And song and dance thy power confess—
I will not touch thee; for there clings
A scorpion to thy side that stings.”
Pierpont.
CHAPTER XXIII.
NATURAL AMPHITHEATRE.—NO SCIENTIFIC CLUE TO THE DEPOSITS OF GOLD.—SOIL OF THE MINES.—LIFE AMONG THE GOLD-DIGGERS.—LOSS OF OUR CABALLADA.—THE OLD MAN AND ROCK.—DEPARTURE FROM THE MINES.—TRAVELLING AMONG GORGES AND PINNACLES.—INSTINCTS OF THE MULE.—A MOUNTAIN CABIN.
Friday, Nov. 3. At the head of the ravine, where our camping-trees wave, stands an amphitheatre reared by nature, and unrivalled in the grandeur of its proportions, and the stateliness and strength of its architecture. It unrolls its wild magnificence on the eye with a more majestic power than even Rome’s great wonder. From its ample arena, circling ranges of crags soar one over the other to the lofty sweep of the architrave, where sentinel-trees toss their branches against the sky. Had nature reared this theatre on the banks of the Tiber, the beauty and bravery of Rome would have flashed over the arena’s gladiatorial tumult. But it was here in California, where even the Roman eagle, in its earth-embracing circuit, flew not.
A new deposit was discovered this morning near the falls of the Stanislaus, and in the crevices of the rocks over which the river pours its foaming sheet. An Irishman had gone there to bathe, and in throwing off his clothes, had dropped his jack-knife, which slipped into a crevice, where he first discovered the gold. He was soon tracked, and in less than an hour a storm of picks and crowbars were shivering the rocks. The accessible pockets were readily exhausted, but beyond these only the drill and blast of the practical miner can extend. And this is true of all the rock-gold in California; the present harvest glows near the surface; but there are under-crops, which the sunlight has never visited. Deep mining here, as elsewhere, will be attended with uncertain results; but a fount so capacious on its rim, must have its replenishing depths. The largest fish are taken with the longest line.
Saturday, Nov. 4. The deposits here baffle all the pretensions of science. The volcanoes did their work by no uniform geological law; they burst out at random, and scattered their gold in wanton caprice. Were not those old Vulcans dead, they would laugh at the blundering vanity exhibited around them. The old landmarks are the quartz; these are general indications, but too vague when applied to alluvial deposits, and frequently serve only to bewilder and betray. We have a young geologist here who can unroll the whole earth, layer by layer, from surface to centre, and tell the properties of each, and how it came to be deposited there, who unsuspectingly walked over a bank of gold, which a poor Indian afterwards stirred out with a stick. I have seen this savan camp down and snore soundly through the night, with a half-pound piece of gold within a few inches of his nose; and then rise at peep of day to push his learned theory into some ledge of rocks, where not a particle of the yellow ore ever existed. I have seen a digger take from a bank of decomposed granite, in a space not larger than a man’s hat, between three and four pounds of gold, while his only clue to it was a blast on the opposite side of the glen, through which he believed the deil had blown the gold into the bank, where he was at work. What a burlesque on all geological laws as applied to gold deposits! There is only one of these laws, in reference to alluvial deposits, worth a pin, and that is the simple fact that a heavy body will tumble down hill faster than a lighter one, or that a nut shaken from a tree will drop through the fog to the ground.
Sunday, Nov. 5. I rose this morning with the intention of proposing to the diggers a religious service. But mid-day came, and only here and there one broke from slumbers doubly deep from the overpowering fatigues of the week. In a shaded recess of the hills three of us found a little sanctuary: neither of the two with me was a professor of religion, but each retained in vivid remembrance the religious instructions of his childhood and youth. Time and distance had not effaced these impressions; each lettered trace remained as legible as the footprints of the primeval bird in the fossil rock. Such is the inscription of parental fidelity on the heart of a child: the wave may wear away the mound which it laves, and the marble dissolve under the touch of time, but that inscription remains.