FOUR MONTHS AMONGST THE GOLD FINDERS IN CALIFORNIA. [From the Times, April 11.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 427, 5 September 1849, Page 4

FOUR MONTHS AMONGST THE GOLD FINDERS IN CALIFORNIA. [From the Times, April 11.]

Here is a gentleman who knows all about it ! — a live Englishman who has set foot in the diggings, has had his hand in the washings, has scratched for dust till his back ached, has picked up lumps as big as ynui fist without any lab-ur at all, has made bis fortune like a "stag," and lost it like a donkey, and. in fact, gone through a regular Californian experience in less than no time at all. We are by no means sorry to take J, Tyrwhitt Brooks, M.D., by the button for ten minutes, 'and to hear from his own lips a veritable account of the mystery. Indeed, we need a little if his cooling medicine before the next packet arrives to recover from the excitement occasioned by the extraordinary accounts brought to us by the last. Our medical friend's experience is a pel feet febrifuge. We stiongly recommend it to all the agitated curates, lawyers' clerks, bankers' ditto, who aie firmly resolved to. throw up civilization and their hundred a- year next quarter-day, to buy with their poor savings a spade and a cradle, and to set up in another hemisphere upon their own account as dealers ; in bullion, wholesale and lor exportation. The dose is net a severe one. A very lew pages tell the whole business. The Doctor was not long, as the title of his volume indicates, in California, but quite long enough to be sickened. He leaves £1 Dorado as poor as he went thither, and comes away by no means elated by bis adventures. He is just the man for us at the present crisis. He shall tell his own tale. { We have already seen that our friend is a member of the medical profession. It would appear that he left his country or'ginally to find employjnent in the Oregon, that he tailed in his object, and that he finally quitted that "barren, desert- like place," to try bis luck in California, the soil of which country waa represented to him as one of extraoidinary fertility, but of whose mineral wealth he at the jime knew nothing. The war between ihe United States and Mexico was then at it«

height. One Mr. Malcolm, a Scotchman, and a practical agriculturist, offered to accompany the adventurer, and both set out for the already renowned San Francisco. Reaching the port, they fell in with an American settler, a Mr. Bradley, who proposed to make one of the party, and the three started off for i Monterey, a town also on the coast, and south of San Francisco. At Monterey Dr. Brooks learned that California is no place for doctors I to settle in, and, much disgusted with the intelligence, made his way back at once to San Francisco. It was on arriving at .the lastnamed place for the second time that the first definite intelligence respecting the great gold discovery reached his ears. Of course they pricked up amaz'.ngly. A man bad setn a man who had seen another man who, a hundred miles away in the interior of the country, at a river called "the American Fork," had, in the course of the week, taken 23 ounces of gold out of the water, with the least possible inconvenience. The Doctor had been unfortunate from his birth. . Providence Mas just, and was about to make amends. It was decided forthwith 10 start (or the " Fork," which is situated in the Sacramento settlements. The distance was I*2o miles; nothing at all to the three adventurous spirits. The resolution was taken on the Bth May last. Before the 13th San Francisco was half mad. Individuals were walking anout the town with lumps of the precious metal in their pockets. They showed their treasures, intimated how they got them, and the workpeople struck to a man. The Doctor and his friends were to make iheir journey on horseback, but the sad ilers were already riding on their own manufactures to the golden region themsel es The Doctor took bodily possession of one saddler, and by dun of paying him exorbitantly for his labour, and of watching him till the work was complete, obtained after much anxiety and delay the means of setting out for himself and his friends. The paity, by the way, had increased. One Don' Luis Palo, from Monterey, arrived with his servant Jose, a converted Indian, and craved permission to join the partnership. He was admitted ; as also was one M'Phail from Oregon. We have all heard by this time of Sutter's Fort. Captain Suiter is a Swiss, was one of Charles X.'s guard in 1830, and still canies the scar of a wound received during the three "glorious" days. He was the first white man who settled in those parts ; ten years a n o he received a grant of land, 60 miles one way and 12 another, and at this moment he has about 1,700 acres under cultivation. His fort, built by Indians, lies on the American Fork. The travellers reached the captain's abode, and heard from his own lips the history of the great Californian discovery. Our readers know, from other accounts, ail about the millwheel and the tail race, and we may pass over the history here. Whilst Captain Sutler narrated it the poor Doctor was in a state of extreme agitation. He was most nervously anxious to be off. As the point of operations grew nearer the wondrous tales became more magnificent, the evidences of positive treasure more clear, the bustle and animation of greedy multitudes more irritating and intense. On Sunday,- June 4, tbey left the fort. At noon they halted to refresh "by the side of a small stream of ciystal purity." The corner of every man's eye peered wickedly into the crystal stream for golden intimations. Nune. was there ; the nappy spot was not yet reached. They pushed on ; the scenery was no doubt beautiful ; but who thinks of scenery in a cl>aise-and-four, with a lovely and blushing bride at his side? The lofty Sierra Nevada was, we dare say, a glorious ridge of snow-capped mountains ; but the little bright lumps in the distance utterly put out the mountains above our travelleis' very noses. Finally, at sundown they came upon the lower mines. Fony tents were scattered on the river side, occupied mostly by Americans and their families. It was Sunday ; yet everybody was at work. There were men with their naked arms washing out golden flakes from the generous s»il ; others passing gold dust through sieves ; others again washing lumps of soil in pots, and stirring them up to separate the lighter particles frum the mass. The Doctor immediately called to mind all he had read in his youth in the Arabian Nigkfs : what plans he at the same time formed tor his family, how much he patriotically pi oposed to himself to give io Sir Charles Wood towards the annihilation of the national debt, what hospitals he would erect, what churches endow, it is impossible for us to say. It is our simple but very painful office to confess that, although the day was the Sabbath, and although the Doctor had been travelling from suurise to sunset, and although it was high time to say prayers and to go to bed, he positively set' to work on the very Sunday night of his arrival, and never left off until be was in a condition to return the congratulations of iiia. American friend Bradley, who met him at

the close of the night's operations in tip toe spirits and with a shrewd "guess that this is the way we do the trick down in these clearing*." | Real business may be said to have begun on the following morning. Two of the horses belonging to the party had escaped, and it was necessary to recover them. Who should go in search of the runaways? It was pleasing to think that the Doctor and his friends were not forgetful of what was due to the young Indian catechumen. To leave gold digging [-and to run after stray horses, evidently re- | quired the exercise. of Christian self-denial ; the youngest Christian needed most practice, and so Jose was selected for the office. The youth was modest and declined the honour. Bradley of the United States, seized his rifle and threatened to shoot the lad if he disobeyed orders. So the young Christian was convinced, and went after the horses. After dinner on the Monday Dr. Brooks was so complete'y knocked up with his work that he could do nothing more. His reflections at this point are admirable, — " After dinner." he says. " we determined to rest until the next day. The fiict is, that the human frame will not stand, and was never intended to stand, a course of incessant toil ; indeed, I believe that in civilised Communities the Sabbath, bringing round, asitdoes, a stated remission from labour, is an institution physically necessary." Dr. Brooks, in other words, with a profound sense of his moral and religious duties, piously resolved, upon consideration, not to work again on the Sabbath, if he should find himself unable. Thus lot tided, labour went on, and the labourer prospered. Gold, inrieed, was to be had for the picking up. There was uo mistake about it. " 1 reckon," said a Keutuckian, addressing the Doctor one morning at the' diggings, " I reckon old John Bull would scrunch up his fingers in his empty pockets when he comes to hear of it. It's a most everlasting wonderful thing, and that's a fact, that beats Joe Dunkin's goose pie and apple sarce." The Doctor quite agreed wiih him. The average produce of a day's work amounted to something like 16 ounces of gold each man, the value of an ounce being 14 dollars. But the price of a common shovel for digging purposes was 30 dollars, and Hiram Ensloe, a Yankee, who kept a store at the "Pldcer," charged 15 dollars for a small pair of ordinary brass scales. Everything else was in proportion, even to Doctor's advice. Bad diet, daily exposure to a'burning sun at noon, followed by an exposure to the cold ramp atr at night, brought many of the miners dow n and plagued them with low fever. Our friend the Doctor was the only medical man at the diggings, his stork cf medicine was small, and, like a prudent person, he made the most of it. An ounce of gold was his fee for advice and n.edicine at starting, but as the drugs declined the price was raised, and finally the advice alone was all that the physician was disposed to give in return for the fee. Thus, even in California, and" amidst whole rivers full of gold, do things find their level, and the balauce which weighs the varied relations of man is carefully adjusted ! On Monday, July 24th, our party, having done well at the " diggings" and "washings," and becoming naturally disgusted at the continual pouring in of fresh gold-worshippers, resolve to go northward, and to try their luck at a less frequented tributary of the Sacramento, called the Bear river. A trapper, for 65 dollars and his food, offered to become their guide. A lawyer, a sailor, and a carpenter proposed to join the society ; and, thus stiengihened, the force set forth. No signs of human life welcomed them on the spot, upon which a shanty was at once erected. Labour was apportioned to each man, and the trapper agreed to become the general servant provided he might hunt for his masters and have nothing to do with the gold digging. He was as indifferent to the grand object of man's love as though he were a trapper in Mr. Cooper's last novel ; but he was not the less appreciated on that account, by his employers. Nature was as prodigal as ever. Amongst those particles of rock severar lumps of gold were picked up, of a much larger size than any that had been met with. There was no limit to expectation or to the promises of thesfr glorious riveis. How rich Dr. Brooks and his company would have become if circumstances had not arisen to render them deplorably poor, it is not easy to conjecture. But circumstances did arise, and out of them - sp ings the whale moral of this history. (7b be continued,)