I will speak of [San Francisco] here, as it was upon our arrival the 5th of July, and in another connection, as it was a few months after, when we passed through it on our return home. The population of all kinds, permanent residents, gold diggers on their way to the mines, and miscellaneous adventurers, was between six and seven thousand. There was a show of frame and brick buildings on one or two streets, some of them tolerably respectable in size and architecture, but most of them exhibiting evidence that they were put up in a hurry. Canvass houses and tents completed the landscape of the embryo city, and they were scattered about in profusion, occupying vacant lots and squares, here and there stretching off in some favored locality, and forming detached colonies. It was a ragged, novel scene. There were at least four thousand "dwellers in tents" and canvass houses. It was a busy population, bustling, full of excitement, of bright and buoyant hopes. With the newly arrived adventurer, there was a foretaste of what his imagination could easily convert into a self-possessed reality; there were the glimmerings, the assurances, of the full fruition of his most ardent expectations. The returned gold-diggers were there with their "piles," exhibiting the glittering "lumps" and bags of "scales" and "dust"; elated with their acquisitions; in some instances, giddy with their suddenly acquired wealth--opening to the imagination of the new comers rich "placers" and a wide field bestrewed with the object of their long and tedious journey; weaving upon a warp of reality a glittering woof of fancy. "Light comes, light goes," is an old adage, and it was well illustrated at San Francisco. There were prudent men among the returned gold diggers, but the majority of them were as reckless of their gain, the product of severe toil and privation, as if they had scooped it from the surface of the earth, instead of delving for it beneath. There was but little coin in circulation--no paper money of course--gold as it came from the mines was the principal medium of exchange and traffic. It was rated at sixteen dollars an ounce, and weighed in all manner of scales; many of them such as our apothecaries would not trust with their moderately high priced drugs. No body thought of disputing weights, or contending against "down weights," as some of our economical farmers would, when selling their coarse grains. There was not much difficulty growing out of infinitesimal, or homoeopathic fractions and divisions, for there were allopathic prices for everything. Liberality, profusion, was catching: those going to the mines, seeing how flush those were that had been and returned, depleted their consumptive purses as if they had been plethoric. The conclusion was, that when their money was gone, they had only to go out to the mines, stoop down, and pick up more. But ah! that stooping down, that creaking of joints under a new discipline--that forward leaning of the vertebra, till it described a half circle, and keeping it there until it would hesitate to go back to its place, like the bow which has been too long bent; that back-ache and head-ache; there was far less of fun in it, of play and poetry--it was, to tell the truth, more "like work" than had been taken into the account; as the reader shall be told, if his patience will continue with us in our adventures.
Most, of all we found in San Francisco, were from this country, though there was a sprinkling of Mexicans, Chileans, Peruvians, Chinese, Sandwich Islanders, and a very few from England and France. The Chinese were generally, carpenters, laborers, and keepers of rude shops and eating houses. They were not, I should judge, your real "celestials," but a kind of half way "outside barbarians," who acquired a little knowledge with the world, by dwelling in the commercial marts of China. The shop keepers were as keen as if they had taken lessons in our own Puritan, over-reaching, New England;and although the cooking in their eating houses, was generally of a strange hashmedley, I saw no "chop sticks,"--no mourners of the canine species, for their martyred companions; no veritable rat tails in their soups. The Chileans were generally traders and keepers of eating houses; were mostly harmless and inoffensive. The "Kanakers [Kanakas]," or Sandwich Islanders, were common laborers and porters. There were a few native Californians, not to exceed two hundred. The city government consisted of an alcalde, and some kind of city council; the municipal affairs were crude and undigested, as a matter of course; and yet there was a tolerable government, a security of life and property which could hardly have been anticipated; its strength and support being the character of a large majority of those suddenly thrown together, whose self-preservation depended upon the maintenance of law and order.
There were not less than one hundred vessels in port, mostly American; a few Chilean brigs. The number was rapidly accumulating. When a vessel reached there, it was soon deserted by its crew, and left with its officers; and in many instances officers and all, were off to the mines leaving the vessel to take care of itself. Sailors are proverbially fond of their pursuit--have usually a contempt for land service; but gold, its supposed easy acquisition--in this instance, prevailed over enlistments, engagement, and discipline.
Gold and gold digging absorbed everything. California was emphatically, a country of "one idea." It was there, the reign of Mammon,--all were his votaries, and they were as absorbed, as "set apart" for his service, as if bound by religious vows. There had been but little of systematic agricultural pursuits, since the breaking up of the mission establishments, many years previous, but, on the discovery of gold, this, as well as all other ordinary pursuits, was abandoned. In a semi-official letter, from Captain S. [ i.e ., Joseph] L. Folsom of the U.S. Army, serving in California, of date, September 18th, 1848, a little over seven months from the first discovery of gold, the following graphic sentence occurs:--
Villages and districts, where all had been bustle, industry and improvement, were soon left without a male population. Mechanics, merchants, lawyers, doctors, magistrates, were alike off to the mines, and all kinds of useful occupation, gold digging excepted, were apparently at an end. In most cases the crops were remarkably good; but they are generally lost for the want of laborers to secure them. In some parts of the country hundreds of acres of fine wheat will rot in the field from the improbability of getting white laborers. Vessels are left swinging idly at their anchors, while both captains and crews are at the mines. (1)
And all this had been increasing, with a rapid influx of adventurers from abroad, in the time that had intervened between the date of Capt. Folsom's letter, and the period of our arrival. There were but two branches of business, that to any great extent diverted from gold digging, and those, arbitrarily, were principally consequent upon it. Building, in the principal marts of the mining districts, had to be done of course, to shelter persons and property; and there was necessarily a carrying trade upon the waters of the bay and its tributaries. All this demanded the employment of labor, and the prices paid were enormous. They were regulated by the earnings in the mines;--no man would work for less than he supposed he could earn in gold digging, and many got much more than they would have got in the mines. There was a brisk commercial business going on upon the bay, the Rio Sacramento, the Rio San Joaquin, and their navigable tributaries, that flowed from the mining districts. Not less than one hundred steamboats, schooners, brigs, sloops, lighters and whale boats, were upon these waters, carrying forward miners, their tools and camp equipage. San Francisco was the focus, the temporary halting place of the great throng that came across the Isthmus, and arriving by sea, spread themselves over the extended gold region. It may well be imagined that in the mass so suddenly thrown together, there was bustle and excitement; parties were leaving the newly arrived vessels and pitching their tents for a few days of preparation, or stowing themselves away in the crowded and ill-provided hotels and boarding houses; others, who were allowed a few days' stay upon the vessels they came in, were trans-shipping, directly for Sacramento and Stockton. Squads of newly arrived adventurers, were gathering here and there, to listen to the stories of returned miners, and take their advice as to the most promising localities in the mining district, and the best mode of getting there. There was a "confusion of tongues" as in the building of the tower of Babel, for the greater portion of the world had their representatives there.
There was a novel method of brick making going on:--a large number of Mexicans and Chileans, were molding them from clay, 8 by 18 inches, and drying them in the sun. When laid in house-walls they were plastered on the inside with sand and clay, and made a tolerable good substitute for the ordinary burnt brick.
Prices in California is a hacknied theme, but I will give a few specimens of those that prevailed at the period of our arrival:--,
Third rate pine lumber, $400 pr. M., and brick, $70 pr. M. Shingles M.; carpenter and joiner's wages, from $16 to $20 pr. day; laborers, from $8 to $10 pr. day; carting, $2.00 pr. load, or from $25 to $30 pr. day; clerk's wages from $200 to $500 pr. month; cooks, from $200 to $250 pr. month; pork 37 1/2 cents pr. lb.; flour, from $10 to $15 pr. sack of 200 lbs.; Chilean and Oregon hams, 35 cts. pr. lb.; good butter, from $1.25 to $1.50 pr. lb.; cheese, 75 cts. pr. lb.; bread, from $12 to $15 pr. cwt.; potatoes, from $3 to $4 for 25 lbs.; milk, $2 pr. gallon.
Gambling in San Francisco, had commenced, and was somewhat flourishing, but it remained for us to see that on our return, rife, reckless; to an extent perhaps, existing no where else in the world. It is the worst feature--the plague spot--in the whole aspect of life in California.
(1)This letter, written from San Francisco to Major General Thomas S. Jesup, Quarter Master General, U.S. Army, is now in the T.W. Norris Collection in the Bancroft Library, endorsed as having been received at Washington on December 15, 1848. Released to the Washington Globe , it was widely reprinted, e.g ., in the New York Herald , December 24, 1848. [Return]