Free The Age of Gold by H.W. Brands Page B

steering under a clear sky and with a fresh wind, the mouth of the Golden Gate, which inspired awe but at the same time smiled, seeming to open wide to receive us.”
    W HILE PéREZ ROSALES and his Chilean shipmates were creeping north toward the equator, far across the Pacific in Australia an ambivalent Tom Archer pondered the startling news from America. Archer had come to Australia in his teens after his Scottish parents, transplanted to Norway, feared he would grow irretrievably Scandinavian and accepted theoffer of an uncle to take the lad down under. Tommy wasn’t consulted, being just then at death’s door from typhus. By the time he recovered, the decision had been made, and the fourteen-year-old boy, after a brief visit to England, arrived at Sydney in company with two hundred Irish emigrants, at midnight on December 31, 1837, following a passage from Plymouth of 120 days.
    During the next dozen years Tom Archer grew up with the country. Most of his time was spent in the outback herding sheep and some cattle, fending off larcenous and occasionally murderous “bushrangers,” intimidating certain aboriginal “blacks” and employing others, and generally learning to survive in some of the most unforgiving country on earth. Years later he would summarize his lessons: “Morals—don’t make shortcuts through the bush without food, matches, or tinder; don’t attempt the impossible feat of rubbing a fire with a dry branch on a big log; don’t imagine you have slept for hours when you have only slept for minutes; and finally, don’t forget to be thankful for the exquisite luxury of sleeping on a sheepskin beside a roaring fire, having consumed a pot of delicious hot tea, with the usual accompaniment of damper and mutton.” Archer regularly spent months at a stretch far from anything that passed for civilization, and longer than that from various accoutrements of domestic life. He remembered distinctly a day when he went to a creek to bathe. “I caught sight of the reflection of a tall broad-shouldered young man, who, on closer inspection, turned out to be myself.” The Australian Narcissus gazed in wonder at his own figure. “For the first time, it occurred to me that I was verging upon eighteen, and nearly grown up. The knowledge of this inspired me with much veneration for myself.” He added wryly, “But I was unable to perceive any approach to that feeling in anyone else.”
    Outback life was rigorous in other ways. A mate developed a severe toothache and begged the local doctor to pull the offending grinder. The doctor explained that he lacked the requisite tools. The patient moaned that the tooth must be removed or he’d die. A helpful bystander suggested that in the absence of pliers a bullet-mold (hinged and handled to accept the hot lead) might do. The doctor was game and the patient imploring, so into the mouth the instrument went. Much larger than pliers,it nearly choked the patient, who made awful noises as the doctor grappled for the tooth. Finally, after a mighty yank, the doctor triumphantly displayed the bloody molar. The patient, by now in shock, discharged a mouthful of gore before telling the doctor that what he had been trying to say—while the doctor was apparently trying to kill him—was that he had the wrong tooth. The doctor’s face fell, and the patient fled as if from a torturer. But soon he was back, determined to have done with his malady or his life. The second operation succeeded.
    The early summer—that is, December—of 1848 found Tom Archer sheep-rich but bored, and when he heard the news of gold in California he naturally took notice. But the news, at least as circulated in the Sydney papers, was puzzling. The editors couldn’t decide whether the gold strike was a good thing or bad. As Archer himself appreciated, the Australian market for wool was slumping sadly; California offered a fresh and—if the reports of its sudden riches were true—lucrative outlet. And not