The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

The greater part of the people, it is true, were individuals whose wealth was safe in their buckskin purses, and to them the pleasure of beholding such a grand pyrotechnic display was unalloyed by any greater individual misfortune than the loss of a few articles of clothing; but even those who were sitting hatless and shoeless among the wreck of their property showed little sign of being at all cast down by their disaster; they had more the air of determined men, waiting for the fire to play out its hand before they again set to work to repair all the destruction it had caused.

The fire commenced about half-past one o’clock in the morning, and by three o’clock it had almost burned itself out. Darkness again prevailed, and when day dawned, the whole city of Sonora had been removed from the face of the earth. The ground on which it had stood, now white with ashes, was covered with still smoldering fragments, and the only objects left standing were three large safes belonging to different banking and express companies, with a small remnant of the walls of an adobe house.

People now began to venture down upon the still smoking site of the city, and, seeing an excitement among them at the lower end of the town, I went down to see what was going on. The atmosphere was smoky and stifling, and the ground was almost too hot to stand on. The crowd was collected on a place which was known to be very rich, as the ground behind the houses had been worked, and a large amount of gold having been there extracted, it was consequently presumed that under the houses equally good diggings would be found. During the fire, miners had flocked in from all quarters, and among them were some unprincipled vagabonds, who were now endeavoring to take up mining claims on the ground where the houses had stood, measuring off the regular number of feet allowed to each man, and driving in stakes to mark out their claims in the usual manner.

The owners of the houses, however, were “on hand,” prepared to defend their rights to the utmost. Men who had just seen the greater part of their property destroyed were not likely to relinquish very readily what little still remained to them; and now, armed with pistols, guns, and knives, their eyes bloodshot and their faces scorched and blackened, they were tearing up the stakes as fast as the miners drove them in, while they declared very emphatically, with all sorts of oaths, that any man who dared to put a pick into that ground would not live half a minute. And truly a threat from such men was one not to be disregarded.

By the laws of the mines, the diggings under a man’s house are his property, and the law being on their side, the people would have assisted them in defending their rights; and it would not have been absolutely necessary for them to take the trouble of shooting the miscreants, who, as other miners began to assemble on the ground, attracted by the row, found themselves so heartily denounced that they thought it advisable to sneak off as fast as possible.

The only buildings left standing after the fire were a Catholic and a Wesleyan church, which stood on the hill a little off the street, and also a large building which had been erected for a ball-room, or some other public purpose. The proprietor of the principal gambling-saloon, as soon as the fire broke out and he saw that there was no hope for his house, immediately made arrangements for occupying this room, which, from its isolated position, seemed safe enough; and into this place he succeeded in moving the greater part of his furniture, mirrors, chandeliers, and so on. The large sign in front of the house was also removed to the new quarters, and the morning after the fire—but an hour or two after the town had been burned down—the new saloon was in full operation. The same gamblers were sitting at the same tables, dealing monte and faro to crowds of betters; the piano and violin, which had been interrupted by the fire, were now enlivening the people in their distress; and the bar-keeper was as composedly as ever mixing cocktails for the thirsty throats of the million.

No time was lost by the rest of the population. The hot and smoky ground was alive with men clearing away rubbish; others were in the woods cutting down trees and getting out posts and brushwood, or procuring canvas and other supplies from the neighboring camps.

In the afternoon the Phœnix began to rise. Amid the crowds of workers on the long blackened tract of ground which had been the street, posts began here and there to spring up; presently cross-pieces connected them; and before one could look around, the framework was filled in with brushwood. As the ground became sufficiently cool, people began to move down their goods and furniture to where their houses had been, where those who were not yet erecting either a canvas or a brush house, built themselves a sort of pen of boxes and casks of merchandise.

The fire originated in a French hotel, and among the ashes of this house were found the remains of a human body. There was merely the head and trunk, the limbs being entirely burned off. It looked like a charred and blackened log of wood, but the contour of the head and figure was preserved; and it would be hard to conceive anything more painfully expressive of intense agony than the few lines which so powerfully indicated what had been the contorted position of the head, neck, and shoulders of the unfortunate man when he ceased to move. The coroner held an inquest as soon as he could raise a jury out of the crowd, and in the afternoon the body was followed to the grave by several hundred Frenchmen.

This was the only death from the fire which was discovered at the time, but among the ruins of an adobe house, which for some reason was not rebuilt for several weeks afterwards, the remains of another body were found, and were never identified.