Meanwhile,
the enrolled members of sea-going companies sat impatiently in their
club-rooms and consumed mountains of tobacco while waiting for their
ships to be bought, made ready and provisioned. Few of them foresaw the
chancy and dismal future. They pored over maps and charts, and books on
the various processes used in mining. They recalled to mind everything
their grandÂfathers had had to say about the China trade. They disputed
endlessly and aroused one another's golden hopes.
The
earlier venturers around the Horn made the best bargains they could in
a booming market for well-found ships. Their infection with gold-fever
did not, however, seriously affect their judgÂment of seaworthiness nor
their caution in shipping competent officers and crews. One company
enrolled as seamen more than a dozen men who had served as mates aboard
other vessels.
William Sidney Mount's painting "California News," below, was
executed at the height of the excitement. It portrays a group in a Long
Island post office as they listen to the latest word from El Dorado.
There is no better contemporary record of the fascination which the
great adventure exercised on all kinds and conditions of Americans.
