The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

A MOST useful quality for a California emigrant was one which the Americans possess in a pre-eminent degree—a natural versatility of disposition and adaptability to every description of pursuit or occupation.

The numbers of the different classes forming the community were not in the proportion requisite to preserve its equilibrium. Transplanting oneself to California from any part of the world involved an outlay beyond the means of the bulk of the laboring classes; and to those who did come to the country, the mines were of course the great point of attraction; so that in San Francisco the numbers of the laboring and of the working classes generally, were not nearly equal to the demand. The consequence was that laborers’ and mechanics’ wages were ridiculously high; and, as a general thing, the lower the description of labor, or of service, required, the more extravagant in proportion were the wages paid. Sailors’ wages were two and three hundred dollars per month, and there were hundreds of ships lying idle in the bay for want of crews to man them even at these rates. Every ship, on her arrival, was immediately deserted by all hands; for, of all people, sailors were the most unrestrainable in their determination to go to the diggings; and it was there a common saying, of the truth of which I saw myself many examples, that sailors, niggers, and Dutchmen, were the luckiest men in the mines: a very drunken old salt was always particularly lucky.

There was a great overplus of young men of education, who had never dreamed of manual labor, and who found that their services in their wonted capacities were not required in such a rough-and-ready, every-man-for-himself sort of place. Hard work, however, was generally better paid than head work, and men employed themselves in any way, quite regardless of preconceived ideas of their own dignity. It was one intense scramble for dollars—the man who got most was the best man—how he got them had nothing to do with it. No occupation was considered at all derogatory, and, in fact, every one was too much occupied with his own affairs to trouble himself in the smallest degree about his neighbor.

A man’s actions and conduct were totally unrestrained by the ordinary conventionalities of civilized life, and, so long as he did not interfere with the rights of others, he could follow his own course, for good or for evil, with utmost freedom.

Among so many temptations to err, thrust prominently in one’s way, without any social restraint to counteract them, it was not surprising that many men were too weak for such a trial and, to use an expressive, though not very elegant phrase, went to the devil. The community was composed of isolated individuals, each quite regardless of the good opinion of his neighbors; and, the outside pressure of society being removed, men assumed their natural shape, and showed what they really were, following their unchecked impulses and inclinations. The human nature of ordinary life appeared in a bald and naked state, and the natural bad passions of men, with all the vices and depravities of civilization, were indulged with the same freedom which characterizes the life of a wild savage.

There were, however, bright examples of the contrary. If there was a lavish expenditure in ministering to vice, there was also munificence in the bestowing of charity. Though there were gorgeous temples for the worship of mammon, there was a sufficiency of schools and churches for every denomination; while, under the influence of the constantly increasing numbers of virtuous women, the standard of morals was steadily improving, and society, as it assumed a shape and a form, began to assert its claims to respect.

Although employment, of one sort or another, and good pay, were to be had by all who were able and willing to work, there was nevertheless a vast amount of misery and destitution. Many men had come to the country with their expectations raised to an unwarrantable pitch, imagining that the mere fact of emigration to California would insure them a rapid fortune; but when they came to experience the severe competition in every branch of trade, their hopes were gradually destroyed by the difficulties of the reality.

Every kind of business, custom, and employment, was solicited with an importunity little known in old countries, where the course of all such things is in so well-worn a channel, that it is not easily diverted. But here the field was open, and every one was striving for what seemed to be within the reach of all—a foremost rank in his own sphere. To keep one’s place in the crowd required an unremitted exercise of the same vigor and energy which were necessary to obtain it; and many a man, though possessed of qualities which would have enabled him to distinguish himself in the quiet routine life of old countries, was crowded out of his place by the multitude of competitors, whose deficiency of merit in other respects was more than counterbalanced by an excess of unscrupulous boldness and physical energy. A polished education was of little service, unless accompanied by an unwonted amount of democratic feeling; for the extreme sensitiveness which it is otherwise apt to produce, unfitted a man for taking part in such a hand-to-hand struggle with his fellow-men.

Drinking was the great consolation for those who had not moral strength to bear up under their disappointments. Some men gradually obscured their intellects by increased habits of drinking, and, equally gradually, reached the lowest stage of misery and want; while others went at it with more force, and drank themselves into delirium tremens before they knew where they were. This is a very common disease in California: there is something in the climate which superinduces it with less provocation than in other countries.

But, though drunkenness was common enough, the number of drunken men one saw was small, considering the enormous consumption of liquor.