As for living on that day, one had to do the best one could with raw materials. Every man had to attend to his own commissariat; and when it was time to think about dinner, I went foraging with a friend among the promiscuous heaps of merchandise, and succeeded in getting some boxes of sardines and a bottle of wine. We were also fortunate enough to find some hard bread, so we did not fare very badly; and at night we lay down on the bare hillside, and shared that vast apartment with two or three thousand fellow-lodgers. Happy was the man who had saved his blankets,—mine had gone as a small contribution to the general conflagration; but though the nights were agreeably cool, the want of a covering, even in the open air, was not a very great hardship.
The next day the growth of the town was still more rapid. All sorts of temporary contrivances were erected by the storekeepers and hotel-keepers on the sites of their former houses. Every man was anxious to let the public see that he was “on hand,” and carrying on business as before. Sign-painters had been hard at work all night, and now huge signs on yard-wide strips of cotton cloth lined each side of the street, in many cases being merely laid upon the ground, where as yet nothing had been erected whereon to display them. These canvas and brush houses were only temporary. Every one, as soon as lumber could be procured, set to work to build a better house than the one he had lost; and within a month Sonora was in all respects a finer town than it had been before the fire.
CHAPTER XXV
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
ON the 4th of July I went over to Columbia, four miles distant from Sonora, where there were to be great doings, as the latter place had hardly yet recovered from the effects of the fire, and was still in a state of transition. So Columbia, which was nearly as large a town, was to be the place of celebration for all the surrounding country.
Early in the forenoon an immense concourse of people had assembled to take part in the proceedings, and were employing themselves in the meantime in drinking success to the American eagle, in the numerous saloons and bar-rooms. The town was all stars and stripes; they fluttered over nearly every house, and here and there hung suspended across the street. The day was celebrated in the usual way, with a continual discharge of revolvers, and a vast expenditure of powder and squibs and crackers, together with an unlimited consumption of brandy. But this was only the overflowing of individual enthusiasm; the regular program was a procession, a prayer, and an oration.
The procession was headed by about half-a-dozen ladies and a number of children—the teachers and pupils of a school—who sang hymns at intervals, when the brass band which accompanied them had blown themselves out of breath. They were followed by the freemasons, to the number of a hundred or so, in their aprons and other paraphernalia; and after them came a company of about the same number of horsemen, the most irregular cavalry one could imagine. Whoever could get a four-legged animal to carry him, joined the ranks; and horses, mules, and jackasses were all mixed up together. Next came the hook and ladder company, dragging their hooks and ladders after them in regular firemen fashion; and after them came three or four hundred miners, walking two and two, and dragging, in like manner, by a long rope, a wheelbarrow, in which were placed a pick and shovel, a frying-pan, an old coffee-pot, and a tin cup. They were marshalled by half-a-dozen miners, with long-handled shovels over their shoulders, and all sorts of ribbons tied round their old hats to make a show.
Another mob of miners brought up the rear, drawing after them a long tom on a pair of wheels. In the tom was a lot of “dirt,” which one man stirred up with his shovel, as if he were washing, while a number of others alongside were hard at work throwing in imaginary shovelfuls of dirt.
The idea was pretty good; but to understand the meaning of this gorgeous pageant, it was necessary to be familiar with mining life. The pick and shovel in the wheelbarrow were the emblems of the miners’ trade, while the old pots and pans were intended to signify the very rough style of his domestic life, particularly of his cuisine; and the party of miners at work around the long tom was a representation of the way in which the wealth of the country is wrested from it by all who have stout hearts and willing hands, or stout hands and willing hearts—it amounts to much the same thing.
The procession paraded the streets for two or three hours, and proceeded to the bull-ring, where the ceremonies were to be performed. The bull-ring here was neither so large nor so well got up as the one at Sonora, but still it could accommodate a very large number of people. As the miners entered the arena with their wheelbarrow and long tom, they were immensely cheered by the crowds who had already taken their seats, the band in the meantime playing “Hail Columbia” most lustily.
The Declaration of Independence was read by a gentleman in a white neckcloth, and the oration was then delivered by the “orator of the day,” who was a pale-faced, chubby-cheeked young gentleman, with very white and extensive shirt-collars. He indulged in a great deal of buncombe about the Pilgrim Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, the “Blarney-stone of America,” as the Americans call it. George the Third and his “red-coated minions” were alluded to in not very flattering terms; and after having exhausted the past, the orator, in his enthusiasm, became prophetic of the future. He fancied he saw a distant vision of a great republic in Ireland, England sunk into insignificance, and all the rest of it.