The hospitality of the Spanish Californian was boundless. “There is no need of an orphan asylum in California,” wrote the American Alcalde at Monterey. “The question is not who shall be burdened with the care of an orphan, but who shall have the privilege of rearing it. An industrious man of rather limited means applied to me to-day for the care of six orphan children. He had fifteen of his own;” and when the Alcalde questioned the prudence of his offer, the Spaniard replied, “The hen that has twenty chickens scratches no harder than the hen that has one.”
A Pioneer, speaking from his own experience, said: “If you are sick there is nothing which sympathy can divine which is not done for you. This is as true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream; and all this from the heart!”[35]
Generosity and pride are Spanish traits. “The worst and weakest of them,” remarks an English Pioneer, “has that indefinable something about him that lifts so immeasurably the beggar of Murillo above the beggar of Hogarth.”[36] The Reader will remember how cheerfully and punctiliously Don José Sepulvida paid the wagers of his friend and servant, Bucking Bob. A gambling debt was regarded by the Spaniards in so sacred a light that if he who incurred it was unable to pay, then, for the honor of the family, any relative, a godfather, or even one who had the misfortune to be connected by marriage with the debtor, was bound to discharge the obligation. Some Americans basely took advantage of this sentiment; and, in one case, an old Spanish lady was deprived of a vineyard, her only means of support, in order to preserve the reputation of a scapegrace nephew who had lost to an American at faro a greater sum than he possessed.
Some convenient and becoming articles of Spanish dress were adopted by the Americans, notably the sombrero and the serapé, or horseman’s cloak. Jack Hamlin, as the Reader will remember, sometimes went a little further. Thus, when he started on his search for the Sappho of Green Springs, he “modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful combination of a roquero’s costume, and in loose white bullion-fringed trousers, red sash, jacket and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing and picturesque than his original.”
The profuse wearing of jewelry, even by men, was another foreign fashion which Americans adopted in the early years; so much so, in fact, that to appear in a plain and unadorned state was to be conspicuous. The jewelry thus worn was not of the conventional kind, but a sort of miner’s jewelry, significant of the place and time. Ornaments were made from the gold in its native state by soldering into one mass many small nuggets, without any polish or other embellishment. Everybody carried a gold watch, and watch-chains were constructed upon a massive plan, the links sometimes representing dogs in pursuit of deer, horses at full speed, birds in the act of flight, or serpents coiled and hissing. Scarf-pins were made from lumps of gold retaining their natural form and mixed with quartz, rose-colored, blue-gray, or white, according to the rock from which they were taken. The big “specimen ring” worn by the hero of A Night on the Divide was an example.
Some Americans adhered to their usual dress which, in the Eastern States, was a sober suit of black; but usually the Pioneers discarded all conventional clothes, and appeared in a rough and picturesque costume much like that of a stage pirate. Indeed, it was impossible for any man in ’49 to make his dress sufficiently bizarre to attract attention. The prevailing fashion included a red or blue flannel shirt, a “wide-awake” hat of every conceivable shape and color, trousers stuffed into a huge pair of boots coming up above the knee, and a belt decorated with pistols and knives. More than one Pioneer landed in San Francisco with a rifle slung on his back, a sword-cane in his hand, two six-shooters and a bowie-knife in his belt, and a couple of small pistols protruding from his waistcoat pockets.
In the rainy season of ’49, long boots were so scarce, and so desirable on account of the mud, that they sold for forty dollars a pair in San Francisco, and higher yet in Stockton. Learning of this, Eastern merchants flooded the market with top-boots a year later; but by that time the streets had been planked, the miner’s costume was passing out of fashion, and long boots were no longer in demand. These changes were greatly regretted by unconventional Pioneers, and even so early as 1850 they were lamenting “the good old times,”—just one year back,—before the tailor and the barber were abroad in the land.
Local celebrations were marked by more color and display than are usually indulged in by Americans. In 1851, on Washington’s Birthday, there was a procession in San Francisco headed by the Mayor in a barouche drawn by four white horses. Next came the fire engines of the city, each with a team of eight gray horses, and followed by a long train of firemen in white shirts and black trousers. Then came a company of teamsters mounted on their draught horses, and carrying gay banners; and finally a delegation of Chinamen, preceded by a Chinese band and bearing aloft a huge flag of yellow silk.
Horsemen, more or less intoxicated, and shouting like wild Indians, charged up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night, to the great discomfort of many and the fatal injury of some pedestrians. “On Sundays especially, one would imagine,” a local newspaper remarks, “that a horde of Cossacks or Tartars had taken possession of the city.”
“The Spaniard,” Bret Harte says, “taught the Americans horsemanship, and they rode off with his cattle.” The Americans usually adopted the Spanish equipment, consisting of a huge saddle, with cumbrous leather saddle-flaps, stirrups carved from solid oak, heavy metal spurs, a bridle jingling with ornaments, and a cruel curb bit,—the whole paraphernalia being designed to serve the convenience and vanity of the rider without the least regard to the comfort of his beast. The Spanish manner of abrupt stopping, made possible by the severe bit, was also taken up by young Americans who loved to charge down upon a friend, halting at the last possible moment, in a cloud of dust, with the horse almost upon his haunches. This was Jack Hamlin’s habit.