Sacramento, but a few months before a sleepy, quiet city, mostly inhabited by Spaniards, or rather people of Spanish descent, was now a scene of animation and bustle. Long teams of waggons, laden with stores, rolled in almost hourly across the plains from San Francisco, while the wharves at the river-side were surrounded by laden barges. Bands of newly-arrived emigrants wandered through the streets, asking eager questions of any one who had time enough to talk as to the best way of getting to the diggings, and as to the camp which they had better select for their first attempt. Dark-looking men, half Spaniard and half Indian, went along on their little ponies, or rode at the head of a string of laden animals, with an air of perfect indifference to the bustle around them.
Sounds of shouting and singing came through the doors of some saloons, in which many of the fortunate diggers were busily engaged in dissipating their hard-earned gains. Men sunburnt almost to blackness, in red shirts and canvas trousers, walked along the streets as if the town and all in it belonged to them in virtue of the store of gold-dust tied up in their waist-belts. In these, revolvers and bowie-knives were stuck conspicuously, and the newly-arrived emigrants looked with awe and envy at these men who had already reaped a harvest at the mines.
Shooting affrays were of frequent occurrence in the drinking saloons, where at night gambling was invariably carried on, the diggers being as reckless of their lives as of their money.
"About ten days of that place would be enough to ruin any man," Abe said, as they walked at the head of their cavalcade from the town. "I reckon as Sacramento is a sort of hell on arth, and guess there's more wickedness goes on in that ere little town than in any other place its own size on the face of creation. They tells me as San Francisco is worse, but at any rate Sacramento is bad enough for me."
On the evening of the third day after leaving Sacramento they arrived at the mining camp, and having delivered the stores they had brought up to the trader, and received the amount agreed upon, they took their way to the spot where they had pitched their camp.
"Well, lads, what luck?" Abe asked, as at the sound of their feet their comrades came out to greet them.
"We have got about four ounces of dust," Dick said, "and our backs are pretty nigh broken, and our hands that blistered we can hardly hold the shovel. However, we have been better the last two days. I expect there have been two or three hundred people arrived here since you left, and they are all at work now."
"Well, that's pretty well for a beginning," Abe said, "though you wouldn't have much of your four ounces left if you had had to pay for grub. However, we've brought up another half-sack of flour, twenty pounds of sugar, and five pounds of tea, and a half-side of bacon, so we have got quite enough to go on for a long time yet. I have brought up, too, a good stout tent, which will hold us comfortable, and, after paying for all that, here's thirty pounds in money. I got five pounds a horse-load, so with your earnings and ours we haven't made a bad week's work; that's pretty nigh ten pounds a man. I don't say that's anything wonderful, as times goes here; but when we hit on a good spot for our digging, we shall pick it up quick. Now let's pitch the new tent, and then we will have supper, for I can tell you walking twenty-five miles in this mountain air gives one something like an appetite."