The gold hunters : $b A first-hand picture of life in California mining camps in the early fiftiesBorthwick, John David
History
The gold hunters : $b A first-hand picture of life in California mining camps in the early fifties
Borthwick, John David
California -- Gold discoveries; California -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Mining camps -- California -- History
Having never been able to get any very intelligible account of what they
really were, I had supposed that some large rocks rolling down the
mountain had got jammed over the creek, by the steepness of the rocky
banks on each side, which I fancied would be a very easy mode of
building a natural bridge. My idea, however, was very far from the
reality. In fact, bridges was an inappropriate name; they should rather
have been called caves or tunnels. How they were formed is a question
for geologists; but their appearance gave the idea that there had been a
sort of landslip, which blocked up the bed of the creek for a distance
of two or three hundred feet, and to the height of fifty or sixty above
the bed of the stream. They were about a quarter of a mile apart, and
their surface was, like that of the hills, perfectly smooth, and covered
with grass and flowers. The interiors were somewhat the same style of
place, but the upper one was the larger and more curious of the two. The
faces of the tunnel were perpendicular, presenting an entrance like a
church door, about twelve feet high, surrounded by huge stony
fungus-like excrescences, of a dark purple-and-green color. The waters
of the creek flowed in here, and occupied all the width of the entrance.
They were only a few inches in depth, and gave a perfect reflection of
the whole of the interior, which was a lofty chamber some hundred feet
in length, the straight sides of which met at the top in the form of a
Gothic arch. At the further end was a vista of similarly arched small
passages, branching off into darkness. The walls were deeply carved into
pillars and grotesque forms, in which one could trace all manner of
fanciful resemblances; while at the base of some of the columns were
most symmetrically formed projections, many of which might be taken for
fonts, the top of them being a circular basin containing water. These
projections were of stone, and had the appearance of having congealed
suddenly while in a boiling state. There was a beautiful regularity in
the roughness of their surface, some of the rounded forms being deeply
carved with circular lines, similar to the engine-turning on the back of
a watch, and others being rippled like a shirt of mail, the rippling
getting gradually and regularly finer, till at the top the surface was
hardly more rough than that of a file. The walls and roof seemed to have
been smothered over with some stuff which had hardened into a sort of
cement, presenting a polished surface of a bright cream-color, tinged
here and there with pink and pale-green. The entrance was sufficiently
large to light up the whole place, which, from its general outline, gave
somewhat the idea of a church; for, besides the pillars, with their
flowery ornaments, the Gothic arches and the fonts, there was at one
side, near the entrance, one of these stone excrescences much larger
than the others, which would have passed for a pulpit, overhung as it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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