This sort of feeling is not very uncommon in early life. And ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ is also a known experience. Long before we reached San Fr’isco I was again eager for adventure.
How magnificent is the bay! One cannot see across it. How impatient we were to land! Everything new. Bearded dirty heterogeneous crowds busy in all directions,—some running up wooden and zinc houses, some paving the streets with planks, some housing over ships beached for temporary dwellings. The sandy hills behind the infant town are being levelled and the foreshore filled up. A ‘water surface’ of forty feet square is worth 5,000 dollars. So that here and there the shop-fronts are ships’ broadsides. Already there is a theatre. But the chief feature is the gambling saloons, open night and day. These large rooms are always filled with from 300 to 400 people of every description—from ‘judges’ and ‘colonels’ (every man is one or the other, who is nothing else) to Parisian cocottes, and escaped convicts of all nationalities. At one end of the saloon is a bar, at the other a band. Dozens of tables are ranged around. Monte, faro, rouge-et-noir, are the games. A large proportion of the players are diggers in shirt-sleeves and butcher-boots, belts round their waists for bowie knife and ‘five shooters,’ which have to be surrendered on admittance. They come with their bags of nuggets or ‘dust,’ which is duly weighed, stamped, and sealed by officials for the purpose.
I have still several specimens of the precious metal which I captured, varying in size from a grain of wheat to a mustard seed.
The tables win enormously, and so do the ladies of pleasure; but the winnings of these go back again to the tables. Four times, while we were here, differences of opinion arose concerning points of ‘honour,’ and were summarily decided by revolvers. Two of the four were subsequently referred to Judge ‘Lynch.’
Wishing to see the ‘diggings,’ Fred and I went to Sacramento—about 150 miles up the river of that name. This was but a pocket edition of San Francisco, or scarcely that. We therefore moved to Marysville, which, from its vicinity to the various branches of the Sacramento river, was the chief depot for the miners of the ‘wet diggin’s’ in Northern California. Here we were received by a Mr. Massett—a curious specimen of the waifs and strays that turn up all over the world in odd places, and whom one would be sure to find in the moon if ever one went there. He owned a little one-roomed cabin, over the door of which was painted ‘Offices of the Marysville Herald.’ He was his own contributor and ‘correspondent,’ editor and printer, (the press was in a corner of the room). Amongst other avocations he was a concert-giver, a comic reader, a tragic actor, and an auctioneer. He had the good temper and sanguine disposition of a Mark Tapley. After the golden days of California he spent his life wandering about the globe; giving ‘entertainments’ in China, Japan, India, Australia. Wherever the English language is spoken, Stephen Massett had many friends and no enemies.
Fred slept on the table, I under it, and next morning we hired horses and started for the ‘Forks of the Yuba.’ A few hours’ ride brought us to the gold-hunters. Two or three hundred men were at work upon what had formerly been the bed of the river. By unwritten law, each miner was entitled to a certain portion of the ‘bar,’ as it was called, in which the gold is found. And, as the precious metal has to be obtained by washing, the allotments were measured by thirty feet on the banks of the river and into the dry bed as far as this extends; thus giving each man his allowance of water. Generally three or four combined to possess a ‘claim.’ Each would then attend to his own department: one loosened the soil, another filled the barrow or cart, a third carried it to the river, and the fourth would wash it in the ‘rocker.’ The average weight of gold got by each miner while we were at the ‘wet diggin’s,’ i.e. where water had to be used, was nearly half an ounce or seven dollars’ worth a day. We saw three Englishmen who had bought a claim 30 feet by 100 feet, for 1,400 dollars. It had been bought and sold twice before for considerable sums, each party supposing it to be nearly ‘played out.’ In three weeks the Englishmen paid their 1,400 dollars and had cleared thirteen dollars a day apiece for their labour.
Our presence here created both curiosity and suspicion, for each gang and each individual was very shy of his neighbour. They did not believe our story of crossing the plains; they themselves, for the most part, had come round the Horn; a few across the isthmus. Then, if we didn’t want to dig, what did we want? Another peculiarity about us—a great one—was, that, so far as they could see, we were unarmed. At night the majority, all except the few who had huts, slept in a zinc house or sort of low-roofed barn, against the walls of which were three tiers of bunks. There was no room for us, even if we had wished it, but we managed to hire a trestle. Mattress or covering we had none. As Fred and I lay side by side, squeezed together in a trough scarcely big enough for one, we heard two fellows by the door of the shed talking us over. They thought no doubt that we were fast asleep, they themselves were slightly fuddled. We nudged each other and pricked up our ears, for we had already canvassed the question of security, surrounded as we were by ruffians who looked quite ready to dispose of babes in the wood. They discussed our ‘portable property’ which was nil; one decided, while the other believed, that we must have money in our pockets. The first remarked that, whether or no, we were unarmed; the other wasn’t so sure about that—it wasn’t likely we’d come there to be skinned for the asking. Then arose the question of consequences, and it transpired that neither of them had the courage of his rascality. After a bit, both agreed they had better turn in. Tired as we were, we fell asleep. How long we had slumbered I know not, but all of a sudden I was seized by the beard, and was conscious of a report which in my dreams I took for a pistol-shot. I found myself on the ground amid the wrecks of the trestle. Its joints had given way under the extra weight, and Fred’s first impulse had been to clutch at my throat.
On the way back to San Francisco we stayed for a couple of nights at Sacramento. It was a miserable place, with nothing but a few temporary buildings except those of the Spanish settlers. In the course of a walk round the town I noticed a crowd collected under a large elm-tree in the horse-market. On inquiry I was informed that a man had been lynched on one of its boughs the night before last. A piece of the rope was still hanging from the tree. When I got back to the ‘hotel’—a place not much better than the shed at Yuba Forks—I found a newspaper with an account of the affair. Drawing a chair up to the stove, I was deep in the story, when a huge rowdy-looking fellow in digger-costume interrupted me with:
‘Say, stranger, let’s have a look at that paper, will ye?’
‘When I’ve done with it,’ said I, and continued reading. He lent over the back of my chair, put one hand on my shoulder, and with the other raised the paper so that he could read.