After his departure our little company, now reduced to its original number, was conducted on a different principle, our gains being no longer shared in common. Number Four bought a cradle on his own account, together with a hole, a crowbar, a shovel, and a cheese-box; while Tertium and myself still continued in partnership. We also bought a cradle of sheet-iron, for which we had to pay seventy dollars; and after one or two trials of different localities, we settled down on the same part of the bank where we had made our first experiment with the pan. The bank here as elsewhere was high and steep, consisting of an irregular ledge of soft granite that had been originally covered with a thin coat of soil, but was now, for a width of forty or fifty feet from the water, picked as clean as the bones of a thanksgiving turkey. Owing to this circumstance we seldom remained long in one place; but, like bone and rag-pickers hurrying from one barrel to another, we gleaned a bit here and a bit there, comforting ourselves with the hope of suddenly lighting upon some of those rich deposits of which we had heard such seductive stories, just as the magnanimous gentry last mentioned are forever soothed and excited by a pleasing delusion of silver spoons and gold watches.
So we worked all the rest of the month, making about twenty dollars a day, on the solitary bank of the river, listening soberly to the eternal bass of its waters, and the sharp, sudden crash of some distant rocker keeping faithful time to the beating of its master's heart.
There was then no laughing in California; everybody was terribly in earnest, and a settled look of more than Puritanic severity was in every face. There was such depth of passion that only the fiercest commotion could stir up the bubble laughter from the bottom of the heart; and, for my own part, I seem almost entirely to have lost that human faculty, as if I had tarried too long in the cave of Trephonius.
The extraordinary sickness that prevailed during that season may partially account for this all-pervading austerity; hardly a tent in which there was not one prostrated by scurvy or dysentery—hardly a miner who had not suffered in his own person from one or both of these dreadful diseases. Every one of our own party had been attacked at different times and with different degrees of severity; but I was the most unfortunate. It was several months before I found any relief either from medicine or change in diet, and during the whole of my first year in the mines I was never free from apprehension, the least imprudence being sufficient to bring on a relapse.
We had thus far enjoyed uninterrupted fine weather,—a few drops only of rain had fallen through the whole of October; but November was ushered in under very different conditions. The little party of Bostonians, our next door neighbours, who had been for some time preparing to move into the dry diggings, had hardly stowed the last of their baggage in the wagon, when a sullen shower commenced, that quenched at once their deserted camp-fire, and continued almost without cessation for a whole week. The conical firmament of our tent, usually almost transparent in its brightness, except when fleckered with the dancing shadow of the leaves, now assumed a uniform, leaden and opaque hue, corresponding to the lowering character of the sky. Heavy drops collected on the inside, and, rolling half-way down, fell maliciously on our heads. Sitting on our low bedsteads, with knees drawn up to the chin, we shrank into the smallest possible compass; while we found a whimsical amusement in wondering where the next drop would fall, and in rallying each other on our involuntary contortions. Mowbray, and a Dr. Collyer, with whom we had been some time acquainted, were now almost our only visitors. The latter, a middle-aged man, of a peculiarly sour and morose temper, seemed to find no employment so congenial as grumbling, and the subjects on which he most delighted to expatiate were California and the Burke rocker.
"Well, gentlemen," he would exclaim, with nasal bitterness, "California is a miserable country, a very poor country; it is as much as a man's life is worth to remain here through the winter;" and then, like Sairy Gamp, to give greater emphasis to his words, he would reverse the objurgatory phrase till he had run it through all its changes, while we, in our feeble way, echoed assent to every one of his propositions, glad to find one who understood so thoroughly the true merits of the question.
Mowbray, on the other hand, never very talkative or vivacious, and now doubly oppressed by the untoward aspect of the weather and the uncertainty of his future movements, hardly spoke except in monosyllables.
Cooking, in such weather, was plainly impossible; and the ship-bread and molasses to which we were consequently reduced, were never very thankfully received. Once, indeed, during a brief lull in the storm, I ventured out, and succeeded in boiling a pot of coffee and in frying a little pork, and these two smoking dishes somewhat dispelled the chill that was creeping over us.
The fifth night the storm increased. The wind blew with fearful violence, and drove the rain in sheets through that side of the tent most exposed to its fury. Tertium was awakened by a choking sensation, and found himself lying with his face in a puddle of water almost deep enough to drown him. On my side it was rather better; my outer blankets were thoroughly saturated, but the inner one still remained tolerably dry.
The tent writhed and struggled with the tempest. The fastenings on one side at length gave out, and as it flapped its wet and clinging folds about our faces, we expected every moment to hear it fly bodily away, leaving us entirely exposed to the pelting of the pitiless storm. We were finally compelled to leave our beds, and leaning against the bags and boxes in the middle of the tent, we fell asleep, like the ship-boy on the high and giddy mast, in all that elemental uproar.