"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."
"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."
"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, bringingnarrow-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, thatagreeable 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 wehad 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, thecrew 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."
"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."
"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."
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 onboard 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 therewas 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 insilk 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 littleencouragement 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 wassaid, 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 trainAccompanied than with his own completePerfections; in himself was all his state,More solemn than the tedious pomp that waitsOn princes, when their rich retinue long,Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.
Forth without more trainAccompanied than with his own completePerfections; in himself was all his state,More solemn than the tedious pomp that waitsOn princes, when their rich retinue long,Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.
Forth without more trainAccompanied than with his own completePerfections; in himself was all his state,More solemn than the tedious pomp that waitsOn 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 sufferby 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, onseeing 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 waseasy 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.
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 impatienceto 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 uptheir 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 LooChoo, 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 wasnothing 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.
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 wewere 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 onthe 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 sothirsty 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 puta 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,