Gold Seekers of '49 Part 33

Mr. Grigsby was promptly on hand, at noon, in the hotel. He reported that he had engaged pa.s.sage on a sail-boat, the _Mary Ann_, for the town of Sacramento, 120 miles north up the Sacramento River.

"That is," he added, "if you want to try the American River country, where the first diggin's are. Sacramento is the old _embarcadero_ [which, as Charley found out, was the Spanish for boat-landing] for Sutter's Fort, up the American. The fare is thirty dollars, and I paid ten dollars apiece down, to hold our places till two o'clock."

"All right," approved Mr. Adams. "We'll go. Now let's eat. Hear the dinner bells! It must be a hungry town."

And that would seem so, indeed. From every hotel and restaurant issued a clamor of hand-bells and of gongs, each apparently vying with the other to make noise. It sounded like a Fourth of July! People began to rush into the Parker-house, and in a jiffy the long tables were filled. The Adams party got seats just in time.

The price of the meal was two dollars, for beef (splendid beef, too), bread, potatoes, and coffee or chocolate. There wasn't any milk or b.u.t.ter. However, as Mr. Grigsby remarked, one could easily eat a dollar's worth of potatoes at a helping! The food was very good and well cooked. Charley heard somebody say that the cook was a famous chef from New York, and drew a salary of $2000 a month. Even the waiters (who were men in shirt-sleeves) were paid $300 a month, and board.

"I believe I'll go up to the room and rest a bit," announced Mr. Adams, after dinner. "The rest of you can do as you please."

"You aren't sick, are you, dad?" asked Charley, anxiously.

"Not a bit. I feel a hundred per cent. stronger than when we left home. But I mustn't overdo. I'll take a nap and write a letter to your mother. There'll be a mail out next week, and not another for maybe thirty or forty days. Shall I leave the letter open for you?"

"Yes, please," bade Charley, a lump in his throat at the mere thought of his mother. "I'll add a lot to it after I come back."

"I'll tell her we've not found our gold mine yet, but we've sold our newspapers for a dollar apiece and spent that for washing," laughed his father.

"Tell her to send us out all the old papers she has," begged Charley, excitedly. "And potatoes and cabbages, from the garden!"

"I saw a man buy a whole cargo of eggs, down at the water-front," put in Mr. Grigsby, "at thirty-seven and a half cents a dozen, and he turned right around and resold 100 dozen of them at six dollars the dozen! You can't afford to be sick here, Adams. The doctors charge $50 for a visit, and the same for every hour after the first look-in.

Come along, Charley, and we'll see the sights while I do a few errands on my own account. I hear Colonel Fremont's in town. Maybe we can catch him."

XVI

CHARLEY HEARS A CONVERSATION

"If you're looking for Colonel Fremont, you'll likely find him at the United States Hotel," hailed the hotel clerk, as Charley and Mr.

Grigsby pa.s.sed the counter. "He's there with General Vallejo, I understand."

"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Grigsby. "You know who Fremont is," he said, to Charley; and Charley nodded. Of course he knew. Fremont was the great explorer--Fremont the Pathfinder, they called him. He it was who, arrived in California on his third exploring expedition for the Government, early in 1846, had been on hand to lead in the taking of California from Mexico. His stories of his travels made fine reading.

"Well, this General Vallejo is Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. He was the military governor of Upper California before the war, but he's been a great friend of the Americans, although he was the first man they captured in the uprising of Forty-six. n.o.body has a word to say against General Vallejo. He wanted California to belong to the United States, and said so, when other Californians were favoring England and France instead of Mexico, after it was seen that Mexico couldn't hold it. Fact is, General Vallejo it was who started San Francisco. Not this San Francisco, but Benicia, at the other end of the bay. He donated the land, and only asked that the city be named Francisca, after his wife, Francisca Benicia. He gave a tract an mile wide by five miles long. It's a better site for a big city than this is, they say, because it's not so steep and is only across a narrow strait from the mainland, and has deep-water anchorage. Most of the steamers go there now, to anchor, and it has the naval and military headquarters, at Mare Island and at the new post going up. This place was only Yerba Buena--Good Herb Cove--a landing-place for the San Francisco mission.

But the settlers already here got ahead of the Vallejo plan, and renamed their town San Francisco, because of San Francis...o...b..y; and the name has made it grow. The general and Thomas O. Larkin (who was the Government consul and agent) and Doc Robert Semple, who's an old-time trapper from Kentucky and is about seven feet high, went ahead and started the other town, and having lost out on Francisca called it by Mrs. Vallejo's other name, Benicia. But it never has amounted to much as a town. I thought I'd tell you about General Vallejo. He and Fremont are a good pair--Americans both, though one is French, born in Georgia, the other is Mexican, born in California."

The same boys whom Charley had seen in the morning were scratching for gold in front of the United States Hotel, and quarreling over their finds, which stuck to the moistened heads of the pins they were using.

"There he is, now--and the General with him," spoke Mr. Grigsby, quickening pace as he and Charley approached across the street.

Two men were just leaving the hotel porch. One was of medium height, erect and slender, in a broad silvered Californian hat and a short velvet jacket embroidered with gilt. The other was taller and heavier and darker, in ordinary citizen's clothes. Charley guessed that the first was Colonel Fremont.

That was so, for going directly to him, Mr. Grigsby extended his brown, sinewy hand, saying:

"Colonel, do you remember me?"

Colonel Fremont gave him one flashing glance out of a pair of deep-set, very keen, dark blue eyes. A handsome man was the Pathfinder, with such eyes, a clean-cut, imperious nose, and a crisp full brown beard.

"h.e.l.lo, Grigsby," he said, grasping the hand heartily. "Do you think I could forget one of my own men? The General remembers you, too, I'll wager."

"With pleasure," said General Vallejo; and he, also, shook hands. He was older than Colonel Fremont, was General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, and even more commanding in his appearance. His face was large and dignified, in its black beard, his forehead was high and broad, and his dark eyes piercing.

Mr. Grigsby introduced Charley, and they both shook hands with him.

"We're off to the mines in the morning, and I wanted to pay my respects and introduce this boy, here, before we left," explained Mr. Grigsby.

"Are your family here, Colonel? And yours, General?"

"The General's are north at Sonoma, I believe," answered the Pathfinder. "Mine are on their way back to Monterey. What trail do you take, Grigsby? The northern mines, or the southern?"

"We'll try the northern, up the American; by boat as far as Sacramento."

"Our old stamping-ground of the American fork, eh?" remarked the Colonel. "I well recall our first trip in, across the mountains, in that winter of early Forty-four, when Sutter's Fort was the only habitation. Who'd have thought that in five years there'd be towns all along the old trail, and thousands of white men pushing in from mountains and ocean both, to scratch and burrow like gophers! You won't know the place, Grigsby! When were you there last?"

"A year ago."

"You won't know it, just the same."

"No," agreed General Vallejo, earnestly.

"There's still plenty of gold, is there?" queried Mr. Grigsby. This was an important question, to Charley.

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders and laughed. The General gravely smiled. Answered the Colonel:

"Gold? Lots of it, and people finding it. The diggings along the American and the Yuba and the Feather are in full blast; and then there are the southern mines, up the San Joaquin Valley, in the Mokelumne and Calaveras districts. I'm going over there myself to-morrow or next day. If you see Captain Sutter up north, tell him that any help he can give you will be appreciated by me."

"Your rancho is prosperous, Colonel?"

"Fairly so. You know we've named it Mariposa, or Lily Ranch. I had intended to stock it to cattle, but the mining excitement has changed my plans and all my ranch machinery is stored here in town. The land has so much mineral on it, we've discovered, that I'll work that first if the Government doesn't object. Unfortunately mineral claims are not supposed to go with Mexican land grants. While my family are here we make our quarters in the Happy Valley section. I have a saw-mill started back of San Jose, too. Should you come that way, be sure and stop off with me."

"And should you come to Sonoma, do me the honor of making my house your home," said the General. "And pray do not forget that in September we of California hold a statehood convention at Monterey, to frame a State const.i.tution. All good citizens are requested to be present."

"The State of California, already! Think of that!" exclaimed Mr.

Grigsby.

"And a free State, too, if we can make it so," added Colonel Fremont, his blue eyes aglow. "California's free now, to everybody. One man is as good as another. I was born in the South, but I'm against slavery.

California has started gloriously free, and she ought to remain so."

"I'm with you, there, gentlemen," quoth Mr. Grigsby. "Certainly this is the one population, away out here like a big family, where slavery has no place or reason. Anybody who will work ought to be allowed to make a living. This gold and land weren't put here for the benefit of a few."

They all shook hands again. The Colonel and the General paced away, on their business. Mr. Grigsby and Charley went ahead on theirs. And Charley never forgot his first meeting with the celebrated Pathfinder and the stately ex-governor.

He was tired enough when he and Mr. Grigsby had completed their errands. But he found his father rested and up, and waiting with the home letter just finished. Charley added four pages; but he had so much to tell that he didn't say half of it. 'Twas a wonderful country, let alone the marvelous journey behind it. He only regretted that he didn't pick up a little gold, in the streets, so as to enclose that in the letter, too.

His father had made arrangements to store their trunk, and what clothes they would not need while at the mines.

"Now all that remains is to get our washing early--and, by the way, the Frenchman promises to have it ready by six o'clock--and a pack animal at Sacramento," he p.r.o.nounced. "That is, if we can find one."