Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850

Surely there never was a jollier fellow than Lieutenant Wise of the United States navy. A rare good companion he must be, a real bonus socius across a julep, a very storehouse of fun, frolic, and adventure. So well do we like his society, that we are only sorry we cannot at present accompany him further on his rambles, or return with him to Mazatlan, where he arrived at a flying gallop, after a ride of 2500 miles on horseback – the last 112 leagues in fifty-three hours, (said to be the quickest trip on record,) to be received by a host of friends, and by a Yankee band playing, "Hail, Columbia!" and sail with him to Polynesia, and revisit Valparaiso and Lima, and many other places, in all of which he manages heartily to amuse both himself and his reader, till he finally drops anchor in the waters of the Chesapeake, arriving, with equal satisfaction to both parties, at the end of 450 pages, and 55,000 miles. His book richly deserves an independent notice; but as we started by associating it with others, we are compelled to lay it aside, whilst we visit the glittering coast of California, in company with Mr Theodore Johnson, who arrived on the 1st of April 1849 in Sancelito Bay, and proceeded forthwith to look for the city of the same name, whose wide and elegant streets he had frequently traced upon the map. After some search, he found the city. "It consisted of one board-shed and one tent, holding on to the hill-side like a woodpecker against a tree." Thus was his first illusion dissipated. A few other Californian castles were speedily to crumble. "The latitude of Richmond, and climate of Italy, the gold of Ophir, the silver, red wood and cedar of Solomon's temple, the lovely valley of the Sacramento, the vineyards of France, indigo of Hindostan, and wheat of America, golden rocks, and rivers flowing over the same metal," such were a few of the bright promises that had lured him, "in company with thousands of his go-ahead countrymen," to the Eldorado of the Pacific. These were the things he expected; let us collect, from his first week's experience in California, those that he really found. Ugly barren hills, a miserable sandy-clay soil, producing a weed which a starving jackass will scorn, and a fine dust, against which the most impenetrable eyelids are not proof, a repulsive and disagreeable climate in the month of April, (growing worse as the summer advances,) the extremes of heat and cold following each other in constant succession, water often extremely scarce, and impregnated with quicksilver, platina, and other minerals, killing the fish, and giving Christians the Sacramento fever, "a slow, continual fever, which men go about with for months; but in its more violent forms soon mortal, always affecting the brain, and, in case of recovery, leaving the mind impaired. The lung fever and rheumatism are brought on by working in the cold water, and stooping continually under the burning sun." The scurvy, too, was prevalent, from the use of salt provisions, for none could find time to procure fresh ones, to hunt or tend cattle; and if they did leave their eternal digging for such pursuits, the prices they expected were preposterous. Wild cattle and game are plenty in the valley of the Sacramento and adjacent mountains, but in California the hours are truly golden, and not to be wasted on kitchen considerations; to say nothing of the hardship of driving wild oxen or carrying a gun across a rugged country with the thermometer at 109° to 112° in the shade – the usual temperature in June and July, and one fully justifying the derivation of the name California from two Spanish words signifying a hot oven, caliente horno. "The thermometer stood at 90° Fahrenheit, at noon, in the shade of Culloma valley, on the 16th of April; and at night we slept cold in our tent with our clothing on, and provided with abundant blankets." With such a climate, and with no grass in the mountains fit to sustain them, it is no wonder that the best pack-horses can carry but one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds weight across the mountains, and frequently fall down and die if overladen. At the time referred to – that is to say, in the month of April last – Mr Johnson "continually saw old miners departing for the cañons6 of the middle and north Forks, with one month's supply of provisions, consisting of seventy-five lb. of pork and seventy-five lb. of pilot bread, for which they paid respectively at the rates of one hundred and fifty and one hundred and twenty dollars per hundred pounds! Now, although the prices of these articles were rapidly declining on the sea-board, by reason of the immense importation, yet the price of fresh beef was twenty-five dollars per hundred pounds in San Francisco, and must farther enhance there, the supply then being quite insufficient. Fresh provisions will therefore be consumed at the seaport and trading towns, and not in the mining region. The humbug of preserved meats was already exploded, great quantities having been spoiled." All this was very different from the promised vineyards and corn-fields; and Mr Johnson, who had not come to California to feed on salt junk at six shillings a pound, and to drink mercurial water, began to wish himself back again almost as soon as arrived.

In countries where a large majority of the men are content to give, year after year, their skill, energy, and time, in exchange for a few hundred pieces of gold, or even of silver, the reports of a land where the most precious of these metals turns up under the ploughshare, abounds in the rivers, mingles with the highway-dust, and is picked from the bricks of the houses, are naturally at first received with doubt and misgiving, and suspected of exaggeration, if not condemned as fiction. We confess, for our part, that we attached little weight to the first accounts of Californian marvels, and that long after the wise men of the East had begun to debate, in the shadow of the grasshopper, the possible effect upon the currency of the anticipated influx of the produce of the diggings, we still were sceptics as to the magnitude of the newly-found treasure. But even those who gave readiest credence to the tale of wonder, could hardly, we should have thought, have expected that the ingots were to be gathered without trouble or pain beyond that of performing a long journey and filling a big bag. Evidently this was Mr Johnson's notion, and that of not a few others of his sanguine countrymen, "who left their homes and families, and the decencies of civilisation, with the expectation of acquiring an adequate competency by the efforts of a single year." At what figure Mr Johnson rates an "adequate competency" we know not; but it is evident he expected to be placed on pretty nearly the same footing as those Oriental princes who, after wandering through the desert to the enchanted gardens, had the free pick of trees whose fruits were diamonds and rubies. The real state of affairs proved very different. A few persons, dwellers in California when the golden richness of the soil was first discovered in 1848,7 may have made large fortunes on easy terms, by being early in the field, and through barter with the Indians, who (before they were frightened and soured by the shooting and scalping practices of the Oregonians and others) were willing enough to labour and trade, and to give gold-dust weight for weight for glass beads and other baubles. We read of one man, a western farmer, owner and occupier of a loghouse, known as the Blue Tent, who arrived in California before the gold discoveries, treated the Indians well, learned their language, employed them to dig, and realised, it is said, two hundred thousand dollars. Another old settler, we are told, accumulated, in the season of 1848, also by help of the Indians, nearly two bushels of gold-dust. Our arithmetic is not equal to the reduction of this into pounds sterling, but at a rough estimate we should take it to represent a very pleasing sum – possibly the competency Mr Johnson aspired to. But those palmy days of gold-gathering have fled, violently driven away; the Indians, welcomed with bullets instead of beads, will work no more, and every man must dig for himself. And so did Mr Johnson – but only for a very short time, and with no very prosperous result. The gold fever, under whose influence he and his companions started for the diggings, was still burning in their veins when, on the second day after leaving San Francisco, they halted for the night on the river bank, and one of them, "thrusting his bowie-knife into the ground, revealed innumerable shining yellow particles, immediately announced gold discoveries on the Sacramento, and claimed the placer." But it was mica, not gold. They had much further to go, and worse to fare, before reaching the right metal. It was the interest of the United States' government and of certain speculators to tempt emigrants to the distant territory on the shore of the Pacific; and accordingly, says Mr Johnson, "the wonders of the gold region were trumpeted to the world, with unabating, but by no means unforeseeing zeal. Glowing accounts were sent to the United States of the result of all the most successful efforts in the mines. To these were added a delicious climate and wonderful agricultural fertility. The inaccessibility of the placeres, the diseases, the hardships, &c. &c., were quite forgotten or omitted." And thus a certain number of ambitious young men, (many of them wholly unfitted, by their previous mode of life for roughing it in a new country,) were lured from their comfortable homes in New York and elsewhere, in the confident expectation that, on arriving in California, they would ascend beauteous rivers in commodious ships, sleep on board at night, and pleasantly pass a few hours of each day in collecting the wealth that lay strewn upon the shore. Such is the account given of the matter by poor Johnson, who denounces the journey across the mountainous and roadless country as most toilsome, and the whole adventure as disappointing and unsatisfactory. At last he and his companions reached the lower bar8 on the south fork of American River, shouldered shovels, buckets, and washing-machine, and applied themselves to the task.

"The scene presented to us was new indeed, and not more extraordinary than impressive. Some, with long-handled shovels, delved among clumps of bushes, or by the side of large rocks, never raising their eyes for an instant; others, with pick and shovel, worked among stone and gravel, or with trowels searched under banks and roots of trees, where, if rewarded with small lumps of gold, the eye shone brighter for an instant, when the search was immediately and more ardently resumed. At the edge of the stream, or knee-deep and waist-deep in water, as cold as melted ice and snow could make it, some were washing gold with tin pans, or the common cradle-rocker, while the rays of the sun poured down on their heads with an intensity exceeding any thing we ever experienced at home, though it was but the middle of April. The thirst for gold and the labour of acquisition overruled all else, and totally absorbed every faculty. Complete silence reigned among the miners: they addressed not a word to each other, and seemed averse to all conversation."

After digging and washing twenty bucketfuls of earth, Mr Johnson's party had obtained but four dollars' worth of gold. At noon, the sun's heat being intolerable, they knocked off from work; not much encouraged by the result. This, however, they admit, was a poor digging, the stream being yet too high, and the bar not sufficiently exposed – to say nothing of their being novices at the work. They persisted little, however: another trial was made with no better result; and, in short, a week's effort and observation sickened them of a toil so far less lucrative than they had anticipated. Two of the party (Mr Johnson was one of them) resolved to return to San Francisco till the healthier season of winter; a third, having some goods, took to trading; the fourth and last, a hardy little down-easter from Maine, stuck to the diggings.

By this time, we are not entirely dependent on American books or newspaper correspondence for intelligence from the Californian mines. Some portion of the gold that has come to this country has been brought by the finders; and only the other day, a party of them reached England, having left the diggings as lately as the beginning of October. The details obtained from these men, who are of various European countries, confirm, in all important particulars, the statements of Mr Johnson, with merely the difference of tint imparted by failure and success. Either easily discouraged or physically unequal to encounter the hardships inseparable from the search for and extraction of the gold, Mr Johnson, disappointed in his sanguine expectations, makes a sombre report of the speculation; whereas these more persevering and prosperous miners, having safely returned to Europe, their pockets full of "chunks," scales and dust of the most undeniable purity and excellence, naturally give a more rose-coloured view of the enterprise. They admit, however, (to use the words of one of them,) that "it takes a smart lad to do good in California," and that it is useless for any one to go thither unless prepared to rough it, in the fullest sense of the word. At first, they inform us the amount of theft and outrage was very great; but summary and severe punishment checked this. Mr Johnson deplores the existence of Lynch-law. It really appears to us that California is the very place where such a system is not only justifiable, but indispensable. One miner stated that he belonged to a band or club, thirty in number, who threw together all the gold they found, and shared alike; sharp penalties being denounced against any member of the society who attempted to divert his findings from the common stock. The amount obtained by each member of this joint-stock company during the season of eight or nine months was equivalent to thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds sterling. Not quite the "adequate competency" anticipated by Mr Theodore T. Johnson, but still a very pretty gain for men, most of whom would probably have found it impossible, in any other way, and in the same time, to earn a tithe of the amount. More than one of them proposed, after depositing his treasure safely in Europe, to augment it by a second trip to the gold region; and held the time occupied by the voyage to and fro as little loss, digging being impeded by the winter snows. The winter of 1848-9 was very severe, the snow lying four feet deep on the mountains, and having fallen even on the coast; a circumstance unprecedented in California, whose Spanish and Indian inhabitants attributed the disagreeable phenomenon to the American intruders. Notwithstanding this unwonted rigour, however, we learn from Mr Johnson that "large numbers of hardy and industrious Oregonians spent the last winter in the mines of California, generally with success commensurate with their perseverance, prudence, and sobriety." The lumps of gold, according to the account of the miners already referred to, (and which tallies exactly in this particular with Mr Johnson's statement) are found in what are called the dry diggings, in the red sandy clay of the ravines on the mountain sides; whilst the dust and scales are obtained by washing the earth and sand from the rivers. Lumps of pure gold, with a greater or less admixture of quartz, are also found in the crevices of a white-veined rock.

Whilst denouncing the expense of health and labour at which the Californian gold is obtained, Mr Johnson admits the vast quantity of the metal that has been and still is being collected. In town, fort, and settlement, – in every place, in short, where a score or two of men were congregated, he beheld astonishing evidence of its abundance. "Quarts of the dust or scale gold were to be seen on the tables or counters, or in the safes of all classes of men; and although the form of small scales was most common, yet pieces or lumps of a quarter to three ounces were to be seen everywhere; and among several chunks one was shown us by C. L. Ross, Esq., weighing eighty-one ounces. This was solid pure gold with only the appearance of a little quartz in it." In one day he saw bushels of gold, most of it too pure for jewellery or coin, without alloy. Although the price of the metal was maintained at sixteen dollars per ounce, its depreciation in comparison with labour and merchandise was enormous; and in the mines, during the winter of 1848, "a good deal of gold was sold for three or four dollars the ounce." Carpenters and blacksmiths received an ounce a-day. Lumber was at six hundred dollars per thousand feet. A lot of land, purchased two years previously for a cask of brandy, fetched eighteen thousand dollars. At a French café, a cup of coffee, bit of ham, and two eggs, cost three dollars, or 12s. 6d. A host of details of this kind are added, most of which have already been given in the American and English newspapers. Captain Sutter's saw-mill was earning a thousand dollars a-day. At the Stanislaus diggings, in the winter of 1848-9, a box of raisins, greatly needed for the cure of scurvy, then raging there without remedy, sold for its weight in gold dust, or four thousand dollars! Reckless expenditure is the natural consequence of easily-acquired wealth. The diggers, after a brief period of severe labour, would come into town for what they called "a burst," and scatter their gold dust and ingots like sand and pebbles, keeping "upon the ball" for three or four days and nights, or even for a week together, drinking brandy at eight and champagne at sixteen dollars the bottle, often getting helplessly drunk and losing the whole of their gains. One fellow, during a three days' drunken fit, got rid of sixteen thousand dollars in gold. Two hopeful youths, known as Bill and Gus, who took an especial liking to Mr Johnson and his party, had come in for "a particular, general, and universal burst;" and they carried out their intentions most completely. They were tender in their liquor, and, in the excess of their drunken philanthropy, they purchased a barrel of ale at three dollars a bottle, and a parcel of sardinas at eight dollars a box, and patrolled the district, forcing every one to drink. In paying for something, Bill dropped a lump of gold, worth two or three dollars, which Mr Johnson picked up, and handed to him. "Without taking it, he looked at us with a comical mixture of amazement and ill-humour, and at length broke out with – 'Well, stranger, you are a curiosity; I guess you hain't been in the diggins long, and better keep that for a sample.'" Even in all sobriety, miners would not be troubled with anything less than dollars, and often scattered small coins by handfuls in the streets, rather than count or carry them. And as neither exorbitant prices nor drunken bursts sufficed to exhaust the resources of the gold-laden diggers, gambling went on upon all sides. "Talk of placers," cried an American, who had just cleared his thousand dollars in ten minutes, at a monte-table in San Francisco; "what better placer need a man want than this?" At Sutter's Fort, a halting-place of the miners, gambling prevailed without limit or stint, men often losing in a single night the result of many months' severe toil. Drunkenness and fighting diversified the scene. "Hundreds of dollars were often spent in a night, and thousands on Sunday, when Pandemonium was in full blast." Such iniquities were no more than might be expected amongst the ragamuffin crew assembled in California, and which included discharged convicts from New South Wales, Mexicans, Kanakas, Peruvians, Chilians, representatives of every European nation, and thousands of the more dissolute and reckless class of United States men.

It is not surprising that some of the minority of honest and respectable men, who found themselves mingled with the mob of ruffians and outlaws assembled in California, thought the prospect of wealth dearly purchased by a prolonged residence in vile society and a most trying climate, and by labour and exposure destructive to health. Mr Johnson assures us that, among the miners who had been long at the diggings, he saw very few who were not suffering from disease – emaciated by fever till they were mere walking shadows, or tormented by frequently recurring attacks of scurvy and rheumatism. If there was a constant stream of adventurers proceeding to the diggings, there was also a pretty steady flow of weary and sickly men returning thence. It would seem, from Mr Johnson's account, that no previous habit of hard labour qualifies the human frame to follow, without injury, the trying trade of a gold-grubber. "We met a party of six sailors, of the Pacific whalers, who were returning to go before the mast again, swearing, sailor-fashion, that they would rather go a whaling at half wages than dig gold any more." Mr Johnson was somewhat of the same way of thinking. He sums up a general review of California in the following words: —

"So large an emigration of the American people, as have gone to that territory, must make something of the country. They will make it one of the states of this Union, at all events, and speedily, too: and although the country is only adapted by nature for mining and grazing, yet a constant trade must result from the former, and more or less agriculture be added to the latter, from the necessity of the case. A few have made, and will hereafter make fortunes there, and very many of those who remain long enough will accumulate something; but the great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of gold in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. The writer visited California to dig gold, but chose to abandon that purpose rather than expose his life and health in the mines; and as numbers were already seeking employment in San Francisco without success, and he had neither the means nor the inclination to speculate, he concluded to return to his family and home industry."

Finally, the disappointed gold-seeker addresses to his readers a parting hint, apprehensive, seemingly, of their supposing that his own ill-success has warped his judgment, or induced him to calumniate the country. "If you think," he says, "we have not shown you enough of the elephant, but got on the wrong way and slid off backwards, please to mount him and take a view for yourself." By which metaphorical phrase, if the worthy Johnson means that we are to go to the diggings, and judge for ourselves, we can only say we had much rather take his word than his advice, and read his book by our fireside than tread in his footsteps amongst the mountains of California.

Without further comment, but with a warm recommendation, we close these three American volumes. It were idle to subject to minute criticism books that make no pretensions to literary merit, and which, professing only to give, in plain language, an account of the writers' personal adventures and experiences, are written in off-hand style, and are wholly free from pedantry and affectation. If they are occasionally somewhat rude in form, like the men and countries they portray, they at least are frank and honest in substance; and they contain more novelty, amusement, and information, than are to be found in any dozen of those vapid narratives of fashionable tourists with which the Bentley and Colburn presses annually cram the nauseated public. We have been much pleased and diverted by the unsophisticated pages of Messrs Johnson, Wise, and Parkman.