California Inter Pocula

by Hubert Howe Bancroft

CALIFORNIA

INTER POCULA.

A REVIEW OF SOME CLASSICAL ABNORMITIES.

BY

HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT.

Pape Satan, Pape Satan, aleppe!

Dante.

SAN FRANCISCO:

THE HISTORY COMPANY, PUBLISHERS.

1888

Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by

HUBERT H. BANCROFT,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

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All Rights Reserved.

PREFACE.

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So full of oddities, and crudities, and strange developments, consequent upon unprecedented combinations of nationalities, characters and conditions, were the flush times of California, that to condense them into the more solid forms of history without to some extent stifling the life that is in them and marring their originality and beauty is not possible. There are topics and episodes and incidents which cannot be vividly portrayed without a tolerably free use of words — T do not say a free use of the imagination.

Much has been written of the Californian Inferno of 1849 and the years immediately following, much that is neither fact nor fable. Great and gaudy pictures have been painted, but few of them bear much resemblance to nature. Many conceits have been thrown off by fertile brains which have given their authors money and notoriety ; but the true artist who, with the hand of the master drawing from life, places before the observer the all-glowing facts, unbesmeared by artificial and deceptive coloring, has yet to appear.

No attempt is made in these pages to outdo my predecessors in morbid intensifications of the certain phases of society and character engendered of the times. They contain simple sketches and plain descriptions, historical rather than fantastical, with no effort toward effect.

CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME.

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CHAPTER I.	PAGE
THE VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA	1
CHAPTER II.
THREE CENTURIES OF WILD TALK ABOUT GOLD IN CALIFORNIA	25
CHAPTER III.
FURTHER RUMORS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA PRIOR TO THE DISCOVERY BY MARSHALL.	44
CHAPTER IV.
AFFAIRS ABOUT THE COLOMA SAW-MILL DURING THE SPRING OF 1848	62
CHAPTER V.
THE JOURNEY OVERLAND	89
CHAPTER VI.
THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA—NEW YORK TO CHAGRES	121
CHAPTER VII.
THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA—ISTHMUS OF PANAMA	165
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA—PANAMA TO SAN FRANCISCO	190
CHAPTER IX.
EL DORADO	225
CHAPTER X.
CLASSICAL ABNORMITIES	248
CHAPTER XI.
SAN FRANCISCO	260
CHAPTER XII.
SOCIETY	294
CHAPTER XIII.
FURTHER ABNORMITIES	315
CHAPTER XIV.
BUSINESS	334
CHAPTER XV.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE AND CHARACTER	361
CHAPTER XVI.
AMONG THE MINERS	381
CHAPTER XVII.
SQUATTERISM	396
CHAPTER XVIII.
PACIFIC COAST PRISONS	413
CHAPTER XIX.
SOME INDIAN EPISODES	436
CHAPTER XX.
SOME CHINESE EPISODES	561
CHAPTER XXI.
COURTS OF JUSTICE AND COURT SCENES.	582
CHAPTER XXII.
DRINKING	658
CHAPTER XXIII.
GAMBLING	685
CHAPTER XXIV.
DUELLING	734
CHAPTER XXV.
TALES OF THE TIMES	785