Senator, the finest and fastest boat that ever turned a
wheel from Long Wharf, sound and strong, with mir-
rors, mahogany doors and silver hinges — one dollar to-
night— feather pillows and curled hair-mattresses,
eight young-lady passengers and not a nigger from
stem to stern of her. All the dead languages spoken,
and all for one dollar!" "Low fares and no monop-
oly," yells another, "no more rotten bottoms and
bursting boilers, and beds with bushels of bed-bugs
and fleas 1 "
In August 1853 the fare to Sacramento by boat was one dollar in the cabin and twenty -five cents on deck. Opposition steamers flaunted their banners, and 'Long Wharf presented a stirring scene. He was a luckless fellow who fell unprepared into the hands of the runners. Amidst cries of "no imposition prac- tised by this line," and cursings on all sides of combi- nations, monopolies, and oppositions, he is fenced in by the philistines, and nolens volens he is hurried to the boat, whose representatives are for the moment in the ascendant
At the various landings along the rivers, stages take up the passengers and whirl them on toward the mines, and when wheeled vehicles are stopped by the rugged barriers of the Sierra foothills, saddle mules stand ready to hurry them on to their destination.
Out of every necessity is born a new phase of character ; and the Californian stage-driver — the whip par excellence of early times, now unhappily no more — is not the least orioinal and fantastic — of the great conglomeration. Culled from the scum, with a swaggering air, a rough manner, and uncleanly mouth, lie is not without heart, conscience, and deportment. He is a lord in his w^ay, the captain of his craft, the fear of timid passengers, the admiration of stable- boys, and the trusty agent of his employer. He prides himself in being an expert in his profession, to which all other occupations and professions are subordinate; all must sooner or later fall into his
