There are a few Indians near this place; poor, miserable devils, dirty and half clothed, for they have given up buckskin for Mexican blankets, their faces begrimed with dirt and their whole appearance one of neglect and filth. They dig a little gold from time to time and leave a good share of it with a French trader, Poillon by name. He makes his trade pay by giving them presents in the morning to secure their good-will, and a little extra change at night, on his provisions. I saw him selling the lowest part of a leg from the forequarter of a very poor beef at an abominable price, and he turned to me with a pitiful expression, and asked if he ought to let it go for so small a price, showing me an ounce of gold. All Indian trading appears to be done in the same way, make them presents, and then charge double the value of the gift, on the first article they buy.
The food of these Indians is chiefly the "payote" made from the acorns into a kind of gruel, rather astringent to the taste of the white man, but to an Indian digestion all seems good that can be swallowed.
I saw a papoose, too small to walk, with a stone in his hand half as big as his head, shelling out the nuts of the pine-cone, cracking and eating them with the judgment of a monkey, and looking very much like one.
Their wigwams faced the south, and formed an irregular cluster of bark and mud cones; the usual number of fox- and wolf-like dogs gave the same effect that I am accustomed to, but the tribe is not as handsome as the Indians of the east, or even the Yumas, Pimos, or the Maricopas on the Gila.
Leaving Cayote diggings, the trail for five miles passes between two moderately high ridges to Carson's Creek, where the soil changes to a much poorer quality; crossing the creek we ascended a fairly high hill, from which I took a sketch across the Stanislaus. The sunset effect was fine, but I had no colors with me.
March 25th. After crossing the Stanislaus we ascended a long hill leading about southwest, towards the "Mormon Gulch" three miles distant. The road wound up ravines for the first two miles, and would have made as beautiful a walk as it did a ride. All nature was still and calm, and the silent scene brought Sunday to both our minds, and we agreed that whether in the wilderness, or at home, the day brought a feeling of tranquillity. We almost changed our minds when we reached the diggings, so different was the scene. The bar-rooms were all doing a "thriving business," and the monte dealers were doing even a better, gloating over the hard-earned piles of gold dust which ought to have served a better purpose.
Passing all this, and going up a beautiful gorge, winding at times so as almost to form a semi-circle, we turned our course, and came upon a most exquisite cascade; the water split upon a bold rock about fifty feet high and tumbled in leaps of from six to ten feet until it reached the rocky bed, where it rushed on boiling and bubbling impetuously until it joined the Stanislaus.
Our walk to Wood's Creek was hot and tiresome, and after cooling off we took a sponge bath, the water being too cold for a plunge, and then sauntered about looking for the best points at which to take views of this most beautiful part of the country. Situated, by comparison, in a basin, and straggling up and down the creek are here situated Wood's diggings, Jamestown and Yorktown. The soil looks poor, and the rock is granite and sandstone with some slate. On the high points and peaks of "Table Mountain" huge masses of conglomerate boulders, two feet and more in diameter, are scattered everywhere, and give a dreary look to all the north side of Wood's diggings. The hill to the west has shot up into beautiful obelisks of quartz, and you only cease to admire it to be in raptures over the views seen by turning east, to look over mountain beyond mountain, snowy peaks bare of trees, and between them the rounded points of hills, looking tiny by comparison. To the south, bold, rounded but high mountains, full of verdure and with most graceful outlines, enchant you, while the verdant stretches at the foot of these mountains have a pastoral air which made us think of home.
March 27th. My day passed in a vain attempt to transfer to canvas the scene before our tent; when I had worked some hours I went into the tent next to ours, where lies a poor man, ill, pale, dejected, unable to move even a few steps. His mud roof leaks, the soil forming the side of his cabin is so porous that it admits such quantities of water that a ditch is necessary to carry it off from the dirt floor. This man came round the Horn, and the long voyage and poor food left him such a victim of scurvy that since he arrived in California, the first of last October, he has worked only six days; the relative with whom he came, and who has toiled for both, has only been able to keep them in provisions, with his best endeavors; he has no money to get home, now his only wish. This man is the brother of Barnum, the museum man; he has written to him, and is awaiting a draft which will enable him to return.
Day and night (these beautiful moonlight nights), flock after flock of wild geese pass almost hourly over our heads to the north. I give up in despair trying to fathom the use of their migration, when hundreds of their fellows are known to breed so far south. Their courtship is kept up as they fly high over the grassy plains where they fed last fall, for if you look closely at the flock, you will see that with the exception of the old gander, a fourth larger than the others, as a rule all the rest are in pairs, and the males follow the females so closely that the line is composed of two very near together, two a little distance from them, and so on to the end.