Turning my back on Poverty Bar, with a feeling of secret satisfaction that our conclusions had been so fully verified, I took a short cut across the hills, and presently came to a bend in the river where a large party of Dutchmen had commenced the most extensive damming operations I had yet witnessed. The river at this point made almost a complete circle, so that by digging through a hill a quarter of a mile in width they drained a mile and a half of the channel. The tunnel was about ten feet square, dug through a ledge of rotten granite. The work went on day and night, and a wooden railroad with small hand-cars was employed to remove the rubbish. When completed the tunnel was found too small to conduct the river, and the lateness of the season obliged the company to postpone further operations till the next summer.
I took supper at a boarding-house kept by the most enterprising merchant in all that section. The extent of his business operations may be inferred from a single fact. At a time when flour was worth a dollar a pound, he was said to have from one to two hundred thousand pounds in store, and other staples in nearly equal proportions. His warehouse at Coloma was a long low building, stuffed with goods of every description, from which he supplied the trading posts he had established at Ford's Bar, and other places on the Middle Fork.
The company assembled at table was of a very mixed character, and the conversation, which had by some strange accident strayed from mining to politics, was more free and easy than is usual on such occasions. I was not a little amused by one of the company, a Col. Somebody, from Ohio, who asserted, in the same tone as if he were stating a truism, that Andrew Jackson was the greatest man that ever lived except St. Paul. I leave it to more theological politicians, or more political theologians than I, to settle this knotty question.
The next morning, having received my money, I set out on my return, but after walking about two miles remembered an important errand I had neglected, and was obliged to retrace my steps to Coloma. This was but a foretaste of what was to follow. A new road had recently been constructed by the merchants of Georgetown and Coloma, winding in a very picturesque manner along the face of the mountain, and reminding me, to compare great things with small, of Napoleon's road over the Simplon. Having reached the summit, and turned my back upon the vast panorama that had presented itself in so many different aspects as the road dragged its length like a wounded snake in irregular curves from point to point, I walked on more rapidly, without paying much attention to my path, till an uneasy instinctive impression that I had lost my way brought me to a sudden pause.
The old and new roads came together seven miles from Coloma; but though, as I supposed, I had walked much further than that distance, there was yet nothing about me that I remembered to have seen before. I found myself in a narrow winding footpath that ran along the elevated ridge or backbone of the mountain, and in the midst of a dark pine forest. The solitude was most profound. It seemed an immense manufactory of silence, enough to supply the whole world, where nothing was ever heard but the melancholy cry of the mourning-dove, the only safety-valve of a stillness pent up till it was like to burst. This bird is the most skilful of all ventriloquists; for, though he may be perched directly over your head, his voice seems always to proceed from a great distance, which gives it a startling unearthly sound impossible to be described.
After walking irresolutely back and forth a few minutes, I determined to proceed, trusting soon to meet some one who could give me the necessary information. The narrow footpath presently led me to the brow of the hill, when, instantly recognising the wide road that skirted its base as the one I had travelled the preceding day, I descended with a bound, inwardly congratulating myself on the sagacity and good fortune that had prevented me from turning back as I had at first intended. Meeting a wagon soon after, I asked the driver with the utmost confidence how far it was to Georgetown, to which he replied with a grin that, if I meant Greenwood Valley, it was not more than five or six miles, but Georgetown was in a very different direction.
On explaining my situation, he very good-naturedly informed me that I was in the wrong road entirely; and that I ought to have taken the right hand turning several miles back, at somebody's ranch. I thanked him, and promised to follow his directions to the very letter, if ever I travelled that way again, but what I wanted to know then was the nearest way to Georgetown. Opening his mouth, and setting his eyes very hard on vacancy, while he pressed his forefinger on his nether lip, he appeared to meditate for a moment; and then replied, pointing with his whip, that the nearest way was over that hill yonder, but if he was me he should go right on to Greenwood Valley and take a clean start from there.
I very reluctantly followed his advice, and having obtained a drink of water from a lonely shingle-maker I encountered in the forest, I hastened on, and came in due time to the prettiest village I had seen in California. The single broad street with its bright white houses, of canvass indeed, instead of painted clapboards, reminded me strongly of New England; but I had just then little relish of beauty of any sort, and was passing through in very ill humour, when I was saluted with, "Hullo, stranger! is that you?" and turning round, I recognised, to my equal pleasure and surprise, one of the company who had started with us from Mormon Island and afterwards left us, as already narrated, on their way to Rector's Bar. The judge was there also, keeping a bowling alley and its usual concomitants; and a little further down the street two more of the company partners in a store and boarding house. They confirmed the accounts we had already heard of Rector's; on their arrival at that place in April, they found the ground white with snow, provisions enormously dear, and no possibility of doing any thing for months. They finally broke up their camp, and came down to Greenwood, where they had been so far successful as to make them forget their former losses.
A tedious walk of eight miles brought me to Georgetown, where I stopped half an hour to rest, very foolishly as it happened; for when I prepared to go, I could hardly rise from my seat, and did not succeed in gaining an erect position till I reached the bottom of the hill at Cañon Creek. Sitting down on a log that bridged the sluggish current, I bathed my feet in the muddy water, and, thus refreshed, made my way down the mountain at Ford's Bar, just as the miners were returning from their day's work.
The next morning, the river having now fallen sufficiently, we made trial of the spot where we had designed building a wing-dam, but found that the great depth of water at that place rendered such an undertaking altogether impracticable. We spent several of the succeeding days in running up and down the river, in pursuit of some of those rich pickings we had so confidently expected; but without success. Lest the reader should think this was entirely our own fault, I would add, that we did not find them, because they were not there. The banks, instead of improving as the waters receded, became even worse and worse—the first miners, naturally, commenced at low-water mark, and they had done their work so effectually, that nothing was left for their successors.