Greater Britain Part 12

In spite of the gold currency, prices are higher in Nevada than in Denver. A shave is half a dollar--gold; in Washoe and in Atchison, but a paper quarter. A boot-blacking is fifty cents in gold, instead of ten cents paper, as in Chicago or St. Louis.

During the war, when fluctuations in the value of the paper were great and sudden, prices changed from day to day. Hotel proprietors in the West received their guests at breakfast, it is said, with "Glorious news; we've whipped at ----. Gold's 180; board's down half a dollar."

While I was in the country, gold fluctuated between 140 and 163, but prices remained unaltered.

Paper money is of some use to a young country in making the rate of wages appear enormous, and so attracting immigration. If a Cork bog-trotter is told that he can get two dollars a day for his work in America, but only one in Canada, no economic considerations interfere to prevent him rushing to the nominally higher rate. Whether the workingmen of America have been gainers by the inflation of the currency, or the reverse, it is hard to say. It has been stated in the Senate that wages have risen sixty per cent., and prices ninety per cent.; but "prices" is a term of great width. The men themselves believe that they have not been losers, and no argument can be so strong as that.

My first afternoon upon Mount Davidson I spent underground in the Gould and Curry Mine, the wealthiest and largest of those that have tapped the famous Comstock Lode. In this single vein of silver lies the prosperity not only of the city, but of Nevada State; its discovery will have hastened the completion of the overland railway itself by several years.

It is owing to the enormous yield of this one lode that the United States now stands second only to Mexico as a silver-producing land. In one year Nevada has given the world as much silver as there came from the mines of all Peru.

The rise of Nevada has been sudden. I was shown in Virginia City a building block of land that _rents_ for ten times what it _cost_ four years ago. Nothing short of solid silver by the yard would have brought twenty thousand men to live upon the summit of Mount Davidson. It is easy here to understand the mad rush and madder speculation that took place at the time of the discovery. Every valley in the Washoe Range was "prospected," and p.r.o.nounced paved with silver; every mountain was a solid ma.s.s. "Cities" were laid out, and town lots sold, wherever room was afforded by a flat piece of ground. The publication of the Californian newspapers was suspended, as writers, editors, proprietors, and devils, all had gone with the rush. San Francisco went clean mad, and London and Paris were not far behind. Of the hundred "cities"

founded, but one was built; of the thousand claims registered, but a hundred were taken up and worked; of the companies formed, but half a dozen ever paid a dividend, except that obtained from the sale of their plant. The silver of which the whole base of Mount Davidson is composed has not been traced in the surrounding hills, though they are covered with a forest of posts, marking the limits of forgotten "claims:"

"James Thompson, 130 feet N.E. by N."

"Ezra Williams, 130 feet due E.;"

and so for miles. The Gould and Curry Company, on the other hand, is said to have once paid a larger half-yearly dividend than the sum of the original capital, and its shares have been quoted at 1000 per cent. Such are the differences of a hundred yards.

One of the oddities of mining life is, that the gold-diggers profess a sublime contempt for silver-miners and their trade. A Coloradan going West was asked in Nevada if in his country they could beat the Comstock lode. "Dear, no!" he said. "The boys with us are plaguy discouraged jess at present." The Nevadans were down upon the word. "Discouraged, air they!" "Why, yes! They've jess found they've got ter dig through three feet of solid silver 'fore ever they come ter gold."

Some of the Nevada companies have curious t.i.tles. "The Union Lumber a.s.sociation" is not bad; but "The Segregated Belcher Mining Enterprise of Gold Hill District, Storey County, Nevada State," is far before it as an advertising name.

In a real "coach" at last--a coach with windows and a roof--drawn by six "mustangs," we dashed down Mount Davidson upon a real road, engineered with grades and bridges--my first since Junction City. Through the Devil's Gate we burst out upon a chaotic country. For a hundred miles the eye ranged over humps and b.u.mps of every size, from stones to mountains, but no level ground, no field, no house, no tree, no green.

Not even the Sahara so thoroughly deserves the name of "desert." In Egypt there is the oasis, in Arabia here and there a date and a sweet-water well; here there is nothing, not even earth. The ground is soda, and the water and air are full of salt.

This road is notorious for the depredations of the "road agents," as white highwaymen are politely called, red or yellow robbers being still "darned thieves." At Desert Wells, the coach had been robbed, a week before I pa.s.sed, by men who had first tied up the ranchmen, and taken their places to receive the driver and pa.s.sengers when they arrived. The prime object with the robbers is the treasury box of "dust," but they generally "go through" the pa.s.sengers, by way of pastime, after their more regular work is done. As to firing, they have a rule--a simple one. If a pa.s.senger shoots, every man is killed. It need not be said that the armed driver and armed guard never shoot; they know their business far too well.

Close here we came on hot and cold springs in close conjunction, flowing almost from the same "sink-hole"--the original twofold springs, I hinted to our driver, that Poseidon planted in the Atlantic isle. He said that "some one of that name" had a ranch near Carson, so I "concluded" to drop Poseidon, lest I should say something that might offend.

From Desert Wells the alkali grew worse and worse, but began to be alleviated at the ranches by irrigation of the throat with delicious Californian wine. The plain was strewn with erratic boulders, and here and there I noticed sharp sand-cones, like those of the Elk Mountain country in Utah.

At last we dashed into the "city" named after the notorious Kit Carson, of which an old inhabitant has lately said: "This here city is growing plaguy mean--there was only one man shot all yesterday." There was what is here styled an "altercation" a day or two ago. The sheriff tried to arrest a man in broad daylight in the single street which Carson boasts.

The result was that each fired several shots at the other, and that both were badly hurt.

The half-deserted mining village and wholly ruined Mormon settlement stand grimly on the bare rock, surrounded by weird-looking depressions of the earth, the far-famed "sinks," the very bottom of the plateau, and goal of all the plateau streams--in summer dry, and spread with sheets of salt; in winter filled with brine. The Sierra Nevada rises like a wall from the salt pools, with a fringe of giant, leafless trees hanging stiffly from its heights--my first forest since I left the Missouri bottoms. The trees made me feel that I was really across the continent, within reach at least of the fogs of the Pacific--on "the other side;"

that there was still rough, cold work to be done was clear from the great snow-fields that showed through the pines with that threatening blackness that the purest of snows wear in the evening when they face the east.

As I gazed upon the tremendous battlements of the Sierra, I not only ceased to marvel that for three hundred years traffic had gone round by Panama rather than through these frightful obstacles, but even wondered that they should be surmounted now. In this hideous valley it was that the California immigrants wintered in 1848, and killed their Indian guides for food. For three months more the strongest of them lived upon the bodies of those who died, incapable in their weakness of making good their foothold upon the slippery snows of the Sierra. After awhile, some were cannibals by choice; but the story is not one that can be told.

Galloping up the gentle grades of Johnson's Pa.s.s, we began the ascent of the last of fifteen great mountain ranges crossed or flanked since I had left Great Salt Lake City. The thought recalled a pa.s.sage of arms that had occurred at Denver between Dixon and Governor Gilpin. In his grand enthusiastic way, the governor, pointing to the Cordillera, said: "Five hundred snowy ranges lie between this and San Francisco." "Peaks," said Dixon. "Ranges!" thundered Gilpin; "I've seen them."

Of the fifteen greater ranges to the westward of Salt Lake, eight at least are named from the rivers they contain, or are wholly nameless.

Trade has preceded survey; the country is not yet thoroughly explored.

The six paper maps by which I traveled--the best and latest--differed in essential points. The position and length of the Great Salt Lake itself are not yet accurately known; the height of Mount Hood has been made anything between nine thousand and twenty thousand feet; the southern boundary line of Nevada State pa.s.ses through untrodden wilds. A rectification of the limits of California and Nevada was attempted no great time ago, and the head-waters of some stream which formed a starting-point had been found to be erroneously laid down. At the flourishing young city of Aurora, in Esmeralda County, a court of California was sitting. A mounted messenger rode up at great pace, and, throwing his bridle round the stump, dashed in breathlessly, shouting, "What's this here court?" Being told that it was a Californian court, he said, "Wall, thet's all wrong: this here's Nevada. We've been and rectified this boundary, an' California's a good ten mile off here."

"Wall, Mr. Judge, I move this court adjourn," said the plaintiff's counsel. "How can a court adjourn thet's not a court?" replied the judge. "Guess I'll go." And off he went. So, if the court of Aurora _was_ a court, it must be sitting now.

The coaching on this line is beyond comparison the best the world can show. Drawn by six half-bred mustangs, driven by whips of the fame of the Hank Monk "who drove Greeley," the mails and pa.s.sengers have been conveyed from Virginia City to the rail at Placerville, 154 miles, in 15 hours and 20 minutes, including a stoppage of half an hour for supper, and sixteen shorter stays to change horses. In this distance, the Sierra Nevada has to be traversed in a rapid rise of three thousand feet, a fall of a thousand feet, another rise of the same, and then a descent of five thousand feet on the Californian side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRIDAY'S STATION--VALLEY OF LAKE TAHOE.--P. 176.]

Before the road was made, the pa.s.sage was one of extraordinary difficulty. A wagon once started, they say, from Folsom, bearing "Carson or bust" in large letters upon the tilt. After ten days, it returned lamely enough, with four of the twelve oxen gone, and bearing the label "Busted."

When we were nearing Hank Monk's "piece," I became impatient to see the hero of the famous ride. What was my disgust when the driver of the earlier portion of the road appeared again upon the box in charge of six magnificent iron-grays. The peremptory cry of "All aboard" brought me without remonstrance to the coach, but I took care to get upon the box, although, as we were starting before the break of day, the frost was terrible. To my relief, when I inquired after Hank, the driver said that he was at a ball at a timber ranch in the forest "six mile on." At early light we reached the spot--the summit of the more eastern of the twin ranges of the Sierra. Out came Hank, amid the cheers of the half dozen men and women of the timber ranch who formed the "ball," wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and took the reins without a word. For miles he drove steadily and moodily along. I knew these drivers top well to venture upon speaking first when they were in the sulks; at last, however, I lost all patience, and silently offered him a cigar. He took it without thanking me, but after a few minutes said: "Thet last driver, how did he drive?" I made some shuffling answer, when he cut in: "Drove as ef he were skeert; and so he was. Look at them mustangs. Yoo--ou!" As he yelled, the horses started at what out here they style "the run;" and when, after ten minutes, he pulled up, we must have done three miles, round most violent and narrow turns, with only the bare precipice at the side, and a fall of often a hundred feet to the stream at the bottom of the ravine--the Simplon without its wall. Dropping into the talking mood, he asked me the usual questions as to my business, and whither I was bound. When I told him I thought of visiting Australia, he said, "D'you tell now! Jess give my love--at Bendigo--to Gumption d.i.c.k." Not another word about Australia or Gumption d.i.c.k could I draw from him. I asked at Bendigo for d.i.c.k; but not even the officer in command of the police had ever heard of Hank Monk's friend.

The sun rose as we dashed through the grand landscapes of Lake Tahoe. On we went, through gloomy snow-drifts and still sadder forests of gigantic pines nearly three hundred feet in height, and down the canyon of the American River from the second range. Suddenly we left the snows, and burst through the pine woods into an open scene. From gloom there was a change to light; from somber green to glowing red and gold. The trees, no longer hung with icicles, were draped with Spanish moss. In ten yards we had come from winter into summer. Alkali was left behind forever; we were in El Dorado, on the Pacific sh.o.r.es--in sunny, dreamy California.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEAMING UP THE GRADE AT SLIPPERY FORD, IN THE SIERRA.--P.

178.]

CHAPTER XX.

EL DORADO.

The city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold figures largely in the story of Spanish discovery in America. The hardy soldiers who crossed the Atlantic in caravels and c.o.c.kboats, and toiled in leathern doublets and plate armor through the jungle swamp of Panama, were lured on through years of plague and famine by the dream of a country whose rivers flowed with gold. Diego de Mendoza found the land in 1532, but it was not till January, 1848, that James Marshall washed the golden sands of El Dorado.

The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly paradise in America. Not to speak of New Atlantis, the Canadian Indians have never ceased to hand down to their sons a legend of western abodes of bliss, to which their souls journey after death, through frightful glens and forests. In their mystic chants they describe minutely the obstacles over which the souls must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring.

These stories are no mere dreams, but records of the great Indian migration from the West: the liquid-eyed Hurons, not sprung from the Canadian snows, may be Californian if they are not Malay, the Pacific sh.o.r.es their happy hunting-ground, the climate of Los Angeles their never-ending spring.

The names The Golden State and El Dorado are doubly applicable to California; her light and landscape, as well as her soil, are golden.

Here, on the Pacific side, nature wears a robe of deep rich yellow: even the distant hills, no longer purple, are wrapt in golden haze. No more cliffs and canyons--all is rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra, which faces eastward, with four thousand feet of wall-like rock, on the west descends gently in vine-clad slopes into the Californian vales, and trends away in spurs toward the sea. The scenery of the Nevada side was weird, but these western foot-hills are unlike anything in the world.

Drake, who never left the Pacific sh.o.r.es, named the country New Albion, from the whiteness of a headland on the coast; but the first viceroys were less ridiculously misled by patriotic vanity when they christened it New Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW ON THE AMERICAN RIVER--THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST FOUND.--P. 180.]

In the warm dry sunlight, we rolled down hills of rich red loam, and through forests of n.o.ble redwood--the _Sequoia sempervirens_, brother to the _Sequoia gigantea_, or Wellingtonia of our lawns. Dashing at full gallop through the American River, just below its falls, where, in 1848, the Mormons first dug that Californian gold which in the interests of their church they had better have let alone, we came upon great gangs of Indians working by proxy upon the Continental railroad. The Indian's plan for living happily is a simple one: he sits and smokes in silence while his women work, and he thus lives upon the earnings of the squaws.

Unlike a Mormon patriarch, he contrives that polygamy shall pay, and says with the New Zealand Maori: "A man with one wife may starve, but a man with many wives grows fat." These fellows were Shoshones from the other side of the plateau; for the Pacific Indians, who are black, not red, will not even force their wives to work, which, in the opinion of the Western men, is the ultimate form of degradation in a race. Higher up the hills, Chinamen alone are employed; but their labor is too costly to be thrown away upon the easier work.

In El Dorado City we stayed not long enough for the exploration of the once famous surface gold mines, now forming one long vineyard, but, rolling on, were soon among the tents of Placerville, which had been swept with fire a few months before. All these valley diggings have been deserted for deep-sinking--not that they are exhausted yet, but that the yield has ceased to be sufficient to tempt the gambling digger. The men who lived in Placerville and made it infamous throughout the world some years ago are scattered now through Nevada, Arizona, Montana, and the Frazer country, and Chinamen and Digger Indians have the old workings to themselves, settling their rights as against each other by daily battle and perpetual feud. The Digger Indians are the most degraded of all the aborigines of North America--outcasts from the other tribes--men under a ban--"tapu," as their Maori cousins say--weaponless, naked savages who live on roots, and pester the industrious Chinese.

It is not with all their foes that the yellow men can cope so easily. In a tiny Chinese theater in their camp near Placerville, I saw a farce which to the remainder of the audience was no doubt a very solemn drama, in which the adventures of two Celestials on the diggings were given to the world. The only scene in which the pantomime was sufficiently clear for me to read it without the possibility of error was one in which a white man--"Melican man"--came to ask for taxes. The Chinamen had paid their taxes once before, but the fellow said that didn't matter. The yellow men consulted together, and at last agreed that the stranger was a humbug, so the play ended with a big fight, in which they drove him off their ground. A Chinaman played the over 'cute Yankee, and did it well.

Perhaps the tax-collectors in the remoter districts of the States count on the Chinese to make up the deficiencies in their accounts caused by the non-payment of their taxes by the whites; for even in these days of comparative quiet and civilization, taxes are not gathered to their full amount in any of the Territories, and the justice of the collector is in Montana tempered by many a threat of instant lynching if he proceeds with his a.s.sessment. Even in Utah, the returns are far from satisfactory: the three great merchants of Salt Lake City should, if their incomes are correctly stated, contribute a heavier sum than that returned for the whole of the population of the Territory.

The white diggers who preceded the Chinese have left their traces in the names of lodes and places. There is no town in California with such a t.i.tle as the Coloradan City of Buckskin Joe, but Yankee Jim comes near it. Placerville itself was formerly known as Hangtown, on account of its being the city in which "lynch-law was inaugurated." Dead Shot Flat is not far from here, and within easy distance are h.e.l.l's Delight, Jacka.s.s Gulch, and Loafer's Hill. The once famous Plug-ugly Gulch has now another name; but of Chucklehead Diggings and Puppytown I could not find the whereabouts in my walks and rides. Graveyard Canyon, Gospel Gulch, and Paint-pot Hill are other Californian names. It is to be hoped that the English and Spanish names will live unmutilated in California and Nevada, to hand down in liquid syllables the history of a half-forgotten conquest, an already perished race. San Francisco has become "Frisco" in speech if not on paper, and Sacramento will hardly bear the wear and tear of Californian life; but the use of the Spanish tongue has spread among the Americans who have dealings with the Mexican country folk of California State, and, except in mining districts, the local names will stand.

It is not places only that have strange designations in America. Out of the Puritan fashion of naming children from the Old Testament patriarchs has grown, by a sort of recoil, the custom of following the heroes of the cla.s.sics, and when they fail, inventing strange t.i.tles for children.

Mahonri Cahoon lives in Salt Lake City; Attila Harding was secretary to one of the governors of Utah; Michigan University has for president Erastus Haven; for superintendent, Oramel Hosford; for professors, Abram Sanger, Silas Douglas, Moses Gunn, Zina Pitcher, Alonzo Pitman, De Volson Wood, Lucius Chapin, and Corydon Ford. Luman Stevens, Bolivar Barnum, Wyllys Ransom, Ozora Stearnes, and Buel Derby were Michigan officers during the war, and Epaphroditus Ransom was formerly governor of the State. Theron Rockwell, Gershon Weston, and Bela Kellogg are well-known politicians in Ma.s.sachusetts, and Colonel Liberty Billings is equally prominent in Florida. In New England school-lists it is hard to pick boys from girls. Who shall tell the s.e.x of Lois Lombard, Asahel Morton, Ginery French, Royal Miller, Thankful Poyne? A Chicago man, who was lynched in Central Illinois while I was in the neighborhood, was named Alonza Tibbets. Eliphalet Arnould and Velenus Sherman are ranchmen on the overland road; Sereno Burt is an editor in Montana; Persis Boynton a merchant in Chicago. Zelotes Terry, Datus Darner, Zeryiah Rainforth, Barzellai Stanton, Sardis Clark, Ozias Williams, Xenas Phelps, Converse Hopkins, and Hirodshai Blake are names with which I have met. Zilpah, Huldah, Nabby, Basetha, Minnesota, and Semantha are New England ladies; while one gentleman of Springfield, lately married, caught a Tartia. One of the earliest enemies of the Mormons was Palatiah Allen; one of their first converts Preserved Harris. Taking the pedigree of Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, as that of a representative New England family, we shall find that his aunts were Lovisa and Lovina Mack, Dolly Smith, Eunice and Miranda Pearce; his uncles, Royal, Ira, and Bushrod Smith. His grandfather's name was Asael; of his great aunts one was Hephzibah, another Hypsebeth, and another Vasta. The prophet's eldest brother's name was Alvin; his youngest Don Carlos; his sister, Sophronia; and his sister-in-law, Jerusha Smith; while a nephew was christened Chilon. One of the nieces was Levira, and another Rizpah. The first wife of George A. Smith, the prophet's cousin, is Bathsheba, and his eldest daughter also bears this name.

In the smaller towns near Placerville, there is still a wide field for the discovery of character as well as gold; but eccentricity among the diggers here seems chiefly to waste itself on food. The luxury of this Pacific country is amazing. The restaurants and cafes of each petty digging-town put forth bills-of-fare which the "Trios Freres" could not equal for ingenuity; wine lists such as Delmonico's cannot beat. The facilities are great: except in the far interior or on the hills, one even spring reigns unchangeably--summer in all except the heat; every fruit and vegetable of the world is perpetually in season. Fruit is not named in the hotel bills-of-fare, but all the day long there are piled in strange confusion on the tables, Mission grapes, the Californian Bartlet pears, Empire apples from Oregon, melons--English, Spanish, American and Musk; peaches, nectarines, and fresh almonds. All comers may help themselves, and wash down the fruit with excellent Californian-made Sauterne. If dancing, gambling, drinking, and still shorter cuts to the devil have their votaries among the diggers, there is no employment upon which they so freely spend their cash as on dishes cunningly prepared by cooks--Chinese, Italian, Bordelais--who follow every "rush." After the doctor and the coroner, no one makes money at the diggings like the cook. The dishes smell of the Californian soil; baked rock-cod a la Buena Vista, broiled Californian quail with Russian River bacon, Sacramento snipes on toast, Oregon ham with champagne sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things--these were the dishes on the Placerville bill-of-fare in an hotel which had escaped the fire, but whose only guests were diggers and their friends. A few Atlantic States dishes were down upon the list: hominy, cod chowder--hardly equal, I fear, to that of Salem--sa.s.safras candy, and squash tart, but never a mention of pork and mola.s.ses, dear to the Ma.s.sachusetts boy. All these good things the diggers, when "dirt is plenty," moisten with Clicquot, or Heidsick cabinet; when returns are small, with their excellent Sonoma wine.

Even earthquakes fail to interrupt the triumphs of the cooks. The last "bad shake" was fourteen days ago, but it is forgotten in the joy called forth by the discovery of a thirteenth way to cook fresh oysters, which are brought here from the coast by train. There is still a something in Placerville that smacks of the time when tin-tacks were selling for their weight in gold.

Wandering through the only remaining street of Placerville before I left for the Southern country, I saw that grapes were marked "three cents a pound;" but as the lowest coin known on the Pacific sh.o.r.es is the ten-cent bit, the price exists but upon paper. Three pounds of grapes, however, for "a bit" is a practicable purchase, in which I indulged when starting on my journey South: in the towns you have always the hotel supply. If the value of the smallest coin be a test of the prosperity of a country, California must stand high. Not only is nothing less than the bit, or fivepence, known, but when fivepence is deducted from a "quarter," or shilling, fivepence is all you get or give for change--a gain or loss upon which Californian shopkeepers look with profound indifference.