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Volume 4 (1859-1860) (600 pages)
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Page: of 600
78 HUTCHINGS’ CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE.
ling of what the pious call profanity garnishes their colloquial efforts a little too
abundantly; but, if they are prompt in
dealing hard words, they are just as
prompt in dealing hard blows. The portrait of the soldier, drawn by the melancholy Jacques, needs but little variation,
in limning and coloring, to make it a fit
presentment of the Californian Mountaineer. Mark how apt:
“Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard:
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel.”
But our Mountaineer is not a vain and
coxeombical quarreler. His belligerent
energies are seldom expended for mere
amusement. He fights only for his rights,
or what he esteems his rights. He can
be generous to the last dime in his pocket, but his whole soul is in arms the moment he imagines himself overreached
in a bargain or made the victim of a
trick of knavery. In all his business negotiations, he thinks, if he does not speak,
like the fiery Hotspur:
Ee Til give thrice so much land
To any well-deserving friend ;
But, in the way of bargain, mark ye me,
TV’ cavil on the ninth part of a hair.”
Next to his dislike to being “taken in,”
in a business transaction, is the supreme
contempt the Californian Mountaineer
entertains for all manner of charlatans
and Charlatanism. The mountains of
California furnish an exceedingly indifferent field for the exploits of mountebanks, whether they be players, preachers, or politicians. Our Mountaineers
will not barter their hard-earned gold tor
the spurious wares of buskined pretenders and canting gospelers, nor will they
insanely trot at the heels of a demagogue.
The men of the Sierra Nevadas have read
too much, thought too largely, and traveled too far, to be easily made the dupes of
pretenders, let them take what shape
they will.
Though the lump of Californian mountain life is made up of such variant materials, yet, sooth to say, it is the Yankee
leaven that leaveneth it. It is the restless, all-pervading, all-controlling Yankee element, insinuating itself into, and
mixing itself with, all the other elements,
that has, in ten brief years, produced
that homogeneousness, of which we have
spoken, and which has converted a grand
melange of Goths, and Teutons, and Gauls,
and Britons into one living, breathing
community of Yankee industrials. It is
the speciality of the Yankee that, though
he loveth the results of labor, he loveth
not the labor, itself. His education and
religious teachings forbid hiscondemning
human muscles to involuntary servitude,
and, therefore, he casteth about to enslave
the physical elements and make them
work in his harness. He chaineth up
the air, the fire, and the water, and
causeth them to do his bidding. Even
the lightnings, those subtle spirits of the
clouds, he is now seeking to make his
servitors, and will, some day, drive them
in triumph before what he is pleased to
term his Car or Procress. Well, the
Yankee, when he looked upon the golden
hills of the Sierra Nevadas, said unto
himself, that gold was good, but that the
tedious and toilsome wielding of the pick
and shovel was ‘‘evil, and that continually.” Therefore, he called to his aid
the Hereules of Hydraulics, and water
ditches were woven, like network, along
the mountain sides, beneath whose resistless might the auriferous hills melted
away, as from the wand of an enchanter,
leaving their long-hidden treasures to
swell the triumphs of Yaukee science.
The Yankee, in the mountains of California, is not only the motor but the balance
‘wheel of the social and industrial machinery. He infuses his piety, his politics, and his philosophy into everything
around him. The Scandinavians, the
Celts, and the Slavons, though at first astonished by the boldness of his designs
and the miracles of his inventive genius,
soon lost their amazement in admiration,
and in all things, save identity of birth-