Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 | Page 7

prophecy which a gipsy woman, whom his mother
met once in a country excursion, had uttered concerning himself--that
he should find riches he never wrought for, and leave a great fortune
behind him. In the faith of that prediction Bill had lived; and it was a

curious illustration of the sympathetic force inherent in a firm belief,
that both passengers and seamen, even those who affected to laugh at
the rest of what they called his wonderful yarns, entertained a secret
conviction in favour of that tale, and felt secure of gold-gathering in
Bill's company.
I am not certain that my own mind was entirely clear of a similar
impression, but the two among us who contemned loudest and believed
most devoutly, were the captain and his mate. They were brothers, and
of Jewish parentage; the rest of the family still hang about an
old-clothes and dyeing establishment in the neighbourhood of
Houndsditch. I made that discovery by an accidental glance at a torn
and mislaid letter before we left the Thames, and thought proper to
reserve it for private meditation. The relationship of the two was kept a
profound secret, for reasons best known to themselves; but to the eye at
least it was revealed by their striking resemblance, both being small,
spare, dingy-complexioned men, with keen, cunning eyes, and faces
that looked as hard and sharp as steel. Ever since they first heard of the
prophecy, they had half ridiculed, half flattered, and kept remarkably
familiar with Bill. That familiarity rather increased as we went up the
Sacramento. A goodly number we made on the deck of the Go-Ahead,
our only place of accommodation; and at length we reached the new
town, the golden city, which takes its name from the river, christened in
old times of Spanish voyaging by some discoverer for his Catholic
majesty, and which was to be the metropolis of the diggings. When I
first saw it, it consisted of some hundred huts and tents, a large
frame-house, in which an advertising board informed us there was an
ordinary, a gaming-table, and all manner of spirits; and a timber wharf,
somewhat temporarily put together, at which we landed. Yet the city
was rising, as cities rise only in the western hemisphere: broad streets
and squares were marked out; building was going forward on all sides;
while bullock-wagons, canoes, and steamers, brought materials by land
and water. The enterprise and vagrancy of all nations were there, as we
had seen them at San Francisco; and those not engaged in building the
town, were going off in caravans to the gold-gathering.
We fraternised with a company of Americans, who said they knew 'a

bluff that flogged creation for the real metal,' and sold us two spare
tents and a wagon, at a price marvellous to ask or pay. Our journey was
not far. It led along the course of the Sacramento, and towards evening
we came in sight of the diggings. A strange sight it was for one
accustomed to London streets and shops. The Sacramento runs through
a great inclined plane, sloping from the hill-country to the sea. Here
and there, it is covered with low coppice or underwood; but the greater
part is bare and sandy, or sprinkled over with thin, dry waving grass.
As far as the eye could reach upon the plain, and up the river-banks, the
smoke of fires was rising from hut, tent, and upturned wagon, which
served for temporary dwellings. Groups of men were hard at work in
small trenches, and numbers more stood with pan and cradle, washing
out the gold in the shallow creeks of the river. 'Our location,' as the
Americans called it, was an earthy promontory jutting far out into the
water. Close by its landward base we pitched our tents, turned up our
wagon--the bullocks that brought it belonged to the Americans, who
promised to sell us a share when they were killed--and commenced
operations. Digging out tenacious clay, and washing its sandy particles
for minute grains of gold, sleeping under canvas at night, and living on
half-cooked and not very choice provisions, have little in them of
interest worth relating. The first thing that struck me, was the silence
that prevailed among the workers. In a district so populous, scarcely a
sound was heard from tent, trench, or river. Caravan after caravan, as it
arrived, pitched its tents, and fell to work in the same quiet fashion. A
cynical character might have attributed this to the absence of all
feminine faces, for in my time there was not a woman at the diggings.
Incredible as it may seem to the fair ones themselves, they were not
missed; but nobody missed anything except gold. Relations parted; old
comrades left each other with scarcely a leave--taking in