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
We had only two deaths on board, and in justice to the doctor, I must
say he was not considered to have been the cause of either of them. One
case was that of a young man, who, while the doctor was treating him for
fever, was at the same time privately treating himself to large doses,
taken frequently, of bad brandy, of which he had an ample stock stowed
away under his bed. About a day and a half settled him. The other was a
much more melancholy case. He was a young Swede--such a delicate,
effeminate fellow that he seemed quite out of place among the rough and
noisy characters who formed the rest of the party. A few days before we
left Panama, a steamer had arrived from San Francisco with a great many
cases of cholera on board. Numerous deaths had occurred in Panama, and
considerable alarm prevailed there in consequence. The Swede was
attacked with fever like the rest of us, but he had no force in him,
either mental or bodily, to bear up against sickness under such
circumstances; and the fear of cholera had taken such possession of him,
that he insisted upon it that he had cholera, and that he would die of
it that night. His lamentations were most piteous, but all attempts to
reassure him were in vain. He very soon became delirious, and died
raving before morning. None of us were doctors enough to know exactly
what he died of, but the general belief was that he frightened himself
to death. The church-service was read over him by the supercargo, many
of the passengers merely leaving their cards to be present at the
ceremony, and as soon as he was launched over the side, resuming their
game where they had been interrupted; and this, moreover, was on a
Sunday morning. In future the captain prohibited all card-playing on
Sundays, but throughout the voyage nearly one-half of the passengers
spent the whole day, and half the night, in playing the favorite game of
poker, which is something like brag, and at which they cheated each
other in the most barefaced manner, so causing perpetual quarrels,
which, however, never ended in a fight--for the reason, as it seemed to
me, that as every one wore his bowie-knife, the prospect of getting his
opponent’s knife between his ribs deterred each man from drawing his
own, or offering any violence whatever.
The poor Swede had no friends on board; nobody knew who he was, where he
came from, or anything at all about him; and so his effects were, a few
days after his death, sold at auction by order of the captain, one of
the passengers, who had been an auctioneer in the States, officiating on
the occasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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