We stared ahead of us, all eyes. The bay was a veritable inland sea; and the shores ahead of us lay flat and wide, with blue hazy hills in the distance, and a great mountain hovering in midair to our right. Black cormorants going upwind flapped heavily by us just above the water, their necks stretched out. Gulls wheeled and screamed above us, or floated high and light like corks over the racing waves. Rafts of ducks lay bobbing, their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. A salt 130 tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of the harbour entrance the shadows of cañons were beginning most beautifully to define themselves.
Altogether it was a pleasant sail. We perched to windward, and smoked our pipes, and worked ourselves to a high pitch of enthusiasm over what we were going to see and do. The sailor too smoked his pipe, leaning against the long, heavy tiller.
The distant flat shores drew nearer. We turned a corner and could make out the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came up on it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a very solid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood on his feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of the mainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers. In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our very vertebræ. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolled on her keel, the sail flopped, a following wave slopped heavily over the stern, and the water swashed forward across our feet. Then we recovered a trifle, staggered forward, bumped twice more, and slid into the smoother deep water. The sailor grunted, and passed us a dipper. We bailed her out while he raised again the peak of his sail.
Shortly after this experience we glided up the reaches of a wide beautiful river. It had no banks, but was bordered by the tall reeds called tules. As far as the eye could reach, and that was very far when we climbed part way up the mast to look, these tules extended. League after 131 league they ran away like illimitable plains, green and brown and beautiful, until somewhere over the curve of the earth straight ahead they must have met distant blue hills. To the southeast there seemed no end but the sky.
From the level of the boat, however, we saw only a little way into the outer fringe. The water lay among the stalks, and mud hens with white bills pushed their way busily into intricate narrow unguessed waterways. Occasionally the hedge of the tules broke to a greater or lesser opening into a lagoon. These were like shallow lakes, in which sometimes grew clumps of grasses. They were covered with waterfowl. Never have I seen so many ducks and geese of all kinds. They literally covered the surface of the water, and fairly seemed to jostle each other as they swam busily to and fro, intent on some business of their own. Their comfortable, low conversational clucking and quacking was a pleasure to hear. When, out of curiosity, we fired a revolver shot, they rose in the air with a roar like that of a great waterfall, and their crossing lines of flight in the sky was like the multitude of midges in the sun. I remember one flock of snow-white geese that turned and wheeled, alternately throwing their bodies in shadow or in the sunlight, so that they flashed brilliantly.
As the sun declined, the wind fell. Fortunately the current in the river was hardly perceptible. We slipped along on glassy waters. Thousands upon thousands of blackbirds dipped across us uttering their calls. Against a saffron sky were long lines of waterfowl, their necks outstretched. A busy multitudinous noise of marsh birds 132 rose and fell all about us. The sun was a huge red ball touching the distant hills.
At last the wind failed us entirely, but the sailor got out a pair of sweeps, and we took turns rowing. Within a half hour we caught the silhouette of three trees against the sky, and shortly landed on a little island of solid ground. Here we made camp for the night.
All next day, and the days after, being luckily favoured by steady fair winds, we glided up the river. I could not but wonder at the certainty with which our sailor picked the right passage from the numerous false channels that offered themselves. The water was beautifully clear and sweet; quite different from the muddy currents of to-day. Shortly the solid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches of earth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grew sycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of the wild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything else was green and beautiful. We could see the tracks of many deer along the flats, but caught no sight of the animals themselves. At one place, however, we did frighten a small band of half a dozen elk. They crashed away recklessly through the brush, making noise and splashing enough for a hundred. Yank threw one of his little pea bullets after them; and certainly hit, for we found drops of blood. The sailor shook his head disparagingly over the size of the rifle balls, to Yank’s vast disgust. I never saw him come nearer to losing his temper. As a matter of fact I think the sailor’s contention had something in it; the long accurate weapon with its tiny missile 133 was probably all right when its user had a chance to plant the bullet exactly in a fatal spot, but not for such quick snap shooting as this. At any rate our visions of cheap fresh meat vanished on the hoof.
The last day out we came into a wide bottomland country with oaks. The distant blue hills had grown, and had become slate-gray. At noon we discerned ahead of us a low bluff, and a fork in the river; and among the oak trees the gleam of tents, and before them a tracery of masts where the boats and small ships lay moored to the trees. This was the embarcadero of Sutter’s Fort beyond; or the new city of Sacramento, whichever you pleased. Here our boat journey ended.
We disembarked into a welter of confusion. Dust, men, mules, oxen, bales, boxes, barrels, and more dust. Everything was in the open air. Tents were pitched in the open, under the great oaks, anywhere and everywhere. Next, the river, and for perhaps a hundred yards from the banks, the canvas structures were arranged in rows along what were evidently intended to be streets; but beyond that every one simply “squatted” where he pleased. We tramped about until we found a clear space, and there dumped down our effects. They were simple enough; and our housekeeping consisted in spreading our blankets and canvas, and unpacking our frying pan and pots. The entire list of our provisions consisted of pork, flour, salt, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and some spirits.