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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
114 THE STREET.
were all working as if for their lives, going into it
with a will, and a degree of energy, not usually seen
among labouring men. It was altogether a scene
which conveyed the idea of hard work in the fullest
sense of the words, and in comparison with which a
gang of railway navvies would have seemed to be
merely a party of gentlemen amateurs playing at
working pour passer le temps.
A stroll through the village revealed the extent to
which the ordinary comforts of life were attainable.
The gambling houses, of which there were three or
four, were of course the largest and most conspicuous
buildings; their mirrors, chandeliers, and other decorations, suggesting a style of life totally at variance with
the outward indications of everything around them.
The street itself was in many places knee-deep in
mud, and was plentifully strewed with old boots,
hats, and shirts, old sardine-boxes, empty tins of preserved oysters, empty bottles, worn-out pots and
kettles, old ham-bones, broken picks and shovels, and
other rubbish too various to particularise. Here and
there, in the middle of the street, was a square hole
about six feet deep, in which one miner was digging,
while another was baling the water out with a
bucket, and a third, sitting alongside the heap of dirt
which had been dug up, was washing it in a rocker.
Waggons, drawn by six or eight mules or oxen, were
navigating along the street, or discharging their
strangely-assorted cargoes at the various stores; and
men in picturesque rags, with large muddy boots,