Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-11
BAJA CALIFORNIA.
PRESENT OUTLOOK OF THE SANTA
CLARA GOLD FIELDS.
The "Record- Union" Correspond
ent on the Ground-The
Boom" is Over

special Correspondence of the RECORD UN1oNI
ENsENADA, Mex, May 6, 1889.
Although the boom" SO quickly sub
sided and the famous placers are complete
ly worked out, an era of permanent pros
perity has come to the Santa Clara min
ing district, about which so many conflict
ing reports have been circulated within
the last three months. The rush is over,
the tenderfeet have departed, and the
more substantial class of miners who re-
manned to develop the quartz lodes are
abundantly satisfied with the returns. The
sprinkling of placer gold in the gulches, in
big nuggets washed out by natures pro-
gress, simply indicated what might be
found in the strong store-houses whence
they came. There is no doubt about the
exceeding richness of these mountains of
Baja California, but to make them yield
their treasures will require time and
money and with their enormous extent
it will be work not only for to-day, next
our children's children in other centuries.
Some of the best paying mines in Mexico
to-day are those that have been in constant
operation since the earliest days of the
conquest, more than $50 years ago. There
are
TWO OR THREE DIFFERENT ROUTES
To Santa Clara, all so inconceivably bad
that, whichever one you choose, you will
wish you had taken another-part of the
way leading straight up the faces of path
less hills, where it seems impossible for
man or beast to find foothold, or over
huge, loose powders, piled in pell-mell
and washed by tropic torrents during
portion of the year.
| If one has backbone enough to endure
hard rides and courage enough to go on
horseback around the outer edge of the
| top of the Washington Recommendation
which feat some of these mountain passes
are not more nerve-trying, along the brink
of tremendous precipices-he may find
the journey not unpleasant, whether made
i'll the saddle, the clumsy, old fashioned
Concord coach that now makes irregular
trips between San Diego and the cold
fields, or by the more common mode of
transit from Ensenada in wagon-aliow-
ing not less than three days in transit
each way, stopping nights at convenient
ranches or camping under the open sky,
and walking up the steepest nights. When
the first craze was on,
| HUNDREDS OF GoLD-FEvER VICTIMS
Too poor to own even sore-backed burros,
and perhaps too honest to steal them
walked incredible distances, carrying their
scanty outfits upon their backs. For weeks
the woods were full of these enterprising
pedestrians, at the mercy of the blazing
sun by day and the chilly dews of night
half-starved and suffering, but plucky to
the last. / am happy to record that many
OF these were amply rewarded, by CHANGING
to strike it rich," as the miners say, in
the short-lived placers, to the tune Of from
$50 to 5000 per diem, until the surface
gold was all picked up. But there were
hundreds of sadder cases-of men who gave
up lucrative positions to come here and
meet with bitter disappointment, of fathers
who sold there homes and beggared their
families, of sickness and death from ex-
posure, of hunger and heartache and dis
pair-and there would have been actual
starvation had not those who were better
supplied, maintained the impecunious and
helped them to get away from this grave
OF their hopes as quickly as possible
Where
THE TYPICAL MINER
Comes from no man can tell. As Strakosch
says of the opera chorus, he is not born
like other people, but made for the emer-
gency. The instant new excitement
breaks out he seems to spring from the
earth like the tabled crop from the drag
on's teeth, fully equipped for the fray, and
his name is legion. During the first weeks
of the rush constant procession of them
might have been met tramping toward
Santa Clara, each with Speculation +" in
his cold, gray eye and dirty pack upon
his back, shirt of brindle flannel, exposing
a stretch of hairy throat, ne-colored
breeches tucked inside of cow-hide boots
pistols and bowie-knife in belt, and SLOUGH
ing sombrero whose "better days. were
at some long-forgotten period. These are
THE MEN OF EXPERIENCE,
And their presence in a new mining sec.
ton is as sure a sign of its richness as a
| flock of black birds on q field indicates the
grain beneath. But the chronic miner is
also the "man of destiny" and his fate is
to be forever moving Onto the end OF
time, unsatisfed and impecunious.
a portion of the way between Ensenada
and the gold fields of Santa Clara leads
through narrow valleys, fair as a poets
dream, carpeted with a surprising variety
of wild flowers; where great ox-eyed
daisies wave their golden blossoms above
the head of a man ON horseback. In this
terra perfect perfect land of the Mission
fathers there is SOFT delicious air and dain.
ty sunshine Throughout all the northern
season of ice and snow. When travelled
through them in March and the early DAYS
of April-before the streams were dried
and the time for intenser heats to begin
the skies were blue as those of sNaples
the Beautiful" and earth rejoiced in all the
beauty and freshness of perfect summer
Wheat, breast-high, nodded full-headed in
the gentle breeze, tasseled corn waved green
on sunny slopes, and in many places the
rancheros were digging potatoes bigger
than their own brawny fists.
Arrived at the ultima thule in the heart
of the Santa Clara, one finds
AN ANIMATED SCENE,
Four thousand five hundred feet above the
level OF the sea, In the most desolate gorge
imaginable, shut in on all sides by grim
and frowning mountains Along an ele-
waited plateau, 800 feet wide, and bordered
by higher hills, thousand white tents are
: scattered like gigantic snow-hakes A river
runs through it during part of the year
furnishing an embarrassing overplus oil
water soon after the rainy season, but
dwindling away to nothing as summer adj
vances. Up and down the creek-bed for a
mile or two the canvas town extends, and
at night the stars are dimmed by blazing
cama-fires.
Notwithstanding the reports in some
northern papers concerning alleged dis
turbances here between Mexicans and
Americans, the interference of Fedora
troops and prospects of bloodshed, the
greatest harmony has prevailed from the
first. Within the memory of the oldest
forty-niner, no more orderly, Jolly and
friendly class of miners was ever collected
together. AT one time the narrow gulcl
held more than 5000 men, collected from
California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho ana
Colorado, from camps which have become
proyerbial for their turbulent, rough and
desperate characters and for drunkenness
gambling and every other yics-yet in RI.