After the Kern River Exchequer had been exhausted, the public were congratulated by the press throughout the state upon the effectual check now put upon these ruinous and extravagant excitements. The enterprising miners who had been tempted to abandon good claims in search of better had undergone a species of purging which would allay any irritation of the mucous membrane for some time. What they had lost in money they had gained in experience. They would henceforth turn a deaf ear to interested representations, and not be dazzled by visions of sudden wealth conjured up by monte-dealers, travelers, and horse-jockeys. They were, on the whole, wiser if not happier men. Nor would the lesson be lost to the merchants and capitalists who had scattered their goods and their funds over the picturesque heights of the Sierra Nevada. And even the gentlemen of elegant leisure, who had gone off so suddenly in search of small change for liquors and cigars, could now recuperate their exhausted energies at the free lunch establishments of San Francisco, or, if too far gone in seed for that, they could regenerate their muscular system by some wholesome exercise in the old diggings, where there was not so much gold perhaps as at Kern River, but where it could be got at more easily.
HO! FOR FRAZER RIVER.
Scarcely had the reverberation caused by the bursting of the Kern River bubble died away, and fortune again smiled upon the ruined multitudes, when a faint cry was heard from afar—first low and uncertain, like a mysterious whisper, then full and sonorous, like the boom of glad tidings from the mouth of a cannon, the inspiring cry of Frazer River! Here was gold sure enough! a river of gold! a country that dazzled the eyes with its glitter of gold! There was no deception about it this time. New Caledonia was the land of Ophir. True, it was in the British possessions, but what of that? The people of California would develop the British possessions. Had our claim to 54° 40´ been insisted upon, this immense treasure would now have been within our own boundaries; but no matter—it was ours by right of proximity. The problem of Solomon's Temple was now solved. Travelers, from Marco Polo down to the present era, who had attempted to find the true land of Ophir, had signally failed; but here it was, the exact locality, beyond peradventure. For where else in the world could the river-beds, creeks, and cañons be lined with gold? Where else could the honest miner "pan out" $100 per day every day in the year? But if any who had been rendered incredulous by former excitements still doubted, they could no longer discredit the statements that were brought down by every steamer, accompanied by positive and palpable specimens of the ore, and by the assurances of captains, pursers, mates, cooks, and waiters, that Frazer River was the country. To be sure, it was afterward hinted that the best part of the gold brought down from Frazer had made the round voyage from San Francisco; but I consider this a gross and unwarranted imputation upon the integrity of steam-boat owners, captains, and speculators. Did not the famous Commodore Wright take the matter in hand; put his best steamers on the route; hoist his banners and placards in every direction, and give every man a chance of testing the question in person? This was establishing the existence of immense mineral wealth in that region upon a firm and practical basis. No man of judgment and experience, like the commodore, would undertake to run his steamers on "the baseless fabric of a vision." The cheapness and variety of his rates afforded every man an opportunity of making a fortune. For thirty, twenty, and even fifteen dollars, the ambitious aspirant for Frazer could be landed at Victoria.
I will not now undertake to give a detail of that memorable excitement; how the stages, north, south, east, and, I had almost said, west, were crowded day and night with scores upon scores of sturdy adventurers; how farms were abandoned and crops lost for want of hands to work them; how rich claims in the old diggings were given away for a song; how the wharves of San Francisco groaned under the pressure of the human freight delivered upon them on every arrival of the Sacramento and Stockton boats; how it was often impracticable to get through the streets in that vicinity owing to the crowds gathered around the "runners," who cried aloud the merits and demerits of the rival steamers; and, strangest of all, how the head and front of the Frazerites were the very men who had enjoyed such pleasant experience at Gold Bluff, Kern River, and other places famous in the history of California. No sensible man could doubt the richness of Frazer River when these veterans became leaders, and called upon the masses to follow. They were not a class of men likely to be deceived—they knew the signs of the times. And, in addition to all this, who could resist the judgment and experience of Commodore Wright, a man who had made an independent fortune in the steam-boat business? Who could be deaf when assayers, bankers, jobbers, and speculators cried aloud that it was all true?
Well, I am not going to moralize. Mr. Nugent was appointed a commissioner, on the part of the United States, to settle the various difficulties which had grown up between the miners and Governor Douglass. He arrived at Victoria in time to perform signal service to his fellow-citizens; that is to say, he found many of them in a state of starvation, and sent them back to California at public expense. Frazer River, always too high for mining purposes, could not be prevailed upon to subside. Its banks were not banks of issue, nor were its beds stuffed with the feathers of the Golden Goose. Had it not been for this turn of affairs, it is difficult to say what would have been the result. The British Lion had been slumbering undisturbed at Victoria for half a century, and was very much astonished, upon waking up, to find thirty thousand semi-barbarous Californians scattered broadcast over the British possessions. Governor Douglass issued manifestoes in vain. He evidently thought it no joke. The subject eventually became a matter of diplomatic correspondence, in which much ink was shed, but fortunately no blood, although the subsequent seizure of San Juan by General Harney came very near producing that result.
RETURNED FROM FRAZER RIVER.