The arrival of the fortnightly mail steamer was always the most important event of those early years; and Bret Harte thus described it: "Perhaps it is the gilded drinking saloon into which some one rushes with arms extended at right angles, and conveys in that one pantomimic action the signal of the semaph.o.r.e telegraph on Telegraph Hill that a side-wheel steamer has arrived, and that there are letters from home. Perhaps it is the long queue that afterward winds and stretches from the Post Office half a mile away. Perhaps it is the eager men who, following it rapidly down, bid fifty, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, and even five hundred dollars for favored places in the line. Perhaps it is the haggard man who nervously tears open his letter, and falls senseless beside his comrade."[56]

Thus far Bret Harte. In precisely the same vein, and with a literary finish almost equal, is the following paragraph from a contemporary newspaper: "This other face is well known. It is that of one who has always been at his post on the arrival of each steamer for the past six months, certain at each time that he will get a letter. His eye brightens for a moment as the clerk pauses in running over the yellow-covered doc.u.ments, but the clerk goes on again hastily, and then shakes his head, and says 'No letter.' The brightened eye looks sad again, the face pales, and the poor fellow goes off with a feeling in his heart that he is forgotten by those who knew and loved him at home."[57]

Anxious men sometimes camped out on the steps of the Post Office, the night before a mail steamer was due, in order that they might receive the longed-for letter at the earliest possible moment.

The coming of three women on a steamer from New York in 1850 was mentioned by all the newspapers as a notable event. In May of that year the "Sacramento Transcript" contained an advertis.e.m.e.nt, novel for California, being that of a "_Few_ fashionably-trimmed, Florence braid velvet and silk bonnets." A month later a Sydney ship arrived at San Francisco, having on board two hundred and sixty pa.s.sengers, of whom seventy were women. As soon as this vessel had anch.o.r.ed, there was a rush of bachelors to the Bay, and boat-loads of them climbed the ship's side, trying to engage housekeepers.

In 1851 women began to arrive in somewhat larger numbers, and the coming of wives from the East gave rise to many amusing, many pathetic and some tragic scenes. "You could always tell a month beforehand," said a Pioneer, "when a man was expecting the arrival of his real or intended wife. The old slouch hat, checked shirt and coa.r.s.e outer garments disappeared, and the gentleman could be seen on Sunday going to church, newly rigged from head to foot, with fine beaver hat, white linen, nice and clean, good broadcloth coat, velvet vest, patent-leather boots, his long beard shaven or neatly shorn,--he looked like a new man. As the time drew near many of his hours were spent about the wharves or on Telegraph Hill, and every five minutes he was looking for the signal to announce the coming of the steamer. If, owing to some breakdown or wreck, there was a delay of a week or two, the suspense was awful beyond description."[58]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE POST-OFFICE, SAN FRANCISCO, 1849-50

A. Castaigne, del.

Copyright by the Century Co.]

The great beards grown in California were sometimes a source of embarra.s.sment. When a steamer arrived fathers might be seen caressing little ones whom they now saw for the first time, while the children, in their turn, were frightened at finding themselves in the arms of such fierce-looking men. Wives almost shared the consternation of the children.

"Why don't you kiss me, Bessie?" said a Pioneer to his newly arrived wife.

She stood gazing at the hirsute imitation of her husband in utter astonishment. At last she timidly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "I can't find any place."

In March, 1852, forty four women and thirty-six children arrived on one steamer. The proportion of women Pioneers in that year was one to ten. By 1853, women were one in five of the population, and children one in ten.

Even so late as 1860, however, marriageable women were very scarce. In November of that year the "Calaveras Chronicle" declared: "No sooner does a girl emerge from her pantalettes than she is taken possession of by one of our bachelors, and a.s.signed a seat at the head of his table. We hear that girls are plenty in the cities below, but such is not the case here."

The same paper gives an account of the first meeting between a heroine of the Plains, and a Calaveras bachelor. "One day this week a party of immigrants came down the ridge, and the advance-wagon was driven by a young and pretty woman--one of General Allen's maidens. When near town the train was met by a butcher's cart, and the cart was driven by a young 'bach.' He, staring at the lovely features of the lady, neglected to rein his horse to one side of the road, and the two wagons were about to come in collision, when a man in the train, noticing the danger, cried out to the female driver, 'Gee, Kate, Gee!' Said Kate, 'Ain't I a-tryin', but the dog-gone horses won't gee!'"

Mrs. Bates speaks of two emigrant wagons pa.s.sing through Marysville one day in 1850, "each with three yoke of oxen driven by a beautiful girl. In their hands they carried one of those tremendous, long ox-whips which, by great exertion, they flourished to the admiration of all beholders. Within two weeks each one was married."

But it was seldom that a woman who had crossed the Plains presented a comely appearance upon her arrival. The sunken eyes and worn features of the newcomers, both men and women, gave some hint of what they had endured.[59]

A letter from Placerville, written in September, 1850, describes a female Pioneer who had not quite reached the goal. "On Tuesday last an old lady was seen leading a thin, jaded horse laden with her scanty stores. The heat of the sun was almost unbearable, and the sand ankle deep, yet she said that she had travelled in the same way for the last two hundred miles."

And then comes a figure which recalls that of Liberty Jones on her arrival in California: "By the side of one wagon there walked a little girl about thirteen years old, and from her appearance she must have walked many hundreds of miles. She was bare-footed and haggard, and she strode on with steps longer than her years would warrant, as though in the tiresome journey she had thrown off all grace, and had accustomed herself to a gait which would on the long marches enable her with most ease to keep up with the wagon."

The long journey across the Plains without the comforts and conveniences, and sometimes without even the decencies of life, the contact with rough men, the shock of hardships and fatigues under which human nature is apt to lose respect for itself and consideration for others,--these things inevitably had a coa.r.s.ening effect upon the Pioneer women. Only those who possessed exceptional strength and sweetness of character could pa.s.s through them unscathed. As one traveller graphically puts it: "A woman in whose virtue you might have the same confidence as in the existence of the stars above would suddenly horrify you by letting a huge oath escape from her lips, or by speaking to her children as an ungentle hostler would to his cattle, and perhaps listening undisturbed to the same style of address in reply."[60] The callousness which Liberty Jones showed at the death of her father was not in the least exaggerated by Bret Harte.

And yet these defects shrink almost to nothing when we contrast them with the deeds of love and affection silently performed by women upon those terrible journeys, and often spoken of with emotion by the Pioneers who witnessed them. A few of those deeds are chronicled in this book, many more may be found in the narratives and newspapers of the day, but by far the greater number were long since buried in oblivion. They are preserved, if preserved at all, only in the characters of those descended from the women who performed them.

Upon one thing the Pioneer women could rely,--the universal respect shown them by the men. In the roughest mining camp in California an unprotected girl would not only have been safe, she would have been treated with the utmost consideration and courtesy. Such was the society of which the English critic declared that "its laxity surpa.s.sed the laxity of savages!"[61]

In this respect, if in no other, the Pioneers insisted that foreigners should comply with their notions. Nothing, indeed, gave more surprise to the "Greasers" and Chilenos than the fact that they were haled into court and punished for beating their wives.

As to the Mexican and Chilean women themselves, it must be admitted that they contributed more to the gaiety than to the morality or peacefulness of California life. "Rowdyism and crime," remarked the "Alta California"

in October, 1851, "increase in proportion to the increase in the number of Senoritas. This is true in the mines as well as in the city."

At a horse-race that came off that year in San Francisco, we hear of the Senoritas as freely backing their favorite nags with United States money, though how it came into their possession, as a contemporary satirist remarked, "is matter of surmise only." This species of woman is portrayed by Bret Harte in the pa.s.sionate Teresa, who met her fate, in a double sense, in _The Carquinez Woods_, finding there both a lover and her death.

The Spanish woman of good family is represented by Dona Rosita in _The Argonauts of North Liberty_, by Enriquez Saltello's charming sister, Consuelo, and by Concepcion,[62] the beautiful daughter of the Commandante, who, after the death of her lover, the Russian Envoy, took the veil, and died a nun at Benicia.

Even before the discovery of gold a few Americans had married into leading Spanish families of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Sonoma. The first house erected on the spot which afterward became San Francisco was built in 1836 by Jacob P. Leese, an American who had married a sister of General Vallejo. It was finished July 3, and on the following day was "dedicated to the cause of freedom."

There is something of great interest in the union of races so diverse, and Bret Harte has touched upon this aspect of California life in the character of that unique heroine, Maruja. "'Hush, she's looking.' She had indeed lifted her eyes toward the window. They were beautiful eyes, and charged with something more than their own beauty. With a deep, brunette setting, even to the darkened cornea, the pupils were blue as the sky above them. But they were lit with another intelligence. The soul of the Salem whaler looked out of the pa.s.sion-darkened orbits of the mother, and was resistless."

Chapter and verse can always be given to confirm Bret Harte's account of California life, and even Maruja can be authenticated. A Lieutenant in the United States Navy, who visited the Coast in 1846, gave this description of the reigning belle of California: "Her father was an Englishman, her mother a Spanish lady. She was brunette, with an oval face, magnificent grey eyes, the corners of her mouth slightly curved downward, so as to give a proud and haughty expression to the face. She was tall, graceful, well-shaped, with small feet and hands, a dead shot, an accomplished rider, and amiable withal. I never saw a more patrician style of beauty and native elegance."[63]

California was always the land of romance, and Bret Harte in his poems and stories touched upon its whole history from the beginning. Even the visit of Sir Francis Drake in 1578 was not overlooked. In _The Mermaid of Light-House Point_, Bret Harte quotes a footnote, perhaps imaginary, from an account of Drake's travels, as follows: "The admiral seems to have lost several of his crew by desertion, who were supposed to have perished miserably by starvation in the inhospitable interior or by the hands of savages. But later voyagers have suggested that the deserters married Indian wives, and there is a legend that a hundred years later a singular race of half-breeds, bearing unmistakable Anglo-Saxon characteristics, was found in that locality."

This was the origin of the blue-eyed and light-haired mermaid of the story; and it is only fair to add that the tradition of which the author speaks was current among the Nicasio Indians who inhabited the valley of that name, about fifteen miles eastward of Drake's Bay.

Among the women who first arrived from the East by sea, there were many of easy virtue; but even these women--and here is disclosed a wonderful compliment to the s.e.x--were held by observing Pioneers to have an elevating influence upon the men. "The bad women," says one careful historian, "have improved the morals of the community. They have banished much barbarism, softened many hard hearts, and given a gentleness to the men which they did not have before."[64]

If this was the effect of the bad, what must have been the influence of the good women! Let the same writer tell us: "Soon after their arrival, schools and churches began to spring up; social circles were formed; refinement dawned upon a debauched and reckless community; decorum took the place of obscenity; kind and gentle words were heard to fall from the lips of those who before had been accustomed to taint every phrase with an oath; and smiles displayed themselves upon countenances to which they had long been strangers."

And then the author pays a tribute to woman which could hardly be surpa.s.sed: "Had I received no other benefit from my trip to California than the knowledge I have gained, inadequate as it may be, of woman's many virtues and perfections, I should account myself well repaid." In a ship-load of Pioneers which sailed from New York around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1850 there was just one woman; and yet her influence upon the men was so marked and so salutary that it was often spoken of by the Captain.

The effect of their peculiar situation upon the married women was not good. They were apt to be demoralized by the attentions of their men friends, and they were too few in number to inflict upon improper females that rigid ostracism from society, which, some cynics think, is the strongest safeguard of feminine virtue. Women in California were released from their accustomed restraints, they were much noticed and flattered; and, then, as a San Francis...o...b..lle exclaimed, "The gentlemen are so rich and so handsome, and have such superb whiskers!"

In a single issue of the "Sacramento Transcript," in July, 1850, are the following two items: "A certain madam now in this town buried her husband, and seventy-four hours afterward she married another." "One of our fair and lovely damsels had a quarrel with her husband. He took the stage for Stockton, and the same day she married another man."

Even those Pioneers who were fortunate enough to have their wives with them did not always appreciate the blessing. Being absorbed in business they often felt hampered by obligations from which their bachelor rivals were free, or perhaps, they chafed at the wholesome restraint imposed upon a married man in a community of unmarried persons. There was a dangerous tendency among California husbands to permit their friends to look after their wives. On this subject Professor Royce very acutely remarks: "The family grows best in a garden with its kind. When family life does not involve healthy friendship with other families, it is likely to be injured by unhealthy if well-meaning friendships with wanderers." This is a sentiment which Brown of Calaveras would have echoed.

Men with attractive wives were apt to be uncomfortably situated in California. It is matter of history how The Bell-Ringer of Angel's protected his young and pretty spouse from dangerous communications: "When I married my wife and brought her down here, knowin' this yer camp, I sez: 'No flirtin', no foolin', no philanderin' here, my dear! You're young and don't know the ways o' men. The first man I see you talking with, I shoot.'"

In 1851, there was a man named Crockett whose predicament was something like that of the Bell-Ringer, and still more like that of Brown of Calaveras, for he not only had a very handsome wife, but it was his additional misfortune to keep a tavern on the road between Sacramento and Salmon Falls. It was not unusual for a dozen or more bearded miners to be gazing at Mrs. Crockett or watching for an opportunity to speak with her.

This kept Crockett in a continual state of jealous irritation. He was a very small man, and he carried ostentatiously a very large pistol, which he would often draw and exhibit. A guest who stopped at the tavern for breakfast at a time when miners along the road had been more numerous than usual, found Crockett "charging around like a madman, and foaming at the mouth." However, he received the guest with hospitality, informed him that "he (Crockett) was a devilish good fellow when he was right side up,"

and finally set before him an excellent meal. Mrs. Crockett presided at the table, "but in a very nervous manner, as if she were in expectation of being at almost any minute made a target of."

If life in California during the earlier years was bad for women, it was still worse for children. In San Francisco there was no public school until the autumn of 1851. Before that time there had been several small private schools, and one free school supported by charity, but in 1851 this was given up for want of funds. In the cities and towns outside of San Francisco there was even greater delay in establishing public schools.

In 1852 there were many children at Marysville who were receiving no instruction, and others, fourteen years old and even older, were only just learning to read. Horace Greeley visited California in the year 1859, and he wrote, "There ought to be two thousand good common schools in operation this winter, but I fear there will not be six hundred."[65]

Partly in consequence of this lack of schools, partly on account of the general demoralization and ultra freedom of California society, boys grew up in the streets, and were remarkable for their precocious depravity.

Even the climate contributed to this result, for, except in the rainy season, the shelter of a house could easily be dispensed with by night as well as by day. "It was the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural hoa.r.s.eness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-a.s.sertion can give. It was the face of a small boy, a face that might have been pretty and even refined but that it was darkened by evil knowledge from within, and by dirt and hard experience from without."[66]

It was no uncommon thing, in San Francisco especially, to see small boys drinking and gambling in public places.

A Pioneer describes "boys from six upward swaggering through the streets, begirt with scarlet sashes, cigar in mouth, uttering huge oaths, and occasionally treating men and boys at the bar." Miners not more than ten years old were washing for gold on their own account, and obtaining five or ten dollars a week, which they spent chiefly on drinks and cigars. Bret Harte's Youngest Prospector in Calaveras was not an uncommon child.

An instance of precocity was the attempted abduction in May, 1851, of a girl of thirteen by two boys a little older. They were all the children of Sydney parents, and the girl declared that she loved those boys, and had begged them to take her away, and she thought it very hard to be compelled to return to her home. This incident may recall to the Reader the precocious love affairs of Richelieu Sharpe, whose father thus explained his absence from supper: "'Like ez not, he's gone over to see that fammerly at the summit. There's a little girl there that he's sparkin', about his own age.'

"'His own age!' said Minty indignantly, 'why, she's double that, if she's a day. Well--if he ain't the triflinest, conceitedest little limb that ever grew!'"

The son of a tavern-keeper at Sacramento, a boy only eight years old, was described as a finished gambler. Upon an occasion when he was acting as dealer, all the other players being men, one of them accused him of cheating. The consequence was a general fight: two men were shot, one fatally, and the man who killed him was hung the next day by a vigilance committee. Even Bret Harte's "perverse romanticism" never carried him quite so far in delineation of the California child. The word "hoodlum,"

meaning a youthful, semi-criminal rough, originated in San Francisco.

But there is another side to this picture of childhood on the Pacific Slope, and we obtain a glimpse of it occasionally. There was a Sunday-school procession at Sacramento in July, 1850, upon which the "Sacramento Transcript" remarked, "We have seen no sight here which called home so forcibly to our minds with all its endearments." Three years later in San Francisco, there was a May-Day procession of a thousand children, each one carrying a flower.

Even Bret Harte's story of the adoption of a child by the city of San Francisco[67] had a solid foundation in fact, though perhaps he was not aware of it. In July, 1851, the City Fathers charged themselves with the support and protection of an orphan girl, and on the thirteenth of that month a measure providing for her maintenance was introduced in the Board of Aldermen.

The scarcity, or rather, as we have seen, the almost total absence at first of women and children, of wives and sweethearts, led to the adoption by the Pioneers of a great number and variety of pet animals. Dogs and cats from all quarters, parrots from over-seas, canaries brought from the East, bears from the Sierras, wolves from the Plains, foxes and racc.o.o.ns from the Foot-Hills,--all these were found in miners' cabins, in gambling saloons and in restaurants. They occupied the waste places in the hearts of the Argonauts, and furnished an object, if an inadequate one, for those affections which might otherwise have withered at the root. One miner was accompanied in all his wanderings by a family consisting of a bay horse, two dogs, two sheep and two goats.