field and forest of perpetual green, but reduced to a mere mountain torrent, came hissing and boiling down among the deep volcanic gorges. "But the pale-faces would fain know what became of the remnant of the oppressors of our people. For more than twenty moons were the mountains hid from our view, by day in a canopy of smoke and ashes, and by night great fires streamed up until they reached the stars, many of which were melted away and fell to the earth like rain-drops, and these made the oro that the white man seeks. At last, when all was still again—when | the great rain had put the fires all out, and a wind greater than ever was felt before had driven the smoke away-our fathers saw how terrible had been the anger of the Great Spirit. Instead of green fields, and trees teeming with rich fruit, every vestige of vegetation had been swept away; and instead of a plain, so gentle in its descent to the sea as hardly to be perceived, all was one sterile mountain, traversed by rocky precipices and deep gorges, as you now see them, and on which the first snows ever seen by our fathers fell, and from which they have never fully disappeared, nor ever will until the children of the Great Spirit shall again displease him, at which time the whole earth will be burned, and the ashes thrown into the sea. "It was a long time before the spot where stood the great fire-temple could be recognized; for though the mountains had ceased to tremble, and the great fires that had caused them all had gone out, yet were there five great volcanos that continued to burn, and which neither the great rains or yet the winter's snows could extinguish. One of them, and the last and greatest of them all, is the one on the top of the mountain at the head of this little vale; but even this long since has gone out; for when I was but a boy, small volumes of smoke issued from deep fissures in the rock; but while it did burn, say our fathers, it cast forth a vein of fire, which ran along the ground, filling up deep yawning chasms that lay along it. But for this little lake freezing the fiery river in its course, the spirit home of the fire-worshipers would have been filled up, and every trace of their prison-house would have been lost forever." The question was asked, "How came they there, when your fathers left them locked within the temple walls?" He replied-"The temple stood upon the bank of the Tro-ke-nene, but all trace of that deep and ancient river was lost, except this lake, this valley, and a deep ravine beyond yonder cave in the western slope of the mountain. Here, where now sleeps the lake, once stood the templegrove of the ancient conquerors of our fathers; but when the mountains from all around were lifted up by the mighty force beneath, and raised so very high, the temple and its groves were lifted too, but its foundation was the substance that fed the burning volcano from beneath. At length a vast chasm was formed, that, when the mountain came to burn and throw up its fiery torrents from below, became filled with water from the melting snow on the mountain; but its great foundations had been weakened, and it sank down with all its altars and burnedup groves, deep beneath the level of the waters of the lake-all but the dome of the great temple, around which clung the remnant of the brutal race. Because they would thus cling to life, the Great Spirit became enraged, descended to the earth, walked upon the waters as though solid ground, and taking them one by one, hurled them, as a child would a pebble, into the deep recesses of the cavern. The waters of the lake rose to their present height, and shut them in. Since that day, to this hour, their wailings and moanings have been heard, increasing in tone and intensity as the waters of the lake are increased by the melting of the winter snows. And there must they ever remain, until the great spirit releases them, by another and the last of earth's volcanic burnings." Nearly in the centre of the lake is a rock, whose top reaches nearly to the surface of the water, being in the form of a dome. It is supposed that reference was had to this, as being the top of the sunken temple spoken of in the above legend. It is rather a singular formation, and resembles much the shape of a tower. The cave adjoining the lake is one of great beauty; the water in it is perfectly clear. The lake and the cave adjoining it will doubtless become ere long subjects of frequent visit from those who love the contemplation of nature's works in all their grandeur and glory. Of these, no country can boast a more bountiful supply than California.—For a beautiful view and full description of Lake Bigler, we refer the reader to the second volume of this magazine, p. 107. A LAMENT. BY W. H. D. I. The Autumn winds around me sigh, While in my heart each mournful tone Forever dead. II. O, why should sacred joys depart, Be doomed to blight? Or why should sorrow's awful power, In scathing tempests o'er us lower, And with a force beyond control, Drive downward the despairing soul To blackest night? III. What a dark mystery is life, Its solemn thoughts, its earnest strife, Which soon must end ;- Where do you tend! IV. No more returns the silent past, That comes to all ; Answer, thou dark and silent tomb, V. Say, shall we not again arise, Where Jesus' love for all mankind Is there no region of the blest, THREE YEARS IN CALIFORNIA. BY J. D. BORTHWICK. CHAPTER VII. DIGGER INDIANS-COON HOLLOW-COYOTE DIGGINGS-COYOTES-WEAVER CREEKTHE WEATHER AND THE CLIMATE-CHI 66 NAMEN-A CELESTIAL MUSS." 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 lookingglass 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. 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 water was falling rapidly; and as most of our party owned shares in claims on different rivers, we became dispersed. A young Englishman and myself remained, uncertain as yet where we should go to. 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 all 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. 66 coy Such diggings as these are called " ote" 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 pepper-pod, 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 candle light; 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 a favorable account 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 of a man in Hangtown to carry our long tom, hoses, picks, shovels, blankets, and pots 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 comparative level country, which had all the beauty of an English park. ground was quite smooth, though gently undulating, and the rich verdure was diversified with numbers of white, yellow and The 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. 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 on the rocks, resorted for provisions to the small store already mentioned, which was supplied with a general assortment of provisions and clothing. and relieving our feelings by laying in fiercely with pick and shovel. There had still been occasional heavy rains, from which our tents were but poor protection, and we awoke sometimes in the morning, finding small pools of After traveling some miles over this water in the folds of our blankets, and sort of country, we got among the pine everything so soaking wet, inside the tent trees once more, and very soon came to as well as outside, that it was hopeless to the brink of the high mountains over- attempt to light a fire. On such occahanging Weaver Creek. The descent was sions, raw ham, hard bread, and cold water so steep that we had the greatest dificulty was all the breakfast we could raise; in getting the cart down without a cap-eking it out, however, with an extra pipe, size, having to make short tacks down the face of the hill, and generally steering for a tree, to bring up 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. The weather very soon, however, became quite settled. The sky was always bright and cloudless; all verdure was fast disapearing 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° 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 Not knowing how far we might be from countries where, though the range of the a store, we had brought along with us a thermometer is much lower, the damp supply of flour, ham, beans, and tea, with suffocating atmosphere makes the heat which we were independent. After pros- more severely felt. In the hottest weathpecting a little, we soon found a spot on er in California, it is always agreeably the bank of the stream which we judged cool at night-sufficiently so to make a would yield us pretty fair pay for our blanket acceptable, and to enable one to labour. We had some difficulty at first enjoy a sound sleep, in which one recov in bringing water to our long tom, hav- ers from all the evil effects of the previing to lead our hose a considerable dis-ous day's baking; and even the extreme tance 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 heat of the hottest hours of the day, though it crisps up one's hair like that of a nigger's, 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 dig gings 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 eat 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. They were very averse to working in the water, and for four or five hours in the heat of the day they assembled under the shade of a tree, where they sat fanning themselves, drinking tea, and saying "too muchee hot." names imaginable, begining with sacré cochon, and going through a long series of still less complimentary epithets, till finally sacré astrologe caps the climax. This is a regular smasher; it is supposed to be such a comprehensive term as to exhaust the whole vocabulary; both parties then give in for want of ammunition, and the fight is over. I presume it was by a similar process that the Chinamen arrived at a solution of their difficulty; at all events, discretion seemed to form a very large component part of Celestial valor. TO "LITTLE MARY," DEPARTED. A child of three years, remarkable for her ideality. "What the flowers said," and "what the birds said," was always her theme. At last she told of "what the angels said." Then we knew that voices from the unseen world had said "come up hither." The angels called for thee, and thou didst go! In the still purple evening, when the stars Had set their watch in heaven, thou didst go talked The Spoiler touched thee, and thy face was changed On the whole, they seemed a harmless, inoffensive people; but one day, as we were going to dinner, we heard an unusual hullaballoo going on where the Chi- Didst thou not know their voice? Oft had they namen were at work; and on reaching [winds. the place we found the whole tribe of With thee in birds and flowers, and whispering Celestials divided into two equal parties, O! they were angel voices, sent by God, drawn up against each other in battle Heard in the golden visions of the night, array, brandishing picks and shovels, lift- In accents far too sweet for mortal ears, ing stones as if to hurl them at their ad- Oft heard by thee, and now in mercy sent versaries' heads, and every man chatter- To summon thee away. ing and gesticulating in the most frantic manner. The miners collected on the ground to see the "muss," and cheered the Chinamen on to more active hostilities. But after taunting and threatening each other in this way for about an hour, during which time, although the excitement seemed to be continually increasing, not a blow was struck nor a stone thrown, the two parties suddenly, and without any apparent cause, fraternised, and moved off together to their tents. What all the row was about, or why peace was so suddenly proclaimed, was of course a mystery to us outside barbarians; and the tame and unsatisfactory termination of such warlike demonstrations, was a great disappointment, as we had been every moment expecting that the ball would open, and hoped to see a general engagement. It reminded me of the way in which a couple of French Canadians have a set-to. Shaking their fists within an inch of each other's faces, they call each other all the Into a seraph's, for the Conqueror Gone to God! E'en in thy early dawning, ere the star San Francisco, Jan. 1, 1858. G. T. S. It is a gratifying fact to record, that the John L. Stephens took away from our shores but one hundred and eighty passengers, on the fifth of January last. California has never been appreciated, even by her own sons, until now. |