XLIII.
CALIFORNIA AND HER TERRESTRIAL TREASURES.
WONDERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST—CALIFORNIA IN 1835—CAUSE OF HER RAPID PROGRESS—THE HONEST MINER OF THE OLDEN TIME—FATE OF THE FORTY-NINERS—EFFORTS OF A NOVICE—RUSHES TO NEW PLACERS—CHANGE FROM PLACER TO QUARTZ MINING—GRASS VALLEY—EXTENT OF THE GOLD-BEARING RIDGE—AMALGAMATING PROCESSES—SPECULATIONS IN MINING STOCKS—HOW A SHARP NEW YORKER WAS SOLD—A LUCKY HIT—COPPER MINES IN CALIFORNIA AND ARIZONA—NEW ALMADEN AND ITS QUICKSILVER—BENEFITS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.
For a few years after the discovery of gold in California, little attention was given by her inhabitants to any other pursuit than mining. But in course of time the agricultural resources of the State were developed, and California soon made herself one of the grain-supplying regions of the world. The mines do not hold such a prominent place as they did fifteen years ago, but they are still an important source of wealth to the Pacific coast, and will so continue for a long time to come. Had there been no discovery of gold or other precious metal west of the Rocky Mountains up to the present time, California would to-day be but little advanced beyond the condition in which she was found by the author of “Two Years Before the Mast,” when he landed on her shores in 1835. The cities along the coast would have grown larger, and the number of ships trading to San Diego, San Francisco, and other parts would have steadily increased, but the traffic would be mainly in hides from California cattle, or in the very few articles that were then the produce of this region. San Francisco could not have become in a few years a great city, without the discovery of gold in the streams and on the hill-sides of California.
THE MINERS OF CALIFORNIA
The first rush of gold-seekers in 1849, and for two or three years, subsequent to that date, was to the diggings along the various rivers and their tributaries. Men came, with pick and shovel, to gather up a fortune by separating gold from the earth along the valleys. The honest miner, with the tools of his profession, with his bronzed and unshaven face, his hair unkempt and matted like locks of wool, his clothing of the roughest character, and utterly innocent of whisk-broom or cologne water, was a figure well known on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coast. In California he existed in reality, but in the East he was drawn in caricature as something that all California emigrants must become. He toiled in the sands of the Sacramento and its tributaries, now with a run of good luck that sent him rejoicing to his home in the East, or furnished the material for a “high old time,” and again, with ill fortune that left him, after long exertion, with very little of the valuable metal in his own right.
The race of miners has not become extinct, as any one who has visited the interior of California can testify, but it is by no means as numerous as of yore. A large number of men who now stand high in the business world, began their California life by working in the mines. Many of the former miners have gone to their homes in the East, or to those undiscovered regions where gold is said to be of no particular use. Many long since drifted to other gold-mining countries, and many others have taken to agriculture, or to some business more certain—though less seductive—than gold-hunting. Most of the placers have been washed out and abandoned to the Mexicans or Chinese. Localities that formerly supported a large mining population are now deserted, while others can still count a goodly number of inhabitants. Whenever a new region is opened up there are many persons ready to rush to it, in the belief that they will find the fortune they have so long sought. Fraser River, Washoe, Kern River, and other regions have all stood high in the bill of attractions, and all proved more or less delusive. Hardly a year passes without a new discovery somewhere, and a consequent rush of emigration. Human nature remains the same, and there is no probability of the arrival of a time when men will no longer be tempted by extravagant stories to go in quest of a fortune.
THE FIRST MINERS.
In the early days, thousands of persons landed at San Francisco with no definite knowledge of the country, and with the impression that the gold mines were within a few hours’ walk of the city, and possibly inside its corporate limits. The story is told of a party of emigrants who came ashore from a steamer, breakfasted at a cheap hotel, and then, with their mining tools, proceeded to the beach at the foot of Telegraph Hill, and began washing for gold. The Sacramento was the deposit of a greater wealth than that of the Indies; they argued that all the water in the bay of San Francisco had come from that river, and therefore all the earth that it touched must be auriferous. Only a day’s toil in that locality could convince them that their theories were incorrect.