While tales of aces abundance are the getting of legend, the avant-garde
miners of California faced huge obstacles and a lot of almost
fabricated abundant to eat, let abandoned get wealthy. The acclimate
during some times of the year was affable and conductive to their mining
and prospecting, but added times it was absinthian and inclement. To
eat, they had to plan in the rain and cold. The winter of 1852-53, was
conceivably the roughest time anytime apparent to that time in
California. The connected spell of rain arch to top baptize in the
rivers and streams absolutely prevented the busline of accoutrement from
the cities, and there was abundant want, admitting no absolute cases of
starvation. Abounding men lived for weeks on above barley. Beans,
afterwards even a ham-bone to division them, furnished, in some cases,
the alone aliment accessible to the gold miners for weeks. At one camp, a
pork case was adopted from one abode to another, to grease the
frying-pan for slap-jacks (pancakes). A anecdotal of claimed
acquaintance of one miner who lived on the south annex of Dry Creek,
Amador County, in 1852, will accord an abstraction of the troubles of
that year:
"It had been aqueous for about six weeks, and our affirmation had been
four anxiety beneath baptize for a month. There were no gulches there
that would pay, and we had been cat-and-mouse for the rain to cease
until every bit of accouterment of any description was gone, as
able-bodied as money or dust. Something had to be done, even if the rain
was advancing down in torrents. There were four of us, one Yankee, two
adolescent affiliated men from Illinois, and a man who had served in the
United States army in the Seminole war, and. Also as a advance in the
Mexican war. We shouldered our picks, shovels, and rockers, and started
up appear Indian gulch. Afterwards traveling a abbreviate distance, one
of the miners in our accumulation who had appear from Illinois got to
cerebration of his adolescent wife, and the pleasures of home compared
with this country, and, affected by his feelings, access into a blab of
despair, and started on the run for the cabin, area he was begin at
night aerial over the algid ashes of the fire-place, the blaze
absolutely abolished by his floods of tears.
At the arch of Indian coulee we begin some paying dirt. We went to work,
and by cavity of arena sluicing, agitation and panning, about four
o'clock we had, probably, an ounce of gold dust. With this I started to
Fiddletown to buy a supper for the boys."
Now at a amount of about $1000 per ounce, an ounce of gold dust in the
year 2009 will buy abounding months account of basal aliment and
accoutrement for a man, but in those canicule gold was account alone 20
dollars per ounce. With the prevailing gold blitz prices of aliment in
1852 (flour at one hundred dollars per barrel, and meat seventy-five
cents per pound), it was not much. Our miner connected his tale:
"After continuing and cerebration awhile, I remarked that I anticipation
the rain would authority up shortly, so that accoutrement would get
cheaper; believed that I would buy but a baby abundance to-night, etc.
Mr. Wingo, the civil trader, did not assume to apprehension my
embarrassment, but affably awash me the little dab of abrade and a
section of meat, which went down into the bend of the sack out of sight.
I rushed off for the cabin, black advancing rapidly on, and the rain
still falling.
The creeks were now about waist deep, but I cautiously got through them
all until I got to Dry creek. The log on which I beyond in the morning
was gone, and the baptize was active top over the banks. Two or three
hundred yards abroad was the cabin, and I knew, by the ablaze ablaze
animated through the cracks of the door, that a big blaze had been
congenital to baker our suppers, out of the gain of our day's work, and
to dry our clothes, blood-soaked by twelve hours' rain. A board of war
was called, and all accessible advice apropos roads, bridges, and
ferries, alleged for. The brook was boilerplate fordable; that
hypothesis was disposed of afterwards delay. One witness, or affiliate
of the council, had an ambiguous bond of accepting apparent a timberline
beyond the brook a mile or two below, some canicule since, but could
not vouch for its getting there at present. This getting the alone
advice attainable, the administrator ordered a change of base, to the
accessible bridge. Down the creek, in absolute darkness, over rocks and
bushes, barrier and falling, and afterwards an hour's harder work, the
arch was found. It was a cedar tree, the base comatose on the stump, the
ample top extensive to the adverse shore, and the average sagged down
so that the baptize was running, perhaps, two anxiety abysmal over the
trunk, and aggressive every moment to ambit the timberline off its
moorings; for, continuing on its high end, I could feel it acceptable to
the movement of the water. But the abysmal allotment had limbs
continuing up out of the stream, and a allegation in force beyond the
arch was ordered, I with this caution, ' My boy, if you go overboard,
the boys will go afterwards their suppers.' The adverse coffer was
acquired in safety, by activity the way and captivation to the limbs;
and, an hour later, some aliment and absurd pork, and a roaring fire,
brought us to a adequate condition, and gave us the spirit to beam at
all our troubles."
Such were the struggles and above difficulties of activity in the California gold camps in the aboriginal days.
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