Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities

by George Payson

I encountered many other scientific miners during my travels, but never met with one whose science was worth his salt. It did not seem so much a means as an end, and was continually leading them astray from the real object of pursuit. They acted often as foolishly as the man who in travelling would not take the common highway that led directly to the spot where he wished to go, but chose, because he could move a little faster, to get into a railroad car that was going in just the opposite direction. In short, their science was like that discriminating salve which, being rubbed slightly on one eye, disclosed all the treasures of the earth, but being applied to both, resulted in total blindness. Yet to hear them talk of geological formations, of strata and deposits, with their primitive and secondary, it would seem as if they were thoroughly acquainted with the diagnosis of their patient, and could put their finger on the very spot in nature's loins where she had hutched the all-worshipped ore, with as much certainty as a modern Esculapius can determine the seat of a disease.

However, the second scientific miner had said it, and accordingly the next morning after our arrival, and before the blisters had dried off my feet, I set out with Number Four for Coloma, twenty-five miles farther up the river. Our blankets were slung over our shoulders, and we carried in our pockets a bit of bread and cheese to beguile the way somewhat of its weariness. We commenced our journey in high spirits, but had not walked more than two miles before the stiffening which my limbs so much needed seemed all to have settled in my boots, where it was not needed at all; and I found, to my indignant surprise and consternation, that I, who had never, so to speak, been sick in my life, was thus shamefully betrayed into a downright fit of dysentery.

It was now the middle of September, a season when the heat, if no longer quite so intense, is even more oppressive than in summer; all vegetation was burnt up, and the parched, dusty ground quivered in the dizzy rays.

Loitering slowly under the scattered trees, and quickening our pace in the unbroken sunshine, we came at noon to a circular sandy plain about two miles in diameter, without a leaf in its whole extent, and glowing under the fierce meridian like the focus of a burning-glass.

Collecting our forces for a desperate rally, we hurried in eager emulation across this little desert, and found on the other side a ranch, with a spring, shaded by a few solitary oaks, at some distance from the roadside, and offering a convenient resting-place. We stopped here several hours, nibbling at our bread and cheese, and scooping up water from the spring in a cocoanut shell I had brought from Rio Janeiro; but the sun playing "bo-peep" with us round the tree made it impossible to sleep, and at length compelled us to resume our journey. The country became, as we advanced, more and more hilly and thickly wooded; and after crossing Weaver's Creek, a small stream four miles from Coloma, the road seemed entirely made up of a succession of long steep hills. The degree of exhaustion to which I was now reduced, exceeded anything of which I had supposed the human frame was capable; at the top of every hill I hurried forward, hoping to hear the roar of the river, or to catch a glimpse of the tents of Coloma at the bottom; more than once I threw myself on the ground with the full determination to proceed no farther till morning, but the urgency of my companion prevailed, and again I set forward to encounter the next ascent.

It was long after dark when we at last saw the lights of the village far below. Slowly winding down the long hill, we passed the scattered suburbs of tents, with little groups of miners sitting round their drowsy fires, and in a few minutes reached the store to which we had been directed, where I sank onto a bench, as it seemed more dead than alive.

They gave us for supper some wretched tea, of which I drank eagerly four or five cups—cold stewed beans, and an apple-sauce of dried peaches, of which I ate more sparingly, but my stomach, with superior instinct, refused to retain any such villainous combination. We slept on the dirty open floor of the dining-room, fanned by the night air sifting through, cold and dust-laden—and lulled by the beating of that mill that will henceforth, while the world stands, be more renowned in story than many a royal palace. Among our companions were two or three dogs continually running in and out, and smelling round our faces, and a poor woman who had walked that day twenty-five miles, with an infant in her arms, to meet her husband, and was now inconsolable at his delay.

In the morning we walked out to see the place. It stands in a narrow valley, hemmed in by high rugged hills, among which the South Fork worms its way, sometimes dark and deep, but oftener widening into a stream so shallow that it can almost be crossed dryshod. There by its side was the mill that had made all this stir, worth a hundred thousand dollars, yet working away ignobly, day and night, like any of the thousand saw-mills that bestride the streams of New England.

After breakfast we borrowed a pick, pan and shovel of our landlord; and, striking into a footpath over the hills, walked a mile down the river to the bar so highly recommended by the second scientific miner.