Never before had I so fully realized the winds of the heathen poets—the names which had seemed so unmeaning, now impressed me as actual existences; and Notus, Eurus, and Auster, with ten thousand of lesser degree, seemed "now fighting on firm ground a standing fight, then soaring on main wing tormented all the air."
We thought ourselves very fortunate whenever we succeeded in borrowing a book from any of our neighbours, but were still more interested in the papers that we obtained usually as often as once a month. We read them through, advertisements and all, often two and three times; and I have not yet lost the relish thus acquired for that sort of reading.
Oldbuck and the doctor used sometimes to come in and spend the evening in singing, gossiping, and telling stories. When conversation flagged, "Come, Browne!" Oldbuck would cry, "suppose you run down cellar, and fetch a basket of apples and a pitcher of cider;" and the conceit never failed to give general satisfaction, though he might as well have asked for a roc's egg, or the dome of St. Peter's.
"Apples and cider!" repeated the doctor, "Jerusha, don't I wish I had some?" and then a pause ensued, while each thought himself again at home, basket in hand, cautiously descending the rickety cellar stairs, groping his way along to the bin or barrel, and, as he filled his basket, reserving the finest for the pleasant voice calling after him encouragingly from the upper air. But there are no cellars in California, and no apples to put in them;
And thee, aye me! the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.
There were half a dozen tents in our immediate neighbourhood, and in the course of the winter we became somewhat intimate with their occupants. We remained however a long time ignorant of their names, and were consequently obliged to return to the ancient custom of designating an individual from some natural or acquired peculiarity, as Blackbeard, Greybeard, Brushhouse, and California Hat.
Brushhouse was a stumpy little fellow, not more than five feet high, who obtained his name from living most of the winter under a pile of pine branches, into which he crept like a wild beast into its den. I thought when I first saw him that he was a Bohemian or gipsy, but afterwards learned that he was from the north of Ireland. It was impossible to determine his age with any certainty, as he knew nothing about it himself, and his face showed only that he was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty;—and though his various adventures seemed to confirm the latter supposition, his beardless face, high squeaking voice, rapid utterance, and almost childish simplicity, were as much in favour of the former. His geographical knowledge was by no means contemptible—he had heard of Australia, which he believed to be in Bombay and to belong to Austria; and when, in answer to some inquiry, I had assured him that Brazil was independent, "Oh yes," he cried, "I know—Independent Tartary."
One day, when he had come into our tent to thaw his fingers at the stove, I asked him where he was working.
"Oh! I been't working anywhere now," he replied, in his peculiar rapid manner, which had about it such a winning, supplicating air as would melt the heart of a stone. "I had a hole up here in the ravine, and there was two other men working by the side of me, and they kept working so" (here he illustrated his words by putting his two forefingers together at an acute angle), "and bimeby I hadn't any hole, and they gave me an ounce not to say anything about it, and I thought I had better take the ounce, though the hole was worth a good deal more than the ounce."