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XXXII

CALIFORNIA IN 1849

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 transformed a sleepy Mexican province into a bustling American State; for the report of the gold fields drew thousands of Americans, some going in overland wagon trains, some by way of the Isthmus of Panama, while others made the long voyage around the Horn. The story is a fascinating one in itself; Bret Harte's tales of the "Forty-niners" are classics of American literature; and the account given below has the interest of being written by one who apparently was an eye-witness of the events he described.

Although the romance of the California gold fields has an interest and importance all its own in our history, we must remember that in the development of the United States a similar scene has been enacted in other mining regions. Repeatedly the discovery of precious metals has built up a feverish mining camp in a desert; a mining camp in which labor is priceless, the cheapest commodities bring fabulous sums, and business methods and social or political relations are swept away for the time. In each of these cases the community has soon steadied itself, set up government, reëstablished ordinary standards of morality, and restored business to a normal level. But in California the task was most difficult; and accordingly all the greater honor is due the American citizens who reëstablished order. In the latter part of 1849 California's new citizens held a constitutional convention, drew up a state constitution, and applied for admission to the Union. At Washington in that year Northern and Southern statesmen were debating the division of the spoils of Mexico between freedom and slavery. California's demand for admission as a Free State introduced a new factor into the problem and helped to bring matters to a head.

The promising state of things in San Francisco shortly before described was now to be suddenly checked by means which, unpromising at first, ultimately led to the most extraordinary prosperity in the city. Early in the spring of

this year, occasional intelligence had been received of the finding of gold in large quantities among the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the particulars of which discovery we have already given. Small parcels of the precious metal had also been forwarded to San Francisco, while visitors from the mines, and some actual diggers arrived, to tell the wonders of the region and the golden gains of those engaged in exploring and working it. In consequence of such representations, the inhabitants began gradually, in bands and singly, to desert their previous occupations, and betake themselves to the American River and other auriferous parts of the great Sacramento Valley. Labor, from the deficiency of hands, rose rapidly in value, and soon all business and work, except the most urgent, was forced to be stopped. Seamen deserted from their ships in the bay and soldiers from the barracks. Over all the country the excitement was the same. Neither threats, punishment nor money could keep men to their most solemn engagements. Gold was the irresistible magnet that drew human souls to the place where it lay, rudely snapping asunder the feebler ties of affection and duty. Avarice and the overweening desire to be suddenly rich, from whence sprang the hope and moral certainty of being so, grew into a disease, and the infection spread on all sides, and led to a general migration of every class of the community to the golden quarters. The daily laborer, who had worked for the good and at the command of another, for one or two dollars a day, could not be restrained from flying to the happy spot where he could earn six or ten times the amount, and might possibly gain a hundred or even a thousand times the sum in one lucky day's chance. Then the life, at worst, promised to be one of continual adventure and excitement, and the miner was his own master. While this was the case with the common laborer, his employer, wanting his services, suddenly found his occupation at an end; while shopkeepers and the like, dependent on both, discovered themselves in the same predicament. The glow

ing tales of the successful miners all the while reached their ears, and threw their own steady and large gains comparatively in the shade. They therefore could do no better, in a pecuniary sense even, for themselves, than to hasten after their old servants, and share in their new labor and its extraordinary gains, or pack up their former business stock, and, travelling with it to the mines, open their new stores and shops and stalls, and dispose of their old articles to the fortunate diggers, at a rise of five hundred or a thousand per cent.

In the month of May it was computed that, at least one hundred and fifty people had left San Francisco, and every day since was adding to their number. Some were occasionally returning from the auriferous quarter; but they had little time to stop and expatiate upon what they had seen. They had hastily come back, as they had hastily gone away at first, leaving their household and business to waste and ruin, now to fasten more properly their houses, and remove goods, family, and all, at once to the gold region. Their hurried movements, more even than the words they uttered, excited the curiosity and then the eager desire of others to accompany them. And so it was. Day after day the bay was covered with launches filled with the inhabitants and their goods, hastening up the Sacramento. This state of matters soon came to a head; and master and man alike hurried to the placeres, leaving San Francisco, like a place where the plague reigns, forsaken by its old inhabitants, a melancholy solitude.

On the 29th of May the Californian published a flysheet apologizing for the future non-issue of the paper, until better days came, when they might expect to retain their servants for some amount of remuneration, which at present was impossible, as all, from the "subs" to the "devil" had indignantly rejected every offer, and gone off to the diggings. "The whole country," said the last editorial of the paper," from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds

with the sordid cry of gold! GOLD!! GOLD!!!while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and every thing neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick-axes, and the means of transportation to the spot where one man obtained one hundred and twenty-eight dollars' worth of the real stuff in one day's washing, and the average for all concerned is twenty dollars per diem!" On the 14th of June the California Star likewise ceased. In the explanatory fly-sheet, the editor simply and sadly said, that his paper "could not be made by magic, and the labor of mechanism was as essential to its existence as to all other arts." And as everybody was deserting him, why, the press and the paper stopped together - that was all. . . .

While San Francisco, like so many other parts of the country, was forsaken in the manner described in the foregoing chapter, the neighborhood of the American River was overflowing with people, all busily engaged in gold hunting. The miners by the middle of May were estimated to be about two thousand. In another month they had increased probably to three; and, two months later, their number was supposed to be about six thousand. From that period the arrival of persons at the different auriferous districts, which were known to extend over a large space of territory, was constant; but no sufficient materials existed to form a correct opinion of their total number. The vast majority of all the laboring classes in the country had certainly deserted their former pursuits, and had become miners, while a great many others- merchants and their clerks, shop-keepers and their assistants, lawyers, surgeons, officials in every department of the State, of the districts and in the towns, run-away seamen and soldiers, and a great variety of nondescript adventurers-likewise began the search for gold. The miners were by no means exclusively American. They consisted of every kindred and clan. There were already tame Indians, Mexicans from Sonora, Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands, settlers from Oregon, mixed with the

usual dash of Spanish, British, German and French adventurers that had for a long time existed in California. Later months were to bring other Mexicans, Chinese, Peruvians, and Chilians, and all these before the great impending immigration of Americans and Europeans.

At first the general gains of the miners, though great, were little compared to what shortly afterwards were collected.

When the minters knew a little better about the business and the mode of turning their labor to the most profitable account, the returns were correspondingly increased. At what were called the "dry diggings" particularly, the yield of gold was enormous. One piece of pure metal was found of thirteen pounds weight. The common instrument at first made use of was a simple butcher's knife; and as everything was valuable in proportion to the demand and supply, butchers' knives suddenly went up to twenty and thirty dollars apiece. But afterwards the pick and shovel were employed. The auriferous earth, dug out of ravines and holes in the sides of the mountains, was packed on horses, and carried one, two, or three miles, to the nearest water, to be washed. An average price of this washing dirt was, at one period, so much as four hundred dollars a cart load. In one instance, five loads of such earth sold for seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, which yielded, after washing, sixteen thousand dollars. Cases occurred where men carried the earth in sacks on their backs to the watering places, and collected eight to fifteen hundred dollars in a day, as the proceeds of their labor. Individuals made their five thousand, ten thousand, and fifteen thousand dollars in the space of only a few weeks. One man dug out twelve thousand dollars in six days. Three others obtained eight thousand dollars in a single day. But these, of course, were extreme cases.

The story has a shady as well as a bright side, and would be incomplete unless both were shown. There happened

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