YIELD OF GOLD—ITS DURATION—MORMON GULCH—THE DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD—TUNNELLING—DAMMING RIVERS—HOLDEN’S GARDEN—ENERGY IN THE MINES—QUARTZ-MINES—QUARTZ MINING SUCCESSFUL—THE AUTHOR GETS OUT OF HIS DEPTH.October, 1851.Thediggings in our immediate vicinity were not actively worked, as there was not sufficient water for the purpose; this, however, was shortly to be remedied, for companies composed of miners were at work in every direction, conducting water from the rivers to the dry diggings; and at this moment new plots of auriferous soil are daily being added to the area of “paying groundâ€� in the mines by the artificial introduction of the water which nature has denied to them. Most of these companies have received handsome returns; the charge to each miner supplied with water being about two shillings a day.This affords another instance of the successful employment of capital originally procured by gold digging; and if you wanted a few shares in one ofthese young companies, you could procure them without money, for by taking your coat off and helping to cut the ditch, you could in six months work yourself into a very respectable stockholder. I suppose each traveller who returns to his home from California, whether he is an Englishman or a Sandwich Islander, is questioned on all sides as to whether the “diggingsâ€� are nearly exhausted? This is easy to answer in the negative, but then follows a query far more difficult to reply to, viz., “when will they be?â€� Conjecture must necessarily have much weight in determining this problem, statistics of the past or present yield of the placers being almost valueless for that purpose. Yet this should be a question of very great financial importance, and not alone as regards the probable duration of the twelve million sterling now annually exported from California. For we must consider how far we are sustained by facts in presuming that the present yield of this country will be doubled, nay, quadrupled annually before the surface-soil is left again as once no doubt it was, valueless in gold. Of course, the gold mines must some day be exhausted; let us see then how far we are justified in supposing this day to be, comparatively speaking, distant, as regards California. I offer the following remarks with the avowal that they are of worth onlyas the crude opinions of one who has had nearly all that practically bears upon the subject brought before his notice, but as they will necessarily be dull and heavy as a blue book, I recommend the generality of those who have followed me thus far, to skip this chapter, which they probably will do with all the rest of the book.For you, reader, who have sent to the circulating library for the “Newcomes,â€� and have had this book forwarded you as a “new work,â€� (the “Newcomesâ€� being out,) can scarcely be expected to peruse in your present state of disgust, a chapter on gold mines: I therefore dedicate this “paperâ€� to two individuals, one of whom shall be the gold mine victim before alluded to, as contemplating the two and twopence he received for his invested sovereign, and the other is that unknown man, who, in theennuiof a long sea voyage, shall peruse, mayhap, as I have done before to-day, the pages with which his trunk is lined.Mormon Gulch was the name of a ravine that was about a hundred yards from my tent, it was reported to have been the wealthiest digging in the mines, and according to rumour, half an hour’s work with a clasp knife or tin spoon, had invariably enriched any of the fortunate Mormons who first discovered it in 1848. Since those days, however, the earth, or stonesrather, for these preponderate, had been turned over again and again, each time yielding less, until the soil ceased to return sufficient remuneration to the only process of labour that could be at that time applied to it. But before now water has been conducted there, and by the more wholesale process of sluice-washing, the gulch claims are again up in the market.By-and-by we shall hear of the sluice-washing companies having deserted the gulch, and perhaps for a short period the red stony gravel will lie idle; but soon steam-engines and some process of securing the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, will brighten up old Mormon Gulch again, and there is no knowing how remote the day is, when its red banks shall for once and all, finally and for the twentieth time, be reported to have “given out.â€�The history of Mormon Gulch, and the future I have sketched for it, is applicable to every ravine in the country, so far as this, that each auriferous flat or gulch will be subjected to certain processes, until at last the appliances of steam and science shall have robbed every square foot of earth of the treasure it contains.Now, if all the gold territory of this country had been seized upon and worked at the time that Mormon Gulch was first discovered, we might form someestimate of the time when machinery should be brought to bear generally upon the placers; but as yet we cannot ascertain the amount of gold-bearing soil that exists; for not only are fresh diggings still brought to light, in the vicinity of the original discoveries, but we have ample proof that plenty lies beyond in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, which now, from the presence of hostile Indians, cannot be disturbed, and indeed, for the present, is not wanted.The number of those who are now actually collecting gold by mining in California, may be computed at about one hundred and forty thousand men.The obstacles that are alike presented by the extremes of the wet and dry seasons, will not admit, probably, of these miners working for more than two hundred days in the year, and the average daily sum amassed by each man, may be fairly quoted at three and a half dollars, or fifteen shillings.This will give an annual yield of twenty-one millions sterling from California, and I have no reason to doubt that this sum is obtained, although it does not (for many reasons) appear in the reported exports of specie from the country.Now, if this sum can be annually realised by the exertions of comparatively so small a body of men,who have even at the latest dates no better plan of securing the gold than by a rude system of washing, what may we expect when machinery is employed, and labour concentrated?Those portions of the placer fields that would reward manual labour with less than one or two dollars a day, are as yet unmolested, for as yet the ruling rates of wages in the mines is higher, being guided by the average yield. Therefore it is difficult to place a limit on the amount of auriferous earth that now, rejected by the miner, will, by the proper application of machinery and the reduction of labour, eventually produce a vast return. There is scarcely a hill-side but gives evidence of the existence of gold, but although this soil will not at present repay manual labour, no one can suppose that the metal will be allowed to rest there undisturbed.The distribution of gold in the soil is most eccentric, and this is attributable probably to three causes:[19]firstly, that for the most part it was disintegrated from the matrix during the stupendous volcanic action to which all the gold territory of California has been subjected; secondly, that it has been carried to and fro by vast masses of water, the result of heavy rains,or more probably of heavy falls of snow in the mountains, that have suddenly melted and carried all before them; finally, from the land-slips and accumulations of upper soil that must necessarily result where steep hills of gravel have been for ages subjected to the sudden transitions of wet and dry seasons.I tread very carefully whenever I find myself on the geologist’s ground, bearing in mind my scientific friend at Murderer’s Bar, who reached the bottom so much quicker than he desired; therefore I can only suggest; and the two readers to whom this discourse is dedicated, whilst they deplore the ignorance which prevents me leading them through a labyrinth of formations and stratas, must place something to my credit on the score of modesty.Wherever gold is discovered in California, particles of quartz are found adhering to it more or less; this quartz, even when found at great depths, is generally rounded by the action of water, for quartz, when detached by violent action, is naturally angular, and inclined to splinter, and from its hardness it must require ages to give it the form of a pebble, by the slow process of grinding it receives in a comparatively dry mountain gorge. This, taken in conjunction with the facts that the gold is found now on thesurface, and now low down resting on the bed rock, here forced into clefts of granite, and again in clusters of small pear-shaped nuggets, as if the metal had been ejected by intense heat, and had dripped from the volcanic boulders that lie scattered around; tends to bear out the supposition that disintegrated gold has been cast into places that time and accident alone can reveal, and that the original opinion that the gold was on the surface only no longer holds good.Tunnelling has already been applied to rich hills in the mines with great success, and this fact alone is of great importance, in so far that it leaves us powerless to place a limit on the amount of auriferous soil that is imbedded in the small round hillocks that extend over a space of nearly four hundred miles, north and south.Where ingenuity aided by science is at fault, a very slight clue will often accidentally lead to the solution of a problem; thus much capital has already been devoted to the damming of those streams in California, of which the banks were found to be wealthy; but in few instances hitherto have the beds been found to be productive: yet they must be so at some point, unless we are to imagine, what is improbable, that gold has been carried by rain water to the verge of a swiftstream, and then has been arrested there without any apparent obstacle.There is something capricious about this metal in its released state; a search for it, even where evidence of its existence has been shown, is seldom attended with success, yet every day almost chance brings to light some fresh gold field.I remember a gentleman who, taking an early Sunday walk among the hills that surround the town of Sonora, struck his foot against a stone. He should have found a sermon in it, for he was not likely to find one anywhere else, but in the agony of a mutilated great toe, he turned and apostrophised the rock in unbecoming language; but he suddenly checked his impetuous feelings, and we will hope from a good motive; whether or no, the offending quartz was so richly coated with the dross that we make a point of despising when we can’t get enough of it, that he took it home. It was found to contain more gold than quartz, and yet within a few hundred yards of a populous city, it had protruded itself ostentatiously without notice for two or three years.It is difficult to understand why gold remained so long undiscovered in California, considering that so much of it was on the surface, even in those parts of the country already inhabited by whites. TheIndians, who will search assiduously for the flints they require for arrow-heads, do not seem to have been aware of the existence of gold on the plains, although the savages of the as yet unexplored mountain districts, are found with gold in their possession. The early Spanish priests evidently sought for it without success, judging from the old shafts that have been sunk, on part of the banks of the Stanislaus River; and yet these explorations were ineffectually made in the centre of a rich district, and by a class of gentlemen who were never in the habit of overlooking a good thing. Some of the best diggings have been discovered by market-gardeners, who have chosen some apparently valueless tract for the purpose of cabbage growing, and it is a fact that one man with more energy than agricultural experience, who was abusing the earth for producing cabbages that were all stalk, found on rooting up one very lengthy specimen, that a piece of gold adhered to the roots.Holden’s garden, near Sonora, is a case in point; this was found to be so rich, that the gamblers of the town sallied out to take possession of it, and a fight occurred, in which one or two lives were lost before the “claimsâ€� could be adjusted.For four years Holden’s acre of cabbage ground has been worked with great profit, pieces of gold of manypounds weight each have been taken from it, and to this day it is a rich digging, as times go.It is possible that both my readers have heard of a certain Irish pig that could only be induced to go in one direction by being at the onset driven in another; it is somewhat this way with the search for gold.—Start on a voyage of discovery for copper or coal, and you will probably, if in a gold region, tumble down and break your nose over a nugget as large as a paving stone; but if you give chase to the seductive metal itself, the toil of a lifetime will very likely not counterbalance the first week’s privation.In respect to gold-fields, even if our argument leads to no definite conclusion, it is something gained if we can determine that no sign of diminution of yield is as yet apparent,—as regards the future, the wisest can only record an opinion. I believe for my part that the gold-fields of California will certainly yield in an equivalent proportion to their present produce for many years, even if the diggers are left to their own resources;—what may be done with the soil eventually, when capital shall increase in the mines andfrom the mines, is a question as impossible to solve as that of the advance of science in other respects within the next half century.The miners of California are a highly intelligentand determined race, possessed of a degree ofmechanical geniusthat surprises me; they have before them a large area of soil, which they, equally with myself, believe still to be most wealthy. They may by-and-by have the advantages of foreign capital to help them; but if not, the capital that their sinews can accumulate ounce by ounce from the gold soil will, in the long run, so far answer the end, that the hills will be burrowed and the streams turned, until the wealth is sifted from them, and then they have a gold territory, as yet partially explored, to fall back upon—the first range of the Sierra Nevada.Now, like enterprising farmers, they sow again perhaps one half of the year’s harvest, until each fertile spot shall be in cultivation, multiplying and fruitful; and so long as we see that the gold from the soil is turned against the soil in the all-powerful form of capital, aided by science; and so long as we know that what is separated to-day by the “long tomâ€� may to-morrow be devoted to the erection of steam-engines and the sinking of vast tunnels; we know that a great system of improvement is being carried out independent ofall external aid: and in the facts that on every side attest the strong faith the miners hold themselves in respect of the inexhaustible nature of the soil, and in the evidences of successthat meet us at all points, where fresh inventions are applied, we have the best guarantee that the “placersâ€� of California are in a state of progressive improvement.The reader will better understand this when I state that the miners of California have many of them had six years experience, are naturally men of ability, and are now in positions of independence, though still miners. The popular opinion respecting gold miners, is that of a body of rough, vagabond, long-haired men, who work one day with a tin pan and get drunk the next; this is perhaps what they were, to some extent; and San Francisco, which owes existence to the mines, was then a canvas village, given up to dissipation; but the tents have disappeared from Yerba Buena, and we have in their room a large and substantially-built city; equally have the mines changed, and the “vagabond populationâ€� stands forth in the shape of engineers, excavators, mechanics, and cunning inventors, and, better still, organised bands of labourers, who, under the guidance of these first, bring profit to themselves and benefit to the country generally.The quartz mines of California must now be reviewed, for, in connection with the probable future yield of gold, they occupy a prominent position.In that column of the “Timesâ€� which is expressly devoted to a review of the Share Markets, some half-dozen Californian quartz mine operations will be found daily recorded; these, for the most part, are in a very sickly state. Why they are so is no business of mine; but the fact is no criterion of the value of the quartz lodes of California.The quartz formation stretches in one great vein across the country for nearly three hundred miles in a north-westerly direction, and this main lode is throughout more or less impregnated with gold, excepting where it has been disturbed by volcanic eruption. From the main vein tributaries branch out on either side, throughout its length, and many of these possess undoubtedly sufficient wealth to repay labour, if this is properly applied. I say this cautiously, for I know something now of the traps and pit-falls that beset the path of the quartz miner. These are among them: you have rich and partially decomposed lodes that enrich you with a nest of gold on the onset, but lead you a wild-goose chase into the bowels of the earth before you find another; you have broad lodes white as alabaster, speckled in parts with gold, but from which you must quarry more valueless quartz than the “paying seamâ€� will compensate for; and you have lodes that are liberally and evenly diffusedwith gold, but contain so many properties antagonistic to amalgamation by quicksilver that the metal you seek can only be secured by a most expensive process. These are the lodes that do not pay; and by this time probably the mining community here know as much of them as I do.But a great number of veins, worked unostentatiously by American companies, are giving very satisfactory results; alargernumber are paying their expenses only, but with good prospects of improvement. But I must direct attention to this fact; the amount of profit derived from quartz-mine speculations is not of so much importance to my argument as the number of quartz mines being worked. If many of the lodes now open in California are bringing at present a smaller percentage to their owners than was anticipated, fault perhaps of imperfect machinery and false economy, they are none the less of importance as affecting the question of the yield of gold. For although the hundred ounces per day that pass through the stamping-mill may scarcely leave a profit on the expenses, the hundred ounces are none the less added to the gross daily yield of the country. Palpably plain as this is, I mention it because we are apt, when speaking of gold quartz mining as comparatively profitless to speculators, to forget thatthe gold is for all that compressed from the rock; and it is with this alone I have to do.But as it may be observed that operations that combine so much risk of failure will shortly be abandoned, particularly in a country where money commands so high a rate of interest, I must mention these facts.In the first place, many American mining companies are already paying handsome dividends, and those which are least successful have, in most instances, their machinery to blame more than the vein, on which it is erected; but everything is in favour even of those who are thus situated, for improvements in machinery start up on every side, labour and the expense of living is diminishing rapidly, whilst fresh developments bring new aspirants continually into the field. For there is something about quartz mining that is seductive; fail as you will, as long as some are successful around you there is a “never-say-dieâ€� feeling which ever prompts to fresh exertion in the same field.I shall not attempt to draw conclusions from an estimate of the number of veins that are now being profitably worked, or the amount of gold that may be derived from them in California, as that country is still in a state of transition, and not yet ripe for figured calculations. I can only fall back again uponmy belief, that where gold exists ready to man’s hand, as it does in the great veins of California, the people of that region are not likely to allow it to remain slumbering.Having now shown that the material, the capital, and the energy exist to warrant a belief amounting almost to a certainty, that an amount of gold will yet be produced from California that will throw into the shade the millions that have already been acquired, I leave it to others to argue how far the same facts apply to Australia, Oregon, and other gold-fields as yet less perfectly developed. I scarcely dare guess at the sum that the next ten years will see produced from California, but call attention to this fact, that seven years have elapsed since the discovery of gold, and as yet no apparent sign of exhaustion is manifest, although all predicted, from the first, that the auriferous soil was but superficial. Had this prophecy been borne out to any degree by experience we might have made a calculation; as matters stand, all tends to the belief that the best is yet to come. Nor should it be overlooked that the price of labour in California is still slightlyhigherthan in Australia, one country being four years older (in gold discovery) than the other, and both necessarily regulating wages by the profits of the gold-field.When I have stated that twenty millions sterling are annually produced from California, and that as yet no probability is apparent of a less yield for some years, I have said as much as comes within the province of my narrative.How far gold may be eventually permanently depreciated by the addition of five hundred millions, to the specie currency of the world, is a question for financiers, and those who have gold enough to care about the value of it; but ten years of successful work in the gold-fields already discovered, may produce that sum, and in all probability will.There is but one question more: is gold already depreciated in value? As measured by labour and property undoubtedly it is; for it matters not whether in speaking of a gold country, we say that gold is cheap, or labour is dear: as affecting the question the terms are equivalent. Like a stone thrown in the water, the effects of a gold country spread from it in widening circles; the increased value of labour there is diffused to places more remote, and consequently the depreciation of gold is diffused also. If the farmer here, affected by the extending influence of the gold-field, already pays more for his labour, he may individually counterbalance this loss by receiving a higher price for his wheat: still his gold (supposingthese effects to be perceived) represents less labour on the one hand, and less property on the other. But it will be argued that such a depreciation is caused by the indirect means of emigration, and that this is temporary. Granted: but if it is a depreciation, may it not last, in a temporary way, as fresh gold-fields are discovered, until it is supplanted by the permanent depreciation which will arise when the vast influx of precious metal shall first make itself felt throughout the world?Already out of my depth, I leave the foregoing remarks as they stand, and the reader will observe that they are only suggestive. If I have allowed myself to plunge from a firm bank of facts into a small puddle of conjecture, with which I had no business, all I can say is that I am very sorry for it, and will wade out of it as fast as I can.CHAPTER XVIII.TRANSPORT MACHINERY TO THE MINE—THE CARPENTER JUDGE, AND CONSTABLE ROWE—CUT-THROAT JACK—GREASERS—FRENCH MINERS—JOHN CHINAMAN—CHINESE FEROCITY—THE FEAST OF LANTERNS—CHINESE DESPOTISM—FALSE SYMPATHY.November, 1851.Inthe course of three months we had collected two or three hundred tons of ore, and as the tests we daily made still bore out our preconceived opinions of the value of the mine, I proceeded to San Francisco for the purpose of procuring the steam power and machinery requisite for a trial of the metal we had quarried.The life of the quartz miner at this date was tortured by doubts; he was ever in doubt as to the value of his rock; he was ever in doubt as to the depth of his vein; and he was ever in doubt as to the machinery best adapted for securing gold; nor is his position, taken generally, much happier in these respects at the present time; and I will be bound, sir, that the directors who led to your victimization,[20]and the subordinates that they employed, are as much trammelled by these doubts as any quartz miners I could mention.I was profoundly meditative on the subject of machinery as I jogged along on the Old Soldier to Stockton. I recalled to mind that for pulverising the rock we had stampers, rollers, grinders, and triturators, which you pleased; that for amalgamating the gold with quicksilver we had “trapiches,â€� “erasteros,â€� wooden tubs, and iron basins, which you pleased also. That we had design No. 1, that had been so successfully employed by Professor A, in the Ural Mountains; design No. 2, that Professor B had made his fortune with (by selling the patent though), and which had never failed in the Swiss Cantons, where gold was rather scarce than otherwise; and design No. 3, an infallible invention by Professor C, an American gentleman, who hadn’t sold his patent yet, but was quite ready to part with it for a consideration. All this I knew, but I was also aware that none of these plans had been attended with complete success; some were too simple in construction and too slow, others were too complicated in mechanism and too fast and furious.One machine would catch every metal the quartz contained except the gold; another would allow everything to give it the go by, except the refuse tailings that were not wanted; none secured the gold but those which requiredmore manual labourthan it would have been profitable to employ.When, therefore, I arrived at San Francisco I determined on trying a newly invented machine which had not yet been proved in the mines, but which looked very promising for my experimental work; with this, and an eight horse power steam engine, I returned to Tuttle Town.It was hard work to get the boiler of the engine over the mountains, for the rains had commenced to fall, and in many places the mud was very deep. Three or four days’ rain entirely change the character of the Sonora road; and wherever there is a hollow in which the water can accumulate, there, throughout the winter, you have a quagmire which becomes deeper as each fresh waggon or mule passes through it, until at last having become impassable, it is avoided by a circuit, which one traveller having made every other traveller from that day follows.Although I had given the boiler two or three days’ start, I found it on arriving at Table Mountain, with the worst part of the journey still before it; however, we had sixteen yoke of oxen, and after a couple of days of great trouble, the machinery was at lengthsafely planted in Tuttle Town. Its arrival created great sensation, and the town increased in size and importance on the strength of it. A French baker and a butcher established themselves in our main street; and at the first general election a justice of the peace and constable were legally elected; the former was a worthy carpenter of good education; the latter post was filled by Rowe. Whenever we saw Rowe buckling on his pistols in a decisive manner preparatory to a start, we knew that he was proceeding to collect a debt due to some Tuttletonian, and this active constable invariably brought back either the money or the man. And although our own small population was very peaceful, our justice of the peace had ample employment from the surrounding miners, and dispensed a great amount of justice in a very firm but off-hand manner; and so much respect was felt for the sagacity and impartiality of our carpenter, that his decisions in those disputes that came before his notice were invariably received with satisfaction on all sides. The following incident will illustrate the summary process by which one judge and one constable could force obedience to the law amongst an armed population in the mountains. One evening as our “judgeâ€� was putting the finishing touch to a shanty he had been engaged inrepairing, a messenger informed him that a murder had just been committed at an adjacent digging; the judge thereupon threw down his hammer, and, after taking the depositions, issued a warrant for the arrest of the murderer, who was a well-known desperado. Constable Rowe was to serve this warrant and capture the delinquent; consequently, the whole population of Tuttle Town (about fifteen) armed themselves to protect constable Rowe, and accompanied him to the diggings in question. Arrived there, the accused was found to have entrenched himself in his house, with desperate intentions of firing his revolver at the law in whatever form it might summon him. I was not sorry to find on our arrival that he abandoned this design and surrendered himself at discretion, so we marched him off to Tuttle Town. The judge heard all that was to be said, and that was sufficient for the committal of the prisoner to the jail at Sonora to await a trial; so we mounted our horses, took him at once into the town, and had him locked up. Whatever became of him afterwards I don’t know, but he never returned to our vicinity, and this was the way that the law was put in force in every case that came under the authority of our carpenter judge.A Sonorian was found one day in possession of amule not his own. Whilst the culprit quakes in the grip of our constable, our judge exhorts the villain to be more honest in his dealings. I have this scene before me so vividly that I’ll place it on the wood at once before I write another line.So! now if there is less benevolence beaming from the eyes of our carpenter than I would have you believe existed in his heart, the fault is in the spectacles.We rid ourselves about this time of a bad character. There was a fierce brute of a man who often visited our camp, who was known to have committed a cold-blooded murder, although the law had acquitted him. He was called “Cut-throat Jack,â€� nor did he object to the appellation; he was more feared in the mines than I should have supposed any man to have been, but he was always in a reckless, half-drunken state, and those who preferred to avoid a deadly quarrel would leave any house he entered. He was invariably armed, and always boastful.One night as Thomas was watching a stack-fire near the tents, in which a mass of quartz was being purposely brought to a white heat for experimental purposes, Cut-throat Jack swaggered up to him, and informed him that he intended to pass the night in our shanty (Rowe and I being at Sonora). To this Thomas objected, upon which Cut-throat made such a warlike demonstration that Thomas very properly knocked him down. “Jackâ€� unfortunately fell on the red-hot quartz, and the sensation was so new to him that, as soon as he could withdraw himself, he drew neither pistol nor knife, but was instantly lost to sight in the surrounding gloom, and never swaggered into our camp again from that night forth.In our immediate neighbourhood we had three classes of miners, Mexicans, French, and Chinese, and their peculiarities of race were so marked that I shall record them.The “Greasers,â€� which term includes all Spanish Americans, will pass the night and early morning in working at their claims, and then devote the day togambling and sleeping, and the evening to a Fandango or a horse-stealing excursion; a Mexican in the mines has no idea of saving money, but, like the water-carrier of Bagdad, he will work one half of the day that he may spend the other half in indulgence.The French, among whom are many Parisians, will work in a quiet and tolerably steady manner if nothing unusual occurs to disturb them; but, if by chance a strange Frenchman should arrive in their camp, or an old copy of the “Moniteurâ€� should reach them, the picks and spades are relinquished for the day, and all devote themselves to discussion. Often I have passed some solitary Frenchman at a gulch, who, whilst elevating a tin pannikin of vin ordinaire, would be shouting out “L’Amour et la Patrie.â€� Probably some of his countrymen had that day passed on the road, something of course had been said in allusion to the beautiful France, and the poor fellow was as happy under the influence of reawakened associations, as if he had already reached his native vineyards to settle there for life, with a well-lined purse.The Chinese are a strong contrast to the thriftless Mexicans and joyous Gauls.The Celestial digger, with a grave, elongated face, is up with the dawn and at work, forgetting to performhis ablutions in his hurry. No laugh proceeds from his lantern jaws, but his thoughts are steadily bent on the pursuit before him; if ever he chuckles, it must be inwardly, to think how fast he is putting by the nice gold, and how cheaply he is living every day upon six pennyworth of rice and salt worms, whilst those around him are gambling away their substance. But the Chinaman is none the less a gambler, the only difference is that he plays for a small stake, and is, in fact, a good economist, for as he watches the wavering fortunes of his farthing, he enjoys pleasurable excitement if he wins, and is not materially damaged if he loses. Hundreds of these gambling houses are to be found in the Chinese “quartierâ€� of San Francisco, and there is one or more at every Chinese digging, but with the exception of an occasional silver dollar, I never saw any thing change hands in them but the copperpicethe Chinese bring with them to the country.These people must feel very happy whilst daily fingering the Californian soil, where they acquire more gold in a week, than at home they would see in a year. John Chinaman knows the value of a dollar so well, that he will do anything rather than be without it: to gain so much, then, at such little trouble must indeed be a treat.When a couple of Chinese dispute over the right to a claim, the noise and gesticulations are frightful; arms (corporeal) are elevated on all sides; fingers are extended in indication of numbers, days, or dates, whilst each disputant being supported by his friends, all talk at once so rapidly, that the wonder is how they can sustain the altercation, and it is only when breath is exhausted on all sides, that the argument is at last made comprehensible. Chinamen are a long time coming to blows, and I have seen them at Amoy and other towns, stand almost nose to nose, with arms extended, as if preparatory to a deadlystruggle that was to end only with life; but, further than making a dreadful uproar, no harm came of these rencontres.A real fight, accompanied by loss of life, occurred in a Chinese digging in the north, but this was attributable principally to the fact, that a small party of Tartars compelled a larger body of Chinese, either to fight or relinquish the gold field, and this was driving poor “Johnâ€� into a corner indeed.Many of the Chinese at the mines have abolished tails, and when their hair has grown in its natural manner, it is astonishing how villanous an appearance they present. Their hair grows low down on the forehead, and is invariably straight.An ordinary Chinaman, in his loose dress, with his head shaved and hair drawn back, is rather an intellectual looking being, at the first glance, but take the same man, and allow his hair to grow, and divest him of a picturesque costume, and in place of an apparent mild benevolence, you are struck at once with the small cunning-looking eyes and low forehead, which in the other garb escaped notice.A Chinaman is supposed to regard his tail in a religious light, but those who have dispensed voluntarily with them in California, do not seem by any means to have placed themselves without the pale of society.Some of them adopt the European costume, and patronise patent leather boots and gold watch-chains. I remember a very beautiful drawing, I think by Allom, of the “Feast of Lanternsâ€� in China; the same festive day is observed at San Francisco, and if the accompanying sketch of two Americo-Chinese, celebrating this fête, on hired hacks, is less picturesque than the drawing alluded to, it is none the less a faithful delineation of the appearance of civilised Celestials.All the Chinamen of San Francisco are fond of riding out on these feast days, and in whatever costume they may be, they invariably pursue one mode of horsemanship, that is, to ride at full gallop, shouting or screaming, and then to tumble off into the sand or mud, the last act being involuntary. There is nodoubt that these people are excellent colonists as regards their own interests, for they have learnt the first art of colonisation, a systematic obedience to a chief, and wherever they go, they quietly submit to the code of discipline established among themselves, and submit even when this authority is abused, by the imposition of taxes and extortions, by their own head men. Part of Sacramento Street is entirely occupied by Chinese retail merchants, and it is similar in appearance to the Old Bazaar at Hong-Kong. Immediately a ship arrives in port with Chinese emigrants, these are taken in charge by the head men, and are supplied with stores and packed off to the mines, with great precision and regularity, there to pay a tax to these self-constituted chiefs as long as they are in the mines.I have already alluded to the existence of a combination of three or four of the most powerful of the Chinese merchants, which being discovered, was interfered with ineffectually by the police. Now I have no doubt that this clique of wealthy Chinese not only supply the Chinese emigrants, as aforesaid, looking to their labour in the mines for a profit, but that they also invest money in chartering ships to bring the poorer classes of their nation to California, thus exercising a monopoly in the gold fields.Much has been said and argued relative to checking by law the Chinese emigration to California, and believing, as I do, from such facts as I could gather, that this system of private taxation is on the increase, I wonder at the forbearance that has hitherto been shown by the authorities. “Live, and let live,â€� is a capital creed, properly carried out, but when the mines of California are overrun with bands of poor fishermen, whose profits serve to enrich a clique, and these latter remove the money from the country as fast as they collect it, the principle is an unfair one, injurious to the country, and antagonistic to the principles which have made it a free state as regards black slavery.An instance of the power these head men attempt to exercise came under my notice, for whilst staying with an English friend in the suburbs of San Francisco, there arrived one day a carriage, from which a gorgeously dressed “Johnâ€� emerged. He stated in tolerable English that he was a “lawyer,â€� and that he had come for a Chinese woman who, for many years, had been in my friend’s service, and who, he said, had complained of being confined against her will. The woman had saved a large sum in wages, and could speak no language but her own, but she resolutely declined to go when an interpreterwas procured. The Celestial lawyer was consequently well kicked for his pains, and departed, but we had no doubt that all that was wanted of the old woman was the money she had saved, and it was fortunate for her, that her master was a Hong Kong merchant, and knew something of the wiles of John Chinaman.Much has been said, also, at home here, relative to the conversion of the Chinese, and no one would more gladly see this brought about than myself, provided it is done withChinese money.The Chinaman is highly intelligent, inventive, laborious and patient, be he where he will, but he is ever avaricious; it may or may not be that those are right who, knowing something of his character, hold that he would worship any god if thereby he can better worship mammon;[21]but I confine my opinion to this, that it is time enough to build colleges for the Chinese, when we have suitably provided for the instruction of our own ignorant poor, and until this is done, I humbly submit, with every respect for the Missionaries among the Heathen, that every sixpence that leaves our country for the conversion of the Chinese, is an injustice to those at home, whose claimsupon our charity ring daily in our ears, with a truth that ought to be more forcible than the energetic appeals that are raised for John Chinaman, but which unfortunately is not always so.Never doubting that it is our first duty as a Christian nation to disseminate those truths that come from an inspired source, why should we, under the influence of a false sympathy, strive to do for the Chinese what so many of our own people yet require. The Chinese have an advantage over many of our lower classes; they are intelligent and reflective, and have Confucian maxims daily brought even in the highways before their notice, that enjoin most of the social duties that render man’s life more in accordance with the Divine wish.Morallyat least, the Chinaman is cared for; and although a heathen, ignorant in this respect he cannot be said to be. Let him therefore, for the present, study from gilded sign-posts the Confucian maxims that ordain him to be charitable, honest, and reverent to his parents; and let us first instil these commands given from a holier source to those around us who have never heard them, who could not read them if they were written up, and who are too ignorant, too poverty-stricken, and too much at war with the life that has entailed nothing but misery upon them, to accept them evenas truths, until they first see charity in a more substantial form. This done,[22]we may build colleges for the Chinese, in a full hope that He who has ordained us to love our brother, may bless the work ofCONVERSION.CHAPTER XIX.
YIELD OF GOLD—ITS DURATION—MORMON GULCH—THE DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD—TUNNELLING—DAMMING RIVERS—HOLDEN’S GARDEN—ENERGY IN THE MINES—QUARTZ-MINES—QUARTZ MINING SUCCESSFUL—THE AUTHOR GETS OUT OF HIS DEPTH.
YIELD OF GOLD—ITS DURATION—MORMON GULCH—THE DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD—TUNNELLING—DAMMING RIVERS—HOLDEN’S GARDEN—ENERGY IN THE MINES—QUARTZ-MINES—QUARTZ MINING SUCCESSFUL—THE AUTHOR GETS OUT OF HIS DEPTH.
October, 1851.
Thediggings in our immediate vicinity were not actively worked, as there was not sufficient water for the purpose; this, however, was shortly to be remedied, for companies composed of miners were at work in every direction, conducting water from the rivers to the dry diggings; and at this moment new plots of auriferous soil are daily being added to the area of “paying ground� in the mines by the artificial introduction of the water which nature has denied to them. Most of these companies have received handsome returns; the charge to each miner supplied with water being about two shillings a day.
This affords another instance of the successful employment of capital originally procured by gold digging; and if you wanted a few shares in one ofthese young companies, you could procure them without money, for by taking your coat off and helping to cut the ditch, you could in six months work yourself into a very respectable stockholder. I suppose each traveller who returns to his home from California, whether he is an Englishman or a Sandwich Islander, is questioned on all sides as to whether the “diggings� are nearly exhausted? This is easy to answer in the negative, but then follows a query far more difficult to reply to, viz., “when will they be?� Conjecture must necessarily have much weight in determining this problem, statistics of the past or present yield of the placers being almost valueless for that purpose. Yet this should be a question of very great financial importance, and not alone as regards the probable duration of the twelve million sterling now annually exported from California. For we must consider how far we are sustained by facts in presuming that the present yield of this country will be doubled, nay, quadrupled annually before the surface-soil is left again as once no doubt it was, valueless in gold. Of course, the gold mines must some day be exhausted; let us see then how far we are justified in supposing this day to be, comparatively speaking, distant, as regards California. I offer the following remarks with the avowal that they are of worth onlyas the crude opinions of one who has had nearly all that practically bears upon the subject brought before his notice, but as they will necessarily be dull and heavy as a blue book, I recommend the generality of those who have followed me thus far, to skip this chapter, which they probably will do with all the rest of the book.
For you, reader, who have sent to the circulating library for the “Newcomes,� and have had this book forwarded you as a “new work,� (the “Newcomes� being out,) can scarcely be expected to peruse in your present state of disgust, a chapter on gold mines: I therefore dedicate this “paper� to two individuals, one of whom shall be the gold mine victim before alluded to, as contemplating the two and twopence he received for his invested sovereign, and the other is that unknown man, who, in theennuiof a long sea voyage, shall peruse, mayhap, as I have done before to-day, the pages with which his trunk is lined.
Mormon Gulch was the name of a ravine that was about a hundred yards from my tent, it was reported to have been the wealthiest digging in the mines, and according to rumour, half an hour’s work with a clasp knife or tin spoon, had invariably enriched any of the fortunate Mormons who first discovered it in 1848. Since those days, however, the earth, or stonesrather, for these preponderate, had been turned over again and again, each time yielding less, until the soil ceased to return sufficient remuneration to the only process of labour that could be at that time applied to it. But before now water has been conducted there, and by the more wholesale process of sluice-washing, the gulch claims are again up in the market.
By-and-by we shall hear of the sluice-washing companies having deserted the gulch, and perhaps for a short period the red stony gravel will lie idle; but soon steam-engines and some process of securing the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, will brighten up old Mormon Gulch again, and there is no knowing how remote the day is, when its red banks shall for once and all, finally and for the twentieth time, be reported to have “given out.�
The history of Mormon Gulch, and the future I have sketched for it, is applicable to every ravine in the country, so far as this, that each auriferous flat or gulch will be subjected to certain processes, until at last the appliances of steam and science shall have robbed every square foot of earth of the treasure it contains.
Now, if all the gold territory of this country had been seized upon and worked at the time that Mormon Gulch was first discovered, we might form someestimate of the time when machinery should be brought to bear generally upon the placers; but as yet we cannot ascertain the amount of gold-bearing soil that exists; for not only are fresh diggings still brought to light, in the vicinity of the original discoveries, but we have ample proof that plenty lies beyond in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, which now, from the presence of hostile Indians, cannot be disturbed, and indeed, for the present, is not wanted.
The number of those who are now actually collecting gold by mining in California, may be computed at about one hundred and forty thousand men.
The obstacles that are alike presented by the extremes of the wet and dry seasons, will not admit, probably, of these miners working for more than two hundred days in the year, and the average daily sum amassed by each man, may be fairly quoted at three and a half dollars, or fifteen shillings.
This will give an annual yield of twenty-one millions sterling from California, and I have no reason to doubt that this sum is obtained, although it does not (for many reasons) appear in the reported exports of specie from the country.
Now, if this sum can be annually realised by the exertions of comparatively so small a body of men,who have even at the latest dates no better plan of securing the gold than by a rude system of washing, what may we expect when machinery is employed, and labour concentrated?
Those portions of the placer fields that would reward manual labour with less than one or two dollars a day, are as yet unmolested, for as yet the ruling rates of wages in the mines is higher, being guided by the average yield. Therefore it is difficult to place a limit on the amount of auriferous earth that now, rejected by the miner, will, by the proper application of machinery and the reduction of labour, eventually produce a vast return. There is scarcely a hill-side but gives evidence of the existence of gold, but although this soil will not at present repay manual labour, no one can suppose that the metal will be allowed to rest there undisturbed.
The distribution of gold in the soil is most eccentric, and this is attributable probably to three causes:[19]firstly, that for the most part it was disintegrated from the matrix during the stupendous volcanic action to which all the gold territory of California has been subjected; secondly, that it has been carried to and fro by vast masses of water, the result of heavy rains,or more probably of heavy falls of snow in the mountains, that have suddenly melted and carried all before them; finally, from the land-slips and accumulations of upper soil that must necessarily result where steep hills of gravel have been for ages subjected to the sudden transitions of wet and dry seasons.
I tread very carefully whenever I find myself on the geologist’s ground, bearing in mind my scientific friend at Murderer’s Bar, who reached the bottom so much quicker than he desired; therefore I can only suggest; and the two readers to whom this discourse is dedicated, whilst they deplore the ignorance which prevents me leading them through a labyrinth of formations and stratas, must place something to my credit on the score of modesty.
Wherever gold is discovered in California, particles of quartz are found adhering to it more or less; this quartz, even when found at great depths, is generally rounded by the action of water, for quartz, when detached by violent action, is naturally angular, and inclined to splinter, and from its hardness it must require ages to give it the form of a pebble, by the slow process of grinding it receives in a comparatively dry mountain gorge. This, taken in conjunction with the facts that the gold is found now on thesurface, and now low down resting on the bed rock, here forced into clefts of granite, and again in clusters of small pear-shaped nuggets, as if the metal had been ejected by intense heat, and had dripped from the volcanic boulders that lie scattered around; tends to bear out the supposition that disintegrated gold has been cast into places that time and accident alone can reveal, and that the original opinion that the gold was on the surface only no longer holds good.
Tunnelling has already been applied to rich hills in the mines with great success, and this fact alone is of great importance, in so far that it leaves us powerless to place a limit on the amount of auriferous soil that is imbedded in the small round hillocks that extend over a space of nearly four hundred miles, north and south.
Where ingenuity aided by science is at fault, a very slight clue will often accidentally lead to the solution of a problem; thus much capital has already been devoted to the damming of those streams in California, of which the banks were found to be wealthy; but in few instances hitherto have the beds been found to be productive: yet they must be so at some point, unless we are to imagine, what is improbable, that gold has been carried by rain water to the verge of a swiftstream, and then has been arrested there without any apparent obstacle.
There is something capricious about this metal in its released state; a search for it, even where evidence of its existence has been shown, is seldom attended with success, yet every day almost chance brings to light some fresh gold field.
I remember a gentleman who, taking an early Sunday walk among the hills that surround the town of Sonora, struck his foot against a stone. He should have found a sermon in it, for he was not likely to find one anywhere else, but in the agony of a mutilated great toe, he turned and apostrophised the rock in unbecoming language; but he suddenly checked his impetuous feelings, and we will hope from a good motive; whether or no, the offending quartz was so richly coated with the dross that we make a point of despising when we can’t get enough of it, that he took it home. It was found to contain more gold than quartz, and yet within a few hundred yards of a populous city, it had protruded itself ostentatiously without notice for two or three years.
It is difficult to understand why gold remained so long undiscovered in California, considering that so much of it was on the surface, even in those parts of the country already inhabited by whites. TheIndians, who will search assiduously for the flints they require for arrow-heads, do not seem to have been aware of the existence of gold on the plains, although the savages of the as yet unexplored mountain districts, are found with gold in their possession. The early Spanish priests evidently sought for it without success, judging from the old shafts that have been sunk, on part of the banks of the Stanislaus River; and yet these explorations were ineffectually made in the centre of a rich district, and by a class of gentlemen who were never in the habit of overlooking a good thing. Some of the best diggings have been discovered by market-gardeners, who have chosen some apparently valueless tract for the purpose of cabbage growing, and it is a fact that one man with more energy than agricultural experience, who was abusing the earth for producing cabbages that were all stalk, found on rooting up one very lengthy specimen, that a piece of gold adhered to the roots.
Holden’s garden, near Sonora, is a case in point; this was found to be so rich, that the gamblers of the town sallied out to take possession of it, and a fight occurred, in which one or two lives were lost before the “claims� could be adjusted.
For four years Holden’s acre of cabbage ground has been worked with great profit, pieces of gold of manypounds weight each have been taken from it, and to this day it is a rich digging, as times go.
It is possible that both my readers have heard of a certain Irish pig that could only be induced to go in one direction by being at the onset driven in another; it is somewhat this way with the search for gold.—Start on a voyage of discovery for copper or coal, and you will probably, if in a gold region, tumble down and break your nose over a nugget as large as a paving stone; but if you give chase to the seductive metal itself, the toil of a lifetime will very likely not counterbalance the first week’s privation.
In respect to gold-fields, even if our argument leads to no definite conclusion, it is something gained if we can determine that no sign of diminution of yield is as yet apparent,—as regards the future, the wisest can only record an opinion. I believe for my part that the gold-fields of California will certainly yield in an equivalent proportion to their present produce for many years, even if the diggers are left to their own resources;—what may be done with the soil eventually, when capital shall increase in the mines andfrom the mines, is a question as impossible to solve as that of the advance of science in other respects within the next half century.
The miners of California are a highly intelligentand determined race, possessed of a degree ofmechanical geniusthat surprises me; they have before them a large area of soil, which they, equally with myself, believe still to be most wealthy. They may by-and-by have the advantages of foreign capital to help them; but if not, the capital that their sinews can accumulate ounce by ounce from the gold soil will, in the long run, so far answer the end, that the hills will be burrowed and the streams turned, until the wealth is sifted from them, and then they have a gold territory, as yet partially explored, to fall back upon—the first range of the Sierra Nevada.
Now, like enterprising farmers, they sow again perhaps one half of the year’s harvest, until each fertile spot shall be in cultivation, multiplying and fruitful; and so long as we see that the gold from the soil is turned against the soil in the all-powerful form of capital, aided by science; and so long as we know that what is separated to-day by the “long tom� may to-morrow be devoted to the erection of steam-engines and the sinking of vast tunnels; we know that a great system of improvement is being carried out independent ofall external aid: and in the facts that on every side attest the strong faith the miners hold themselves in respect of the inexhaustible nature of the soil, and in the evidences of successthat meet us at all points, where fresh inventions are applied, we have the best guarantee that the “placers� of California are in a state of progressive improvement.
The reader will better understand this when I state that the miners of California have many of them had six years experience, are naturally men of ability, and are now in positions of independence, though still miners. The popular opinion respecting gold miners, is that of a body of rough, vagabond, long-haired men, who work one day with a tin pan and get drunk the next; this is perhaps what they were, to some extent; and San Francisco, which owes existence to the mines, was then a canvas village, given up to dissipation; but the tents have disappeared from Yerba Buena, and we have in their room a large and substantially-built city; equally have the mines changed, and the “vagabond population� stands forth in the shape of engineers, excavators, mechanics, and cunning inventors, and, better still, organised bands of labourers, who, under the guidance of these first, bring profit to themselves and benefit to the country generally.
The quartz mines of California must now be reviewed, for, in connection with the probable future yield of gold, they occupy a prominent position.
In that column of the “Times� which is expressly devoted to a review of the Share Markets, some half-dozen Californian quartz mine operations will be found daily recorded; these, for the most part, are in a very sickly state. Why they are so is no business of mine; but the fact is no criterion of the value of the quartz lodes of California.
The quartz formation stretches in one great vein across the country for nearly three hundred miles in a north-westerly direction, and this main lode is throughout more or less impregnated with gold, excepting where it has been disturbed by volcanic eruption. From the main vein tributaries branch out on either side, throughout its length, and many of these possess undoubtedly sufficient wealth to repay labour, if this is properly applied. I say this cautiously, for I know something now of the traps and pit-falls that beset the path of the quartz miner. These are among them: you have rich and partially decomposed lodes that enrich you with a nest of gold on the onset, but lead you a wild-goose chase into the bowels of the earth before you find another; you have broad lodes white as alabaster, speckled in parts with gold, but from which you must quarry more valueless quartz than the “paying seam� will compensate for; and you have lodes that are liberally and evenly diffusedwith gold, but contain so many properties antagonistic to amalgamation by quicksilver that the metal you seek can only be secured by a most expensive process. These are the lodes that do not pay; and by this time probably the mining community here know as much of them as I do.
But a great number of veins, worked unostentatiously by American companies, are giving very satisfactory results; alargernumber are paying their expenses only, but with good prospects of improvement. But I must direct attention to this fact; the amount of profit derived from quartz-mine speculations is not of so much importance to my argument as the number of quartz mines being worked. If many of the lodes now open in California are bringing at present a smaller percentage to their owners than was anticipated, fault perhaps of imperfect machinery and false economy, they are none the less of importance as affecting the question of the yield of gold. For although the hundred ounces per day that pass through the stamping-mill may scarcely leave a profit on the expenses, the hundred ounces are none the less added to the gross daily yield of the country. Palpably plain as this is, I mention it because we are apt, when speaking of gold quartz mining as comparatively profitless to speculators, to forget thatthe gold is for all that compressed from the rock; and it is with this alone I have to do.
But as it may be observed that operations that combine so much risk of failure will shortly be abandoned, particularly in a country where money commands so high a rate of interest, I must mention these facts.
In the first place, many American mining companies are already paying handsome dividends, and those which are least successful have, in most instances, their machinery to blame more than the vein, on which it is erected; but everything is in favour even of those who are thus situated, for improvements in machinery start up on every side, labour and the expense of living is diminishing rapidly, whilst fresh developments bring new aspirants continually into the field. For there is something about quartz mining that is seductive; fail as you will, as long as some are successful around you there is a “never-say-die� feeling which ever prompts to fresh exertion in the same field.
I shall not attempt to draw conclusions from an estimate of the number of veins that are now being profitably worked, or the amount of gold that may be derived from them in California, as that country is still in a state of transition, and not yet ripe for figured calculations. I can only fall back again uponmy belief, that where gold exists ready to man’s hand, as it does in the great veins of California, the people of that region are not likely to allow it to remain slumbering.
Having now shown that the material, the capital, and the energy exist to warrant a belief amounting almost to a certainty, that an amount of gold will yet be produced from California that will throw into the shade the millions that have already been acquired, I leave it to others to argue how far the same facts apply to Australia, Oregon, and other gold-fields as yet less perfectly developed. I scarcely dare guess at the sum that the next ten years will see produced from California, but call attention to this fact, that seven years have elapsed since the discovery of gold, and as yet no apparent sign of exhaustion is manifest, although all predicted, from the first, that the auriferous soil was but superficial. Had this prophecy been borne out to any degree by experience we might have made a calculation; as matters stand, all tends to the belief that the best is yet to come. Nor should it be overlooked that the price of labour in California is still slightlyhigherthan in Australia, one country being four years older (in gold discovery) than the other, and both necessarily regulating wages by the profits of the gold-field.
When I have stated that twenty millions sterling are annually produced from California, and that as yet no probability is apparent of a less yield for some years, I have said as much as comes within the province of my narrative.
How far gold may be eventually permanently depreciated by the addition of five hundred millions, to the specie currency of the world, is a question for financiers, and those who have gold enough to care about the value of it; but ten years of successful work in the gold-fields already discovered, may produce that sum, and in all probability will.
There is but one question more: is gold already depreciated in value? As measured by labour and property undoubtedly it is; for it matters not whether in speaking of a gold country, we say that gold is cheap, or labour is dear: as affecting the question the terms are equivalent. Like a stone thrown in the water, the effects of a gold country spread from it in widening circles; the increased value of labour there is diffused to places more remote, and consequently the depreciation of gold is diffused also. If the farmer here, affected by the extending influence of the gold-field, already pays more for his labour, he may individually counterbalance this loss by receiving a higher price for his wheat: still his gold (supposingthese effects to be perceived) represents less labour on the one hand, and less property on the other. But it will be argued that such a depreciation is caused by the indirect means of emigration, and that this is temporary. Granted: but if it is a depreciation, may it not last, in a temporary way, as fresh gold-fields are discovered, until it is supplanted by the permanent depreciation which will arise when the vast influx of precious metal shall first make itself felt throughout the world?
Already out of my depth, I leave the foregoing remarks as they stand, and the reader will observe that they are only suggestive. If I have allowed myself to plunge from a firm bank of facts into a small puddle of conjecture, with which I had no business, all I can say is that I am very sorry for it, and will wade out of it as fast as I can.
TRANSPORT MACHINERY TO THE MINE—THE CARPENTER JUDGE, AND CONSTABLE ROWE—CUT-THROAT JACK—GREASERS—FRENCH MINERS—JOHN CHINAMAN—CHINESE FEROCITY—THE FEAST OF LANTERNS—CHINESE DESPOTISM—FALSE SYMPATHY.
TRANSPORT MACHINERY TO THE MINE—THE CARPENTER JUDGE, AND CONSTABLE ROWE—CUT-THROAT JACK—GREASERS—FRENCH MINERS—JOHN CHINAMAN—CHINESE FEROCITY—THE FEAST OF LANTERNS—CHINESE DESPOTISM—FALSE SYMPATHY.
November, 1851.
Inthe course of three months we had collected two or three hundred tons of ore, and as the tests we daily made still bore out our preconceived opinions of the value of the mine, I proceeded to San Francisco for the purpose of procuring the steam power and machinery requisite for a trial of the metal we had quarried.
The life of the quartz miner at this date was tortured by doubts; he was ever in doubt as to the value of his rock; he was ever in doubt as to the depth of his vein; and he was ever in doubt as to the machinery best adapted for securing gold; nor is his position, taken generally, much happier in these respects at the present time; and I will be bound, sir, that the directors who led to your victimization,[20]
and the subordinates that they employed, are as much trammelled by these doubts as any quartz miners I could mention.
I was profoundly meditative on the subject of machinery as I jogged along on the Old Soldier to Stockton. I recalled to mind that for pulverising the rock we had stampers, rollers, grinders, and triturators, which you pleased; that for amalgamating the gold with quicksilver we had “trapiches,� “erasteros,� wooden tubs, and iron basins, which you pleased also. That we had design No. 1, that had been so successfully employed by Professor A, in the Ural Mountains; design No. 2, that Professor B had made his fortune with (by selling the patent though), and which had never failed in the Swiss Cantons, where gold was rather scarce than otherwise; and design No. 3, an infallible invention by Professor C, an American gentleman, who hadn’t sold his patent yet, but was quite ready to part with it for a consideration. All this I knew, but I was also aware that none of these plans had been attended with complete success; some were too simple in construction and too slow, others were too complicated in mechanism and too fast and furious.
One machine would catch every metal the quartz contained except the gold; another would allow everything to give it the go by, except the refuse tailings that were not wanted; none secured the gold but those which requiredmore manual labourthan it would have been profitable to employ.
When, therefore, I arrived at San Francisco I determined on trying a newly invented machine which had not yet been proved in the mines, but which looked very promising for my experimental work; with this, and an eight horse power steam engine, I returned to Tuttle Town.
It was hard work to get the boiler of the engine over the mountains, for the rains had commenced to fall, and in many places the mud was very deep. Three or four days’ rain entirely change the character of the Sonora road; and wherever there is a hollow in which the water can accumulate, there, throughout the winter, you have a quagmire which becomes deeper as each fresh waggon or mule passes through it, until at last having become impassable, it is avoided by a circuit, which one traveller having made every other traveller from that day follows.
Although I had given the boiler two or three days’ start, I found it on arriving at Table Mountain, with the worst part of the journey still before it; however, we had sixteen yoke of oxen, and after a couple of days of great trouble, the machinery was at lengthsafely planted in Tuttle Town. Its arrival created great sensation, and the town increased in size and importance on the strength of it. A French baker and a butcher established themselves in our main street; and at the first general election a justice of the peace and constable were legally elected; the former was a worthy carpenter of good education; the latter post was filled by Rowe. Whenever we saw Rowe buckling on his pistols in a decisive manner preparatory to a start, we knew that he was proceeding to collect a debt due to some Tuttletonian, and this active constable invariably brought back either the money or the man. And although our own small population was very peaceful, our justice of the peace had ample employment from the surrounding miners, and dispensed a great amount of justice in a very firm but off-hand manner; and so much respect was felt for the sagacity and impartiality of our carpenter, that his decisions in those disputes that came before his notice were invariably received with satisfaction on all sides. The following incident will illustrate the summary process by which one judge and one constable could force obedience to the law amongst an armed population in the mountains. One evening as our “judge� was putting the finishing touch to a shanty he had been engaged inrepairing, a messenger informed him that a murder had just been committed at an adjacent digging; the judge thereupon threw down his hammer, and, after taking the depositions, issued a warrant for the arrest of the murderer, who was a well-known desperado. Constable Rowe was to serve this warrant and capture the delinquent; consequently, the whole population of Tuttle Town (about fifteen) armed themselves to protect constable Rowe, and accompanied him to the diggings in question. Arrived there, the accused was found to have entrenched himself in his house, with desperate intentions of firing his revolver at the law in whatever form it might summon him. I was not sorry to find on our arrival that he abandoned this design and surrendered himself at discretion, so we marched him off to Tuttle Town. The judge heard all that was to be said, and that was sufficient for the committal of the prisoner to the jail at Sonora to await a trial; so we mounted our horses, took him at once into the town, and had him locked up. Whatever became of him afterwards I don’t know, but he never returned to our vicinity, and this was the way that the law was put in force in every case that came under the authority of our carpenter judge.
A Sonorian was found one day in possession of amule not his own. Whilst the culprit quakes in the grip of our constable, our judge exhorts the villain to be more honest in his dealings. I have this scene before me so vividly that I’ll place it on the wood at once before I write another line.
So! now if there is less benevolence beaming from the eyes of our carpenter than I would have you believe existed in his heart, the fault is in the spectacles.
We rid ourselves about this time of a bad character. There was a fierce brute of a man who often visited our camp, who was known to have committed a cold-blooded murder, although the law had acquitted him. He was called “Cut-throat Jack,� nor did he object to the appellation; he was more feared in the mines than I should have supposed any man to have been, but he was always in a reckless, half-drunken state, and those who preferred to avoid a deadly quarrel would leave any house he entered. He was invariably armed, and always boastful.
One night as Thomas was watching a stack-fire near the tents, in which a mass of quartz was being purposely brought to a white heat for experimental purposes, Cut-throat Jack swaggered up to him, and informed him that he intended to pass the night in our shanty (Rowe and I being at Sonora). To this Thomas objected, upon which Cut-throat made such a warlike demonstration that Thomas very properly knocked him down. “Jack� unfortunately fell on the red-hot quartz, and the sensation was so new to him that, as soon as he could withdraw himself, he drew neither pistol nor knife, but was instantly lost to sight in the surrounding gloom, and never swaggered into our camp again from that night forth.
In our immediate neighbourhood we had three classes of miners, Mexicans, French, and Chinese, and their peculiarities of race were so marked that I shall record them.
The “Greasers,� which term includes all Spanish Americans, will pass the night and early morning in working at their claims, and then devote the day togambling and sleeping, and the evening to a Fandango or a horse-stealing excursion; a Mexican in the mines has no idea of saving money, but, like the water-carrier of Bagdad, he will work one half of the day that he may spend the other half in indulgence.
The French, among whom are many Parisians, will work in a quiet and tolerably steady manner if nothing unusual occurs to disturb them; but, if by chance a strange Frenchman should arrive in their camp, or an old copy of the “Moniteur� should reach them, the picks and spades are relinquished for the day, and all devote themselves to discussion. Often I have passed some solitary Frenchman at a gulch, who, whilst elevating a tin pannikin of vin ordinaire, would be shouting out “L’Amour et la Patrie.� Probably some of his countrymen had that day passed on the road, something of course had been said in allusion to the beautiful France, and the poor fellow was as happy under the influence of reawakened associations, as if he had already reached his native vineyards to settle there for life, with a well-lined purse.
The Chinese are a strong contrast to the thriftless Mexicans and joyous Gauls.
The Celestial digger, with a grave, elongated face, is up with the dawn and at work, forgetting to performhis ablutions in his hurry. No laugh proceeds from his lantern jaws, but his thoughts are steadily bent on the pursuit before him; if ever he chuckles, it must be inwardly, to think how fast he is putting by the nice gold, and how cheaply he is living every day upon six pennyworth of rice and salt worms, whilst those around him are gambling away their substance. But the Chinaman is none the less a gambler, the only difference is that he plays for a small stake, and is, in fact, a good economist, for as he watches the wavering fortunes of his farthing, he enjoys pleasurable excitement if he wins, and is not materially damaged if he loses. Hundreds of these gambling houses are to be found in the Chinese “quartier� of San Francisco, and there is one or more at every Chinese digging, but with the exception of an occasional silver dollar, I never saw any thing change hands in them but the copperpicethe Chinese bring with them to the country.
These people must feel very happy whilst daily fingering the Californian soil, where they acquire more gold in a week, than at home they would see in a year. John Chinaman knows the value of a dollar so well, that he will do anything rather than be without it: to gain so much, then, at such little trouble must indeed be a treat.
When a couple of Chinese dispute over the right to a claim, the noise and gesticulations are frightful; arms (corporeal) are elevated on all sides; fingers are extended in indication of numbers, days, or dates, whilst each disputant being supported by his friends, all talk at once so rapidly, that the wonder is how they can sustain the altercation, and it is only when breath is exhausted on all sides, that the argument is at last made comprehensible. Chinamen are a long time coming to blows, and I have seen them at Amoy and other towns, stand almost nose to nose, with arms extended, as if preparatory to a deadlystruggle that was to end only with life; but, further than making a dreadful uproar, no harm came of these rencontres.
A real fight, accompanied by loss of life, occurred in a Chinese digging in the north, but this was attributable principally to the fact, that a small party of Tartars compelled a larger body of Chinese, either to fight or relinquish the gold field, and this was driving poor “John� into a corner indeed.
Many of the Chinese at the mines have abolished tails, and when their hair has grown in its natural manner, it is astonishing how villanous an appearance they present. Their hair grows low down on the forehead, and is invariably straight.
An ordinary Chinaman, in his loose dress, with his head shaved and hair drawn back, is rather an intellectual looking being, at the first glance, but take the same man, and allow his hair to grow, and divest him of a picturesque costume, and in place of an apparent mild benevolence, you are struck at once with the small cunning-looking eyes and low forehead, which in the other garb escaped notice.
A Chinaman is supposed to regard his tail in a religious light, but those who have dispensed voluntarily with them in California, do not seem by any means to have placed themselves without the pale of society.
Some of them adopt the European costume, and patronise patent leather boots and gold watch-chains. I remember a very beautiful drawing, I think by Allom, of the “Feast of Lanterns� in China; the same festive day is observed at San Francisco, and if the accompanying sketch of two Americo-Chinese, celebrating this fête, on hired hacks, is less picturesque than the drawing alluded to, it is none the less a faithful delineation of the appearance of civilised Celestials.
All the Chinamen of San Francisco are fond of riding out on these feast days, and in whatever costume they may be, they invariably pursue one mode of horsemanship, that is, to ride at full gallop, shouting or screaming, and then to tumble off into the sand or mud, the last act being involuntary. There is nodoubt that these people are excellent colonists as regards their own interests, for they have learnt the first art of colonisation, a systematic obedience to a chief, and wherever they go, they quietly submit to the code of discipline established among themselves, and submit even when this authority is abused, by the imposition of taxes and extortions, by their own head men. Part of Sacramento Street is entirely occupied by Chinese retail merchants, and it is similar in appearance to the Old Bazaar at Hong-Kong. Immediately a ship arrives in port with Chinese emigrants, these are taken in charge by the head men, and are supplied with stores and packed off to the mines, with great precision and regularity, there to pay a tax to these self-constituted chiefs as long as they are in the mines.
I have already alluded to the existence of a combination of three or four of the most powerful of the Chinese merchants, which being discovered, was interfered with ineffectually by the police. Now I have no doubt that this clique of wealthy Chinese not only supply the Chinese emigrants, as aforesaid, looking to their labour in the mines for a profit, but that they also invest money in chartering ships to bring the poorer classes of their nation to California, thus exercising a monopoly in the gold fields.
Much has been said and argued relative to checking by law the Chinese emigration to California, and believing, as I do, from such facts as I could gather, that this system of private taxation is on the increase, I wonder at the forbearance that has hitherto been shown by the authorities. “Live, and let live,� is a capital creed, properly carried out, but when the mines of California are overrun with bands of poor fishermen, whose profits serve to enrich a clique, and these latter remove the money from the country as fast as they collect it, the principle is an unfair one, injurious to the country, and antagonistic to the principles which have made it a free state as regards black slavery.
An instance of the power these head men attempt to exercise came under my notice, for whilst staying with an English friend in the suburbs of San Francisco, there arrived one day a carriage, from which a gorgeously dressed “John� emerged. He stated in tolerable English that he was a “lawyer,� and that he had come for a Chinese woman who, for many years, had been in my friend’s service, and who, he said, had complained of being confined against her will. The woman had saved a large sum in wages, and could speak no language but her own, but she resolutely declined to go when an interpreterwas procured. The Celestial lawyer was consequently well kicked for his pains, and departed, but we had no doubt that all that was wanted of the old woman was the money she had saved, and it was fortunate for her, that her master was a Hong Kong merchant, and knew something of the wiles of John Chinaman.
Much has been said, also, at home here, relative to the conversion of the Chinese, and no one would more gladly see this brought about than myself, provided it is done withChinese money.
The Chinaman is highly intelligent, inventive, laborious and patient, be he where he will, but he is ever avaricious; it may or may not be that those are right who, knowing something of his character, hold that he would worship any god if thereby he can better worship mammon;[21]but I confine my opinion to this, that it is time enough to build colleges for the Chinese, when we have suitably provided for the instruction of our own ignorant poor, and until this is done, I humbly submit, with every respect for the Missionaries among the Heathen, that every sixpence that leaves our country for the conversion of the Chinese, is an injustice to those at home, whose claimsupon our charity ring daily in our ears, with a truth that ought to be more forcible than the energetic appeals that are raised for John Chinaman, but which unfortunately is not always so.
Never doubting that it is our first duty as a Christian nation to disseminate those truths that come from an inspired source, why should we, under the influence of a false sympathy, strive to do for the Chinese what so many of our own people yet require. The Chinese have an advantage over many of our lower classes; they are intelligent and reflective, and have Confucian maxims daily brought even in the highways before their notice, that enjoin most of the social duties that render man’s life more in accordance with the Divine wish.Morallyat least, the Chinaman is cared for; and although a heathen, ignorant in this respect he cannot be said to be. Let him therefore, for the present, study from gilded sign-posts the Confucian maxims that ordain him to be charitable, honest, and reverent to his parents; and let us first instil these commands given from a holier source to those around us who have never heard them, who could not read them if they were written up, and who are too ignorant, too poverty-stricken, and too much at war with the life that has entailed nothing but misery upon them, to accept them evenas truths, until they first see charity in a more substantial form. This done,[22]we may build colleges for the Chinese, in a full hope that He who has ordained us to love our brother, may bless the work ofCONVERSION.