The Rush
Page 30
31 “An extremity has come”: ibid., p. 266.
32 “we enjoyed our pipes”: ibid., p. 271.
33 “So we have a Christmas dinner”: ibid., p. 273.
34 “Poyle and myself are too weak”: ibid., p. 276.
35 “WILLIAM, Infant son of LAMBKIN”: ibid., p. 285.
36 “pain in back very bad”: ibid., p. 309.
37 “old hunter, and used to a rough life”: ibid., p. 288.
38 “A series of circumstances & misfortunes”: ibid., p. 685.
39 “About 7 p.m. my comrade returned”: ibid., p. 309.
40 “I am now in a snap truly”: ibid., p. 324.
41 “Made a fire”: ibid., p. 335.
42 “I will soon have plenty to eat”: ibid., p. 342.
PART III: REALITY
Chapter Eleven: First Peeks at the Golden Land
1 “The sight of his white shirt”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 28.
2 “I’ll give you five dollars”: ibid., p. 29.
3 Fn “all kinds of animals”: Wyman, ed., Letters, p. 140.
4 “The present of this city”: Woods, Sixteen Months, p. 47. LC.
5 “Imagine a long room”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 39.
6 “Every new-comer in San Francisco”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 57.
7 “You speak to an acquaintance”: ibid., p. 112.
8 Taylor watched a dozen men: ibid., p. 60.
9 Fn Con men knew these stories: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 143.
10 “hurry and skurry”: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 200.
11 “It is impossible to witness this excess”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 114.
12 “People seem to be very near crazy”: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 38.
13 “The most busy streets in New York”: ibid., p 39.
14 “There never was a place”: ibid., p. 42.
15 Thomas wrote to a friend: ibid, p. 43.
16 “People lived more in a week”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 49.
17 “A man, on coming to California”: Taylor, Eldorado, v. 2, p. 64.
18 “You are right in thinking”: White, ed., Franklin Buck, p. 233.
19 “gigantic temptations” lurked: This passage and the other quotations from Farley come from “The Moral Aspect of California: A Thanksgiving Sermon,” by Charles A. Farley (delivered Dec. 1, 1850).
20 Fn A miner named Vicente Pérez Rosales: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 145.
21 His task was to exchange: Lavender, New Beginnings, p. 158.
22 Like barbers who found gold: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 143.
23 great numbers of young men: Wyman, ed., Letters, p. 27.
24 “the returned gold diggers were there”: McCollum, California, p. 122.
25 “Wrapped in rags were nuggets”: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 135.
26 “The immigrants would stop in amazement”: Downie, Hunting, p. 14.
27 Lord was “struck all aback”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 198.
28 “Everyone must do something”: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 37.
29 624 miners for every 1,000 people: Whaples, “California Gold Rush.”
30 “All were in a hurry”: McCollum, California, p. 159.
31 “Now is the time for making money”: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 123.
32 “as jolly as a clam at high water”: Starr, Barbarous Soil, p. 175.
33 “a cellar in the earth”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 58.
34 One man cornered the market: The candle wick and barley examples are both from Taylor, Eldorado, v. 2, p. 57.
35 “by scraping on a squeaky fiddle”: Barker, ed., Memoirs, p. 254.
36 chickens for $25 each: Lewis, Sea Routes, p. 94.
37 “We did not get much gold”: James Horner, “Adventures of a Pioneer,” p. 573.
38 Aboard the clipper ship America: Haskins, Argonauts, p. 47.
39 “I had never earned over one dollar”: McNeil, Travels, p. 20.
40 “As for the prospects of mining”: Delano, Correspondence, p. 20.
41 “Here were real, live miners”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 92.
42 “Four or five men were working”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 111.
43 “You hear of men”: Delano, Correspondence, p. 30.
44 “Now I will tell you what we have done”: Wyman, ed., Letters, p. 78.
45 “The labor of gold-digging”: Buffum, Six Months, p. 180.
46 “hardest work at home”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 162.
47 “It was altogether a scene”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 113.
48 A gold-seeker named Prentice Mulford: Mulford, Life, p. 105. Mulford reached the goldfields only in 1856, but many of his descriptions of the miners’ routine and their frame of mind apply to the pioneer days as well.
49 “a dog with a sore foot”: Clappe, The Shirley Letters, p. 54. Louise Clappe, a brilliant writer better known by her pseudonym, Dame Shirley, described life in the diggings in letters to her sister.
50 “scaring the Hogs out of my kitchen”: Ballou, “Hogs in My Kitchen,” pp. 42–46.
51 In a camp called Indian Bar: Clappe, The Shirley Letters, pp. 37–39.
Chapter Twelve: Hard Times
1 Fn “It is no uncommon thing”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 36.
2 “A mighty river taken up in a wooden trough”: Clappe, Letters, p. 162.
3 Mercury by the ton: Meldahl, Rough-Hewn Land, p. 38, and. Alpers et al., “Mercury Contamination,” online at http://tinyurl.com/mbqun8c.
4 Fn “pale, cadaverous faces”: Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, p. 61.
5 “like immensely long slimey sea-serpents”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 111.
6 “Prying up and breaking huge rocks”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 162.
7 “We work from five in the morning”: Fairchild, Letters, p. 77.
8 “a party of gentlemen sit playing poker”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 217.
9 “The fever and uncertainty of mining”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 81.
10 “I have seen a thousand dollars”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 190.
11 “It was strength, absolute brute force”: Delano, Journey, p. 242.
12 “They told about the heaps of dust”: The song was “The Returning Californian,” by James Pierpont.
13 “There seems to be but one way”: Delano, Correspondence, p. 24.
14 “The miseries of a miner”: Bancroft, California Inter Pocula, p. 228.
15 “I have myself seen dozens”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 186.
16 “Weather-beaten tars”: Taylor, Eldorado, v. 2, p. 9.
17 “only knew the difference”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 194.
18 In Coloma, two miners: John Caughey, The California Gold Rush, p. 35.
19 One grizzled loner: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 10.
20 “They were dancing when I went to sleep”: Clappe, Letters, p. 93.
21 Gambling was “a perfect mania”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 193.
22 “The character of the pioneers”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 59.
23 “stewed beans and flapjacks”: Shaw, Across the Plains, p. 151.
24 “Cramp is so common”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 229.
25 “I’ve lived on swine”: The lyrics to “The Lousy Miner” can be found in full in Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining, p. 89.
26 “Each squalid death”: Kevin Starr, Dream, p. 55.
27 “drawn up into a kind of ball”: Reid, Overland, p. 150.
28 Fn “The sensitiveness of the bodies”: Kenneth Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 5.
29 “Whole camps were sometimes buried”: Bancroft, Works, p. 231, fn 27.
30 “The bottom of the river is covered with gold”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 431.
31 “The whole current of the river”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 203.
32 “I have often been in a position”: ibid., p. 204.
33 “Rained all night lo
ng”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 170.
34 “the Methodist church turned around”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 41.
35 “The river seemed as if it had suddenly arisen”: ibid., p. 268.
36 “If he could blow a fife”: Levy, Elephant, p. 108.
37 “If I was a real Captain”: ibid., p. 109.
38 “Oh, what was your name in the states?”: Kowalewski, ed., Gold Rush, p. 204.
39 “It is all the same whether you go to church”: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 43.
40 “The glorious Fourth was ushered in”: Downie, Hunting, p. 13.
41 “There, sin is stealthy”: Farley, “Thanksgiving Sermon.”
42 “I have seen purer liquors”: Helper, Land of Gold, p. 68.
43 “a lot of badges running off”: Wisconsin Historical Society, http://tinyurl.com/qchyj7z.
44 “Gambling, drinking, and houses of ill fame”: Fairchild, Letters, p. 71.
45 Clothed in “nature’s robes”: Kurutz, “Popular Culture on the Golden Shore,” in Starr and Orsi, eds., Barbarous Soil, p. 293.
46 “It is fitted up like a palace”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 284.
47 “She greeted me with a fascinating smile”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 250.
48 “Every man thought every woman”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 71.
49 “unfortunates who make a trade”: Clappe, Letters, p. 21.
50 Some were “quite shameless”: Levy, Elephant, p. 163.
51 one shocked Philadelphia native wrote: Marston, ed., Records of a California Family, p. 170. LC.
52 “Look—a back door stands ajar”: Roberts, American Alchemy, p. 209.
Chapter Thirteen: At Ease in a Barbarous Land
1 “I am right glad to hear”: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 120.
2 “Will you not bring back?” Starr, Dream, p. 69.
3 “In San Francisco,” she wrote excitedly: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 120.
4 “The churches are very well attended”: ibid., p. 56.
5 “I suppose she thinks I am very wicked”: ibid., p. 68.
6 “There is no such thing as slander”: ibid., p. 56.
7 “You would be astonished”: ibid., p. 65.
8 “Your Father thinks it is no place”: ibid., p. 45.
9 “it is not proper for respectable ladies”: ibid., p. 128.
10 A “shrinking, timid, frail thing”: Clappe, Letters, p. 157.
11 “I have slept on tables”: ibid., p. 173.
12 “in that transcendental state of intoxication”: ibid., p. 195.
13 “I like this wild and barbarous life”: ibid., p. 198.
14 “I will give a dollar”: Kaufman, ed., Apron, p. 68. For Megquier’s nightmare, see p. 71.
15 “I get up and make the coffee”: ibid., p. 69.
16 “I cast my thoughts about me”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 68.
17 “Everybody had money”: ibid., p. 69.
18 “At one time I must have had”: ibid., p. 71.
19 Fn Married women in the early 1800s: The judgment that “the husband and the wife are one” was a paraphrase of a slightly more cumbersome observation by the eminent English jurist Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England. See v. 1, ch. 15.
20 “Sparta could not hold a candle to it”: Delano, Correspondence, p. 59.
21 “bending over the wash-tub”: Delano, Journey, p. 243.
22 “Smith and Brown, whom I had brought across”: ibid., p. 244.
23 “Oh, doom me not to slave and toil”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 224.
24 “Every man is his own porter”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 56.
25 “not to labor was degrading”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 371.
26 “LABOR IS RESPECTABLE”: Taylor, Eldorado, v. 2, p. 67.
27 “It was one intense scramble”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 66.
Chapter Fourteen: Taking the Bread from American Miners
1 “grisly bears”: Langworthy, Scenery, pp. 64, 66.
2 The word “racism”: Robert Miles, Racism (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 42.
3 “copper-hued Kanakas”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 118.
4 “Their hats are made of stiff splints”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 182.
5 “making coffee for the French people”: Hanna, ed., “Hogs in My Kitchen.”
6 Fn “The Frenchmen are at it again”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 332.
7 “I, for one, contend”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 243.
8 “It’s a shame”: Fairchild, Letters, p. 99.
9 “a grasping and avaricious spirit”: Taylor, Eldorado, p. 103.
10 “all those who were not American citizens”: Perkins, Three Years, p. 30.
11 two hundred men shouting “Hang them”: Buffum, Six Months, p. 84.
12 Chinese men “generally work in diggings”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 184.
13 “A dozen armed white men”: ibid., p. 182.
14 “They may offer to come into the union”: Colton, Three Years, p. 375.
15 In all but the smallest camps: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 164.
16 “no Black, or Mulatto person”: The 1850 law was quoted in The People v. George Hall, California Supreme Court, October, 1854, which is also the source for the footnote at the bottom of the page. See http://tinyurl.com/mvw2sen.
17 Indians had outnumbered whites: Albert Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier, pp. 120–24.
18 In November, 1848, Edward Buffum: Buffum, Six Months, p. 44.
19 “giving handfuls of gold”: Carson, Bright Gem of the Western Seas, p. 4.
20 John Marsh packed sugar: Lavender, Beginnings, p. 158.
21 “They make the most”: Browning, ed., Golden Shore, p. 58.
22 “There are at this time”: ibid., p. 157.
23 “A more filthy and disgusting”: Delano, Correspondence, p. 28.
24 “among the least intelligent”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 218.
25 “the inaptitude of the Indian”: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1996), pp. 82–93.
26 “Native Americans were hunted down”: Starr and Orsi, eds., Barbarous Soil, p. 6.
27 “the Indians are much sinned against”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 159.
28 “bound to be exterminated”: ibid., p. 220.
29 “Nine-tenths of the troubles”: Delano, Journey, p. 320.
30 “There will be safety only in a war”: “Our Indian Policy,” Daily Alta California, May 29, 1850. A PDF of the story is available at http://tinyurl.com/mtrybzc.
31 “A war of extermination”: Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, p. 279.
32 “a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque”: Mark Twain, Roughing It, ch. 16.
33 “Men assumed their natural shape”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 67.
34 life insurance companies refused: Shepherd B. Clough, A Century of American Life Insurance (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1970), p. 85.
35 Sonora is very dull: Perkins, Three Years, p. 314.
36 “Nothing fatal has taken place”: White, ed., Franklin Buck, p. 106.
37 “Yesterday one American shot another”: Christman, One Man’s Gold, p. 178.
38 “This is the worst country in the world”: Farley, “Thanksgiving Sermon.”
39 “It has been a lifelong source of regret”: Henry, ed., My Checkered Life, p. 47.
40 “a picture of universal human nature”: Borthwick, Three Years, p. 91.
41 “murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths”: Clappe, Letters, p. 145.
42 “A residence here at present”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 222.
43 “If a terrier catches a rat”: Helper, Land of Gold, p. 179.
44 “Our countrymen are the most discontented”: Clappe, Letters, p. 118.
45 “to make pleasant man’s stay on earth”: Mulford, Life, p. 142.
46 “The whole population of the mining country”: Langworthy, Scenery, p. 196.
47 Joseph Bruff heard the stor
y: Read and Gaines, eds., Gold Rush, pp. 404–6.
48 Alonzo Delano ventured out in search: Delano, Journey, p. 332.
49 “Gold Lake humbug”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 261.
50 Stoddard claimed he had been the first: Downie, Hunting, p. 178.
51 “a person of common sense”: Read and Gaines, eds., Gold Rush, p. 406.
52 “beautiful, white botyroidal crystals”: ibid., p. 419.
53 On the night of October 11: ibid., p. 442.
54 “It’s hard work writing home”: Mulford, Life, p. 118.
Chapter Fifteen: The Princess and the Mangled Hand
1 Matteson put his idea into practice: Kelley, Gold versus Grain, p. 27.
2 “living rivers to exhume the dead”: Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, p. 33.
3 “If a giant nozzle should be set”: Holliday, Rush for Riches, p. 272.
4 As technology improved, the hoses grew: Kelley, Gold versus Grain, p. 31.
5 “The velocity of the water”: Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, p. 36.
6 a writer from Scientific American marveled: “Hydraulic Gold Mining in California,” Scientific American, May 17, 1879, p. 314.
7 the governor-elect had to travel: Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, p. 48.
8 “The hills have been cut and scalped”: John Muir, The Mountains of California, ch. 15, online at http://tinyurl.com/14yh6of.
9 “a princess who has been captured”: J. S. Holliday cited this remark in his lecture “Failure Be Damned: The Origin of California’s Risk-taking Culture,” delivered May 3, 2000, at the Milken Institute Forum.
10 “There are now thousands of men”: Wyman, ed., Letters, p. 125.
11 “an excited and impatient audience”: Helper, Land of Gold, p. 101.
12 “all dried and withered”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 265.
13 “the swill is hot”: ibid., p. 236.
14 “Come here and see”: ibid., p. 239.
15 “the fewer to laugh”: ibid., p. 275.
16 California was “a beautiful prison”: Reid, Overland, p. 163.
17 “You may rely upon it”: Liles, ed., Journey, p. 430.
18 most miners would have done as well: Clay and Jones, “Migrating to Riches.”
19 By the reckoning of Rodman Paul: Paul, Gold: Beginning, p. 120, and more details in appendix B, pp. 349–52.