“Oh, Susannah! don’t you cry for me!
I’m off to California with my washbowl on my knee!”
We topped a rise and advanced on Sutter’s Fort as though we intended by force and arms to take that historic post.
PART III
THE MINES
141CHAPTER XIV
SUTTER’S FORT
Sutter’s Fort was situated at the edge of the live-oak park. We found it to resemble a real fort, with high walls, bastions, and a single gate at each end through which one entered to a large enclosed square, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards long by fifty wide. The walls were not pierced for guns; and the defence seemed to depend entirely on the jutting bastions. The walls were double, and about twenty-five feet apart. Thus by roofing over this space, and dividing it with partitions, Sutter had made up his barracks, blacksmith shop, bakery, and the like. Later in our investigations we even ran across a woollen factory, a distillery, a billiard room, and a bowling alley! At the southern end of this long space stood a two-story house. Directly opposite the two-story house and at the other end of the enclosure was an adobe corral.
The place was crowded with people. A hundred or so miners rushed here and there on apparently very important business, or loafed contentedly against the posts or the sun-warmth of adobe walls. In this latter occupation they were aided and abetted by a number of the native Californians. Perhaps a hundred Indians were leading horses, carrying burdens or engaged in some other heavy toil. They were the first we had seen, and we examined 142 them with considerable curiosity. A good many of them were nearly naked; but some had on portions of battered civilized apparel. Very few could make up a full suit of clothes; but contented themselves with either a coat, or a shirt, or a pair of pantaloons, or even with only a hat, as the case might be. They were very swarthy, squat, villainous-looking savages, with big heads, low foreheads, coarse hair, and beady little eyes.