Once or twice I dropped in haste what I carried in my hands in order to save myself from blundering over a precipice by clinging to the bushes; and the rocker on my back received many an unlucky bump, and my dignity many a grievous affront from the compulsory sittings-down that I encountered. In an hour and a half we reached the bottom in safety, and then picked our weary way stoopedly over the stones to the store where Dr. B. had fixed his quarters. This store, a large oblong tent, stood at the upper end of the bar, near the mouth of a brook called Otter Creek, that found its way down in a succession of small cascades between two spurs of the mountain range, and emptied at this place into the Middle Fork.
We proceeded a short distance up this stream, and kneeling down camelwise upon the ground, contrived, with some difficulty, to ease our shoulders of their unaccustomed burden. Our first object after recovering somewhat from our fatigue, was to find a few poles on which to suspend our tent, or rather the long broad piece of drilling that was to take its place. This was not so simple a matter as it might seem; there was nothing in the immediate neighbourhood but two or three gigantic pines and scattered clumps of bushes; and we had to go a long way up the continuous arbour that shaded the creek before we could find anything fit for our purpose. For bedding we covered the floor with an aromatic shrub resembling the willow, the odour of which was so pungent that it filled our eyes with tears, and brought on an interminable fit of sneezing.
Having thus completed our simple arrangements, we were at leisure to look about us, and see what kind of a world it was into which we had fallen. There were about a hundred miners in this place, some of whom had pitched their tents, like our own, on the banks of the creek; but the greater part were scattered up and down the bar. Besides these, there was at least an equal number who had camped here and there along the river for several miles above and below, but were in the habit of coming to Ford's Bar to buy their provisions. There were two stores, the one already mentioned, belonging to a merchant in Coloma, and kept by a genuine Nantucketer, smooth-faced, disputatious, lank, cadaverous, and good natured; and another about the middle of the bar, owned by a man who was in every respect the opposite of the first, and went by the name of Dutch Tom.
Wednesday, we went to work in a claim given us by Dr. B., who, having taken up another of greater value, was unable longer to retain possession. In opposition to the prevailing rule, the surface was here richer than the earth below, the first foot yielding fifteen cents to the bucket, and the stratum lying immediately beneath, only four or five. But neither was fifteen-cent dirt at all suited to our notions; we had done far better than that at Mormon Island, and thought it no great things either; so the next day, leaving a pick in the hole, by which, according to the laws of the bar, we could hold possession four days without working, we set off a prospecting down the river, in the confident expectation of lighting upon a spot richer than we had yet seen except in dreams.
The Middle Fork here presented the strange anomaly of a river without banks; the mountains stood face to face, foot to foot, their broad stubbed toes actually fitting into each other, and breaking up the stream into a constant succession of falls and rapids. The bar afforded comparatively easy walking, but this being past, we found ourselves now sidling along the face of a precipice, now leaping from rock to rock at its base. Here and there, a little brook, bubbling out far up among the nodding pines, came trickling, like tears or sweat, down the deep wrinkles of the mountain, till it was drunk up by the spongy moss, and juicy bushes thick with fragrant flowers.
But wherever we came, others had been before us; and, in fact, in all my California rambles—I record it with grief and shame—I never had the exquisite pleasure of going where man had never been before, and never, except once or twice, of digging a hole where there were not others all around in most disheartening proximity.
This river, which we had thought to find an unexplored, almost virgin stream, had been already trampled by a thousand feet, and far more effectually ransacked than even the South Fork itself. This was partially accounted for by the comparatively small quantity of soil, which both in depth and extent bore no proportion to the broad deep banks of the latter river. Except on the bars it was very unusual to find earth more than two feet in thickness; and often there was nothing but the crumbling slate in whose crevices the gold had found a lodging.
The result of our explorations, while it at once precipitated us from the pinnacle of present promise, left us the largest liberty to hope as much as we pleased from the morrow; and thus our fall was broken by the same never-failing feather bed of future anticipation on which the gallant Micawber so often rested. The river must fall some time or other, though it was certainly very long about it; and then, every body said, we should find rich pickings.
In the mean time we were in great perplexity where to spend the next six weeks; we thought at first of returning to Weaverville or Coloma, until the melting snows should cease to swell the rivers, but a natural aversion to taking any step backward interfered.
We passed the evening at the store, where a small party was usually assembled; some engaged in card-playing, others in conversing on various topics, among which the mines furnished the most frequent and the most interesting. Some veteran gold-hunter, with the beard of '48 still on his face, commonly occupied the post of honour, and, with the importance, he had also a full share of the license of the professional story-teller. We were of course, like all good citizens, devout believers in every thing appertaining to the early history of our little colony; and Ford, from whom the bar received its name, was with many nearly as great a hero as Captain Kidd. For three weeks in succession he took out seven hundred dollars a day from a particular spot that was ever after regarded with almost religious reverence; but being then taken sick, he was obliged to leave the mines and make the best of his way down to Sutter's Fort, at that time the nearest point where he could obtain the necessary assistance. Before he reached the fort, however, he had not only spent all his previous earnings, but was besides in debt to the amount of fifteen hundred dollars; the enormous price he had to pay for medicine and attendance having swallowed up in a few days what would have sufficed for his whole life.