GOLDEN DREAMS
AND
LEADEN REALITIES.

Table of Contents

GOLDEN DREAMS

AND

LEADEN REALITIES.

BY

RALPH RAVEN.

WITH AN

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER,

BY

FRANCIS FOGIE, Sen., Esq.

New York:
G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE.

M.DCCC.LIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853,
By G. P. Putnam and Company,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Billin & Brothers, Printers and Stereotypers, 20 North William street, N. Y.

[INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.]

So! I have come to be an old man at last! and I hav'n't been a great while about it either. No one is a great while about anything nowadays. Where is my life? heighho! here I am holding tight on to the little end, and it slipping all the while faster and faster out of my fingers. And no wonder; sixty-nine years all taking hold of the rope, and all pulling together, walk it off as fast as two engines racing to a fire, and here is the seventieth running to join them. By the way, what a strange dream that was I had the other night! if I were superstitious, I should suppose it meant something, for I never had any like it before—the world on fire! ten thousand bells ringing the alarm! hurry up the engines! pour on water! but the ocean is burning too! Payne's problem is solved at last. Hark to those volcanoes! great guns, double shotted, there goes Mount Etna, and there's Vesuvius, and that, that must be Cotapaxi; what a tremendous burst there'll be when the fire reaches the great central magazine! but where are the mourners? do the stars miss one of their number? will its ashes reach their sphere?

Well, I have seen a great deal—magnetic telegraph railroads, woman's rights, crystal palaces, California, Australia, and now, ships of twelve thousand tons, the Atlantic turned into a horse-pond: what is the world coming to? There was no such thing when I was young—we didn't profess then to be wiser than all before us. I'm glad I shall soon be out of the way. And yet I should like to see the end. The end, when will that be? and who can tell what it will be? Heighho! it racks my old heart all to pieces, like a locomotive on a corduroy road. No wonder man's life has been shortened to three score-years and ten. How poor old Methusalah would have stared! why we live as long in a year as he did in one of his sleepy centuries. He never could have stood the racket, unless he had first been dried in an oven. It would have fretted the skin off him, as it did off that big juicy apple I had in my pocket when I rode Squire Smith's old trotting horse. Let me see, that was forty, fifty, yes, fifty-one years ago—strange how I remember such a trifle.

Well, well, I have overlapped my time, I don't seem to belong here. That was what that young fire-brain, what's his name, said this morning. He and I were like an ox yoked with a locomotive. I'm the ox; yes, yes, he's right; I can't keep up with their new-fangled ways; nor I don't want to either, they are too fast altogether. All I want is to die and be buried before they harness their steam to the hearses; and yet they've done that already. What was that railroad train the other day at Norwalk but a train of hearses, a great funeral procession? only that they put the folks into them before they were dead.

Yes, yes, the dead ride fast—tramp, tramp, along the land they go; splash, splash, along the sea; and why shouldn't they, if they like it, as well as their betters?

And I won't be buried in the city neither, nor in Greenwood. I've been crowded enough in my life-time—I'll have room enough after I'm dead. But where shall I go? There are places a plenty now, but in fifty years, or ten, who can tell that there won't be a hundred thousand trampling over my grave? Five dollars a square foot, let me see, that would be thirty dollars. Alas, poor Yorick! who would give thirty dollars to secure you a quiet sleep?

That was a glorious idea of that world-weary old Goth to be buried under a river, forever sounding his funeral dirge; but it's no sort of use now—that's the very place to be turned topsey-turvey. I'll be sunk in the very middle of the Atlantic—yes, that'll do—I shall be safe enough there, in an iron coffin. But wait a minute. They are talking already of laying their wires to Europe—yes, and then I shall hardly have settled myself for a nap of a thousand years or so, when they'll be sure to come foul of me, and perhaps fish me up again, or at least give me a confounded shock.

I used to think I would be buried by my old mother, under the old elm in the quiet churchyard. But it's no use: the churchyard is quiet no longer; the old elm is as dusty and worried as I; and the old tombstones have stopped mourning for the dead, to stare, and gape, and gossip over the living. No, I'll not be buried there, to be waked up every hour by that infernal whistle.

Heighho! what a strange thing it is to grow old all alone, and when everything else is so young! I used to think the world would grow old with me, but I believe it's younger than ever. But it's no such thing—it's only paint and varnish; the older it grows, the thicker they lay it on. Wash that off, and what is there but a withered, wrinkled old hag? Faugh! I'd as lieve sit down to dinner with a skeleton. There's nothing old but the hills. They're not ashamed to be grey, God bless 'em! They never can paint Mr. Washington.

How I love the sight of their conscious yet unpretending majesty, their quiet, self-reliant strength! With what grand and noble pity they seem to look down on our fretting, bustling insignificance!

But stop. Where am I? right in the middle of the nineteenth century—the last of my race—the last of the old fogies. There's something in that. There'll never be another after me. Noah, he was the first, and I'm the last. Who is there to mourn for Logan?

But, no matter. They've enough to do to mourn for themselves. From my soul I pity them, poor helpless creatures! stuffed full of self-sufficiency, they've no longer any occasion for our services; they're no longer sensible of any obligation. When I was young it was the fashion to respect old age for what it had done, if not for what it could do; but we have changed all that.

[He turns over some old papers and reads.]

"July, 1812. Some reflections on the exceeding folly of growing old." Let me see: what is this? Oh, ha, ha, [laughing feebly] I remember now. It's that paper I wrote for my grandfather when I was younger and not so wise as I am now; and sister Mary—where is she now, I wonder—she wouldn't let me put it in his way.

[He reads here and there.]

"What a fine thing it is to be young, and in this time of the world too! We are the cream of all that have gone before us. We really live their life; we begin where they ended; we stand on their shoulders; their whole learning is only our alphabet; they laid the foundation, we build the superstructure. But poor old fogies! they would never have got any farther if they had lived a thousand years. It's a lucky thing for the world that they didn't—useless lumber, withered stubble, trees dead at the root—cut, burn, and bury them out of the way: they have done all the good in the world they ever can do, and the world wants them no longer."

"They are a clog on its machinery—dirt in its wheels—rust in its joints—a pebble in its shoe—it's never been a merry world since old men came into fashion."

"If a man must grow old, if he will be so unreasonable and unseasonable, let him keep it to himself and not infect everything about him. If his hair is grey, is that any reason why the sunshine should be so too?—if he walks with crutches, must the brooks stop running?—if his eyes are dim, must we put out the stars or clap a pair of spectacles on to the nose of the moon?"

"Heaven bless the mark! nothing grows old but man and his inventions—the sky is as blue—the sun's eye, though he has but one, is as bright—the wind is as frolicsome, as when they first shone and danced through Eden; the very flowers, though they fade and go out, yet keep their heart young to the last—who ever heard of a decrepit rose, a superannuated violet, or a greyheaded butterfly?"

"I never mean to grow old. I can ride as fast and as far as any of them—my heart beats as many beats to a minute as the best, no one shall ever ride over me, or cry to me to get out of his way.—My last pulsation shall be as vigorous as any that preceded it."

[He lays down the paper with a cold shudder.] Who said I was old? who was that talking about being buried? away with such idle fancies! I shant be buried these twenty years. I'm not old—I'm as vigorous and active as ever I was in my life—there's as much strength in that arm [here he stretches out his right arm, and clasps it with his left hand] as when I was thirty, and my limbs are as light, [he gets up and dances] I should like to see the young man that could tire me out, [he sits down rather suddenly] only I want practice to strengthen my wind; and as for my mind, I believe it is capable of greater exertion than ever, [he knits his brow, and appears to be solving some knotty question in state or finance] yes, I have twenty years yet as good as the best; hurrah boys! never say die! [he swings his hat feebly round his head, then sits down in a tremor of shame and indignation at being detected by his youngest clerk in such outrageous fashion].

In this state he takes his pen and with infinite labour writes these brief observations, as if all the fog of all the Fogies were in his veins.

If the author of the following narrative had taken my advice, he would never have gone to California in the first place, nor written this book afterwards. It is obvious to the dullest capacity that he wouldn't have written the book if he hadn't gone; and as for the other, he allows himself in the very first chapter that I did all I could to prevent it. It may be gratifying to the reader to know that I am the very person there mentioned in such flattering terms, and I can assure him that that account is by no means exaggerated. I believe I am, at least I have always enjoyed the reputation of being as sober and prudent as my neighbors; and it was therefore no more than natural that I should express the unalterable conviction there referred to. I added moreover my reasons for that conviction which the author has seen fit not to mention, possibly because his folly and obstinacy would thereby appear still more inexcusable than they do now; but he shall not escape so easily, as I am determined to set the whole matter in the clearest possible light.

My first and principal reason then was that I did not believe there was any such place as California.

"No such place as California! Well, you have found out your mistake by this time I suppose."

Not at all, I don't believe it now any more than I did then.

"What! not with all the gold that's pouring into the country, and the thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of men that have gone there!"

Softly, my young friend, all this proves nothing. Indeed, if you have seen California, you of course are justified in believing, but not otherwise. I remember a great many people used to believe in the existence of such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte, and the papers were full of the subject, just as they are now of California. In fact, (I was younger then than I am now,) I used to believe in him myself, and dare say I should have gone on believing to this day if it hadn't been for that little book of the Bishop of Berkshire proving to a mathematical certainty that such a series of events was clearly impossible according to the world's history. But I'm sure California is just as improbable, just as much out of the common course, and we've no more proof, in fact not so much, of its existence, for it's a good deal further off, and though it is a little bigger, it can't make half so much noise; so that is about equal. To be sure, as you say, any number of men and ships have set sail for California, but that's no sign that they ever got there. They say so of course, for no one likes to be humbugged, but for all we know, they might just as well have gone to India, or China, or Japan. I have noticed they are never very fond of talking about their adventures, and when they are, they say very little about the gold they have brought home, though that after all is the only real proof; and they are sure to go into a huff if any one asks them how much they made, or to give some ridiculous and impertinent answer. So you see that, reasoning à priori, the balance of probability is decidedly opposed to the existence of any such country.

But supposing that there is such a country, it doesn't follow that there is any gold in it. In fact this is even more improbable than the other. There is no gold in New York—why should there be any in California? Is it because it is so far off? or because it lies on the Pacific? or because it is good for nothing else? None of these reasons will answer. There are other countries equally distant, equally valueless, and in the same ocean, but they contain no gold; why then, I say, should California?

But a simple proposition will set the matter at rest at once. The world has now existed, according to the strictest calculation, six thousand years; which being multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year, will give over two millions of days, on any of which the gold might have been discovered. The chances then that it would not be discovered on the first day of the six thousand and first year are as two millions to one. If we then take into the account, that during all this time the population of the globe has averaged about five hundred millions, and that all this immense number has never made this discovery, the improbability that it should be made by a single individual, and one too that nobody ever heard of, is as five hundred millions to one; and these two chances multiplied together, ought surely to satisfy any reasonable man that there is no gold there, and never has been.

Besides, even supposing California really to be, and to be as full of gold as it is represented, my acquaintance with the character of the late author, was enough to convince me that he would never get a morsel of it. I was not very well acquainted with him, to be sure, having only known him twenty years or so, and his character being of that shallow order, that one could read it at a glance if he would only take sufficient trouble; but as far as I did know, he was always an idle shiftless fellow, with an education he had not the capacity to improve, nor the courage entirely to disown, so he used to say, though I must confess I never could discover why it should require such a prodigious effort. He had waited a long time in hopes something would turn up, and used to justify himself in this particular by reference to one Mr. Wilkins Micawber, who, according to his account, had amassed a considerable fortune in that way; though for my own part I never heard of such an individual before, and always believed that to be one of his own inventions.

He was fond too of talking, in his barbarous and senseless fashion, about his having been engaged, at such an early age that he really had no voice in the matter, to one Clio or Chloe, some person of colour I suppose, though nobody to my knowledge ever saw her, and he declared that now he was arrived at years of discretion, (discretion indeed!) as the laws of society, which he was pleased in his wisdom to pronounce foolish and absurd, rendered a divorce difficult, he was determined to run away from her altogether; and the California fever breaking out just then, he was one of the first to be taken. But though California seems expressly designed by Providence for the accommodation and relief of just such good-for-naughts, lazy clerks, runaway apprentices, men without professions, and professions without practice—he was really as unfit for anything of the kind as could possibly be imagined or conceived of. He has seen fit to indulge in much unseemly and unbecoming mirth over the misfortunes of some of his acquaintances, but I will venture on my own authority to maintain that among them all there was not one but was better calculated to make his way in the world, and in California too, for that matter, than himself. He might have walked right over a lump of gold weighing a hundred pounds every day for six months, and would have been sure to tumble into the hole after it had been taken out, and wonder he had not seen it before.

As for faith and energy, he hadn't as much as could ride on a thistledown; and though he could dream fast enough, I warrant you, of thousands and of millions, yet when it came to the actual, downright, wide-awake necessity, he was of no more account than a child or a philosopher.

It was in view of these various reasons that I declared my unalterable conviction, that he would not get gold enough to carry on his thumb-nail. Of course, being unalterable, I have never thought of altering it. And there has been no reason. He did, indeed, for some time after his return, carry about with him a snuff-box, half full of an ugly yellow dust he called gold, and some folks were credulous enough to believe him; but I was too old a bird to be caught with such chaff. It looked as much like brass as it did like gold. Besides, nobody knew, nobody could know where it came from, and like enough he had it manufactured for the occasion. Anything was more probable than that it came from California.

I could forgive him anything, however, even his good fortune, easier than his inconsequential, illogical mode of reasoning. It is very evident that he did not meet with that success he had expected; but instead of giving the true reasons for his disappointment, he seeks to conceal his weakness by a variety of evasions equally futile, ridiculous, and absurd.

In the first place, he was sick! When I was young no one ever thought of being sick except women and old men; but, I suppose, now the case is different. But see the folly of the thing! For why? I've known him, as I said, any time these twenty years, and, to my certain knowledge, he was never sick in his life; and then, to go and be sick just then, at the most critical and important crisis, as it were, when so much was at stake, his whole future prosperity, as one may say, hanging on it, that is, on his being sick or well—to be sick at such a time, I say, argues the most deplorable folly and shortsightedness. Why in the world wasn't he sick during the voyage, when he had nothing else to do? or why not wait till he got home, when he could have things comfortable about him?

But the Burke rocker? surely that was a most grievous misfortune. Not if he had known how to use it. For they employ the Burke rocker to this very day in the enlightened States of Virginia and North Carolina; and, of course, it is good enough for such a semi-barbarous country as California. But, for my part, I wonder at his ever thinking of anything so plainly unfit for the purpose.

Then there is the loss he sustained by the submarine armour. All I can say is, served him right. I never saw one of those machines myself, and know nothing at all about it, but I should as soon think of ploughing with a balloon, as of digging under water, or out of water, with a feather bed on my back, a bolster on each leg, a pillow on each arm, and a great copper kettle on my head.

The project, then, of going to California was conceived with rashness—determined upon with obstinacy—and executed with folly. He, to be sure, sets up in defence the fact that the scheme was finally successful, as if that were enough to silence all objections. Now, I am an old man, and may perhaps be growing a little crotchety and whimsical in my old age, but I must and will protest against any such dangerous and heretical doctrine. Success has here nothing to do with the matter; in fact he had no business to succeed; his success was and must be a positive insult to all who are in the habit of governing their conduct by judgment and right reason. If this plea is to be received in vindication, there is no crime or blunder that may not be excused in the same way; we have no longer any use for our boasted reason, and are at once plunged from the firm ground of induction and analogy into the quagmire of chance and conjecture. He was always a sort of wildfire, and knew no more about logic than Will-o'-the-Wisp does of straight walking. But as even a Will-o'-the-Wisp is sometimes very useful, in pointing out to the benighted traveller the marshy and dangerous ground over which it hovers, so the reader may, perhaps, in like manner, take warning from the example here set before him; and if so, the author, like a piece of rotten wood,—I cannot stop to perfect the simile,—will have shed more light from his folly, than he ever could have produced by his wisdom.

[Golden dreams and leaden realities]

[CHAPTER I.]

Early in 1849, the unwilling ship in which I had taken passage for California, was dragged away from the wharf in the sooty hug of a remorseless steamtug, like a struggling, kicking schoolboy in the arms of a hated master. Such an event was not then so common as it has since become, and an immense crowd had assembled to witness our departure, with some such feelings as if we had been bound on a voyage of discovery to the moon, or, at the very least, in search of the Northwest Passage.

It was a cold grey day; the deck of the Leucothea was sloppy with melting snow, and littered with chaotic little piles of luggage, among which the passengers wandered up and down like a hundred cats smelling about in a strange garret. Some were still crouched, shiveringly, on the high piles of lumber amid ships, to which they had ascended to take their last view of home; others jostled in the gangways, as they revolved in their uneasy orbits from stem to stern; while a third party, without any ostensible motive, kept running up and down the cabin-stairs. Everybody looked cross and out of sorts, as if he would like nothing so well as to get into a quarrel with everybody else.

After proceeding a few miles down the bay, we put back and anchored, for the night, just out of sight of the city; and the deck being now almost entirely deserted, I groped my way down the winding stairs and into the little cabin. At first, I could see nothing but the misty light of a lantern swinging amidships, faintly illuminating the white-washed beams, and oil-cloth covered table; but, as my eyes became used to the darkness, I discovered a small party gathered round the unsocial airtight, and conversing in a sort of subterranean tones, of their present dismal condition. Sitting down among them, I was not so much occupied with my own bitter and thick-coming fancies, as to take no note of their broken dialogue.

"Ah," said one, with an abortive laugh, "Charley feels bad enough to-night."

"Yes, he wishes he was up to M——, I guess," returned another, whose faltering vivacity plainly declared he wished so himself at any rate.

"Humph," retorted Charley, with something between a whine and a growl, "I think we were all a set of darned fools; if I was only safe back, you'd never catch me in such a scrape again; you'd better believe it."

"Well," said his companion, "there's a chance left yet; you can go back in the pilot-boat to-morrow."

"I ain't quite such a fool as all that comes to" sneered Charley; "we're in for it now, and I mean to put her through."

This speech was followed by a melancholy laugh, and then by a profound silence, in the midst of which, they, one by one, dropped off to bed in the adjoining staterooms; leaving me alone in the dingy little cabin, with the ungenial airtight,—the puffy lantern, with one big, drunken eye in its belly,—and the greasy table, whose pinching, miserly face said, as plainly as words could speak, that if it had ever witnessed one generous feast, it was so long ago that it remembered nothing about it. I was unable to resist these combined influences, and soon slunk away to my berth, with a heart heavy as the gold I was pursuing.

In refitting the Leucothea for a passenger ship, eight supplemental staterooms had been built on deck, covered, as well as the space between, with what is called a poop deck, extending from the stern several feet forward of the mizenmast. My berth was an upper one, and its already alarming elevation was aggravated by a miscellaneous collection of boots, shovels, and pickaxes, which I had stored under the mattrass, partly to economize space, and partly to prepare myself, by this sort of hardening process, for the privations I expected to encounter in the mines. Owing to the hurry of my departure, and the crowded state of my trunks, I had been obliged to resort to a very ingenious expedient to transport my superfluous wardrobe. When one shirt became soiled, I hid it with a second, and this process I repeated till I had no less than six lying one above another. I then improved upon this invention by adding two vests, a frock, a sack, a great coat, and a pea-jacket, so that I might easily have been mistaken for one of those early Dutch navigators immortalized by Irving, who thought it a great hardship to be obliged to go aloft with only five coats apiece. Thus fortified, and having my feet encased in a huge pair of boots, I climbed with infinite difficulty into my berth, where I slept about as securely as an elephant on the roof of a house.

The next morning we stood out to sea, which somewhat revived our drooping courage; as, in battle, it is easier to advance boldly against the enemy, than to remain, a long time, passively exposed to his attacks. But our fortitude was soon to be subjected to a still severer test. Very few of our number had ever been to sea before, and some had never seen any larger body of water than the pond or river in which they had fished and bathed in boyhood. All, however, had heard of the ocean, of its grandeur and sublimity, and, of course, had already made up their minds to be duly affected, as every one possessing the least share of sensibility must be, by its mighty attributes. Accordingly, the sharp outline of the horizon was still broken on one side by the gradually sinking land, when they went to work with most commendable ardour and perseverance to raise their imaginations to the proper level.

I confess, for my own part, to an entire inability to enter into these emotions. I have no affection or admiration for the ocean, per se. I love it in our winding bays dotted with sails, and reflecting the flickering shadows of green banks or populous cities, and have been, once or twice in my life, awe-and-wonder-struck on beholding it swelling from afar against the rock-bound coasts of New England. Here its beauty is multiplied by contrast, and its power thoroughly aroused by opposition.

It is pleasant to lie on some lofty promontory and gaze away off into the illimitable blue, and dream that so it goes on forever, without any opposing shore. I am even willing to make short excursions with it, to meet it half way, as it were, on this neutral ground; but I care not to go home with it, or to venture into its own undisputed domain. As Shylock says to Bassanio, "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following,—but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you"—there is such a thing as too great intimacy. The sea itself suffers by this undecent familiarity. Instead of that mysterious and salutary dread we formerly entertained towards it, we come to regard it, in a manner, as our bond-servant, or beast of burden. Its sublimity is gone—its vastness becomes wearisome monotony—its royal pomp and power sink into peevish ill-humour or sullen bravado. It is not so very big either. A circular disc of salt water, thirty or forty miles across, is all you can see. If its waves were indeed mountains—if one sailed among Alps, in valleys lighted only by the mid-day sun, or along the face of a precipice, towering as high towards heaven as it sunk sheer down to the abyss—then, indeed, the naked, melancholy ocean would not need to borrow any element of sublimity from the continent earth.

This was the nature of the reflections produced by the first view of the rounded ocean; if I should hereafter take just the opposite side of the question, I hope not to be charged with inconsistency;—in a long voyage one's opinions change almost as often as the winds. The revolution, however, is seldom as sudden or as ludicrous as in the case of our unlucky enthusiasts. While they were even yet expatiating on the grandeur and sublimity of the scene, they became aware of certain uneasy and mysterious sensations, the precise locality of which it was hard to determine, but which seemed to have their capital seat somewhere in the region of the diaphragm. Strange horrors seized them, and pangs unfelt before. But it is the nature of this malady to dispose its victims to conceal their weakness as long as possible. They shrink from the mortifying disclosure, and obstinately persist, to the last moment, in declaring they never felt so well in their lives.

The little party of Vermonters, the same that had collected in the cabin the preceding evening, were among the first to feel the advances of the insidious foe.

"I say, boys," cried Charley, "isn't this—ugh—worth going to California for?"

"Grand!" "splendid!" "magnificent!" echoed the three boldest of the party, with sundry unaccountable grimaces, while the rest thought it more prudent at that moment, to keep their mouths shut as tight as possible.

"I hope, a—ugh—you ain't a going to be—a—ugh—sick," returned Charley, glancing doubtfully at the pale faces of his followers, as if to satisfy himself how many he could rely upon in the approaching struggle. "I—a-a—ugh—don't feel sick in the least," and away he hurried to lee-ward, where, for the next hour, the whole party might be seen, hanging like so many dish-clouts, over the bulwarks.

"What do yer see—a whale?" drily inquires an old salt, with a cold-blooded cruelty, of which no one with the heart even of the most magnanimous mouse, would be guilty. But they are too sick to be angry—contempt, that pierces the shell of the tortoise, touches them not,—there is a dignity, springing from the very depths of their abasement, that sets them above the reach of injury or insult—their ridiculous, indeed, reaches to the sublime. Solomon and Dr. Johnson are commonly considered the highest authority on the vanity of life—but was there ever a sufferer from sea-sickness who did not moralize, by the hour together, in a far more affecting strain? Every sigh is a book of Ecclesiastes, and is there any other philosophy like his? so sudden and effectual in its operations? that dives down so deep to the very root of pride and self-laudation?

For three days and nights I lay in my berth, dressed as I have said, parched by thirst, and tantalized by waking dreams of every cooling and delicious draught. Meanwhile, the Leucothea had reached the Gulf-stream, and in that region of storms, encountered one of the most terrific. Huge waves came foaming in over the bows, sending their crests even to my door, and pouring down the forehatch into the steerage, drowned out the frightened passengers in the very dead of night. The alarm was so sudden that some had time only to snatch their clothes; and, with them in their hands, they came running aft as to a place of comparative safety. When reproached for their pusillanimity, they offered the paltry excuse, that the water came down the hatch as big as a hogshead, and that it was already deep enough in the steerage for a man to swim in. This might have touched my healthy sympathies, but it now gave me no concern. I believe I may say without vanity, that at that moment I felt perfectly reconciled to the idea, thus suggested, of thirty or forty of our fellow-passengers being drowned like so many rats; though, for my own part, so great was my thirst, I doubted whether there was water enough in the ocean to drown me. Through the open door of my stateroom I could see the white tops of the waves, as the ship leaned over to embrace them; and I thought it no great thing to make my throat a passage for the whole Atlantic.

But I had still no relentings of purpose; through storm, and thirst, and burning fever, I was sustained by dreams of golden joy. At the period of our departure, what is commonly called the sober and prudent part of the community, regarded California as a mischievous humbug. None of my friends favoured my going; and one, still more sober and prudent than the rest, had emphatically declared his conviction, adding considerately that he did not wish to discourage me, that I should not find gold enough to lay on my thumb-nail. Few, however, who had set their hearts on going, were ever dissuaded, I apprehend, by such arguments; even the last pleasant and ingenious comparison failed to convince me: having once made up my mind, I fixed my eyes on the mark and overlooked all intervening objects. Yet my calculations, so I thought, were by no means extravagant; the simple brevity of argument with which I silenced all opposition was $2,000 certain—$20,000 probable—$100,000 possible. I now saw these numbers printed in glaring ciphers, with all the lifelike, seductive reality of a lottery placard, all over the walls of my stateroom. Who would not, for such reward, endure the discomforts of a four months' voyage, even though every week should be like the first?

The idea of a life in the mines was rather agreeable. It had about it a smack of Robinson Crusoe; and then, it would be so exciting to bring our gains home at night, and, every two or three days, to light upon a whole nestful of ingots—hunting birds' nests would be nothing to it. If the first discoverers, I said to myself again and again, have met with such astonishing success, with their pans and wash-bowls, what may I not expect, with my improved machines, and the experience I have gained by reading of their adventures? As I said this, I glanced, with a look of complacency, upon the ingenious fabric of our invention which was stowed piecemeal just above my head, and was destined, in spite of its humble pretensions, to work out such astounding results.

It consisted simply of a roll of wire-webbing, with meshes about one-sixth of an inch in diameter, and several rough boards six or seven feet long, with which we proposed to construct three huge sieves, one for each of our company. If these implements failed of their intended purpose, or indeed were never constructed, it was not owing to any fault in them, but entirely to the unexpected, and, if I may be allowed to coin a word, unexpectable nature of that perverse country whither we were going. I saw, in my mind's eye, an immense sandy plain, intersected by rivers, and sentinelled about by lofty mountains. The auriferous sands were to be sifted through our wire-webbing, while the bit of gold would be caught in the meshes. When some meddling adviser suggested that these were too large, and that we should thus lose the finer particles, I, magnanimously, and rather disdainfully, replied, that I intended to leave something for those who should come after me, and that, for my part, I cared for nothing smaller than peas.

Thus, three days and nights I lay; while day dreams, as bright as those of Alnaschar, and oh, too like in sad event! alternated in my sea-sick brain with visions of a darkened chamber—of a spacious bed covered with soft white sheets—of women's voices soft and low—of cool sherbet and fragrant lemonade—and all the "monarchal prerogatives" attendant on a sick man's state at home. Here there was nothing but the casual attendance of the cabin-boy bringing me an occasional cup of gruel, and the querulous sympathy of others as helpless as myself. In a week, however, most were sufficiently recovered to take their meals in the cabin, though in a few instances, the sickness was much more prolonged. A German from Hamburg was the greatest sufferer, the experience he had gained in once crossing the Atlantic seeming not to assist him on the present occasion. For weeks after the rest of us had almost forgotten our trials, he still lay hoaning and moaning to himself in his berth.

"Well, John," asked one, with as much sympathy as could be expected to remain in his oblivious stomach, "how do you feel this morning?"

"Oh!" he replied, with a dolorous shake of the head, "if I live two week, I shall die!"

The ladies on board were almost equally unfortunate—and here I beg their pardon and that of the reader for not having sooner introduced them to each other. It was not every ship in those days that was blessed with female society; and the owners of the Leucothea had taken care to make the most of this important distinction. In setting forth the advantages of the "good ship Leucothea, of superior accommodations," this had been the brightest star in the glorified galaxy that was to dazzle the eyes of the genteel adventurer. The library, the piano, and the ladies,—learning, song and beauty were to shed their benign and humanizing influence over our rude and savage natures, and prevent us from sinking back into worse than heathen darkness and barbarism. It must be confessed that the piano was sadly out of tune, and that the library consisted mainly of such books as everybody had read, or else nobody ever does read; and, furthermore, the proportion of ladies was small, only three or four to a hundred; but then it is well known that a drop of certain substances can be detected in a whole hogshead of water, and I have no doubt that the sight of a bonnet or lady's slipper hung in some conspicuous position about the ship, nailed to the mainmast, for example, would exert a most salutary influence; in the same way as a horseshoe nailed to a barndoor is a most effectual scarecrow to all predatory ghosts and witches.

Be that as it may, the presence of the ladies, considered simply as as an abstract idea, was highly edifying and satisfactory to all on board; and it was no fault of theirs, if we failed to derive from their society all the benefits we had expected.

Mr. Tape, our supercargo, was a man of infinite good nature; he smiled easily, and made promises with equal facility. "Do you think we had better lay in any private stores, Mr. Tape?" we inquired, after settling more important matters with that smiling functionary.

"Oh, no sir, no sir; there's no need of anything of the sort. You'll find everything you want aboard the ship."

"But," we persisted, "we might take a few preserves or crackers, or——"

"No; save your money. You'll want it more when you get to San Francisco. You'll eat at the same table with Mrs. Tape and the other ladies, and I suppose you don't want to live any better than they do."

"Oh dear! no, sir! not we! no indeed!"

"Well, then, it's all right," and away bustled little Mr. Tape to go through the same form with another applicant.

A few weeks sufficed to dispel the pleasing illusions which these assurances had produced. As the cabin was too small to accommodate us all, we divided into two messes; or, as we styled them in our amateur nautical phraseology, the starboard and larboard watches. But when all had recovered from sea-sickness, even this expedient was found insufficient, and here arose a plausible pretext for a third division. The captain, the supercargo, and the doctor retired with their wives into the after-cabin, already dignified by the presence of the library and piano; and thus, at one "unexpected blow, worse than of death," annihilated all our hopes of that feminine grace and propriety that was to preside over our meals, converting the salt junk into delicatest beef, the muddy coffee into nectar, and the ship-biscuit into ambrosian cates.

To be sure, we were still allowed to behold them at long intervals, sitting on deck in chairs lashed to the mizenmast, or to hear their dulcet voices, rising like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, through the skylight of the after-cabin; but our former state and dignity were departed forever. We no longer basked in the sunshine of royal favour, but resembled rather a capital city from which the seat of empire has been removed, and which is left to languish in obscurity and neglect. The steerage passengers regarded us with commiseration, or made odious comparisons in our hearing. The delicacies in which we should have shared, were borne past our door into the after-cabin, and their place supplied with lobscouse and dunderfunk—the first, a detestable hash or ragout of everything edible in the ship—the second, a johnnycake constructed on the same principle, except that the beef and pork were commonly excluded. I always looked with suspicion upon the man who professed a fondness for lobscouse; and if, in our expressive phrase, he was able "to go" dunderfunk, I avoided him as if he had the leprosy. It was impossible to reconcile such tastes with the least twinkle of high or generous feeling; one might as well associate with a cannibal or a ghoule.

In order to add the pleasures of anticipation to those of actual fruition, or to cheat our imaginations with the semblance of more terrene banquets, a bill of fare was duly provided, calculated, apparently, with the far-reaching accuracy of an almanac, for the whole duration of our voyage, and for any meridian. Here, each dish had its own peculiar day, to which it returned, from its hebdomedal revolution, with all the punctuality of Encke's comet. Two days—I remember them well—Monday and Thursday, were allotted to baked beans—three to salt beef, pork, and potatoes—one each to salt fish and ham. The names of Tuesday and Wednesday were lost in the more alluring and alliterative appellation of Dough-days; the first syllable being made, by a double analogy, to rhyme with tough. Some do even spell it Duff, but this is a manifest cacography, and of the most pernicious description, since it loses sight of the etymology of the word, which would otherwise at once explain its meaning to the most cursory reader.

For breakfast and supper, there were tea and coffee, most "pitiful hearted butter," pilot bread, lobscouse, and dunderfunk. Two or three times a week we had hot bread; once a week we had gingerbread; and, on one occasion, a nondescript article about which there was a good deal of curious speculation, till at length one, more ingenious than the rest, suggested that it was intended for an apple-pie. This solution was hailed with shouts of applause, and it was at once voted to present the article, with the thanks of the company, to the lucky discoverer, who happened to be the identical Charley so often mentioned; who being naturally of a philosophic and inquisitive temper, wished to add this unique specimen of naval architecture to a list of curiosities he was then engaged in collecting; and which already consisted of a shark's left eye "kep in spirits in a bottle," and a set of very ingenious checkers made out of his back bone.

The third week of our voyage a terrible feud arose among the passengers, something like that recorded by Gulliver as having existed between the Lilliputians and Blefuscians as to the proper method of eating eggs. The cause of quarrel in our case, however, was even more mighty and important, since it involved the nicest casuistry, and furnished the most unfailing test of character. The question at issue concerned the lobscouse, and the warcries of the contending parties were "onions" and "no onions." The two factions were almost equally divided; and, though the onionists had the captain on their side as well as most of the old fogies, the revolutionists, or liberals, as they styled themselves, by help of the doctor and supercargo, still upheld the war. As this dissension finally threatened the most serious consequences, a compromise was effected, and it was agreed to settle the difficulty by a division; when the parties being drawn up on either side of a seam in the deck, the disonionists were found to have a majority of one, and thus the matter was brought to a peaceful termination.

[CHAPTER II.]

In a few weeks we had run through every variety of climate, and at the end of February, while our friends at home were still shivering in great-coats and cloaks, or rubbing their hands over coal fires, we were basking beneath the sky of June. I had thrown off, one by one, my outer garments, within which I had shrunk (the effects of long sickness and starvation) like a silkworm in its cocoon; and now, like the same insect, I came out light and airy, in a summer suit of bright calico and nankeen.

There is something very pleasant in thus anticipating summer, in forestalling the all too-punctual sun returning leisurely from the south, and in bartering a certain quantity of snow and ice for the unadulterated sunshine of the tropics. Yet I could not help thinking that we were intruders, interlopers, in thus presuming to thrust ourselves where we had no right, and to snatch her bounty from the liberal hand of nature, instead of waiting patiently, like good children, till it was our turn to be served. The baffling winds that opposed our progress into those golden gardens of the Hesperides, seemed to favour this idea,—for many days we were unable to head our course, and were compelled to sail in an easterly direction, and even north of east. It was little consolation to a landsman, naturally credulous as he is in all matters pertaining to "sea-ography," to be told that we were thus making the necessary Easting, and that at sea it is especially true that the longest way round is the nearest way home; nor could I bring myself to believe, when the ship's head was turned towards Europe, that we were actually taking the shortest cut to Cape Horn. Under the most favourable conditions, the Leucothea was a dull sailor, a broken down, superannuated cart-horse, jogging along "the right butter-woman's rank to market," which, in this case, was so distant, that we sometimes doubted whether we should ever get there at all.

This was rendered more tolerable, however, by the delicious breeze, that flowing from the coast of Africa, was tempered by the wide extent of water that lay between.

"With such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell old ocean smiles."

The last expression is peculiarly significant. Here was indeed the many-millioned smile of ocean. It seemed impossible that this amiable monster should be the same we had so lately seen swelling with rage, and threatening our instant destruction. But the naked ocean, even when in good humour, is after all a tiresome companion. I had formed my ideas of a sea-voyage almost entirely from Irving's description of his voyage to Europe. I remembered reading, in my younger days, of the many hours of delightful revery in which he had indulged, and of the amusements he derived from watching the unwieldly monsters of the deep in their uncouth gambols. It seemed to my boyish fancy as if the shark, the whale, the porpoise and the dolphin, and perhaps, even the veritable sea-serpent himself, had come at his bidding, as the beasts came to Adam in Paradise. But either these noble personages are less accommodating since his time, or are unwilling to pay their respects to any less distinguished visitors. Their privacy has been so often invaded by troops of cockney tourists, that it has now become almost impossible to obtain an introduction.

But if these dwellers beneath the surface, these aborigines of the ocean, indigenous, if we may so say, to the soil, failed to gratify our curiosity, or to answer our extravagant expectations, this was far from being the case with the comparatively alien but dominant race of man's introduction. A ship at sea is as different from the same ship lying at a wharf, as the lion of the desert from the cringing brute of a menagerie; I no longer wondered that such should seem to the ignorant savage, beholding them for the first time, living and intelligent creatures, tamed and subjected to the service of a superior race of beings, nor did the ancient fable of their transformation into sea-nymphs seem altogether incredible.

We spoke several ships at this time, bound in different directions. Such an event never failed to produce the most intense excitement, and a feverish anxiety to know the name of the vessel, where she was from, and whither she was bound. To compare great things with small, it was as if two worlds should cross each other's path in the heavens, and should "heave to" a moment in their breathless career to hold brief converse on their state and destiny. It would be an interesting question what matters should be introduced at so august a meeting; though it were much to be feared, that in their anxiety to touch upon none but the most important, the precious, irrecoverable moment would be altogether lost.

In the present instance, however, the question and answer are both ready beforehand; and even the order of precedence is determined by some freemasonary of the high seas, the mystery of which I did not unravel. A few moments are commonly sufficient for the purpose; the captain, who has the first words, pours through his trumpet a hoarse bellow that would be quite unintelligible if its purport were not already known,—the other courteously replies,—the flags are run up and down, to take the place of that head and hand shaking that attends the meeting of two magnates on land, and away go the obedient vessels, to meet, perhaps, no more during their whole career.

When three weeks out, we spoke an English ship from Madras, which thus became exalted, in our imaginations, to a place of vast importance. She sent her boat to obtain a supply of fuel; and we regarded the crew with almost as much interest as if they had belonged to a different planet. Charley Bainbridge, who was always on the look-out for such opportunities, slid down into the boat, and presently returned with some article he had found in her bottom, mysteriously guarded in his breeches pocket. On being pressed to exhibit his treasure, he steadily refused till after the boat had gone; when he drew forth a pebble, which he said came from Madras, and being obtained in that odd way, would make a very handsome addition to his cabinet.

A yet more lively interest was awakened by our meeting, soon after, a ship bound from Calcutta to Boston. She had been in sight all the afternoon, and, in compliance with our invitation to speak, altered her course sufficiently to come up with us just after dusk. A lantern was suspended at our poop, and guided by its light, which seemed quite absorbed by the immense darkness, she came cautiously feeling her way along, till, suddenly shooting into our little illuminated horizon, she hove to and waited to know our pleasure. All the while our ship was silent as the grave, but more than a hundred pair of eyes were peeping through the blanket of the night, as if, though the frailest and softest things, they would really tear it into shreds. We had no sooner, however, learned the destination of the stranger than our decks swarmed with sudden life. As a delay of even a few minutes is regarded as a serious inconvenience, especially by your fast-sailing Indiaman, there was little time to prepare our letters, but most on board, in expectation of such an opportunity, had everything in readiness; and the boat was hardly lowered before the mail-bag was thrown into it. When our visitor had filled her sails, and her tall shadow had merged in the surrounding blackness, a feeling of loneliness settled down upon us, that we had not known since leaving home. In a few weeks she would be in Boston; while, at the same time, we should be off the stormy Cape. It seemed like severing the last tie that bound us to home; as if we had now really begun to slide down the backside of the world, without any possibility of ever climbing up again.

We had now become somewhat accustomed to the dull routine of a long voyage. Sunrise, commonly flat and insipid, even on land, had here the superadded monotony of life at sea. The sun came bouncing out of bed, without a rag of a cloud about him, as if in a great hurry to find out whether we were just where he left us the night before. Soon after we began, one by one, to drop down from our berths; and having drawn on our pantaloons, we shuffled along, towel and wash-bowl in hand, to the waist of the ship, where we were used to perform our ablutions. A fireman's bucket attached to a stout rope had been considerately provided for the use of one hundred passengers; or, to speak more accurately, for the use of the cooks, the passengers having the benefit of it only by sufferance of those sooty dignities.

In warm weather, and quiet seas, drawing water was no great hardship; but when the seas and the latitudes both ran high, and the ship was rolling and pitching at such a rate that it was no easy matter to stand upright,—I could not help thinking that the old nursery ballad

What! cry to be washed?
Not love to be clean?

was not after all quite so orthodox in its irony as I had supposed.

Leaning over the bulwarks, with feet well braced against the slippery deck, his hair in his eyes, and the crook of his elbow nervously hooking the rigging, the unlucky ablutor picks up the "superior accommodation," and throws it over the gunwale into the sea. This is a simple and facile operation; there is no need of plumping the bucket up and down in order to fill it, the swift current has already done that for you, and has at once drawn out the whole length of the rope, while the bucket, with open mouth, seems ready to burst, like the frog in the fable, in the vain attempt to swallow the whole ocean. But to regain possession, or as Dan Carpenter, one of our Vermonters, had it, "revocare bucketum, hoc labor, hoc opus est."

This important duty being at length accomplished, we proceeded, in fine weather, to promenade the deck till breakfast. The forenoon was occupied in a great variety of ways. Some disinterested and inquiring individuals kept a constant look-out for sails, sharks, and whales, in order to gratify the universal craving for novelty and excitement. These were the newsmongers and express agents of our little community. A shark could not show his dorsal fin within a cable's length of the ship,—a whale could not wag his tail or blow his nose within five miles,—and a sail could not steal into the wide horizon of the masthead, without being at once detected by half a dozen curious eyes, and straightway reported to all below. Various groups on deck were occupied in reading, talking, and smoking, or in games of chance or skill. A few bolder spirits had even the hardihood to attempt "Spanish without a Master," but they got no farther than the story of the three travellers, and the ominous moral, "Desgraciado el que aspira a riquezas,"—miserable is he who aspires after riches.

[CHAPTER III.]

The party to which I belonged consisted originally of but three members. Captain Bill was a short, broad-faced, blue-eyed Saxon, who no sooner felt his sea-legs, as the sailors said, well under him, than he began to discover an aptitude for naval tactics that might almost be called genius. Instead of spending his time in those light and trifling pursuits that engrossed the attention of those about him, he applied himself with unwearied assiduity to the acquisition of that knowledge that is usually so distasteful to a landsman; and had constantly in his mouth some such horrid and uncouth phrases as, "How's she head?" "Keep her off half a point," "Haul in your jib-sheets," and others equally portentous. He at length acquired such a facility in this sort of exercise that he came to be regarded as a very high authority in such matters, and hence received from his companions the honorary title of Captain, which his subsequent fortune strangely confirmed. One of the sailors whom I met by chance in the maintop, assured me that he, Captain Bill, knew almost as much as the Captain himself; and that it was a great pity he had not been sent to sea when he was a boy, as there was no knowing what might have happened. I assented to all he said, but took care to say nothing about it to my companion, for fear of inflaming his malady; as his conversation, even then, was almost wholly made up of the phrases above mentioned, and it was well nigh impossible to obtain from him an answer such as a landsman could understand. As Captain Bill, in spite of this little infirmity, was a very clever fellow, and was reputed to have a great deal of what is commonly called luck, I felicitated myself, not a little, on having him for a partner, as I thought I must surely share in his good fortune.

A younger brother of the author, who having like Captain Bill lost his proper title, was distinguished by the name of Tertium Quid, or simply Tertium, and a big bull-dog called Zachary Taylor, completed our little party.

The most conspicuous person in the ship was Charley Bainbridge; who, without being acknowledged as such, was generally regarded as the representative head of the Vermonters. He was the spoilt child of his parents, just beginning, curiously, to dabble in the great mudpuddle of the world. Laughing blue eyes, hair brown and curling, a frank, good-humoured expression, and a fine manly figure, had stamped him plainly as one of that happy or unhappy class who never do anything for themselves, but are always sure to find others ready to do for them. He, as well as his companions, were declared decidedly green, at the outset of our voyage, by some who had seen a little more of the world; but, as the same uncomfortable wisdom had pronounced a similar judgment upon the author, the reader will readily perceive how much it was worth. Our hero left home with an abundant allowance, but this being exhausted by the time we arrived at San Francisco, he was obliged to borrow money in order to reach the mines. The air of the Yuba, whither he first directed his steps, did not agree with his health, and we next heard of him in the southern mines, where, being still unsuccessful, he borrowed money for the fourth time, and returning to Sacramento went into the business of cleaning tripe on a very enlarged scale, that plainly declared him intended only for grand and arduous undertakings. He would undoubtedly have succeeded in this new enterprise but for one of those unlucky accidents that sometimes befall the wisest, and would certainly never have entered into the calculations of Napoleon himself. He was one day backing his cart, filled with the precious commodity, too near the bank of the river, which here falls some thirty feet at a very dangerous angle, when the wheels suddenly passing beyond the brink, the tripe, the cart, and the horse went rolling over each other down the declivity into the river. He stood awhile in amaze, such an illustration of the laws of gravity having probably never been heard of in the halls of old Harvard; but, finding that there was no hope of an immediate resurrection, he cast one longing, lingering look behind, and going at once on board the boat bid a final farewell to the country that had used him so ungratefully. I was the more interested in the adventures of this hero, as I thought they discovered a temper, like my own, too noble for what weaker and more grovelling minds call success.

Dan Carpenter belonged to the same party. He was oftener called "Old Herculaneum," from an admirable misapprehension of the sense of that word, which he was wont to use, in connection with grasp, as synonomous with Herculean. He had studied a little law, and was the best man at checkers in the ship. His conversation was rather homely than brilliant, but he sometimes blundered into what were considered at sea very tolerable jests.

A man of a very different stamp was Thomas Busby, our Manhattan merchant. He was an admirable representative of his class, and prouder of the distinction than if he had written "The Reveries of a Bachelor." He thought a Broadway merchant the greatest man in the world, and himself the greatest merchant in Broadway. He was the most respectable man I ever saw,—the valet, I forget his name, in David Copperfield, was nothing to him,—and this was the more remarkable, since his figure was too slight to act the character to advantage. His manner was everything; though really below the medium height, he had the art ascribed to Louis XIV. of impressing the beholder with a painful idea of his majestic proportions. Methinks I see him now; his slight but jaunty figure cased in the finest of broadcloth, his head thrown back, his chest expanded, as if about to toss a roll of cloth on to a counter; and then his voice! it seemed impossible it should proceed from anything less than a giant,—indeed I never believed it rightfully belonged to him, but was one he had stolen from some thick-witted Goliah, with whom he had left his own piping notes in exchange.

His most amusing idiosyncrasy, however, was his contempt for college learning; it amounted to a positive mania. "When any one," said he, "applied for a situation at our store, (he was fond of telling how many clerks he employed at once,) I always asked him if he had been to college; and, if he had, that was enough—I had nothing more to do with him." In spite however of this antipathy, he had once studied a little Latin, and adroitly contrived to be vain of this distinction, and, at the same time, of having forgotten all he had learned.

The little spice of the ridiculous thus mingled in his composition only made Busby the more agreeable as a companion; as it is impossible to feel an affection, I had almost said respect, for one at whom we cannot sometimes laugh.

Then there was ——, that Will-o'-the-wisp, that strange compound of opposite and seemingly, contradictory qualities, the unwinking, almost ubiquitous celerity of the lizard, and more than elephantine clumsiness. He needed to tie up his wits, as Lightfoot in the story tied up his legs that he might run slow enough to catch the deer. He walked with a pair of seven-league boots, and stept beyond the mark continually.

At table, he was the victim of more unlucky accidents than all the rest of the ship's company. He upset his soup into his lap. He ran his fork through his cheek. He stept into the slop-pail. He trod on his own toes. He tript himself up. If it had been possible, he would have run between his own legs. He was always sure to spit on his own boot, or on another's. He emptied his wash-bowl on the Captain's head. Off Cape Horn he fell overboard, and only saved himself by catching his leg in a rope that lamed him for a week. As he said, nobody else could have possibly done it; but nobody else would have fallen.

[CHAPTER IV.]

Nearly two months after leaving home we entered the harbour of Rio; or, to borrow the spirited lines of Madame W. our poetess,—we were so fortunate as to possess the species, both male and female,—

"We crossed the line in cheerful glee,
And anchored safe in Rio Janee."

We were nearly out of sight of the city; but its scattering suburbs lay all around in the laps of the mountains, the white walls of the houses contrasting finely with the deep green of the back ground. The nearest mountain peaks stood with their naked feet in the very bottom of the bay, presenting, on the water side, a smooth, and, in many places, almost perpendicular wall, and enclosing between them long winding coves, stretching away almost out of sight.

We were obliged to remain on board all the next morning, until the officers had made their customary visit, but having endured this formality with what patience we could, and eaten a dinner of "fresh," as it is called at sea, we went ashore in a boat manned by four slaves entirely naked. We landed near the emperor's palace; and having no particular object in view, strolled through the streets as chance directed. Partly from thoughtlessness, and partly to obtain a better view of the buildings, we walked carelessly along, in the middle of the street, staring about us like a parcel of backcountrymen just landed in the city of New York; at least so said the respectable Busby, who never, in any case, forgot his propriety, and even now, though nobody about him talked with an English tongue, or saw with English eyes, conducted himself precisely as if he had been in his favourite Broadway.

But we were too much engrossed with the strange objects about us, to waste a thought on our own appearance. It was as if we had gone back to the days of childhood, and recovered, for a season, that delicious sense of novelty that gave those days their peculiar charm. We resembled a piece of sponge, from which the last drop had been squeezed, suddenly plunged into a vessel of water. Every sense, every pore, seemed made the highway for a whole host of new ideas. We read volumes at a glance, sucked up knowledge at every breath, and found sermons in the very stones of the streets. Slaves were crossing the great square in every direction, carrying on their heads tall jars of water, baskets of clothes to be washed at the fountain, and large trays full of fruit and flowers. They moved with a peculiar erect and springing gait, balancing their awkward burdens with such dexterity as made them seem rather a natural excrescence than anything they could lay aside at pleasure. Others were basking in the sun, in the very middle of the street, like so many bundles of old clothes.

When they were wanted for any purpose, and failed to arouse themselves at the first signal, the impatient master would run upon them, and, after an enlivening series of hearty kicks and thumps, hale them along to their work like a refractory or worn-out horse; and indeed they performed most of that work assigned to horses in more humane countries. Every thing whose weight permitted they carried on their heads or backs, and these burdens were often so heavy, that two or three men were required to raise them. In other cases they made use of a rude cart, with two low wheels, which was pushed and pulled along by a dozen slaves. One usually took his station at each wheel, and tugged, apparently very hard, at the spokes. But all were evidently skillful adepts at the art of sogering; and a single horse, with a properly constructed cart, would have drawn three times their ordinary load.

As we were walking through a narrow street, about thirty slaves came suddenly upon us, round a corner, moving at a slow trot, carrying on their backs bales of sheeting, and keeping time to their step by a loud, monotonous chant. They threw down their loads at a door we were passing, and, stopping their music, one by one, hurried away like the genii of the Arabian tales, who, having performed their master's bidding, disappeared as mysteriously as they came.

The buildings of Rio are generally heavy and substantial, with little exterior decoration. Their churches resemble, in this respect, the shell of an oyster, rough and rude without, but of a metallic brilliancy within. It was a festival of some sort at the close of Lent, and the churches were all open, though we saw but few worshippers. Little boys were dragging effigies of Judas about the streets, and beating them with sticks, with the most edifying zeal and devotion.

Having somewhat satiated our curiosity, we returned to the Hotel Pharoux, to take a supplemental dinner. This was a French café in spite of its Egyptian title; the cooking was excellent, and the idea of being served by veritable Parlezvous highly gratifying, at least to the provincials of our party, who had very likely never seen one of those animals before.

"Here, garsong" cried Charley Bainbridge, with an air, "donny moy some pully à potage, and some pang à boottre."

"Oui, monsieur" replied the ready Frenchman, who had acquired by long practice a marvellous facility in interpreting the patois of his guests; but as the reader may be less successful, I would explain that the mysterious substantives above, signified chicken and potatoes, bread and butter.

Charley's example was, as usual, contagious, and presently there arose a Babel of English, interspersed with such mongrel French and Spanish as might have taxed the triple throat of Cerberus himself. Captain Bill, whose whole stock in foreign languages, if we exclude that in which we have already shown his proficiency, consisted of three words, si, monsieur, and mademoiselle, traded upon this slender capital with unequalled success. "Si monsieur," or "si mademoiselle" he constantly repeated, whenever any of the waiters approached the table, sometimes interrogatively, sometimes affirmatively, and sometimes suggestively, but always with a bland smile, expressive of the highest self-satisfaction and contentment.

Our dinner consisted of bifstek, potatoes, bread and butter, and coffee, all of the finest quality—but we were somewhat alarmed, when our bill was presented, at sight of a long row of figures swelling up to a total of several thousands. A few words, however, soon removed our apprehensions; the thousands were nothing but reys, twenty of which make one cent. The milrey, or thousand reys, is a silver coin equivalent to our half dollar. They have also a copper coin about equal in value to two cents, of a very clumsy form, and appropriately called a dump.

The Hotel Pharoux was our favourite lounge while we remained on shore. It was constantly thronged with a motley crowd of Californians, man-of-war's men, and others of various nations, presenting altogether a scene of the most lively and amusing description. We now began, for the first time, to feel the suck and swing of that mighty maelstrom into which we had ventured. Sixty ships had been at Rio before us—and, while we were there, the number of Californians in port was over a thousand. We naturally regarded all these as, in some sort, our rivals, and the excitement of competition was thus aggravated a hundred-fold. It was impossible to get rid of the absurd notion, that the whole country would be appropriated before we had set foot in it, and that we should thus be in the awkward predicament of a dilatory guest, who arrives only in time to be tantalized by sight of the fragments of the feast.

The next day was Sunday. It was ushered in by the chiming of bells, bursts of martial music, and the thunder of cannon. Going early on shore, we found all the shops open as usual, and nothing to distinguish the day but the increased display in the churches. Hearing that the Emperor was to be present in the cathedral attached to his palace, and fronting the great square, we went at an early hour for the purpose of seeing his Majesty. After we had stood several hours, he came in at a private entrance, attended by the Empress, and took his seat on an elevated platform that afforded us a fine view of his person. He was tall and finely formed, dressed in military uniform, and was, altogether, just such a figure as one would naturally expect in an Emperor.

The cathedral shone like a great jewel box, with gold and silver; a numerous and enthusiastic band played martial airs with all their might and main; and the Emperor, and the priests, and the dignitaries of the Empire, and the foreign ambassadors, standing meekly and foolishly in a row, like a class of school boys—and all the congregation, save and except some unterrified Californian, and the saints that stood in gold-and-silvery dignity around the sides of the cathedral, kept kneeling down and getting up again in the most unexpected manner.

After some time spent in this way, an ecclesiastic, richly dressed, climbed up into a sort of martin-house that stood on one side; and poking his head and shoulders out at the top, somewhat in the manner of those ingenious bouncing toys with which children are so deliciously frightened, he began to shout down to us below like a sweep on top of a chimney. But no one regarded him, though he doubtless talked very wisely, and in Latin, too; and, in fifteen minutes, he came down again, very warm and red in the face, and again the band struck up their music.

The long service being at length over, the Emperor left the cathedral, and passed through the whole length of his palace to the principal entrance, where a carriage was in readiness to convey him to his country-seat. Having handed his empress into the carriage as politely as if he had been only a private individual, he took his seat beside her; the door was closed, and the six horses instantly set off at full gallop, diagonally across the square, to the imminent danger of his loyal subjects, who had much ado to get out of the royal road. The whole scene reminded me very pleasantly of a picture I had often studied, with great interest, in somebody's geography, representing a nobleman—in Austria, I think—riding over a cripple, who held up his wooden leg bayonetwise against the frightened horses. When the emperor has thus swept away like a whirlwind, and his escort had gone galloping after him on diminutive horses, his suit also got into carriages, and followed, more soberly, in the same direction.

We spent Monday and Tuesday in wandering about the city, and in purchasing a few luxuries for use at sea. Wednesday morning, I went, with a small party, in one of the ship's boats, several miles up into one of the arms of the bay, for the purpose of buying oranges. Leaving the boat anchored a short distance from the beach, we struck into a narrow lane or footpath leading up into the country, and shut in, on both sides, by the queerest and most eccentric forest I had ever seen. Every tree, shrub, and flower was a most decided humourist, and had its own way of growing, entirely different from its neighbours. Instead of harmonizing with each other, like the twin quakers of a Northern forest, each one seemed trying to be as odd and outre as possible.

There were beauties there of every description, but they needed a cunning hand to sort and arrange them. The effect, though almost bewildering by its brilliancy, was not, in the end, agreeable to my plain republican notions. The eye is wearied by so much slovenly magnificence, such wasted prodigality, and ostentatious vanity; and would gladly turn to "the sober realm of leafless trees," even of our own November.

Walking a mile over the deep, fine sand, we came to the plantation to which we had been directed. The house, which was small and light, like a huge bird-cage of bamboo, stood in the midst of an orange orchard, where the fruit was hanging on the trees in the greatest profusion. The price demanded was twenty-five cents a hundred; we were to gather the oranges ourselves, and wherever we pleased, with the exception of half a dozen trees, the fruit of which, being of a higher flavour, was reserved by the owner for his own use. It was a very pleasant novelty—this picking oranges as though they had been apples—tasting one, here and there, and throwing it magnanimously away, if it were not quite first-rate; but we had little leisure for such pastimes. We selected the sweetest trees, and stopping only to pick the thickest of the fruit, we had collected by noon more than five thousand oranges, which we thought as many as our boat would hold.

After eating the dinner we had brought from the ship, we strolled off to a neighbouring plantation, where we found a similar bird-cage perched on a slight elevation, and its owner, a little, squat, bandy-legged Frenchman, engaged in drying coffee on mats spread before the door. He received us with the greatest cordiality; and after his heart was a little warmed by the wine he had compelled us to drink with him, he began to give us some account of his former history; and at length informed us that he had served in the armies of the great Emperor. Stripping up his sleeve, with characteristic vivacity, he exhibited the wounds he had received in his service, with as much pride and enthusiasm as if they had been the cross of the Legion of Honour. It seemed strangely incongruous to find one who had played a part, even though the humblest, in that stirring drama, mouldering away, like a forgotten firebrand, in this woody solitude, long after the fierce flame of battle had gone out on the field of Waterloo.

We were employed the whole afternoon in conveying our booty to the boat. After working hard all the morning, we found little romance in carrying one or two hundred oranges, in bags, on our heads, over the hot yielding sand; and there was a general exclamation of satisfaction when the last load came heavily down to the beach. We reached the ship long after sundown, and bid a final farewell to Rio the next morning.

[CHAPTER V.]

My quiet room-mate went with us no farther. He was disheartened by the length of the voyage, and perhaps thought Brazil presented quite as many advantages as California. His place was filled by a young, red-haired Scotchman, who had formerly lived in Edinburgh, and sat on the knee of Sir Walter. He had been on one or two whaling voyages, and had evidently seen the world. He played on the guitar—sang a variety of songs, some of which were of a very doubtful character—was an expert boxer—had something of a turn for poetry and light literature—and, in spite of his unsettled, wandering life, still possessed, to an unusual degree, that sort of native refinement that makes one tender of the feelings and weaknesses of others. He seemed, however, to value these various accomplishments only as passports to the favour of the other sex. His successes in that line had been very numerous, according to his own showing, and had confirmed him in the belief that there was no such thing as virtue in the world.

On leaving port, we plunged at once into the region of storms. The tropic of Capricorn seemed an actual wall of separation, dividing two distinct climates as smoothly and evenly as it does the zones upon the map. On one side, all was bright and serene; on the other, cloudy and tempestuous. Off the mouth of the La Platte, the mariner is sure to encounter heavy seas, as if there floated down that magnificent river, from its mountain birthplace, nothing but miniature Andes to encumber the smooth surface of the deep. Day after day we climbed up and down these hills, as slowly and painfully as a man walking over a ploughed field. We gained, seemingly, not a foot; and I sometimes thought we were to remain there forever seesawing the same dull wave. Every morning we found ourselves apparently just where we were the night before; the same ill-looking wave on our quarter, the same dirty cloud over head. Drive as hard as we could, there was no getting away from them; they still, like the headless horseman, preserved the same relative position.

But the ocean was no longer a solitude; the space around the ship resembled rather an immense barnyard thronged with a greater variety of poultry than is often seen, even in the enclosures of the most successful fancier. There were little bevies of Mother Cary's Chickens—flocks of Cape pigeons, gonies, hagletts, and mollymocks; and, largest and noblest of all, the solitary albatross. They followed us for miles, floating on the water till almost out of sight, then regaining their position by a hasty flight. We fished for them with great success, using for bait a bit of pork attached to a stout hook, which, being suffered to float on a piece of board, far behind the ship, was eagerly swallowed by these greedy scavengers.

The largest albatross measured nearly twelve feet across his wings, though his body was no larger than a goose. Their powers of flight are unrivalled. I used to watch them for hours together, circling with prying eyes round the ship, now rising, now falling, now coming up heavily against the wind, then suddenly shooting away before it, like a kite that has broken its string; and all, apparently, without any more exertion than is visible in the flight of a thistle down, their "sail broad vans" remaining constantly motionless, with the exception, now and then, of a single, almost imperceptible flap, as they varied their course to one side or the other.

When drawn on board, and placed upon the deck, the albatross lost at once all this poetry of motion, and became an awkward, ungainly bird, unable to rise into the air, and in constant danger of tumbling forward on to its ugly nose. I was rather disappointed by the indifference of our sailors on this interesting subject. They viewed the death of their patron bird with as little concern as if it had been a turkey; they had no superstitious fears about ill-luck thence arising; and, indeed, I am sorry to say, were as little given to superstition of any kind as the stoutest enlightener of the masses could desire.

Some of the smaller birds were also killed for food; but their feathers were so disproportioned to the flesh, that they were not worth the trouble of picking. A far more abundant and grateful repast was furnished by a porpoise, that was harpooned as he frolicked past the bows. No sooner was the approach of these playful creatures discovered, than the inspiriting cry of "porpoise," "porpoise," was echoed through the ship, and all hands were instantly on the alert. They generally made their first appearance on our quarter; and speedily overtaking us, rolled, in broken files, and with many an awkward bound and splash, directly under the bowsprit. A harpoon was always kept in readiness for such an emergency, and the second mate, who was an old hand at the business, taking his station on the martingal, waited a favourable opportunity to hurl his weapon into the back of one of the plunging monsters. This was the first time he had succeeded, and now twenty or thirty of the passengers, bowsing away on the rope to the tune of Uncle Ned, soon landed our game on deck. He weighed several hundred pounds, and the flesh, which was remarkably sweet, closely resembling beef, furnished an excellent dinner for all on board.

The sight of a strange sail in these lonely seas aroused our most eager speculation. She was bound in the same direction as ourselves, and we had no difficulty in conjecturing that she was seeking the same golden gate. She proved to be the ship Sweden; had left port three weeks after us, and partly by not stopping at any port, and partly by her superior sailing, had gained so decided an advantage. We raced with her two days in succession, but, as the wind freshened, she slowly crept ahead, and our captain gave orders to put on more sail. The Sweden followed our example, and both vessels, crowded with all the canvass they could bear, staggered, like a drunken man with a barrel of whisky on his shoulders, heavily, along their uneven path, showing many feet of their bright and dripping copper at every spring. Suddenly the Sweden carried away her foresail, and we began to recover the ground we had lost. But it was set again with provoking rapidity, and, ere long, we were compelled to abandon the contest. Before parting company, however, we endeavoured to find out if her commander intended to go through the Straits of Magellan, as there was a great diversity of opinion on board our ship as to the expediency of attempting the passage. A board was put up in the rigging with the question printed on it in large letters; but though, as we afterwards learned, they saw the board, they could not make out the inscription, and our captain, in his perplexity, finally referred the matter to the passengers. The majority, knowing nothing of the difficulties of the undertaking, and naturally desirous to shorten the voyage as much as possible, were in favour of going through the Straits; but we were fortunately prevented from making the trial by adverse winds that drove us wide of the mark, and compelled us to take the longer, but far safer passage round the Horn.

About the middle of May we arrived off the coast of Patagonia, and soon after made Staten Island. In these inhospitable latitudes, we found the serenest weather since leaving Rio; the sea, though heaving in lazy swells, was almost as smooth as a looking-glass. It was evident that our coming was unexpected, and that the fierce brood of storms that infest that region had left home on some distant marauding expedition. We were so near the coast that we could easily distinguish the helmets of glittering snow worn by the hills drawn up in solid phalanx near the shore; but we were unable to catch a glimpse of that race of giants that had so imposed upon our childish fancy.

Passing Terra del Fuego, and the little island of Cape Horn, at too great a distance to obtain a view of those famous headlands, we held steadily on our course into still higher latitudes; till, having gained a sufficient elevation to avoid all danger of being blown back into the Atlantic, the ship's head was, at last, turned towards the west; and on the morning of the twenty-second of May we waked up in the Pacific, with something of the feeling of those early navigators when they first burst through into this unknown sea.

The sun off Cape Horn is a very sleepy fellow, with none of that inconvenient propensity to early rising that elsewhere interferes so much with our arrangements; he rose about eight, attained a meridian altitude of some twelve degrees, and retired at four. The weather was now cold and squally. Spirts of rain or sleet, or what was still worse, the tops of the waves driven in upon us by the winds, made it almost as hard to remain upon deck as if it had been swept by the fire of a battery. The ship seemed almost entirely deserted; a few of the more resolute sort, their heads drawn into their shoulders, purple with cold, and half blinded by the spray, still clung to the rigging, and stared stupidly, with puckered mouth and eyebrows, out into the immeasurable gloom. The rest had retired, like bats and owls, or a somnolescent bear, into the most out-of-the-way places they could find; and it was about as safe and agreeable an operation to disturb one of them as to stir up the abstracted, meditative gentleman last mentioned from his hollow tree.

Slinking away to my berth, I wrapped myself in great-coats and blankets, and strove, by the aid of a feeble lantern and an entertaining book, to conjure up more pleasing associations; but the result was a wretched failure. My narrow stateroom, six feet by four, contained, within its dark green walls, as much that was gloomy and repulsive as the wet, slippery deck, and melancholy ocean—everything had the feeling of a "cold, damp, uncomfortable body."

Cooking, in such weather, was well nigh impossible, but fortunately we had no appetite. We were put on an allowance of water, three quarts a day; but then we could not have drunk half of it if we had tried. Everybody, however, was out of sorts; and the dismal weather, the wretched fare, and the unjustifiable length of the voyage, afforded sufficient matter, if not cause, for grumbling. In such a state of mind it is anything but agreeable to be left behind by more successful rivals. A handsome, gaily-painted ship came up with us one of these days, and the usual question was propounded, how long she had been out. "Sixty-one days," was the ready and self-satisfied answer; "how long have you?" "One hundred and four," very slowly and reluctantly. We heard the passengers on the Loo Choo repeat the number with jeering triumph, as she forged ahead, flinging up her heels, and showing her bright yellow bottom in a very insulting manner. I hurled after them a wish not of the most amiable character, and looked to see them go down together; but they held on their course, rejoicing in the successful flam they had put upon us. The first question we asked, on arriving at San Francisco, was about the ships we had spoken on the way; and it gave us no little gratification to learn that the Loo Choo had not yet come into port. At the time of our meeting, she had really been out eighty-one days, and her whole passage was even longer than our own.

We then knew nothing of all this, however, and it would be hard to find a more discontented, distracted set of beings than was on board the Leucothea after the Loo Choo was fairly out of sight. A merry party got together round the windlass for the express purpose of cursing the ship and all concerned in her, the day in which they ever heard there was such a place as N——, and themselves, most of all, for having taken passage in what their prompter called such a lubberly, blubber-hunting craft. They were unfortunately interrupted, however, in their well meant design, by the cheerful cry of "porpoise," "porpoise," and hurrying to the bows, we soon had one of these delicate monsters floundering on deck, which, like a lump of sugar to a peevish child, put us all, for a time, in good humor.

Early the next morning, before it was light enough to see the ship's length, a fierce and sudden cry of "put the helm hard down, lower the boat," pierced every part of the ship, falling on the ears of the sleeping passengers like their funeral knell. "What's the matter? is the ship sinking?" cried at once a hundred voices, and a hundred hearts stood still for the answer. The next moment, "a man overboard" explained the alarm, and converted the lively apprehensions for our own safety into a comparatively inert sympathy for another. The waves were running mountains high, and the boats were all firmly lashed in their places, so that lowering one was both difficult and dangerous, yet ten minutes found the man safe in the ship, though so thoroughly exhausted by the intense cold as to be unable to stand alone. His escape was almost miraculous; he was stationed just beneath the bowsprit, trying to harpoon a porpoise, when the ship plunging heavily, he was swept off by the waves. As he passed along the side, he uttered the cry that had produced such an excitement, and was thus the first to announce his own danger. He afterwards contrived to kick off his boots, and being an excellent swimmer, kept his head above water till the boat, pulling directly in the wake of the ship, came to his relief.

The night came on unusually cold and blustering. I was sitting with Tertium and Captain Bill, in their stateroom, when a faint smell of fire attracted our attention. As it grew stronger, we became greatly alarmed, as indeed we well might, for nothing can appear more hideous to the imagination, than a ship loaded with passengers, on fire of a dark, stormy, wintry night off Cape Horn. Captain Bill now hastily descended into the cabin and roused the captain, who was already asleep, and became almost palsied with fright on hearing the dreadful tidings.

"Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd."

Before, however, he reached the deck, we had opened the door of the adjoining stateroom, and discovered the seat of danger. The wife of one of the seamen, who occupied the room, had incautiously placed a hot brick between the sheets, to answer the purpose of a warming pan, and the whole bedding was soon in a light blaze. It was extinguished without difficulty, and, as I had displayed, through the whole of this trying occasion, that presence of mind of which I am so justly proud, I was able to laugh without mercy at my companions for their needless alarm.

This was the last of Cape Horn. Near the end of May we fell in with a favourable breeze that bore us, in ten days, farther than we had sailed in any preceding month, and promised a speedy arrival at Talcahuano—but, a few hundred miles south of that port, we encountered a violent head wind, against which we slowly toiled for nearly a week, and it was not till the 12th of June that we came in sight of the coast of Chili.

We came to anchor, the same evening, in the little bay, abreast of the town and a quarter of a mile from the shore. The next morning we were surrounded by native boats, bringing narrow-necked earthen vessels full of milk, fine white rolls, and baskets of eggs and apples; for all which we paid about the same prices as are usual in our own cities. Going on shore we found ourselves in the dirtiest little village in the world, except one that I afterwards visited in Central America, consisting of a few streets of low houses built of large coarse brick, or rude basket work daubed with clay. Talcahuano, or Turkeywarner, as it is oddly enough called by sailors, though hardly known to the civilised world, has long been the favorite resort of ships engaged in the whale fishery. They generally remain a week or more in port to recruit and lay in a stock of fresh provisions, and the town has hence become the very hot bed of vice. As we walked through the filthy narrow streets, the open doors on each side were full of women, who kept up an incessant cry of "come in, Californe;" "Californe, come in;" adding often other allurements of a yet more unmistakable character.

In the afternoon a large party sat down to dinner in a shambling, tumbledown edifice called a hotel, and kept by an American. Ascending a flight of narrow, rickety stairs, we passed through a range of rooms and galleries presenting the very picture of desolation, till we came to one a little superior to the rest, and just wide enough for the long narrow table that by its royal plenty gave the lie to all about it.

A pig, crispily roasted by some firm yet gentle hand, graced the upper end, supported, at convenient intervals, by beef, turkeys, chickens, and pigeon pie; flanked, in their turn, by a small but delicious species of oysters, potatoes, and string beans, bread and butter,—the last imported from the States—with a noble array of pitchers and bottles containing a liberal supply of the cheap wine of the country—all furnished for the moderate sum of half a dollar. The reader can but faintly imagine the wholesouled delight with which our senses, after so long mortification and self-denial, expatiated over this dainty repast. Yet call it not animal, sensual, that agreeable titillation, having its principal seat indeed in the palate and stomach, but thence diffused over the brain and heart, making the one apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes,—disposing the other to gentle and kind offices, and producing, in fine, the most perfect harmony of the whole man.

But a more potent influence was at work to inflame our imaginations. While we were at sea, that faculty was comparatively quiescent; our droning, isolated life was by no means favourable to excitement, which can hardly exist without novelty and frequent contact with others. We now found both of these in abundance, and the marvellous reports we heard on every side seemed to acquire a greater degree of credibility from our near approach to the fountain head. In the inflated language of our narrators, that portion of Chili was almost exhausted of its male population. All along the coast they were hastening to the El Dorado; some in foreign shipping, and others, who could not obtain a passage, crept along the shore in boats, or set out on a still more perilous journey by land. Parties had already returned with sums varying from twenty to two hundred thousand dollars; one woman in particular was instanced who had dug fifty thousand with her own hands, and my informant had seen the kegs and boxes that held the gold. To all these stories we listened with the gravest deliberation, and having, with a degree of sagacity that did us infinite credit, rejected one-half as falsehood, we swallowed the remainder without any further difficulty.

Our little party of three was here converted into a quadrate by the addition of a fourth member, who had been thus far hesitating between the mines and San Francisco, but was now determined to try the former. In honour of this new member we considered it necessary to add somewhat to our bill of fare for the diggings, and I accordingly went with him to examine into the merits of some jerked beef, an article we had heard highly recommended for that purpose. It was in bundles as big as a flour barrel, and was nearly as tough and unpalatable as the strips of hide that bound it together; but it contained a deal of nourishment, there was no doubt about that; and as for troubling our heads about the quality of our food, while making a hundred dollars apiece a day, such an extravagance never entered our calculations.

We had brought with us from home an abundant supply of beans, rice, biscuit, pork, and sugar—cold water we expected to find in the mines; and on this lenten fare we had no doubt we should be perfectly content. But this hung beef was peculiarly detestable, and therefore highly appropriate as an addition to our list of comestibles; the only thing, in fact, wanting to add the finishing touch to its unique ugliness. Accordingly we bought the beef, congratulating each other on our good fortune, carried it with us into the mines, and there incontinently hung it up on a tree as the only way of getting rid of so formidable an incumbrance.

Thursday it rained heavily, and the swell that came in from the sea rendered all communication with the shore extremely difficult. Busby and Captain Bill attempting, with several others, to come on board, were caught by a roller that stove their boat against the beach and drenched them all in salt water, to the serious detriment of their Old-World hats and chest-wrinkled broadcloth. This being the season of the winter solstice, we were agreeably disappointed at finding the sun shining brightly the following morning, which encouraged us to pass the day on shore. A party even had the hardihood to hire horses and ride to the city of Concepcion, a distance of ten miles; but they found the road in a wretched condition, and were horribly scared by robbers, from whom they escaped only by unparalleled valour, perhaps a little tempered with discretion.

We met with various delays in obtaining a supply of water, and as it was not all on board by Saturday night, the crew were set to work the next morning. They were already dressed to go ashore; and Sunday being considered a holiday, though anything but a holy day, they at first declared they would not hoist a cask, but finally pulled off their coats, and went to work, to the tune of "Bright Canaan, that happy land!" and the chorus being enthusiastically helped along by some fifty voices, the casks came in merrily, and the task was finished in a few hours. In the afternoon I took a long walk into the country with Busby and Number Four. The flocks of sheep feeding on the hills and the soft green turf, the absence of which I had noticed at Rio, reminded us pleasantly of New-England; but the enormous cacti, a foot in diameter, and the odd little wattled cottages, built in unexpected situations on the hill sides, at once dispelled the illusion. We put to sea Monday evening, and will now take leave of Chili in the words of our gifted poetess:

"Among the fruits to be found there,
Are apples, cabbages, onions, and pear.
The animals is the same with the exception of the mules;
But in this land of freedom, we oughter be thankful no slaveholder rules."

[CHAPTER VI.]

The Leucothea crept timidly out of the harbour, like a mouse out of its hole; but had scarcely got to sea, when one of the Northers that prevail at that season was upon us, and drove us far to the south. Thus each time, on leaving port, we had met with storms; and each time I had suffered from a renewal of sea-sickness, though far less severely on each successive occasion. The young Scot, who had shared my stateroom since leaving Rio, had now sold his berth to an American named Lewis, and taken up his quarters with the first mate, of whom he was an old friend and crony.

Lewis was about thirty-five years of age, of a slender habit, and a genteel sort of stoop, as if constantly afflicted with the stomach-ache. He possessed the most remarkable faculty of exaggeration, which he began to display almost as soon as his foot touched the deck. It was generally boastful, or egotistical; but, sometimes, free from the least taint or alloy, as if the habit had become so confirmed that he continued to indulge in it even when no motive could be detected. He had been a sailor, and engaged for many months in the opium trade on the coast of China, but, several years before, had settled in Chili, where he had since enjoyed great consideration as a master mechanic.

It was not to be expected that such a stick of drift wood should remain long in one place, especially in the height of such a freshet as was now sweeping past. He came on board with a large chest of sandal wood, a Spanish sarape, and a pick-axe about a foot in length, that looked more like a plaything for children than an instrument for the hard hands of a California miner. But he had not been long in the ship before the little pick-axe was regarded with a sort of mysterious envy by all those who had been unfortunate enough to provide themselves with the common two handed implement. In his hands it seemed the key which was to unlock those sumless and sunless treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth. It was a nut-picker, with which he intended to pick out the yellow meat from its stony shell. He was not going to burden himself with pan or rocker; but, with his pockets stuffed with provisions, his sarape on his back, a big leathern pouch in one hand, and his little pick-axe in the other, he would roam leisurely and pleasantly among the mountains and over the plains for two or three months; when he should have as much gold, so he said, as he knew what to do with. He had acquaintance, Chilians, who had been there before, who had promised to take him to places where there would be hardly enough difficulty in the work to make it pleasant.

All this seemed, by some strange necromancy, to grow out of that mysterious instrument; and, as I lay in my berth listening to his droning narrative of what he had heard, and what he intended to do, I was sometimes tempted to steal it while he slept. My envy, however, was somewhat allayed by his consolatory assurances that, even without such aid, I could make a very handsome fortune. Having hinted to him one day my modest expectations, "Humph," he said, in a tone that seemed to imply a degree of contempt for such poverty of spirits, "Humph! if that's all, there's no danger but what you'll make it fast enough; the least you can do is to dig fifty thousand this summer." If any one else had made this assertion, it would have carried no weight with it; but his manner was so imposing, and then there was the little pick-axe—it seemed to give a sort of authority in such matters. I felt grateful to him as if he had said, "I give you, out of the nobleness and generosity of my disposition, so many thousands."

Such stories, constantly repeated, could not fail to have their effect; the excitement in the ship visibly increased, and Lewis, by virtue of his superior knowledge, arrogated to himself prodigious importance. Meeting him on shore, a few days after we landed at San Francisco, I asked him when he was going to the mines; when, to my infinite surprise and consternation, he replied that he had made up his mind not to go at all. Nothing could have given my faith such a fearful shock; but just then, when it seemed about to perish altogether, it was fortunately confirmed in a new and surprising manner, an account of which will be given hereafter. Lewis, as well as my last room-mate, was something of a literary character, and the extent of his acquirements may be inferred from the fact that Lippard, and Rev. G. Chauncey Burr—I love, as the good vicar says, to give the whole name—were his favourite authors.

The storm having, at length, blown itself out, the ship began to present a scene of unusual activity. The hurricane deck was filled with tent-makers and boat-builders, a carpenter's bench was put up amidships, and a blacksmith's forge puffed and glowed under the forward galley. Knapsacks, powder-horns, pick-axes, boatsails, hammocks, and gold-washers were made or refitted; and those who were already provided with these various articles, or expected to have no use for them, caught the busy infection, and began to schrimpschong with most laudable perseverance. Schrimpschonging is a word of most varied significance. It is derived from the low Dutch, and includes all those kinds of labour between the useful and ornamental, but verging more on the latter. Whittling is the simplest form of the disease; most kinds of ladies' work, all those ingenious inventions in silk and worsted, must be regarded as still more alarming indications. With us, it manifested itself chiefly in making ornamental dippers out of cocoanut shells, and a certain necromantic puzzle, for which one of the crew, himself a confirmed schrimpschonger, had furnished the model.

We began also at this time to compare our different plans for the approaching struggle, all different, but all alike monstrous and impossible. From my present advanced position I look back upon our ignorant simplicity, with smiling pity, as if I possessed a duplicate personality, and had, in my present self, no concern in any of those absurd fictions that then imposed themselves upon us for truth.

I have already given some hints of our rude geographical and geological knowledge of California. The rivers there occupied a very prominent position. They were broad, placid streams, flowing gently between green banks. Several parties in the ship were now at work painting and enlarging the boats they had brought with them for the purpose of ascending these favourable rivers. They talked, with the quiet complacency of superior wisdom, of sailing along from point to point; searching out the richest portions—now shooting a fat buck, as he stooped to quench his thirst—now digging out a peck of nuggets like so many clams—now gliding through the unbroken forest—and anon shooting out into the sun in front of some little encampment of miners—till, having filled the boat with gold, they would throw overboard all their tools, and, with colours flying and guns firing, drop down the river to the bay, and return home.

It was, indeed, a most seductive picture, glowing like an Eastern tale, or the stories of those old buccaneers rifling a Spanish galleon—how the word seems to roll in riches—and aroused our desires to go a gold hunting in the same privateering fashion. Some one suggested that there might be steamboats or schooners on the rivers, that would carry us up as far as we wished to go; but this idea met with little encouragement from any one, and was scouted by all the boat-builders with the highest indignation.

Another subject of nearly equal interest was the great variety of gold-washers, from which we had to make a selection. One party brought out a heavy iron tub, as big as a cartwheel, and exhibited its mode of operation with a ludicrous mixture of doubt and complacency, as if they were afraid of it themselves. It worked admirably when there was nothing in it except a small quantity of sand and shot; and then, it was so very heavy; surely no one would have made anything so clumsy, unless for certain advantages not possessed by a simpler construction. But the name was still more imposing, and was evidently the cunning device of one who had no faith in Shakspeare. "The patent centrifugal gold-washer and California chrysolite," stamped in honest iron letters into the very substance of the machine; could anything be more satisfactory? On landing at San Francisco, we found the beach strewed with similar contrivances, that we could have bought "as cheap as stinking mackerel."

We had expected to celebrate the 4th of July in San Francisco; but the day came, and found us still south of the equator. Not to lose entirely, however, the benefit of the occasion, we determined to show ourselves as patriotic and as independent as our unfavourable circumstances would allow. In the morning there was the usual military parade, but on a scale of unusual magnificence. Charley Bainbridge arrayed himself, as the law directs, in knapsack and cartouch box; and shouldering a rusty musket, marched with measured step several times round the ship; looking, all the while, over both shoulders to see the admiring crowd that followed at his heels.

He included in his single person all the varied pomp of captain, lieutenant, private, and musicians; his whistling was indeed extraordinary, and only to be surpassed by that now classic Ethiop who used to keep a barber's pole, so it was said, just out of the Bowery, and was wont to entertain his customers by whistling two tunes at once, one out of each corner of his mouth.

Like the Irishman who surrounded his enemy, or Kehama doing battle with the king of hell, he seemed to multiply himself for the occasion. He walked

Forth without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections; in himself was all his state,
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
On princes, when their rich retinue long,
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.

"He carried arms, and he presented arms,—he faced to the left, he faced to the right, and he faced to the right-about;" "he wheeled forward, and he wheeled backward, and he wheeled into echelon—he marched and he counter-marched, by grand divisions, by simple divisions, and by subdivisions—by platoons, by sections, and by files—in quick time, in slow time, and in no time at all; till having gone through all the evolutions of two great armies, including the eighteen manœuvres of Dundas," and charged bayonets with signal success upon an unlucky dog that had dared to bark at him, though as his owner alleged in excuse, not as captain but as private, he dismissed his company, and we all sat down to dinner.

By clubbing together our scanty resources, we succeeded in getting up quite a tolerable repast. True, our meats were something old,—our peas and green corn could hardly be distinguished from each other, except by sight,—and our patriotism, too, was getting a little musty; but our wine was sufficiently new to make amends, and we were none of us disposed to be hypercritical. Toasts were given as usual; but, though they were received with shouts of laughter, none, that I remember, would bear repeating. They would suffer by this preserving process even more than the meats and vegetables that accompanied them. Lewis, who had not been among us long enough to become imbued with the prevailing spirit of discontent, offered, for his sentiment, a wish that we might all find ourselves, on the succeeding anniversary, again assembled on board the Leucothea, each one with his pile. This toast was received with a wonderful degree of coolness, considering the final clause; but not even that could reconcile us to the idea of repeating such a voyage in such an ill-omened craft—that pill required more gilding.

But alas for the hopes that mocked us! and of which his words were but a feeble exponent. Just in proportion to their brilliancy, was their vanity; as the soap-bubble becomes the brighter the more it is attenuated. The succeeding anniversary came, and found not a few of our number in the grave; while a still larger proportion, wasted by toil and sickness, and harassed by disappointment, cursed the day that they had ever heard of California.

In the evening a grand shingarnee was held on the quarter-deck, when an intellectual repast was provided of about the same quality as our dinner. There was a young fellow among the steerage passengers who, from some real or fancied resemblance to that individual, had received the cognomen of Smike, though "the Artful Dodger" would have been perhaps more appropriate. He seemed afraid that some one was about to lay hold of him from behind, and hence kept himself in constant readiness for flight; so that his gait became the debateable ground between walking and running, where one ends, and the other has not yet begun. This gave his body a slight inclination forward; and the agreeable slope thus produced, found a fitting termination in the short skirts of his fuzzy, blue roundabout, that projected a few inches from his person as if, like the eaves of a house, intended to shoot off the rain. The beholder, on seeing this jacket for the first time, was unavoidably impressed with the belief that it had originally started with the intention of reaching the knees, but having been stunted in its growth, had stopped short half-way between that point and the waist, which gave the wearer somewhat of the appearance of a rooster who has shed his feathers, and is waiting for his tail to regain its full dimensions before he ventures to indulge in his wonted strut. His hat, which he wore on the back of his head as if to restore his centre of gravity, seemed in truth ill-fitted for the purpose, both rim and crown having been sadly shorn of their fair proportions.

All Shakspeare's seven ages were huddled together in his face, his chin being the seventh. To look at that alone, you would affirm he was a hundred years old; each feature led to a different conclusion, but all together involved the question in painful uncertainty. If you paid to his nose the reverence due to old age, a glance at his mouth made you blush with indignation at having wasted your courtesies on a boy; but if his mouth tempted you to treat him as an equal, his eyes frowned reproach upon such unbecoming familiarity. His physiognomy thus became a perpetual trap to the unwary, as it was an enigma that defied all the speculations of the curious.

This boy-Methuselah was the first performer, and his part was that much abused monologue of Hamlet, "To be or not to be." He took his station on the quarter deck, with the mizen mast at his back; and the spectators stood, or sat, or leaned, wherever they could find support. I do not remember whether he decided to be or not to be, but his effort was received with immense approbation, and in honour of this achievement, he was henceforth called Hamlet, in addition to his other titles.

The next performer was a very Hercules of a fellow, who, if he had been cut into pieces, would have made three of his diminutive rival. He had formerly been an actor, and it was easy to see that he must have gained great success. He bellowed, he muttered, he whispered, he hissed,—he stamped, and the hollow deck resounded; he spread apart his Colossus-like legs, and raised his arms as if to hold up the sky; till having run through all those parts so envied by Bully Bottom, he suddenly broke away in a whirlwind of passion, and resumed his place among the admiring spectators.

During the remainder of the month little occurred worthy of notice. Our water again failed, and we were once more put on an allowance of only three pints a day, and two of these we gave the steward for our coffee. The beans and rice in which we had luxuriated were no longer seen on our table, for there was no water to cook them. Once a week we were summoned into the cabin to receive our hebdomedal allowance of butter. On the steward's table, in his little pantry, were set out, in tempting array, on half sheets of letter paper some forty pats of butter, each weighing exactly four ounces, and, like the candy in a confectioner's window, exhibiting all the colours of the rainbow. Not only candy, but many other articles, are all the more pleasing for this variety, but butter possesses no such versatility; here yellow is your only colour; blue, and green, and red, though elsewhere highly becoming, should be rigidly excluded. Yet I remember hearing the steward trying to convince one young fellow, who rather demurred about taking the fortieth and sole remaining pat, as being more curiously coloured than the rest, that it was nothing more than natural, since streaked and speckled cows always gave butter of the same pattern.

[CHAPTER VII.]

On the morning of the 13th of August a sail was discovered in the horizon. She rapidly overhauled us, and when sufficiently near, a boat was sent to obtain, if possible, a supply of water, our own being now nearly exhausted. The boat returned after several hours, bringing a cask of water and a number of papers from Valparaiso, from which we gleaned a variety of interesting items. The Helena left home a month later than we, but though their voyage had been thus comparatively short, her passengers were no better contented than our own. They had just eaten their last pickled salmon; and the mackerel, fresh beef, and potatoes, which still remained to them, could not efface from their tender stomachs the recollection of their recent bereavement.

In view of this afflictive dispensation how unreasonable now seemed our own ungrateful discontent. Henceforth, if any one grumbled, as some are sure to do under the most favourable conditions, because our water looked like soapsuds, or because we were forced to dine seven days in the week on salt beef and pork, he was sure to be cut short with, "Why!! they are out of pickled salmon on board the Helena!" and unless he were a peculiarly obstinate and hardened offender, this rebuke did not need to be repeated.

The next morning the Helena was out of sight, while, far to leeward appeared another sail driving hard after us towards the same centre of attraction. We had now been more than six months at sea, and every day increased our feverish impatience to be at the end of our voyage. Every change of wind was watched with intense anxiety, and "How's she head?" was asked, at least, five hundred times a day. But there was no hurrying the Leucothea; one ship was passing us after another, but she would choose her own time, and gang her ain gait. We seemed like one oppressed by a hideous nightmare, who tries to escape from some threatening danger, but can hardly move a limb. With some, this impatience finally gave way to settled apathy; they had been at sea so long, they didn't care whether they ever saw land again or not;—they wouldn't take the trouble to look at the compass, or even to ask "how's she head;" to all such matters they were profoundly indifferent. The weather sympathized with this class rather than the other; not that it was indifferent, but it was sullen, sombre, and peculiarly disagreeable, far colder than in the same latitudes in the Atlantic, and inconstant as man, or woman either.

August 22d we spoke the Memnon, one hundred and fifteen days from New York, and asked for a supply of water. While they were getting it out of the hold, her main and mizzen topsails were hove aback, and she lay almost motionless on the water, yet apparently trembling with suppressed eagerness. She was by far the finest ship we had seen—a clipper of a thousand tons;—her tall rakish masts were crowded with canvass, and her long, low hull, beneath its rounded softness of outline, seemed, like the "velvet grace" of a tiger, to promise muscles of prodigious flexibility and power. I could not help feeling a sensation something like pity, when I heard of her loss several years after somewhere on the coast of Africa. The cask of water being now lowered over her side, the Memnon filled her topsails, and went off like a racehorse, as docile and highspirited; and the Leucothea went tumbling after.

Sunday, the 26th, was a day of various excitement. Long lines of pelicans sailed slowly over head, or dropped, with a sudden plash, into the water;—herds of fin-backs heaved up their huge bulk on every side, affording us a better view of their vast proportions than we had obtained during our whole voyage; and several times we heard them bellow, a sure sign, according to our old whalers, that they were aware of our presence. By our reckoning, land could not be far distant; we could even hear the trampling of the surf upon the shore, and cannon fired, as we conjectured, from the port;—but a dense fog shrouded every thing from sight. A bottle of wine was promised to the first discoverer, but there was no need of any such inducement,—men were already at the masthead trying to get above the fog, and others had rowed off some distance in a boat, in hopes of seeing through or under it.

We were at dinner when the startling sound of "Land, ho!" was heard through the cabin skylight. Going hastily on deck, I turned my eyes to the larboard bow, and saw, under the partially lifted fog, cliffs towering apparently higher than Mt. Washington. The next moment, however, I perceived my error; instead of being, as I supposed, ten or fifteen miles off, they were not more than four; and, as I made the discovery, they suddenly shrank down to their proper altitude of only a few hundred feet. No one in the ship was familiar with the entrance to the bay; and as by reckoning we were some distance to the north, the ship was put on the other tack, and soon, to our infinite chagrin, land again faded from view.

Late in the afternoon, a sail appeared astern, when our mizzen topsails were hove aback, and we waited for her to come up in hopes of obtaining the necessary information. As she toiled sluggishly on, she seemed alive with men; they swarmed black as ants out on the bowsprit—they clustered like bees in the rigging,—while the matted heads that looked at us over the bulwarks, seemed almost as thick as a pile of cocoanuts.

Every ship that we had thus far spoken seemed to have its own peculiar character. The Memnon was a decided aristocrat, with, no doubt, noble blood in her veins,—the Sweden was an honest, hard-working, mechanic,—the Loo Choo, a swelling coxcomb, and the Helena a substantial tradesman. The character of the Humboldt, our new acquaintance, was equally unmistakable. She was an out-and-out vagrant, a beggar born and bred, with an hereditary taint of mendicity that all great Neptune's ocean could not wash out, and all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten. She was ninety-eight days from Panama, having left that port about the time we passed Cape Horn, so that we had gained on her the whole length of South America. She had on board three hundred and sixty-five passengers, and a more squalid set of wretches are seldom seen in so small a compass. When we exchanged the customary salute, they sent up a shout that fairly drowned our feeble cry; it seemed as if a voice had come from every plank and timber in the ship.

As the captain of the Humboldt was equally at a loss with our own, we held slowly on our way, and Monday morning again came in sight of land, which many asserted to be the same we had seen the day before. Standing further on, we passed lofty bluffs against which the sea roared like distant thunder. They were succeeded by a long table-land terminating in a point white with foam, the whole agreeing with tolerable accuracy, with the chart. While we were at supper, the water suddenly shoaled to four and a half fathoms; and huge rollers lifting the ship like a feather, filled all with instant apprehension lest she should be dashed the next moment on the sands. There was a sudden bustle and trampling over head, and in a twinkling our table was deserted. The helm was jammed hard down, and we once more stood out to sea.

When we had got to a safe distance, and had time to think a little, it was concluded that the cause of alarm was after all nothing but the bar at the mouth of the harbour, and that if we had kept boldly on, we should have been by that time quietly at anchor opposite the city. It was too foggy, however, to repeat the experiment that day, and there was nothing better to do than to come to anchor where we were.

Tuesday was also very foggy; a boat was sent out on an exploring expedition, and a gun fired at intervals in hopes of receiving an answering signal. After a long absence the boat returned with the information that we were really off the bay; and at the same time a small brig with a long Moorish name, coming up on our quarter, gave us directions how to steer. After waiting several hours longer for the turn of the tide, which here runs with extraordinary rapidity, we hauled up the anchor, and with a fair wind and clear sky, slid rapidly into the bay, and round the point that forms the harbour of San Francisco. One ship, and then another, and another, till we could count no further; chafing there idle and forgotten, like a horse tied to the paling, while his master courts away the flying hours within. Dodging skilfully in among them, our sails were lowered one by one; the anchor was soon imbedded in the lazy mud, and the Leucothea, wearily swinging round to her moorings, at length rested from her long travel of two hundred days.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

As it was sunset when we came to anchor, we deferred our landing till the next morning; but one of the owners coming on board brought a large budget of letters, among which there were several for our party. Having devoured them with that intensity of interest that can be understood only by those who have been in similar circumstances, we laid them aside for a more careful perusal, and gathering round the two or three old settlers who had come from the shore, listened with breathless attention, the careless, genteel indifference with which they talked of hundreds, of thousands, and of millions, affecting the imagination far more than the wildest excitement. As the old man says in the play, there is a positive pleasure in simply talking of such big numbers; they fill the mind with such grand and noble ideas.

The next day boats came from the shore in hopes of obtaining passengers.

"How much do you charge?" cried Captain Bill, looking suspiciously down upon the boatman.

"Only one dollar!" he replied, and in a tone that seemed to say that the rates of fare had recently fallen; but our minds had not yet sufficiently expanded to receive this information with the gratitude it deserved. We looked admiringly upon the sturdy knave who dared to speak thus disrespectfully of the almighty dollar, but preferred to wait till we could obtain a passage in one of the boats belonging to the ship. An opportunity soon offered; and in a few minutes we were gliding across the bows of the vessels that lay in denser phalanx near the wharf. On the high yellow bank stood groups of men ragged and miserable. They leered upon us, as we passed, as much as to say, "Now then, here you are! but wait awhile my hearties, till you've been here long enough to find out a thing or two; and then,—"

This, however, was only a subsequent interpretation; at the time, I had no doubt that everybody had his pockets stuffed with gold, and, like enough, a heavy belt around his waist filled with the same precious metal; and the rags and tatters that flaunted so boldly seemed rather to confirm this gratifying supposition.

Strolling, yet that is not the word, buzzing a few hours through the city was enough to fill us brim full of excitement. To repeat the figure already employed, we had descended farther and farther into this worldwide maelstroom, and seemed now each moment about to plunge into the vortex. Round and round, faster and faster, spun the dizzy tide; sure such a devil's dance was never danced before.

Everything was on a monstrous and perverted scale. The apparent simplicity of the means employed was ridiculous compared to the sublime result. It seemed impossible that a wealth greater than the Indies should flow through such a narrow channel;—that such prodigious power should be confined in the one story, wood and canvass houses of that awkward shambling city. It was as marvellous almost, and incredible, as that the genie of the Arabian tale should have shrunk his steeple bulk into the little copper vessel,—or that the more modern genie of steam, which the other so well symbolized, should suffer himself to be penned in any other than walls of iron and brass. Piles of merchandize of every description, bags, barrels, boxes, and bundles, filled the stores to suffocation, and ran over into the street. Fat gouty mittens, bursting with gold dust,—the thumb alone stiff with a hundred dollars,—turned up their round yellow bellies on the rude counters, like a frog in the last stages of the dropsy; while bars and lumps of still more seductive unity nestled on the window seat, or leaned poker-and-shovel-wise against the corners. Pounds and ounces took the place of dollars and cents,—the appearance of one of the latter was sure to provoke a laugh, but the dollar, though a decided parvenu, was gradually working his way into good society. The time had past when a pinch of gold dust was the lowest standard of value, and when, for want of silver, the nobler metal was forced to perform the most menial offices of trade.

Among all this, in the midst of all these symbols of wealth and power, the miner who had called them into being, moved about with an air of sturdy independence, which received a fresh accession every time he squeezed, between his thumb and fingers, the buckskin bag in his breeches' pocket. Little groups assembled at the corners, and in the principal stores, each one striving to surpass the last speaker in his stories of big lumps,—of holes that paid five or ten dollars a bucket,—and of pockets that made the lucky finder rich in a single hour.

There was something very attractive in this use of the word pocket. There was an appropriateness, an harmony about the idea that imposed upon the understanding. There was such a thing, to be sure, as an empty pocket,—but the old grandam earth had lived a great many years,—she had always been a saving sort of a body, and must have hoarded up quite a handsome pennyworth; it would certainly be a fine thing to have the ransacking of her chinks and crannies.

But the gambling-houses presented scenes of yet fiercer excitement. The finest buildings in the city were devoted to this purpose. Wide doors, standing constantly open, admitted the visitor at once into spacious apartments, where, for every hour in the twenty-four, except a short interval in the morning twilight, were heard the chink of gold and silver, and the confused hum of voices. There is no employment so thirsty as gambling; and the large and splendidly appointed bar was the most striking feature in these establishments. Here the fever-and-aguish gamester sought by one fire to put out another; one drank because he was hot, another because he was cold,—this one because he was losing, that because he had gained.

A curious crowd of spectators circled among the little tables, watching, with an interest second only to that of the principal performers, the movements of the game; or gazing boldly, or with modest obliquity of vision, upon the lascivious pictures that hung on the walls. Little boys of ten or twelve called imperiously for brandy smashes, and staked their all on the turn of a card, or the rolling of a ball with hideous nonchalance; while the next moment oaths as big as cannon balls rolled from their hard lips to testify their impish malice or exultation. The simple novice from some New England village, who has never before been farther from home than the nearest town, proud of his first beard, and champing the ends of his moustache between his lips, sidles timidly up to the bar, and calls in a low voice for a glass of lemonade.

"Yes," cries his Mephistopheles, with a patronizing laugh, "and put a stick in it."

"Well," he replies, laughing in his turn, but more feebly than the other, "I guess I will have a stick in it."

Delighted with the puzzling novelty of the phrase, that, without seeming to mean anything, means so much, he soon repeats the experiment, partly to show he is not afraid, and partly from an indescribable, often unconscious pleasure of doing what he would hardly have dared even to think of at home. He thinks of his mother and sisters and aunt Mary, and wonders what they would say, if they saw him in such company and drinking brandy, at a bar! and in a gambling house besides!! The idea of their horror and incredulous wonder is rather pleasing to his selfish vanity; one is very apt to be vain of such loving tender pity. He has learned to put a stick in it; well for him if he does not ere long put in his whole foot.

After several hours thus spent in wandering from one centre of attraction to another, we returned to the ship, weary of excitement, and hoping to find there at least one place free from the general infection. On reaching the deck, however, a hubbub of voices assailed our ears in which every other word seemed to be diggins, holes, lumps, pockets, &c., &c. Other parties had been like ours wandering through the city; each had brought on board its own budget of news, and now poured them out before us in bewildering confusion.

One had a long story to tell of a lump found in the southern mines. The man who told him knew the man who saw the lucky fellow that found it. Most of these stories were in this respect, too much like the final clause of the story of the house that Jack built.

Others were more interested in the price current of different articles. Saleratus was eight dollars a pound, and everybody wondered he had not brought a few barrels; it would have been the easiest thing in the world, and would have made his fortune at once. Salt, on the other hand, which we had all taken care to bring with us, was worth nothing. On hearing this, Charley Bainbridge hastily descended into the cabin, and presently returning with a bag containing some twenty or thirty pounds, plunged his knife into its belly, and triumphantly emptied the salt into the sea.

"What are you doing there?" cried Busby, who had just come aboard.

"Only throwing overboard some salt," returned Charley, with a chuckle, as if he had been performing some very brilliant action.

"Why," replied Busby, staring very hard as if he did not exactly see the humour of the thing; "you might have given it away if you didn't know what else to do with it."

"Oh," said Charley, "'taint worth anything."

"Ain't worth anything!" retorted the other indignantly; "it's worth twenty-five cents a pound, and I call that something."

This turned out to be the fact; and Charley never heard the last of this adventure, though he said he didn't care, the fun was worth the money any day.

Every one vented his delirium in his own fashion. Dan Carpenter, who was one of the worst affected, clasped his hands on the top of his head as if afraid it should fly away like a balloon; but in spite of this precaution he was raised bodily from the deck, and danced up and down for the space of half an hour, striking his heels three times against each other at every spring; when thoroughly exhausted he was dropt with such violence into a campstool, that it gave way, and let him treacherously down on to his back; whereupon Captain Bill advised him to keep steady, and haul in his jib-sheets; and every one gave him a word of counsel and exhortation.

Such being the food of our waking imagination, it is easy to see what stuff our dreams were made of. All day long we talked and thought of nothing but gold,

And then, in dreaming,
The clouds, we thought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon us; that when we waked,
We cried to dream again.

The mines were now all before us where to choose; but there was no visible Providence for our guide; and among so many conflicting reports, it was difficult to arrive at any fixed conclusion. The southern mines abounded more in lumps and rich deposits, but the gold was distributed more equally in the northern, and the labourer was accordingly more certain of his reward. In each of these grand divisions there was an endless variety of creeks and rivers, every one of which had its advocates, who set forth its advantages to the best of their ability, till the new comer, weary of weighing these opposing probabilities, often rested his decision upon the most trifling coincidence. Twenty dollars a day was said to be the average earned by the miners, but each man's hope told him a far more flattering tale.

Under these circumstances it may seem unaccountable that we should have waited nearly two weeks at San Francisco for our provisions to be unloaded, when, if our calculations were well grounded, we lost so much by the delay. The hope that every day would be the last, and the difficulty of unlearning all at once, that system of pennywise economy in which we had been educated, are the only explanation of this anything but a masterly inactivity.

In the mean time, through the agency of Captain Bill, whose good luck was signally manifest on this occasion, we made the acquaintance of a Mr. Primrose, said by some to be the most scientific miner in California. To a digger of any experience, the word scientific would have indicated nothing but the most besotted ignorance; but, to our Old-World notions, it sounded grand and imposing.

This scientific miner had a machine,—a scientific machine,—a machine such as is used in the gold mines of Virginia, and must of course be equally well adapted to this new territory. The machines had not yet arrived; but the scientific miner assured us that the vessel in which they had been shipped had sailed months before, and was now expected every day. In the meantime he would be happy to show us a drawing, from which we could form a tolerable idea of the mode of operation. We accordingly examined the drawing with great attention; we turned it upside down,—we looked at it straightforward and obliquely,—we looked at it with both eyes, and squinted at it after the most approved fashion with only one,—and finally came to the conclusion that it resembled nothing so much as a patent beehive, and of course must be a very scientific machine indeed.

"But will it work?" we asked the scientific miner.

The scientific miner, who was by the way a tall and rather comely personage, in a white neck-cloth, something between a clergyman and a broker, made no immediate reply, but taking from a table several hemispherical cakes of gold, looking like so many cakes of beeswax, and thereby confirming our notion of the patent beehive, placed them in our hands with a bland smile, and asked if that would do.

"Certainly," we replied, "that would do very well, if we could do it often enough."

"What do you say to once a week?" inquired the scientific miner.

Captain Bill looked at me, and I looked at Captain Bill, with a smile, half of satisfaction, half of incredulity, but made no answer.

The scientific miner noticed this telegraphic communication, and went on with mathematical gravity and precision.

"This gold," said he, "was washed out in a single week by one of these machines now in operation at Mormon Island; and that, too, from earth that had already been through the common rocker. With one of these machines you can make a thousand dollars a week from almost any earth in California, and ten thousand under favourable circumstances."

Having paused a moment, as if to enable us to digest these assertions, the scientific miner went on in a pleasant and confidential manner that was very encouraging.

"You know how it is," said he; "most that come to this country are ignorant mechanics and labourers, that are not fit to be trusted with such things; but with such energy and intelligence as you possess, you cannot help being successful."

At this, we both looked as intelligent as we possibly could; and Captain Bill, gazing respectfully, almost fearfully, at the drawing, asked the scientific miner how many men were required to work the machine; to which he replied that four could work it when everything was handy, but five or even six might sometimes be necessary. The price was one thousand dollars, on which a short credit would be allowed; but as only three hundred machines were expected in the first vessel, it would be necessary to decide without any great delay. Most of these were already engaged, but he thought he could manage to reserve one for us.

As soon as we got into the open air our enthusiasm, which we had prudently restrained in presence of the scientific miner, at once burst forth.

"Keep cool, boys, keep cool," cried Captain Bill, slapping his thigh, as his manner was, his broad, good-humoured face shining like a pewter platter, "steady your helm and haul in your jib-sheets."

"Look here, Bill!" I began, with a look intended to repress all such unseasonable mirth, "I'll tell you what we'll do. A thousand dollars is a good deal, I know, to give for a machine; but what of that? we can pay for it in a week, and all we make after that will be clear profit."

"Si," said Captain Bill.

"Well, then, if we find it work, you know, we'll just send down and order three more, one for each of us; and then, all we'll have to do will be to oversee the workmen, and attend to the amalgamating process."

"Si,—si,—si," said Captain Bill, once to each of the three rockers, but slowly, and at long intervals, as the magnificence of the idea gradually insinuated itself into his mind, like a boa-constrictor gorging a buffalo; and he already saw himself sitting lordly on a stone, engaged in the agreeable occupation of reckoning his gains, and keeping a sharp lookout on the poor fellows that were toiling for him at their miserable pittance of eight dollars a day, simply because they hadn't a scientific machine too; "but I say; this is one of the machines you read of, isn't it."

"Taking the very lowest calculation," I continued, striving to quench his fervour by my cool, business-like manner, "that 'ill be a thousand dollars apiece a week; or we may as well make it twelve hundred while we are about it, so as to cover all expenses; and, at that rate, I think I could be content to stay in the mines a year."

"Yes, yes," cried the Captain, now at last driven to the use of his own vernacular, "so could I."

"But," said I, with inexorable coolness, "we must be cautious—very cautious. It won't do to be in too much of a hurry. We'll wait and see the machine at Mormon Island, and then we shall know what we know."

"Mr. Primrose seems a very clever sort of a man," returned Bill, "but, after all, it's the lumps that does the business."

Number Four had already been to see the scientific miner, but neither he nor Tertium were aware of the extent of their good fortune; and now Captain Bill taking them, as was his wont, mysteriously aside, undertook to enlighten them. He led them along softly, step by step, touching briefly on the machine, the chief merit of which was that we knew so little about it,—descanting at some length on the honesty and uprightness of the scientific miner, of which we knew still less,—coming down with ever-increasing emphasis on the lumps,—and finally, seeing them now prepared to receive it, winding up with a grand flourish on the twelve hundred a week.

The others listened attentively, but Tertium, who was always a horrible fellow for doubting, was still incredulous.

"Take him to see the lumps," I suggested, somewhat indignantly, for I must confess I felt hurt at his want of scientific ardour, "for, as you say, it is the lumps that does the business."

And indeed there was no getting over the lumps,—they were most weighty arguments, stubborn facts, addressing themselves to sight and touch with a silent eloquence no words could equal. Tertium saw them, and hesitated; he lifted them, and was convinced. Still, we determined to proceed with the utmost caution; and, for my part, I believe I derived almost as much satisfaction from the contemplation of my own superior wisdom, as from gloating over the fifty thousand that only waited my arrival to fall into my hands. We were careful to say nothing of our discovery to our less fortunate companions, for fear they should go at once and buy up every one of the thousand machines, leaving us, when too late, to lament our foolish procrastination.