We entered into these feelings to the fullest extent. Before us lay an immense tract of mining country; Murderer's Bar, Spanish Bar, Ford's Bar, Big Bar, and Rector's Bar, on the Middle Fork—the more northern rivers still beyond, and cañons without number on every side. We knew nothing of all these except by reports, and those so contradictory that they involved the subject in yet greater perplexity.
After several hours, I heard our wagon jolting down the stony hill. We hastily threw in our goods, and winding up the long and toilsome ascent, at last reached the summit, where we found our companions lying prone at the foot of a steepling pine, the bark of which was punctured as high as we could see with holes just big enough to admit the slender acorn that was stowed in each for winter's use, but whether of bird or squirrel we could not discover.
Georgetown, fourteen miles from Coloma, was the present end of our journey. This is a small and sombre collection of log-houses in the midst of a dark pine forest. There are few objects more pleasing and picturesque than a log-house standing by itself in an open clearing; but twenty or more of them together, in formal rows, are anything but attractive. Their dark rough walls drink up all the sunshine. They are as much out of place as an Indian or trapper in a great city, and have an air of melancholy about them, as if they pined for their native solitudes.
We found here, however, a very decent lodging, where they gave us a good supper, swept the floor clean for our blankets, and charged us only two dollars apiece for all these attentions. The next morning before breakfast the judge hauled our luggage over to a neighbouring hill, where we suspended our tent between two trees, and our companions pitched theirs at a short distance, to wait till one of their number who had "gone a prospecting" should give them the result of his explorations.
Monday, the 15th, they started for Rector's Bar, which they had finally selected as offering the greatest promise. We would gladly have accompanied them, but St. John's illness, which had now become very serious and alarming, obliged us to remain; and before he was well enough to travel, we heard such accounts as induced us to abandon that scheme altogether.
The week succeeding their departure was one of uninterrupted quiet. All around us rose hundreds of "tall and sombrous pines," many of which were scathed and blackened by fire, their naked, branchless trunks standing like mouldering tombstones in a churchyard of giants. The ground sloped away in front into a deep and narrow ravine. There was near us no human sight nor sound—a rising hill hid the drowsy little village entirely from our view, and the whirling tide of which we had so lately formed a part, swept by unheeded.
Often, as we lay reclined on the thick bed of pine that covered the floor of our tent, the wind sounding hollow among the trees imposed upon us the delightful illusion that we heard afar off the bells of our native city; time and space were forgotten—everything about us seemed dreamy and unsubstantial—a curious phantasmagoria, to which we surrendered ourselves without any interfering reflection. A story that I happened to have with me, written by Horace Smith, and the scene of which was laid at Venice, was in perfect harmony with this indolent after-dinner existence.
Friday, a cold dismal rain darkened this agreeable melancholy into gloom, and in the afternoon I padded over to the village in quest of a little excitement. The gambling houses were in full blast, nor was this at all a matter of wonder; in the absence of all rational amusement, and on such a day as this, I rather felt inclined to wonder that I did not gamble myself.