Read Online Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg - Free Book Online

might get their heads knocked off.
    On the broad river arm the ships were crowding each other, steamboats, sailing ships, sloops, rowboats, ferries, and barges in one great galaxy. In the middle of the river, boats moved with the aid of sails; nearer the shore, wheels under the water drove them. The tall narrow smokestacks of the steamers rose like a forest of black, burned tree trunks over the harbor. The Hudson and the East River, with their bays, estuaries, and canals, flowed around the city of New York, encircled it in their arms, and the city of New York pushed its piers and embankments into the rivers and broke them up. Smoke from house chimneys and steamer funnels flowed together into great clouds, floated by a weak westerly breeze toward the Atlantic.
    A small vessel without sail, wheels, or oars moved with great speed across the water and aroused Robert’s interest. He asked what made it move so speedily. The Finn said it was a steam ferry. Didn’t they see the smoking funnel from a small house in the center of the ship?
    The Charlotta ’s second mate pointed out and explained things to the boys; he spoke of barks and smacks, schooners and galleasses, but of this they understood little. From the deck of a large sailing vessel came song and loud, gay voices. A group of men in broad-brimmed hats, apparently passengers, were making merry on the ship. The boys wanted to stop and listen to them; they were quite curious.
    The Finn said that this was a clipper ship from California, ready to sail for San Francisco. The ship was a new, fast sailer, sheathed in copper; the men on board were California bound, to dig for gold.
    The ship’s name was Angelica, and from her prow hung a red, flapping pennant with jolly words: Ho! Ho! Ho! For California! This pennant did not resemble the flags on other ships, nor did the passengers resemble other ships’ passengers; these men were laughing, noisy, singing lusty songs. It seemed to the boys as though the ship had no command.
    The Finn further informed the boys that a shipload of women, both white and colored, was to sail from New York for the gold fields. There was a scarcity of women throughout America, in San Francisco there were only fifty, and the gold diggers were said to be languishing from lust. Cases of attacks on mules and mares had been reported—woman hunger could drive men insane.
    But there was plenty of gold out there, it grew in the earth as potatoes grow in Sweden. In the rivers they could fish for gold lumps, big as eggs. The Finn himself had seen samples of twenty-three carat California gold right here in New York. Beggars in California, of course, went about in rags, as did beggars the world over, but California beggars were dressed in glittering golden rags. A hundred ships had arrived in the port of San Francisco, and every crew member had run away to the gold fields. The gold would soon be spread all over the world, and in a few years the whole world would be rich.
    But very few men returned alive from the gold fields. The Finn had heard that the passengers on the Angelica had ordered their tombstones in New York and were taking them along—this to save money, since it was cheaper to have them engraved here.
    Robert came to new life, seeing and hearing about this clipper ship; he looked wonderingly and longingly at the Angelica. She wasn’t like the Charlotta, either in name or otherwise. She was a happy ship with happy passengers; as soon as the men finished one song they immediately started another:
    Blow, boys, blow for California!
    There’s plenty of gold,
    So I’ve been told
    On the banks of the Sacramento. . . .
    The men waved, hats in hand, to the crowd on the pier. The passengers on the Swedish Charlotta also had sung, but mostly hymns, funeral hymns, and seldom had any of her passengers laughed. And while Robert didn’t understand the words of the songs from the Angelica, he didn’t think her passengers were singing hymns. Yet these singing