All Gone to Look for America (27 page)

‘It’s just two miles south of here that gold was first discovered in
California
in 1848, at a place called Sutter’s Mill. Auburn grew up to be the administrative centre for the area, and long before the present ancient [
sic
] courthouse was built the grounds in which it stands were known for meting out justice in the form of hanging for the growing number of outlaws who decided there were fatter pickings to be had stealing from the miners than to join their number.’

There’s not the slightest doubt now that we’re going seriously uphill, and fast, through a couple of tunnels and along tracks that seem increasingly to cling to the side of steeply-wooded gorges. All of a sudden the slowly rising land becomes foothills which in a matter of a few miles become mountains – reinforcing how mad the notion of a railway across them must have seemed 150 years ago. Just looking out the window as we climb rapidly on winding tracks, the idea of cutting a track into this mountainside falling away at an angle of nearly 75 degrees seems virtually impossible today and unimaginable with the engineering equipment of the mid-nineteenth century. It seemed pretty much the same to the men tasked to build it who found it hard to believe the
engineers
had decreed this to be the only feasible route. Amazingly the solution was genuinely ancient even if it did come from another continent.

In 1865 on a trial basis 50 Chinese who had come to California to seek work were taken on by Central Pacific as casual labourers. They turned out to be more reliable and hardworking than most of the rest of the workers, many of whom were Irish and had been shipped in – at great expense – from New York and the east coast, but were given to fights, drinking and simply running off to work the gold mines. The Chinese took less time off work for sickness, inebriation or injury than any other workers. They also brought their own food – because they preferred it – but that made them cheaper too. It also had the unacknowledged bonus that it made them healthier.

It was the Chinese who had a solution to the seemingly impossibly steep slopes. One of the foremen approached the site boss and explained that they had long experience in this type of work from the days when their ancestors built fortresses along the Yangtze gorges. What he needed, he explained, was a supply of reed to be sent up from San Francisco. The reed was duly ordered and the Chinese began weaving it into round, waist-high baskets with eyelets at the top which could be fixed to a cable and suspended from a pulley
mechanism
high above. One at a time workers would climb into the basket to be lowered from a bluff above and would use small hand drills to bore a hole into the mountainside into which they would fix a black powder charge – it was after all a Chinese invention. Then they would light the fuse and shout to be hauled out of the way before it exploded.

It was incredibly successful, though not without casualties. Exactly how many died in the operation is not recorded; although the Central Pacific paid its Chinese workers the same as its European workforce, it didn’t bother to keep track of their fatalities. But it was a spectacular piece of work, the result of which can still be admired today on the rocky bluff known as Cape Horn where the train crawls along a hairpin bend etched into the side of a pine-clad canyon wall that drops 1,800 feet to the American River below.

‘In the olden days,’ the docent tells us, ‘trains would stop here for
passengers
to get out, stretch their legs and admire the view, but that was in the days when travel was less hurried.’ Given that the 40 miles an hour, which is the most we can manage at this point due to the gradient, hardly seems hurried, it is a pity they gave up the custom.

The Chinese became known as ‘Celestials’ because they described their homeland as the ‘Celestial Kingdom’, but I can’t help thinking it’s because so many of them found themselves ascending to heaven rather earlier than intended. One way or another the railroad builders were so impressed that they began actively recruiting in China and by the time the transcontinental
route was finished in 1869 there were more than 10,000 Chinese on the
company’s
employment register.

James Strobridge, who was in charge of construction on this section of the route said of his Chinese workforce: ‘They learn quickly. They do not fight, have no strikes that amount to anything, and are very cleanly in their habits. They will gamble and do quarrel among themselves most noisily – but harmlessly.’ On the odd occasion when there was any trouble Strobridge settled it himself by picking out the ringleaders and confronting them with an axe handle.

Getting the railway built was big business that went far beyond the labours of construction. Except where the railway passed through cities and over rivers the companies that built it were granted 10 square miles of land on each side of the tracks for every other section of one-mile track built. In total, during the 21 years from 1850 to 1871 the land the railway companies were granted by the federal government – with no reference of course to the Native American peoples who might foolishly have thought their centuries-old occupation of it gave them some rights of ownership – amounted to 175 million acres, or one tenth of the total land mass of today’s continental United States. The Big Four became very big indeed.

As we continue relentlessly uphill the docents, taking turns to fill in rather like a pair of news anchors, explain that part of the gradient here was cleared by hydraulic miners, who simply sprayed the rock and gravel with high
velocity
water until it gave way and crumbled and they could sieve gold from the run-off. The quantities to be obtained in certain areas were hardly
commercial
and the railroad was actually laid over a gold-bearing gravel surface. But if it was one thing to declare it uneconomic to mine, it was quite another to scare off penniless prospectors who continued to spray the gravel even after the tracks were laid, eroding the bed. In the end the railroad company had to hire armed guards to keep them at bay. Meanwhile the mud and gravel run-off pouring downhill clogged both the American and Sacramento rivers so badly that eventually the state court in 1884 declared it illegal, thereby passing
California’s
first environmental law.

Up here though the main value of the land is its spectacular rugged beauty and the fact that railroad or no railroad – and the modern winding highway also notwithstanding – it remains remote and relatively inaccessible.
Particularly
in winter. We are now a mile above sea level and several thousand feet above the Bear River that winds its way through the deep canyon below. Even nearly 90 years after the Chinese labourers first blasted their way along these ledges, trains could come close to disaster in the wrong weather conditions.

One of our docents has taken to the microphone again now with a tone of voice that suggests he is reading a ghost story in front of the fire in a log cabin. ‘These mountains can also be terrible places,’ he says quietly. ‘Back in the winter of 1951 the City of San Francisco ‘Surfliner’ train became trapped after an avalanche blocked the track ahead. The train stopped but got caught in a heavy snowfall – the like of which nobody had ever seen before – which dumped more than 16 feet on top of it. That train was stranded. For nearly four days, the 196 passengers and a crew of 30 were trapped. A major rescue attempt involved not just everything at the railway company’s disposal but also army, air force and workers for the power and water companies who maintained high-mountain reservoirs. In the end they only got to them when a footway was dug through the deep snow to reach the end carriage. All the people on board that train escaped to be taken to safety in a fleet of 11 private cars with only a few minor injuries and, remarkably, no fatalities.

‘Unfortunately the same could not be said for the rescuers: the engineer of a locomotive trying to plough its way up the tracks towards the trapped train was killed when a sudden avalanche swept him and his locomotive down the precipice below. Another man, an employee of one of the power companies who operated a snowcat for 48 hours continuously during the rescue attempt died of a heart attack a day later.’

It’s impressive stuff and makes us understand the need for the avalanche protection sheds that cover the tracks up here even if they do spoil the
extravagant
views. And then we enter what our docent calls, ‘The Big Hole’. ‘This is a two-mile-long tunnel, ladies and gentlemen, and when we come out the other side we shall be at the highest point across the Sierra, 7,500 feet up.’ With that he lapses into silence and the train whooshes into darkness.

Emerging is almost a shock to the senses. We have sprung from darkness into light, on the top of the world: a great blinding blaze of blue-skied sunshine beams down over an unspoiled vista of forest, green leaves flecked here and there with autumnal golds amid surprisingly gentle mountain tops and in the distance as we begin our gradually curving descent towards it, a wonderful lake of the deepest darkest blue. No sooner have we all got our cameras out than the fatalist in the engineer’s cab turns to a sombre story that cuts to the quick of the wagon train legend.

‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, below you we have Lake Donner. Back here in 1846 there occurred one of the worst tragedies of the pioneer days. A group of settler families who’d set out from Illinois heading for California camped here by the shores of this beautiful lake you see in front of you for a day or two. But
they made the mistake of taking the weather in the mountains for granted to get shut in by a blizzard. This was in October, mind. Well, they were here for more than a day or two. In fact, it took until January for the first handful of them who had put together makeshift snowshoes to struggle on the next 100 miles to reach Sutter’s Fort. It took weeks more for a relief party to get back to the others, by which time half of the 87-strong party had starved to death, including five women and 14 children, while many of those who survived had had to resort to cannibalism, eating the bodies of their loved ones. The original family who had begun the trip in Illinois was called Donner, and the lake was named after them.’

All of a sudden Lake Donner’s placid dark blue waters look a lot less
inviting.
This is a tale that obviously has deep resonance with one group of
passengers
who have come into the observation car specially. For an unkind minute I think we have been invaded by the cast of a live-action Disney remake of
Snow White
. Beaming broadly are two middle-aged balding men with large beards in identical blue shirts, black dungarees and big black boots, and next to them two dumpy middle-aged women also dressed identically in green dresses with white bonnets and thick black stockings. And more remarkably still, a teenage girl dressed exactly the same. Back in Britain, if someone were to describe a family group all dressed in clothing that clearly related to their religion I would visualise chadors or at least headscarves and assume them to be Muslim. Here, I have little doubt I have come across my first Amish. Just to make it clear as they take their seats along the wall of the observation car facing Lake Donner they all burst into a tuneful rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’. I’m not sure what it is about the scene of great disasters that inspires the Godly to sing His praises when what they are confronted with appears to be proof of divine indifference.

But by now the little Amish group has taken us by surprise again, this time by pulling out a pack of cards and dealing hands.

‘Hey,’ says a big bearded ticket inspector passing through at just that moment – though his own hirsute appearance is more reminiscent of a
mountain
grizzly than one of Snow White’s dwarfs – ‘I though you guys didn’t do that kind of stuff.’

‘Sure we do. Get on,’ says one of the two women with a twinkly smile. It occurs to me that I would find it remarkably hard to tell the two men or the two women apart. It’s not that I couldn’t – they’re obviously not twins or
anything
– but it’s something to do with the identical clothing, identical glasses, identical hairstyles (at least as far as the men are concerned, the women’s hair is modestly concealed beneath their bonnets) and their remarkably similar
shapes. Put them on stage and they could be an Amish ABBA tribute act! Except for the girl, of course. She’s probably about 15, I guess, though it’s hard to tell dressed like that. Pretty in a shy sort of way, behind her glasses and with her bonnet on, and overshadowed by the dumpy ghosts of her probable future, with whom, however, she is politely chatting and playing cards with a far greater good humour than many teenage girls dragged on holiday with their parents and parents’ similarly middle-aged friends might display.

And a holiday is indeed what they are on, I discover, getting into a casual conversation with one of the two men, who unfortunately reinforces my ABBA image by telling me his name is Ben (at least it isn’t Benny – or Bjørn). ‘From Benjamin,’ he explains, pronouncing the ‘j’ like a ‘y’, German-style.

It’s the language in fact, which has given me an opening into the
conversation
. As a German speaker it’s impossible not to be intrigued by a snatch like the following, overheard as they examined the cards in their hands:

‘Was bin ish?’

‘Troumpf.’

‘Hasht du a veildcard?’

‘Ach, my pen schreibt nit.’

It’s a wacky, unartificial, easy-flowing hybrid dialect of American English and an archaic German. (What suit am I playing? Trumps. Have you got a face card? Blow, my pen isn’t working.) Not one thing or the other, but the sort of language that families and close friends who are all bilingual drift into when talking casually among one another.

I don’t want to eavesdrop but as a linguist the blend is fascinating. Every now and then, the conversation slips away from me as they drift wholly into an archaic dialect of German that even a modern Berliner would find
incomprehensible
. And then all of a sudden they switch wholly back into American English. ‘Aw, man!’ says the teenager suddenly, laying out her obviously useless cards on the table. It’s not, I realise, as if they’re dropping into their own tongue to share some secrets but have momentarily forgotten that for politeness’ sake in mixed company they should speak the
lingua franca
.