In May, and again in June, 1850, there were large fires, and it was after these disasters that the use of cloth for the sides and roofs of buildings was prohibited by law. Up to that time the shops of the city had been constructed very commonly of that highly inflammable material.
In September, 1850, there was another but less destructive fire, and on May 4, 1851, occurred the “great fire,” in which the loss of property was at least seven million dollars. It was estimated at the time at fifteen million dollars. This conflagration produced a night of horror such as even California had not seen before. The fire started at eleven P. M., and the flames were fanned by a strong, westerly breeze. The glow in the sky was seen at Monterey,—one hundred miles distant. So rapidly did the flames spread that merchants in some cases removed their stock of goods four or five times, and yet had them overtaken and destroyed in the end. Since the burning of Moscow no other city had suffered so much from fire. Delicate women, driven from their homes at midnight, were wandering through the streets, with no protection from the raw wind except their nightclothes. A sick man was carried from his bed in a burning house, and placed in the street, where, amid all the turmoil of the scene, the roaring of the flames, the shouts, cries and imprecations of men, amid falling sparks and cinders, and jostled by the half-frenzied passers-by, he breathed his last.
Among the brave acts performed at this fire was that of a clerk who picked up a burning box which contained canisters of powder, carried it a block on his shoulder, and threw it into a pool of water. It was during this fire, also, that an American flag, released by the burning of the cord which held it, soared away, above the flames and smoke, while a cry that was half a cheer and half a sob, burst from the throats of the crowd beneath it.
But, great as this disaster was, the merchants rallied from it with true California courage. “One year here,” wrote the Reverend Mr. Colton, “will do more for your philosophy than a lifetime elsewhere. I have seen a man sit and quietly smoke his cigar while his house went heavenward in a column of flame.” This was exemplified in the great fire. Men began to fence in their lots although the smouldering ruins still emitted an almost suffocating heat. Contracts for new stores were made while the old ones were yet burning; and in many cases the ground was cleared, and temporary buildings went up before the ashes of the burned buildings had cooled. Lumber, fortunately, was abundant, and the morning after the fire every street and lane leading to the ruined district was crowded with wagons full of building tools and material. The city resembled a hive of bees after it has been rifled of its honey.
The smaller cities suffered almost as severely from fire. Sacramento was burned twice and flooded three times before the year 1854. In The Reincarnation of Smith, Bret Harte describes the appearance of the city when the river upon which it is situated suddenly burst its banks and “a great undulation of yellow water” swept through the streets of the city. Two other stories, In the Tules and When the Waters Were Up at “Jules’,” deal with the floods of 1854 and of 1860, and in the first of these the escape of Martin Morse, the solitary inhabitant of the river-bank, is described. “But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door fell out as from inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against it, and thence out into what might have been another world! For the rain had ceased, and the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water! As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.”
Martin Morse was saved eventually; but another victim of the same flood, and not a fictitious one, was found dead from exposure and exhaustion in the tree which he had reached by swimming. So close, even in small incidents, are Bret Harte’s stories to the reality of California life!
During this freshet a man and his wife, who occupied a ranch on the Feather River, had an experience more remarkable than that of Martin Morse. They took refuge, first, on the roof of their house, and then, when the house floated off, they clung to a piece of timber, and so drifted to a small island. But here they found a prior occupant in the person of a grizzly bear, and to escape him they climbed a tree, whence they were rescued the next morning.
What with fire and flood added to the uncertainties and vicissitudes of trade carried on thousands of miles from the base of supplies, with no telegraphic communication and only a fortnightly mail; what with land values rising and falling; with cities and towns springing up like mushrooms and often withering as quickly;—under these circumstances, and in a stimulating climate, it is no wonder that the Californians lived a feverish, and often a reckless life. The Pioneers could recount more instances of misfortune and more triumphs over misfortune than any other people in the world. But suicides were frequent,—they numbered twenty-nine in San Francisco in a single year,—and one of the first public buildings erected by the State was an Insane Asylum at Stockton. It was quickly filled.
Nevertheless, contemporary with the feverish life of the mining camp and the city was the life of the farm and the vineyard; and this, too, was not neglected by Bret Harte. The agricultural resources of California were beginning to be known even before the discovery of gold, and many of those who crossed the Plains in ’49 and ’50 were bent not upon mining but upon farming. Others, who failed as miners, or who were thrown out of business by the hard times of ’51 and ’56, turned to the fertile valleys and hillsides for support. Monterey, on the lower coast of central California, was the sheep county; and flocks of ten thousand from Ohio and of one hundred thousand from Mexico were grazing there before 1860. In that year it was said to contain more sheep than could be found in any other county in the United States. Tasajara was known as a “cow county.”
An immigrant from New Jersey, in 1850, brought thirty thousand fruit trees; and by 1859 the Foot-Hills in the counties of Yuba, Nevada, El Dorado and Sacramento were covered with vineyards, interspersed with vine-clad cottages, where, a few years before, there had been only the rough and scattered huts of a few miners.