The Life of Bret Harte Part 7

There were many Jews in San Francisco, but none in the mines;--they alone of all the nations gathered in California kept to their ordinary occupations, chiefly the selling of clothes, and never looked for gold.

Even their dress did not change. "They are," writes a Pioneer, "exactly the same unwashed-looking, s...o...b..ry, slipshod individuals that one sees in every seaport town." But the Jew prospered, and was a good citizen.

Another Pioneer, who could look beneath the surface, said, "The Jew does honor to his name here. The pressure which elsewhere bows him to the earth is removed."[32]

The variety and mixture of races in California were without precedent, and San Francisco especially prided itself upon the barbaric aspect of its streets. Perhaps the Chinese were the most striking figures. The low-caste Chinamen wore full jackets and breeches of blue calico, and on their heads a huge wicker-work hat that would have made a good family clothes-basket.

The aristocratic Chinaman displayed a jacket of gay-colored silk, yellow satin breeches, a scarlet skull-cap with a gold k.n.o.b on top, and, in cold weather, a short coat of Astrakhan fur.

There was, of course, a Chinese quarter, and a district known as little Chili, where South Americans of every country could be found, with a mixture of Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands, and negroes from the South Seas. In July, 1850, there arrived a s.h.i.+p-load of Hungarian exiles, and somewhat later a company of Bayonnais from the south of France, the men wild and excitable in appearance, the women dark-skinned, large-eyed, and graceful in their movements.

There was a Spanish quarter where, as Bret Harte said, "three centuries of quaint customs, speech and dress were still preserved; where the proverbs of Sancho Panza were still spoken in the language of Cervantes, and the high-flown allusions of the La Manchian knight still a part of the Spanish Californian hidalgo's dream."

The Spanish women were usually attended by Indian girls, and their dress was coquettish and becoming. Their petticoats, short enough to display a well-turned ankle, were richly laced and embroidered, and striped and flounced with gaudy colors, of which scarlet was the most common. Their tresses fell in luxuriant plaits down their backs; and, in all the little accessories of dress, such as earrings, and necklaces, their costume was very rich. Its chief feature, the _reboso_, was a sort of scarf, like the mantilla of old Spain. This was sometimes twined around the waist and shoulders, and at other times hung in pretty festoons about the figure.

It was only in respect to their diversions that the Spanish had any influence upon the Americans. The gambling houses and theatres were largely in Spanish hands at first, and the _fandango_ was the national amus.e.m.e.nt in which the American miners soon learned to join.[33]

And yet the fundamental gravity of the Spanish nature, a gravity which is epitomized and immortally fixed in the famous portrait of Admiral Pareja by Velasquez, was as marked in California as at home. It is thus that Bret Harte describes Don Jose Sepulvida, the Knight Errant of the Foot-Hills: "The fading glow of the western sky through the deep, embrasured windows lit up his rapt and meditative face. He was a young man of apparently twenty-five, with a colorless, satin complexion, dark eyes, alternating between melancholy and restless energy, a narrow, high forehead, long straight hair, and a lightly pencilled mustache."

One is struck by the resemblance between Don Jose Sepulvida, and Culpeper Starbottle, the Colonel's nephew, whose tragic death the Reader will remember. Bret Harte thus depicts him: "The face was not an unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and lank and bilious to be altogether pleasant. The cheek-bones were prominent, and the black eyes sunken in their orbits. Straight black hair fell slantwise off a high but narrow forehead, and swept part of a hollow cheek. A long, black mustache followed the perpendicular curves of his mouth. It was on the whole a serious, even quixotic face, but at times it was relieved by a rare smile of such tender and even pathetic sweetness, that Miss Jo is reported to have said that, if it would only last through the ceremony, she would have married the possessor on the spot. 'I once told him so,' added that shameless young woman; 'but the man instantly fell into a settled melancholy, and has not laughed since.'"[34]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINERS' BALL

A. Castaigne, del.]

There were, in fact, many things in common between the Southerner and the Spaniard. They lived in similar climates, and the fundamental ideas of their respective communities were very much the same. The Southerner was almost as deeply imbued as the Spaniard with extreme, aristocratic notions of government and society; and he, like the Spaniard, was conservative, religious, dignified, courteous, chivalrous to women, brave, narrow-minded and indolent.

In _The Secret of Sobriente's Well_, this resemblance suddenly occurs to Larry Hawkins, who, in describing to Colonel Wilson, from Virginia, the character of his Spanish predecessor, the former owner of the _posada_ in which the Colonel lived, said: "He was that kind o' fool that he took no stock in mining. When the boys were whoopin' up the place and finding the color everywhere, he was either ridin' round lookin' up the wild horses he owned, or sittin' with two or three lazy peons and Injuns that was fed and looked after by the priests. Gos.h.!.+ Now I think of it, it was mighty like you when you first kem here with your n.i.g.g.e.rs. That's curous, too, ain't it?"

The hospitality of the Spanish Californian was boundless. "There is no need of an orphan asylum in California," wrote the American Alcalde at Monterey. "The question is not who shall be burdened with the care of an orphan, but who shall have the privilege of rearing it. An industrious man of rather limited means applied to me to-day for the care of _six_ orphan children. He had fifteen of his own;" and when the Alcalde questioned the prudence of his offer, the Spaniard replied, "The hen that has twenty chickens scratches no harder than the hen that has one."

A Pioneer, speaking from his own experience, said: "If you are sick there is nothing which sympathy can divine which is not done for you. This is as true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream; and all this from the heart!"[35]

Generosity and pride are Spanish traits. "The worst and weakest of them,"

remarks an English Pioneer, "has that indefinable something about him that lifts so immeasurably the beggar of Murillo above the beggar of Hogarth."[36] The Reader will remember how cheerfully and punctiliously Don Jose Sepulvida paid the wagers of his friend and servant, Bucking Bob.

A gambling debt was regarded by the Spaniards in so sacred a light that if he who incurred it was unable to pay, then, for the honor of the family, any relative, a G.o.dfather, or even one who had the misfortune to be connected by marriage with the debtor, was bound to discharge the obligation. Some Americans basely took advantage of this sentiment; and, in one case, an old Spanish lady was deprived of a vineyard, her only means of support, in order to preserve the reputation of a scapegrace nephew who had lost to an American at faro a greater sum than he possessed.

Some convenient and becoming articles of Spanish dress were adopted by the Americans, notably the sombrero and the serape, or horseman's cloak.

Jack Hamlin, as the Reader will remember, sometimes went a little further.

Thus, when he started on his search for the Sappho of Green Springs, he "modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful combination of a roquero's costume, and in loose white bullion-fringed trousers, red sash, jacket and sombrero, looked infinitely more das.h.i.+ng and picturesque than his original."

The profuse wearing of jewelry, even by men, was another foreign fas.h.i.+on which Americans adopted in the early years; so much so, in fact, that to appear in a plain and unadorned state was to be conspicuous. The jewelry thus worn was not of the conventional kind, but a sort of miner's jewelry, significant of the place and time. Ornaments were made from the gold in its native state by soldering into one ma.s.s many small nuggets, without any polish or other embellishment. Everybody carried a gold watch, and watch-chains were constructed upon a ma.s.sive plan, the links sometimes representing dogs in pursuit of deer, horses at full speed, birds in the act of flight, or serpents coiled and hissing. Scarf-pins were made from lumps of gold retaining their natural form and mixed with quartz, rose-colored, blue-gray, or white, according to the rock from which they were taken. The big "specimen ring" worn by the hero of _A Night on the Divide_ was an example.

Some Americans adhered to their usual dress which, in the Eastern States, was a sober suit of black; but usually the Pioneers discarded all conventional clothes, and appeared in a rough and picturesque costume much like that of a stage pirate. Indeed, it was impossible for any man in '49 to make his dress sufficiently bizarre to attract attention. The prevailing fas.h.i.+on included a red or blue flannel s.h.i.+rt, a "wide-awake"

hat of every conceivable shape and color, trousers stuffed into a huge pair of boots coming up above the knee, and a belt decorated with pistols and knives. More than one Pioneer landed in San Francisco with a rifle slung on his back, a sword-cane in his hand, two six-shooters and a bowie-knife in his belt, and a couple of small pistols protruding from his waistcoat pockets.

In the rainy season of '49, long boots were so scarce, and so desirable on account of the mud, that they sold for forty dollars a pair in San Francisco, and higher yet in Stockton. Learning of this, Eastern merchants flooded the market with top-boots a year later; but by that time the streets had been planked, the miner's costume was pa.s.sing out of fas.h.i.+on, and long boots were no longer in demand. These changes were greatly regretted by unconventional Pioneers, and even so early as 1850 they were lamenting "the good old times,"--just one year back,--before the tailor and the barber were abroad in the land.

Local celebrations were marked by more color and display than are usually indulged in by Americans. In 1851, on Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday, there was a procession in San Francisco headed by the Mayor in a barouche drawn by four white horses. Next came the fire engines of the city, each with a team of eight gray horses, and followed by a long train of firemen in white s.h.i.+rts and black trousers. Then came a company of teamsters mounted on their draught horses, and carrying gay banners; and finally a delegation of Chinamen, preceded by a Chinese band and bearing aloft a huge flag of yellow silk.

Hors.e.m.e.n, more or less intoxicated, and shouting like wild Indians, charged up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night, to the great discomfort of many and the fatal injury of some pedestrians. "On Sundays especially, one would imagine," a local newspaper remarks, "that a horde of Cossacks or Tartars had taken possession of the city."

"The Spaniard," Bret Harte says, "taught the Americans horsemans.h.i.+p, and they rode off with his cattle." The Americans usually adopted the Spanish equipment, consisting of a huge saddle, with c.u.mbrous leather saddle-flaps, stirrups carved from solid oak, heavy metal spurs, a bridle jingling with ornaments, and a cruel curb bit,--the whole paraphernalia being designed to serve the convenience and vanity of the rider without the least regard to the comfort of his beast. The Spanish manner of abrupt stopping, made possible by the severe bit, was also taken up by young Americans who loved to charge down upon a friend, halting at the last possible moment, in a cloud of dust, with the horse almost upon his haunches. This was Jack Hamlin's habit.

A popular figure in the streets of San Francisco was a black pony, the property of a constable, that stood most of the day, saddled and bridled, in front of his master's office. The pony's favorite diversion was to have his hoofs blacked and polished, and whenever a coin was placed between his lips, he would carry it to a neighboring boot-black, put, first, one fore-foot, and then the other, on the foot-rest, and, after receiving a satisfactory "s.h.i.+ne," would walk gravely back to his usual station. Even the dumb animals felt that something unusual was expected of them in California.

There were no harness horses or carriages in San Francisco in the early part of '49; and when they were introduced toward the end of that year, a touch of barbaric splendor marked the fas.h.i.+onable equipage of the hour. A pair of white horses with gilt trappings, drawing a light, yellow-wheeled buggy, was once a familiar sight in the streets of the city. The _demi-monde_ rode on horseback, in parties of two or three, and even of six or more, and the pace which they set corresponded with that of California life in general. The appearance of one of the most noted of these women is thus described by a Pioneer, the wife of a sea-captain: "I have seen her mounted on a glossy, lithe-limbed race-horse, one that had won for her many thousands on the race-course, habited in a close-fitting riding-dress of black velvet, ornamented with one hundred and fifty gold b.u.t.tons, a hat from which depended magnificent sable plumes, and over her face a short, white lace veil of the richest texture, so gossamer-like one could almost see the fire of pa.s.sion flas.h.i.+ng from the depths of her dark, l.u.s.trous eyes."[37]

Even the climate, the dry, bracing air, the cool nights, the aromatic fragrance of the woods, tended to quicken the pulse of the Argonauts, and to heighten the general exuberance of feeling.

Central California, the scene of Bret Harte's stories, is a great valley bounded on the west by the Coast Range of hills or mountains, which rise from two thousand to four thousand, and in a few places to five thousand feet, and on the east by the Foot-Hills. After the immigration, this valley furnished immense crops of wheat, vegetables and fruit; but in '49 it was a vast, uncultivated plain, free from underbrush or other small growth, and studded by ma.s.sive, spreading oaks, by tall plane trees, and occasionally by a gigantic redwood, sending its topmost branches two and even three hundred feet into the air. In the dry season, the surface was brown and parched, but as soon as the rains began, the wild gra.s.ses and wild oats gave it a rich carpet of green, sparkling with countless field flowers. The resemblance of the valley, in the rainy season at least, to an English park, was often spoken of by Pioneers who found in it a reminder of home.

On the eastern side this great central valley gradually merges into the Foot-Hills, the vanguards of the lofty mountain range which separates central California from Nevada. The Foot-Hills form what is perhaps the most picturesque part of the State, watered in the rainy season by numerous rocky, swift-flowing streams, the tributaries of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, and broken into those deep, narrow glens so often described in Bret Harte's poetry and prose. This was the princ.i.p.al gold-bearing region. The Foot-Hills extend over a s.p.a.ce about five hundred miles long and fifty wide, and from them arise, sometimes abruptly, and sometimes gradually, the snow-crowned Sierras.

Such is central California. A region extending from lat.i.tude 32 30' in the South to 42 in the North, and rising from the level of the Pacific Ocean to mountain peaks fifteen thousand feet high, must needs present many varieties of weather; but on the whole the State may be said to have a mild, dry, breezy, healthy climate. Except in the mountains and in the extreme northeast, snow never lies long, the earth does not freeze, and Winter is like a wet Spring during which the cattle fare much better than they do in Summer. The pa.s.sing of one season into the other was thus described by Bret Harte: "The eternal smile of the California Summer had begun to waver and grow fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were s.h.i.+fting to the south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer, and the rains would be here."

San Francisco has a climate of its own. Ice never forms there, and geraniums bloom throughout the Winter; but during the dry season, which lasts from May or June until September or October, a strong, cold wind blows in every afternoon from the ocean, dying down at sunset. The mercury falls with the coming of the wind, the rays of the sun seem to have no more warmth than moonbeams, the sand blows up in clouds, doors and windows rattle, and the city is swept and scourged. But fifty miles inland the air is still and balmy, and residents of San Francisco leave the city in Summer not to escape unpleasant heat, but to enjoy the relaxation of a milder and less stimulating climate. "In the interior one bright, still day follows another, as calm, as dreamy, as disconnected from time and s.p.a.ce as was the air which lulled the lotus-eaters to rest."[38] This evenness of temperature was amazing and delightful to the weather-beaten Pioneers from New England.

The Midsummer days are often intensely hot in the interior, but the nights are cool, and the atmosphere is so dry that the heat is not enervating.

Men have been seen hard at work digging a cellar with the thermometer at 125 F. in the shade; and sunstrokes, though not unknown, are extremely rare. Nothing decays or becomes offensive. Fresh meat hung in the shade does not spoil. Dead animal or vegetable matter simply dries up and wastes away.

In 1849 the rains were uncommonly severe, to the great discomfort of the Pioneers; and Alvarado, the former Spanish governor, explained the fact in all sincerity by saying that the Yankees had been accompanied to California by the devil himself. This explanation was accepted by the natives generally, without doubt or qualification. The streets of San Francisco, in that year, were like the beds of rivers. It was no uncommon thing to see, at the same time, a mule stalled in the middle of the highway, with only his head showing above the road, and an unfortunate pedestrian, who had slipped off the plank sidewalk, in process of being fished out by a companion. At the corner of Clay and Kearney Streets there once stood a sign, erected by some joker, inscribed as follows,--

This street is impa.s.sable, Not even jacka.s.sable!

But the rainy season is usually neither long nor constant. The fall of rain on the Pacific Slope is only about one third of the rainfall in the Atlantic States; and, before water was supplied artificially, the miner was often obliged to suspend operations for want of it. Frequently a day's rain would have been cheaply bought at the price of a million dollars; and even a good shower gave an impetus to business which was felt by the merchants and gamblers of San Francisco and Sacramento. It was observed that after a long drought dimes took the place of gold slugs upon the roulette and faro tables. Thus, even the weather was a speculation in Pioneer times.

And yet, notwithstanding the general mildness of the climate, extremes of cold, at high levels, are close at hand. Snow often falls to a depth of one or two feet within fifty miles of San Francisco. Near the head-waters of the Feather River the snow is sometimes twelve and even fifteen feet deep; and in December, 1850, eighteen men out of a party of nineteen, and sixty-eight of their seventy mules froze to death in one night. A snow-storm came up so suddenly, and fell with such fury, that their firewood became inaccessible, and they were obliged to burn their cabin; but even that did not save them.

Bret Harte has described a California snow-storm not only in _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_, but in several other stories, notably in _Gabriel Conroy_, _Snow-Bound at Eagle's_, and _A Night on the Divide_. It is interesting to know, as Mr. Pemberton tells us, that the description of the snow-storm in _Gabriel Conroy_ was written on a hot day in August.

Poker Flat was in Sierra County, and in March, 1860, the snow was so deep in that county that tunnels were dug through it as a picturesque and convenient means of access to local saloons. The storm which overwhelmed the Outcasts was no uncommon event. But when these storms clear off, the cold, though often intense, is not disagreeable, owing to the dryness of the air. "We are now working every fair day," wrote a miner in January, 1860, "and have been all the Winter without inconvenience. The long, sled-runner Norwegian snow-shoes are used here by nearly everybody. I have seen the ladies floating about, wheeling and soaring, with as much grace and ease of motion as swans on the bosom of a placid lake or eagles in the sun-lit air."

On the summit of the mountains the snow is perpetual, and on the easterly slopes it often attains the almost incredible depth, or height, of fifty feet. In _A Tale of Three Truants_, Bret Harte has described an avalanche of snow, carrying the Three Truants along with it, in the course of which they "seemed to be going through a thicket of underbrush, but Provy Smith knew that they were the tops of pine trees."

On the whole, the climate of California justified the enthusiasm which it aroused in the Pioneers, and which sometimes found an amusing expression.

The birth of twins to an immigrant and his wife, who had been childless for fifteen years, was triumphantly recorded by a San Jose paper as the natural result of even a short residence on the Pacific Slope. Large families and long life marked not only the Spaniards, but also the Mexicans and Indians. Families of fifteen, twenty, and even twenty-five children excited no surprise and procured no rewards of merit for the parents. In 1849 there was a woman living at Monterey whose children, all alive and in good health, numbered twenty-eight.

We read of an Indian, blind but still active at the age of one hundred and forty; and of a squaw "very active" at one hundred and twenty-six. Mr.

Charles Dudley Warner[39] a speaks of "Don Antonio Serrano, a tall, spare man, who rides with grace and vigor at ninety-three," and of an Indian servant "who was a grown man, breaking horses, when Don Antonio was an infant. This man is still strong enough to mount his horse and canter about the country. He is supposed to be about one hundred and eighteen."

This wonderful longevity was ascribed by Mr. Warner to the equable climate and a simple diet.

Ancient Mexicans and Indians figure occasionally in Bret Harte's stories.

There is, for example, Concepcion, "a wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf," who acts as servant to the Convert of the Mission; and, at the Mission of San Carmel, Sanchicha, in the form of a bundle, is brought in and deposited in a corner of the room. "Father Pedro bent over the heap, and distinguished in its midst the glowing black eyes of Sanchicha, the Indian centenarian of the Mission. Only her eyes lived.

Helpless, boneless, and jelly-like, old age had overtaken her with a mild form of deliquescence."

But it was not length of days,--it was feverish energy that the climate produced in the new race which had come under its influence. The amount of labor performed by the Pioneers was prodigious. "There is as much difference," wrote the Methodist preacher, Father Taylor, "between the muscular action of the California miner and a man hired to work on a farm, as between the aimless movements of a sloth and the pounce of the panther."

"We have," declared a San Francisco paper, "the most exhilarating atmosphere in the world. In it a man can do more work than anywhere else, and he feels under a constant pressure of excitement. With a sun like that of Italy, a coast wind as cool as an Atlantic breeze in Spring, an air as crisp and dry as that of the high Alps, people work on without let or relaxation, until the vital cord suddenly snaps. Few Americans die gradually here or of old age; they fall off without warning."