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Borthwick's California - Gold Rush Panorama (12 pages)
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Page: of 12
PAGE 16 THECALIFORNIANS VOcLU MLE 1 2°N< 02 1
Borthwick’s California:
Gold Rush Panorama
With his keen artist’s eye and sense of history,
Borthwick’s eyewitness account and art vividly
capture the gold rush era, ranging from a San
Francisco plagued by rats, fleas and extraordinary
alcohol consumption to the fabled goldfields
themselves, where one and all engaged singlemindedly in “the impetuous pursuit of wealth.”
By R.E. Mather
[I September 1850 — the month that
California became a state — budding
young artist John David Borthwick
sailed into San Francisco harbor. Aboard
the small vessel, half-starved passengers felt
lucky to have survived the voyage from
Panama City, but Borthwick suffered more
from gold rush fever than from malnutrition. It was his naive belief that at the
fabled goldfields he would “acquire an immense fortune” in an “incredibly short
time.” Like other overly optimistic goldseekers, he could not imagine that disappointment might await.
Though Borthwick, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, had previously traveled in
Europe and considered himself quite worldly, he nevertheless was amazed at the bustling New World port of San Francisco.
Though eager to reach the mines, sink a
pick and become rich, he could not resist
delaying his ascent to wealth long enough
to explore the fascinating society flourishing on the bay. As he wandered the streets,
the young artist jotted down descriptions of
the strange sights about him, aided by his
keen eye for detail and avid sense of history.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the record
Borthwick began at San Francisco and continued for three years in the goldfields is
one of the most valuable eyewitness accounts of the gold rush. Borthwick’s canny,
detailed notes and drawings captured the
true sweep and spirit of the gold rush, vivid
images of the men and women gathered at
the mines and their work rituals, customs,
camaraderie, conflicts, sufferings and boisterous recreations.
San Francisco, Borthwick noted that fall of
1850, was a “makeshift” city backed by sand
hills sparsely dotted with scrubby bushes. Its
mile-long street was a hodgepodge of tents,
zinc-sheet huts, abandoned ship hulks and
impressive brick buildings, with myriad
“patchwork” hovels built from indiscriminately combined materials squeezed in between. Casting his eye on the numerous
prefabricated residences that had been
shipped around the Horn, the Scot dubbed
these wooden buildings “Yankee houses,”
inevitably painted white and decorated
with green shutters.
Borthwick’s aesthetic sense was barraged
by “ridiculously extravagant” hotels and
saloons — “barbaric” in their splendor of
massive chandeliers, gilding, mirrors and
French furniture — which were also the
only structures fronted by planked streets.
Elsewhere, hurrying and tumultuous
crowds of pedestrians elbowed their way
through trash-littered, ankle-deep mud.
These citizens wore either the colorful dress
of their native lands or the much-admired
California costume, consisting of a red or
blue flannel shirt and sturdy trousers tucked
into bulky boots. As they scurried about,
Borthwick wrote, they “presented a picture
of universal human nature boiling over.”
Merchants compounded the congestion in