There is but one question more: is gold already depreciated in value? As measured by labour and property undoubtedly it is; for it matters not whether in speaking of a gold country, we say that gold is cheap, or labour is dear: as affecting the question the terms are equivalent. Like a stone thrown in the water, the effects of a gold country spread from it in widening circles; the increased value of labour there is diffused to places more remote, and consequently the depreciation of gold is diffused also. If the farmer here, affected by the extending influence of the gold-field, already pays more for his labour, he may individually counterbalance this loss by receiving a higher price for his wheat: still his gold (supposing these effects to be perceived) represents less labour on the one hand, and less property on the other. But it will be argued that such a depreciation is caused by the indirect means of emigration, and that this is temporary. Granted: but if it is a depreciation, may it not last, in a temporary way, as fresh gold-fields are discovered, until it is supplanted by the permanent depreciation which will arise when the vast influx of precious metal shall first make itself felt throughout the world?
Already out of my depth, I leave the foregoing remarks as they stand, and the reader will observe that they are only suggestive. If I have allowed myself to plunge from a firm bank of facts into a small puddle of conjecture, with which I had no business, all I can say is that I am very sorry for it, and will wade out of it as fast as I can.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TRANSPORT MACHINERY TO THE MINE—THE CARPENTER JUDGE, AND CONSTABLE ROWE—CUT-THROAT JACK—GREASERS—FRENCH MINERS—JOHN CHINAMAN—CHINESE FEROCITY—THE FEAST OF LANTERNS—CHINESE DESPOTISM—FALSE SYMPATHY.
November, 1851.
In the course of three months we had collected two or three hundred tons of ore, and as the tests we daily made still bore out our preconceived opinions of the value of the mine, I proceeded to San Francisco for the purpose of procuring the steam power and machinery requisite for a trial of the metal we had quarried.
The life of the quartz miner at this date was tortured by doubts; he was ever in doubt as to the value of his rock; he was ever in doubt as to the depth of his vein; and he was ever in doubt as to the machinery best adapted for securing gold; nor is his position, taken generally, much happier in these respects at the present time; and I will be bound, sir, that the directors who led to your victimization,[20]
and the subordinates that they employed, are as much trammelled by these doubts as any quartz miners I could mention.
I was profoundly meditative on the subject of machinery as I jogged along on the Old Soldier to Stockton. I recalled to mind that for pulverising the rock we had stampers, rollers, grinders, and triturators, which you pleased; that for amalgamating the gold with quicksilver we had “trapiches,� “erasteros,� wooden tubs, and iron basins, which you pleased also. That we had design No. 1, that had been so successfully employed by Professor A, in the Ural Mountains; design No. 2, that Professor B had made his fortune with (by selling the patent though), and which had never failed in the Swiss Cantons, where gold was rather scarce than otherwise; and design No. 3, an infallible invention by Professor C, an American gentleman, who hadn’t sold his patent yet, but was quite ready to part with it for a consideration. All this I knew, but I was also aware that none of these plans had been attended with complete success; some were too simple in construction and too slow, others were too complicated in mechanism and too fast and furious.
One machine would catch every metal the quartz contained except the gold; another would allow everything to give it the go by, except the refuse tailings that were not wanted; none secured the gold but those which required more manual labour than it would have been profitable to employ.