The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

The southern mines, however, were full of all sorts of people. There were many villages peopled nearly altogether by Mexicans, others by Frenchmen; in some places there were parties of two or three hundred Chilians forming a community of their own. The Chinese camps were very numerous; and besides all such distinct colonies of foreigners, every town of the southern mines contained a very large foreign population. The Americans, however, were of course greatly the majority, but even among them one remarked the comparatively small number of Missourians and such men, who are so conspicuous in the north.

There was still another difference in a very important feature—in fact, the most important of all—the gold. The gold of the northern mines is generally flaky, in exceedingly small thin scales; that of the south is coarse gold, round and “chunky.” The rivers of the north afford very rich diggings, while in the south they are comparatively poor, and the richest deposits are found in the flats and other surface-diggings on the highlands.

In the north there were no such canvas towns as Moquelumne Hill. Log cabins and frame houses were the rule, and canvas the exception; while in the southern mines the reverse was the case, excepting in some of the larger towns.

It is singular that the State should be thus divided by nature into two sections of country so unlike in many important points; and that the people inhabiting them should help to heighten the contrast is equally curious, though it may possibly be accounted for by supposing that Frenchmen, Mexicans, and other foreigners, preferred the less wild-looking country and more temperate winters of the southern mines, while the absence of the Western backwoodsmen in the south was owing to the fact that they came to the country across the plains by a route which entered the State near Placerville. Their natural instinct would have led them to continue on a westward course, but this would have brought them down on the plains of the Sacramento Valley, where there is no gold; so, thinking that sunset was more north than south, and knowing also there was more western land in that direction, they spread all over the northern part of the State, till they connected themselves with the settlements in Oregon.

In the neighborhood of Volcano there is a curious cave, which I went to visit with two or three miners. The entrance to it is among some large rocks on the bank of the creek, and is a hole in the ground just large enough to admit of a man’s dropping himself into it lengthways. The descent is perpendicular between masses of rock for about twenty feet, and is accomplished by means of a rope; the passage then takes a slanting direction for the same distance, and lands one in a chamber thirty or forty feet wide, the roof and sides of which are composed of groups of immense stalactites. The height varies very much, some of the stalactites reaching within four or five feet of the ground; and there are several small openings in the walls, just large enough to creep through, which lead into similar chambers. We brought a number of pieces of candle with us, with which we lighted up the whole place. The effect was very fine; the stalactites, being tinged with pale blue, pink, and green, were grouped in all manner of grotesque forms, in one corner giving an exact representation of a small petrified waterfall.

Coming down into the cave was easy enough, the force of gravity being the only motive power, but to get out again we found rather a difficult operation. The sides of the passage were smooth, offering no resting-place for the foot; and the only means of progression was to haul oneself up by the rope hand over hand—rather hard work in the inclined part of the passage, which was so confined that one could hardly use one’s arms.

At the hotel I stayed at here I found very agreeable company; most of the party were Texans, and were doctors and lawyers by profession, though miners by practice. For the first time since I had been in the mines I here saw whist played, the more favorite games being poker, euchre, and all-fours, or “seven up,” as it is there called. There were also some enthusiastic chess-players among the party, who had manufactured a set of men with their bowie-knives; so what with whist and chess every night, I fancied I had got into a civilized country.

The day before I had intended leaving this village, some Mexicans came into the camp with a lot of mules, which they sold so cheap as to excite suspicions that they had not come by them honestly. In the evening it was discovered that they were stolen animals, and several men started in pursuit of the Mexicans; but they had already been gone some hours, and there was little chance of their being overtaken. I waited a day, in hopes of seeing them brought back and hung by process of Lynch law, which would certainly have been their fate had they been caught; but, fortunately for them, they succeeded in making good their escape. The men who had gone in chase returned empty-handed, so I set out again for Moquelumne Hill on my way south.

I was put upon a shorter trail than the one by which I had come from there; and though it was very dim and little traveled, I managed to keep it: and passing on my way through a small camp called Clinton, inhabited principally by Chilians and Frenchmen, I struck the Moquelumne River at a point several miles above the bridge where I had crossed it before.

The river was still much swollen with the rains and snow of winter, and the mode of crossing was not by any means inviting. Two very small canoes lashed together served as a ferry-boat, in which the passenger hauled himself across the river by means of a rope made fast to a tree on either bank, the force of the current keeping the canoes bow on. When I arrived here, this contrivance happened to be on the opposite side, where I saw a solitary tent which seemed to be inhabited, but I hallooed in vain for some one to make his appearance and act as ferryman. There seemed to be a trail from the tent leading up the river; so, following that direction for about half a mile, I found a party of miners at work on the other side—one of whom, in the obliging spirit universally met with in the mines, immediately left his work and came down to ferry me across.