the morning still at their pans. Numbers were
lying asleep under the trees, or in the shade of their
tents and wagons. Others sat smoking and chatting
in circles upon the grass, mending their clothes or
performing other little domestic duties at the same
time. It was really a motley scene. Indians
strutted by in all the pride of gaudy calico, the
manners of the savage concealed beneath the dress of
the civilized man. Muscular sun-burnt fellows,
whose fine forms and swarthy faces pronounced that
Spanish blood ran through their veins, gossiped away
with sallow hatchet-faced Yankees, smart men at a bargain,
and always on the lookout for squalls. Here,
and there one spied out the flannel shirt and coarse
canvas trousers of a seaman—a runaway, in
all probability, from a South Sea whaler; while one
or two stray negroes chattered with all the volubility
of their race, shaking their woolly heads and showing
their white teeth. I got into conversation with
one tall American; he was a native-born Kentuckian,
and full of the bantam sort of consequence of his
race. He predicted wonderful things from the
discovery of the mineral treasures of California, observing
that it would make a monetary revolution all over
the world, and that nothing similar, at least to so
great an extent, was ever known in history. “Look
around! for, stranger,” said he to me, “I
guess you don’t realise such a scene every day,
and that’s a fact. There’s gold to
be had for the picking of it up, and by all who choose
to come and work. I reckon old John Bull will
scrunch up his fingers in his empty pockets when he
comes to hear of it. It’s a most everlasting
wonderful thing, and that’s a fact, that beats
Joe Dunkin’s goose-pie and apple sarse.”
Farther on we came upon a tremendous-looking tent,
formed by two or three tents being flung into one,
which, on examination, we found was doing duty as
a chapel. A missionary, from one of the New England
States, as I hear, was holding forth to a pretty large
congregation. The place was very hot and chokey,
and I only stayed long enough to hear that the discourse
abounded in the cloudy metaphors and vague technicalities
of Calvinistic theology.
The remainder of the afternoon I have been devoting
to writing my journal, which I here break off to commence
a hearty good supper, in revenge for the scrambling
sort of dinner one has had to-day. The beef doesn’t
look roasted as they would put it on the table at the
Clarendon, or at Astor House even; but none of those
who sit down to the Clarendon table, at any rate,
have such an appetite as I now have, far away beyond
care and civilisation, in the gold-gathering region
of California.
Digging and washing, with a few reflections
A cradle in contemplation
Scales to sell, but none to lend
Stack of gold weighed
More arrivals
Two newcomers
Mr. Biggs and Mr. Lacosse
Good order prevails at the mines
Timber bought for the cradles
The cradles made
The cradles worked
The result of the first day’s trial.
