The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

The houses were nearly all of wood, many of them well-finished two-story houses, with columns and verandas in front. The most prominent places in the town were of course the gambling saloons, fitted up in the usual style of showy extravagance, with the exception of the mirrors; for as everything had to be brought seventy or eighty miles over the mountains on the backs of mules, very large mirrors were a luxury hardly attainable; an extra number of smaller ones, however, made up for the deficiency. There were several very good hotels, and two or three French restaurants; the other houses in the town were nearly all stores, the mining population living in tents and cabins, all up and down the river.

I put up at a French house, which was kept in very good style by a pretty little Frenchwoman, and had quite the air of being a civilized place. I was accommodated with half of a bedroom, in which there was hardly room to turn round between the two beds; but I was so accustomed to rolling myself in my blankets and sleeping on the ground, or on the rocks, or at best being stowed away on a shelf with twenty or thirty other men in a large room, that it seemed to me most luxurious quarters. The salle à manger was underneath me, and as the floor was very thin, I had the full benefit of all the conversation of those who indulged in late suppers, whilst next door was a ten-pin alley, in which they were banging away at the pins all night long; but such trifles did not much disturb my slumbers.

There was no lack of public amusements in the town. The same company which I had heard in Nevada were performing in a very comfortable little theater—not a very highly decorated house, but laid out in the orthodox fashion, with boxes, pit, and gallery—and a company of American glee-singers, who had been concertizing with great success in the various mining towns, were giving concerts in a large room devoted to such purposes. Their selection of songs was of a decidedly national character, and a lady, one of their party, had won the hearts of all the miners by singing very sweetly a number of old familiar ballads, which touched the feelings of the expatriated gold-hunters.

I was present at their concert one night, when, at the close of the performance, a rough old miner stood up on his seat in the middle of the room, and after a few preliminary coughs, delivered himself of a very elaborate speech, in which, on behalf of the miners of Downieville, he begged to express to the lady their great admiration of her vocal talents, and in token thereof begged her acceptance of a purse containing 500 dollars’ worth of gold specimens. Compliments of this sort, which the Scotch would call “wiselike,” and which the fair cantatrice no doubt valued as highly as showers of the most exquisite bouquets, had been paid to her in most of the towns she had visited in the mines. Some enthusiastic miners had even thrown specimens to her on the stage.

Downieville is situated at what is called the Forks of the Yuba River, and the town itself was frequently spoken of as “The Forks” in that part of the country. It may be necessary to explain that, in talking of the forks of a river in California, one is always supposed to be going up the river; the forks are its tributaries. The main rivers received their names, which they still retain, from the Spaniards and Indians; and the first gold-hunting pioneers, in exploring a river, when they came to a tributary, called one branch the north, and the other the south fork. When one of these again received a tributary, it either continued to be the north or south fork, or became the middle fork, as the case might be.

If a river was never to have more than two tributaries, this would do very well, but the river above Downieville kept on forking about every half-a-mile, and the branches were all named on the same principle, so that there were half-a-dozen north, middle, and south forks.

The diggings at Downieville were very extensive; for many miles above it on each fork there were numbers of miners working in the bed and the banks of the river. The mountains are very precipitous, and the only communication was by a narrow trail which had been trodden into the hillside, and crossed from one side of the river to the other, as either happened to be more practicable; sometimes following the rocky bed of the river itself, and occasionally rising over high steep bluffs, where it required a steady head and a sure foot to get along in safety.

One spot in particular was enough to try the nerve of any one but a chamois hunter. It was a high bluff, almost perpendicular, round which the river made a sweep, and the only possible way of passing it was by a trail about eighty feet above the river. The trail hardly deserved the name—it was merely a succession of footsteps, sometimes a few inches of a projecting rock, or a root. Two men could pass each other with difficulty, and only at certain places, by holding on to each other; and from the trail to the river all was clear and smooth, not a tree or a bush to save one if he happened to miss his footing. At one spot there was an indentation in the precipice, where the rock was quite perpendicular: to get over this difficulty, a young pine tree was laid across by way of a bridge; it was only four or five inches in diameter, and lay nearly a couple of feet outside of the rock. In passing, one only rested one foot on the tree, and with the other took advantage of the inequalities in the face of the rock; while looking down to see where to put one’s feet, one saw far below, between his outstretched legs, the most uninviting jagged rocks, strongly suggestive of sudden death.

The miners had given this place the name of Cape Horn. Those who were camped on the river above it, were so used to it that they passed along with a hop, step, and a jump, though carrying a week’s provisions on their backs, but a great many men had fallen over, and been instantly killed on the rocks below.

The last victim, at the time I was there, was a Frenchman, who very foolishly set out to return to his camp from Downieville after dark, having to pass this place on the way. He had taken the precaution to provide himself with a candle and some matches to light him round the Cape, but he was found dead on the rocks the next morning.