Part 11 (1/2)

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_ fas.h.i.+onably-trimmed, Florence braid velvet and silk bonnets.” A month later a Sydney s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+rt 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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.”