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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
CHINAMEN—AUCTIONEERS. 51
Troops of newly arrived Frenchmen marched
along, en route for the mines, staggering under
their equipment of knapsacks, shovels, picks, tin
wash-bowls, pistols, knives, swords, and doublebarrel guns—their blankets slung over their shoulders, and their persons hung around with tin cups,
frying-pans, coffee-pots, and other culinary utensils,
with perhaps a hatchet and a spare pair of boots.
Crowds of Chinamen were also to be seen, bound
for the diggings, under gigantic basket-hats, each
man with a bamboo laid across his shoulder, from
both ends of which were suspended a “higeledypiggledy collection of mining tools, Chinese baskets
and boxes, immense boots, and a variety of Chinese
“fixins,” which no one but a Chinaman could tell the
use of,—all speaking at once, gabbling and chattering
their horrid jargon, and producing a noise like that
of a flock of geese. There were continuous streams
of drays drawn by splendid horses, and loaded with
merchandise from all parts of the world, and horsemen galloped about, equally regardless of their own
and of other men’s lives.
Two or three auctioneers might be heard at
once, “crying” their goods with characteristic California vehemence, while some of their neighbours
in the same line of business were ringing bells to
collect an audience—and at the same time one’s
ears were dinned with the discord of half-a-dozen
brass bands, braying out different popular airs from
as many different gambling saloons. In the midst