[CHAPTER VIII.]
As it was sunset when we came to anchor, we deferred our landing till the next morning; but one of the owners coming on board brought a large budget of letters, among which there were several for our party. Having devoured them with that intensity of interest that can be understood only by those who have been in similar circumstances, we laid them aside for a more careful perusal, and gathering round the two or three old settlers who had come from the shore, listened with breathless attention, the careless, genteel indifference with which they talked of hundreds, of thousands, and of millions, affecting the imagination far more than the wildest excitement. As the old man says in the play, there is a positive pleasure in simply talking of such big numbers; they fill the mind with such grand and noble ideas.
The next day boats came from the shore in hopes of obtaining passengers.
"How much do you charge?" cried Captain Bill, looking suspiciously down upon the boatman.
"Only one dollar!" he replied, and in a tone that seemed to say that the rates of fare had recently fallen; but our minds had not yet sufficiently expanded to receive this information with the gratitude it deserved. We looked admiringly upon the sturdy knave who dared to speak thus disrespectfully of the almighty dollar, but preferred to wait till we could obtain a passage in one of the boats belonging to the ship. An opportunity soon offered; and in a few minutes we were gliding across the bows of the vessels that lay in denser phalanx near the wharf. On the high yellow bank stood groups of men ragged and miserable. They leered upon us, as we passed, as much as to say, "Now then, here you are! but wait awhile my hearties, till you've been here long enough to find out a thing or two; and then,—"
This, however, was only a subsequent interpretation; at the time, I had no doubt that everybody had his pockets stuffed with gold, and, like enough, a heavy belt around his waist filled with the same precious metal; and the rags and tatters that flaunted so boldly seemed rather to confirm this gratifying supposition.
Strolling, yet that is not the word, buzzing a few hours through the city was enough to fill us brim full of excitement. To repeat the figure already employed, we had descended farther and farther into this worldwide maelstroom, and seemed now each moment about to plunge into the vortex. Round and round, faster and faster, spun the dizzy tide; sure such a devil's dance was never danced before.
Everything was on a monstrous and perverted scale. The apparent simplicity of the means employed was ridiculous compared to the sublime result. It seemed impossible that a wealth greater than the Indies should flow through such a narrow channel;—that such prodigious power should be confined in the one story, wood and canvass houses of that awkward shambling city. It was as marvellous almost, and incredible, as that the genie of the Arabian tale should have shrunk his steeple bulk into the little copper vessel,—or that the more modern genie of steam, which the other so well symbolized, should suffer himself to be penned in any other than walls of iron and brass. Piles of merchandize of every description, bags, barrels, boxes, and bundles, filled the stores to suffocation, and ran over into the street. Fat gouty mittens, bursting with gold dust,—the thumb alone stiff with a hundred dollars,—turned up their round yellow bellies on the rude counters, like a frog in the last stages of the dropsy; while bars and lumps of still more seductive unity nestled on the window seat, or leaned poker-and-shovel-wise against the corners. Pounds and ounces took the place of dollars and cents,—the appearance of one of the latter was sure to provoke a laugh, but the dollar, though a decided parvenu, was gradually working his way into good society. The time had past when a pinch of gold dust was the lowest standard of value, and when, for want of silver, the nobler metal was forced to perform the most menial offices of trade.
Among all this, in the midst of all these symbols of wealth and power, the miner who had called them into being, moved about with an air of sturdy independence, which received a fresh accession every time he squeezed, between his thumb and fingers, the buckskin bag in his breeches' pocket. Little groups assembled at the corners, and in the principal stores, each one striving to surpass the last speaker in his stories of big lumps,—of holes that paid five or ten dollars a bucket,—and of pockets that made the lucky finder rich in a single hour.