The first experience I had in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat, when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt, which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased Mongolian. I went with my friend that same day into the Black Horse Mine, and saw quartz crushing for the first time; but, naturally enough, I took far more interest in the alluvial workings that can be managed by few friends than in operations which required capital and the importation of stamping machinery from England; and Ballarat, rich as it once was for the single miner, is now left to corporations.
One of the strangest features of an oldgold-mining district is its wasted and upturned appearance. The whole of the surrounding country is, as it were, eviscerated. It is all hills and hollows, which shine and glare in the hot sun and look exceedingly desolate. When, in addition, the town itself fails and fades for want of other means of support, and the houses fall into rack and ruin as I have seen in Oregon, the place resembles a disordered room seen in the morning after a gambling debauch. The town is happy which is able to reform and live henceforth on agriculture, as is now the case to a great extent with Ballarat and with Sandhurst, which has discarded its famous name of Bendigo.
To a miner, or indeed to anyone in want of money, as I usually was when knocking about in Australian or American mining districts, the one painful thing is to know where untold quantities of gold lie without being able to get a single pennyweight of it. I remember on more than one occasion sitting on the banks of the Fraser River in British Columbia, or of the Illinois River in Oregon, pondering on the absurdity of my needing a hundred dollars when millions were in front of me under those fast-flowing streams. Those who know nothing about gold countries may ask how Iknew there were millions there. The answer is simple enough. First let me say a few words about one common process of mining.
When it is discovered that there is a certain quantity of gold in the vast deposits of gravel which are found in many places along the Pacific slope, but especially in Oregon and California, water, brought in a "flume" or aqueduct from a higher level, is directed, by means of a pipe and nozzle fixed on a movable stand, against the crumbling bench, which perhaps contains only two or three shillings-worth of gold to the ton. This is washed down into a sluice made of wooden boards, in which "riffles," or pieces of wood, are placed to stop the metal as it flows along in the turbid rush of water. Some amalgamated copper plates are put in suitable places to catch the lighter gold, or else the water which contains it is allowed to run into a more slowly-flowing aqueduct, which gives the finer scales time to settle. This, roughly put, is the hydraulic method of mining which causes so much trouble between the agricultural and mining interests in California; for the finer detritus of this washing, called technically "slickens," fills up the rivers, causes them to overflow and depositwhat is by no means a fertilising material on the pastures of the Golden State.
Now, what man does here in a small way, and with infinite labour and pains, Nature has been doing on a grand scale for unnumbered centuries. Let us, for instance, take the Fraser River and its tributary the Thompson, which is again made up of the North and South Forks, which unite at Kamloops, as the main rivers do at Lytton. The whole of the vast extent of mountainous country drained by these streams is known to be more or less auriferous. Many places, such as Cariboo, are, or were, richly so; and there are few spots in that part which will not yield what miners know as a "colour" of gold—that is, gold just sufficient to see, even if it is not enough to pay for working by our slight human methods. I have been in parts of Oregon where one might get "colour" by pulling up the bunches of grass that grew sparsely on a thin soil which just covered the rocks. But the united volumes of the Fraser and the two Thompsons and all their tributaries have been doing an enormous gold-washing business for a geological period; and all that portion of British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar to the bench of gravelwhich is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the natural sluice which is known as the Fraser Cañon.
This cañon, which is cut through the range of mountains known erroneously as the Cascades, is about forty miles long, if we count from Lytton and Yale. In its narrowest part, at Hell Gate, a child may throw a stone across; and its current is tremendous. So rapidly does it run, that no boat can venture upon it, and nothing but a salmon can stem its stream. It is full, too, of whirlpools; and at times the under rush is so strong that the surface appears stationary. What its depth may be it is impossible to tell. But one thing is certain, and that is, that in the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No, it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper cañon, there is a place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will, perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in theshade. Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Cañon, on the South Fork of the Thompson, when that clear blue stream was at a low stage, there was a great landslip, which for some eighty minutes dammed back the waters into a lake. The whole country side gathered there with carts and buckets, scraping up the mud and gold from the bottom. Many thousands of dollars were taken out of the dry river bed before the dam gave way to the rising waters. And, if there was gold there, what is there even now in the great main sluice of the vastest natural gold mining concern ever set going, which has never yet since it began indulged in a "cleanup?"
I have been asked sometimes, when speaking about the Fraser and other rivers, which are undoubtedly gold traps, why it was that nobody attempted to turn them. Of course, my questioners were neither engineers nor geographers. Certainly an inspection of the map of British Columbia would show the utter impossibility of such a scheme. To dam the Fraser would be like turning the Amazon. Yet once I do not doubt that it was dammed, and that all the upper country was a vast lake,until the waters found the way through the Cascades which it has now cut into a cañon. Otherwise I cannot account for the vast benches and terraces which rise along the Thompson. Indeed, the whole of the Dry Belt down to Lytton has the appearance, to an eye only slightly cognisant of geological evidence, of an ancient lacustrine valley.
Yet much work of a similar kind to damming this river has been done in California; and even now there is a company at the great task of turning the Feather River (which is also undoubtedly gold bearing) through a tunnel in order to work a large portion of its bed. Whether they will succeed or not is perhaps doubtful; but if they do, the returns will probably be large, as they would be if anyone were able to turn aside the Illinois in Southern Oregon, or the Rogue River, which has been mining in the Siskiyou Range for untold generations.
I feel certain that all human gold discovering has been a mere nothing; that our methods are only faint and feeble imitations of Nature, and that only by circumventing her shall we be able to reach the richer reward. But by the very vastness of her operations we areprecluded from imitating the sluice robber, who does not work himself, but "cleans up" the rich boxes of some mining company which has undertaken a scheme too large for any one man.
The whole of this vast country—this sea of mountains, as it has very appropriately been called—used practically to belong to the Hudson's Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were, and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost incredible price, as it seemsto us now, for the company made sure of three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London market.
Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government. The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor, and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too, some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for packing food on their backs to the minesthey received a dollar for every pound weight they brought in.
An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000 dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however, than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers after the old exciting times and the prospects of the gold-miner's toast, "Here's a dollar to the pan, the bed-rock pitching, and the gravel turning blue."
Nowadays there are still plenty of men who traverse the country in all directions looking for new finds. They are called "prospectors," and go about with a pony packed with a pick, a shovel, and a few necessaries, hunting chiefly for quartz veins, and they talk of nothing but "quartz," "bed-rock," "leads," gold and silver,and so many ounces to the ton. It is now many years ago since I was working on a small cattle ranch in the Kamloops district, when one of these men, a tall, grey-haired old fellow named Patterson, came by. My employer knew him, and asked him to stay. He bored us to death the whole evening, and showed innumerable specimens, which truly were not very promising, as it seemed to us. His great contempt for farming was very characteristic of the species. "What's a few head of rowdy steers?" asked Mr Patterson; "why, any day I might strike ten thousand dollars." "Yes," I answered mischievously; "and any day you mightn't." He turned and glared at me, demanding what I knew about mining. "Not a great deal," said I; "but I have seen mining here and in Australia, and for one that makes anything a hundred die dead broke." "Well," he replied, scornfully "I'd rather die that way than go ploughing, and I tell you I know where there is money to be made. Just wait till I can get hold of a capitalist."
That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat" speculations.
Next morning Mr Patterson proposed thatI should go along with him and he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.
Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Washington Territory there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and in rags.
Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a great extent,though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done, was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his napkin and put it in his breast pocket.
The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine—and a remarkably intelligent woman she was—one day remarked to me that before white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was allgone. It is true enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her class, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too. A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs ——, being a full-blooded Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.
As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.
The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of the pilotage andengineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a "riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.
"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we shall never make the riffle on that."
The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.
"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.
The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought to bear.
"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"
"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.
On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last. But I confess I did feel nervous.
This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew and passengers were killed outright or drowned.
Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached. That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of thePeerlessran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to see if it could be done.The down-stream trip was done in three hours, but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to make the trip regularly.
As for the river in the main Fraser cañon, it is nothing more nor less than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built a boat to run on it, the first time theSkuzzylet go of the bank she ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been a very hazardous undertaking—as bad as, or even worse than, theMaid of the Mistgoing through the rapids below Niagara.
It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in Pretoria. There was an air of lassitude about the town. President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened wisdom brought about the compact. As for myself, I thought little enough of the matter then, for Pretoria seemed curiously familiar to me, though I had never been there, and had never so much as seen a photograph of it until I saw one in Johannesburg. For some time I could not understand why it seemed familiar. It is true that it hadsome resemblance to a tenth-rate American town in which the Australian gum-trees had been acclimatised, as they have been in some malarious spots in California. And in places I seemed to recall Americanised Honolulu. Yet it was not this which made me feel I knew Pretoria. It was something in the aspect of the people, something in the air of the men, combined doubtless with topographical reminiscence. And when I came to my hotel and had settled down, I began to see why I knew it. The whole atmosphere of the city reeked of the very beginnings of finance. It was the haunt of the concession-monger; of the lobbyist; of the men who wanted something. These I had seen before in some American State capitals; the anxious face of the concession-hunter had a family likeness to the man of Lombard Street: the obsession of the gold-seeker was visible on every other face I looked at.
In the hotels they sat in rows: some were silent, some talked anxiously, some were in spirits and spoke with cheerfulness. It pleased my solitary fancy to label them. These had got their concessions, they were going away; these still hoped strongly, and were going to-morrow and to-morrow; these still held on,and were going later; these again had ceased to hope, but still stayed as a sickened miner will hang round a played-out claim. They were all gamblers, and his Honour the President was the Professional Gambler who kept the House, who dealt the cards, and too often (as they thought) "raked in the pot," or took his heavy commission. And I had nothing to ask for; all I wanted was to see the tables if I could, and have a talk with him who kept them.
The President is an accessible man. He does not hide behind his dignity: he affects a patriarchal simplicity, and is ever ready to receive his own people or the stranger within his gates. His unaffected affectation is to be a simpleton of character: he tells all alike that he is a simple old man, and expects everyone to chuckle at the transparent absurdity of the notion. Was it possible, then, for me to see him and have a talk with him? I was told to apply to a well-known Pretorian journalist. As I was also a journalist of sorts, and not wholly unknown, it was highly probable he would assist me in my desire not to leave Pretoria without seeing the Father of his people. But my informant added: "The President will say nothing—he can say nothing in very few words.If you want him to talk, say 'Rhodes.'" I thanked my new hotel acquaintance and and said I would say "Rhodes" if it seemed necessary. And next afternoon I walked down Church Street with the journalist W—— and came to the President's house. We had an appointment, and after waiting half-an-hour in thestoepwith four or five typical and silent Boers, Mr Kruger came out in company with a notorious Pretorian financier, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies. And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W——, who was to interpret my barbarous English into the eleganttaal.
If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not always attain that accuracy of marksmanship supposed to be characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are not quite clean; his clothes were probably neverintended to fit him. And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is sometimes seen under theblouseof an old French peasant who still remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi. Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers crowned its heights, here before me was something that was passing away. But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.
Then we talked about Johannesburg, andthe President puffed smoke against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted, but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet. I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by saying that they had even more reason to be loyal than the English, seeing that if England were ousted from the Continent the Germans would come in; but he evaded the question at issue by asserting that if the Cape Dutch intrigued against the Queen he would neither aid nor countenance them. Then, as the conversation seemed in danger of languishing, I did what I had been told to do and mentioned Rhodes.
It was odd to observe the instant change in the President's demeanour. He lost hisstolidity, and became voluble and emphatic. Rhodes was evidently his sore point; and he abused him with fervour and with emphasis. All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of the journalist who was interpreting for me. Every time that heavy hand came down I saw poor W—— wince; he was shaken to his foundations. But he endured the punishment like a martyr, and said nothing. I dropped ice into the President's boiling mind by asking him if he thought it would remove danger from the situation if Mr Rhodes and Mr Chamberlain were effectually muzzled by the Imperial Government. His peasant-like caution instantly returned; he smoked steadily for a minute, and then declared he would say nothing on that point. It was not necessary; he had showed, without the shadow of a doubt, that he was anold man who was, in a sense, insane on one point. Rhodes was his fixed pathological idea. This Tenterden steeple was the cause of the revolutionary Goodwin Sands.
As a last question about the Cape Dutch, I asked if, when he declared he would not aid them against the Queen, he would act against them; he replied denying in general terms the right to revolt. I said, "But the right of revolution is the final safeguard of liberty"; and his Honour did nothing but grunt. From his point of view he could neither deny nor affirm this safely, and so our interview came to an end.
At that time I acknowledge that trout-fishing as a real art I knew nothing of; whipping English waters had been almost entirely denied me, and with the exception of a week on a river near Oswestry, and a day in Cornwall, I had never thrown a fly over a pool where a trout might reasonably be supposed to exist. But in British Columbia I used to catch them in quantities and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by an expert) that using a grasshopper as a bait is no better than poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line," orCocculus indicus. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small tin can with those lively insects.
Owing to the fact that I was working for my living on a ranch at Cherry Creek, I had no chance of fishing on week-days, but on Sundays, after breakfast, I used to take my primitive willow rod from the roof, where it had been for six days, see that the ten or twelve feet of string was as sound at least as my frayed yard of gut, examine my hook, and then start hunting grasshoppers. That meant a deal of violent exercise, especially if the wind was blowing, for they fly down it or are driven down it with sufficient velocity to make a man run. Moreover, near the ranche they were mostly of a very surprising alertness, owing, doubtless, to the fact that the fowls, in their eagerness to support Darwin's theory of natural selection, soon picked up the slow and lazy ones. But after an hour's hard work I usually got some fifty or so, and that would last for a whole day, or at anyrate for a whole afternoon. Then I went to the creek, fishing up it and down it with a democratic disregard of authority.
Cherry Creek was only a small stream; here and there it rattled over rocks, and stayed in a deep pool. Now and again it ran as fast as the water in a narrow flume; and then the banks grew cañon-like for fiftyyards. But for almost the whole of its length it went through dense brush, so dense in parts that it defied anyone but a bear to get through it. But when I did reach a secluded pool and manage to thrust my rod out over the water and slowly unwind my bait, I was almost always rewarded by a lively mountain trout as long as my hand, for they never ran over six inches. The grasshopper was absolutely deadly; no fish seemed able to resist it, and sometimes in ten minutes I took six, or even ten, out of a pool as big as an ordinary dining-room table. The fact of the matter is that the greatest difficulty lay in getting to the water. When I fished up stream into the narrow gorge through which the creek ran, I often walked four or five miles before I got the small tin bucket, which was my creel, half full; yet I knew that if I could have really fished five hundred yards of it I might have gone home with a full catch.
But it was not so much the fishing as the strange solitude, the thick, lonely brush, that made such excursions pleasant. Every now and again I came to a spur of the mountains, and climbed up into the open and lay among the red barked bull-pines. If I went a littlehigher I could catch sight of the dun-coloured hills which ran down, as I knew, to the waters of Kamloops Lake, only five miles distant. If I felt hungry, I could easily light a fire and broil the trout; with a bit of bread, carried in my pocket, and a draught from a spring or the creek itself, I made a hearty meal. And all day long I saw no human being. Every now and again I might come across a half-wild bullock or a wilder horse, or see the track of a wolf, but that was all, save the song of the birds, the wind among the trees, and the ceaseless murmurs of the creek. In the evening I made my way back in time to give the cook what I had caught.
In California I used to fish in the small creek running at the back of Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, and, though the trout were by no means so plentiful there as in British Columbia, I often caught two or three dozen in the afternoon. But there I had to use worms, and they seemed far less attractive than the soft, sweet body of the grasshopper. Yet once I caught a very large fish for that part of the country. He was evidently a fish with a history, as I caught him in a big tank sunk in the earth, which supplied the ranch, and was itselfsupplied by a long flume. As I went home past this tank one day I carelessly dropped the bait in, and it was instantly seized by a trout I knew to be larger than I had yet hooked. But, though he was big, he had very little chance. The smooth sides of the tank afforded him no hole to rush for, and, after a short struggle, I hauled him out. My only fear was that my rotten line would part, for he weighed almost a pound, and I was accustomed to fish of less than seven ounces.
I often wondered in British Columbia why so few people fished. In some of the creeks running into the Fraser River, near Yale, I have seen splendid trout of two or three pounds; there would be a dozen in sight at once very often. They always seemed in good condition, too, which was more than could be said for the salmon, for those were half of them very white with the fungus, as one could easily see on the Kamloops or Shushwap Lakes from the bows of the steamer if the water was smooth.
Perhaps the reason there are no trout-fishers out there is that those who care sufficiently for any kind of sport find itmore to their taste to hunt deer, bear or cariboo. When these have disappeared, as they must, seeing the ruthless manner in which they are slaughtered, many may be glad to take to the milder and less ferocious trout. The country certainly affords very good fishing, and the spring and summer climate is perfect. If it were only a little nearer they might be properly educated, until they were far too wary to fall into the simple traps laid for them by a man who fished with a piece of string and carried a bucket for a creel. It may have been my brutal ignorance of tying flies, but when I tried them with what I could furbish up, they seemed to resent the thing as an insult. So there seems some hope of their being capable of instruction.
When I went to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one spends enough money; but I was at that time in no position to sling dollars about, and, besides, I wanted some of the English rust knocked off me. Living in England ends in making a man poor of resource. I hardly know an ordinary Londoner who would not shiver at the notion of being "dead broke" in any foreign city, to say nothing of one on the other side of the world; and though it is not a pleasant experience it has some charms and many uses. It wakes a man up, shows him the real world again, and makes him know his own value once more. So I started for NewYork in rather a devil-may-care spirit, without the slightest chance of doing the business in comfort. And my misfortunes began at once in that city.
To save time and money I went in the first quick vessel that crossed—theLucania; and I went second-class. It was an experience to run twenty-two knots an hour; but it has made me greedy since. I want to do any future journeys in a torpedo-boat. As to the second-class crowd, they were, as they always are on board Western ocean boats, a set of hogs. The difference between first and second-class passengers is one of knowing when and where to spit, to put no fine point on it. I was glad when we reached New York on that account.
I meant to stay there three days, but my business took me a fortnight, and money flowed like water. It soaked up dollars like a new gold mine, and I saw what I meant for the Eastern journey sink like water in sand. But I had to get to San Francisco. I took that journey in sections. All my trouble in New York was to get across the continent. I let the Pacific take care of itself, being sure I could conquer that difficulty when the time came. I recommend this frame of mind to alltravellers. I acquired the habit myself in the United States when I jumped trains instead of paying my fare. It is most useful to think of no more than the matter in hand, for then we can use one's whole faculties at one time. Too much forethought is fatal to progress, and if I had really considered difficulties I could have stayed in England and written a story instead, a most loathsomepis aller.
I do not mean to say that I was without money. All I do mean is that I had less than half that I should have had, unless I meant to cross the continent as a tramp in a "side-door Pullman," as the tramping fraternity call a box car, and the Pacific in the steerage. As a matter of fact, I proposed to do neither. I wanted a free pass over one of the American railroads, and if there had been time I should have got it. I tackled the agents, and "struck" them for a pass. I assured them that I was a person of illimitable influence, and that if I rode over their system, and simply mentioned the fact casually on my return, all Europe would follow me. I insinuated that their traffic returns would rise to heights unheard of: that their rivals would smash and go into the hands of receivers. It was indeed a beautiful, beautiful game, and reminded one of poker,but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith which was not unrewarded in the end.
My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times andsome rustling to get through it all. I had to rustle.
As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the depôt of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always; I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was like a buried city with dust and cinders.
"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."
Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and discovered somebody underneath that at anyratereminded me of myself, and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.
From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the conductor grinned.
"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.
So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up greatly, andwe were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently, and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely needed. I went out to inspect the city.
It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt tothe Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their monotonous ugliness into the sky.
In this city I had starved for three solid months, picking up a meal where I could find it. I had been without a bed for three weeks. I had shared begged food with beggars. Now I came back to it under far different circumstances. I walked in the afternoon to some of my old haunts, and, coming to the hideous den of a common lodging-house where I had once lived, my flesh crept. I remembered that once the agent for a directory had put down "Charles Roberts, labourer," as living there and I tried to get back into my old skin. For a while I succeeded, but the experiment was horrible, and I was glad to drop the dead past and leave the grimy water front where I had looked and looked in vain for work.
For a week I stayed in San Francisco. Then I had an experience which falls to few men, for I went to stay as a visitor at Los Guilucos, where I had once been a stableman. The situation was interesting, for there were still many men in the ranch who had worked with me; even the Chinese cook was there. In the old days he had often appealed to me for more wood to give his devouring dragon ofa stove. But things were altered now. On the first morning of my stay I saw the wood pile, and could not help taking my coat off and lighting into it with the axe. The Chinaman came running out with uplifted hands.
"Oh, Mr Loberts, Mr Loberts, you no splittee me wood, you too much welly kind gentleman, you no splittee me wood!"
So things change, but I split him a barrow load all the same.
I was sorry to leave the ranch and go back to San Francisco, where nine men out of ten in all degrees of society are much too disagreeable for words. The only really decent fellows I met there were a Frenchman and a young mining engineer named Brandt, son of Dr Brandt, at Royat, who was once R. L. Stevenson's physician; and above all an Irish surveyor and architect, the most charming and genial of men. The Californians themselves are less worth knowing as they appear to have money; the moment they begin to fancy themselves a cut above the vulgar, their vulgarity is their chief feature, stupendous as the Rocky Mountains, as obvious as the Grand Duke of Johannisberg's nose. But I had other things to think of than the social parodies of the Slope.
I found at the Poste Restante a letter from my agent, which was a frank statement of misfortune and ill-luck. There was not a red cent in it, and I had only a hundred dollars left. This was just enough to pay my steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times as high as in the West.
I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed, approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man, who helped meover the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my ante I meant staying with the game.
For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short. It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on the strength of it.
In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort, but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I found it was all right. I was not onlyall right, for inside of an hour I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that I might have got it for less, but I have found it a good business rule never to lose a good thing by trying for a better. I had accommodation equal to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Of course, I regretted I dare not ask them one hundred dollars for condescending to go in their boat. If I had been full of money I might have tried it. However, I was quite happy and satisfied. That I might land in Sydney with nothing did not trouble me. Three days after I went on board the steamer, and was seen off by my friend the Irishman and one other.
I had never sailed on the Pacific, or at least that part of it, before, and its wonders were strange to me. I had not seen coral islands, nor cocoanuts growing. It grieved me that I could not afford to stay in Honolulu and visit Kilauea. I only remained some hours, which I spent in prowling about the town, which is like a tenth-rate city in America. And the business American has his claw into it for good. The Hawaiians, in truth, seem to care little. They go blithely in the streets crowned andgarlanded with flowers, and even the leprosy that strikes one now and again with worse than living death seems far away.
On board theMonowai, most comfortable of ships, commanded by Captain Carey, best of skippers, life was easy and delightful. Our one romance was between San Francisco and the Islands, for an individual, with most incredible cheek, managed to go first-class from California almost to Honolulu without a ticket. Two days from the Islands he was bowled out, and set to shovel coals. We left him in gaol at Honolulu, and steamed south of Samoa.
It was good to be at last in the tropics, deep into them, and to wear white all day and feel the heat tempered by the Trades. We played games and sang and lazed and loafed, and life had no troubles. Why should I think of future difficulties when there were none at hand, and the weather was lovely? We ran at last into Apia, the harbour of Upolu, the island where the late Robert Louis Stevenson lived. I rushed ashore, met him, spent three more than pleasant hours with him, and away again round the island reefs with our noses pointed for Auckland.
Some of our passengers had left us atHonolulu, others dropped off at Samoa, but after Auckland, when the weather grew quite cold, we were a thin little band, and our spirits oozed away. We could not keep things lively, the decks seemed empty, I was glad to run into Sydney harbour. I found I had just enough money to get to Melbourne if I went at once, so I caught the mail train and soon smelt the Australian bush that I had left in 1878. On reaching Melbourne at mid-day I had fifteen shillings left. Dumping my baggage at the station, I hunted up my chief friend, a journalist. The very first thing he handed me was a cablegram demanding my instant return to England. My rage can be imagined; it would take strong language to describe it, for I had meant to stay in Australia for a year, and write a book about it from another standpoint thanLand Travel and Seafaring.
I hadn't even enough money to live anywhere. I couldn't cable for any, for if my instructions had been obeyed, all available cash was now on its way to me, when I couldn't wait for it. I talked it over with my friend.
"Have you no money?" I asked, but then I knew he had none.
"Nobody has any money in Australia," he answered. "If it is known you have asovereign in cash you will be pestered in Collins Square by millionaires, whose wealth is locked up in moribund banks, for mere half-crowns as a temporary accommodation."
I pondered a while.
"I have a plan whereby we may get a trifle in the meantime. You can write a long interview with me and I will take the money. Sit down and don't move."
He remonstrated feebly.
"My dear fellow, why not do it yourself?"
"It would be taking a mean advantage of other writers," I said. "Besides, I'm in no mood to write."
Overcome by my generosity, he at last wrote a column and a half. I shall always treasure that interview, for when he tired I dictated some of it myself. The only thing I really objected to was his determination not to let me say what I meant to say about the Australian financial outlook. Under the circumstance of the failure of credit, the matter touched me deeply, and was a personal grievance. But he persisted that if I were too pessimistic the article would never see type, and I couldn't have the money. I gave way, and condescended to have hopes about Australia. Buteven when I got his cheque I was not much further forward.
I went to my banker's agents and asked them to cash a cheque. Would I pay for a cable home and out? No I would not, because I didn't know whether my account was overdrawn or not. All I knew was that if they would cash a cheque I would telegraph from Port Said or Naples and see it was met. So that failed. I tried Cook's, who had cashed cheques for me on the Continent. They also spoke of cabling. I explained matters, but they had no faith. Nobody had.
I began to think I would have to work my passage, for I was determined to get away inside of two weeks or perish. I looked up the vessels in port in case I might know some of them. They were all strangers. In such cases, unless one is in a hurry such as I was, for my return was urgent, it is best to tackle some cargo boat. It is often possible to get a passage for a quarter the mail-boat fare, for the tramp steamer's captain looks on the fare as his own and never mentions passengers to the owner. But I couldn't wait for a good old tramp, and at last, in despair, my friend and a friend of his and I clubbed everything together that was valuable and raised a fare to Napleson the proceeds. I left Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend. I raised five pounds on a cheque with the steward and spent the whole of it in rickshaws and carriages. I saw what one could in the time, for I breakfasted at one place, lunched at another, dined at a third. I mean one of these days to spend a week or two at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo. At Mount Lavinia I got the one dinner of my life. I cordially recommend the cooking.
We ran to Cape Guardafui in a gale, a sticky hot gale which made life unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand looked like snow-drifts.In the day the far-off deserts were a dream of red sands, and red sand mingled with the horizon. At last we came to the Mediterranean and I landed at Naples. The driver of my carrozzella took my last money, so I put up at a good hotel and wired to England at the hotel-keeper's expense. I went overland to London, and was back there in four days under four months from the time I started from New York.
There are scores of people—I meet them every day—who are in a constant state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A first-class ticket from LondonviâNew York, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, Colombo, the Suez, Naples, Gibraltar and Plymouth will run to £125, without including the cost of sleeping-car accommodation and food in the American trans-continental journey. If he stays anywhere it is a mighty knowing and economical traveller who gets off under £200 or £250 by the time he turns up in London.
Now as to what it cost me when I meant doing it moderately. It cost £8 to New York.Owing to business in New York I stayed there a fortnight, and it cost me $4 a day, say £11. The journey to San Francisco ran to £12 including provisions. The Pacific voyage was £22 in all. The fare from Sydney to Melbourne for ocean passengers is £2. 1s. 6d. To Naples I paid £32. Another £12 brought me to London. This runs up to £99.
If I had not been in a hurry I could have done the homeward part for less. If I had been twenty-five I would have gone steerage. But with time to spare for looking up a tramp I might have easily got to London as the only passenger for £20. If I had not stayed in New York and had had the time I could have cut expenses to £70.
But any young man, writer or not, who wants to see a bit of the world, can do it on that if he has the grit to rough it. He can cut the Atlantic journey to £3, and learn some things he never knew while doing it. I can put anyone up to crossing America for £15 at any time. But if he spends £20 he can see Niagara, the work of God, and Chicago, thechef d'œuvreof the Devil. The Pacific can be done for £20 steerage; and he can stay in Australia a month for £10, and a year for £20 if he knows what I know. The steerage fare homeis £16. I fancy it would be the best investment that any young fellow could make. He would learn more of what life is than the world of London would teach him in the ordinary grooves in ten years.
On Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, where I worked for six months in 1886, there was a very large orchard. I know how large it was on account of having to do much too much work with the apricots, plums and cherries; and day by day, as one fruit or the other ripened, I cursed the capable climate of the Pacific slope, which produced so largely. Fortunately, however, the lady who owned the ranch did not trouble her head greatly about the almonds, of which we had a very fine double avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday,and cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe. Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground,for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower. Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the avenue—sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.
Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies, who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths of winter, why he had been fool enough to drop his savings into a bank with the conscience of an ill-regulated automatic machine, which takes everything and gives nothing back. If he had really needed the almonds, they would have been put in an accessible spot. Though this perhaps is a scientific view, I must acknowledge that we were grateful to the birds who stored them for us, and, by making fools of themselves,gave us the opportunity of gathering, if not grapes from thistles, at least almonds from oaks.
Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage grubs—that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an explanation—to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn mystery—is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into—indeed they will place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holesthey had themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder, less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.