Sunday, Oct. 15. A quiet day among the gold-diggers; but few are at work with pick or pan; small parties have gone over the hills “prospecting,” but the masses are beneath the oak and pines, which shadow the cañadas. Missionaries might find a field here in this rolling population; the waving grain, as well as the still, falls before the sickle of the reaper. There is something inspiring in wild-wood worship; you are with nature and nature’s God: every thing around you trembles in the breath of the Almighty: the glad rivulet whispers his name, and the pine-grove pours its sweeping anthem; your spirit soars on lighter wings, and religion becomes, as another has beautifully expressed it, the play of the soul in the sunbeams of God.
Monday, Oct. 16. I encountered this morning, in the person of a Welchman, a pretty marked specimen of the gold-digger. He stood some six feet eight in his shoes, with giant limbs and frame. A leather strap fastened his coarse trowsers above his hips, and confined the flowing bunt of his flannel shirt. A broad-rimmed hat sheltered his browny features, while his unshorn beard and hair flowed in tangled confusion to his waist. To his back was lashed a blanket and bag of provisions; on one shoulder rested a huge crowbar, to which were hung a gold-washer and skillet; on the other rested a rifle, a spade, and pick, from which dangled a cup and pair of heavy shoes. He recognized me as the magistrate who had once arrested him for a breach of the peace. “Well, Señor Alcalde,” said he, “I am glad to see you in these diggings. You had some trouble with me in Monterey; I was on a burster; you did your duty, and I respect you for it; and now let me settle the difference between us with a bit of gold: it shall be the first I strike under this bog.” I told him there was no difference between us; that I knew at the time it was rum which had raised the rumpus. But before I had finished my disclaiming speech, his traps were on the ground, and his heavy pick was tearing up bog after bog from the marl in which it had struck its tangling roots. These removed, he struck a layer of clay: “Here she comes!” he ejaculated, and turned out a piece of gold that would weigh an ounce or more. “There,” said he, “Señor Alcalde, accept that; and when you reach home, where I hope you will find all well, have a bracelet made of it for your good lady.”
He continued to dig around the same place, but during the hour I remained with him found no other piece of gold—not a particle. This is no uncommon thing; I have seen a piece weighing six ounces taken from some little curve in a bank undulating in its bed, while not another of any size, after the most laborious search, could be found in its vicinity. This holds true of the larger pieces, but rarely of the scale gold. Where you find half an ounce of that, you may be pretty sure there is more near by. The same law which deposited that, has carried its results much further; and you will find a clue to them in the curves of the channel, or the character and position of the rocks which project into it. If the projection is smooth, or forms an obtuse angle with the current, there is no gold there, and you must look to the eddy directly below it. This eddy, or its deposit, can be examined only when the water has subsided. During the rainy season, and when the snows are melting on the Sierra, no such investigations can be successfully prosecuted. Of all metals the most difficult to reach and secure under water is gold. It has a thousand modes of eluding your search, and escaping your scooping implements.
Tuesday, Oct. 17. A German this morning, picking a hole in the ground, near our camping-tree, for a tent-pole, struck a piece of gold, weighing about three ounces. As soon as it was known, some forty picks were flying into the earth all around the spot. You would have thought the ground had suddenly caved over some human being, who must be instantly disinhumed or die. But the fellow sought was not the companion of the digger, but the mate of the yellow boy accidentally found by the German. But no such mate was discovered; the one found had slumbered thus alone like Adam before the birth of Eve. How solitary that couch, though in Paradise! Think of that, ye devotees of celibacy, who people your dreams with fairies, and imagine a bliss amid the wrecks of the fall, which was not the portion of man even before that moral catastrophe.
But I forget the piece of gold; no fellow was found for it here; but in a ravine, seven miles distant, a little girl this morning picked up what she thought a curious stone, and brought it to her mother, who, on removing the extraneous matter, found it a lump of pure gold, weighing between six and seven pounds. The news of this discovery silenced all the picks here for half an hour, and set as many tongues going in their places. Twenty or thirty started at once to explore the wonders of this new locality. Gold among hunters, like a magnet in the midst of ferruginous bodies, attracts every thing to itself.
Wednesday, Oct. 18. We are camped in the centre of the gold mines, in the heart of the richest deposits which have been found, and where there are many hundred at work. I have taken some pains to ascertain the average per man that is got out; it must be less than half an ounce per day. It might be more were there any stability among the diggers; but half their time is consumed in what they call prospecting; that is, looking up new deposits. An idle rumor, or mere surmise, will carry them off in this direction or that, when perhaps they gathered nothing for their weariness and toil. A locality where an ounce a day can be obtained by patient labor is constantly left for another, which rumor has enriched with more generous deposits. They who decry this instability in others, may hold out for a time, but yield at last to the same phrensied fickleness. I have never met with one who had the strength of purpose to resist these roving temptations. He will not swing a pick for an ounce a day, with the rumor of pounds ringing in his ears. He shoulders his implements to chase this phantom of hope.
Thursday, Oct. 19. All the gold-diggers through the entire encampment, were shaken out of their slumbers this morning by a report that a solid pocket of gold had been discovered in a bend of the Stanislaus. In half an hour a motley multitude, covered with crowbars, pickaxes, spades, rifles, and wash-bowls, went streaming over the hills in the direction of the new deposits. You would have thought some fortress was to be stormed, or some citadel sapped. I had seen too much of these rumored banks of gold to be moved from my propriety, and remained under my old camping-tree. Near this I pecked out from a small crevice of slate rock, a piece weighing about half an ounce. It had evidently travelled some distance, and taken refuge from the propulsive storms of ages in this little hiding-place, as a good man from the persecutions of the world glides down at last to his sainted repose. But I have no compunction for having disturbed this piece of gold; it may yet be shaped into an ear-drop, and kiss the envied cheek of beauty; or it may be studded with diamonds, and swell on a billow that seems to blush at the flash of its ray; or it may be shaped into the marriage-ring, and set its seal on the purest bliss that greets the visits of angels; or it may be stamped into a coin, and as it drops into the hands of the widow or orphan, prove that—
“The secret pleasure of a generous act
Is the great mind’s great bribe.”
But evening is returning, and with it the gold-diggers from their pursuit of the new deposit. Their jokes, as they clatter down the slopes of the ravine, are sufficient evidence that they have been on a wild-goose chase. Disappointment will make a single man sober, but when it falls on a multitude, is often converted into a source of railery and fun. There is something extremely consoling in having the company of others, when we have been duped through our vanity or exaggerated hopes. This comfort was deeply felt by the diggers this evening. All had lost a day, and with it the most enchanting visions of wealth. All had returned hungry as a wolf on a desert; or a recluse listening in his last penance to the sound of his cross-bones, shaken by the wind.