15: Chapter XV.
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San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer
digging as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied
daily between San Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento.
Passengers and gold from the southern mines came by the Stockton
boat; from the northern mines by Sacramento. In the evening when
these boats arrived, Long Wharf—there was but one wharf in San
Francisco in 1852—was alive with people crowding to meet the
miners as they came down to sell their "dust" and to "have a
time." Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding houses
or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious
adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on
the alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready
means, in the hope of being asked to take a meal at a
restaurant. Many were young men of good family, good education
and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents had been able to
support them during their minority, and to give them good
educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to
1853 there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the
class described. All thought that fortunes were to be picked
up, without effort, in the gold fields on the Pacific. Some
realized more than their most sanguine expectations; but for one
such there were hundreds disappointed, many of whom now fill
unknown graves; others died wrecks of their former selves, and
many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and
outcasts. Many of the real scenes in early California life
exceed in strangeness and interest any of the mere products of
the brain of the novelist.
Those early days in California brought out character. It was a
long way off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate
could go by Cape Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass
of pioneers crossed the plains with their ox-teams. This took
an entire summer. They were very lucky when they got through
with a yoke of worn-out cattle. All other means were exhausted
in procuring the outfit on the Missouri River. The immigrant,
on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a strange land, far
from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be
realized from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not
support a man long at California prices. Many became
discouraged. Others would take off their coats and look for a
job, no matter what it might be. These succeeded as a rule.
There were many young men who had studied professions before
they went to California, and who had never done a day's manual
labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once and went
to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some
supplied carpenters and masons with material—carrying plank,
brick, or mortar, as the case might be; others drove stages,
drays, or baggage wagons, until they could do better. More
became discouraged early and spent their time looking up people
who would "treat," or lounging about restaurants and gambling
houses where free lunches were furnished daily. They were
welcomed at these places because they often brought in miners
who proved good customers.
My regiment spent a few weeks at Benicia barracks, and then was
ordered to Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, then in Oregon
Territory. During the winter of 1852-3 the territory was
divided, all north of the Columbia River being taken from Oregon
to make Washington Territory.
Prices for all kinds of supplies were so high on the Pacific
coast from 1849 until at least 1853—that it would have been
impossible for officers of the army to exist upon their pay, if
it had not been that authority was given them to purchase from
the commissary such supplies as he kept, at New Orleans
wholesale prices. A cook could not be hired for the pay of a
captain. The cook could do better. At Benicia, in 1852, flour
was 25 cents per pound; potatoes were 16 cents; beets, turnips
and cabbage, 6 cents; onions, 37 ½ cents; meat and other
articles in proportion. In 1853 at Vancouver vegetables were a
little lower. I with three other officers concluded that we
would raise a crop for ourselves, and by selling the surplus
realize something handsome. I bought a pair of horses that had
crossed the plains that summer and were very poor. They
recuperated rapidly, however, and proved a good team to break up
the ground with. I performed all the labor of breaking up the
ground while the other officers planted the potatoes. Our crop
was enormous. Luckily for us the Columbia River rose to a great
height from the melting of the snow in the mountains in June, and
overflowed and killed most of our crop. This saved digging it
up, for everybody on the Pacific coast seemed to have come to
the conclusion at the same time that agriculture would be
profitable. In 1853 more than three-quarters of the potatoes
raised were permitted to rot in the ground, or had to be thrown
away. The only potatoes we sold were to our own mess.
While I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from
Indian wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in
the vicinity of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in
Washington Territory. They had generally acquired some of the
vices of civilization, but none of the virtues, except in
individual cases. The Hudson's Bay Company had held the
North-west with their trading posts for many years before the
United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still
retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort
Vancouver, when I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had
brought out the better qualities of the savages. Farming had
been undertaken by the company to supply the Indians with bread
and vegetables; they raised some cattle and horses; and they had
now taught the Indians to do the labor of the farm and herd. They
always compensated them for their labor, and always gave them
goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.
Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange
between the Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it
was silver coin. If an Indian received in the sale of a horse a
fifty dollar gold piece, not an infrequent occurrence, the first
thing he did was to exchange it for American half dollars. These
he could count. He would then commence his purchases, paying for
each article separately, as he got it. He would not trust any
one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that day
fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were
common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.
The Indians, along the lower Columbia as far as the Cascades and
on the lower Willamette, died off very fast during the year I
spent in that section; for besides acquiring the vices of the
white people they had acquired also their diseases. The measles
and the smallpox were both amazingly fatal. In their wild
state, before the appearance of the white man among them, the
principal complaints they were subject to were those produced by
long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit of game,
and over-eating. Instinct more than reason had taught them a
remedy for these ills. It was the steam bath. Something like a
bake-oven was built, large enough to admit a man lying down.
Bushes were stuck in the ground in two rows, about six feet long
and some two or three feet apart; other bushes connected the rows
at one end. The tops of the bushes were drawn together to
interlace, and confined in that position; the whole was then
plastered over with wet clay until every opening was filled.
Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was scooped out
so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of water.
These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big
spring, or pool of water. When a patient required a bath, a
fire was built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it.
The cavity at the front was then filled with water. When the
stones were sufficiently heated, the patient would draw himself
into the oven; a blanket would be thrown over the open end, and
hot stones put into the water until the patient could stand it
no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam bath and doused
into the cold stream near by. This treatment may have answered
with the early ailments of the Indians. With the measles or
smallpox it would kill every time.
During my year on the Columbia River, the smallpox exterminated
one small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced
others materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery
among them, until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took
the matter in hand and established a hospital. Nearly every
case he treated recovered. I never, myself, saw the treatment
described in the preceding paragraph, but have heard it
described by persons who have witnessed it. The decimation
among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital,
established for their benefit, was a Hudson's Bay building not a
stone's throw from my own quarters.
The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's
department, which occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the
captaincy of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay,
California. The notice reached me in September of the same
year, and I very soon started to join my new command. There was
no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage
on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red wood,
a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place
filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of
Humboldt Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in
preparing this lumber for the San Francisco market, and sailing
vessels, used in getting it to market, furnished the only means
of communication between Humboldt and the balance of the world.
I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before
I found a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing
the San Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated,
there had been but one wharf in front of the city in 1852—Long
Wharf. In 1853 the town had grown out into the bay beyond what
was the end of this wharf when I first saw it. Streets and
houses had been built out on piles where the year before the
largest vessels visiting the port lay at anchor or tied to the
wharf. There was no filling under the streets or houses. San
Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year
before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were
conspicuous for their number and publicity. They were on the
first floor, with doors wide open. At all hours of the day and
night in walking the streets, the eye was regaled, on every
block near the water front, by the sight of players at faro.
Often broken places were found in the street, large enough to
let a man down into the water below. I have but little doubt
that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in the
early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard
from since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to
write, found watery graves beneath the houses or streets built
over San Francisco Bay.
Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger
scale in city lots. These were sold "On Change," much as stocks
are now sold on Wall Street. Cash, at time of purchase, was
always paid by the broker; but the purchaser had only to put up
his margin. He was charged at the rate of two or three per
cent. a month on the difference, besides commissions. The sand
hills, some of them almost inaccessible to foot-passengers, were
surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots—a vara being a
Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices, but
were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to
many thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and
so did many such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit
purchasing before the final crash came. As the city grew, the
sand hills back of the town furnished material for filling up
the bay under the houses and streets, and still further out. The
temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon
gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of
the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the
largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San
Francisco again in 1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from
public view. The city had become staid and orderly.
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