This letter was written by John Rollin Ridge to his mother, Sarah Bird Northup Ridge, at Fayetteville after he crossed the frontier west on the way to the goldfields of California. He started with a large retinue of people from Fayetteville and the region, but the group split up at Fort Laramie and Deer Creek, Wyoming.
The letter was published as a serial in the Northwest Arkansas Times, March 11-14, 1973.
The editors of the newspaper noted that John Rollin Ridge never returned home from California, although Aeneas Ridge and Wacooli, a slave, did return to Fayetteville. As an additional note, this letter from Ridge does contain a racial slur. Ridge appears to have used the slur not in a general way but rather very specifically in reference to a particular class of slaves. His few remarks about Wacooli, on the other hand, demonstrate no similar disparagement.
Yuba City, Oct. 4, 1850
Dear Mother: — It is with pleasure that I sit down to relieve what I know must be your great anxiety to hear from your wandering children, torn as they are from you, and cast, as they so well can feel each morning that they rise, and each night that they lay down, on a strange and distant land. Believe me, it is no ordinary thing to come to California, as the thousands that sigh here in the midst of all its wealth can testify.
I am wasting golden hours I giving you what I intend shall be an accurate account of everything connected with us and our interests in this vagabond land. You have, I hope, received letters from me giving an account of our journey as far as Fort Laramie.
After we left Fort Laramie we traveled 150 miles. Then finding that the grass was growing thinner to perhaps none, at all, we concluded to abandon our wagon and pack. This conclusion as the events proved saved us the miserable alternative of walking over the Sierra Nevada with our packs upon our backs.
It was at Deer Creek, a tributary to the North Platte where we packed. From Deer Creek to the Salt Lake, we encountered the roughest road you can conceive, thinly provided with grass all the way; for 50 miles at a time no grass and no water. A large portion of the way was through sand and alkaline ground. Before reaching the Salt Lake a road turns to the right which is called “Sublette’s cut-off” saving some distance in travel. We should have taken this “cut-off” which avoids Salt Lake, but we were compelled to go by the Mormon City to get provisions — of which we were nearly out — although we had purchased frequently from those who, following our example in abandoning their wagons, were glad to sell a part of what they were forced to leave.
We resolved to pack very light because I saw plainly at an early day in our journey that it would be nearly as much as a horse or mule could do to carry his own body to California over such a road with such subsistence without adding a heavy load to his own weight. With this view, we threw away at one fell swoop, all our clothing except one pair of pantaloons, one pair of drawers, etc. with a change, reserving also our overcoats. We threw away all our meat except enough to last us as we thought to the Salt Lake which it did not. We threw away no flour at all, but had only enough at the start to last us to the Salt Lake, owing to the fact, I suppose, that we did not eat as much of the bacon as we should have done had we not been fonder of the flour. All our cooking utensils, save a coffee pot, mill and a frying pan we abandoned of necessity.
Of all the cooking from that time till we reached this country — why, it fills me with horror to think of it! We had to mix up our dough in a pan, generally in a sandy and dusty place, with the wind filling the pan all the time with the said sand and dirt and then bake it in the frying pan; which process consisted in burning the outside and leaving the inside a “gaub” of sticky stuff full of the pure grease! Bah! It used to give me a fit of the utmost loathing after I had eaten it.
To give you an idea of it: after traveling over wide sand plains, traversed here and there by steep mountains all day at times to relieve our wearied beasts, having walked many hours, fatigued, worn out; nearly dead, we reached our “camping” place, tug away with our tired hands and legs in “fixing” the horses, in fetching water and wood, both of which we would frequently be compelled to walk after a mile or more, (owing to the non-proximity of the grass) then at last to sit down, faint and hungry to strong fat meat that tasted like rust, and a piece of bread that made the stomach retch at every swallow, was anything but comfortable! Yet appetite was so strong the stomach, though it loathed, still called for more.
Sometimes we were able to buy from a wagon crackers and bread baked in ovens, and then — do not think I am exaggerating — we would feel a thrill of unbounded happiness at our good fortune in getting them.
But I am consuming too much space — yet I don’t know how to do justice to my task without writing on, in the same strain Pshaw! There’s o use trying to tell anything in a letter. It would take me a week’s hard talking face to face. But still you must have some inkling.
To speak briefly, we got to the Salt Lake, Aeneas and myself and Wacooli having rode 200 miles through clouds of dust every day when we were scarcely able to sit our mule; were burned up with “mountain fever” and suffering excruciating torture — yes, excruciating is the word — from pain in our backs that seemed to enter the very spinal marrow!
But we never said “die”. We encouraged each other with many words and still journeyed on, performing all our duties as tho’ we were fully able to do so. Wacooli had no reason to complain of us. We put no more on him than on ourselves. We worked equally hard and suffered together.
But that “mountain fever.” I will describe it fully when I get home. Believe me we thought of home then, with its soft beds and kind friends, while thro’ the long hours of the day we sat, pale and weak, on our poor jaded mules, or hung our aching heads over their necks to see if change of posture could for a moment alleviate our agony — but that is all past.
When we reached the Mormon City we had all our animals with us except “Beach” which was fast failing and which we “swapt” for a “Snake poney”, a very good one. All our animals were failing. We concluded to recruit at the Salt Lake, both ourselves and our beasts. It was necessary also to have them shod. We had long before thrown away our shoes and nails.
After much trouble questioning the Mormons we found a range for our mules and the Snake poney. My gray poney I had turned into $35 in the city. We put our animals on this range to do the best they could.
We then took our perambulations thro’ the city to satisfy our curiosity and I assure you our hunger too. One or two meals in the course of our rambles of good, cool milk and light bread, with butter and cheese made us in love with the place, for the time. We paid 37½ to 50 cents for such meals. After doing nothing but eat for several days we at last appeased our hitherto insatiable hunger for wholesome food and prepared to lay in our supplies for California.
We had then no provisions whatever of any kind, except a few pounds of flour. To our astonishment we found that there was not a pound of bacon in the whole city, except what they immigrants brought in their wagons and sold to the citizens for their own use, parting with it in this manner because they intended to pack from the Salt Lake.
What was to be done? We had to buy fresh beef and cure it ourselves. According to the “Mormon Guide,” a little book consisting of four small leaves and which they sold to us for the reasonable sum of 50 cents the distance to Sacramento could be traversed by pack mules in 25 days or 30 at the fartherest — we calculated on this basis and cured beef to the amount of 90 pounds. We intended to get more than that weight but when cured the beef did not turn out to our expectations and then it was too late to procure more. This beef costs us 12½ cents per pound, fresh.
You must excuse me for the desultory mode of writing. If you were in California, eating your head off, as everybody here is in danger of doing at $18 per week, and afraid, as I am every minute, that some chance will pass me by forever of making money, you would appreciate everything that I write, however badly written, and take a letter, not as a matter of course and elegance, but as an accommodation. He that writes a letter in California, unless a perfect loafer, I pronounce an exceedingly accommodating man and one entitled to the great gratitude of his friends.
We bought in the way of supplies 150 pounds of flour at 25 cents per pound. It had been sold to the immigrants immediately preceding us for a dollar a pound and even two in some instances. Our better fortune, which I thought bad enough, was owing to the harvest then in.
Our expenses had all along the road been heavy —; 25 cents at every bridge over a mud-hole; $5 per wagon over the different rivers we ferried — where we always found white men ready, and if necessary, back by the Indians; and $250 for a pack mule or horse — when we had no wagon.
The Mormons even charged toll on the 44 miles of the road to the city. We paid $4 per horse for shoeing all around — God save us! It “shelled” the money from me. Besides all this I had to do a great deal of riding in and out of the city getting provisions and “seeing to things” as the Yankees say.
My meals, without meat, cost me from 37½ to 50 cents per meal, with meat they would have cost me a dollar each. Baiting my mule $1.50. “Why didn’t I walk? Because I had to let down bars of fence for six miles from the range to the city and I couldn’t pack beef on my back, and I couldn’t walk to the mill, 18 miles, and pack back flour upon my back. But I grow prolix.
After everything was finished the mules recruited somewhat. I began to think there was danger of the grass drying up at the farther end of the route if I stayed longer. So I went to the printing office in the city, bought one of their little newspapers, with my name, arrival and departure in it, and sent it to you by the Mormon mail. I paid 75 cents for this.
Now comes the tug of war. We expect to reach Sacramento in 25 days. We expect to eat dried beef, which is very good; sleep without a tent, which is not much worse, but we expect not much more hardship.
We left the Salt Lake then about the 15th of July. For 150 miles after leaving the Mormon City we had excellent grass and excellent water. After which, the entire distance may be characterized as a vast desert, through this desert it is only possible for the hardiest animals to pass by means of the food and water found in the oases, which are made to last them thro’ the more barren parts.
The weather was quite tolerable, altho’ warm ’til we were some 200 miles west of Salt Lake. Then for several days it was very hot, and for two days insufferably severe. At the middle of the day, it did seem that death must overtake us in spite of all we could do. If we laid down with our blankets over the sage brushes — which grow along the route to California from 2 to 3 feet high — the heat steamed up from the baked and cracked earth into our bodies and seemed to burn our very livers. If we stood up, the sun rays fell fiercely upon us.
There was no refuge, no shade and no water, but brackish, worse than none, to cool our raging made thirst. So much for the first of these days. The second was like unto it only “more so.” We had found no water and 12 o’clock obliged us to stop and rest our horses which were utterly unable to travel on account of the heat. You will have some sense of the heat and thirst which consumed us, when I tell you our tongues hung out of our mouths as is the case with dogs!
When our animals were rested somewhat we rode and drove slowly along under the dreadful beams ’til sunset and coming shadows relieved us. But our thirst was unquenched, and almost past bearing. It was just dusk when coming down the slant of a hill we found gushing out of a hollow, a trinity of beautiful clear springs which united their waters 50 to 60 yards below!
We all dismounted in the utmost haste and ran to the water with parched lips, when lo! it was so perfectly brackish that no stomach could endure it for a moment! Two days, then, we had of awfully hot weather, without a drop of water that could cool our thirst! — We did not get water fit to drink until after travelling 35 miles the next day.
If the weather had not been so intolerably hot as to prevent all possibility of moving beyond a snail’s pace, during every part of the day, and at mid-day all possibility of moving at all, we should not so have suffered. These sufferings from thirst were greater or less until we gained the Humboldt. I must observe also that the water was so bad as to act as a severe purgative after eating the bread missed by it.
For 50 miles east of and up to the Humboldt river we waded thro’ mineral dust — saleratus, saltpeter, sulphur and what not — sometimes up to the horses’ knees, but commonly four or five inches deep. This we did every day from morn’ til night through clouds of dust, whose poisonous particles made sores in the nose and ears and for myself affected my throat dreadfully.
You have no idea how terrible it is to bear, this dust. Continually, not for a mile or two, but for hundreds of miles, filling your eyes, ears and throat! At night you are not free from it. You cannot shake it out of your blankets, and every time you turn over light clouds of the precious incense greet your senses.
It often made my hands break out in large sores. I have seen this dust so thickly rising from the road that you could not see a horse 40 yards ahead — perhaps not so far; you could not even get an outline or glimpse of him. There was no use to try to avoid it, it rose with every tramp of your horse inside or outside the track, directly into your face. It was light as the finest powder of any kind, and was often carried by little whirlwinds, sometimes in huge columns so high that you could hardly see the tops of them! Isn’t truth stranger than fiction? I confess I stand astonished to this day at that sight.
At the head of the Humboldt we were still several hundred miles from Sacramento. Our provisions had become so short that we expected to suffer inevitably, perhaps to starve (game being at that time very rare) before we should be able to gain California.
We accordingly put ourselves on rations, until we learned that on the westward side of the desert there were provisions which were sold cheap. Learning this, it was then our object to reach that side of the desert as speedily as possible.
It was an absolute necessity for us to do so. — We hurried on therefore our jaded animals to their utmost. Poor things! How faint they grew and watery eyed and weary, as they grunted at each touch of the spurs or lash of the whip which drove them forwards.
All the way down the Humboldt a distance of at least 300 miles, the whole face of the earth was covered with a strong white and yellow substance called alkali, I believe, and the water being so strongly mixed with it as even to partake of its colors we were continually drinking alkali or whatever poisonous substance it is, into our systems.
No wonder that strange spasms would seize us and unaccountable fits of debility and exhaustion! Indeed, at this period of our journey our fatigue was so great that we were taken sometimes with blank despair of ever reach our goal, or g o l d. Our knees would give way under us as tho’ they had no oil; and we seemed to have a set of long awkward and unwieldy frames. Locomotion of the slightest kind was a task.
Our animals were suffering the same way; stiff, and trembling in the joints at every unusual exertion up and down hill. Then the dirt, how can I pass it by! It was utterly impossible to keep clean. We were dirty as the filthiest, lowest most contemptible, white Indian or “nigger”, you ever saw.
We could not comb our heads; it would have taken two days to have combed out the dirt that got into them in one — so our heads looked like an old mop which had scrubbed floors from time immemorial, I tried once to get a comb to the skin of my head and barely did it, but I had to lift the comb straight out of my hair, it being impossible to draw it thro’ downwards.
After a day’s travel each individual every night, looked like he had been rolling himself over and over in the dirt, head and ears, and had taken particular pains to see how perfectly hateful to the sight he could become!
Our best friends would not have known us. If we had in the plight ridden thro’ the neighborhood of Fayetteville, driving our long bony-legged mules and horses (which the buzzards were beating the drums for’ as old black Peter would say) before us, the sense of the ludicrous would have been so supreme — our long solemn faces helping off too — that the boys would have hooted at us as we passed by and the hilarity of the spectacle been without bounds.
I have seen packers pass us on the road whose appearance was so exhilarating that I leaned back in my saddle and nearly killed myself with laughter! But when some poor ragged devil, who started with a most megre outfit under the expectation that it was only necessary to reach California to be a rich man — came riding along on his gaunt old steer which was fully able to run a race with a snail, drubbing the poor old beast at every step to get him along, I confess my mirth was such that gods and men might have envied me! Poor Humanity! to what miserable passes will it put itself for money.
Here comes a man one day driving one ox hitched to the fore wheels of his wagon with a horse, or rather a faint resemblance of one, pulling in front of the ox, the man beating and banging them along, when they looked as though they could not stand up another day. Having lost their teams by ‘poison water’ or thro’ Indian theft, such were the straits to which men were reduced by degrees ’til finally they were forced to take packs on their backs and put it thro’ “footback.”
Passing over much that is interesting I must hurry on to an end. We arrived at last at the “Meadows” — as they are called, viz: a large prairie bottom of the Humboldt, covered with tall fine grass and divided into green plats by deep sloughs of the river. Here we were a day’s journey from the Sink from which point the Desert commences.
The Sink derives its name from the singular circumstances that the river is there absorbed by the sands of the desert, and is forever lost sight of. The Meadows afforded the only grass and thousands of people with wagons and mules and horses were getting grass with which cross the Desert.
We spent a day getting ours, which we cut with a scythe and then packed over one slough after another on our shoulders, waist deep in water for a half mile or more to dry land. It was severely hard day’s work for a poor fellow already worn out with travel. We had to cut enough to feed our horses once at the Sink and once in the centre of the Desert.
When we started from the Sink into the desert, and had travelled about an hour — we started near sundown expecting to go thro’ in a night — we were suddenly arrested by a slough that had be recently burst out, perhaps, and was so deep we were unable to cross it. Thereby we were put off our course 15 miles and worse than that detained all night at the entrance of the desert.
We were obliged to give our horses the grass designed for the middle of the desert and so leave them without substance entirely through. The water in the slough was unfit to drink tho’ many did drink it.
On the morrow we started, compelled, contrary to our better judgment to travel 45 miles without water or grass thro’ deep sand and under the intense heat of the sun. We, with our animals, suffered extremely with thirst and hunger — for we were constrained to eat up the provisions we had provided for the passage when we fed our grass to the horses.
We couldn’t carry enough water in our canteens to quench thirst for any length of time; besides the sun shone so hot that the water became warm as to be an emetic. We travelled on, and on, and on, ’til within 13 miles of the westward side of the Desert, when nearly dead, we met with some wagons from the Salmon Trout river with barrels of the precious liquid which they sold to us for a dollar a gallon.
I never supposed, ’til I got to the desert I should have to pay for so common an article as water. But those wagoners made thousands of dollars by selling it.
Some poor fellows, who were destitute of money, could get no water at all; many of them too, who were afoot, it being refused them even when they begged for it. Many went jogging along, with tears rolling from their eyes.
Horses lay dead, I think I can safely say every 50 yards through the desert. The stench was in every breath we breathed. Thro’ the entire desert it was as tho’ we had been standing with our noses to a piece of carrion! — It was so, without exaggeration. I shall never forget it. It made me sick and wretched as I never have been before and pray God I may never be again.
About 2 o’clock in the night, we got thro’ the desert and there on its edge, rolling like silver in the moonlight, ran the beautiful waters of the Salmon Trout River! The river was lined with trading posts of which we must buy provisions, fore we were out entire. Next morning then we concluded to take our horses to a range but first bought grass to relieve their immediate wants at 15 cents per bundle — bundles very small. Found a range at last which was not filled with animals but which had been picked over by the whole preceding immigration. It was the best we could do so we put our animals on it.
For the first time we now had doubts about our mules bringing such enormous prices as had been represented. I had spent the last cent I had up in the legitimate expenses of the road and I had now to sell a mule for something to eat. Accordingly I offered to sell at the different trading posts and was astonished to find they would give me only $11 for my poorest mules, only $30 for my middling, only $40 for my best and only $10 for the Snake poney!
At the same time they asked me two dollars a pound for hard bread and crackers, and a dollar and a half for a pound of flour. I felt strange like all over! I scratched my head several times! Indeed I was considerably addled! At last Aeneas and I concluded to sell his little mule — so after hard trying we made, what those traders told us was a great bargain, i.e. we got 15 pounds of flour for her and 8 dollars in money with which we bought meat, etc. I found after getting to California that those traders were making great speculations by buying poor stock at cheap rates and afterwards selling them, when they were fattened for California prices, i.e. $100 for an ox of common size and $150 for a common good horse.
There were thousands of horses and cattle sold when we sold our mule by immigrants who were obliged to having something to eat or whose animals were giving out. I have seen a first rate horse, tho’ poor, sell for eight dollars! Cattle in the same way. My little black mule was failing so fast that rathern than let him die on the road I sold him to a skin flint for 11 dollars.
We left Salmon Trout River in a day or two. We crossed several more deserts, 15 or 20 miles, without grass or water ’til we reached Carson’s Valley. Bought beef there at fifty cents a pound. Grass excellent.
We struck the Sierra Nevada eighty miles across. There we would be in the first gold diggings. The ascent and descent of those mountains were awful, transcending all I had ever dreamed. Fancy yourself walking over the side of a mountain five miles from the foot — by the road — and then looking ahead see the road winding around another way up in the sky above you. But I will leave the Sierra Nevada to a description when I get home. I will then have plenty of time to describe them and the tedious route over them. We walked the entire distance. There were trading posts all along the mountains. No grass for our horses except what hay we bought at 20 cents a pound.
Our provisions again gave out and we had to pay two dollars a pound for crackers and a dollar a pound for meat. It cost about twelve dollars a day along the mountains to live at all. We made out to half live at six and eight dollars! It took us a week to get over the eighty miles on the mountains. At last we reached Hangtown, or Placerville, at the Western foot of the mountains. There I sold my next best mule for 45 dollars.
We stayed around there several days recruiting and in the meantime spent nearly all of the $45 in feeding ourselves and mules and horses. Nevertheless provisions were cheaper here than back, as a matter of course. We could get a good sized biscuit for 12½ cents — Hay 10 to 12 cents a pound. There I sold the Snake poney for 35 dollars.
We no looked round to see what would be the chance for digging. Thousands were already digging in the town itself and at every little hole for six miles, up and down the creek. There was not a solitary place to dig. Every claim was taken up. I never saw such a game in my life. A very few of those who were digging there made an average of $50 a day, whilst others made from $20 to $16, from that to $5 and from $5 to 50 cents a day, or nothing. The above rates of success in digging will serve as a standard for the digging over the whole country.
There is an immense sight of gold in the bowels of the earth. But it is hard to get at and to get it large quantities depends entirely upon luck. There is not certainty in it, any more than in a game of cards. At all the diggings $5 or at least $4 a day is got out of by almost every miner. This is in reality a great yield, but it don’t make the fortune of the miner because his expenses swallow it up.
Besides, mining is the hardest work that ever human being performed, and minors are obliged to rest for days at a time — take holidays and recruit themselves. While they are resting their money is passing into other hands.
Reports have been much exaggerated. — There is not more than one out of every thousand of the miners who makes a fortune. Base your estimate upon that. Nevertheless, so many thousands a-digging puts an immense amount of gold dust into circulation, and if one can get into any business about towns, or on the rivers, it will come to him like magic. If one can’t get into business his only resort is in the mines — There he can at least make expenses, perhaps a fortune — if he is only lucky! Expenses in the towns and cities are less than anywhere else. Living is higher at the mines.
As to the locality of the mines they are found generally in the ravines, sometimes on the banks of rivers. These ravines are found at the feet of the mountains and in them, and are often difficult of access. — One season usually serves to dig a ravine clear out. After they exhaust the gold in one place the miners go about ‘prospecting’ as it is termed; that is they pack a mule with a great heavy box — the ‘gold-washer’ and other heavy mining utensils, and travel day after day over the mountains in search of more gold placers.
They are obliged to dip deep ere the place is sufficiently tested and try the earth in the ‘washer’ before they can determine whether there is much gold. Thus they work hard every day digging many holes without finding gold. This is very disheartening. Hundreds have spent all that they had previously acquired in this necessary business of ‘prospecting.’ No man has ever made $50,000 by digging in California — so, at least as I am told. In a few instances some have dug $20,000 but very few, compared with the overwhelming population.
A good many miners went home this season with large fortunes. But the most of last year’s immigration cannot get home at all. I saw a good number of those with whom I am acquainted who came here last year, and but two or three had more than enough to bring them home, of those whom I saw, while the rest had not enough to get home!
But I am leaving myself all this time at Hangtown. I concluded to go on to Sacramento and there to make enquiries that would enable me to find someplace where we could make money. I found after I got there that everything was as blind as before.
I got correct information about the mines and notwithstanding the difficulties in the way, we concluded to try our luck. We got a whale boat — having sold our remaining mules for only $75 a piece — and came up the Sacramento River to the mouth of Feather River, and up that to this place, Yuba City.
Here, I concluded that it would be best for us to go into other business than mining, just as we could get it to do. I do not now regret we did so. We tramped around this city and the city across the river, Marysville, for a week or two without finding a job.
At last we commenced getting into luck and from that time to this have been as we still are — doing remarkably well. Aeneas driving a team at excellent wages. Wacooli hired out at ditto, while I have been replenishing my purse quite briskly. I say we are doing well, but unlike some letter writers home, we are not making thousands a month. But if our luck holds out we will make money. Indeed we could get rich, I believe, right off if it did not cost such an enormous sum to live. Anybody can make enough to live on and do it easy — It is a false report that any are starving in California. There is more money in circulation here than one would imagine.
I have written a long letter and in haste — I hope I have given you some idea of California — its advantages and contra. We must not be too sanguine for everything is so unstable and uncertain here that it is said with much truth everything depends on luck.
I have not space nor time to describe the climate, fruits, flowers, etc. but they are all very fine. I am perfectly delighted with the climate. We have good health. It is the finest grazing country the sun ever shone upon, grass green all the year.
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