[CHAPTER IX.]
After many unlooked for delays, a half-barrel of pork which we had long sought in vain was got out of the hold; and on the 8th of September we bid a final farewell to the Leucothea, and transferred ourselves to the Patuxent, the regular packet for Sacramento. The Patuxent was a very pretty schooner of about one hundred tons,—had formerly been engaged in the slave-trade, but now bore at her masthead a flag showing that she carried the mail for Uncle Sam.
We set sail about four in the afternoon, with a fine breeze that we hoped would last all night; but it went down with the sun, and we were obliged to come to anchor before we had gone half across the bay. Having eaten a frugal supper of boiled ham and biscuit, the ham costing only forty cents a pound, we began anxiously to look about us for sleeping accommodations. Picking my way carefully over the bundles of dead and living lumber that strewed the deck, I at last succeeded in reaching the spot where I had left my blankets, which I found in the possession of a most delicate monster, with four legs and two voices, who had coiled himself in them for the night. Pulling him by the lesser legs, I presently awakened his forward and backward voices, which showed at once, by a duet of curses, that they could both utter foul speeches on occasion.
"Never you mind," I said to myself, "I have not scaped drowning so long to be afeard now of your four legs;" and then adding a few words of explanation, I received back my property with many apologies. But it was a more difficult matter to find six unoccupied feet of plank; and I was at last obliged to put up with a small chest about three feet in length; where, half sitting, half lying, I nodded and blinked till early morning.
Sunday was an extremely dull day; there was but little breeze,—we began to tire of the stupifying monotony of ham and bread, and to feel somewhat of the enervating effect of the climate.
I found, however, considerable amusement in studying the peculiarities of our fellow passengers, nearly all of whom were entire strangers, and presented a greater variety and novelty than I had yet met with. There was a fair proportion of old miners, who had been down to San Francisco to get letters from home, or to have a frolic, and were now returning to the mines; but a far greater number of newcomers like ourselves. There were English, Irish, Scotch, French, Germans, Spaniards, and Chilanos. The captain, who was a Dane, with a nose like Julius Cæsar's, seemed to have almost entire charge of his little vessel, and to be in every part of her at once. I never could discover that he slept at all;—he took his meals holding the tiller under his arm; and, to save himself the trouble of giving orders, chose often to haul on the ropes with his own hands.
The individual who sometimes relieved him from charge of the helm was a laughing, chirruping, little Frenchman, rather gaily dressed, with a bright red flannel shirt, and a showy scarf round his waist. His untamed vivacity smacked strongly of the prairie; and, in spite of the manifest anachronism, I was once or twice on the point of asking him if he were not the Antoine or Pierre of whom I had read in Astorian story.
The night was intensely cold, and I fared even worse than before. I fell asleep several times on my feet; till, towards midnight, some one gave me a seat on the narrow cabin stairs, where I slept and shivered in weary alternation. Monday, however, was a glorious, true California day;—a moderate breeze bore us steadily up the river, whose banks presented a pleasing panorama. Though it was now near the end of the dry season, the Sacramento seemed here brimming full; the trees, and shrubs, and vines crowding so close to the bank that there was no room for even a footpath between. Ascending into the rigging I obtained a fine view of the surrounding country. Beyond the narrow strip of forest that guarded the banks, extended, as far as the eye could reach, tule marshes,—with here and there an island, like a gigantic billow, breaking the straight outline of the horizon.
As we advanced, the soil became higher and fit for cultivation. A narrow clearing running down to the water,—a canoe floating in the shade of the tree to whose roots it was fastened,—a rude hovel standing in the midst of a patch of melons or corn, all proclaimed the adventurous squatter, who, Boonelike, had led the forlorn hope of civilization.
At length, at a sudden turn in the river, we descried at a distance the masts of Sacramento mingling with the branches of the primæval forest. On landing, a scene presented itself of the most novel and bewildering character. On one side was the lonely river, still lonely in spite of the numerous ships that lay, side by side, moored with long ropes to the trees on the bank;—on the other, was the infant city yet maintaining a precarious struggle for existence with the surrounding wilderness. The mighty oak that had possessed the soil alone for centuries, or at least with no other rival than the wandering Indian, now looked down with wonder upon the audacious intruder at its feet, and thrust its long, gnarled branches among the taper, slender spars.