The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

The speech was full of American and local phraseology, but the richness of the brogue was only the more perceptible from the vain attempt to disguise it. Many of the Americans sitting near me seemed to think that the orator was piling up the agony a little too high, and signified their disapprobation by shouting “Gaas, gaas!” My next neighbor, an old Yankee, informed me that, in his opinion, “them Pilgrim Fathers were no better than their neighbors; they left England because they could not have everything their own way, and in America were more intolerant of other religions than any one had been of theirs in England. I know all about ’em,” he said, “for I come from right whar they lived.”

In the middle of the arena, during the ceremonies, was a cage containing a grizzly bear, who had fought and killed a bull by torchlight the night before. His cage was boarded up, so that he was deprived of the pleasure of seeing what was going on, but he could hear all that was said, and expressed his opinion from time to time by grunting and growling most savagely.

After the oration, the company dispersed to answer the loud summons of the numerous dinner-bells and gongs, and in the afternoon there was a bull-fight, which went off with great éclat.

It was announced in the bills that the celebrated lady bull-fighter, the Señorita Ramona Perez, would despatch a bull with the sword. This celebrated señorita, however, turned out to be only the chief matador, who entered the arena very well got up as a woman, with the slight exception of a very fine pair of mustaches, which he had not thought it worth while to sacrifice. He had a fan in his hand, with which he half concealed his face, as if from modesty, as he curtseyed to the audience, who received him with shouts of laughter—mixed with hisses and curses, however, for there were some who had been true believers in the señorita; but the infidels were the majority, and, thinking it a good joke, enjoyed it accordingly. The señorita played with the bull for some little time with the utmost audacity, and with a great deal of feminine grace, whisking her petticoats in the bull’s face with one hand, whilst she smoothed down her hair with the other. At last the sword was handed to her, which she received very gingerly, also a red flag; and after dodging a few passes from the bull, she put the sword most gracefully into the back of his neck, and, hardly condescending to wait to see whether she had killed or not, she dropped both sword and flag, and ran out of the arena, curtsying, and kissing her hand to the spectators, after the manner of a ballet-dancer leaving the stage.

It was a pity the fellow had not shaved off his mustache, as otherwise his acting was so good that one might have deluded oneself with the belief that it was really the celebrated señorita herself who was risking her precious life by such a very ladylike performance.

I had heard from many persons of two natural bridges on a small river called Coyote Creek, some twelve miles off; and as they were represented as being very curious and beautiful objects, I determined to pay them a visit. Accordingly, returning to M’Lean’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, at the point where Coyote Creek joins that river, I traveled up the Creek for some miles, clambering over rocks and winding round steep overhanging banks, by a trail so little used that it was hardly discernible. I was amply repaid for my trouble, however, when, after an hour or two of hard climbing in the roasting hot sun, I at last reached the bridges, and found them much more beautiful natural curiosities than I had imagined them to be.

Having never been able to get any very intelligible account of what they really were, I had supposed that some large rocks rolling down the mountain had got jammed over the creek, by the steepness of the rocky banks on each side, which I fancied would be a very easy mode of building a natural bridge. My idea, however, was very far from the reality. In fact, bridges was an inappropriate name; they should rather have been called caves or tunnels. How they were formed is a question for geologists; but their appearance gave the idea that there had been a sort of landslip, which blocked up the bed of the creek for a distance of two or three hundred feet, and to the height of fifty or sixty above the bed of the stream. They were about a quarter of a mile apart, and their surface was, like that of the hills, perfectly smooth, and covered with grass and flowers. The interiors were somewhat the same style of place, but the upper one was the larger and more curious of the two. The faces of the tunnel were perpendicular, presenting an entrance like a church door, about twelve feet high, surrounded by huge stony fungus-like excrescences, of a dark purple-and-green color. The waters of the creek flowed in here, and occupied all the width of the entrance. They were only a few inches in depth, and gave a perfect reflection of the whole of the interior, which was a lofty chamber some hundred feet in length, the straight sides of which met at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. At the further end was a vista of similarly arched small passages, branching off into darkness. The walls were deeply carved into pillars and grotesque forms, in which one could trace all manner of fanciful resemblances; while at the base of some of the columns were most symmetrically formed projections, many of which might be taken for fonts, the top of them being a circular basin containing water. These projections were of stone, and had the appearance of having congealed suddenly while in a boiling state. There was a beautiful regularity in the roughness of their surface, some of the rounded forms being deeply carved with circular lines, similar to the engine-turning on the back of a watch, and others being rippled like a shirt of mail, the rippling getting gradually and regularly finer, till at the top the surface was hardly more rough than that of a file. The walls and roof seemed to have been smothered over with some stuff which had hardened into a sort of cement, presenting a polished surface of a bright cream-color, tinged here and there with pink and pale-green. The entrance was sufficiently large to light up the whole place, which, from its general outline, gave somewhat the idea of a church; for, besides the pillars, with their flowery ornaments, the Gothic arches and the fonts, there was at one side, near the entrance, one of these stone excrescences much larger than the others, which would have passed for a pulpit, overhung as it was by a projection of a similar nature, spreading out from the wall several feet above it.

The sides of the arches forming the roof did not quite meet at the top, but looked like the crests of two immense foaming waves, between which were seen the extremities of numbers of pendants of a like flowery form.

There was nothing rough or uncertain about the place; every part seemed as if it were elaborately finished, and in strict harmony with the whole; and as the rays of the setting sun fell on the water within the entrance, and reflected a subdued light over the brilliant hues of the interior, it looked like a gorgeous temple, which no art could improve, and such as no human imagination could have designed. At the other end of the tunnel the water emerged from a much smaller cave, which was so low as not to admit of a man crawling in.

The caves, at each end of the other tunnel, were also very small, though the architecture was of the same flowery style. The faces of it, however, were extremely beautiful. To the height of fifty or sixty feet they presented a succession of irregular overhanging projections, bulging out like immense mushrooms, of which the prevailing hue was a delicate pink, with occasional patches of bright green.