It was a long room, lighted with candles hung against the wall in tin sconces; the company—if variety is charming—was perfect. The costumes, as a rule, were more suggestive of ease than elegance; scarlet shirts and buckskin ‘pants’ were in the ascendant. The boots as a rule, being of the species known as Wellingtons, were worn outside the trousers, inducing the latter indispensables to assume a bunchiness about the knees, not calculated to display the symmetry of the leg to advantage. Very few had any jackets on, but all, without exception, carried a bowie-knife and six-shooter in their waistbelts. The ladies’ costumes were equally varied: most of them wore bright-coloured muslins, of very large patterns, and showy waist-ribbons, tied behind in a large bow, with streamers down to their heels.
The dance was just ‘down’ when I came into the room. I saw a few citizens I had met in the day, but each one seemed to have his ‘fancy gal,’ and any chance of getting an introduction was a vain hope. The fashion, I discovered afterwards, is either to bring or meet your partner at the ball-room, and dance with her, and her only, all the evening.
A waltz was called, and I wanted a partner. Looking round, I espied a lady sitting near the end of the room, who evidently had not got one. She was in the same place when I entered the room, and it was clear to me, by her unrumpled appearance, that she had not danced for the evening. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’ might, I imagined, apply as forcibly to dancing as to wooing or fighting; if I am snubbed it won’t be all the world, and I suppose I shall live it down—so here goes! Walking boldly up to her, I asked coolly, but rather apologetically, if she would try a waltz.
‘Guess, stranger, I ain’t a-fix’d up for waltzin.’
‘Perhaps, madam,’ I said, ‘you will excuse me, although unknown to you, if I ask you to dance the next cotillon with me?’
Looking into my face with an expression half doubt, half delight, she said: ‘Stranger, I’ll have the tallest kind of pleasure in puttin’ you right slick through a cotillon, for I’ve sot here, like a blue chicken on a pine-log, till I was like to a-grow’d to the seat.’
This satisfactorily arranged, I sat down by her side until the waltz finished, to have a good look at and trot out my new inamorata. She was a blonde beauty, with fair hair and light-grey eyes, that flashed and twinkled roguishly; and robed in some white material, with blue ribbons in her hair and round her waist—a mountain-sylph, that any wanderer in search of a partner would have deemed himself lucky to have stumbled on. Our conversation was rather discursive, until I discovered that home-politics, or rather the duties and requirements of a gal t’hum, was a never-failing spring from which to draw fresh draughts of household knowledge. At last the cotillon was called by the master of the ceremonies, and again I heard—‘Take your places, salute your partners;’ the fiddles started the same kind of jigging tune, and away we went.
A cotillon is a compound, complicated kind of dance, evidently constructed from the elements and fragments of many other dances: a good deal of quadrille, a strong taste of lancers, a flavour of polka and waltz—the whole highly seasoned with Indian war-dance. You never stand still, neither can you lounge and talk soft nothings to your partner—it is real, bonâ fide, downright, honest dancing. I soon discovered why the men left off their jackets: a trained runner could not have stood it in clothing. My jacket and waist-coat soon hung on a peg, and, red-shirted like the rest, I footed it out gallantly.
My partner was a gem, with the endurance of a ballet-girl in pantomime time. How many cotillons we got through I never clearly remembered; but we danced on, till the grey morning light, stealing in through the windows, warned the revellers that Old Sol was creeping from behind the eastern hills, and that the day, with all its cares and toils, was near at hand once more. My fair partner positively refused to allow me to see her home. Being a casual acquaintance and not a lover, I suppose, of course, that it was highly proper on her part. I thanked her sincerely, for I really felt grateful to her for enabling me to dance away a night that I had destined for a long luxurious repose. With a hearty ‘good-night’ we parted, never to meet again.
It was a glorious morning—the air cool and fresh, the sky unflecked by a single cloud. The sun was just tipping the hilltops with rosy light, and peeping slily into the valleys, as I wandered out to think over my strange adventure. My way led by chance up the back of the street, and out by a little stream to the gold-washings. Early as it was, all was bustle and activity. Many of my friends of the ball were now wresting the yellow ore from its hiding-places, the anticipation of gold dispelling all sense of fatigue. The want of water is a great drawback to these diggings. So valuable is it, that it has been brought by a small canal a distance of thirty miles, and is rented by the miners at so much a cubic foot.