Deck and port /

by Walter Colton

Your loafers must be paid off in the morning, and the scow recovered, or its loss will cost you half the profits of your voyage. But the storm last night has driven another brig into yours; and there they both are, like a bear and bull that have gored and crushed each other. But “misery loves company,” and you have it. The storm which swamped your scow and stove your brig last night, has been busy on shore. Piles of goods heaped up in every street, are in a condition which requires wreckers as well as watchmen. But no one here is going to trouble himself about your misfortunes, nor much about his own. The reverses of to-day are to be more than repaired by the successes of to-morrow. These are only the broken pickaxes and spades by which the great mine is to be reached. What is the loss of a few thousands to one who is so soon to possess millions? Only a coon back in his hole, while the buffalo remains within rifle-shot,—only a periwinkle lost, while the whale is beneath the harpoon,—only a farthing candle consumed, while the dowered bride, blushing in beauty and bliss, is kneeling at the nuptial altar. But let that pass.

But you are not alone in your destitution and dirt. There are hundreds around you who were quite as daintily reared, and who are doing out here what they dodged at home. Do you see that youth in red flannel shirt and coarse brogans, rolling a wheelbarrow? He was once a clerk in a counting-house in New York, and came here to shovel up gold as you scoop up sand. He has been to the mines, gathered no gold, and returned, but now makes his ten dollars a day by rolling that wheelbarrow; it costs him six, however, to live, and the other four he loses at monté.

See you that young man with a long whip in his hand, cracking it over an ox-team? He was one of the most learned geologists, for his age, in the United States, and came out here to apply his science to the discovery of gold deposites; but some how his diving-rods always dipped wrong—and now he has taken a rod about which there is no mistake, so at least think his cattle. He would accumulate a fortune did he not lose it as fast as made in some phrensied speculation. But look yonder—do you see that young gentlemen with a string of fish, which he offers for sale. He was the best Greek and Latin scholar of his class in Yale College; and subsequently one of the most promising members of our bar. But he exchanged his Blackstone for a pick; and instead of picking fees out of his clients’ pockets, he came here to pick gold out of the mines; but the deuce was in it, for whenever his pick struck close upon a deposite, it was no longer there! so he exchanged his pick for a hook and line, and now angles for pike, pickerel, and perch, and can describe each fish by some apt line from Catullus. He would do well at his new piscatory profession, but for the gilded hook of the gambler. He laughs at the trout for darting at a fictitious fly, and then chases a bait himself equally fanciful and false.

But look again—do you see that pulperia, with its gathered groups of soldiers and sailors, poets and politicians, merchants and mendicants, doctors and draymen, clerks and cobblers, trappers and tinkers. That little man who stands behind the bar and deals to each his dram of fire, was once a preacher, and deemed almost a prophet, as he depicted the pangs of that worm which dieth not; but now he has exchanged that worm for another, but preserved his consistency, for this worm, too, distilleth delirium and death. And that thick-set man who stands in the midst of the crowd, with ruby countenance and revelling eye, whose repartee sets the whole pulperia in a roar, and who is now watching the liquor in his glass to see if it stirreth itself aright, once lectured in the West on the temptations of those who tarry late at the wine; but now his teetotalism covers all liquors as goodly gifts graciously bestowed. But one brief year, and some dame Quickly may describe his pale exit as that of his delirious prototype,—“I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends.”

And yet with all these drawbacks—with all these gambling-tables, grog-shops, shanties, shavers, and fleas, San Francisco is swelling into a town of the highest commercial importance. She commands the trade of the great valleys through which the Sacramento and San Joaquin, with their numerous tributaries, roll. She gathers to her bosom the products and manufactures of the United States, of England, China, the shores and islands of the Pacific. But let us glance at California as she was a few years since, as she is now, and as she is fast becoming.

Three years ago the white population of California could not have exceeded ten thousand souls. She has now a population of two hundred thousand, and a resistless tide of emigration rolling in through the heart of Mexico, over the Isthmus of Panama, around Cape Horn, and over the steeps of the Rocky Mountains. Then the great staple of the country was confined to wild cattle; now it is found in exhaustless mines of quicksilver and gold. Then the shipping which frequented her waters was confined to a few drogers, that waddled along her coast in quest of hides and tallow; now the richest argosies of the commercial world are bound to her ports.

Three years ago the dwellings of her citizens were reared under the hands of Indians, from sun-baked adobes of mud and straw; now a thousand hammers are ringing on rafter and roof over walls of iron and brick. Then the plough which furrowed her fields was the crotch of a tree, which a stone or root might shiver; now the shares of the New-England farmer glitter in her soil. Then the wheels of her carts were cut from the butts of trees, with a hole in the centre for the rude axle; now the iron-bound wheel of the finished mechanic rolls over her hills and valleys. Then only the canoe of the Indian disturbed the sleeping surface of her waters; now a fleet of steamers traverse her ample rivers and bays. Then not a schoolhouse, public teacher, magazine, or newspaper, could be found in the whole territory; now they are met with in most of the larger towns. Then the tastes and passions of an idle throng ran on the guitar and the fandango; now the calculations of the busy multitudes turn to the cultured field and productive mine. Then California was a dependency of Mexico, and subject to revolutions with the success of every daring military chieftain; now she is an independent state, with an enlightened constitution, which guaranties equal rights and privileges to all. Then she was in arms against our flag; now she unrolls it on the breeze, with the star of her own being and pride glowing in the constellation which blazes on its folds.

Three years ago and San Francisco contained only three hundred souls; now she has a population of twenty-seven thousand. Then a building lot within her limits cost fifteen dollars; now the same lot cannot be purchased at a less sum than fifteen thousand. Then her commerce was confined to a few Indian blankets, and Mexican reboses and beads; now from two to three hundred merchantmen are unloading their costly cargoes on her quay. Then the famished whaler could hardly find a temporary relief in her markets; now she has phrensied the world with her wealth. Then Benicia was a pasture covered with lowing herds; now she is a commercial mart, threatening to rival her sister nearer the sea. Then Stockton and Sacramento City were covered with wild oats, where the elk and deer gambolled at will; now they are laced with streets, and walled with warehouses, through which the great tide of commerce rolls off into a hundred mountain glens. Then the banks of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were cheered only by the curling smoke of the Indian’s hut; now they throw on the eye at every bend the cheerful aspect of some new hamlet or town. Then the silence of the Sierra Nevada was broken only by the voice of its streams; now every cavern and cliff is echoing under the blows of the sturdy miner. The wild horse, startled in his glen, leaves on the hill the clatter of his hoofs, while the huge bear, roused from his patrimonial jungle, grimly retires to some new mountain fastness.

But I must drop this contrast of the past with the present, and glance at a few facts which affect the future. The gold deposites, which have hitherto been discovered, are confined mainly to the banks and beds of perpetual streams, or the bottoms of ravines through which roll the waters of the transient freshet. These deposites are the natural results of the laws of gravitation; the treasures which they contain must have been washed from the slopes of the surrounding hills. The elevations, like spend-thrifts, seem to have parted entirely with their golden inheritance, except what may linger still in the quartz. And these gold-containing quartz will be found to have their confined localities. They will crown the insular peaks of a mountain ridge, or fret the verge of some extinguished volcano. They have never been found in a continuous range, except in the dreams of enchantment. You might as well look for a wall of diamonds, or a solid bank of pearls. Nature has played off many a prodigal caprice in California, but a mountain of gold is not one of them.

The alluvial gold will at no distant day be measurably exhausted, and the miners be driven into the mountains. Here the work can be successfully prosecuted only by companies with heavy capitals. All the uncertainties which are connected with mining operations will gather around these enterprises. Wealth will reward the labors of the few, whose success was mainly the result of good fortune; while disappointment will attend the efforts of the many, equally skilful and persevering. These wide inequalities, in the proceeds of the miner’s labor, have exhibited themselves wherever a gold deposite has been hunted or found in California. The past is the reliable prophecy of the future.