The philosophical
German, whose description of San Francisco has appeared on a previous
page, did most of his 1849 prospecting on the Feather River and on the
American.
Life
did not deal him any aces in the northern mines. Late in 1849 he made
his way to Sacramento City where he worked for a while as a
wood-chopper and tried, unsuccessfully, to borrow a stake from a rich
fellow-German. This worthy turned out to be a Dutchman, and one who had
conscientious scruples against lending money. He had no work to give;
and the "rich" man's home turned out to be "a low, dirty hovel—and Mr.
Swartz himself suiting the place exactly, and sitting, a great deal
farther than three sheets in the wind, before a couple of bottles of
most abominable gin." After this disappointment, our author paid a
call at San Francisco and worked long enough in a brewery to stake a
trip to Stockton and the Stanislaus.
Thirteen
days after leaving Stockton, he reached Murphy's Diggings, north of the
Stanislaus. "The place itself . . . consisted of one regularly-built
and main street—tents, of course—with only one frame shed; but every
tent a grog-shop, and in some of them gambling tables as well. Behind
this street, and farther on in the hat, other tents were wildly
scattered about . . . and in these the miners lived."
The sketch below represents Murphy's Diggings early in 1850.
