Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444

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Various. Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444

THE ART SEASON

BILL WILLIAMS:

A STORY OF CALIFORNIA

HYGIENIC CHANGE OF AIR

THE DEVICE, OR IMPRESS

A COUNTRY WEDDING IN FRANCE

NOBLE INSTANCE OF TURKISH GENEROSITY AND HONESTY

LADY BETTY, THE HANGWOMAN

THE WILL AND THE WAY

PAPER-MILLS

LINES TO –

PROCESS FOR PRODUCING TAPERED IRON

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It was in the first flush of the Californian fever, when moderate people talked of making one's fortune in a fortnight, and the more sanguine believed that golden pokers would soon become rather common, that the Betsy Jones from London to New Zealand, with myself on board as a passenger, dropped anchor in the bay of San Francisco, and master and man turned out for the diggings. It is my impression that not a soul remained on board but the surgeon, who was sick, and the negro cook, who wouldn't leave him; and the first man I met on the deck of the Go-Ahead steamer, which took as up to Sacramento, was our enterprising captain, clad in a canvas jacket and trousers, with the gold-washing apparatus, two shirts, and a tin kettle, slung at his back. The crew followed his example, and all the passengers. The latter were some thirty men, from every corner of Britain, and of various birth and breeding. There were industrious farm-servants and spendthrift sons of gentlemen among them. Some had sailed with money, to purchase land in the southern colony, some were provided only with their hopes and sinews; but California was an irresistible temptation to them all, and by general desire, they had come to try their luck at the washing. We had mere boys and men of grizzling hair in our company. Two were married, but they wisely left their wives in San Francisco, where, having brought with them some spare blankets and crockery, the ladies improvised a boarding-house, and I believe realised more than their wandering lords. Nevertheless, we, one and all, went up the broad river with loftier expectations than the prudent among us cared to make public.

There was one who made no secret of his hopes. The man's name was Bill Williams. I had had a loose acquaintance with Bill from school-time, for we had been brought up in the same good town of Manchester, where his father was a respectable tradesman, and his three brothers were still in business. Many a town and many a trade had Bill tried to little purpose. Never doing what his relatives could call well, he had gone through a series of failures, which tired out both kinsmen and creditors, and at length shipped for New Zealand, leaving a wife and seven children to the care of the said three brothers, till he should see how the climate agreed with him, and find a home for them. Bill did not belong to the extended fraternity of scapegraces. He was neither wild nor worthless, in the ordinary sense of those terms, but there was a faith in him, the origin of which baffled his most penetrating friends, that he was to get money somehow without working for it by any of the common methods. Unlike many a professor of better principles, Bill had carried that faith into practice. Under its influence, he had engaged in every scheme for making fortunes with incredible rapidity which coffee-house acquaintances or advertising sheets brought to his knowledge. There was not a banking bubble by which he had not lost, nor a mining company of vast promise and brief existence in which he had not held shares. Uncompromisingly averse to the jog-trot work of ordinary mortals. Bill was neither indolent nor timid in his own peculiar fashion of seeking riches. He would have gone up in a balloon to any height, or down in a diving-bell to depths yet unsounded, had the promise been large enough; and there was something so suitable to his inclinations in the Californian reports, that he was the prime mover of our visit to San Francisco, and the entire desertion of the ship. Strange to say, every man on board believed in Bill; from the captain to the cabin-boy, they had all listened to his tales. Where he had learned such a number, fortune knows, concerning found treasures, and wealth suddenly obtained by unexpected and rather impracticable ways. That was the whole circle of Bill's literature, and going over it appeared his chief joy; but the gem of the collection was a prophecy which a gipsy woman, whom his mother met once in a country excursion, had uttered concerning himself—that he should find riches he never wrought for, and leave a great fortune behind him. In the faith of that prediction Bill had lived; and it was a curious illustration of the sympathetic force inherent in a firm belief, that both passengers and seamen, even those who affected to laugh at the rest of what they called his wonderful yarns, entertained a secret conviction in favour of that tale, and felt secure of gold-gathering in Bill's company.

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There was one who made no secret of his hopes. The man's name was Bill Williams. I had had a loose acquaintance with Bill from school-time, for we had been brought up in the same good town of Manchester, where his father was a respectable tradesman, and his three brothers were still in business. Many a town and many a trade had Bill tried to little purpose. Never doing what his relatives could call well, he had gone through a series of failures, which tired out both kinsmen and creditors, and at length shipped for New Zealand, leaving a wife and seven children to the care of the said three brothers, till he should see how the climate agreed with him, and find a home for them. Bill did not belong to the extended fraternity of scapegraces. He was neither wild nor worthless, in the ordinary sense of those terms, but there was a faith in him, the origin of which baffled his most penetrating friends, that he was to get money somehow without working for it by any of the common methods. Unlike many a professor of better principles, Bill had carried that faith into practice. Under its influence, he had engaged in every scheme for making fortunes with incredible rapidity which coffee-house acquaintances or advertising sheets brought to his knowledge. There was not a banking bubble by which he had not lost, nor a mining company of vast promise and brief existence in which he had not held shares. Uncompromisingly averse to the jog-trot work of ordinary mortals. Bill was neither indolent nor timid in his own peculiar fashion of seeking riches. He would have gone up in a balloon to any height, or down in a diving-bell to depths yet unsounded, had the promise been large enough; and there was something so suitable to his inclinations in the Californian reports, that he was the prime mover of our visit to San Francisco, and the entire desertion of the ship. Strange to say, every man on board believed in Bill; from the captain to the cabin-boy, they had all listened to his tales. Where he had learned such a number, fortune knows, concerning found treasures, and wealth suddenly obtained by unexpected and rather impracticable ways. That was the whole circle of Bill's literature, and going over it appeared his chief joy; but the gem of the collection was a prophecy which a gipsy woman, whom his mother met once in a country excursion, had uttered concerning himself—that he should find riches he never wrought for, and leave a great fortune behind him. In the faith of that prediction Bill had lived; and it was a curious illustration of the sympathetic force inherent in a firm belief, that both passengers and seamen, even those who affected to laugh at the rest of what they called his wonderful yarns, entertained a secret conviction in favour of that tale, and felt secure of gold-gathering in Bill's company.

I am not certain that my own mind was entirely clear of a similar impression, but the two among us who contemned loudest and believed most devoutly, were the captain and his mate. They were brothers, and of Jewish parentage; the rest of the family still hang about an old-clothes and dyeing establishment in the neighbourhood of Houndsditch. I made that discovery by an accidental glance at a torn and mislaid letter before we left the Thames, and thought proper to reserve it for private meditation. The relationship of the two was kept a profound secret, for reasons best known to themselves; but to the eye at least it was revealed by their striking resemblance, both being small, spare, dingy-complexioned men, with keen, cunning eyes, and faces that looked as hard and sharp as steel. Ever since they first heard of the prophecy, they had half ridiculed, half flattered, and kept remarkably familiar with Bill. That familiarity rather increased as we went up the Sacramento. A goodly number we made on the deck of the Go-Ahead, our only place of accommodation; and at length we reached the new town, the golden city, which takes its name from the river, christened in old times of Spanish voyaging by some discoverer for his Catholic majesty, and which was to be the metropolis of the diggings. When I first saw it, it consisted of some hundred huts and tents, a large frame-house, in which an advertising board informed us there was an ordinary, a gaming-table, and all manner of spirits; and a timber wharf, somewhat temporarily put together, at which we landed. Yet the city was rising, as cities rise only in the western hemisphere: broad streets and squares were marked out; building was going forward on all sides; while bullock-wagons, canoes, and steamers, brought materials by land and water. The enterprise and vagrancy of all nations were there, as we had seen them at San Francisco; and those not engaged in building the town, were going off in caravans to the gold-gathering.

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