Four Months example essay topic

In the early months in the mining camps, the euphoria of having survived life-threatening journeys, combined with the camaraderie of a still-mysterious, shared adventure, gave rise to a certain communal spirit. Men were generous with one another, and with information - exaggerated as it most often was. During the first year of working the mines, there was relative peace between Native Americans and whites as well. Good will flourished in a land of apparent plenty: "The conviction was widespread that the mountains were a bank on which every man had a drawing account; if he came up short he need only seize his pick and pan and make a withdrawal". But the profile soon changed. The exaggerated rumors, and the increasing number of miners competing for space, sped the work pace.

Miners raced through the short summer months of prime prospecting - winter brought impossible weather - spring brought flash floods, along with the next wave of migrant gold seekers. In the space of a season, the Forty-nine rs turned California "from an isolated island of tranquility to a raucous emporium of business and bedlam". One diarist describes the skewed sense of time brought by the summer of '49: "The longest period of time ever thought of was a month. Money was loaned and houses were rented by the month. All engagements were made by the month. In the space of a month the whole city might be swept off by fire and a totally new one might be flourishing in its place".

Rumors flashed from one hill to the next - $1500 could be washed in a day on the American River - a man below Placerville found $2,000 beneath a boulder - three Frenchmen removed a stump from the Coloma trail and dug out $5,000 - and towns sprang up instantly. An ex-slave from Virginia named Jim Freeman and his Scottish partner, "Major" William Downie, built a log cabin on the site of fabulous diggings they discovered on the Yuba. Within four months, it was a boom town with fifteen hotels, five thousand residents, and a name - Downie ville. As towns came to life, the need for social order was overwhelming. Because everyone was too busy hunting gold to organize basic services, fires leveled towns repeatedly.

Problems of water and sanitation were appalling - sickness was a constant. In one year, cholera killed 1500 in Sacramento alone. Of the original Forty-nine rs who had followed the "California dream", an estimated 30 percent died of disease, accident, or violence. Uncounted Native Americans and other non-An glos were casualties as well. New arrivals had no idea how hard and unhealthy prospecting would be or how small would be their reward. The lessons of the departure sermons now resonated in the hearts of miners who were drained by one misery after another - cholera, pneumonia, wracking dysentery - exhaustion, homesickness, repeated hard luck in the claims.

As the prospect of riches dimmed, suicides were reported. "It was heartrending to see stout-hearted men shedding tears over their horrible situation, not knowing what to do". Some turned and went back where they had come from. Those with stronger constitutions kept on. Few would actually grow rich off their dream. And most of those who did were not to be found scrabbling in the hills, but in San Francisco, where they were swiftly recasting the dream within a distinctly urban framework.

Bayard Taylor was twenty-four years old, a poet and a celebrated travel writer when he sailed to San Francisco with intentions of writing a book about his trip to America's El Dorado. A gifted journalist, Taylor narrates in colorful detail the real estate explosion - the blizzard of businesses opening up - the transformation of San Francisco from a tent city into a metropolis of 15,000 in just four months. Speed was everything. No one knew how long the hills of gold would pay, but while they did, the merchant whose stock arrived first stood to profit even more handsomely than the prospector. On first landing, Taylor recorded astonishing signs of California's distorted economy along the docks of San Francisco: Seventy-five prefabricated iron houses shipped from China - along with Chinese carpenters. Cheaper than using local materials and labor.

Miners's oiled underwear departing by shiploads for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where it was cheaper to get it laundered. An instant 4,000% profit which Taylor himself made, selling the old newspapers he had used to cushion his belongings on the trip. Real estate lots bought up by speculators a year ago at sixteen dollars - now worth $15,000.