Gold Part 11

We were answered with the enthusiasm of an old-timer welcoming a newcomer to any country. Gold! Plenty of it! They told us, in breathless s.n.a.t.c.hes, the most marvellous tales--one sailor had dug $17,000 in a week; another man, a farmer from New England, was taking out $5,000 to $6,000 daily. They mentioned names and places. They pointed to the harbour full of shipping. "Four hundred ships," said they, "and hardly a dozen men aboard the lot! All gone to the mines!" And one man s.n.a.t.c.hing a long narrow buckskin bag from his pocket, shook out of its mouth to the palm of his hand a tiny cascade of glittering yellow particles--the Dust! We shoved and pushed, crowding around him to see this marvellous sight. He laughed in a sort of excited triumph, and tossed the stuff into the air. The breeze caught it and scattered it wide. A number of the little glittering particles clung to my rough coat, where they flashed like spangles.

"Plenty more where that came from!" cried the man; and turned away with a reckless laugh.

Filled with the wine of this new excitement we finally succeeded in getting ash.o.r.e in one of the ship's boats.

We landed on a flat beach of deep black sand. It was strewn from one end to the other by the most extraordinary wreckage. There were levers, cogwheels, cranks, fans, twisted bar, and angle iron, in all stages of rust and disintegration. Some of these machines were half buried in the sand; others were tidily laid up on stones as though just landed. They were of copper, iron, zinc, bra.s.s, tin, wood. We recognized the genus at a glance. They were, one and all, patent labour-saving gold washing machines, of which we had seen so many samples aboard ship. At this sight vanished the last remains of the envy I had ever felt for the owners of similar contraptions.

We looked about for some sort of conveyance into which to dump our belongings. Apparently none existed. Therefore we piled most of our effects neatly above high tide, shouldered our bundles, and started off up the single street.

On either side this thoroughfare stood hundreds of open sheds and buildings in the course of construction. Goods of all sorts, and in great quant.i.ty, lay beneath them, wholly or partially exposed to the dust and weather. Many unopened bales had been left in the open air. One low brick building of a single story seemed to be the only substantial structure in sight. We saw quant.i.ties of calicos, silks, rich furniture, stacks of the pieces of knock-down houses, tierces of tobacco, piles of all sorts of fancy clothing. The most unexpected and incongruous items of luxury seemed to have been dumped down here from the corners of the earth, by the four hundred ships swinging idly at anchor in the bay.

The street was, I think, the worst I have ever seen anywhere. It was a mora.s.s of mud, sticky greasy mud, of some consistency, but full of water-holes and rivulets. It looked ten feet deep; and I should certainly have ventured out on it with misgivings. And yet, incongruously enough, the surface ridges of it had dried, and were lifting into the air in the form of dust! This was of course my first experience with that common California phenomenon, and I was greatly astonished.

An attempt had been made to supply footing for pedestrians. Bags of sand had been thrown down, some rocks, a very few boxes and boards. Then our feet struck something soft and yielding, and we found we were walking over hundred pound sacks of flour marked as from Chili. There must have been many hundred of them. A man going in the opposite direction sidled past us.

"Cheaper than lumber," said he briefly, seeing our astonishment.

"I'd hate to ask the price of lumber," remarked one of our ship's companions, with whom--and a number of others--we were penetrating the town. This man carried only a very neat black morocco satchel and a net bag containing a half dozen pineapples, the last of a number he had brought from the Isthmus. The contrast of that morocco bag with the rest of him was quite as amusing as any we saw about us; though, of course, he did not appreciate that.

We walked on flour for a hundred feet or so, and then came to cook stoves. I mean it. A battalion of heavy iron cook stoves had been laid side by side to form a causeway. Their weight combined with the traffic over them had gradually pressed them down into the mud until their tops were nearly level with the surface. Naturally the first merry and drunken joker had shied the lids into s.p.a.ce. The pedestrian had now either to step in and out of fire boxes or try his skill on narrow ledges! Next we came to a double row of boxes of tobacco; then to some baled goods, and so off onto solid ground.

We pa.s.sed many people, all very intent on getting along safely. From the security of the shed stores the proprietors and an a.s.sorted lot of loafers watched proceedings with interest. The task of crossing the street from one side to the other, especially, was one not lightly to be undertaken! A man had to balance, to leap, to poise; and at last probably, to teeter back and forth trying to keep his balance like a small boy on a fence rail, until, with an oath of disgust, he stepped off into the slime.

When we had gained the dry ground near the head of the street we threw down our burdens for a rest.

"I'll give you ten dollars for those pineapples!" offered a pa.s.serby, stopping short.

Our companion quickly closed the bargain.

"What do you think of that?" he demanded of us wide-eyed, and in the hearing of the purchaser.

The latter grinned a little, and hailed a man across the street.

"Charley!" he yelled. "Come over here!"

The individual addressed offered some demur, but finally picked his way across to us.

"How do you like these?" demanded the pineapple purchaser, showing his fruit.

"Jerusalem!" cried Charley admiringly, "where did you get them? Want to sell 'em?"

"I want some myself, but I'll sell you three of them."

"How much?"

"Fifteen dollars."

"Give 'em to me."

The first purchaser grinned openly at our companion.

The latter followed into the nearest store to get his share of the dust weighed out. His face wore a very thoughtful expression.

We came shortly to the Plaza, since called Portsmouth Square. At that time it was a wind-swept, gra.s.s-grown, scrubby enough plot of ground. On all sides were permanent buildings. The most important of these were a low picturesque house of the sun-dried bricks known as adobes, in which, as it proved, the customs were levied; a frame two-story structure known as the Parker House, and a similar building labelled "City Hotel." The s.p.a.ces between these larger edifices was occupied by a dozen or so of smaller shacks. Next door to the Parker House stood a huge flapping tent. The words _El Dorado_ were painted on its side.

The square itself was crowded with people moving to and fro. The solid majority of the crowd consisted of red or blue shirted miners; but a great many nations and frames of minds seemed to be represented. Chinese merchants, with red coral b.u.t.tons atop their stiff little skullcaps, wandered slowly, their hands tucked in capacious sleeves of the richest brocade. We had seen few of this race; and we looked at them with the greatest interest, examining closely their broad bland faces, the delicate lilacs and purples and blues of their rich costumes, the swaying silk braided queues down their backs. Other Chinese, of the lower castes, clad in blue canvas with broad bowl-shaped hats of straw on their heads, wormed their way through the crowd balancing baskets at the ends of poles. Rivalling the great Chinese merchants in their leisure, strolled the representatives of the native race, the Spanish Californians. They were darkly handsome men, dressed gloriously in short velvet jackets, snowy ruffles, plush trousers flaring at the bottom, and slit up the side of the leg, soft leather boots, and huge spurs ornamented with silver. They sauntered to and fro smoking brown-paper cigarettos. Beside these two, the Chinese and the Californians, but one other cla.s.s seemed to be moving with any deliberation. These were men seen generally alone, or at most in pairs. They were quiet, waxy pale, dressed always neatly in soft black hat, white shirt, long black coat, and varnished boots. In the face of a general gabble they seemed to remain indifferently silent, self-contained and aloof. To occasional salutations they responded briefly and with gravity.

"Professional gamblers," said Talbot.

All the rest of the crowd rushed here and there at a great speed. We saw the wildest incongruities of demeanour and costume beside which the silk-hat-red-shirted combination was nothing. They struck us open-mouthed and gasping; but seemed to attract not the slightest attention from anybody else. We encountered a number of men dressed alike in suits of the finest broadcloth, the coats of which were lined with red silk, and the vests of embroidered white. These men walked with a sort of arrogant importance. We later found that they were members of that dreaded organization known as _The Hounds_, whose ostensible purpose was to perform volunteer police duty, but whose real effort was toward the increase of their own power. These people all surged back and forth good-naturedly, and shouted at each other, and disappeared with great importance up the side streets, or darted out with equal busyness from all points of the compa.s.s. Every few minutes a cry of warning would go up on one side of the square or another. The crowd would scatter to right and left, and down through the opening would thunder a horseman distributing clouds of dust and showers of earth.

"Why doesn't somebody kill a few of those crazy fools!" muttered Talbot impatiently, after a particularly close shave.

"Why, you see, they's mostly drunk," stated a bystander with an air of explaining all.

We tacked across to the doors of the Parker House. There after some search was made we found the proprietor. He, too, seemed very busy, but he spared time to trudge ahead of us up two rickety flights of raw wooden stairs to a loft where he indicated four canvas bunks on which lay as many coa.r.s.e blue blankets.

Perhaps a hundred similar bunks occupied every available inch in the little loft.

"How long you going to stay?" he asked us.

"Don't know; a few days."

"Well, six dollars apiece, please."

"For how long?"

"For to-night."

"Hold on!" expostulated Talbot. "We can't stand that especially for these accommodations. At that price we ought to have something better.

Haven't you anything in the second story?"

The proprietor's busy air fell from him; and he sat down on the edge of one of the canvas bunks.

"I thought you boys were from the mines," said he. "Your friend, here, fooled me." He pointed his thumb at Yank. "He looks like an old-timer.

But now I look at you, I see you're greenhorns. Just get here to-day?

Have a smoke?"

He produced a handful of cigars, of which he lit one.

"We just arrived," said Talbot, somewhat amused at this change. "How about that second story?"

"I want to tell you boys a few things," said the proprietor, "I get sixty thousand dollars a year rent for that second story just as she stands. That tent next door belongs to my brother-in-law. It is just fifteen by twenty-five feet, and he rents it for forty thousand."

"Gamblers?" inquired Talbot.

"You've guessed it. So you see I ain't got any beds to speak of down there. In fact, here's the whole layout."

"But we can't stand six dollars a night for these things," expostulated Johnny. "Let's try over at the other place."