Ocean to Ocean on Horseback Part 34

"My grist mill was never finished. Everything was stolen, even the stones. There is a saying that men will steal everything but a mile-stone and a mill-stone. They stole my mill-stones. They stole the bells from the Fort, and gate-weights; the hides they stole, and salmon barrels. I had two hundred barrels which I made for salmon. Some of the cannon at the fort were stolen. * * My property was all left exposed, and at the mercy of the rabble, when gold was discovered. My men all deserted me. I could not shut the gates of my Fort, and keep out the rabble. They would have broken them down. The country swarmed with lawless men. Emigrants drove their stock into my yard, and used my grain with impunity. Expostulation did no good. I was alone. There was no law."

In face of all these disadvantages he struggled on until farm helpers demanded ten dollars per day, then, a hopeless old man, he gave up the struggle, and in 1849, with his Indians, he moved into Hock Farm, little dreaming that his Fort was to be the nucleus for Sacramento, the second city as to size in California.

He retired, but his son took the reins out of the father's feeble hands, and staked out a town around the Old Fort, down to the embarcadero, and along the river front, naming the settlement Sacramento. The streets were laid out eighty feet wide, except the centre one, M street, which was one hundred feet in width. The purchasing of more than four lots by one person was discouraged.

At first Sacramento was a "city of tents, with its future on paper;"

but by April of that year, 1849, building lots were selling at from one thousand to three thousand dollars a piece; at that time there were twenty-five or thirty stores upon the embarcadero, and, in the vicinity of the Fort, eight or ten more. There was a hotel, a printing office, bakery, blacksmith's shop, tin-shop, billiard room, and bowling alley.

In that month of April, the city had the honor of becoming a port of entry.

By June of the same year, one hundred houses graced the city.

A few months later the city hotel was completed at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, and rented to Messrs. Fowler and Fry for five thousand dollars per month.

In 1850, the scourge of cholera broke out, carrying off one-fifth of those remaining in Sacramento. The city was full to overflowing with a transient population. Accommodations were scant and primitive, vice and disorder prevailed. The disease became rampant. Patients at the hospital were charged sixteen dollars per day. Then it was that the order of Odd Fellows came n.o.bly forward, setting to that plague-stricken district an example of charity and philanthropy long to be remembered, and accenting the fact "that simple duty has no place for fear!"

On February 25, 1854, Sacramento was designated as the seat of government of California. The dignity of being the State capital gave new life to the city. Her growth is instanced by the a.s.sessment on real estate, which rose from $5,400,000 in 1854, to $13,000,000 in twenty years.

When I rode through, the population was 21,400.

In 1853 the streets were planked, and provided with sewers. In 1854 a gas company was formed. The street railroad came in 1870. There were ten churches in the city as I found it.

The first public school came in 1855, the high school in 1856.

When I was there the city had sustained from time to time about forty daily papers and twenty-four weeklies.

The State Library is a brilliant feature of the place. Various large manufacturing interests thrive in the city. Its commerce is awe-inspiring.

Sacramento sent to the east in one year 90,000,000 pounds of fruit, her entire east-bound shipments being over 130,000,000 pounds.

The annual manufacturing and jobbing trade is over $60,000,000.

Looking at these statistics, one is reminded of the magic tent of Prince Ahmed. At first it was no bigger than a nut-sh.e.l.l. Surely it could hold nothing; but it did. People flocked to it. Surely it could not cover them;--but it did! it did!! The army flocked to it;--but the tent was elastic. It covered all; it sheltered all; it welcomed all.

Has not Sacramento proved itself the magic tent of the Golden Age, ready to cover, shelter, welcome the whole world should occasion require?

From Sacramento to San Francisco my route lay along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the river, and few halts were made between the two cities. I was anxious to reach my final destination, as a feeling of fatigue was now overcoming me, which, however, only served to stimulate and urge me forward. I pa.s.sed several places that strongly tempted a halt for refreshment and rest, and finally entered the Western Metropolis on the twenty-fourth of November, registering at the Palace Hotel.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

SAN FRANCISCO AND END OF JOURNEY.

San Francisco, the chief city on the Western Coast of North America, is in every respect a wonderful city, not least so in its origin and development. Not very long ago--less than a century--the Pacific Coast was almost an unexplored region. The great State of California--next to Texas, the largest in the Union--now teems with populous cities and new settlements, and produces meat and grain abundantly sufficient for the supply of a large portion of the country. It has a coast line on the Pacific Ocean of seven hundred miles and, extending from the coast, a breadth of three hundred and thirty miles. California has also the most wonderful gold fields of the world. They were discovered in the middle of the last century by the Jesuits, who kept the knowledge a secret.

In 1848, as previously stated, Captain Sutter found gold on the land of one of his farms, and the news of the discovery at once spread. The excitement extended throughout the Union and the "Argonauts of '49" came swarming to the gold fields. People ran about picking up the precious lumps as "hogs in a forest root for ground-nuts." The golden product of 1848, was $10,000,000; 1849, $40,000,000; and that of 1853, $65,000,000.

Silver mining has been attempted in many localities in the State, but generally with poor results. There are valuable deposits of iron ore, coal, copper, tin, platinum, manganese, asphalt, petroleum, lead and zinc. Fruits are abundant, of great size, and are sold in all the Eastern markets.

The const.i.tution of California requires a free school to be supported in each district six months in each year, and the system includes primary and grammar schools, high schools, evening schools, normal schools, technical schools, and the State University, which is free to both s.e.xes, and is a perpetual public trust. The schools of California are justly famous.

Upper California was discovered in 1538 by a Spanish navigator. In 1578, Sir Francis Drake visited it and gave it the name of New Albion. The Spaniards planted the first colony in 1768. The territory was purchased from Mexico by the United States in 1847 for $15,000,000. A const.i.tution was adopted in the same year, and in 1850, California, without ever having been under a territorial government, was admitted into the Union as a State.

The progress of California has been of the most substantial character.

Gold mining has become a staple industry, but in the agricultural capabilities of her soil lie the possibilities of her greatest wealth.

Among the most valuable of her industries in the future will be those of the orchard and the vineyard. The grape growers of the State can now sell their grapes with as much certainty as the farmer his wheat. There is sent to the Atlantic coast more wine than is imported from France, the heretofore wine market of the world.

In Central California a little peninsula juts out from the main land, a great harbor is on one side, a great ocean on the other. The lofty mountains, lower just here, form, as it were, a natural gateway to the great interior beyond.

Here, in 1836, an American named John P. Lease settled, and here, in time, a little town called San Francisco grew up around him. Two miles to the south loomed up the antiquated building of the Catholic Mission Dolores, with its pretty old gardens. The opposite sh.o.r.es of the bay presented a most beautiful park-like expanse: the native lawn, brilliant with flowers and dotted by eastward bending oaks, watered by the creeks of the Alameda, San Lorenzo, San Leandro, and their tributaries, and enclosed by the spurs of the Diablo Mountains.

San Francisco was on the soil of Mexico, under the flag of Anahuac, governed by an Alcalde and a sapient council, yet the spirit of the United States breathed in it, built its stout wooden houses, and thronged its busy wharves. Animated by this spirit, it was destined to become the metropolis of the Pacific, one of the noted cities of the globe.

Before the "Golden Age," while California was a peaceful settlement, of no especial importance, it was said that around San Francis...o...b..y there was raw material enough, of different types, to develop a new race.

San Francisco was not in the gold region, but it was the gate to that region.

Two weeks after Marshall first discovered the precious metal, a bag of it was brought to the city for a.n.a.lysis, and one day early in May, 1848, "Samuel Brennan, the Mormon leader, held a bottle of gold dust in one hand, and jubilantly swinging his hat in the other, pa.s.sed through the streets of San Francisco shouting, 'Gold! Gold!! Gold!!! from the American River!'"

This started the enthusiasm, the fever, the madness for gold.

Carson writes his sensations when first looking upon a well-filled bag of gold dust. He says:

"A frenzy seized my soul, unbidden my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps. * * Houses were too small for me to stay in. I was soon in the street in search of necessary outfits; piles of gold rose up before me at every step."

All yielded more or less to the subtle influence of the malady. Men hastened to arrange their affairs, dissolving partnerships, disposing of real estate, and converting other effects into ready means for departure.

Stores were rummaged for miners' tools.

One man offered as high as fifty dollars for a shovel. By the middle of June, San Francisco was without male population. The once bustling little town looked as if struck by a plague. Sessions of the town council were at an end. There were no church services. Stores were closed. Newspapers dropped out of existence. Merchandise lay unhandled on the docks. The sailors deserted the ships that lay at anchor in the bay.

One day a Peruvian bark came to anchor in the port. Amazed at the desolation which he beheld, the captain inquired the cause. He was answered, "Everybody has gone northward, where the valleys and mountains are of gold." Instantly upon hearing this marvellous a.s.sertion his own crew joined the innumerable throng.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW IN WOODWARD'S GARDENS. SAN FRANCISCO.]

The San Francisco _Star_ of May 27, 1848, says:

"Stores are closed and places of business vacated, a large number of houses are tenantless, various kinds of mechanical labor suspended or given up entirely, and nowhere the pleasant hum of industry salutes the ear as of late. * * Everything in San Francisco wears a desolate and sombre look; everywhere all is dull, monotonous, dead."

Apparently the Californian of that day was thoroughly imbued with the saying of the Cyclops, "The wise know nothing worth worshipping but wealth."

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was incorporated in 1847, to sail from New York to New Orleans and Chagres, and from Panama to such Pacific port as the Secretary of the Navy might designate. Later, when the existence of gold in her mines made California the cynosure of all eyes, San Francisco was decided upon as the western terminus of the route.

On October 6, 1848, the "California," the first vessel of this line, steamed out of New York harbor, with but a small number of pa.s.sengers.

As this ship was intended for use on the Pacific coast alone, she was obliged to take the tedious and perilous route through the Strait of Magellan to reach her destination. Arriving at Panama, she found the Isthmus apparently turned into pandemonium. The one time dingy, sleepy city of Panama appeared to have fallen entirely into the hands of the gold-seekers. Cholera had broken out with terrible malignity on the banks of the Chagres. The panic-stricken travellers were fleeing from the disease, some trying to reach the land of their desire by an old trail, others were trying to make some progress in boats called "longos," poled by naked negroes. The ma.s.s of the worn, weary, eager wayfarers, however, were waiting as best they might, for that vision of hope and comfort, the "steamer." At last she reached them, with accommodations for about one hundred. She was mobbed by the frantic men, and at last when she left port, over four hundred of them had embarked upon her, many a man braving that adventurous voyage, with only a coil of rope or a plank for a bed.