Two days later Yank, Johnny, and I embarked aboard a small bluff-bowed sailboat, waved our farewells to Talbot standing on the shore, and laid our course to cross the blue bay behind an island called Alcatraz. Our boatman was a short, swarthy man, with curly hair and gold rings in his ears. He handled his boat well, but spoke not at all. After a dozen attempts to get something more than monosyllables out of him, we gave it up, and settled ourselves to the solid enjoyment of a new adventure.

The breeze was strong, and drove even our rather clumsy craft at considerable speed. The blue waters of the bay flashed in the sun and riffled under the squalls. Spray dashed away from our bows. A chill raced in from the open Pacific, diluting the sunlight.

We stared ahead of us, all eyes. The bay was a veritable inland sea; and the shores ahead of us lay flat and wide, with blue hazy hills in the distance, and a great mountain hovering in midair to our right. Black cormorants going upwind flapped heavily by us just above the water, their necks stretched out. Gulls wheeled and screamed above us, or floated high and light like corks over the racing waves. Rafts of ducks lay bobbing, their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. A salt 130 tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of the harbour entrance the shadows of caÑons were beginning most beautifully to define themselves.

Altogether it was a pleasant sail. We perched to windward, and smoked our pipes, and worked ourselves to a high pitch of enthusiasm over what we were going to see and do. The sailor too smoked his pipe, leaning against the long, heavy tiller.

The distant flat shores drew nearer. We turned a corner and could make out the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came up on it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a very solid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood on his feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of the mainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers. In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our very vertebrÆ. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolled on her keel, the sail flopped, a following wave slopped heavily over the stern, and the water swashed forward across our feet. Then we recovered a trifle, staggered forward, bumped twice more, and slid into the smoother deep water. The sailor grunted, and passed us a dipper. We bailed her out while he raised again the peak of his sail.

Shortly after this experience we glided up the reaches of a wide beautiful river. It had no banks, but was bordered by the tall reeds called tules. As far as the eye could reach, and that was very far when we climbed part way up the mast to look, these tules extended. League after 131 league they ran away like illimitable plains, green and brown and beautiful, until somewhere over the curve of the earth straight ahead they must have met distant blue hills. To the southeast there seemed no end but the sky.

From the level of the boat, however, we saw only a little way into the outer fringe. The water lay among the stalks, and mud hens with white bills pushed their way busily into intricate narrow unguessed waterways. Occasionally the hedge of the tules broke to a greater or lesser opening into a lagoon. These were like shallow lakes, in which sometimes grew clumps of grasses. They were covered with waterfowl. Never have I seen so many ducks and geese of all kinds. They literally covered the surface of the water, and fairly seemed to jostle each other as they swam busily to and fro, intent on some business of their own. Their comfortable, low conversational clucking and quacking was a pleasure to hear. When, out of curiosity, we fired a revolver shot, they rose in the air with a roar like that of a great waterfall, and their crossing lines of flight in the sky was like the multitude of midges in the sun. I remember one flock of snow-white geese that turned and wheeled, alternately throwing their bodies in shadow or in the sunlight, so that they flashed brilliantly.

As the sun declined, the wind fell. Fortunately the current in the river was hardly perceptible. We slipped along on glassy waters. Thousands upon thousands of blackbirds dipped across us uttering their calls. Against a saffron sky were long lines of waterfowl, their necks outstretched. A busy multitudinous noise of marsh birds 132 rose and fell all about us. The sun was a huge red ball touching the distant hills.

At last the wind failed us entirely, but the sailor got out a pair of sweeps, and we took turns rowing. Within a half hour we caught the silhouette of three trees against the sky, and shortly landed on a little island of solid ground. Here we made camp for the night.

All next day, and the days after, being luckily favoured by steady fair winds, we glided up the river. I could not but wonder at the certainty with which our sailor picked the right passage from the numerous false channels that offered themselves. The water was beautifully clear and sweet; quite different from the muddy currents of to-day. Shortly the solid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches of earth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grew sycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of the wild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything else was green and beautiful. We could see the tracks of many deer along the flats, but caught no sight of the animals themselves. At one place, however, we did frighten a small band of half a dozen elk. They crashed away recklessly through the brush, making noise and splashing enough for a hundred. Yank threw one of his little pea bullets after them; and certainly hit, for we found drops of blood. The sailor shook his head disparagingly over the size of the rifle balls, to Yank’s vast disgust. I never saw him come nearer to losing his temper. As a matter of fact I think the sailor’s contention had something in it; the long accurate weapon with its tiny missile 133 was probably all right when its user had a chance to plant the bullet exactly in a fatal spot, but not for such quick snap shooting as this. At any rate our visions of cheap fresh meat vanished on the hoof.

The last day out we came into a wide bottomland country with oaks. The distant blue hills had grown, and had become slate-gray. At noon we discerned ahead of us a low bluff, and a fork in the river; and among the oak trees the gleam of tents, and before them a tracery of masts where the boats and small ships lay moored to the trees. This was the embarcadero of Sutter’s Fort beyond; or the new city of Sacramento, whichever you pleased. Here our boat journey ended.

We disembarked into a welter of confusion. Dust, men, mules, oxen, bales, boxes, barrels, and more dust. Everything was in the open air. Tents were pitched in the open, under the great oaks, anywhere and everywhere. Next, the river, and for perhaps a hundred yards from the banks, the canvas structures were arranged in rows along what were evidently intended to be streets; but beyond that every one simply “squatted” where he pleased. We tramped about until we found a clear space, and there dumped down our effects. They were simple enough; and our housekeeping consisted in spreading our blankets and canvas, and unpacking our frying pan and pots. The entire list of our provisions consisted of pork, flour, salt, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and some spirits.

After supper we went out in a body to see what we could find out concerning our way to the mines. We did not even possess a definite idea as to where we wanted to go!

134In this quest we ran across our first definite discouragement. The place was full of men and they were all willing to talk. Fully three quarters were, like ourselves, headed toward the mines; and were consequently full of theoretical advice. The less they actually knew the more insistent they were that theirs was the only one sure route or locality or method. Of the remainder probably half were the permanent population of the place, and busily occupied in making what money they could. They were storekeepers, gamblers, wagon owners, saloonkeepers, transportation men. Of course we could quickly have had from most of these men very definite and practical advice as to where to go and how to get there; but the advice would most likely have been strongly tempered with self-interest. The rest of those we encountered were on their way back from the mines. And from them we got our first dash of cold water in the face.

According to them the whole gold-fable was vastly exaggerated. To be sure there was gold, no one could deny that, but it occurred very rarely, and in terrible places to get at. One had to put in ten dollars’ worth of work, to get out one dollars’ worth of dust. And provisions were so high that the cost of living ate up all the profits. Besides, we were much too late. All the good claims had been taken up and worked out by the earliest comers. There was much sickness in the mines, and men were dying like flies. A man was a fool ever to leave home but a double-dyed fool not to return there as soon as possible. Thus the army of the discouraged. There were so many of them, and they talked so convincingly, that I, for one, 135 felt my golden dream dissipating; and a glance at Johnny’s face showed that he was much in the same frame of mind. We were very young; and we had so long been keyed up so high that a reaction was almost inevitable. Yank showed no sign; but chewed his tobacco imperturbably.

We continued our inquiries, however, and had soon acquired a mass of varied information. The nearest mines were about sixty miles away; we could get our freight transported that far by the native Californian cargadores at fifty dollars the hundredweight. Or we could walk and carry our own goods. Or we might buy a horse or so to pack in our belongings. If we wanted to talk to the cargadores we must visit their camp over toward the south; if we wanted to buy horses we could do nothing better than to talk to McClellan, at Sutter’s Fort. Fifty dollars a hundred seemed pretty steep for freighting; we would not be able to carry all we owned on our backs; we decided to try to buy the horses.

Accordingly next morning, after a delicious sleep under the open sky, we set out to cover the three or four miles to Sutter’s Fort.

This was my first sight of the California country landscape, and I saw it at the most beautiful time of year. The low-rolling hills were bright green, against which blended the darker green of the parklike oaks. Over the slopes were washes of colour where the wild flowers grew, like bright scarves laid out in the sun. They were of deep orange, or an equally deep blue, or, perhaps, of mingled white and purple. Each variety, and there were many of them, seemed to grow by itself so that the colours were 136 massed. Johnny muttered something about “the trailing glory–banners of the hills”; but whether that was a quotation or just Johnny I do not know.

The air was very warm and grateful, and the sky extraordinarily blue. Broad-pinioned birds wheeled slowly, very high; and all about us, on the tips of swaying bushes and in the tops of trees, thousands of golden larks were singing. They were in appearance like our meadow-larks back east, but their note was quite different; more joyous and lilting, but with the same liquid quality. We flushed many sparrows of different sorts; and we saw the plumed quail, the gallant, trim, little, well-groomed gentlemen, running rapidly ahead of us. And over it all showered the clear warmth of the sun, like some subtle golden ether that dissolved and disengaged from the sleeping hills multitudinous hummings of insects, songs of birds, odours of earth, perfumes of flowers.

In spite of ourselves our spirits rose. We forgot our anxious figurings on ways and means, our too concentrated hopes of success, our feverish, intent, single-minded desire for gold. Three abreast we marched forward through the waving, shimmering wild oats, humming once more the strains of the silly little song to which the gold seekers had elected to stride:

137Even old Yank joined in the chorus, and he had about as much voice as a rusty windmill, and about the same idea of tune as a hog has of war.

We topped a rise and advanced on Sutter’s Fort as though we intended by force and arms to take that historic post.

PART III

THE MINES