[A CANTER TO CALIFORNIA.][58]
To be very sure of what he is about to say, and to say it in the fewest possible words, are golden rules which every young author should inscribe, in letters of the same metal, upon the most prominent panel of his study. Had the Hon. Henry Coke done this when he stepped out of his stirrup, on his return from his Ride to California, he would have spared himself the painful throes which appear to have attended the commencement of his literary labour—would have spared his readers, too, the triviality and platitudes which deface some of the earlier pages of his otherwise spirited narrative of a most adventurous expedition. We reckon it amongst the remarkable and hopeful signs of the times, that young men of family and fortune voluntarily abandon the luxurious ease of home for such breakneck and laborious expeditions as that whose record is before us. Whatever the faults of the nobles of Great Britain, effeminacy is certainly not of the number. May the day be far distant when this is otherwise, and when we cease to possess, in a bold and manly aristocracy, one important guarantee of our national greatness.
It is, indeed, from no featherbed journey or carpet-knight's tour that Mr Coke has recently returned. Take the map, reader, and trace his route. From England to Jamaica, Cuba, Charleston, New York and St Louis, the great and rising capital of the Western States. We omit the minor intermediate places at which he touched or paused. Thus far all was plain sailing and easy civilised travel. The rough work began when St Louis was left behind. Across the wide wastes of Missouri territory, through the inhospitable passes of the Rocky Mountains, the traveller passed on to Oregon city and Fort Vancouver, thence took ship to the Sandwich Islands, returned to San Francisco, visited the gold diggings, steamed to Acapulco, rode across Mexico, and came home to England after an absence of a year and a half, during which he had been half round the world and back again.
Mr Coke started from St Louis with two companions: one an old college friend, whom he designates as Fred; the other "a British parson, whose strength and dimensions most justly entitled him to be called a pillar of the church." What the parson did in the prairies of the Far West does not clearly appear. He certainly did not go as a missionary, so far as we can ascertain from his friend's book, and indeed his habits and tendencies were evidently sporting and jovial rather than clerical, although we do catch him reading Sunday prayers to Mr Coke, when the latter had the chills, and lay wrapped up in wet blankets on the banks of Green River, with a boxful of Brandreth's pills in his stomach. We regret to believe that instances have been known of parsons employing their time far worse than in an adventurous ramble across the American continent. Mr Coke, nevertheless, thinks proper to veil his chaplain's identity under the heroic cognomen of Julius Cæsar, against which distinguished Roman, could he be recalled to life, we would unhesitatingly back the reverend gentleman to box a round, wrestle a fall, or handle a rifle, for any number of ponies the ancient's backers might be disposed to post. A stalwart priest and a powerful was Parson Julius, and is still, we trust, if nothing has happened to him since Mr Coke left him at the court of his majesty Tamehameha III., at Honolulu, on the eve of setting sail for the island of Owyhee. No better companion could be desired on a rough and perilous expedition; and although his careless friend manages to let his true name slip out before ending his volume, we will not allow that the slip affords grounds for regret, or that there is anything in his journey of which, as a clergyman, he need be ashamed.
Considerably over-provided with attendants, horses, mules, and, above all, with baggage, the three friends left St Louis. Their "following" comprised "four young Frenchmen of St Louis; Fils, a Canadian voyageur; a little four-foot-nothing Yankee, and Fred's valet-de-champs, familiarly called Jimmy." The journey was commenced on the 28th May 1850, per steamer, up the Missouri. On the morning of the 29th a disagreeable discovery was made. Fils, the guide, had disappeared. The scamp had levanted in the night; how, none could tell. Drowning was suggested; but as he had taken his baggage, and had forgotten to leave behind him the rifle and three months' advance of pay which he had received from his employers, the hypothesis was contemptuously scouted. Consoling themselves with the reflection that his desertion would have been far more prejudicial at a later period of their journey, the travellers continued their progress up the Missouri (for whose scenery Mr Coke can find no better comparison than the Cockney one of "Rosherville or Cremorne") to St Joseph, which the Yankees familiarise into St Joe. Here they were to exchange the deck for the saddle; and so impatient were they for the substitution that they actually felt "annoyed at being obliged to sleep another night on board the steamer." They had yet to learn the value of a coarse hammock in a close cabin. At last they made a fair start:—
"3d June.—After much bother about a guide, and loss of linch-pins, fitting of harness, kicking and jibbing of mules, &c., we left the Missouri, and camped five miles from the town. We pitched our tents in a beautiful spot, on the slope of a hill, surrounded by a large wood. A muddy little stream ran at the bottom. To this (with sleeves turned up and braces off, trying, I suppose, to look as much like grooms or dragoons as we were able) we each led our horses: no doubt we succeeded, for we felt perfectly satisfied with everything and everybody. The novelty put us all in excellent humour. The potatoes in the camp-kettle had a decidedly bivouacking appearance; and though the grass was wet, who, I should like to know, would have condescended to prefer a camp-stool? As to the pistols, and tomahawks, and rifles, it was evident that they might be wanted at a moment's notice, that it would have been absolutely dangerous not to have them all in perfect readiness. Besides, there was a chance of finding game in the wood. If the chance had been a hundred times as diminutive, we were in duty bound to try it."
Playing at travelling, like playing at soldiers, is all very well when the campaign is brief. The raw recruit or amateur campaigner plumes himself on a night passed upon straw in a barn. Give him a week's bivouacking in damp ploughed fields, and he sings small and feels rheumatic, and prefers the domestic nightcap to the warrior's laurel. Thus with Messrs Coke and Company. They were in a monstrous hurry to begin gipsying. What would they not have given, a week or two later, for a truckle bed and a tiled roof? The varnish of the picture, the anticipated romance, was soon rubbed off by the rough fingers of hardship and reality. What a start they made of it! Mr Coke is tolerably reserved on this head; but through his reserve it is not difficult to discern that, unless they had taken hair powder and a grand piano, they could hardly have encumbered themselves with more superfluities than those with which their mules and waggons were overloaded. Many who read these lines will remember the admirable and humorous account given by our lamented friend Ruxton, of the westward-bound caravan which fell in with Killbuck and La Bonté at the big granite block in Sweet Water Valley. Few, who have ever read, will have forgotten that characteristic sketch;—the dapper shooting-jackets, the fire-new rifles, the well-fitted boots and natty cravats, the Woodstock gloves and elaborate powder-horns, the preserved soup, hotch-potch, pickles, porter, brandy, coffee, sugar, of the amateur backwoodsmen who found the starving trappers dining on a grilled snake in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and generously ministered to their necessities. With somewhat similar but still more extravagant provision did our jockey of Norfolk, Fred, and Julius Cæsar, go forth into the prairie. Less fortunate than Ruxton's Scotchman, they failed to retain or enjoy what they had dearly paid for. Sadly altered was their trim, piteous their plight, long, long before they reached the Rocky Mountains. Disasters soon arrived, with disgust and discord in their train. At their first halting place, five miles from St Joseph, a pouring rain, pattering on their tent, forbade sleep; a horse and mule, disgusted by the dirty weather and foretaste of rough work, broke loose and galloped back to the town. These recovered, and the new guide, successor to the faithless Fils, having joined, they again went ahead. We may cull from Mr Coke's pages a few of the impediments and annoyances encountered at this early period of the journey:—
"Nothing could be more provoking than the behaviour of our teams; each animal seemed to vie with its yoke-mate in making itself disagreeable. They had no idea of attempting to pull together, and all exertions on our parts were discouraged by the most vehement kicks and plunges on theirs.... The men were as incapable of driving as the mules were unwilling to be driven, and before we had travelled three miles the heaviest of our waggons was stuck fast.... A doubt here arose as to which road we had better take, and I clearly perceived that our guide was deplorably ignorant of his calling, since in the very outset he was undecided as to which route we should pursue.... 7th June.—Started at seven. Roads worse than ever. Heavy waggon, as usual, sticks in a rut, and is nearly upset. Discharge cargo, and find it hard work to carry heavy boxes up the hill.... My black mare, Gipsy, has run away. Take Louis, the Canadian, and go after her. Find her tracks in a large wood, and hunt the whole day in every direction, but are at last obliged to give her up."