But to return to the little Dutchman. All knew him to be a shrewd gold-hunter, and determined to find him before he should exhaust his discovery. No child lost in the woods ever awakened half the concern: some started in this direction, others in that, till all the cardinal points in the heaven, and all the glens between, had men travelling towards them. The most curious feature in this business is, that out of a regiment of gold-hunters, where the utmost apparent confusion prevails, the absence of two men should be noticed. But the motions of every man are watched. Even when he gathers up his traps, takes formal leave, and is professedly bound home, he is tracked for leagues. No disguise can avail him; the most successful war-stratagem would fail here.
Friday, Oct. 27. I have just returned from another ravine, five miles distant, where there are eighty or a hundred gold-diggers. They are mostly Sonoranians, and, like all their countrymen, passionately devoted to gambling. They were playing at monté; the keeper of the bank was a woman, and herself a Sonoranian. There was no coin on the table; the bank consisted of a pile of gold, weighing, perhaps, a hundred pounds; and each of the players laid down his ounce or pound, as his means or courage permitted. The woman, on the whole, appeared to be the winner, though one man, in the course of half an hour, took ten pounds from her yellow pile. But such a loss was felt only for the moment, and only had the effect to stimulate others to lose what little they had left. A Sonoranian digs out gold simply and solely that he may have the wherewithal for gambling. This is the rallying thought which wakes with him in the morning, which accompanies him through the day, and which floats through his dreams at night. For this he labors, and cheerfully denies himself every comfort. All this is the result of habit. A Mussulman looks upon gambling as a species of larceny,—as a crime which deserves the bastinado. I saw a Turkish cadi at Smyrna sentence a man to thirty-nine lashes for having, as he termed it, swindled another out of fifty dollars at faro. Give me a Turk where there is a rogue to be caught or a crime punished. The flashings of the sword of justice follow the crime as light the shark in a phosphoric sea.
Saturday, Oct. 28. A portion of the party that went in quest of the little Dutchman have found him, and helped him to dig out his new deposit—a sort of assistance for which he can feel no very profound obligation. It was much like that rendered by Prince Hal in the division of the spoils secured by the knight of sack at Gad’s hill. A successful gold-hunter is like the leader of hounds in the chase—the whole pack comes sweeping after, and are sure to be in at the death. No doubling hill, or covert, or stream throws them upon a false scent. I advise all fox-hunters to come here and train their hounds, and throw away their horns. Even his Grace of Wellington, who is still so hotly keen in the chase, that the snows of eighty winters fall from his locks unperceived, might catch some valuable hints in the gold mines of California.
Monday, Oct. 30. I encountered to-day, in a ravine some three miles distant, among the gold-washers, a woman from San José. She was at work with a large wooden bowl, by the side of a stream. I asked her how long she had been there, and how much gold she averaged a day. She replied, “Three weeks and an ounce.” Her reply reminded me of an anecdote of the late Judge B——, who met a girl returning from market, and asked her, “How deep did you find the stream? what did you get for your butter?” “Up to the knee and nine-pence,” was the reply. Ah! said the judge to himself; she is the girl for me—no words lost there: turned back, proposed, was accepted, and married the next week; and a more happy couple the conjugal bonds never united: the nuptial lamp never waned; its ray was steady and clear to the last. Ye, who paddle off and on for seven years, and are at last perhaps capsized, take a lesson of the judge. That “up to the knee and nine-pence” is worth all the rose letters and melancholy rhymes ever penned. But I am wandering; I did intend to write this journal without an episode, but they will keep forcing themselves in, like the curiosity of the crowd in a family jar, or remembrances of wrong upon a guilty conscience. I know the interest of a journal depends much on the continuity of its thread; but it is the easiest thing in the world to be continuously stupid, and that is my apology for these episodical breaks. If the reader don’t like this reason, then let him look up a better; while I plunge into that o’ershadowed glen, and see if it contains any gold.
Tuesday, Oct. 31. I have collected, since my arrival in the mines, several singular and beautiful specimens of the gold. One of the pieces resembles a pendulous ear-drop, and must have assumed that shape when the metal was in a state of fusion. That all the gold here has once been in that state is sufficiently evident from the forms in which it is found. I have a specimen, weighing several ounces, in which the characteristics of the slate rock are as palpable as if they had been engraved. I have another specimen, in which a clear crystal of quartz is set, with a finish of execution which no jeweller can rival. I have another specimen still, where the gold gleams up, in the shape of buck-shot, from a basis of sandstone; and another still, where it has taken the form of a paper-folder, and may be used to cut the leaves of a book, which have escaped the knife of the binder. A most interesting cabinet of curiosities might be gathered from the variety of combinations and forms which the gold in these mines has assumed. Nature never indulged in fancies more elegant and whimsical. If these are the works of the volcano, then jewellers, instead of looking to the laboratories of Paris, or Amsterdam, for models, should come and seat themselves by the side of these craters. Here are laboratories, which no human power has constructed, and models, which no human skill can rival.
Wednesday, Nov. 1. There are several persons among the gold-diggers here who rarely use any implement but their wooden bowls. Into these they scrape the dirt left by others, which they stir and whirl till the gold gradually works its way to the bottom. The earth, as these heavier particles descend, is thrown off by the hands, and the gold remains. This process is what they call dry washing: it is resorted to where there is no water in the vicinity, and will answer pretty well where the gold is found in coarse grains; but the finer particles, of course, escape. The Sonoranians obviate this difficulty to some extent by calling their lungs into requisition. They rub the earth into their bowls, through their hands, detaching and throwing away all the pebbles, and then blow off the sand and dust, leaving the gold at the bottom. But on some of the streams, particularly the Yuba, the gold is too fine even for this process. It is amusing to see a group of Sonoranians, seated around a deposit, blowing the earth out of their bowls. But for the dust they raise, you would think they were cooling hasty-pudding. Their cheeks swell out, like the chops of a squirrel, carrying half the beech-nuts on a tree to his hole. A more provident fellow he than his two-legged superior! He lays in his stores against the inclemency of winter; while the Sonoranian squanders his at the gambling-table. There is more practical wisdom in an ant-hill than is often found in a city. But I am digressing again—a propensity which I shall never get over.
Thursday, Nov. 2. Quite a sensation was produced among the gold-diggers this morning by the arrival of a wagon from Stockton, freighted with provisions and a barrel of liquor. The former had been getting scarce, and the latter had long since entirely given out. The prices of the first importation were—flour, two dollars a pound; sugar and coffee, four dollars; and the liquor, which was nothing more nor less than New England rum, was twenty dollars the quart. But few had bottles: every species of retainer was resorted to; some took their quart cups, some their coffee-pots, and others their sauce-pans; while one fellow, who had neither, offered ten dollars to let him suck with a straw from the bung. All were soon in every variety of excitement, from prattling exhilaration, to roaring inebriety. Some shouted, some danced, and some wrestled: a son of Erin poured out his soul on the beauties of the Emerald isle; a German sung the songs of his father-land; a Yankee apostrophized the mines, which swelled in the hills around; an Englishman challenged all the bears in the mountain glens to mortal combat; and a Spaniard, posted aloft on a beetling crag, addressed the universe. The multitudinous voices which rang from every chasm and cove of the ravine, rivalled the roar that went up around the tower of Babel. But night has come; the camp-fires burn dim; and the revellers are at rest, save here and there one who strides about in his delirium, commanding silence among the wolves who bark from the hills. What exciting, elevating, and expanding powers there are in a barrel of New England rum! It makes one to-day monarch of peopled realms, and their riches; but leaves him to-morrow in rags, and with only ground enough in which to sink his pauper grave.
“Thou sparkling bowl! thou sparkling bowl!
Though lips of bards thy brim may press,
And eyes of beauty o’er thee roll,