Chapter Twenty Four.
Voyage to San Francisco—The City and Diggings—We book our passage for Honolulu—Marcus warns me of Danger, and the idea is abandoned—We return to England via New York—Marcus sails for Liberia, and we spend Christmas with Aunt Becky.
I scarcely know why, but all of a sudden Trevor seized with a strong desire to visit San Francisco; and as there is steam communication between that city and Victoria, there was no difficulty in the way to prevent its being gratified. We had fixed the day for leaving Victoria, and were expecting Peter’s return to my service, when Mr Habakkuk Gaby walked into the room. He was wonderfully improved for the better since we parted at Cariboo, as far as dress was concerned; indeed, his costume was an indication of his very flourishing condition. “Well, I’ve brought back Peter to you; and I kalkilate the lad’s worth a hundred good dollars more than he was when you left him with me,” he observed, after the usual salutations were over.
I hoped that he had been successful in his speculations.
“Yas, I guess I have,” he answered, with a knowing wink; “I’ve had, too, enough of gold-digging, and I’m thinking of offering my services to the governor of one of these states as private secretary, or colonial secretary—I’m in no ways particular,—just to help him to put things to rights. I know how they ought to be—and that’s not as they now are. If my offers are not accepted I shall go on to Californy and see what’s to be done there; but I guess there are too many full-blooded Yankees there for the place to suit me.”
Mr Gaby, finding that the Governor of Victoria did not place the same estimate on his talents that he himself entertained, quitted the province in disgust, and was one of our fellow-passengers to San Francisco, the Queen of the Pacific, of which it is enough to say that the harbour is a magnificent one, as soon as the Golden Gate—the name given to the mouth of the river—is passed; and that the city is huge, composed of buildings of all sizes, from the imposing stone or brick edifice to the humble shanty. The hotels are numerous, and the jewellers’ shops, especially, are as handsome as any in London or Paris, while the population is truly composed of the natives of all countries in the world. We visited Sacramento and the diggings. The gold at the latter is chiefly obtained by crushing quartz; and numerous companies, with powerful machinery, are engaged in the business.
Cortez discovered California in 1537; yet, acclimatised as the Spaniards then were to the heat of the tropics, so oppressive did he find the climate, that he named the country, Caliente Fornalla, “the fiery furnace.” The Spaniards made no attempt to search for its mineral wealth; and till the middle of the last century, when California belonged to Mexico, and rumours reached Europe of its auriferous soil, its gold-fields were looked upon as fabulous. Some efforts were then made to discover the hidden treasure, but they all proved abortive, and the pearl fishery was looked upon as the only valuable product of “a sterile land of rocks and stunted bushes,” as it is described in the earliest account of any value of the country and its inhabitants, the latter then “but a step above the brute creation.” This account was written in German, by a Jesuit, after his return to his native country upon the suppression of his order by Pope Ganganelli, in July, 1773, and is full of curious information.
Still, the tradition of its yielding gold was never obliterated; but it was not till September, 1847, after its cession to the United States, that gold in any considerable quantity was discovered in California. The pioneers were a Captain Sutter and a Mr Marshall, two free settlers, who at first attempted to keep the discovery a secret. It is between that period and the year 1850 that the following sketch of “Dangers of the Diggings” must be placed, after which it became a sovereign State of the American Confederation, though murders and Lynch law prevailed even up to 1860.