There is something capricious about this metal in its released state; a search for it, even where evidence of its existence has been shown, is seldom attended with success, yet every day almost chance brings to light some fresh gold field.
I remember a gentleman who, taking an early Sunday walk among the hills that surround the town of Sonora, struck his foot against a stone. He should have found a sermon in it, for he was not likely to find one anywhere else, but in the agony of a mutilated great toe, he turned and apostrophised the rock in unbecoming language; but he suddenly checked his impetuous feelings, and we will hope from a good motive; whether or no, the offending quartz was so richly coated with the dross that we make a point of despising when we can’t get enough of it, that he took it home. It was found to contain more gold than quartz, and yet within a few hundred yards of a populous city, it had protruded itself ostentatiously without notice for two or three years.
It is difficult to understand why gold remained so long undiscovered in California, considering that so much of it was on the surface, even in those parts of the country already inhabited by whites. The Indians, who will search assiduously for the flints they require for arrow-heads, do not seem to have been aware of the existence of gold on the plains, although the savages of the as yet unexplored mountain districts, are found with gold in their possession. The early Spanish priests evidently sought for it without success, judging from the old shafts that have been sunk, on part of the banks of the Stanislaus River; and yet these explorations were ineffectually made in the centre of a rich district, and by a class of gentlemen who were never in the habit of overlooking a good thing. Some of the best diggings have been discovered by market-gardeners, who have chosen some apparently valueless tract for the purpose of cabbage growing, and it is a fact that one man with more energy than agricultural experience, who was abusing the earth for producing cabbages that were all stalk, found on rooting up one very lengthy specimen, that a piece of gold adhered to the roots.
Holden’s garden, near Sonora, is a case in point; this was found to be so rich, that the gamblers of the town sallied out to take possession of it, and a fight occurred, in which one or two lives were lost before the “claims� could be adjusted.
For four years Holden’s acre of cabbage ground has been worked with great profit, pieces of gold of many pounds weight each have been taken from it, and to this day it is a rich digging, as times go.
It is possible that both my readers have heard of a certain Irish pig that could only be induced to go in one direction by being at the onset driven in another; it is somewhat this way with the search for gold.—Start on a voyage of discovery for copper or coal, and you will probably, if in a gold region, tumble down and break your nose over a nugget as large as a paving stone; but if you give chase to the seductive metal itself, the toil of a lifetime will very likely not counterbalance the first week’s privation.
In respect to gold-fields, even if our argument leads to no definite conclusion, it is something gained if we can determine that no sign of diminution of yield is as yet apparent,—as regards the future, the wisest can only record an opinion. I believe for my part that the gold-fields of California will certainly yield in an equivalent proportion to their present produce for many years, even if the diggers are left to their own resources;—what may be done with the soil eventually, when capital shall increase in the mines and from the mines, is a question as impossible to solve as that of the advance of science in other respects within the next half century.
The miners of California are a highly intelligent and determined race, possessed of a degree of mechanical genius that surprises me; they have before them a large area of soil, which they, equally with myself, believe still to be most wealthy. They may by-and-by have the advantages of foreign capital to help them; but if not, the capital that their sinews can accumulate ounce by ounce from the gold soil will, in the long run, so far answer the end, that the hills will be burrowed and the streams turned, until the wealth is sifted from them, and then they have a gold territory, as yet partially explored, to fall back upon—the first range of the Sierra Nevada.
Now, like enterprising farmers, they sow again perhaps one half of the year’s harvest, until each fertile spot shall be in cultivation, multiplying and fruitful; and so long as we see that the gold from the soil is turned against the soil in the all-powerful form of capital, aided by science; and so long as we know that what is separated to-day by the “long tom� may to-morrow be devoted to the erection of steam-engines and the sinking of vast tunnels; we know that a great system of improvement is being carried out independent of all external aid: and in the facts that on every side attest the strong faith the miners hold themselves in respect of the inexhaustible nature of the soil, and in the evidences of success that meet us at all points, where fresh inventions are applied, we have the best guarantee that the “placers� of California are in a state of progressive improvement.
The reader will better understand this when I state that the miners of California have many of them had six years experience, are naturally men of ability, and are now in positions of independence, though still miners. The popular opinion respecting gold miners, is that of a body of rough, vagabond, long-haired men, who work one day with a tin pan and get drunk the next; this is perhaps what they were, to some extent; and San Francisco, which owes existence to the mines, was then a canvas village, given up to dissipation; but the tents have disappeared from Yerba Buena, and we have in their room a large and substantially-built city; equally have the mines changed, and the “vagabond population� stands forth in the shape of engineers, excavators, mechanics, and cunning inventors, and, better still, organised bands of labourers, who, under the guidance of these first, bring profit to themselves and benefit to the country generally.