499 CONCLUSION. THE traveler and the lecturer have apparently laid down a law that, whether the journey does or does not begin at home, it should always end at that "hallowed spot." Unwilling to break through what is now becoming a time-honored custom, I trespass upon the reader's patience for a few pages more, and make my final salaam in the muddy-puddly streets, under the gusty, misty sky of the "Liverpool of the South." After a day's rest at Carson City, employed in collecting certain necessaries of tobacco and raiment, which, intrinsically vile, were about treble the price of the best articles of their kind in the Burlington Arcade, I fell in with Captain Dall, superintendent of the Ophir mines, for whom I bore a recommendation from Judge Crosby, of Utah Territory. The valuable silver leads of Virginia City occupied me, under the guidance of that hospitable gentleman, two days, and on the third we returned to Carson City, via the Steam-boat Springs, Washoe Valley, and other local lions. On the 24th appeared the boys driving in the stock from Carson Lake: certain of these youths had disappeared; Jim Gilston, who had found his brother at Dry-Creek Station, had bolted, of course forgetting to pay his passage. A stage-coach, most creditably horsed, places the traveler from Carson City at San Francisco in two days; as Mr. Kennedy, however, wished to see me safely to the end, and the judge, esteeming me a fit Mentor for youth, had intrusted to me Telemachus, alias Thomas, his son, I resolved to cross the Sierra by easy stages. After taking kindly leave of and a last "liquor up" with my old compagnons de voyage, the judge and the marshal, we broke ground once more on the 25th of October. At Genoa, pronounced Ge-nóa, the county town, built in a valley thirteen miles south of Carson, I met Judge Cradlebaugh, who set me right on grounds where the Mormons had sown some prejudices. Five days of a very dilatory travel placed us on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada; the dugways and zigzags reminded me of the descriptions of travelers over the Andes; the snow threatened to block up the roads, and our days and nights were passed among teamsters en route and in the frame-house inn. On the 30th of November, reaching Diamond Springs, I was advised by a Londoner, Mr. George Fryer, of the "Boomerang Saloon," to visit the gold diggings at Placerville, whither a coach was about to start. At "Hangtown," as the place was less euphoniously termed, Mr. Collum, of the Cary House, kindly put me through the gold washing and "hydraulicking," and Dr. Smith, an old East Indian practitioner, and Mr. White, who had collected some fine specimens of minerals, made the evenings pleasant. I started on the 1st of November by coach to Folsom, and there found the railroad, which in two hours conducts to Sacramento: the negro coachmen driving hacks and wagons to the station, the whistling of the steam, and the hurry of the train, struck me by the contrast with the calm travel of the desert. At Sacramento, the newer name for New Helvetia-a capital mass of shops and stores, groggeries and hotels-I cashed a draught, settled old scores with Kennedy, who almost carried me off by force to his location, shook hands with Thomas, and transferred myself from the Golden Eagle on board the steamer Queen City. Eight hours down the Sacramento River, past Beniciathe birthplace of the Boy-in the dark to the head-waters of the glorious bay, placed me at the "El Dorada of the West," where a tolerable opera, a superior supper, and the society of friends made. the arrival exceptionably comfortable. I spent ten pleasant days at San Francisco. There remained some traveler's work to be done: the giant trees, the Yosemite or Yohamite Falls-the highest cataracts yet known in the worldand the Almaden cinnabar mines, with British Columbia, Vancouver's Island, and Los Angelos temptingly near. But, in sooth, I was aweary of the way; for eight months I had lived on board steamers and railraod cars, coaches and mules; my eyes were full of sight-seeing, my pockets empty, and my brain stuffed with all manner of useful knowledge. It was far more grateful to flaner about the stirring streets, to admire the charming faces, to enjoy the delicious climate, and to pay quiet visits like a "ladies' man," than to front wind and rain, muddy roads, arrieros, and rough teamsters, fit only for Rembrandt, and the solitude of out-stations. The presidential election was also in progress, and I wished to see with my eyes the working of a system which has been facetiously called "universal suffering and vote by bullet." Mr. Consul Booker placed my name on the lists of the Union Club, which was a superior institution to that of Leamington; Colonel Hooker, of Oregon, and Mr. Tooney, showed me life in San Francisco; Mr. Gregory Yale, whom I had met at Carson City, introduced me to a quiet picture of old Spanish happiness, fast fading from California; Mr. Donald Davidson, an old East Indian, talked East Indian with me; and Lieutenants Macpherson and Brewer accompanied me over the forts and batteries which are intended to make of San Francisco a New-World Cronstadt. Mr. Polonius sensibly refused to cash for me a draught not authorized by my circular letter from the Union Bank. Mr. Booker took a less prudential and mercantile view of the question, and kindly helped me through with the necessaire-£100. My return for all this kindness was, I regret to say, a temperate but firm refusal to lecture upon the subject of Meccah and El Medinah, Central Africa, Indian cotton, American politics, or every thing in general. I nevertheless bade my adieux to San Francisco and the hospitable San Franciscans with regret. On the 15th of November, the Golden Age, Commodore Watkins, steamed out of the Golden Gates, bearing on board, among some 520 souls, the body that now addresses the public. She was a model steamer, with engines and engine-rooms clean as a club kitchen, and a cuisine whose terrapin soup and deviled crabs à la Baltimore will long maintain their position in my memorynot so long, however, as the kindness and courtesy of the ancient mariner who commanded the Golden Age. On the 28th we spent the best part of a night at Acapulco, the city of Cortez and of Doña Marina, where any lurking project of passing through ill-conditioned Mexico was finally dispelled. The route from Acapulco to Vera Cruz, over a once well-worn highway, was simply and absolutely impassable. Each sovereign and independent state in that miserable caricature of the Anglo-American federal Union was at daggers drawn with all and every of its next-door neighbors; the battles were paper battles, but the plundering and the barbarities-cosas de Mejico!-were stern realities. A rich man could not travel because of the banditti ; a poor man would have been enlisted almost outside the city gates; a man with many servants would have seen half of them converted to soldiers under his eyes, and have lost the other half by desertion, while a man without servants would have been himself press-gang'd; a Liberal would have been murdered by the Church, and a Churchman-even the frock is no protection-would have been martyred by the Liberal party. For this disappointment I found a philosophical consolation in various experiments touching the influence of Mezcal brandy, the Mexican national drink, upon the human mind and body. On the 15th of December we debarked at Panama; horridly wet, dull, and dirty was the "place of fish," and the "Aspinwall House" and its Mivart reminded me of a Parsee hotel in the fort, Bombay. Yet I managed to spend there three pleasant circlings of the sun. A visit to the acting consul introduced me to M. Hurtado, the Intendente or military governor, and to a charming country woman, whose fascinating society made me regret that my stay there could not be protracted. Though politics were running high, I became acquainted with most of the officers of the United States squadron, and only saw the last of them at Colon, alias Aspinwall. Messrs. Boyd and Power, of the "Weekly Star and Herald," introduced me to the officials of the Panama Railroad, Messrs. Nelson, Center, and others, who, had I not expressed an aversion to "dead-headism," or gratis traveling, would have offered me a free passage. Last, but not least, I must mention the venerable name of Mrs. Seacole, of Jamaica and Balaklava. On the 8th of December I passed over the celebrated Panama Railway to Aspinwall, where Mr. Center, the superintendent of the line, made the evening highly agreeable with conversation aided by "Italia," a certain muscatel cognac that has yet to reach Great Britain. We steamed the next morning, under charge of Captain Leeds, over the Caribbean Sea or Spanish Main, bound for St. Thomas. A hard-hearted E.N.E. wind protracted the voyage of the Solent for six days, and we reached the Danish settlement in time, and only just in time, to save a week's delay upon that offensive scrap of negro liberty-land. On the 9th of December we bade adieu with pleasure to the little dungeon-rock, and turned the head of the good ship Seine, Captain Rivett, toward the Western Islands. She played a pretty wheel till almost within sight of Land's End, where Britannia received us with her characteristic welcome, a gale and a pea-soup fog, which kept us cruising about for three days in the unpleasant Solent and the Southampton Water. |