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T h e D o n k ey i n H um a n H i s t o ry
The Donkey in
Human History
An Archaeological Perspective

Peter Mitchell

1
 1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Peter Mitchell 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work
 Acknowledgments

Books have multiple origins. In this case they include donkeys seen at the
seaside when very young, others observed carrying heavy loads or pulling
carts in Greece and Turkey as a student, those visited at the Island Farm Donkey
Sanctuary near Oxford with an enthusiastic small child, and still more encoun-
tered on a variety of holidays in the Mediterranean and beyond. From them,
and from a growing realization of the donkey’s marginalized status not only
within the contemporary world, but also that of the past, including far too often
the writings of archaeologists and others, this book has grown.
Numerous people have helped it to do so. First of all I should like to thank
those who provided me with additional reference material or images or facili-
tated my access to them: Matthew Adams, Guy Bar-Oz, Paul Collins, Mike de
Jongh, Frank Förster, Haskel Greenfield, Henriette Hafsaas Tsakos, Ana Lúcia
Herberts, Vasalia Isaakidou, Rudolph Kuper, Jürgen Lippe, Aren Maeir, Siyakha
Mguni, Chris Morton, David O’Connor, Eliezer Oren, Evangelia Pappi, John
Powell, Father Peter Powell, Mary Prendergast, Mesa Schumacher, Glenn
Schwartz, Alexandros Tsakos, Marijke van der Veen, and Andrew Wilson.
Wikimedia Commons and Flickr and their many contributors have provided
the majority of the illustrations that I have used and it is thus appropriate to put
on record my gratitude to them as organizations and as individuals. Thanks as
well to the generosity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library for making so much
of their holdings freely and straightforwardly available online, something that
many British institutions could usefully emulate.
Several colleagues kindly commented on part or all of the text ahead of pub-
lication, making suggestions that have enriched the final product, removing
errors and confusions along the way: Patrick Alexander, Christoph Bachhuber,
John Baines (who also kindly translated the hieroglyphic text in Figure 3.16),
Paul Collins, Amalia Nuevo Delaunay, Helena Hamerow, Vasalia Isaakidou,
Alistair Paterson (particularly for his final comment on Chapter 7), Patrick
Roberts, Bert Smith, Eleanor Standley, Angela Trentacoste, and Andrew Wilson.
Fiona Marshall, who may justly be called the doyen of donkey archaeology,
provided important comments that improved the paper on the impact of dis-
ease on the distribution of donkeys in sub-Saharan Africa that informs the last
section of Chapter 3. Sol Pomerantz constantly enquired after the book’s pro-
gress, and I am grateful to him for teaching Archaeology and Anthropology
undergraduates at St Hugh’s College so that I could focus on writing this book,
even if it does not bear the title that he (and Patrick Roberts) initially suggested.
vi Acknowledgments

Those who did not receive tutorials from me in Michaelmas 2016 and Hilary
2017 now know what I was doing with my time.
Additionally, I should like to thank Sam Lunn-Rockliffe for producing a ser-
ies of excellent maps with remarkable speed and efficiency; St Hugh’s College,
Oxford, the School of Archaeology of the University of Oxford, and the School
of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies of the University of the
Witwatersrand for the grants that covered the costs of reproducing many of the
illustrations that I have used; and everyone at Oxford University Press, especially
Georgina Leighton, Charlotte Loveridge, Clare Kennedy, Charles Lauder, Emma
Slaughter, and Gail Eaton, for the book’s transition from manuscript to what you
have before you. This is also the place to recognize with gratitude all those at the
Donkey Sanctuary (https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk) and in similar
organizations worldwide for the remarkable work that they undertake.
Running through all these acknowledgments are two threads: the good-
naturedness and generosity of scholarly collaboration across frontiers (discipli-
nary and national) and the benefits accruing from having the good fortune to
work in a setting where intellectual enquiry is prized and students of the high-
est quality arrive from all over the world. At a time when international partner-
ships, academic freedom, and even the very notion of belonging to a common
civilization that transcends political borders are threatened by nativism, nation-
alism, and the disparagement of scientific research, that generosity and those
benefits are all the more to be valued and defended. So, too, are the warmth and
support that come from family. This book would never have been begun with-
out the prompting and encouragement of my wife, Gloria, and it would not
have been completed without her comments (and drawings) or her always-
helpful critique. Like her, our daughter Chiara bravely endured countless even-
ings discussing one ‘donkeyfact’ after the other over the dinner table while
inputting observations of her own. Finally, even if they have yet to encounter a
donkey in the flesh, Falco and Luna provided considerable distraction and
guidance from behind my desk. To my family, as always, I am profoundly grate-
ful. Grazie mille, vi voglio tanto bene.
 Contents

List of Figures viii

List of Colour Plates xi
List of Tables xii
A Note on Nomenclature and Dating xiii

1. Why Donkeys? 1
2. Origins 14
3. Along and beyond the Nile 40
4. The Ancient Near East 72
5. The Classical World 108
6. The Triumph of the Mule 148
7. New Worlds for the Donkey 187
8. The Donkey’s Tale 224

Classical Authors Cited 245

References 246
Index 293
 List of Figures

Jacket image: An Attic Red Figure Ware rhyton (a ceremonial vessel for pouring libations)
in the form of a donkey’s head painted in the manner of the Sotades Painter
in Athens c.460–450 bc. Donkeys were strongly associated with the god
Dionysus and thus with the consumption of wine, making them an excellent
choice of motif for this kind of vessel. Photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen
and courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
1.1. Donkeys: a resource for the poor. 2
1.2. Evidence of the ‘animal trace’: (a) mule track, St Gotthard Pass;
(b) a post-medieval crotal bell. 8
2.1. Equid evolutionary relationships. 15
2.2. Map of wild ass populations. 18
2.3. The Nubian wild ass.  21
2.4. Generalized equid biology. 23
2.5. The mule.  27
2.6. Map of sites relevant to early donkeys in Africa. 38
3.1. Map of sites in Egypt. 41
3.2. The Libyan Palette. 42
3.3. Donkey burials, Abydos. 43
3.4. Donkeys working on an Egyptian farm.  45
3.5. Donkeys with packsaddles.  47
3.6. Riding a donkey.  47
3.7. Donkeys in the tomb of Ti.  48
3.8. Deir el-Medina.  50
3.9. A receipt for a donkey.  51
3.10. Riding the Seth animal. 53
3.11. Piercing the ‘donkey’, Edfu.  55
3.12. An Egyptian ship. 61
3.13. Donkey tethering holes.  62
3.14. Muhattah Yaqub. 64
3.15. Map of the donkey’s expansion in Africa. 67
3.16. Donkeys in the land of Punt. 69
3.17. The Lake Eyasi Basin. 70
4.1. Map of the Near East. 73
4.2. An Early Bronze Age donkey figurine. 75
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 List of Figures ix

4.3. Donkey and rider near the Dead Sea.  76

4.4. Donkeys in Gujarat.  77
4.5. Eastern Iran.  78
4.6. Donkeys in Chinese medicine.  80
4.7. The Taurus Mountains.  82
4.8. An onager rider. 88
4.9. Onagers.  88
4.10. A rein-ring, Ur. 91
4.11. The Umm el-Marra equid installations. 93
4.12. The Tel Haror bridle bit. 96
4.13. Tutankhamun in his chariot.  101
4.14. Refugees fleeing Lachish on mule-back.  103
4.15. An Iron Age camel.  104
4.16. Bronze Age tombs, Oman.  105
5.1. Map of the Mediterranean Basin. 109
5.2. The archetypal Greek landscape.  110
5.3. Donkey deposit at Dendra. 112
5.4. Cancho Roano sanctuary, Badajoz.  115
5.5. Map of the Roman Empire. 117
5.6. Pack-mules on Trajan’s Column.  120
5.7. The Biriciana fortress.  121
5.8. A Gallic reaping machine.  123
5.9. Pompeian flour mills.  124
5.10. The monument of Eurysaces. 125
5.11. A North African oil press.  127
5.12. The Roman walls, Tours.  130
5.13. The Mont Cenis Pass.  132
5.14. An Athenian wedding procession.  135
5.15. A Greek mule-cart.  136
5.16. A muleteer’s gravestone.  137
5.17. Mosaic from the Baths of the Carriage-Drivers, Ostia. 138
5.18. The Pantheon.  139
5.19. Donkey and camel dung, Myos Hormos. 140
5.20. Mons Claudianus.  141
5.21. An Olympic mule-cart victory. 143
5.22. A satyr on a donkey.  146
6.1. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.  150
x List of Figures

6.2. The Nativity.  152

6.3. The Alexamenos Graffito.  153
6.4. The Flight into Egypt. 155
6.5. A Muslim shaykh on his mule.  156
6.6. Map of the medieval world. 158
6.7. The value of the mule.  160
6.8. A Poitou donkey.  161
6.9. A donkey carrying wood.  162
6.10. A Roman streetscape.  167
6.11. Donkey deliveries, Marrakech.  170
6.12. A pozo de nieve, Valencia.  172
6.13. Spanish muleteers.  176
6.14. Maragatos.  177
6.15. The Trebbia Valley.  178
6.16. Map of the Silk and Salt Roads. 181
6.17. The Tea Horse Road.  183
6.18. Donkeys in the Sahara.  184
6.19. A donkey transporting salt.  185
7.1. Map of the Americas. 190
7.2. Potosí.  193
7.3. The Camino Real de Panamá.  195
7.4. A Brazilian mule train. 200
7.5. Map of the Caminho das Tropas. 201
7.6. A wagon on the Oregon Trail.  204
7.7. Mules and the mining industry.  206
7.8. Map of Indigenous North America. 207
7.9. Navajo mules.  208
7.10. Yellow Horse capturing mules. 211
7.11. Mules in the Andes.  213
7.12. Map of southern Africa. 214
7.13. Rural transport in Botswana.  217
7.14. An Australian donkey team. 219
7.15. Wild donkeys in Nevada.  221
8.1. Donkeys as an aid to development.  232
8.2. Donkey market, Kashgar.  233
8.3. The Animals in War Memorial.  234
8.4. Donkeys in modern Afghanistan.  243
 List of Colour Plates

1. The Somali wild ass. 

2. Donkeys among Sahelian pastoralists. 
3. Tomb reliefs, Beni Hasan. 
4. Jebel Uweinat.
5. The Abu Ballas Trail.
6. The North African ass.
7. An Ethiopian donkey depot. 
8. Kanesh. 
9. The Royal Standard of Ur. 
10. A donkey burial, Gath.
11. Timna. 
12. An Indian mule as tribute, Persepolis. 
13. A pack-donkey from Phaistos. 
14. Donkeys ploughing. 
15. Donkeys threshing fava beans. 
16. Feeding a donkey. 
17. A donkey harvesting grapes. 
18. Donkeys as pack animals. 
19. The procession of Dionysus. 
20. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. 
21. The Nativity. 
22. Anglo-Saxon donkeys.
23. Renaissance pack-mules. 
24. Sogdian merchants in China. 
25. Arrieros in Mexico. 
26. Wine merchants in Argentina.
27. The Monumento ao Tropeiro. 
28. Wayúu women on donkeys, Colombia.
29. Mule-drawn wagons, Stompiesfontein.
30. Karretjiemense. 
31. Tutankhamun’s mask. 
32. The Corsa degli asini, Ferrara. 
 List of Tables

2.1. African and Asian wild ass subspecies. 19

5.1. The relative efficiency of movement by donkey and boat in
the Bronze Age Aegean. 113
5.2. Comparative performance of animals using a packsaddle. 131
5.3. Comparative potential force and power of the
principal Old World portage and draught animals. 133
7.1. European imports traded at the fair of Xalapa (Jalapa),
Mexico, in the eighteenth century. 197
8.1. A donkey’s periodization of world history. 235
 A Note on Nomenclature and Dating

D onkeys and their offspring

The literature on donkeys is sometimes confusing because of the multiple

meanings held by some English words. In this book, ‘donkey’ is used solely with
reference to the domesticated form of Equus africanus. When bred with a horse
the resulting offspring are either mules or hinnies. I explain the difference
between the two in Chapter 2, but otherwise use ‘mules’ throughout. I refer to
the offspring of a donkey and an onager by the Sumerian word kúnga, as
explained in Chapter 4. I employ ‘wild ass’ when writing about the donkey’s
ancestors and their non-domesticated descendants in North Africa, and also
use this as a generic term for their close relatives, the non-domesticated Asiatic
wild ass (Equus hemionus) and kiang (Equus kiang). ‘Ass’ without further quali-
fication encompasses both donkeys and mules.

Native North Americans

How those of European descent refer to individuals and communities of

Indigenous (i.e. non-European) ancestry in the Americas, Australia, and
southern Africa is a vexed question. To distinguish humans from plants or ani-
mals I capitalize Indigenous and Native whenever they are employed for the
former, while recognizing the difficulties that their usage entails. I thus also prefer
‘Native American’ to ‘Indian’, even though the latter is used by some activist
groups and is not always offensive. For ease of comprehension I use the familiar
English names for individual groups where they exist, but provide below the
self-designations of those Native American populations north of the Río
Grande mentioned in Chapter 7.

Name as used in the text Self-designation(s)

Apache Ndé
Arapaho Inuna-Ina
Arikara Sahnish
Blackfoot Niitsítapi; Saokí-tapi-ksi
Cheyenne TsisTsisTsas
Comanche Nɨmɨnɨ
Crow Apsáaloke
Flathead Séliš
Hidatsa Hirá·ca; Awaxá?wi; Awatixá
xiv A Note on Nomenclature and Dating

Kiowa Ka’igwu
Lakota Lakota
Mandan Rųwą́?ka·ki
Naishan (Kiowa Apache) Na-I-Sha
Navajo Diné
Nez Perce Nimi’ipuu
Osage Wažáže
Shoshone Nɨmɨ, Nɨwɨ
Zuñi A·šiwi

Radio carb on dating

Radiocarbon dates underpin much of the chronology for the early part of the
donkey’s history. Because the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has
not remained constant, it is necessary to calibrate ‘raw’ radiocarbon determin-
ations in order to convert them into calendar years. The resulting calibrated
dates remain a probability distribution, rather than an absolute certainty, and
are normally expressed as a range such that there is a 95% chance of a sample’s
true age lying within the limits stated. Wherever possible, when directly citing
radiocarbon dates I provide the ‘raw’ date, its laboratory number, and the cali-
brated range according to the OxCal 4.2 program.
Plate 1. A Somali wild ass (Equus africanus somaliensis) photographed in the Basel
Zoo, Switzerland. Courtesy of Flickr and Tambako The Jaguar. CC-BY-ND 2.0.

Plate 2. Donkeys continue to be a vital mode of transport for many Sahelian and
Saharan pastoralists, as here in Chad. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and
Photokadaffi. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Plate 3. The arrival of an Asiatic group using donkeys to transport some of their pos-
sessions and children in the nineteenth-century bc tomb (BH3) of Khnumhotep II,
governor of the Oryx Nome at Beni Hasan, south of Cairo (after Lepsius 1849–59,
­volume 2, plate 133). Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Plate 4. The approach to Jebel Uweinat at the joint border of Egypt, Libya, and Sudan.
An Eleventh Dynasty inscription confirms an episodic Egyptian presence here at the
possible terminus of the Abu Ballas Trail. Courtesy of Frank Förster and copyright
R. Kuper, University of Cologne.
Plate 5. An ancient donkey path leads travellers toward an upright stone slab, one of
many cairns that guide movement along the Abu Ballas Trail in Egypt’s Western Desert.
Courtesy of Frank Förster and copyright R. Kuper, University of Cologne.

Plate 6. A North African wild ass (Equus africanus ‘atlanticus’) in a Roman mosaic now
in the Bardo Museum, Tunisia. Wild asses survived in the Maghreb until the early cen-
turies ad, although their contribution to the domestic donkey’s ancestry remains
unknown. Copyright Peter Mitchell.
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Plate 7. A donkey depot in Ethiopia. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Rod
Waddington. CC-BY-SA-2.0.

Plate 8. A view of the archaeological mound of Kültepe from the lower town (the
karum inhabited by Old Assyrian merchants) at the ancient site of Kanesh, central
Turkey. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Anadolu. CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Plate 9. The Royal Standard of Ur, showing multiple elite individuals going into battle
in war-carts pulled by kúnga (donkey–onager) hybrids. Dating to c.2600–2500 bc, this
shell and stone mosaic set in bitumen was probably originally attached to a wooden
box. It is now on display in the British Museum. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 10. The Early Bronze Age III articulated donkey skeleton found in situ in a pit
beneath the floor of a house at ancient Gath (Tell eṣ-Ṣāfī), Israel, with legs bound and
the head and neck removed and placed on its stomach. Copyright of the Tell eṣ-Ṣāfī/
Gath Project and published with permission of Haskel J. Greenfield and Aren M. Maeir.
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 We made a straight course of it across the plains for about thirty miles,
changing horses occasionally at some of the numerous wayside inns, and
passing numbers of wagons drawn by teams of six or eight mules or oxen,
and laden with supplies for the mines.
The ascent from the plains was very gradual, over a hilly country, well
wooded with oaks and pines. Our pace here was not so killing as it had
been. We had frequently long hills to climb, where all hands were obliged
to get out and walk; but we made up for the delay by galloping down the
descent on the other side.
The road, which, though in some places very narrow, for the most part
spread out to two or three times the width of an ordinary road, was covered
with stumps and large rocks; it was full of deep ruts and hollows, and roots
of trees spread all over it.
To any one not used to such roads or to such driving, an upset would
have seemed inevitable. If there was safety in speed, however, we were safe
enough, and all sense of danger was lost in admiration of the coolness and
dexterity of the driver as he circumvented every obstacle, but without going
one inch farther than necessary out of his way to save us from perdition. He
went through extraordinary bodily contortions, which would have shocked
an English coachman out of his propriety; but, at the same time, he
performed such feats as no one would have dared to attempt who had never
been used to anything worse than an English road. With his right foot he
managed a brake, and, clawing at the reins with both hands, he swayed his
body from side to side to preserve his equilibrium, as now on the right pair
of wheels, now on the left, he cut the “outside edge” round a stump or a
rock; and when coming to a spot where he was going to execute a difficult
maneuver on a piece of road which slanted violently down to one side, he
trimmed the wagon as one would a small boat in a squall, and made us all
crowd up to the weather side to prevent a capsize.
When about ten miles from the plains, I first saw the actual reality of
gold-digging. Four or five men were working in a ravine by the roadside,
digging holes like so many grave-diggers. I then considered myself fairly in
“the mines,” and experienced a disagreeable consciousness that we might
be passing over huge masses of gold, only concealed from us by an inch or
two of earth.
 As we traveled onwards, we passed at intervals numerous parties of
miners, and the country assumed a more inhabited appearance. Log-cabins
and clapboard shanties were to be seen among the trees; and occasionally
we found about a dozen of such houses grouped together by the roadside,
and dignified with the name of a town.
For several miles again the country would seem to have been deserted.
That it had once been a busy scene was evident from the uptorn earth in the
ravines and hollows, and from the numbers of unoccupied cabins; but the
cream of such diggings had already been taken, and they were not now
sufficiently rich to suit the ambitious ideas of the miners.
After traveling about thirty miles over this mountainous region,
ascending gradually all the while, we arrived at Hangtown in the afternoon,
having accomplished the sixty miles from Sacramento city in about eight
hours.
 CHAPTER VI

LOOKING FOR GOLD

T HE town of Placerville—or Hangtown, as it was commonly called—

consisted of one long straggling street of clapboard houses and log
cabins, built in a hollow at the side of a creek, and surrounded by high
and steep hills.
The diggings here had been exceedingly rich—men used to pick the
chunks of gold out of the crevices of the rocks in the ravines with no other
tool than a bowie-knife; but these days had passed, and now the whole
surface of the surrounding country showed the amount of real hard work
which had been done. The beds of the numerous ravines which wrinkle the
faces of the hills, the bed of the creek, and all the little flats alongside of it,
were a confused mass of heaps of dirt and piles of stones lying around the
innumerable holes, about six feet square and five or six feet deep, from
which they had been thrown out. The original course of the creek was
completely obliterated, its waters being distributed into numberless little
ditches, and from them conducted into the “long toms” of the miners
through canvas hoses, looking like immensely long slimy sea-serpents.
The number of bare stumps of what had once been gigantic pine trees,
dotted over the naked hillsides surrounding the town, showed how freely
the ax had been used, and to what purpose was apparent in the extent of the
town itself, and in the numerous log-cabins scattered over the hills, in
situations apparently chosen at the caprice of the owners, but in reality with
a view to be near to their diggings, and at the same time to be within a
convenient distance of water and firewood.
Along the whole length of the creek, as far as one could see, on the
banks of the creek, in the ravines, in the middle of the principal and only
street of the town, and even inside some of the houses, were parties of
miners, numbering from three or four to a dozen, all hard at work, some
laying into it with picks, some shoveling the dirt into the “long toms,” or
with long-handled shovels washing the dirt thrown in, and throwing out the
stones, while others were working pumps or baling water out of the holes
with buckets. There was a continual noise and clatter, as mud, dirt, stones,
and water were thrown about in all directions; and the men, dressed in
ragged clothes and big boots, wielding picks and shovels, and rolling big
rocks about, were all working as if for their lives, going into it with a will,
and a degree of energy, not usually seen among laboring men. It was
altogether a scene which conveyed the idea of hard work in the fullest sense
of the words, and in comparison with which a gang of railway navvies
would have seemed to be merely a party of gentlemen amateurs playing at
working pour passer le temps.
A stroll through the village revealed the extent to which the ordinary
comforts of life were attainable. The gambling-houses, of which there were
three or four, were of course the largest and most conspicuous buildings;
their mirrors, chandeliers, and other decorations, suggesting a style of life
totally at variance with the outward indications of everything around them.
The street itself was in many places knee-deep in mud, and was
plentifully strewed with old boots, hats, and shirts, old sardine-boxes,
empty tins of preserved oysters, empty bottles, worn-out pots and kettles,
old ham-bones, broken picks and shovels, and other rubbish too various to
particularize. Here and there, in the middle of the street, was a square hole
about six feet deep, in which one miner was digging, while another was
baling the water out with a bucket, and a third, sitting alongside the heap of
dirt which had been dug up, was washing it in a rocker. Wagons, drawn by
six or eight mules or oxen, were navigating along the street, or discharging
their strangely-assorted cargoes at the various stores; and men in
picturesque rags, with large muddy boots, long beards, and brown faces,
were the only inhabitants to be seen.
There were boarding-houses on the table-d’hôte principle, in each of
which forty or fifty hungry miners sat down three times a day to an oilcloth-
covered table, and in the course of about three minutes surfeited themselves
on salt pork, greasy steaks, and pickles. There were also two or three
“hotels,” where much the same sort of fare was to be had, with the extra
luxuries of a table-cloth and a superior quality of knives and forks.
The stores were curious places. There was no specialty about them—
everything was to be found in them which it could be supposed that any one
could possibly want, excepting fresh beef (there was a butcher who
monopolized the sale of that article).
 On entering a store, one would find the storekeeper in much the same
style of costume as the miners, very probably sitting on an empty keg at a
rickety little table, playing “seven up” for “the liquor” with one of his
customers.
The counter served also the purpose of a bar, and behind it was the usual
array of bottles and decanters, while on shelves above them was an
ornamental display of boxes of sardines, and brightly-colored tins of
preserved meats and vegetables with showy labels, interspersed with bottles
of champagne and strangely-shaped bottles of exceedingly green pickles,
the whole being arranged with some degree of taste.
Goods and provisions of every description were stowed away
promiscuously all round the store, in the middle of which was invariably a
small table with a bench, or some empty boxes and barrels for the miners to
sit on while they played cards, spent their money in brandy and oysters, and
occasionally got drunk.
The clothing trade was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews, who are
very numerous in California, and devote their time and energies exclusively
to supplying their Christian brethren with the necessary articles of wearing
apparel.
In traveling through the mines from one end to the other, I never saw a
Jew lift a pick or shovel to do a single stroke of work, or, in fact, occupy
himself in any other way than in selling slops. While men of all classes and
of every nation showed such versatility in betaking themselves to whatever
business or occupation appeared at the time to be most advisable, without
reference to their antecedents, and in a country where no man, to whatever
class of society he belonged, was in the least degree ashamed to roll up his
sleeves and dig in the mines for gold, or to engage in any other kind of
manual labor, it was a very remarkable fact that the Jews were the only
people among whom this was not observable.
They were very numerous—so much so, that the business to which they
confined themselves could hardly have yielded to every individual a fair
average California rate of remuneration. But they seemed to be proof
against all temptation to move out of their own limited sphere of industry,
and of course, concentrated upon one point as their energies were, they kept
pace with the go-ahead spirit of the times. Clothing of all sorts could be
bought in any part of the mines more cheaply than in San Francisco, where
rents were so very high that retail prices of everything were most
exorbitant; and scarcely did twenty or thirty miners collect in any out-of-
the-way place, upon newly discovered diggings, before the inevitable Jew
slop-seller also made his appearance, to play his allotted part in the newly-
formed community.
The Jew slop-shops were generally rattletrap erections about the size of a
bathing-machine, so small that one half of the stock had to be displayed
suspended from projecting sticks outside. They were filled with red and
blue flannel shirts, thick boots, and other articles suited to the wants of the
miners, along with Colt’s revolvers and bowie-knives, brass jewelry, and
diamonds like young Koh-i-Noors.
Almost every man, after a short residence in California, became changed
to a certain extent in his outward appearance. In the mines especially, to the
great majority of men, the usual style of dress was one to which they had
never been accustomed; and those to whom it might have been supposed
such a costume was not so strange, or who were even wearing the old
clothes they had brought with them to the country, acquired a certain
California air, which would have made them remarkable in whatever part of
the world they came from, had they been suddenly transplanted there. But
to this rule also the Jews formed a very striking exception. In their
appearance there was nothing at all suggestive of California; they were
exactly the same unwashed-looking, slobbery, slipshod individuals that one
sees in every seaport town.
During the week, and especially when the miners were all at work,
Hangtown was comparatively quiet; but on Sundays it was a very different
place. On that day the miners living within eight or ten miles all flocked in
to buy provisions for the week—to spend their money in the gambling-
rooms—to play cards—to get their letters from home—and to refresh
themselves, after a week’s labor and isolation in the mountains, in enjoying
the excitement of the scene according to their tastes.
The gamblers on Sundays reaped a rich harvest; their tables were
thronged with crowds of miners, betting eagerly, and of course losing their
money. Many men came in, Sunday after Sunday, and gambled off all the
gold they had dug during the week, having to get credit at a store for their
next week’s provisions, and returning to their diggings to work for six days
in getting more gold, which would all be transferred the next Sunday to the
gamblers, in the vain hope of recovering what had been already lost.
The street was crowded all day with miners loafing about from store to
store, making their purchases and asking each other to drink, the effects of
which began to be seen at an early hour in the number of drunken men, and
the consequent frequency of rows and quarrels. Almost every man wore a
pistol or a knife—many wore both—but they were rarely used. The liberal
and prompt administration of Lynch law had done a great deal towards
checking the wanton and indiscriminate use of these weapons on any slight
occasion. The utmost latitude was allowed in the exercise of self-defence.
In the case of a row, it was not necessary to wait till a pistol was actually
leveled at one’s head—if a man made even a motion towards drawing a
weapon, it was considered perfectly justifiable to shoot him first, if
possible. The very prevalence of the custom of carrying arms thus in a great
measure was a cause of their being seldom used. They were never drawn
out of bravado, for when a man once drew his pistol, he had to be prepared
to use it, and to use it quickly, or he might expect to be laid low by a ball
from his adversary; and again, if he shot a man without sufficient
provocation, he was pretty sure of being accommodated with a hempen
cravat by Judge Lynch.
The storekeepers did more business on Sundays than in all the rest of the
week; and in the afternoon crowds of miners could be seen dispersing over
the hills in every direction, laden with the provisions they had been
purchasing, chiefly flour, pork and beans, and perhaps a lump of fresh beef.
There was only one place of public worship in Hangtown at that time, a
very neat little wooden edifice, which belonged to some denomination of
Methodists, and seemed to be well attended.
There was also a newspaper published two or three times a week, which
kept the inhabitants “posted up” as to what was going on in the world.
The richest deposits of gold were found in the beds and banks of the
rivers, creeks, and ravines, in the flats on the convex side of the bends of
the streams, and in many of the flats and hollows high up in the mountains.
The precious metal was also abstracted from the very hearts of the
mountains, through tunnels drifted into them for several hundred yards; and
in some places real mining was carried on in the bowels of the earth by
means of shafts sunk to the depth of a couple of hundred feet.
 The principal diggings in the neighborhood of Hangtown were surface
diggings; but, with the exception of river diggings, every kind of mining
operation was to be seen in full force.
The gold is found at various depths from the surface; but the dirt on the
bed-rock is the richest, as the gold naturally in time sinks through earth and
gravel, till it is arrested in its downward progress by the solid rock.
The diggings here were from four to six or seven feet deep; the layer of
“pay-dirt” being about a couple of feet thick on the top of the bed-rock.
I should mention that “dirt” is the word universally used in California to
signify the substance dug, earth, clay, gravel, loose slate, or whatever other
name might be more appropriate. The miners talk of rich dirt and poor dirt,
and of “stripping off” so many feet of “top dirt” before getting to “pay-dirt,”
the latter meaning dirt with so much gold in it that it will pay to dig it up
and wash it.
The apparatus generally used for washing was a “long tom,” which was
nothing more than a wooden trough from twelve to twenty-five feet long,
and about a foot wide. At the lower end it widens considerably, and on the
floor there is a sheet of iron pierced with holes half an inch in diameter,
under which is placed a flat box a couple of inches deep. The long tom is
set at a slight inclination over the place which is to be worked, and a stream
of water is kept running through it by means of a hose, the mouth of which
is inserted in a dam built for the purpose high enough up the stream to gain
the requisite elevation; and while some of the party shovel the dirt into the
tom as fast as they can dig it up, one man stands at the lower end stirring up
the dirt as it is washed down, separating the stones and throwing them out,
while the earth and small gravel falls with the water through the sieve into
the “ripple-box.” This box is about five feet long, and is crossed by two
partitions. It is also placed at an inclination, so that the water falling into it
keeps the dirt loose, allowing the gold and heavy particles to settle to the
bottom, while all the lighter stuff washes over the end of the box along with
the water. When the day’s work is over, the dirt is taken from the “ripple-
box” and is “washed out” in a “wash-pan,” a round tin dish, eighteen inches
in diameter, with shelving sides three or four inches deep. In washing out a
panful of dirt, it has to be placed in water deep enough to cover it over; the
dirt is stirred up with the hands, and the gravel thrown out; the pan is then
taken in both hands, and by an indescribable series of maneuvers all the dirt
is gradually washed out of it, leaving nothing but the gold and a small
quantity of black sand. This black sand is mineral (some oxide or other salt
of iron), and is so heavy that it is not possible to wash it all out; it has to be
blown out of the gold afterwards when dry.
Another mode of washing dirt, but much more tedious, and consequently
only resorted to where a sufficient supply of water for a long tom could not
be obtained, was by means of an apparatus called a “rocker” or “cradle.”
This was merely a wooden cradle, on the top of which was a sieve. The dirt
was put into this, and a miner, sitting alongside of it, rocked the cradle with
one hand, while with a dipper in the other he kept baling water on to the
dirt. This acted on the same principle as the “tom,” and had formerly been
the only contrivance in use; but it was now seldom seen, as the long tom
effected such a saving of time and labor. The latter was set immediately
over the claim, and the dirt was shoveled into it at once, while a rocker had
to be set alongside of the water, and the dirt was carried to it in buckets
from the place which was being worked. Three men working together with
a rocker—one digging, another carrying the dirt in buckets, and the third
rocking the cradle—would wash on an average a hundred bucketfuls of dirt
to the man in the course of the day. With a “long tom” the dirt was so easily
washed that parties of six or eight could work together to advantage, and
four or five hundred bucketfuls of dirt a day to each one of the party was a
usual day’s work.
I met a San Francisco friend in Hangtown practising his profession as a
doctor, who very hospitably offered me quarters in his cabin, which I gladly
accepted. The accommodation was not very luxurious, being merely six feet
of the floor on which to spread my blankets. My host, however, had no
better bed himself, and indeed it was as much as most men cared about.
Those who were very particular preferred sleeping on a table or a bench
when they were to be had; bunks and shelves were also much in fashion;
but the difference in comfort was a mere matter of imagination, for
mattresses were not known, and an earthen floor was quite as soft as any
wooden board. Three or four miners were also inmates of the doctor’s
cabin. They were quondam New South Wales squatters, who had been
mining for several months in a distant part of the country, and were now
going to work a claim about two miles up the creek from Hangtown. As
they wanted another hand to work their long tom with them, I very readily
joined their party. For several days we worked this place, trudging out to it
when it was hardly daylight, taking with us our dinner, which consisted of
beefsteaks and bread, and returning to Hangtown about dark; but the claim
did not prove rich enough to satisfy us, so we abandoned it, and went
“prospecting,” which means looking about for a more likely place.
A “prospector” goes out with a pick and shovel, and a wash-pan; and to
test the richness of a place he digs down till he reaches the dirt in which it
may be expected that the gold will be found; and washing out a panful of
this, he can easily calculate, from the amount of gold which he finds in it,
how much could be taken out in a day’s work. An old miner, looking at the
few specks of gold in the bottom of his pan, can tell their value within a few
cents; calling it a twelve or a twenty cent “prospect,” as it may be. If, on
washing out a panful of dirt, a mere speck of gold remained, just enough to
swear by, such dirt was said to have only “the color,” and was not worth
digging. A twelve-cent prospect was considered a pretty good one; but in
estimating the probable result of a day’s work, allowance had to be made
for the time and labor to be expended in removing top-dirt, and in otherwise
preparing the claim for being worked.
To establish one’s claim to a piece of ground, all that was requisite was
to leave upon it a pick or shovel, or other mining tool. The extent of ground
allowed to each individual varied in different diggings from ten to thirty
feet square, and was fixed by the miners themselves, who also made their
own laws, defining the rights and duties of those holding claims; and any
dispute on such subjects was settled by calling together a few of the
neighboring miners, who would enforce the due observance of the laws of
the diggings. After prospecting for two or three days we concluded to take
up a claim near a small settlement called Middletown, two or three miles
distant from Hangtown. It was situated by the side of a small creek, in a
rolling hilly country, and consisted of about a dozen cabins, one of which
was a store supplied with flour, pork, tobacco, and other necessaries.
We found near our claim a very comfortable cabin, which the owner had
deserted, and in which we established ourselves. We had plenty of firewood
and water close to us, and being only two miles from Hangtown, we kept
ourselves well supplied with fresh beef. We cooked our “dampers” in New
South Wales fashion, and lived on the fat of the land, our bill of fare being
beefsteaks, damper, and tea for breakfast, dinner, and supper. A damper is a
very good thing, but not commonly seen in California, excepting among
men from New South Wales. A quantity of flour and water, with a pinch or
two of salt, is worked into a dough, and, raking down a good hardwood fire,
it is placed on the hot ashes, and then smothered in more hot ashes to the
depth of two or three inches, on the top of which is placed a quantity of the
still burning embers. A very little practice enables one to judge from the
feel of the crust when it is sufficiently cooked. The great advantage of a
damper is, that it retains a certain amount of moisture, and is as good when
a week old as when fresh baked. It is very solid and heavy, and a little of it
goes a great way, which of itself is no small recommendation when one eats
only to live.
Another sort of bread we very frequently made by filling a frying-pan
with dough, and sticking it upon end to roast before the fire.
The Americans do not understand dampers. They either bake bread,
using saleratus to make it rise, or else they make flapjacks, which are
nothing more than pancakes made of flour and water, and are a very good
substitute for bread when one is in a hurry, as they are made in a moment.
As for our beefsteaks, they could not be beat anywhere. A piece of an
old iron-hoop, twisted into a serpentine form and laid on the fire, made a
first-rate gridiron, on which every man cooked his steak to his own taste. In
the matter of tea I am afraid we were dreadfully extravagant, throwing it
into the pot in handfuls. It is a favorite beverage in the mines—morning,
noon, and night—and at no time is it more refreshing than in the extreme
heat of mid-day.
In the cabin two bunks had been fitted up, one above the other, made of
clapboards laid crossways, but they were all loose and warped. I tried to
sleep on them one night, but it was like sleeping on a gridiron; the smooth
earthen floor was a much more easy couch.
 CHAPTER VII

INDIANS AND CHINAMEN

W ITHIN a few miles of us there was camped a large tribe of Indians,

who were generally quite peaceable, and showed no hostility to the
whites.
Small parties of them were constantly to be seen in Hangtown,
wandering listlessly about the street, begging for bread, meat, or old
clothes. These Digger Indians, as they are called, from the fact of their
digging for themselves a sort of subterranean abode in which they pass the
winter, are most repulsive-looking wretches, and seem to be very little less
degraded and uncivilizable than the blacks of New South Wales.
They are nearly black, and are exceedingly ugly, with long hair, which
they cut straight across the forehead just above the eyes. They had learned
the value of gold, and might be seen occasionally in unfrequented places
washing out a panful of dirt, but they had no idea of systematic work. What
little gold they got, they spent in buying fresh beef and clothes. They dress
very fantastically. Some, with no other garment than an old dress-coat
buttoned up to the throat, or perhaps with only a hat and a pair of boots,
think themselves very well got up, and look with great contempt on their
neighbors whose wardrobe is not so extensive. A coat with showy linings to
the sleeves is a great prize; it is worn inside out to produce a better effect,
and pantaloons are frequently worn, or rather carried, with the legs tied
around the waist. They seemed to think it impossible to have too much of a
good thing; and any man so fortunate as to be the possessor of duplicates of
any article of clothing, puts them on one over the other, piling hat upon hat
after the manner of “Old clo.”
The men are very tenacious of their dignity, and carry nothing but their
bows and arrows, while the attendant squaws are loaded down with a large
creel on the back, which is supported by a band passing across the forehead,
and is the receptacle for all the rubbish they pick up. The squaws have also,
of course, to carry the babies; which, however, are not very troublesome, as
they are wrapped up in papoose-frames like those of the North American
Indians, though of infinitely inferior workmanship.
 They are very fond of dogs, and have always at their heels a number of
the most wretchedly thin, mangy, starved-looking curs, of dirty brindle
color, something the shape of a greyhound, but only about half his size. A
strong mutual attachment exists between the dogs and their masters; but the
affection of the latter does not move them to bestow much food on their
canine friends, who live in a state of chronic starvation; every bone seems
ready to break through the confinement of the skin, and their whole life is
merely a slow death from inanition. They have none of the life or spirit of
other dogs, but crawl along as if every step was to be their last, with a look
of most humble resignation, and so conscious of their degradation that they
never presume to hold any communion with their civilized fellow-creatures.
It is very likely that canine nature cannot stand such food as the Indians are
content to live upon, and of which acorns and grasshoppers are the staple
articles. There are plenty of small animals on which one would think that a
dog could live very well, if he would only take the trouble to catch them;
but it would seem that a dog, as long as he remains a companion of man, is
an animal quite incapable of providing for himself.
A failure of the acorn crop is to the Indians a national calamity, as they
depend on it in a great measure for their subsistence during the winter. In
the fall of the year the squaws are busily employed in gathering acorns, to
be afterwards stored in small conical stacks, and covered with a sort of
wicker-work. They are prepared for food by being made into a paste, very
much of the color and consistency of opium. Such horrid-looking stuff it is,
that I never ventured to taste it; but I believe that the bitter and astringent
taste of the raw material is in no way modified by the process of
manufacture.[1]
As is the case with most savages, the Digger Indians show remarkable
instances of ingenuity in some of their contrivances, and great skill in the
manufacture of their weapons. Their bows and arrows are very good
specimens of workmanship. The former are shorter than the bows used in
this country, but resemble them in every other particular, even in the shape
of the pieces of horn at the ends. The head of the arrow is of the orthodox
cut, the three feathers being placed in the usual position; the point, however,
is the most elaborate part. About three inches of the end is of a heavier
wood than the rest of the arrow, being very neatly spliced in with thin
tendons. The point itself is a piece of flint chipped down into a flat diamond
shape, about the size of a diamond on a playing-card; the edges are very
sharp, and are notched to receive the tendons with which it is firmly secured
to the arrow.
The women make a kind of wicker-work basket of a conical form, so
closely woven as to be perfectly water-tight, and in these they have an
ingenious method of boiling water, by heating a number of stones in the
fire, and throwing a succession of them into the water till the temperature is
raised to boiling point.
We had a visit at our cabin one Sunday from an Indian and his squaw.
She was such a particularly ugly specimen of human nature that I made her
sit down, and proceeded to take a sketch of her, to the great delight of her
dutiful husband, who looked over my shoulder and reported progress to her.
I offered her the sketch when I had finished, but after admiring herself in
the bottom of a new tin pannikin, the only substitute for a looking-glass
which I could find, and comparing her own beautiful face with her portrait,
she was by no means pleased, and would have nothing to do with it. I
suppose she thought I had not done her justice; which was very likely, for
no doubt our ideas of female beauty must have differed very materially.
Not many days after we had settled ourselves at Middletown, news was
brought into Hangtown that a white man had been killed by Indians at a
place called Johnson’s Ranch, about twelve miles distant. A party of three
or four men immediately went out to recover the body, and to “hunt” the
Indians. They found the half-burned remains of the murdered man; but were
attacked by a large number of Indians, and had to retire, one of the party
being wounded by an Indian arrow. On their return to Hangtown there was
great excitement; about thirty men, mostly from the Western States, turned
out with their long rifles, intending, in the first place, to visit the camp of
the Middletown tribe, and to take from them their rifles, which they were
reported to have bought from the storekeeper there, and after that to lynch
the storekeeper himself for selling arms to the Indians, which is against the
law; for however friendly the Indians may be, they trade them off to hostile
tribes.
It happened, however, that on this particular day a neighboring tribe had
come over to the camp of the Middletown Indians for the purpose of having
a fandango together; and when they saw this armed party coming upon
them, they immediately saluted them with a shower of arrows and rifle-
balls, which damaged a good many hats and shirts, without wounding any
one. The miners returned their fire, killing a few of the Indians; but their
party being too small to fight against such odds, they were compelled to
retreat; and as the storekeeper, having got a hint of their kind intentions
towards him, had made himself scarce, they marched back to Hangtown
without having done much to boast of.
When the result of their expedition was made known, the excitement in
Hangtown was of course greater than ever. The next day crowds of miners
flocked in from all quarters, each man equipped with a long rifle in addition
to his bowie-knife and revolver, while two men, playing a drum and a fife,
marched up and down the street to give a military air to the occasion. A
public meeting was held in one of the gambling-rooms, at which the
governor, the sheriff of the county, and other big men of the place, were
present. The miners about Hangtown were mostly all Americans, and a
large proportion of them were men from the Western States, who had come
by the overland route across the plains—men who had all their lives been
used to Indian wiles and treachery, and thought about as much of shooting
an Indian as of killing a rattlesnake. They were a rough-looking crowd;
long, gaunt, wiry men, dressed in the usual old-flannel-shirt costume of the
mines, with shaggy beards, their faces, hands, and arms as brown as
mahogany, and with an expression about their eyes which boded no good to
any Indian who should come within range of their rifles.
There were some very good speeches made at the meeting; that of a
young Kentuckian doctor was quite a treat. He spoke very well, but from
the fuss he made it might have been supposed that the whole country was in
the hands of the enemy. The eyes of the thirty States of the Union, he said,
were upon them; and it was for them, the thirty-first, to avenge this insult to
the Anglo-Saxon race, and to show the wily savage that the American
nation, which could dictate terms of peace or war to every other nation on
the face of the globe, was not to be trifled with. He tried to rouse their
courage, and excite their animosity against the Indians, though it was quite
unnecessary, by drawing a vivid picture of the unburied bones of poor
Brown, or Jones, the unfortunate individual who had been murdered,
bleaching on the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, while his death was still
unavenged. If they were cowardly enough not to go out and whip the
savage Indians, their wives would spurn them, their sweethearts would
reject them, and the whole world would look upon them with scorn. The
most common-sense argument in his speech, however, was, that unless the
Indians were taught a lesson, there would be no safety for the straggling
miners in the mountains at any distance from a settlement. Altogether he
spoke very well, considering the sort of crowd he was addressing; and
judging from the enthusiastic applause, and from the remarks I heard made
by the men around me, he could not have spoken with better effect.
The Governor also made a short speech, saying that he would take the
responsibility of raising a company of one hundred men, at five dollars a
day, to go and whip the Indians.
The Sheriff followed. He “cal’lated” to raise out of that crowd one
hundred men, but wanted no man to put down his name who would not
stand up in his boots, and he would ask no man to go any further than he
would go himself.
Those who wished to enlist were then told to come round to the other
end of the room, when nearly the whole crowd rushed eagerly forward, and
the required number were at once enrolled. They started the next day, but
the Indians retreating before them, they followed them far up into the
mountains, where they remained for a couple of months, by which time the
wily savages, it is to be hoped, got properly whipped, and were taught the
respect due to white men.
We continued working our claim at Middletown, having taken into
partnership an old sea-captain whom we found there working alone. It paid
us very well for about three weeks, when, from the continued dry weather,
the water began to fail, and we were obliged to think of moving off to other
diggings.
It was now time to commence preparatory operations before working the
beds of the creeks and rivers, as their waters were falling rapidly; and as
most of our party owned shares in claims on different rivers, we became
dispersed. A young Englishman and myself alone remained, uncertain as
yet where we should go.
We had gone into Hangtown one night for provisions, when we heard
that a great strike had been made at a place called ’Coon Hollow, about a
mile distant. One man was reported to have taken out that day about fifteen
hundred dollars. Before daylight next morning we started over the hill,
intending to stake off a claim on the same ground; but even by the time we
got there, the whole hillside was already pegged off into claims of thirty
feet square, on each of which men were commencing to sink shafts, while
hundreds of others were prowling about, too late to get a claim which
would be thought worth taking up.
Those who had claims, immediately surrounding that of the lucky man
who had caused all the excitement by letting his good fortune be known,
were very sanguine. Two Cornish miners had got what was supposed to be
the most likely claim, and declared they would not take ten thousand dollars
for it. Of course, no one thought of offering such a sum; but so great was
the excitement that they might have got eight hundred or a thousand dollars
for their claim before ever they put a pick in the ground. As it turned out,
however, they spent a month in sinking a shaft about a hundred feet deep;
and after drifting all round, they could not get a cent out of it, while many
of the claims adjacent to theirs proved extremely rich.
Such diggings as these are called “coyote” diggings, receiving their
name from an animal called the coyote, which abounds all over the plain
lands of Mexico and California, and which lives in the cracks and crevices
made in the plains by the extreme heat of summer. He is half dog, half fox,
and, as an Irishman might say, half wolf also. They howl most dismally, just
like a dog, on moonlight nights, and are seen in great numbers skulking
about the plains.
Connected with them is a curious fact in natural history. They are
intensely carnivorous—so are cannibals; but as cannibals object to the
flavor of roasted sailor as being too salt, so coyotes turn up their noses at
dead Mexicans as being too peppery. I have heard the fact mentioned over
and over again, by Americans who had been in the Mexican war, that on
going over the field after their battles, they found their own comrades with
the flesh eaten off their bones by the coyotes, while never a Mexican corpse
had been touched; and the only and most natural way to account for this
phenomenon was in the fact that the Mexicans, by the constant and
inordinate eating of the hot pepperpod, the Chili colorado, had so
impregnated their system with pepper as to render their flesh too savory a
morsel for the natural and unvitiated taste of the coyotes.
These coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay, from the great
amount of labor necessary before any pay-dirt can be obtained. They are
generally worked by only two men. A shaft is sunk, over which is rigged a
rude windlass, tended by one man, who draws up the dirt in a large bucket
while his partner is digging down below. When the bed rock is reached on
which the rich dirt is found, excavations are made all round, leaving only
the necessary supporting pillars of earth, which are also ultimately
removed, and replaced by logs of wood. Accidents frequently occur from
the “caving-in” of these diggings, the result generally of the carelessness of
the men themselves.
The Cornish miners, of whom numbers had come to California from the
mines of Mexico and South America, generally devoted themselves to these
deep diggings, as did also the lead-miners from Wisconsin. Such men were
quite at home a hundred feet or so under ground, picking through hard rock
by candlelight; at the same time, gold mining in any way was to almost
every one a new occupation, and men who had passed their lives hitherto
above ground, took quite as naturally to this subterranean style of digging
as to any other.
We felt no particular fancy for it, however, especially as we could not get
a claim; and having heard favorable accounts of the diggings on Weaver
Creek, we concluded to migrate to that place. It was about fifteen miles off;
and having hired a mule and cart from a man in Hangtown to carry our long
tom, hoses, picks, shovels, blankets, and pot and pans, we started early the
next morning, and arrived at our destination about noon. We passed through
some beautiful scenery on the way. The ground was not yet parched and
scorched by the summer sun, but was still green, and on the hillsides were
patches of wild-flowers growing so thick that they were quite soft and
delightful to lie down upon. For some distance we followed a winding road
between smooth rounded hills, thickly wooded with immense pines and
cedars, gradually ascending till we came upon a comparatively level
country, which had all the beauty of an English park. The ground was quite
smooth, though gently undulating, and the rich verdure was diversified with
numbers of white, yellow, and purple flowers. The oaks of various kinds,
which were here the only tree, were of an immense size, but not so
numerous as to confine the view; and the only underwood was the
mansanita, a very beautiful and graceful shrub, generally growing in single
plants to the height of six or eight feet. There was no appearance of
ruggedness or disorder; we might have imagined ourselves in a well-kept
domain; and the solitude, and the vast unemployed wealth of nature, alone
reminded us that we were among the wild mountains of California.
After traveling some miles over this sort of country, we got among the
pine trees once more, and very soon came to the brink of the high
mountains overhanging Weaver Creek. The descent was so steep that we
had the greatest difficulty in getting the cart down without a capsize, having
to make short tacks down the face of the hill, and generally steering for a
tree to bring up upon in case of accidents. At the point where we reached
the Creek was a store, and scattered along the rocky banks of the Creek
were a few miners’ tents and cabins. We had expected to have to camp out
here, but seeing a small tent unoccupied near the store, we made inquiry of
the storekeeper, and finding that it belonged to him, and that he had no
objection to our using it, we took possession accordingly, and proceeded to
light a fire and cook our dinner.
Not knowing how far we might be from a store, we had brought along
with us a supply of flour, ham, beans, and tea, with which we were quite
independent. After prospecting a little, we soon found a spot on the bank of
the stream which we judged would yield us pretty fair pay for our labor. We
had some difficulty at first in bringing water to the long tom, having to lead
our hose a considerable distance up the stream to obtain sufficient
elevation; but we soon got everything in working order, and pitched in. The
gold which we found here was of the finest kind, and required great care in
washing. It was in exceedingly small thin scales—so thin, that in washing
out in a pan at the end of the day, a scale of gold would occasionally float
for an instant on the surface of the water. This is the most valuable kind of
gold dust, and is worth one or two dollars an ounce more than the coarse
chunky dust.
It was a wild rocky place where we were now located. The steep
mountains, rising abruptly all round us, so confined the view that we
seemed to be shut out from the rest of the world. The nearest village or
settlement was about ten miles distant; and all the miners on the Creek
within four or five miles living in isolated cabins, tents, and brush-houses,
or camping out on the rocks, resorted for provisions to the small store
already mentioned, which was supplied with a general assortment of
provisions and clothing.
There had still been occasional heavy rains, from which our tent was but
poor protection, and we awoke sometimes in the morning, finding small
pools of water in the folds of our blankets, and everything so soaking wet,
inside the tent as well as outside, that it was hopeless to attempt to light a
fire. On such occasions, raw ham, hard bread, and cold water was all the
breakfast we could raise; eking it out however, with an extra pipe, and
relieving our feelings by laying in fiercely with pick and shovel.
The weather very soon, however, became quite settled. The sky was
always bright and cloudless; all verdure was fast disappearing from the
hills, and they began to look brown and scorched. The heat in the mines
during summer is greater than in most tropical countries. I have in some
parts seen the thermometer as high as 120 degrees in the shade during the
greater part of the day for three weeks at a time; but the climate is not by
any means so relaxing and oppressive as in countries where, though the
range of the thermometer is much lower, the damp suffocating atmosphere
makes the heat more severely felt. In the hottest weather in California, it is
always agreeably cool at night—sufficiently so to make a blanket
acceptable, and to enable one to enjoy a sound sleep, in which one recovers
from all the evil effects of the previous day’s baking; and even the extreme
heat of the hottest hours of the day, though it crisps up one’s hair like that of
a nigger, is still light and exhilarating, and by no means disinclines one for
bodily exertion.
We continued to work the claim we had first taken for two or three
weeks with very good success, when the diggings gave out—that is to say,
they ceased to yield sufficiently to suit our ideas: so we took up another
claim about a mile further up the creek; and as this was rather an
inconvenient distance from our tent, we abandoned it, and took possession
of a log cabin near our claim which some men had just vacated. It was a
very badly built cabin perched on a rocky platform overhanging the rugged
pathway which led along the banks of the creek.
A cabin with a good shingle-roof is generally the coolest kind of abode
in summer; but ours was only roofed with cotton cloth, offering scarcely
any resistance to the fierce rays of the sun, which rendered the cabin during
the day so intolerably hot that we cooked and ate our dinner under the shade
of a tree.
A whole bevy of Chinamen had recently made their appearance on the
creek. Their camp, consisting of a dozen or so of small tents and brush
houses, was near our cabin on the side of the hill—too near to be pleasant,
for they kept up a continual chattering all night, which was rather tiresome
till we got used to it.