“Shipmates, we’ll never see that lieutenant again, nor the young reefer, nor the old cox—never!”
Chapter Eight.
A Fleet of many Flags.
Scene, San Francisco, the capital of California. Time, the autumn of 1849; several weeks anterior to the chase recounted.
A singular city the San Francisco of 1849; very different from that it is to-day, and equally unlike what it was twelve months before the aforesaid date, when the obscure village of Yerba Buena yielded up its name, along with its site, entering on what may be termed a second genesis.
The little pueblita, port of the Mission Dolores, built of sun-dried bricks—its petty commerce in hides and tallow represented by two or three small craft annually arriving and departing—wakes up one morning to behold whole fleets of ships sailing in through the “Golden Gate,” and dropping anchor in front of its shingly strand. They come from all parts of the Pacific, from all the other oceans, from the ends of the earth, carrying every kind of flag known to the nations. The whalesman, late harpooning “fish” in the Arctic ocean, with him who has been chasing “cachalot” in the Pacific or Indian; the merchantman standing towards Australia, China, or Japan the traders among the South Sea Islands; the coasters of Mexico, Chili, Peru; men-o’-war of every flag and fashion, frigates, corvettes, and double-deckers; even Chinese junks and Malayan prahus are seen setting into San Francisco Bay, and bringing to beside the wharfless beach of Yerba Buena.
What has caused this grand spreading of canvas, and commingling of queer craft? What is still causing it; for still they come! The answer lies in a little word of four letters; the same that from the beginning of man’s activity on earth has moved him to many things—too oft to deeds of evil—gold. Some eighteen months before the Swiss emigrant Sutter, scouring out his mill-race on a tributary of the Sacramento River, observes shining particles among the mud. Taking them up, and holding them in the hollow of his hand, he feels that they are heavy, and sees them to be of golden sheen. And gold they prove, when submitted to the test of the alembic.
The son of Helvetia discovered the precious metal in grains, and nuggets, interspersed with the drift of a fluvial deposit. They were not the first found in California, but the first coming under the eyes of European settlers—men imbued with the energy to collect, and carry them to the far-off outside world.