We soon, however, left the hilly country behind us, and came upon the vast plains which extend the whole length of California, bounded on one side by the range of mountains which runs along the coast, and on the other side by the mountains which constitute the mining districts. Through these plains flows the Sacramento river, receiving as tributaries all the rivers flowing down from the mountains on either side.
The steamer—which was a very fair specimen of the usual style of New York river-boat—was crowded with passengers and merchandise. There were not berths for one-half of the people on board; and so, in company with many others, I lay down and slept very comfortably on the deck of the saloon till about three o’clock in the morning, when we were awakened by the noise of letting off the steam on our arrival at Sacramento.
One of not the least striking wonders of California was the number of these magnificent river steamboats which, even at that early period of its history, had steamed round Cape Horn from New York, and now, gliding along the California rivers at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour, afforded the same rapid and comfortable means of traveling, and sometimes at as cheap rates, as when they plied between New York and Albany. Every traveler in the United States has described the river steamboats; suffice it to say here, that they lost none of their characteristics in California; and, looking at these long, white, narrow, two-story houses, floating apparently on nothing, so little of the hull of the boat appears above water, and showing none of the lines which, in a ship, convey an idea of buoyancy and power of resistance, but, on the contrary, suggesting only the idea of how easy it would be to smash them to pieces—following in imagination these fragile-looking fabrics over the seventeen thousand miles of stormy ocean over which they had been brought in safety, one could not help feeling a degree of admiration and respect for the daring and skill of the men by whom such perilous undertakings had been accomplished. In preparing these steamboats for their long voyage to California, the lower story was strengthened with thick planking, and on the forward part of the deck was built a strong wedge-shaped screen, to break the force of the waves, which might otherwise wash the whole house overboard. They crept along the coast, having to touch at most of the ports on the way for fuel; and passing through the Straits of Magellan, they escaped to a certain extent the dangers of Cape Horn, although equal dangers might be encountered on any part of the voyage.
But besides the question of nautical skill and individual daring, as a commercial undertaking the sending such steamers round to California was a very bold speculation. Their value in New York is about a hundred thousand dollars, and to take them round to San Francisco costs about thirty thousand more. Insurance is, of course, out of the question (I do not think 99 per cent. would insure them in this country from Dover to Calais); so the owners had to play a neck-or-nothing game. Their enterprise was in most cases duly rewarded. I only know of one instance—though doubtless others have occurred—in which such vessels did not get round in safety: it was an old Long Island Sound boat; she was rotten before ever she left New York, and foundered somewhere about the Bermudas, all hands on board escaping in the boats.
The profits of the first few steamers which arrived out were of course enormous; but, after a while, competition was so keen that for some time cabin fare between San Francisco and Sacramento was only one dollar; a ridiculously small sum to pay, in any part of the world, for being carried in such boats two hundred miles in ten hours; but, in California at that time, the wages of the common deck hands on board these same boats were about a hundred dollars a-month; and ten dollars were there, to the generality of men, a sum of much less consequence than ten shillings are here.
These low fares did not last long, however; the owners of steamers came to an understanding, and the average rate of fare from San Francisco to Sacramento was from five to eight dollars. I have only alluded to the one-dollar fares for the purpose of giving an idea of the competition which existed in such a business as “steamboating,” which requires a large capital; and from that it may be imagined what intense rivalry there was among those engaged in less important lines of business, which engrossed their whole time and labor, and required the employment of all the means at their command.
Looking at the map of California, it will be seen that the “mines” occupy a long strip of mountainous country, which commences many miles to the eastward of San Francisco, and stretches northward several hundred miles. The Sacramento river running parallel with the mines, the San Joaquin joining it from the southward and eastward, and the Feather river continuing a northward course from the Sacramento—all of them being navigable—present the natural means of communication between San Francisco and the “mines.” Accordingly, the city of Sacramento—about two hundred miles north of San Francisco—sprang up as the depot for all the middle part of the mines, with roads radiating from it across the plains to the various settlements in the mountains. In like manner the city of Marysville, being at the extreme northern point of navigation of the Feather river, became the starting-place and the depot for the mining districts in the northern section of the State; and Stockton, named after Commodore Stockton, of the United States Navy, who had command of the Pacific squadron during the Mexican war, being situated at the head of navigation of the San Joaquin, forms the intermediate station between San Francisco and all the “southern mines.”
Seeing the facilities that California thus presented for inland navigation, it is not surprising that the Americans, so pre-eminent as they are in that branch of commercial enterprise, should so soon have taken advantage of them. But though the prospective profits were great, still the enormous risk attending the sending of steamboats round the Horn might have seemed sufficient to deter most men from entering into such a hazardous speculation. It must be remembered that many of these river steamboats were despatched from New York, on an ocean voyage of seventeen thousand miles, to a place of which one-half the world as yet even doubted the existence, and when people were looking up their atlases to see in what part of the world California was. The risk of taking a steamboat of this kind to what was then such an out-of-the-way part of the world, did not end with her arrival in San Francisco by any means. The slightest accident to her machinery, which there was at that time no possibility of repairing in California, or even the extreme fluctuations in the price of coal, might have rendered her at any moment so much useless lumber.
In ocean navigation the same adventurous energy was manifest. Hardly had the news of the discovery of gold in California been received in New York, when numbers of steamers were despatched, at an expense equal to one-half their value, to take their place on the Pacific in forming a line between the United States and San Francisco via Panama; so that almost from the commencement of the existence of California as a gold-bearing country, steam-communication was established between New York and San Francisco, bringing the two places within twenty to twenty-five days of each other. It is true the mail line had the advantage of a mail contract from the United States government; but other lines, without any such fostering influence, ran them close in competition for public patronage.
The Americans are often accused of boasting—perhaps deservedly so; but there certainly are many things in the history of California of which they may justly be proud, having transformed her, as they did so suddenly, from a wilderness into a country in which most of the luxuries of life were procurable; and a fair instance of the bold and prompt spirit of commercial enterprise by which this was accomplished was seen in the fact that, from the earliest days of her settlement, California had as good means of both ocean and inland steam-communication as any of the oldest countries in the world.