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diff --git a/8587.txt b/8587.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..35ae308 --- /dev/null +++ b/8587.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2535 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, Part 6., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Roughing It, Part 6. + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #8587] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 6. *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + ROUGHING IT + + by Mark Twain + + 1880 + + Part 6. + + + + +CHAPTER LI. + +Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times." The +saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the +gambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of high +prosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter. Is it not +so? A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that trade +is brisk and money plenty. Still, there is one other sign; it comes +last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flush +times" are at the flood. This is the birth of the "literary" paper. +The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature," made its appearance in +Virginia. All the literary people were engaged to write for it. Mr. F. +was to edit it. He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen, and a man who +could say happy things in a crisp, neat way. Once, while editor of the +Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made +upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance, +seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF +OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"--and left it to the reader's +memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more +different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the +rest of the Scripture--"in that it passeth understanding." He once said +of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistence +except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stopped +over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in their +Church service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us this +day our daily stranger!" + +We expected great things of the Occidental. Of course it could not get +along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into +the work the full strength of the company. Mrs. F. was an able romancist +of the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whose +heroes are all dainty and all perfect. She wrote the opening chapter, +and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but pearls +and poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity. She also +introduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with the +blonde. Mr. F. followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set about +getting the Duke's estates into trouble, and a sparkling young lady of +high society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the appetite +of the blonde. Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies, +followed Mr. F., the third week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucian +who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave at +dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroines +in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careers +and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel. He also +introduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on a +salary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoned +dagger. He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placed +him in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission to +carry billet-doux to the Duke. + +About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with a +literary turn of mind--rather seedy he was, but very quiet and +unassuming; almost diffident, indeed. He was so gentle, and his manners +were so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that he +made friends of all who came in contact with him. He applied for +literary work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy and +practiced pen, and so Mr. F. engaged him at once to help write the novel. +His chapter was to follow Mr. D.'s, and mine was to come next. Now what +does this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to his +quarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, and +that chaos in a condition of extravagant activity. The result may be +guessed. He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of +heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he +decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky +inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then +launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the +society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the +blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the +desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and the +Roscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands; +made the lawyer's upbraiding conscience drive him to drink, thence to +delirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman's neck; let his +widow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and consumption; caused the +blonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on the bank with the +customary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and hoping he would be +happy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual strawberry mark on +left arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother and destroyed his +long-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary suicide of the Duke +and the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice; opened the earth +and let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the accustomed smoke +and thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the promise that in +the next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he would take up the +surviving character of the novel and tell what became of the devil! +It read with singular smoothness, and with a "dead" earnestness that was +funny enough to suffocate a body. But there was war when it came in. +The other novelists were furious. The mild stranger, not yet more than +half sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of vituperation, meek and +bewildered, looking from one to another of his assailants, and wondering +what he could have done to invoke such a storm. When a lull came at +last, he said his say gently and appealingly--said he did not rightly +remember what he had written, but was sure he had tried to do the best he +could, and knew his object had been to make the novel not only pleasant +and plausible but instructive and---- + +The bombardment began again. The novelists assailed his ill-chosen +adjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule. +And so the siege went on. Every time the stranger tried to appease the +enemy he only made matters worse. Finally he offered to rewrite the +chapter. This arrested hostilities. The indignation gradually quieted +down, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got him +to his own citadel. + +But on the way thither the evil angel tempted him and he got drunk again. +And again his imagination went mad. He led the heroes and heroines a +wilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincing +air of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work. He got +the characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them through +the most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk! +But the chapter cannot be described. It was symmetrically crazy; it was +artistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully as +curious as the text. I remember one of the "situations," and will offer +it as an example of the whole. He altered the character of the brilliant +lawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him fame and +riches, and set his age at thirty-three years. Then he made the blonde +discover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramatic +miscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, he +secretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady. Stung to +the quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them with +tenfold power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal. But +the parents would none of it. What they wanted in the family was a Duke; +and a Duke they were determined to have; though they confessed that next +to the Duke the lawyer had their preference. Necessarily the blonde now +went into a decline. The parents were alarmed. They pleaded with her to +marry the Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on. Then they +laid a plan. They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the end +of that time she still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she might +marry the lawyer with their full consent. The result was as they had +foreseen: gladness came again, and the flush of returning health. Then +the parents took the next step in their scheme. They had the family +physician recommend a long sea voyage and much land travel for the +thorough restoration of the blonde's strength; and they invited the Duke +to be of the party. They judged that the Duke's constant presence and +the lawyer's protracted absence would do the rest--for they did not +invite the lawyer. + +So they set sail in a steamer for America--and the third day out, when +their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their first +meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke and +party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and +the vessel neared America. + +But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire; +she burned to the water's edge; of all her crew and passengers, only +thirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all +night long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhuman +exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth +two hundred yards and bringing one each time--(the girl first). The Duke +had saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the scene +and sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation was +attended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his duty +like a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and +some others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell +overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and +helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its +mother's screams. Then he ran back--a few seconds too late--the blonde's +boat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to the +other ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of +each other--drove them whither it would. + +When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde's ship was seven +hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south of +that port. The blonde's captain was bound on a whaling cruise in the +North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a port +without orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer's captain was to +cruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a port +without orders. All the lawyer's money and baggage were in the blonde's +boat and went to the blonde's ship--so his captain made him work his +passage as a common sailor. When both ships had been cruising nearly a +year, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring's +Strait. The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer +had been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reached +the raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke she +was at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, and +prepare for the hated marriage. + +But she would not yield a day before the date set. The weeks dragged on, +the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding--a +wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all would +be over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where was +her true love--and why, why did he not come and save her? At that moment +he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring's Strait, five +thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousand +by the way of the Horn--that was the reason. He struck, but not with +perfect aim--his foot slipped and he fell in the whale's mouth and went +down his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came to himself +and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in the +whale's roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were +hoisting blubber up a ship's side. He recognized the vessel, flew +aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed: + +"Stop the proceedings--I'm here! Come to my arms, my own!" + +There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the +author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the +possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from +Behring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in five +days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little Love +Me Long," and considered that that established the fact that the thing +could be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a man +could live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could stand +it three days a lawyer could surely stand it five! + +There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the +stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his +head. But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time +for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out +without any novel in it. It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid +journal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence; +at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the +Weekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant. + +An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a +telling new title, and Mr. F. said that The Phenix would be just the name +for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its dead +ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some +low-priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the +Lazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural +matters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant +that begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, the +name became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good +and all. + +I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a +literary paper--prouder than I have ever been of anything since, perhaps. +I had written some rhymes for it--poetry I considered it--and it was a +great grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of the +issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light. But time +brings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of a +tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental. The idea (not the +chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by the +old song called "The Raging Canal," but I cannot remember now. I do +remember, though, that at that time I thought my doggerel was one of the +ablest poems of the age: + + +THE AGED PILOT MAN. + +On the Erie Canal, it was, +All on a summer's day, +I sailed forth with my parents +Far away to Albany. + +From out the clouds at noon that day +There came a dreadful storm, +That piled the billows high about, +And filled us with alarm. + +A man came rushing from a house, +Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray, +[The customary canal technicality for "tie up."] +Snub up your boat, snub up, alas, +Snub up while yet you may." + +Our captain cast one glance astern, +Then forward glanced he, +And said, "My wife and little ones +I never more shall see." + +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +In noble words, but few, +--"Fear not, but lean on Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +The boat drove on, the frightened mules +Tore through the rain and wind, +And bravely still, in danger's post, +The whip-boy strode behind. + +"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried, +"Nor tempt so wild a storm;" +But still the raging mules advanced, +And still the boy strode on. + +Then said the captain to us all, +"Alas, 'tis plain to me, +The greater danger is not there, +But here upon the sea. + +"So let us strive, while life remains, +To save all souls on board, +And then if die at last we must, +Let . . . . I cannot speak the word!" + +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +Tow'ring above the crew, +"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +"Low bridge! low bridge!" all heads went down, +The laboring bark sped on; +A mill we passed, we passed church, +Hamlets, and fields of corn; +And all the world came out to see, +And chased along the shore +Crying, "Alas, alas, the sheeted rain, +The wind, the tempest's roar! +Alas, the gallant ship and crew, +Can nothing help them more?" + +And from our deck sad eyes looked out +Across the stormy scene: +The tossing wake of billows aft, +The bending forests green, +The chickens sheltered under carts +In lee of barn the cows, +The skurrying swine with straw in mouth, +The wild spray from our bows! + +"She balances! +She wavers! +Now let her go about! +If she misses stays and broaches to, +We're all"--then with a shout, +"Huray! huray! +Avast! belay! +Take in more sail! +Lord, what a gale! +Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!" +"Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump! +Ho, hostler, heave the lead!" + +"A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast! +Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet! +--Three feet scant!" I cried in fright +"Oh, is there no retreat?" + +Said Dollinger, the pilot man, +As on the vessel flew, +"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +A panic struck the bravest hearts, +The boldest cheek turned pale; +For plain to all, this shoaling said +A leak had burst the ditch's bed! +And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped, +Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead, +Before the fearful gale! + +"Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!" +Too late! There comes a shock! +Another length, and the fated craft +Would have swum in the saving lock! + +Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew +And took one last embrace, +While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes +Ran down each hopeless face; +And some did think of their little ones +Whom they never more might see, +And others of waiting wives at home, +And mothers that grieved would be. + +But of all the children of misery there +On that poor sinking frame, +But one spake words of hope and faith, +And I worshipped as they came: +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +--(O brave heart, strong and true!) +--"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +For he will fetch you through." + +Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips +The dauntless prophet say'th, +When every soul about him seeth +A wonder crown his faith! + +"And count ye all, both great and small, +As numbered with the dead: +For mariner for forty year, +On Erie, boy and man, +I never yet saw such a storm, +Or one't with it began!" + +So overboard a keg of nails +And anvils three we threw, +Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks, +Two hundred pounds of glue, +Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat, +A box of books, a cow, +A violin, Lord Byron's works, +A rip-saw and a sow. + +A curve! a curve! the dangers grow! +"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so! +--Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee! +Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee! +Luff!--bring her to the wind!" + +For straight a farmer brought a plank, +--(Mysteriously inspired) +--And laying it unto the ship, +In silent awe retired. + +Then every sufferer stood amazed +That pilot man before; +A moment stood. Then wondering turned, +And speechless walked ashore. + + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about +the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he +chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination +of the "flush times." Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to that +degree that the place looked like a very hive--that is when one's vision +could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generally +blowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you drove +ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a +sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a +uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust +in it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by the +assayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet +some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would +get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales. + +Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business +going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from +California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons +drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, +and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals +stretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long route was +traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing +serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that +hundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for +all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads. +One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid +$10,000 a month freightage. In the winter the freights were much higher. +All the bullion was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was +usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500 +to $3,000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the +freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per +cent. of its intrinsic value. + +So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25 +each. Small shippers paid two per cent. There were three stages a day, +each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a +ton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot +and take it off. However, these were extraordinary events. +[Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo's agent, has handled all the bullion shipped +through the Virginia office for many a month. To his memory--which is +excellent--we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company's +business in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From +January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through +that office, during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000; +next quarter, $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter +ending on the 30th of last June, about $1,600,000. Thus in a year and a +half, the Virginia office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion. During the +year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments +have more than doubled in the last six months. This gives us room to +promise for the Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863 +(though perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, we are +under estimating, somewhat). This gives us $6,000,000 for the year. +Gold Hill and Silver City together can beat us--we will give them +$10,000,000. To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will +allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps, +and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000. +To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not +be before the year is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion +this year will be about $30,000,000. Placing the number of mills in the +Territory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing +$300,000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run three +hundred days in the year (which none of them more than do), this makes +their work average $1,000 a day. Say the mills average twenty tons of +rock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have the +actual work of our one hundred mills figured down "to a spot"--$1,000 a +day each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.--Enterprise. +[A considerable over estimate--M. T.]] + +Two tons of silver bullion would be in the neighborhood of forty bars, +and the freight on it over $1,000. Each coach always carried a deal of +ordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twenty +passengers at from $25 to $30 a head. With six stages going all the +time, Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Virginia City business was important and +lucrative. + +All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of +miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode--a vein of ore from fifty to +eighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock--a vein as wide as some +of New York's streets. I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania a +coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample. + +Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it +was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great +population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels +and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of +lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers +that held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as +large as a man's body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no +eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like +peering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal +skeleton. Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and +higher than any church spire in America. Imagine this stately +lattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall +street, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on +top of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity +steeple. One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that +forest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries +beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious +rates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine +and built up there. Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the +greatest of those silver mines. The Spanish proverb says it requires a +gold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true. A beggar with a silver +mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell. + +I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould and Curry is +only one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the +Gould and Curry's streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in +extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as a +whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a +population of five or six thousand. In this present day some of those +populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under +Virginia and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what the +superintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as +we strike a fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a +thousand feet deep. In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest. + +If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel +about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan +of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is like +tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach the +bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where +throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full +of great lumps of stone--silver ore; you select choice specimens from the +mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you +reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet +below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery" +to "gallery," up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when +your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a cramped +"incline" like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged up to daylight +feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it. +Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending +cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows of +bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rows +of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down the +long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver +mills with their rich freight. It is all "done," now, and there you are. +You need never go down again, for you have seen it all. If you have +forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making the +silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chapters +if so disposed. + +Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is +worth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observing +the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain. +I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I +will take an extract: + + AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.--We journeyed down into the Ophir mine, + yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep + incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places. + Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill + above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long + ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery. + Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of + timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake. Here was as + complete a chaos as ever was seen--vast masses of earth and + splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with + scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through. + Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber + which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out + of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the + tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the + Ophir known as the "north mines." Returning to the surface, we + entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of + getting into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this + tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft + from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From + a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst + of the earthquake again--earth and broken timbers mingled together + without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second, + third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction--the + two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening. + + At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery, + two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth + gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come. + These beams are solid--eighteen inches square; first, a great beam + is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on + it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above + square, like the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight + was sufficient to mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly + into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing + and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow. Before the + Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were + compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick! + Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in + that way. Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of + twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the + weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above. You could + hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know + that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon + you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however. + + Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the + Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten + inches of water there, and had to come back. In repairing the + damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two + hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot. However, + the pump was at work again, and the flood-water was decreasing. + We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft, + whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach + of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to + dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So, having seen + the earthquake, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnel, and + adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to + lunch at the Ophir office. + + During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have] + produced $25,000,000 in bullion--almost, if not quite, a round + million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well, + considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures. + Silver mining was her sole productive industry. [Since the above was + in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is + too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000.] + However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel + is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of + two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively + inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and + hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work will + absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but + it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as + soon as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be + some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing riches. Cars + will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and + thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and + transportation by mule teams. The water from the tunnel will + furnish the motive power for the mills. Mr. Sutro, the originator + of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world + who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up + and hound such an undertaking to its completion. He has converted + several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his + important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe + until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to +get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather's old +ram--but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jim +was drunk at the time--just comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept +this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to +haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with +his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk. +I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, such +anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk +before. At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that +this time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could find +no fault with it--he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk--not a +hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to +obscure his memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty +powder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command +silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare +and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart +miner of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light +revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes, +powder-kegs, etc. They said: + +"Sh--! Don't speak--he's going to commence." + + + THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM. + +I found a seat at once, and Blaine said: + +'I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more +bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois +--got him of a man by the name of Yates--Bill Yates--maybe you might have +heard of him; his father was a deacon--Baptist--and he was a rustler, +too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful +Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my +grandfather when he moved west. + +'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson +--Sarah Wilkerson--good cretur, she was--one of the likeliest heifers that +was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She +could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? +Don't mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a +browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't +trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, it +warn't Sile Hawkins, after all--it was a galoot by the name of Filkins +--I disremember his first name; but he was a stump--come into pra'r meeting +drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; +and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit +on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul--had a +glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to +receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't +noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, +or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking +as straight ahead as a spy-glass. + +'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it +was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it +wouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and look +so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She was +always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company +empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it +hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to +hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner dear" +--and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in +again--wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg, +being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong +side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was +sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way +she turned it it didn't match nohow. + +'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a +quilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed Miss +Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than +her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn't abide +crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had +company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. +She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops's wig +--Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife--a ratty old buzzard, he was, +that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for 'em; +and there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that +he judged would fit the can'idate; and if it was a slow customer and kind +of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in the +coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for +about three weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and +after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms +with the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him. He got one of his +feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn +and got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up +with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but +old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to be +powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay +it back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin +after he'd tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he +bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let +up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that. +You see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he +took the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made the trip it was +money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. And +by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up +the coffin in his back parlor and said he 'lowed to take his time, now. +It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing +acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon--went to Wellsville +--Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family. +Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed +licker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see. His second wife +was the widder Billings--she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon +Dunlap's first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and +died in grace--et up by the savages. They et him, too, poor feller +--biled him. It warn't the custom, so they say, but they explained to +friends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, that +they'd tried missionaries every other way and never could get any good +out of 'em--and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that +man's life was fooled away just out of a dern'd experiment, so to speak. +But mind you, there ain't anything ever reely lost; everything that +people can't understand and don't see the reason of does good if you only +hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blank +ca'tridges, boys. That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to +himself, actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a +chance at the barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don't tell +me it was an accident that he was biled. There ain't no such a thing as +an accident. + +'When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk, +or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the +third story and broke the old man's back in two places. People said it +was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn't know +what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn't +been there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me +believe anything different from that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Why +didn't the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him a +coming and stood from under. That's the reason the dog warn't appinted. +A dog can't be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my +words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle Lem's +dog--I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd--or +ruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged to +parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the +Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his +sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got +nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than +a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his +remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral. +There was fourteen yards in the piece. + +'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so--full length. +The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they +had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn't +bury him--they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument. +And they nailed a sign on it and put--put on--put on it--sacred to--the +m-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containing +all that was--m-o-r-t-a-l--of--of--W-i-l-l-i-a-m--W-h-e--' + +Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier--his head +nodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, and +he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys' cheeks +--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from the +start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold." +I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached +a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from +setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure +which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention of +the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him +get, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from one +thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep. +What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is +a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia--it is the +case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless +race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than +dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom +think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are +quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as +industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a +lazy one does not exist. So long as a Chinaman has strength to use his +hands he needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of want +of work, but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages to +find something to do. He is a great convenience to everybody--even to +the worst class of white men, for he bears the most of their sins, +suffering fines for their petty thefts, imprisonment for their robberies, +and death for their murders. Any white man can swear a Chinaman's life +away in the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man. +Ours is the "land of the free"--nobody denies that--nobody challenges it. +[Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.] As I write, news +comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an +inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed +the shameful deed, no one interfered. + +There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen +on the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. They +were penned into a "Chinese quarter"--a thing which they do not +particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together. Their +buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly +together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through. +Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chief +employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send a +bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere ceremony, for +it does not enlighten the customer much. Their price for washing was +$2.50 per dozen--rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash +for at that time. A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: "See +Yup, Washer and Ironer"; "Hong Wo, Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing." +The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly +Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. +Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick +to learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a +thing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were +to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a +fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture +for fuel forever afterward. + +All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility--pity but all +our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of +ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of +vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to a +Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or +another. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white +people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by +melting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure. +In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men +have abandoned as exhausted and worthless--and then the officers come +down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the +legislature has given the broad, general name of "foreign" mining tax, +but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle +has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the +course of the same month--but the public treasury was no additionally +enriched by it, probably. + +Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence--they worship their departed +ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, or +any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in +order that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore that +huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from its +centre to its circumference with graves--and inasmuch as every foot of +ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarming +population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a +harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since the +departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear +that any indignity be offered the places where they sleep. +Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition to +railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without +disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends. + +A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body +lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after +death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him. +Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have +his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a +foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that +his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells +a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is +specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in +case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or +another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies +keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies +home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of +these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand +members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it +has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal +state in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a +numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with +the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship +that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese +corpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious +refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat +underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, +whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was +another bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to be +vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor +would defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. +As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the +law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese +immigration. + +What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the +Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be +gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting +for that paper: + + CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through + our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their + portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither + carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a + general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock + at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little + cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning + Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly, + guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed + vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium, + motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess + of satisfaction--or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately + after having passed the pipe to his neighbor--for opium-smoking is a + comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits + on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's + mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on + fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a + hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds + to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of + the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue. + John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen + whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we + could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his + visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular + washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise. + +Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang +street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest +way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies, +with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs, +and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of +porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neat +sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen +to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse, +and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles +of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, and +beyond our ability to describe. + +His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were +split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that +shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which +kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage. + +We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery +scheme--in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in +various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a +lottery, and the balance of the tribe "buck" at it. "Tom," who speaks +faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial +Enterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago, +said that "Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two tree +hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight um +seventy--may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself, welly good." + +However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are, +as a general thing, that "he get whip heself." We could not see that +these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the +figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed +in telling "t'other from which;" the manner of drawing is similar to +ours. + +Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of +white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like +Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone +unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the +inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented +the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with +peacocks' feathers. + +We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our +comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their +want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our +hosts and "dickered" for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed +with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on a +machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different +rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them +with incredible rapidity--in fact, he pushed them from place to place as +fast as a musical professor's fingers travel over the keys of a piano. + +They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well +treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian +gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any +circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. +Only the scum of the population do it--they and their children; they, +and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, +for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as +well as elsewhere in America. + + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +I began to get tired of staying in one place so long. + +There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report +the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and +pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins and +potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements of +the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair +to show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in--however, the +territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum"). I wanted +to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted--I did not +know what I wanted. I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change, +principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State +Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed that +these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among +the population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killing +the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government, +since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines +could not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there was +but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to +think of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder). +I believed that a State government would destroy the "flush times," and I +wanted to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand +would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before the +Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself secure from +the crash the change of government was going to bring. I considered +$100,000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a small +amount compared to what I had been expecting to return with. I felt +rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with the +reflection that with such a sum I could not fall into want. About this +time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came +tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. +The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, +bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless +hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have +"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly +remarked. + +He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars--twenty-six to take him to San +Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe, +for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted, +in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker +(on twenty days' time, without the formality of a note), and gave it him, +rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie laid +up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay back +that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the +Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And so +would the banker. + +I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman +went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed +me. The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the forenoon. The second day, +I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put +it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the +"American Cyclopedia," that steadfast friend of the editor, all over this +land. The fourth day I "fooled around" till midnight, and then fell back +on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till +midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter +personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in +anguish till far into the night and brought forth--nothing. The paper +went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the +eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands--my +personalities had borne fruit. + +Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is +easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy +to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a +correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write +editorials. Subjects are the trouble--the dreary lack of them, I mean. +Every day, it is drag, drag, drag--think, and worry and suffer--all the +world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled. +Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done--it is no trouble to +write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains +dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low +spirited simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a daily +paper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to +eight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a library an editor's +work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet people often +marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to +produce so many books. If these authors had wrought as voluminously as +newspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed. +How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhausting +consumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a mere +mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and year +after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two months' holiday in +midsummer, for they find that to produce two sermons a week is wearing, +in the long run. In truth it must be so, and is so; and therefore, how +an editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from ten +to twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the year +round, is farther beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survived +my week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper +that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial, +and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it! + +Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become +a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranks +after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go +abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my +associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two +citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and +aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured +in a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to +pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale. +He had refused to go. It was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused +him for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said +it had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had +recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper. +I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle. He said the +men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take +to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rock +in Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had secured a +tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My first idea +was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind, notwithstanding I was so angry, +for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it was by no +means lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and would not be +in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that they had +requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he +would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they +got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, and +then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them. + +It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody +had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white +for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan +would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or +difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in +the air. It was the "blind lead" come again. + +Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending +departures of old citizens,--for if you have only half a dozen friends +out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to +go away neglected and unregretted--and Dan promised to keep strict watch +for the men that had the mine to sell. + +The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred +just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger +got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver +bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward +express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled +and let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground +and began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowd +gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed +louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and between +the gasps ejaculated "Brandy! for Heaven's sake, brandy!" They poured +half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and comforted him. +Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which was done. +The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he +declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along with +him, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be +grateful and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we +drove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not +refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with a +crushed foot. + +"Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't a +cent to my name. I was most perishing--and so, when that duffer dropped +that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance. Got a cork leg, you +know!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and proved it. + +He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over his +timely ingenuity. + +One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once heard a +gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian +bar-room. He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink." It was nothing +but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthy +of Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer and +other matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for +anything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a +half dollar; calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes change +and lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest man +fumbles at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds +it; he contemplates it, and tries again; same result; observes that +people are interested in what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter +again--blushes--puts his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure +of his aim--pushes the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh: + +"Gimme a cigar!" + +Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man. He +said he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered the +wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the stoop; and it was--an iron one. + +He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog; ventured +to say "Be (hic) begone!" No effect. Then he approached warily, and +adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, but +failed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!--doggy, doggy, doggy!--poor +doggy-dog!" Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names; till +master of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"--planted a +vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, of +course. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a +reflective voice: + +"Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? ('ic!) Rocks, p'raps. +Such animals is dangerous.--' At's what I say--they're dangerous. If a +man--('ic!)--if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him feed him on +rocks; 'at's all right; but let him keep him at home--not have him layin' +round promiscuous, where ('ic!) where people's liable to stumble over him +when they ain't noticin'!" + +It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it +was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady's +handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet +above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent +farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of +life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident which +the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must +vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summer +afternoon we had a rain shower. + +That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing, +for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada, +and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any +merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief +wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still +talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness +as of midnight. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, +over-looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the +nearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly +distinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested +against. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain; +and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving +and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme +summit! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with +hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world +of darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; but +with such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. It +was the flag!--though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like a +supernatural visitor of some kind--a mysterious messenger of good +tidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation's emblem +transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from +view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad +panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the +flag--for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched +by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the +weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the +thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How the +people were wrought up! The superstition grew apace that this was a +mystic courier come with great news from the war--the poetry of the idea +excusing and commending it--and on it spread, from heart to heart, from +lip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to +have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of +artillery! + +And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to +official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a +silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the +speculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen +that day in the east--Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at +Gettysburg! + +But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment +of eastern news till a day after its publication in the California +papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and +re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of +powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every +man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk,--as was the +custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this +distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity +without regret. What a time we might have had! + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the +clouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remark +here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance to +give it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimity +and their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view--but one +must have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings; +a Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sad +poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous +family--redwood, pine, spruce, fir--and so, at a near view there is a +wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down ward +and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to "Sh! +--don't say a word!--you might disturb somebody!" Close at hand, too, +there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there +is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; one +walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of +the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall; +he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns for substantial, +shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none, +for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to +pensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California, is +what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance, +because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictively +straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, with +uncomely spots of barren sand between. + +One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from "the +States" go into ecstasies over the loveliness of "ever-blooming +California." And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But +perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with +the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer +greens of Californian "verdure," stand astonished, and filled with +worshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the +brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form +and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of +Paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and +sombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expanses +and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, +or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes +very near being funny--would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. +No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are +not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful +at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the +handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has +four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. +Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of +its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating +graces--and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a +radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. +And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its +turn, seems the loveliest. + +San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and +handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the +architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of +decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward +the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindly +climate is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personally +experienced, for a lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by, +and then when the longed for rain does come it stays. Even the playful +earthquake is better contemplated at a dis---- + +However there are varying opinions about that. + +The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The +thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly +changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and +Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. +You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just +the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the +other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as +pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is +doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a +good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if +you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there. It has +only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only +remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them +to wondering what the feathery stuff was. + +During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and +cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other four +months come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Because +you will require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days +in hardly varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attend +church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it +is likely to rain or not--you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, it +will rain--and if it is Summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it. +You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it never +lightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every +night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your +heart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skies +once, and make everything alive--you will wish the prisoned lightnings +would cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blinding +glare for one little instant. You would give anything to hear the old +familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody. And along +in the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, +pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for +rain--hail--snow--thunder and lightning--anything to break the monotony +--you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better. And the +chances are that you'll get it, too. + +San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills. +They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in +"the States" rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and +green-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year +round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss +roses--I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that +while New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, +Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only +keep their hands off and let them grow. And I have heard that they have +also that rarest and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful +Espiritu Santo, as the Spaniards call it--or flower of the Holy Spirit +--though I thought it grew only in Central America--down on the Isthmus. +In its cup is the daintiest little facsimile of a dove, as pure as snow. +The Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it. The blossom has +been conveyed to the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has been +taken thither also, but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived, +has failed. + +I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and +but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel +a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of +Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San +Francisco--but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and +unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve +years, perhaps. Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easily +believe--people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and +wear out their stanchest energies fanning themselves. It gets hot there, +but if you go down to Fort Yuma you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is +probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one +hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time--except when it varies +and goes higher. It is a U.S. military post, and its occupants get so +used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a +tradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fifty +different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed +to steal one.--M. T.]) that a very, very wicked soldier died there, +once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, +--and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets. There is no doubt +about the truth of this statement--there can be no doubt about it. I +have seen the place where that soldier used to board. In Sacramento it +is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries +and ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at +eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon +put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner +Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feet +deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frosty +crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. + +There is a transition for you! Where will you find another like it in +the Western hemisphere? And some of us have swept around snow-walled +curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above +the sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of +the Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, +its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted +atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance--a +dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and +striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow, +and savage crags and precipices. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the +most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, +in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured +by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see +such disfigurements far and wide over California--and in some such +places, where only meadows and forests are visible--not a living +creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a +sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness--you will find +it hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing +little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper, +fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth +of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobacco +smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with +tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German +principality--streets crowded and rife with business--town lots worth +four hundred dollars a front foot--labor, laughter, music, dancing, +swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing--a bloody inquest and a man for +breakfast every morning--everything that delights and adorns existence +--all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and +promising young city,--and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless, +homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the +name of the place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, have +towns so absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of +California. + +It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was a +curious population. It was the only population of the kind that the +world has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the +world will ever see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage of +two hundred thousand young men--not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved +weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of +push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to +make up a peerless and magnificent manhood--the very pick and choice of +the world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping +veterans,--none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed young +giants--the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant +host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. +And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth--or +prematurely aged and decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--or +dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all +--victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf--the noblest holocaust +that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to +think upon. + +It was a splendid population--for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained +sloths staid at home--you never find that sort of people among pioneers +--you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that +population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding +enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring +and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this +day--and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as +usual, and says "Well, that is California all over." + +But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky, +fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner +raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and +what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a +cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own +bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts +--blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any +annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt +or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people +hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward +what they called a "biled shirt." + +It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! Men--only swarming +hosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visible +anywhere! + +In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that +rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a +certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was +come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the +camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody +went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was +discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible. The +miners said: + +"Fetch her out!" + +He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed of +money, provisions, everything, by the Indians--we want to rest." + +"Fetch her out! We've got to see her!" + +"But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she--" + +"FETCH HER OUT!" + +He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing +cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched +her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to +a memory rather than a present reality--and then they collected +twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung +their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied. + + +Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked +with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco +was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only +two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing +from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the +party with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner, +bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just down +from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stopped +the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification +and astonishment. Then he said, reverently: + +"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sack +out of his pocket and said to the servant: + +"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to +you to let me kiss the child!" + +That anecdote is true. + +But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to +that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of +kissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years +have far more than doubled the price. + +And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the +Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single +file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in +the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation--a genuine, live +Woman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye +to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing +flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other. + +And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I +voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.--M.T.] years old, and hadn't a +tooth in her head. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII. + +For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of +existence--a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible +to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the +most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and +alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at +the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places, +infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which +oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the +vulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worse +than the most of my countrymen in that. I had longed to be a butterfly, +and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening +dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkad and +schottisched with a step peculiar to myself--and the kangaroo. In a +word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars +(prospectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that +silver-mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spent +money with a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an +interested eye and looked to see what might happen in Nevada. + +Something very important happened. The property holders of Nevada voted +against the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to lose +were in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. But +after all it did not immediately look like a disaster, though +unquestionably it was one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then +concluded not to sell. Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad; +bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very +washerwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silver +stocks, and every sun that rose in the morning went down on paupers +enriched and rich men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was! Gould +and Curry soared to six thousand three hundred dollars a foot! And then +--all of a sudden, out went the bottom and everything and everybody went +to ruin and destruction! The wreck was complete. + +The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was an +early beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth the +paper they were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerful +idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myself +beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when +I gathered together my various debts and paid them. I removed from the +hotel to a very private boarding house. I took a reporter's berth and +went to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building +confidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east. But I could not +hear from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered. + +One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. The +next day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my desk +which had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed "Marshall"--the +Virginia reporter--and contained a request that I should call at the +hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for +the east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a big +mining speculation! I was hardly ever so sick in my life. I abused +myself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I +ought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from +the office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there. +And thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and +arrived just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream and +under way. + +I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation would +amount to nothing--poor comfort at best--and then went back to my +slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forget +all about it. + +A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was +long called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished +till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was +coming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sight +in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind +me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, all +was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a +frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that +here was an item!--no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could turn +and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground seemed +to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, +and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together. +I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. I knew what it was, +now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my watch +and noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer shock +came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, +I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in +Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the +street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here came the +buggy--overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the +vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of +street. + +One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds +and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horses +were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends, +and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side +of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an +impaled madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could +reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could +execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people +stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. +Never was solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker. + +Of the wonders wrought by "the great earthquake," these were all that +came under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and wide +over the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days. + +The destruction of property was trifling--the injury to it was +wide-spread and somewhat serious. + +The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply endless. Gentlemen and +ladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till a +late hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into the public streets +in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all. One woman +who had been washing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by the +ankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent citizens who were +supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons in their +shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Dozens of men with +necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyes +or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairy +stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a +short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had +not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up. + +A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothing +on but one brief undergarment--met a chambermaid, and exclaimed: + +"Oh, what shall I do! Where shall I go!" + +She responded with naive serenity: + +"If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store!" + +A certain foreign consul's lady was the acknowledged leader of fashion, +and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the ladies +in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayed +themselves similarly. One man who had suffered considerably and growled +accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and the +next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with no +other apology for clothing than--a bath-towel! The sufferer rose +superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife: + +"Now that is something like! Get out your towel my dear!" + +The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would +have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups of +eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long +zig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet of +the tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned +around in such a way as to completely stop the draft. + +A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of +one street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up +the meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rocking +and quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut +twice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like a +tooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose +and went out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs was +astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to +strike her with its club. They both reached the bottom of the flight at +the same time,--the woman insensible from the fright. Her child, born +some little time afterward, was club-footed. However--on second +thought,--if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at +his own risk. + +The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the +churches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the +services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said: + +"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there was +a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood. + +After the first shock, an Oakland minister said: + +"Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this"-- + +And added, after the third: + +"But outside is good enough!" He then skipped out at the back door. + +Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the +earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a +girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended +pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the +earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces +to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the +course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out +of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made +so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they +were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days +afterward.--Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely. + +The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco +gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so +I will diverge from the subject. + +By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the +Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow: + + NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.--G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H. + Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores + from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese + River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet + and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of + $3,000,000. The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to + Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000, + which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one + document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the + treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large + quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible. The stock in + this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable. The ores + of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba + mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with + his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber + they desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores from + there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in + silver and gold--silver predominating. There is an abundance of + wood and water in the District. We are glad to know that New York + capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this + region. Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the + mines of the District are very valuable--anything but wild-cat. + +Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a +million! It was the "blind lead" over again. + +Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these +things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true +to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and +yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall, +months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to +have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then +received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of +uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However, +when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and +incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so +lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and +foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, +as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors +took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, +and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the +disgrace of a dismissal. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had +established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but +high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to +three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was +employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still +languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a +pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive +luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of +the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a +peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these +things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs +that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble +into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country. + +For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during +that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay +my board. I became a very adept at "slinking." I slunk from back street +to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar, +I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every +mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after +wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I +slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the +worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver ten +cent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest +the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless, +might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes I had +on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling. + +However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of +"slinking." It was the entertaining of a collector (and being +entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for +forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal." This +man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes oftener. +He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing. +He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per +cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in +it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might +for any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, on +account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. He +immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigars +and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long, +luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a +world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory. +By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly: + +"Well, business is business--can't stay with you always!"--and was off in +a second. + +The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come, +and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his +visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at +last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself. + +Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly +lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune. +He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken, +that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with +him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward +each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together +oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not +speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of +both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would +idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home +lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much +enjoying our dumb companionship. + +Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were +identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and +this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing +his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a +boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street; +from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence +to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then; +for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of +grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as +chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight, +now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and +cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day. + +This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendid +creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read +and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of +satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes +and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a +crown. + +He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most +pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been +without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, +among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to +him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was +sufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could +not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back +street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he +could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread +doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine +what one might do if one only had it. + +Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--looked +again--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to try +them, then looked again. It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspired +delusion--it was a silver dime! + +He snatched it--gloated over it; doubted it--bit it--found it genuine +--choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked +around--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where it +was before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he +did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury of +finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points; then +sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs +and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again. +Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket. He +idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to +take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings--an +empty queens-ware hogshead,--and employed himself till night trying to +make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the +most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he +could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a +fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one +fish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain, +and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee--a pint at +least--and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the +eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that +in the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still +his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street, +still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving +men. + +He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic +in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in +better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the +range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show +window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and +some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in +there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry +interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was +conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched +his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very +allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung +with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded +piteously. This phantom said: + +"Come with me--please." + +He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the +passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put +out his hands in a beseeching way, and said: + +"Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placid +and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten +your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and +thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world +--but you've never suffered! You don't know what trouble is--you don't +know what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a +poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted +food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give +me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything +--twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please. It will be nothing +to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick +the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the +very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing +--perishing--starving by inches! For God's sake don't desert me!" + +Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths. He +reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said: + +"Come with me." + +He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated +him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said: + +"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin." + +"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin. + +Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the +man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents +a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two +dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destruction +had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went +down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and +three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king! + +Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from +the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps. + + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the +decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him. +We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five +other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a +flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this +grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years +before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming +hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into +decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared--streets, dwellings, shops, +everything--and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth +and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere +handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up spread, +grow and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and die, and +pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest of +life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceased +to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward +their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world and +been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and +railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the +events that stirred the globe's great populations, dead to the common +interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind. +It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy +exile that fancy can imagine.--One of my associates in this locality, for +two or three months, was a man who had had a university education; but +now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded, +rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings and +soliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin and +Greek sentences--dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughts +of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure; a +tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; a +man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end. + +In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining +which is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called "pocket +mining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little +corner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as +in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are +very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one +you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty +pocket miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one of +them personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the +hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make +a snuff-box--his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time--and +then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of +his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two +hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a +dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night +was gone. And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual, +and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting +pockets again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all the +different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of +victims to the lunatic asylum. + +Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spadeful of earth +from the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it +gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment. +Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the +heaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will find +half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You are +delighted. You move off to one side and wash another pan. If you find +gold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan. If you +find no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you are +on the right scent. + +You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up the +hill--for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich +deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been +washed down the hill, spreading farther and farther apart as they +wandered. And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and +narrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows that +you are outside the spread of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the +hill your lines have converged to a point--a single foot from that point +you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are +feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you +pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, +they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic +interest--and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth +and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of +gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all--$500. Sometimes the nest +contains $10,000, and it takes you three or four days to get it all out. +The pocket-miners tell of one nest that yielded $60,000 and two men +exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10,000 to a +party who never got $300 out of it afterward. + +The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around the +bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners +long for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash +them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets +were found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5,000 in it +and the other $8,000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had a +cent for about a year. + +In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in +the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of +the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest +on a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen +years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and +by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to +amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a +sledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with +gold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravating +circumstance was that these "Greasers" knew that there must be more gold +where that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and +found what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced. +It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two +American miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they +take turn about in getting up early in the morning to curse those +Mexicans--and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native +American is gifted above the sons of men. + +I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because it +is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged +that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches +to novelty. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Roughing It, Part 6. +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 6. *** + +***** This file should be named 8587.txt or 8587.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/8/8587/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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