The backwoodsman and the small farmer from the Western States, who formed a very large proportion of the people, could be easily recognized by many peculiarities. The educated man, who had lived and moved among gentlemen, was also to be detected under any disguise; but the great mass of the people were men who, in their appearance and manners, afforded little clue to their antecedents.

From the mode of life and the style of dress, men became very much assimilated in outward appearance, and acquired also a certain individuality of manner, which was more characteristic of what they now were—of the independent gold-hunter—than of any other order of mankind.

It was easy enough, if one had any curiosity on the subject, to learn something of a man’s history, for there was little reserve used in alluding to it. What a man had been mattered as little to him as it did to any one else; and it was refreshing to find, as was generally the case, that one’s preconceived ideas of a man were so utterly at variance with the truth.

Among such a motley crowd one could select his own associates, but the best-informed, the most entertaining, and those in many respects the most desirable, were not always those whose company one could have enjoyed where the inseparable barriers of class are erected;—and it is difficult to believe that any one, after circulating much among the different types of mankind to be found in the mines, should not have a higher respect than before for the various classes which they represented.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE RESOURCEFUL AMERICANS

AFTER a month or two spent on the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, and in the more sparsely populated section of country lying still farther south, I returned to Sonora, on my way to San Francisco.

Here I took the stage for Stockton—a large open wagon, drawn by five horses, three leaders abreast. We were well ballasted with about a dozen passengers, the most amusing of whom was a hard, dried-up man, dressed in a greasy old leathern hunting-shirt, and inexpressibles to match, all covered with tags and fringes, and clasping in his hand a long rifle, which had probably been his bosom-friend all his life. He took an early opportunity of informing us all that he was from Arkansas; that he came to “Calaforny” across the plains, and having been successful in the diggings, he was now on his way home. He was like a schoolboy going home for the holidays, so delighted was he with the prospect before him. It seemed to surprise him very much that all the rest of the party were not also bound for Arkansas, and he evidently looked upon us, in consequence, with a degree of compassionate interest, as much less fortunate mortals, and very much to be pitied.

We started at four o’clock in the morning, so as to accomplish the sixty or seventy miles to Stockton before the departure of the San Francisco steamer. The first ten or twelve miles of our journey were consequently performed in the dark, but that did not affect our speed; the road was good, and it was only in crossing the hollows between the hills that the navigation was difficult; for in such places the diggings had frequently encroached so much on the road as to leave only sufficient space for a wagon to pass between the miners’ excavations.

We drove about thirty miles before we were quite out of the mining regions. The country, however, became gradually less mountainous, and more suitable for cultivation, and every half-mile or so we passed a house by the roadside, with ploughed fields around it, whose occupant combined farming with tavern-keeping. This was all very pleasant traveling, but the most wretched part of the journey was when we reached the plains. The earth was scorched and baked, the heat was more oppressive than in the mountains, and for about thirty miles we moved along enveloped in a cloud of dust, which soaked into one’s clothes and hair and skin as if it had been a liquid substance. On our arrival in Stockton we were of a uniform color all over—all identity of person was lost as much as in a party of chimney-sweeps; but fortunately the steamer did not start for an hour, so I had time to take a bath, and make myself look somewhat like a white man before going on board.

The Stockton steamboats, though not so large as those which run to Sacramento, were not inferior in speed. We steamed down the San Joaquin at about twenty miles an hour, and reached San Francisco at ten o’clock at night.