milar
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.

We fraternised with a company of Americans, who said they knew 'a
bluff that flogged creation for the real metal,' and sold us two spare
tents and a wagon, at a price marvellous to ask or pay. Our journey
was not far. It led along the course of the Sacramento, and towards
evening we came in sight of the diggings. A strange sight it was for
one accustomed to London streets and shops. The Sacramento runs
through a great inclined plane, sloping from the hill-country to the
sea. Here and there, it is covered with low coppic