As you approach them, the noise of the toms and of the swift current rushing through the narrow artificial channels into which it is forced, the hum of voices and the clink of spades among the gravel, rise up from the deep chasms to the very tops of the mountains that almost overhang them. The great height and steepness of these border-hills on many of the streams, make one of the grandest features of California scenery. Some of them are two, three, and four miles high, and they rise at angles varying from 45 to 60. You scramble down them, in the best way you can. Sometimes you feel as if your horse were about to turn a summerset, but you push back as forcibly as possible, by way of helping him to preserve the centre of gravity, and, with an occasional halt and then a rush--a detour to the right and another to the left--a fearful looking forward, and an anxious glance backward, you finally reach the bottom, and, drawing a free breath, once more look about you, and ascertain that, deep down as you are, there have been plenty before you; that Mary Avery keeps a boarding-house for miners on your right, and that Patrick Doyle has the best of liquors and wines for your refreshment in his shanty or tent, on your left; that John Smith, honest man, is a carpenter and no swindler, as he has so often been represented to be in the wicked world you have left up yonder; that he is ready to furnish the busy community about him, indiscriminately with "rockers , long toms , or coffins," (1) as their condition or convenience may require; that the National, or the United States, or the American hotel is kept in that rough one-story hut, which, as you pass, discloses dismal rents in its cotton walls and ceilings, and allures the thirsty wayfarer by a display of a bar, bristling with bottles--and that at the El Dorado or Pavilion are billiards and bowling, and, also, of course, the more spicy and earnest games in which men are wont to try their chances for fortune or ruin.
Twice, or may be thrice, as your horse loiters through the dusty street, you see a little garden spot, wherein a few cabbages, laden with dust, plead silently for water, and half a dozen rows of choked potatoes remonstrate against their hard lot. At the door of this shanty, you, perhaps, see a child, which looks much like the plants; for its mother cannot keep it clean, and she, perhaps, sits within, or may be by her husband's rocker in the bared bed of the river, working it while he shovels the earth. If it be at midday, the sun pours his light and heat into this gorge so fiercely that you scorch beneath his rays, and envy the men working in the cool stream or upon the damp gravel.
The heat will soon drive them to the shade for a couple of hours and then all will be still for the time, save the gurgling of water and the hum of voices occasionally raised above the drowsy noontide tone. Between two and three o'clock the miners straggle out again, the shoveling recommences, lazily at first, by two or three, who are soon joined by a score or two, and the familiar sounds return. The traders and publicans stand at their doors or lounge upon a bench just within; your horse is brought round looking sleepy and tired, you mount, ride through the stream, and push him up the opposite hill with a deal of toil and dust, and when you have gained the dry and sunny plain, wish you could again feel around you, if only for a moment, the dampness and coolness of the "Bar."
(1)A literal copy of a carpenter's sign in one of the mining towns. [Return]