy that even the pleasures of the “little valley� fell into insignificance before those of our Tuttletonian life; and this arose in a great measure from the fact that we all entertained a strong belief, that one day or other our labour would be rewarded.
Who talks of hope and disappointment in the same breath? Shall a day of the one efface or tarnish the recollection of a year’s happiness brightened by the other?—Not with me whilst I live. “See here, now, boys,â€� said a Tuttletonian miner, one day, as he held up to an admiring crowd a small and well-constructed lady’s boot. “The chunk aint found that can buy this boot; ’taint for sale, no-how!â€�
A lady’s boot to you, or I, reader, is not much unless we are married and have to pay for a pair occasionally; but so long as we can associate our hopes of earthly happiness for the future with some emblem held out to us even at arm’s length, as was the miner’s “lady’s boot,� we may go on our way to work as did his gratified spectators more cheerfully and light of heart.