Some of the party, the warrior among the number, commenced the day by taking a gin cocktail, the hunter acting as bar-keeper, while his partner the cook, who had been up an hour before any of us, chopping wood and lighting a fire, was laying the table for breakfast.
Breakfast was an affair of but very few moments, and as soon as it was over, I set out in company with three or four of the party, who were going the same way.
We crossed the north fork of the American River at Kelly’s Bar, a very rocky little place, covered with a number of dilapidated tents. We had the usual mountains to descend and ascend in crossing the river, but on gaining the summit we found ourselves again in a beautiful rolling country. Not far from the river was a very romantic little place called Illinoistown, consisting of three shanties and a saw-mill. The pine trees in the neighborhood were of an enormous size, and were being fast converted into lumber, which was in great demand for various mining operations, and sold at 120 dollars per thousand feet. We fared sumptuously on stewed squirrels at a solitary shanty in the forest a few miles farther on.
These little wayside inns, or “ranches,” as they are usually called in the mines, are generally situated in a spot which offers some capabilities of cultivation, and where water, the great desideratum in the mountains, is to be had all the year. The owners employ themselves in fencing-in and clearing the land, and by degrees give the place an appearance of comfort and civilization. One finds such places in all the different stages of improvement, from a small tent or log cabin, with the wild forest around it as yet undisturbed, to good frame houses with two or three rooms, a boarded floor, and windows, and surrounded by several acres of cleared land under cultivation.
Oats and barley are the principal crops raised in the mountains. In some of the little valleys a species of wild oats, which makes excellent hay, grows very luxuriantly. In passing through one such place, where the grasshoppers were in clouds, we found a number of Indian squaws catching them with small nets attached to a short stick, in the style of an angler’s landing-net. I believe they bruise them and knead them into a paste, somewhat of the consistency of potted shrimps; it may be as palatable also, but I cannot speak from experience on that point. My companions, as we traveled on, branched off one by one to their respective destinations, and I was again alone when I got to the ranch where I intended to pass the night. It was somewhat the same style of thing as the Grizzly-Bear House, but the house was larger, and the accommodation more luxurious, inasmuch as we had canvas bunks or shelves to sleep upon.
I went on next day along with a young miner from Georgia, who was also bound for Nevada. We dined at a place where we crossed Bear River; and a villainous bad dinner it was—nothing but bad salt pork, bad pickled onions, and bad bread.
On resuming our journey, we were joined by a man who said he always liked to have company on that road. Several robberies and murders had been committed on it of late, and he very kindly pointed out to us, as we passed it, the exact spot where, a few days before, one man had been shot through the head, and another through the hat. One was robbed of seventy-five cents, the other of eight hundred dollars.
It was a very romantic place, and well calculated for the operations of the gentlemen of the road, being a little hollow darkened by the spreading branches of a grove of oak trees; the underwood was thick and very high, and as the trail twisted round trees and bushes, a traveler could not see more than a few feet before or behind him. We had our revolvers in readiness; but I was not very apprehensive, as three men, all showing pistols in their belts, are rather more than those ruffians generally care to tackle.
We arrived at Nevada City between five and six o’clock, when I took a look round to find the most likely place for a good supper, being particularly ravenous after the long walk and the salt-pork dinner. I found a house bearing the sign of “Hotel de Paris,” and my choice was made at once. As I had half an hour to wait for supper, I strolled about the town to see what sort of a place it was. It is beautifully situated on the hills bordering a small creek, and had once been surrounded by a forest of magnificent pine trees, which, however, had been made to become useful instead of ornamental, and nothing now remained to show that they had existed but the numbers of stumps all over the hillsides. The bed of the creek, which had once flowed past the town, was now choked up with heaps of “tailings”—the washed dirt from which the gold has been extracted—the white color of the dirt rendering it still more unsightly. All the water of the creek was distributed among a number of small troughs, carried along the steep banks on either side at different elevations, for the purpose of supplying various quartz-mills and long toms.
The town itself—or, I should say, the “City,” for from the moment of its birth it has been called Nevada City—is, like all mining towns, a mixture of staring white frame houses, dingy old canvas booths, and log cabins.