ROUGHING IT

 by Mark Twain

 1880

 TO CALVIN H. HIGBIE, Of California, an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend. THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED By the Author, In Memory of the Curious Time When We Two WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS. 

 ROUGHING IT

 BY MARK TWAIN. (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. )

 PREFATORY. 

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious historyor a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years ofvariegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the restingreader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goadhim with science. Still, there is information in the volume; informationconcerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, aboutwhich no books have been written by persons who were on the ground inperson, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I alludeto the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada-a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likelyto occur in it. 

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in thebook. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped:information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottarof roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I wouldgive worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calkup the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, notjustification. 

THE AUTHOR. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. My Brother appointed Secretary of Nevada--I Envy His ProspectiveAdventures--Am Appointed Private Secretary Under Him--My ContentmentComplete--Packed in One Hour--Dreams and Visions--On the Missouri River--A Bully Boat

CHAPTER II. Arrive at St. Joseph--Only Twenty-five Pounds Baggage Allowed--Farewellto Kid Gloves and Dress Coats--Armed to the Teeth--The "Allen"--ACheerful Weapon--Persuaded to Buy a Mule--Schedule of Luxuries--We Leavethe "States"--"Our Coach"--Mails for the Indians--Between a Wink and anEarthquake--A Modern Sphynx and How She Entertained Us--A Sociable Heifer

CHAPTER III. "The Thoroughbrace is Broke"--Mails Delivered Properly--Sleeping UnderDifficulties--A Jackass Rabbit Meditating, and on Business--A ModernGulliver--Sage-brush--Overcoats as an Article of Diet--Sad Fate of aCamel--Warning to Experimenters

CHAPTER IV. Making Our Bed--Assaults by the Unabridged--At a Station--Our Driver aGreat and Shining Dignitary--Strange Place for a Frontyard--Accommodations--Double Portraits--An Heirloom--Our Worthy Landlord--"Fixings and Things"--An Exile--Slumgullion--A Well Furnished Table--TheLandlord Astonished--Table Etiquette--Wild Mexican Mules--Stage-coachingand Railroading

CHAPTER V. New Acquaintances--The Cayote--A Dog's Experiences--A Disgusted Dog--TheRelatives of the Cayote--Meals Taken Away from Home

CHAPTER VI. The Division Superintendent--The Conductor--The Driver--One Hundred andFifty Miles' Drive Without Sleep--Teaching a Subordinate--Our Old FriendJack and a Pilgrim--Ben Holliday Compared to Moses

CHAPTER VII. Overland City--Crossing the Platte--Bemis's Buffalo Hunt--Assault by aBuffalo--Bemis's Horse Goes Crazy--An Impromptu Circus--A New Departure--Bemis Finds Refuge in a Tree--Escapes Finally by a Wonderful Method

CHAPTER VIII. The Pony Express--Fifty Miles Without Stopping--"Here he Comes"--AlkaliWater--Riding an Avalanche--Indian Massacre

CHAPTER IX. Among the Indians--An Unfair Advantage--Laying on our Arms--A MidnightMurder--Wrath of Outlaws--A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen

CHAPTER X. History of Slade--A Proposed Fist-fight--Encounter with Jules--Paradiseof Outlaws--Slade as Superintendent--As Executioner--A Doomed WhiskySeller--A Prisoner--A Wife's Bravery--An Ancient Enemy Captured--Enjoyinga Luxury--Hob-nobbing with Slade--Too Polite--A Happy Escape

CHAPTER XI. Slade in Montana--"On a Spree"--In Court--Attack on a Judge--Arrest bythe Vigilantes--Turn out of the Miners--Execution of Slade--Lamentationsof His Wife--Was Slade a Coward?

CHAPTER XII. A Mormon Emigrant Train--The Heart of the Rocky Mountains--PureSaleratus--A Natural Ice-House--An Entire Inhabitant--In Sight of"Eternal Snow"--The South Pass--The Parting Streams--An Unreliable LetterCarrier--Meeting of Old Friends--A Spoiled Watermelon--Down theMountain--A Scene of Desolation--Lost in the Dark--Unnecessary Advice--U. S. Troops and Indians--Sublime Spectacle--Another Delusion Dispelled--Among the Angels

CHAPTER XIII. Mormons and Gentiles--Exhilarating Drink, and its Effect on Bemis--SaltLake City--A Great Contrast--A Mormon Vagrant--Talk with a Saint--A Visitto the "King"--A Happy Simile

CHAPTER XIV. Mormon Contractors--How Mr. Street Astonished Them--The Case BeforeBrigham Young, and How he Disposed of it--Polygamy Viewed from a NewPosition

CHAPTER XV. A Gentile Den--Polygamy Discussed--Favorite Wife and D. 4--Hennery forRetired Wives--Children Need Marking--Cost of a Gift to No. 6--A Penny-whistle Gift and its Effects--Fathering the Foundlings--It Resembled Him--The Family Bedstead

CHAPTER XVIThe Mormon Bible--Proofs of its Divinity--Plagiarism of its Authors--Story of Nephi--Wonderful Battle--Kilkenny Cats Outdone

CHAPTER XVII. Three Sides to all Questions--Everything "A Quarter"--Shriveled Up--Emigrants and White Shirts at a Discount--"Forty-Niners"--Above Par--RealHappiness

CHAPTER XVIII. Alkali Desert--Romance of Crossing Dispelled--Alkali Dust--Effect on theMules--Universal Thanksgiving

CHAPTER XIX. The Digger Indians Compared with the Bushmen of Africa--Food, Life andCharacteristics--Cowardly Attack on a Stage Coach--A Brave Driver--TheNoble Red Man

CHAPTER XX. The Great American Desert--Forty Miles on Bones--Lakes Without Outlets--Greely's Remarkable Ride--Hank Monk, the Renowned Driver--Fatal Effectsof "Corking" a Story--Bald-Headed Anecdote

CHAPTER XXI. Alkali Dust--Desolation and Contemplation--Carson City--Our JourneyEnded--We are Introduced to Several Citizens--A Strange Rebuke--A WashoeZephyr at Play--Its Office Hours--Governor's Palace--Government Offices--Our French Landlady Bridget O'Flannigan--Shadow Secrets--Cause for aDisturbance at Once--The Irish Brigade--Mrs. O'Flannigan's Boarders--TheSurveying Expedition--Escape of the Tarantulas

CHAPTER XXII. The Son of a Nabob--Start for Lake Tahoe--Splendor of the Views--Trip onthe Lake--Camping Out--Reinvigorating Climate--Clearing a Tract of Land--Securing a Title--Outhouse and Fences

CHAPTER XXIII. A Happy Life--Lake Tahoe and its Moods--Transparency of the Waters--ACatastrophe--Fire! Fire!--A Magnificent Spectacle--Homeless Again--Wetake to the Lake--A Storm--Return to Carson

CHAPTER XXIV. Resolve to Buy a Horse--Horsemanship in Carson--A Temptation--AdviceGiven Me Freely--I Buy the Mexican Plug--My First Ride--A Good Bucker--ILoan the Plug--Experience of Borrowers--Attempts to Sell--Expense of theExperiment--A Stranger Taken In

CHAPTER XXV. The Mormons in Nevada--How to Persuade a Loan from Them--Early History ofthe Territory--Silver Mines Discovered--The New Territorial Government--AForeign One and a Poor One--Its Funny Struggles for Existence--No Credit, no Cash--Old Abe Currey Sustains it and its Officers--Instructions andVouchers--An Indian's Endorsement--Toll-Gates

CHAPTER XXVI. The Silver Fever--State of the Market--Silver Bricks--Tales Told--Off forthe Humboldt Mines

CHAPTER XXVII. Our manner of going--Incidents of the Trip--A Warm but Too Familiar aBedfellow--Mr. Ballou Objects--Sunshine amid Clouds--Safely Arrived

CHAPTER XXVIII. Arrive at the Mountains--Building Our Cabin--My First Prospecting Tour--My First Gold Mine--Pockets Filled With Treasures--Filtering the News toMy Companions--The Bubble Pricked--All Not Gold That Glitters

CHAPTER XXIX. Out Prospecting--A Silver Mine At Last--Making a Fortune With Sledge andDrill--A Hard Road to Travel--We Own in Claims--A Rocky Country

CHAPTER XXX. Disinterested Friends--How "Feet" Were Sold--We Quit Tunnelling--A Tripto Esmeralda--My Companions--An Indian Prophesy--A Flood--Our QuartersDuring It

CHAPTER XXXI. The Guests at "Honey Lake Smith's"--"Bully Old Arkansas"--"Our Landlord"--Determined to Fight--The Landlord's Wife--The Bully Conquered by Her--Another Start--Crossing the Carson--A Narrow Escape--Following Our OwnTrack--A New Guide--Lost in the Snow

CHAPTER XXXII. Desperate Situation--Attempts to Make a Fire--Our Horses leave us--WeFind Matches--One, Two, Three and the Last--No Fire--Death SeemsInevitable--We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives--Discarded Vices--We ForgiveEach Other--An Affectionate Farewell--The Sleep of Oblivion

CHAPTER XXXIII. Return of Consciousness--Ridiculous Developments--A Station House--BitterFeelings--Fruits of Repentance--Resurrected Vices

CHAPTER XXXIV. About Carson--General Buncombe--Hyde vs. Morgan--How Hyde Lost His Ranch--The Great Landslide Case--The Trial--General Buncombe in Court--AWonderful Decision--A Serious Afterthought

CHAPTER XXXV. A New Travelling Companion--All Full and No Accommodations--How CaptainNye found Room--and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented--The Uses ofTunnelling--A Notable Example--We Go into the "Claim" Business and Fail--At the Bottom

CHAPTER XXXVI. A Quartz Mill--Amalgamation--"Screening Tailings"--First Quartz Mill inNevada--Fire Assay--A Smart Assayer--I stake for an advance

CHAPTER XXXVII. The Whiteman Cement Mine--Story of its Discovery--A Secret Expedition--ANocturnal Adventure--A Distressing Position--A Failure and a Week'sHoliday

CHAPTER XXXVIII. Mono Lake--Shampooing Made Easy--Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and theResults--Lye Water--Curiosities of the Lake--Free Hotel--Some FunnyIncidents a Little Overdrawn

CHAPTER XXXIX. Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono--Ashes and Desolation--Life Amid DeathOur Boat Adrift--A Jump For Life--A Storm On the Lake--A Mass of SoapSuds--Geological Curiosities--A Week On the Sierras--A Narrow Escape Froma Funny Explosion--"Stove Heap Gone"

CHAPTER XL. The "Wide West" Mine--It is "Interviewed" by Higbie--A Blind Lead--Wortha Million--We are Rich At Last--Plans for the Future

CHAPTER XLI. A Rheumatic Patient--Day Dreams--An Unfortunate Stumble--I LeaveSuddenly--Another Patient--Higbie in the Cabin--Our Balloon Bursted--Worth Nothing--Regrets and Explanations--Our Third Partner

CHAPTER XLII. What to do Next?--Obstacles I Had Met With--"Jack of All Trades"--MiningAgain--Target Shooting--I Turn City Editor--I Succeed Finely

CHAPTER XLIII. My Friend Boggs--The School Report--Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt--VirginiaCity

CHAPTER XLIV. Flush Times--Plenty of Stock--Editorial Puffing--Stocks Given Me--SaltingMines--A Tragedian In a New Role

CHAPTER XLV. Flush Times Continue--Sanitary Commission Fund--Wild Enthusiasm of thePeople--Would not wait to Contribute--The Sanitary Flour Sack--It isCarried to Gold Hill and Dayton--Final Reception in Virginia--Results ofthe Sale--A Grand Total

CHAPTER XLVI. The Nabobs of Those Days--John Smith as a Traveler--Sudden Wealth--ASixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse--A Smart Telegraph Operator--A Nabob in NewYork City--Charters an Omnibus--"Walk in, It's All Free"--"You Can't Paya Cent"--"Hold On, Driver, I Weaken"--Sociability of New Yorkers

CHAPTER XLVII. Buck Fanshaw's Death--The Cause Thereof--Preparations for His Burial--Scotty Briggs the Committee Man--He Visits the Minister--Scotty Can'tPlay His Hand--The Minister Gets Mixed--Both Begin to See--"All DownAgain But Nine"--Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen--How To "Shook Your Mother"--The Funeral--Scotty Briggs as a Sunday School Teacher

CHAPTER XLVIII. The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada--The Prominent Men of the County--The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen--Trial by Jury--Specimen Jurors--APrivate Grave Yard--The Desperadoes--Who They Killed--Waking up the WearyPassenger--Satisfaction Without Fighting

CHAPTER XLIX. Fatal Shooting Affray--Robbery and Desperate Affray--A Specimen CityOfficial--A Marked Man--A Street Fight--Punishment of Crime

CHAPTER L. Captain Ned Blakely--Bill Nookes Receives Desired Information--Killing ofBlakely's Mate--A Walking Battery--Blakely Secures Nookes--Hang First andBe Tried Afterwards--Captain Blakely as a Chaplain--The First Chapter ofGenesis Read at a Hanging--Nookes Hung--Blakely's Regrets

CHAPTER LI. The Weekly Occidental--A Ready Editor--A Novel--A Concentration ofTalent--The Heroes and the Heroines--The Dissolute Author Engaged--Extraordinary Havoc With the Novel--A Highly Romantic Chapter--The LoversSeparated--Jonah Out-done--A Lost Poem--The Aged Pilot Man--Storm On theErie Canal--Dollinger the Pilot Man--Terrific Gale--Danger Increases--ACrisis Arrived--Saved as if by a Miracle

CHAPTER LII. Freights to California--Silver Bricks--Under Ground Mines--TimberSupports--A Visit to the Mines--The Caved Mines--Total of Shipments in1863

CHAPTER LIII. Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram--Filkin's Mistake--Old Miss Wagnerand her Glass Eye--Jacobs, the Coffin Dealer--Waiting for a Customer--HisBargain With Old Robbins--Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects--A New Usefor Missionaries--The Effect--His Uncle Lem and the Use Providence Madeof Him--Sad Fate of Wheeler--Devotion of His Wife--A Model Monument--WhatAbout the Ram?

CHAPTER LIV. Chinese in Virginia City--Washing Bills--Habit of Imitation--ChineseImmigration--A Visit to Chinatown--Messrs. Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &c. 

CHAPTER LV. Tired of Virginia City--An Old Schoolmate--A Two Years' Loan--Acting asan Editor--Almost Receive an Offer--An Accident--Three Drunken Anecdotes--Last Look at Mt. Davidson--A Beautiful Incident

CHAPTER LVI. Off for San Francisco--Western and Eastern Landscapes--The Hottest placeon Earth--Summer and Winter

CHAPTER LVII. California--Novelty of Seeing a Woman--"Well if it ain't a Child!"--OneHundred and Fifty Dollars for a Kiss--Waiting for a turn

CHAPTER LVIII. Life in San Francisco--Worthless Stocks--My First Earthquake--ReportorialInstincts--Effects of the Shocks--Incidents and Curiosities--SabbathBreakers--The Lodger and the Chambermaid--A Sensible Fashion to Follow--Effects of the Earthquake on the Ministers

CHAPTER LIX. Poor Again--Slinking as a Business--A Model Collector--Misery lovesCompany--Comparing Notes for Comfort--A Streak of Luck--Finding a Dime--Wealthy by Comparison--Two Sumptuous Dinners

CHAPTER LX. An Old Friend--An Educated Miner--Pocket Mining--Freaks of Fortune

CHAPTER LXI. Dick Baker and his Cat--Tom Quartz's Peculiarities--On an Excursion--Appearance On His Return--A Prejudiced Cat--Empty Pockets and a RovingLife

CHAPTER LXII. Bound for the Sandwich Islands--The Three Captains--The Old Admiral--HisDaily Habits--His Well Fought Fields--An Unexpected Opponent--The AdmiralOverpowered--The Victor Declared a Hero

CHAPTER LXIII. Arrival at the Islands--Honolulu--What I Saw There--Dress and Habits ofthe Inhabitants--The Animal Kingdom--Fruits and Delightful Effects

CHAPTER LXIV. An Excursion--Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out--A Horseback Ride--AVicious Animal--Nature and Art--Interesting Ruins--All Praise to theMissionaries

CHAPTER LXV. Interesting Mementoes and Relics--An Old Legend of a Frightful Leap--AnAppreciative Horse--Horse Jockeys and Their Brothers--A New Trick--A HayMerchant--Good Country for Horse Lovers

CHAPTER LXVI. A Saturday Afternoon--Sandwich Island Girls on a Frolic--The PoiMerchant--Grand Gala Day--A Native Dance--Church Membership--Cats andOfficials--An Overwhelming Discovery

CHAPTER LXVII. The Legislature of the Island--What Its President Has Seen--Praying foran Enemy--Women's Rights--Romantic Fashions--Worship of the Shark--Desirefor Dress--Full Dress--Not Paris Style--Playing Empire--Officials andForeign Ambassadors--Overwhelming Magnificence

CHAPTER LXVIII. A Royal Funeral--Order of Procession--Pomp and Ceremony--A StrikingContrast--A Sick Monarch--Human Sacrifices at His Death--Burial Orgies

CHAPTER LXIX. "Once more upon the Waters. "--A Noisy Passenger--Several Silent Ones--AMoonlight Scene--Fruits and Plantations

CHAPTER LXX. A Droll Character--Mrs. Beazely and Her Son--Meditations on Turnips--ALetter from Horace Greeley--An Indignant Rejoinder--The Letter Translatedbut too Late

CHAPTER LXXI. Kealakekua Bay--Death of Captain Cook--His Monument--Its Construction--OnBoard the Schooner

CHAPTER LXXII. Young Kanakas in New England--A Temple Built by Ghosts--Female Bathers--IStood Guard--Women and Whiskey--A Fight for Religion--Arrival ofMissionaries

CHAPTER LXXIII. Native Canoes--Surf Bathing--A Sanctuary--How Built--The Queen's Rock--Curiosities--Petrified Lava

CHAPTER LXXIV. Visit to the Volcano--The Crater--Pillar of Fire--Magnificent Spectacle--A Lake of Fire

CHAPTER LXXV. The North Lake--Fountains of Fire--Streams of Burning Lava--Tidal Waves

CHAPTER LXXVI. A Reminiscence--Another Horse Story--My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse--A Picnicing Excursion--Dead Volcano of Holeakala--Comparison withVesuvius--An Inside View

CHAPTER LXXVII. A Curious Character--A Series of Stories--Sad Fate of a Liar--Evidence ofInsanity

CHAPTER LXXVIII. Return to San Francisco--Ship Amusements--Preparing for Lecturing--Valuable Assistance Secured--My First Attempt--The Audience Carried--"All's Well that Ends Well. "

CHAPTER LXXIX. Highwaymen--A Predicament--A Huge Joke--Farewell to California--At HomeAgain--Great Changes. Moral. 

APPENDIX. A. --Brief Sketch of Mormon HistoryB. --The Mountain Meadows MassacreC. --Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated

CHAPTER I. 

My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--anoffice of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties anddignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and ActingGovernor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollarsa year and the title of "Mr. Secretary, " gave to the great position anair of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and Ienvied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going tomake, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going totravel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had aseductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds ofmiles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains ofthe Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, andantelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged orscalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us allabout it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silvermines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, andpick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold andsilver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, andreturn home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco andthe ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any consequence tohave seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplatinghis happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in coldblood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appearedto me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament wasrolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. Mycontentment was complete. 

At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not muchpacking up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stagefrom the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed asmall quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in thosefine times of ten or twelve years ago--not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months--I had no thought ofstaying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new andstrange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I wouldnot see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or sevenuncommonly long years!

I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in duetime, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board asteamboat bound up the Missouri River. 

We were six days going from St. Louis to "St. Jo. "--a trip that was sodull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on mymemory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that manydays. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confusedjumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked over withone wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and thenretired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of sand-barswhich we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out ourcrutches and sparred over. 

In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. By land, forshe was walking most of the time, anyhow--climbing over reefs andclambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. Thecaptain said she was a "bully" boat, and all she wanted was more "shear"and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had thedeep sagacity not to say so. 

CHAPTER II. 

The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Josephwas to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollarsapiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada. 

The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, andhurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itselfwhich we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannotmake a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage--because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take--twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make aselection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-fivepounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louisagain. It was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats andwhite kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, andno stove-pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessaryto make life calm and peaceful. We were reduced to a war-footing. Eachof us put on a rough, heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and"stogy" boots included; and into the valise we crowded a few whiteshirts, some under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, took along about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds ofUnabridged Dictionary; for we did not know--poor innocents--that suchthings could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in CarsonCity the next. I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith &Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thoughtit was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only hadone fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our "conductors"practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still andbehaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretaryhad a small-sized Colt's revolver strapped around him for protectionagainst the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried ituncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis wasour fellow-traveler. 

We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original"Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box. " Simplydrawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the triggercame back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a featwhich was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George'swas a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-driversafterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetchsomething else. " And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailedagainst a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards tothe left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out witha double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was acheerful weapon--the "Allen. " Sometimes all its six barrels would go offat once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it. 

We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather inthe mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest--we took nonealong but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had twolarge canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and wealso took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses inthe way of breakfasts and dinners. 

By eight o'clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side ofthe river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and webowled away and left "the States" behind us. It was a superb summermorning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was afreshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipationfrom all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feelthat the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas, and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on thegreat Plains. Just here the land was rolling--a grand sweep of regularelevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach--like thestately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. Andeverywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, thislimitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry groundwas to lose its "rolling" character and stretch away for seven hundredmiles as level as a floor!

Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuousdescription--an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsomehorses, and by the side of the driver sat the "conductor, " the legitimatecaptain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge and care ofthe mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three were theonly passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About allthe rest of the coach was full of mail bags--for we had three days'delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wallof mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of itstrapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full. We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said--"alittle for Brigham, and Carson, and 'Frisco, but the heft of it for theInjuns, which is powerful troublesome 'thout they get plenty of truck toread. " But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenancewhich was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, weguessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that wewould unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains andleave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it. 

We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over thehard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time thecoach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued. 

After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, andwe three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver andconductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sitthere in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on amosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other handtill she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him thatwould have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate thecorpse with tranquil satisfaction--for she never missed her mosquito; shewas a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but leftthem there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her killthirty or forty mosquitoes--watched her, and waited for her to saysomething, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversationmyself. I said:

"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam. "

"You bet!"

"What did I understand you to say, madam?"

"You BET!"

Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:

"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did, b'gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters andwonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then Ithot you was sick or crazy, or suthin', and then by and by I begin toreckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn't think of nothing tosay. Wher'd ye come from?"

The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep werebroken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and fortynights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating delugeof trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinderprojecting above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposedpronunciation!

How we suffered, suffered, suffered! She went on, hour after hour, tillI was sorry I ever opened the mosquito question and gave her a start. She never did stop again until she got to her journey's end towarddaylight; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for wewere nodding, by that time), and said:

"Now you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o'days, and I'll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any goodby edgin' in a word now and then, I'm right thar. Folks'll tell you'tI've always ben kind o' offish and partic'lar for a gal that's raised inthe woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and bob-tail, and a gal has to be, if she wants to be anything, but when people comes along which is myequals, I reckon I'm a pretty sociable heifer after all. "

We resolved not to "lay by at Cottonwood. "

CHAPTER III. 

About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothlyover the road--so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle, lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling ourconsciousness--when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware ofit, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver andconductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, andswearing because they could not find it--but we had no interest inwhatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of thosepeople out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest withthe curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be anexamination going on, and then the driver's voice said:

"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!"

This startled me broad awake--as an undefined sense of calamity is alwaysapt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of ahorse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver'svoice. Leg, maybe--and yet how could he break his leg waltzing alongsuch a road as this? No, it can't be his leg. That is impossible, unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be thethoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall notair my ignorance in this crowd, anyway. "

Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain, and hislantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said:"Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke. "

We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless anddreary. When I found that the thing they called a "thoroughbrace" wasthe massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itselfin, I said to the driver:

"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I canremember. How did it happen?"

"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail--that's how it happened, " said he. "And right here is the very directionwhich is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for theInjuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's sonation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbracehadn't broke. "

I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though Icould not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing hima safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks. It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When theyhad mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put nomail on top, and only half as much inside as there was before. Theconductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach justhalf full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly to this, forit left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser than we, and said a bedwas better than seats, and moreover, this plan would protect histhoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats after that. The lazy bed wasinfinitely preferable. I had many an exciting day, subsequently, lyingon it reading the statutes and the dictionary, and wondering how thecharacters would turn out. 

The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station totake charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on. 

It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length onthe mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastesof greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectantlook in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of atranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spankinggait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a mostexhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the patteringof the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi!g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appearedto give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look afterus with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked thepipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresomecity life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only onecomplete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it. 

After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten, we threeclimbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have ourbed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down onmy face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and sleptfor an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of thosematchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold ofthe railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, nogrip is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in theirplaces and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good roads, whilespinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I saw them doit, often. There was no danger about it; a sleeping man will seize theirons in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard worked, and itwas not possible for them to stay awake all the time. 

By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and LittleSandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile furtheron, we came to the Big Sandy--one hundred and eighty miles from St. Joseph. 

As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal knownfamiliarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert--from Kansasclear to the Pacific Ocean--as the "jackass rabbit. " He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third totwice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has themost preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but ajackass. 

When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded orunapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above himconspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you cansee, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched outstraight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyesright, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you wherethe animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now andthen he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over thestunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope, " and shortly hemysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and willsit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creatureonce, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do thebest he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays hislong ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stickevery spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easyindifference that is enchanting. 

Our party made this specimen "hump himself, " as the conductor said. Thesecretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I commenced spitting athim with my weapon; and all in the same instant the old "Allen's" wholebroadside let go with a rattling crash, and it is not putting it toostrong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He dropped his ears, set uphis tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only bedescribed as a flash and a vanish! Long after he was out of sight wecould hear him whiz. 

I do not remember where we first came across "sage-brush, " but as I havebeen speaking of it I may as well describe it. 

This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled andvenerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet-high, with itsrough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picturethe "sage-brush" exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains, Ihave lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and entertainedmyself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputianbirds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base wereliliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignagwaiting to catch a little citizen and eat him. 

It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the"sage-brush. " Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint todesert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and "sage-tea"made from it taste like the sage-tea which all boys are so wellacquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and growsright in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothingelse in the vegetable world would try to grow, except "bunch-grass. "--["Bunch-grass" grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada andneighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in thedead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and exposes it;notwithstanding its unpromising home, bunch-grass is a better and morenutritious diet for cattle and horses than almost any other hay or grassthat is known--so stock-men say. ]--The sage-bushes grow from three tosix or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the FarWest, clear to the borders of California. There is not a tree of anykind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles--there is no vegetation at allin a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the"greasewood, " which is so much like the sage-brush that the differenceamounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would beimpossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as aboy's wrist (and from that up to a man's arm), and its crooked branchesare half as large as its trunk--all good, sound, hard wood, very likeoak. 

When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; andin a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole afoot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brushchopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowingcoals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequentlyno swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very littlereplenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one aroundwhich the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, andprofoundly entertaining. 

Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguishedfailure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and hisillegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousnessis worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, orbrass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comeshandy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters fordinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything willrelieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy. 

In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge ofmy overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with acritical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea ofgetting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it asan article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the whileopening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he hadnever tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Thenhe smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentmentthat it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thingabout an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion capsand cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then mynewspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading ondangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in thosedocuments that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally hewould take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; itwas getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with goodcourage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statementsthat not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag andgasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in abouta quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled themanuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature hadchoked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of factthat I ever laid before a trusting public. 

I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally onefinds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch andfoliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usualheight. 

CHAPTER IV. 

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparationfor bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knottycanvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projectingends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up andredisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an upheavedand billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea. Next wehunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they hadsettled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloonsand heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been swingingall day, and clothed ourselves in them--for, there being no ladies eitherat the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had lookedto our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o'clock in themorning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy Dictionarywhere it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteensand pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a finalpipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the pipes, tobaccoand bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and thenfastened down the coach curtains all around, and made the place as "darkas the inside of a cow, " as the conductor phrased it in his picturesqueway. It was certainly as dark as any place could be--nothing was evendimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled ourselves up likesilk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully to sleep. 

Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try torecollect where we were--and succeed--and in a minute or two the stagewould be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep bankson each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up theother, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be downin a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners ofmail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rosefrom the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of uswould grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbowout of my ribs!--can't you quit crowding?"

Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, theUnabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damagedsomebody. One trip it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip ithurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis's nose up till hecould look down his nostrils--he said. The pistols and coin soon settledto the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clatteredand floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us, and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and waterdown our backs. 

Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It woregradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible throughthe puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched withsatisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as wasnecessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulledoff our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly intime, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of hisbugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a lowhut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatterof our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands, awoke to alouder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station atour smartest speed. It was fascinating--that old overland stagecoaching. 

We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reinsout on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavybuckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity--takingnot the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders ofservice, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers andhostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the freshteam out of the stables--for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day, station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures, useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kindof beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himselfwith; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and thehostler, the stage-driver was a hero--a great and shining dignitary, theworld's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of thenations. When they spoke to him they received his insolent silencemeekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man;when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admiration (henever honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed itwith a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surroundingcountry and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetiousinsulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day;when he uttered his one jest--old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time hiscoach drove up there--the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, andswore it was the best thing they'd ever heard in all their lives. Andhow they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of thesame, or a light for his pipe!--but they would instantly insult apassenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied itfrom--for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but littleless contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers. 

The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful conductor ofthe coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, butthe driver was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped. Howadmiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he glovedhimself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held thebunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And howthey would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked hislong whip and went careering away. 

The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-coloredbricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten it to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant tothem worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with athick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weedsand grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man's front yard ontop of his house. The building consisted of barns, stable-room fortwelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room for passengers. This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to bend in order toget in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole aboutlarge enough for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it. There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard. There was nostove, but the fire-place served all needful purposes. There were noshelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack offlour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerabletin coffee-pots, a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon. 

By the door of the station-keeper's den, outside, was a tin wash-basin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow barsoap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt, significantly--but this latter was the station-keeper's private towel, and only twopersons in all the party might venture to use it--the stage-driver andthe conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency; the formerwould not, because did not choose to encourage the advances of astation-keeper. We had towels--in the valise; they might as well havebeen in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used ourhandkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, inside, was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with twolittle fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it. This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you whenyou looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple of inchesabove the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by astring--but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I wouldorder some sample coffins. 

It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hairever since--along with certain impurities. In one corner of the roomstood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouchesof ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-wovenstuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ampleadditions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rodehorseback--so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, andunspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of highboots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whoselittle iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore ahuge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, nosuspenders, no vest, no coat--in a leathern sheath in his belt, a greatlong "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), andprojecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife. The furniture ofthe hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs andsofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented bytwo three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two emptycandle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and thetable-cloth and napkins had not come--and they were not looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup, were at each man's place, and the driver had a queens-ware saucer thathad seen better days. Of course this duke sat at the head of the table. There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it atouching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the caster. It wasGerman silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously outof place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king amongbarbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect evenin its degradation. 

There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozenpreserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had investedthere. 

The station-keeper upended a disk of last week's bread, of the shape andsize of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were asgood as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer. 

He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced oldhands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which theUnited States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stagecompany had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers andemployees. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out onthe plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it--thereis no gainsaying that. 

Then he poured for us a beverage which he called "Slum gullion, " and itis hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It reallypretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and oldbacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler. 

He had no sugar and no milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredientswith. 

We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the "slumgullion. " Andwhen I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote(a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down toa table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. Heasked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said:

"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerelenough there for six. "

"But I don't like mackerel. "

"Oh--then help yourself to the mustard. "

In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, butthere was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humorout of it. 

Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle. 

I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. Thestation-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last, when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes withhimself upon a matter too vast to grasp:

"Coffee! Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d---d!"

We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers andherdsmen--we all sat at the same board. At least there was noconversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, fromone employee to another. It was always in the same form, and alwaysgruffly friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, atfirst, and interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost itscharm. It was:

"Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!" No, I forget--skunk was not theword; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, infact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is nomatter--probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmarkin my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous newvernacular of the occidental plains and mountains. 

We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to ourmail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right here wesuffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our sixfine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wildMexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them andhold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when atlast he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly awayfrom the mules' heads and the coach shot from the station as if it hadissued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was afierce and furious gallop--and the gait never altered for a moment tillwe reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection oflittle station-huts and stables. 

So we flew along all day. At 2 P. M. The belt of timber that fringes theNorth Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of thePlains came in sight. At 4 P. M. We crossed a branch of the river, andat 5 P. M. We crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney, fifty-six hours out from St. Joe--THREE HUNDRED MILES!

Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve yearsago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected tolive to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But therailroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons andcontrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times, of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. Ican scarcely comprehend the new state of things:

 "ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 

 "At 4. 20 P. M. , Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner was announced--an 'event' to those of us who had yet to experience what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results achieved. Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could have had no occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this --bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling air of the prairies?

 "You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two days afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns--"Praise God from whom, " etc. ; "Shining Shore, " "Coronation, " etc. --the voices of the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight o'clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte, three hundred miles from Omaha--fifteen hours and forty minutes out. "

CHAPTER V. 

Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came, by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expansesof level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterlywithout visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere ofsuch amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at handwere more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbeda-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shoutedoccasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears backand scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things newand strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through andthrough to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedomthat used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overlandmornings!

Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dogvillages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the fartherdeserts. And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectableeither, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speakwith confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-lookingskeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tailthat forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness andmisery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightlylifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression allover. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is alwayshungry. 

He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creaturesdespise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He isso spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth arepretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And heis so homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, andthen turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his heada bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is aboutout of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate surveyof you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again--another fifty and stopagain; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray ofthe sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make nodemonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interestin his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a dealof real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you haveraised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the timeyou have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time youhave "drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that nothing but anunusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he isnow. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy itever so much--especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion ofhimself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. 

The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, andevery little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder thatwill fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neckfurther to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail outstraighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desertsand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain!And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannotget perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes himmadder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and neverpants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and moreincensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entirestranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trotis; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayoteactually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away fromhim--and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strainand weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for thecayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds himsix feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. Andthen, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, thecayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a somethingabout it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away fromyou, bub--business is business, and it will not do for me to be foolingalong this way all day"--and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and thesudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold thatdog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!

It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs thenearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his headreflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back tohis train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, andfeels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail athalf-mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, wheneverthere is a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glancein that direction without emotion, and apparently observe to himself, "I believe I do not wish any of the pie. "

The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert, along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets anuncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsistalmost wholly on the carcases of oxen, mules and horses that have droppedout of emigrant trains and died, and upon windfalls of carrion, andoccasional legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have beenopulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned armybacon. 

He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, thedesert-frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anythingthey can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the onlycreatures known to history who will eat nitro-glycerine and ask for moreif they survive. 

The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarlyhard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, arejust as apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desertbreeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as heis himself; and when this occurs he has to content himself with sittingoff at a little distance watching those people strip off and dig outeverything edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravensexplore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that thecayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify theirblood kinship with each other in that they live together in the wasteplaces of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, whilehating all other creature and yearning to assist at their funerals. Hedoes not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fiftyto dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lyingaround doing nothing and adding to the burdens of his parents. 

We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as itcame across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among themail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, madeshift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day's good luck and alimitless larder the morrow. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours. Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, toSacramento, California, by stage-coach, was nearly nineteen hundredmiles, and the trip was often made in fifteen days (the cars do it infour and a half, now), but the time specified in the mail contracts, andrequired by the schedule, was eighteen or nineteen days, if I rememberrightly. This was to make fair allowance for winter storms and snows, and other unavoidable causes of detention. The stage company hadeverything under strict discipline and good system. Over each twohundred and fifty miles of road they placed an agent or superintendent, and invested him with great authority. His beat or jurisdiction of twohundred and fifty miles was called a "division. " He purchased horses, mules harness, and food for men and beasts, and distributed these thingsamong his stage stations, from time to time, according to his judgment ofwhat each station needed. He erected station buildings and dug wells. He attended to the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers andblacksmiths, and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, verygreat man in his "division"--a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of theIndies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner, and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driverdwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, alltold, on the overland route. 

Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the "conductor. "His beat was the same length as the agent's--two hundred and fifty miles. He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that fearful distance, night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he could get perchedthus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had absolute chargeof the mails, express matter, passengers and stage, coach, until hedelivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for them. 

Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision andconsiderable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man, who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman. It was not absolutely necessary that the division-agent should be agentleman, and occasionally he wasn't. But he was always a general inadministrative ability, and a bull-dog in courage and determination--otherwise the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overlandservice would never in any instance have been to him anything but anequivalent for a month of insolence and distress and a bullet and acoffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen conductorson the overland, for there was a daily stage each way, and a conductor onevery stage. 

Next in real and official rank and importance, after the conductor, camemy delight, the driver--next in real but not in apparent importance--forwe have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the driver was to theconductor as an admiral is to the captain of the flag-ship. The driver'sbeat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time at the stations pretty short, sometimes; and so, but for the grandeur of his position his would havebeen a sorry life, as well as a hard and a wearing one. We took a newdriver every day or every night (for they drove backward and forward overthe same piece of road all the time), and therefore we never got as wellacquainted with them as we did with the conductors; and besides, theywould have been above being familiar with such rubbish as passengers, anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we were always eager to get a sightof each and every new driver as soon as the watch changed, for each andevery day we were either anxious to get rid of an unpleasant one, orloath to part with a driver we had learned to like and had come to besociable and friendly with. And so the first question we asked theconductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange drivers, wasalways, "Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could notknow, then, that it would go into a book some day. As long as everythingwent smoothly, the overland driver was well enough situated, but if afellow driver got sick suddenly it made trouble, for the coach must goon, and so the potentate who was about to climb down and take a luxuriousrest after his long night's siege in the midst of wind and rain anddarkness, had to stay where he was and do the sick man's work. Once, inthe Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver sound asleep on the box, andthe mules going at the usual break-neck pace, the conductor said nevermind him, there was no danger, and he was doing double duty--had drivenseventy-five miles on one coach, and was now going back over it on thiswithout rest or sleep. A hundred and fifty miles of holding back of sixvindictive mules and keeping them from climbing the trees! It soundsincredible, but I remember the statement well enough. 

The station-keepers, hostlers, etc. , were low, rough characters, asalready described; and from western Nebraska to Nevada a considerablesprinkling of them might be fairly set down as outlaws--fugitives fromjustice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which waswithout law and without even the pretence of it. When the"division-agent" issued an order to one of these parties he did it withthe full understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navysix-shooter, and so he always went "fixed" to make things go alongsmoothly. 

Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostlerthrough the head to teach him some simple matter that he could havetaught him with a club if his circumstances and surroundings had beendifferent. But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, andwhen they tried to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinategenerally "got it through his head. "

A great portion of this vast machinery--these hundreds of men andcoaches, and thousands of mules and horses--was in the hands of Mr. BenHolliday. All the western half of the business was in his hands. Thisreminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, soI will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in myHoly Land note-book:

 No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday--a man of prodigious energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind--two thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch! But this fragment of history is not about Ben Holliday, but about a young New York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to California in Mr. Holliday's overland coaches three years before, and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of Mr. H. ) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good boy--a good-hearted and always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful things, his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected--to such a degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new to him, and all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his virgin ear. 

 Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast concerning them. He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them. He never passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem, without illuminating it with an oration. One day, when camped near the ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with something like this:

 "Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds the Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of it, my boy--the actual mountains of Moab--renowned in Scripture history! We are actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags and peaks--and for all we know" [dropping his voice impressively], "our eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WHERE LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES! Think of it, Jack!"

 "Moses who?" (falling inflection). 

 "Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you ought to be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this very spot; and where we now stand they entered the Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of it!"

 "Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!"

The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything thatwas wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended withhim--and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusingthe heedless blunders of a boy. 

At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of the SouthPlatte, " alias "Julesburg, " alias "Overland City, " four hundred andseventy miles from St. Joseph--the strangest, quaintest, funniestfrontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and beenastonished with. 

CHAPTER VII. 

It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to ussuch a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houselesssolitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoricpeople crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened upsuddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland Cityas if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour tospare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuousaffair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails. 

Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddySouth Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars andpigmy islands--a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of theenormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find withthe naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on eitherbank. The Platte was "up, " they said--which made me wish I could see itwhen it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said itwas a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liableto swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to fordit. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice inmidstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly thatwe half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to beshipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But wedragged through and sped away toward the setting sun. 

Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty milesfrom St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five orsix hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined aparty who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sportgalloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but ourpart of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalobull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook hishorse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter forsome twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, and finally he said:

"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks makingthemselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest forawhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, ifI could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but ofcourse I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wishthose loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laughso. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw thatbuffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in theair and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took himround the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he camedown and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stoppedpawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle. 

"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that soundedperfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literallyprostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of aminute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, assure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Thenthe bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours andtook a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actuallythrow one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to getunsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood theresneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now andthen, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse forbreakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, notthe bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes headup, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to beripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as youmight say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought awaysome of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy atthe time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested tohim to get up and hunt for it. 

"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! andyou ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongueout, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down theweeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like awhirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back onthe rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommelwith both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackassrabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope whenthe rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift withhis heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wishI may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the onlysolitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature couldsee with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark withfour sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I wasastraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made mybreath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think ofone thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but therewere greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do incase he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where Isat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle----"

"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"

"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down. "

"Oh--exactly. "

"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to thelimb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustainingtons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to seethe length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I feltsatisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that Idread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him. But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing thatalways happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such asituation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently athought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve failsnow, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started into climb the tree----"

"What, the bull?"

"Of course--who else?"

"But a bull can't climb a tree. "

"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see abull try?"

"No! I never dreamt of such a thing. "

"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because younever saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?"

"Well, all right--go on. What did you do?"

"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slippedand slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a littlehigher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he wascareful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went downmore and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and histongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stumpof a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend. 'Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath, --and then said I, 'It is now or never. ' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid itout slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go ofthe slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker thanlightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It wasan awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When thesmoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot fromthe ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than youcould count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree andshot for home. "

"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"

"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't. "

"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there weresome proofs----"

"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"

"No. "

"Did I bring back my horse?"

"No. "

"Did you ever see the bull again?"

"No. "

"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular asyou are about a little thing like that. "

I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it bythe skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of mybrief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a townin the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name ofEckert, an Englishman--a person famous for the number, ingenuity andimposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his mostcelebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out" beforestrangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the housewhere I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie. One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud andsometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call onEckert. As we jogged along, said he:

"Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on hisguard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectlywell what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybodymight know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer thanthat. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself--let him drop it orchange it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying todraw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forgethimself and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient--just keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seemto me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simpletrick as that. "

Eckert received us heartily--a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature. We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about theking, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner ofthings; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation himselfor shaped it, but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed nosolicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortlyperceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and moreat his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hourpassed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:

"Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here toastonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heardof--I've got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut--andnot only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so--I'll swear to it. "

A quick glance from Bascom--a glance that I understood--then:

"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it isimpossible. "

"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat. "

He went in the house. Bascom said:

"There--what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. Yousee, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep. I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eata cocoanut--oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly--he will tell theabsurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again. 

"Cat eat a cocoanut--the innocent fool!"

Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough. 

Bascom smiled. Said he:

"I'll hold the cat--you bring a cocoanut. "

Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled awink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it, swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!

We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent, though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal, notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched offhomeward, Bascom said:

"Keep the horse till morning. And--you need not speak of this--foolishness to the boys. "

CHAPTER VIII. 

In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks andwatching for the "pony-rider"--the fleet messenger who sped across thecontinent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundredmiles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human fleshand blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or nighthis watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer, raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a levelstraight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, orwhether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed withhostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and beoff like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or through the blackness of darkness--just as it happened. He rode asplendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like agentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as hecame crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in thetwinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sightbefore the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both riderand horse went "flying light. " The rider's dress was thin, and fittedclose; he wore a "round-about, " and a skull-cap, and tucked hispantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms--hecarried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postageon his literary freight was worth five dollars a letter. 

He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry--his bag had businessletters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight, too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket. He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pocketsstrapped under the rider's thighs would each hold about the bulk of achild's primer. They held many and many an important business chapterand newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin asgold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. Thestage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five milesa day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night andday, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri toCalifornia, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and amongthem making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood andsee a deal of scenery every single day in the year. 

We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed tostreak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and theswift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out ofthe windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and wouldsee him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:

"HERE HE COMES!"

Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Awayacross the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appearsagainst the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!

In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling--sweeping toward us nearer and nearer--growing moreand more distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and stillnearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--anotherinstant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider'shand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, andgo winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!

So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but forthe flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack afterthe vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whetherwe had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe. 

We rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along heresomewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali waterin the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and athing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places theground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkaliwater excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I knowwe felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with lifeafter we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and someother people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletonsas those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and theMatterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that itisn't a common experience. But once in a while one of those partiestrips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sittingposture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench tobench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg intohimself every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at thingsto save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and stillgathering as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweepinggrandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last hewaves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of araging and tossing avalanche!

This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excitement, butask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments nextday, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of him?

We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery andmassacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also allthe passengers but one, it was supposed; but this must have been amistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific coast I waspersonally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people whowere wounded during that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives. There was no doubt of the truth of it--I had it from their own lips. Oneof these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in hissystem for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another of themtold me that he was struck so literally full of arrows that after theIndians were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could notrestrain his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined. 

The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, aperson named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperatelywounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg wasbroken) to a station several miles away. He did it during portions oftwo nights, lying concealed one day and part of another, and for morethan forty hours suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst andbodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained, including quite an amount of treasure. 

CHAPTER IX. 

We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out wefound ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow(apparently) looming vast and solitary--a deep, dark, rich indigo blue inhue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling browsof storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but heonly seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. Webreakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles outfrom St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and duringthe afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfortall the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of thetrees we dashed by at arm's length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet throughthe pony-rider's jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, becausepony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things exceptwhen killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had tostick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting forthem a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and ahalf before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of ithad fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air thatthe Indian had "skipped around so's to spile everything--and ammunition'sblamed skurse, too. " The most natural inference conveyed by his manner ofspeaking was, that in "skipping around, " the Indian had taken an unfairadvantage. 

The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front--a reminiscence ofits last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded thedriver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keepa man "huffy" was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches, before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. Hesaid the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that hecame as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance, because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he "couldn't holdhis vittles. "

This person's statement were not generally believed. 

We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostileIndian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most ofthe time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet andlistened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We wereamong woods and rocks, hills and gorges--so shut in, in fact, that whenwe peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. Thedriver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at longintervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisibledangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and thegrinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing ofthe wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparablefrom travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remainingperfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying ofthe vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath; everytime one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start tosay something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden "Hark!" andinstantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So thetiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last ourtense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if onemight call such a condition by so strong a name--for it was a sleep setwith a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weirdand distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams--a sleep thatwas a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of thenight were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard--ten steps from the stage--

"Help! help! help!" [It was our driver's voice. ]

"Kill him! Kill him like a dog!"

"I'm being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?"

"Look out! head him off! head him off!"

[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet, as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object;several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly, "Don't, gentlemen, please don't--I'm a dead man!" Then a fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left thegrisly mystery behind us. ]

What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time itoccupied--maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at acurtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hinderingflurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling andthundering away, down a mountain "grade. "

We fed on that mystery the rest of the night--what was left of it, for itwas waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we couldget from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like "Tell you in the morning!"

So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney, andlay there in the dark, listening to each other's story of how he firstfelt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselvesupon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds was, and theorder of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was never atheory that would account for our driver's voice being out there, nor yetaccount for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they wereIndians. 

So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, ourboding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presenceof something to be anxious about. 

We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All thatwe could make out of the odds and ends of the information we gathered inthe morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station; that wechanged drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had beentalking roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region ("forthere wasn't a man around there but had a price on his head and didn'tdare show himself in the settlements, " the conductor said); he had talkedroughly about these characters, and ought to have "drove up there withhis pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him, and begunbusiness himself, because any softy would know they would be laying forhim. "

That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the conductornor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They plainlyhad little respect for a man who would deliver offensive opinions ofpeople and then be so simple as to come into their presence unprepared to"back his judgment, " as they pleasantly phrased the killing of anyfellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise they plainlyhad a contempt for the man's poor discretion in venturing to rouse thewrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws--and theconductor added:

"I tell you it's as much as Slade himself want to do!"

This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I carednothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdereddriver. There was such magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, Istood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to somethingnew about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to OverlandCity, we had begun to hear about Slade and his "division" (for he was a"division-agent") on the Overland; and from the hour we had left OverlandCity we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three things--"Californy, " the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade. And adeal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come to havea realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and handsand soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity; aman who awfully avenged all injuries, affront, insults or slights, ofwhatever kind--on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack ofearlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day andnight till vengeance appeased it--and not an ordinary vengeance either, but his enemy's absolute death--nothing less; a man whose face wouldlight up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him at adisadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlawamong outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once themost bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen thatinhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains. 

CHAPTER X. 

Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors hadbeen about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reachedJulesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conceptionof what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state ofdevelopment, I will reduce all this mass of overland gossip to onestraightforward narrative, and present it in the following shape:

Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six yearsof age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph, Missouri, he joined one of the early California-bound emigrant trains, and was given the post of train-master. One day on the plains he had anangry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew theirrevolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weaponcocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small amatter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and thequarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, andthrew down his pistol--whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, andshot him dead!

He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his timebetween fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had beensent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indianbattle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut theirears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe. 

Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was sufficientmerit to procure for him the important post of overland division-agent atJulesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some time previously, thecompany's horses had been frequently stolen, and the coaches delayed, bygangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the idea of any man's havingthe temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented them promptly. 

The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did not fearanything that breathed the breath of life. He made short work of alloffenders. The result was that delays ceased, the company's property waslet alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade's coacheswent through, every time! True, in order to bring about this wholesomechange, Slade had to kill several men--some say three, others say four, and others six--but the world was the richer for their loss. The firstprominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore thereputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules hatedSlade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion for a fight was allhe was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ a man whom Jules hadonce discharged. Next, Slade seized a team of stage-horses which heaccused Jules of having driven off and hidden somewhere for his own use. War was declared, and for a day or two the two men walked warily aboutthe streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with a double-barreled shotgun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Sladestepped into a store Jules poured the contents of his gun into him frombehind the door. Slade was plucky, and Jules got several bad pistolwounds in return. 

Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, bothswearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both werebedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering hispossessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to theRocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day ofreckoning. For many months he was not seen or heard of, and wasgradually dropped out of the remembrance of all save Slade himself. ButSlade was not the man to forget him. On the contrary, common report saidthat Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive!

After awhile, seeing that Slade's energetic administration had restoredpeace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overlandstage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the RockyMountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there. It was thevery paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely nosemblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the onlyrecognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled onthe spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day, and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them. It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their privatereasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon asindelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette requiredof a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game--otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him thefirst time he killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn ininterring him. 

Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of thishive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of themaired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead! Hebegan a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time hehad completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered alarge number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes ofthe district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that theyrespected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He wrought the samemarvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked hisadministration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolenoverland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supremejudge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise--and notonly in the case of offences against his employers, but against passingemigrants as well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lostor stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With asingle companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected, and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding thefourth. 

From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book. --["The Vigilantesof Montana, " by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale. ]--I take this paragraph:

 "While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down to a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means of redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could. "

On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the finelittle half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with hiswidow after his execution. Stories of Slade's hanging men, and ofinnumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he wasa principal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As forminor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minutehistory of Slade's life would be one long record of such practices. 

Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends saythat one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he sawa man approaching who had offended him some days before--observe the finememory he had for matters like that--and, "Gentlemen, " said Slade, drawing, "it is a good twenty-yard shot--I'll clip the third button onhis coat!" Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they allattended the funeral, too. 

On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station didsomething which angered Slade--and went and made his will. A day or twoafterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reachedunder the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle--possibly to get somethingelse), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and satisfiedsmile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as adeath-warrant in disguise, and told him to "none of that!--pass out thehigh-priced article. " So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back andget the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced around againhe was looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. "And the nextinstant, " added my informant, impressively, "he was one of the deadestmen that ever lived. "

The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would leavea hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for weekstogether--had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said theybelieved he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, sothat he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed hesaved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and madethe pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation. One of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade. To the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but lethim alone for a considerable time. Finally, however, he went to theFrenchman's house very late one night, knocked, and when his enemy openedthe door, shot him dead--pushed the corpse inside the door with his foot, set the house on fire and burned up the dead man, his widow and threechildren! I heard this story from several different people, and theyevidently believed what they were saying. It may be true, and it maynot. "Give a dog a bad name, " etc. 

Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him. They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed aguard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, sothat he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving, spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before thedoor could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she andher lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, they mounted double and galloped away unharmed!

In the fulness of time Slade's myrmidons captured his ancient enemyJules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remotefastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious livelihood with hisrifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, anddeposited him in the middle of the cattle-yard with his back against apost. It is said that the pleasure that lit Slade's face when he heardof it was something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to seethat he was securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wait tillmorning before enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the nightin the cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never known. In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping theflesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while Julesbegged him to kill him outright and put him out of his misery. FinallySlade reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made somecharacteristic remarks and then dispatched him. The body lay there halfa day, nobody venturing to touch it without orders, and then Sladedetailed a party and assisted at the burial himself. But he first cutoff the dead man's ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carriedthem for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as I havefrequently heard it told and seen it in print in California newspapers. It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars. 

In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down tobreakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed andbearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The mostgentlemanly-appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found alongthe road in the Overland Company's service was the person who sat at thehead of the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I didwhen I heard them call him SLADE!

Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!--looking upon it--touching it--hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here, right by my side, wasthe actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways, had taken thelives of twenty-six human beings, or all men lied about him! I suppose Iwas the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange lands andwonderful people. 

He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him inspite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize thatthis pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, theraw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrifiedtheir children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkableabout Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin andstraight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I seldom see a face possessing those characteristicswithout fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man. 

The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Sladewas about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty. 

He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politelydeclined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and mightbe needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted onfilling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved itthan he--and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the lastdrop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I couldnot feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given itaway, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss. But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six deadpeople to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thoughtthat in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I hadpleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw usoff, first ordering certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for ourcomfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear ofhim again, some day, and wondering in what connection. 

CHAPTER XI. 

And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again. News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana(whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. I find anaccount of the affair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraphfrom in the last chapter--"The Vigilantes of Montana; being a ReliableAccount of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer's NotoriousRoad Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M. T. "Mr. Dimsdale's chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how thepeople of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law proveinefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of whichare accurately descriptive, and one of which is exceedingly picturesque:"Those who saw him in his natural state only, would pronounce him to be akind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous gentleman; on thecontrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by agang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend incarnate. " And this:"From Fort Kearney, west, he was feared a great deal more than thealmighty. " For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I will"back" that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale'snarrative is as follows. In all places where italics occur, they aremine:

 After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had freed the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and they determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority they would establish a People's Court where all offenders should be tried by judge and jury. This was the nearest approach to social order that the circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal authority was wanting, yet the people were firmly determined to maintain its efficiency, and to enforce its decrees. It may here be mentioned that the overt act which was the last round on the fatal ladder leading to the scaffold on which Slade perished, was the tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of this court, followed by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by authority of a presented Derringer, and with his own hands. 

 J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he openly boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew. He was never accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery, committed in this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his charge, in any place); but that he had killed several men in other localities was notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was a most powerful argument in determining his fate, when he was finally arrested for the offence above mentioned. On returning from Milk River he became more and more addicted to drinking, until at last it was a common feat for him and his friends to "take the town. " He and a couple of his dependents might often be seen on one horse, galloping through the streets, shouting and yelling, firing revolvers, etc. On many occasions he would ride his horse into stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors and use most insulting language to parties present. Just previous to the day of his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his followers; but such was his influence over them that the man wept bitterly at the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power. It had become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he had money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal enemies. 

 From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was not a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public did not expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his very name, and the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who followed him alone prevented a resistance which must certainly have ended in the instant murder or mutilation of the opposing party. 

 Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose organization we have described, and had treated it with respect by paying one or two fines and promising to pay the rest when he had money; but in the transaction that occurred at this crisis, he forgot even this caution, and goaded by passion and the hatred of restraint, he sprang into the embrace of death. 

 Slade had been drunk and "cutting up" all night. He and his companions had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M. Fox, the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and commenced reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of arraignment. He became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the writ, he tore it up, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it. 

 The clicking of the locks of his companions' revolvers was instantly heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt his retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the conqueror and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a declaration of war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Committee now felt that the question of social order and the preponderance of the law-abiding citizens had then and there to be decided. They knew the character of Slade, and they were well aware that they must submit to his rule without murmur, or else that he must be dealt with in such fashion as would prevent his being able to wreak his vengeance on the committee, who could never have hoped to live in the Territory secure from outrage or death, and who could never leave it without encountering his friend, whom his victory would have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that would have rendered them reckless of consequences. The day previous he had ridden into Dorris's store, and on being requested to leave, he drew his revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him. Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of wine, he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered an uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and commenced firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede. 

 A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is saying: "Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will be ---- to pay. " Slade started and took a long look, with his dark and piercing eyes, at the gentleman. "What do you mean?" said he. "You have no right to ask me what I mean, " was the quiet reply, "get your horse at once, and remember what I tell you. " After a short pause he promised to do so, and actually got into the saddle; but, being still intoxicated, he began calling aloud to one after another of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten the warning he had received and became again uproarious, shouting the name of a well-known courtezan in company with those of two men whom he considered heads of the committee, as a sort of challenge; perhaps, however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems probable that the intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way of showing his remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own safety. As the judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no resistance to his captor, no further outrage followed on this score. Previous to this, on account of the critical state of affairs, the committee had met, and at last resolved to arrest him. His execution had not been agreed upon, and, at that time, would have been negatived, most assuredly. A messenger rode down to Nevada to inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was desirable to show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject, all along the gulch. 

 The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and forming in solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the teeth, they marched up to Virginia. The leader of the body well knew the temper of his men on the subject. He spurred on ahead of them, and hastily calling a meeting of the executive, he told them plainly that the miners meant "business, " and that, if they came up, they would not stand in the street to be shot down by Slade's friends; but that they would take him and hang him. The meeting was small, as the Virginia men were loath to act at all. This momentous announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town was made to a cluster of men, who were deliberation behind a wagon, at the rear of a store on Main street. 

 The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All the duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task before them; but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was finally agreed that if the whole body of the miners were of the opinion that he should be hanged, that the committee left it in their hands to deal with him. Off, at hot speed, rode the leader of the Nevada men to join his command. 

 Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts' store, where Davis was, and apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back. 

 The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched up at quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive officer of the committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was at once informed of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he had any business to settle. Several parties spoke to him on the subject; but to all such inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful position. He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his dear wife. The unfortunate lady referred to, between whom and Slade there existed a warm affection, was at this time living at their ranch on the Madison. She was possessed of considerable personal attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful carriage, pleasing manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman. 

 A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her husband's arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all the energy that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament and a strong physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve miles of rough and rocky ground that intervened between her and the object of her passionate devotion. 

 Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations for the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath the site of Pfouts and Russell's stone building there was a corral, the gate-posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was laid a beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box served for the platform. To this place Slade was marched, surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous force that has ever appeared in Montana Territory. 

 The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, "My God! my God! must I die? Oh, my dear wife!"

 On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee, but who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny his request; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties would have certainly incited, forbade the granting of his request. Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people; but in such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns were instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a promise of future peaceable demeanor. 

 Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made. All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution. 

 Everything being ready, the command was given, "Men, do your duty, " and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died almost instantaneously. 

 The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to find that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed before she could regain the command of her excited feelings. 

There is something about the desperado-nature that is whollyunaccountable--at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The truedesperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the mostinfamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up beforea host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is underthe gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words arecheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not"die game" are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and whenwe read of Slade that he "had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers andlamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatalbeam, " the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment--yet infrequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountaincut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and neveroffering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerlessbravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many achicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dyingspeech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity withwhat looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified inbelieving, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was notmoral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is notthe requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-heartedSlade lacked?--this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman, who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would killthem whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is aconundrum worth investigating. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train ofthirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd ofloose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-looking men, women andchildren, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day foreight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance ourstage had come in eight days and three hours--seven hundred andninety-eight miles! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetlessand ragged, and they did look so tired!

After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid, sparkling stream--an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that ourfurious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. Wechanged horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours--changedmules, rather--six mules--and did it nearly every time in four minutes. It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station sixharnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of aneye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and awayagain. 

During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock, Devil's Gate and the Devil's Gap. The latter were wild specimens ofrugged scenery, and full of interest--we were in the heart of the RockyMountains, now. And we also passed by "Alkali" or "Soda Lake, " and wewoke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across theworld when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from GreatSalt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone bythey had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a drylake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagons-loadsof a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it fortwenty-five cents a pound. 

In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had beenhearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were suffering to see. This was what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now, and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the mencould scape the soil on the hill-side under the lee of a range ofboulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice--hard, compactly frozen, and clear as crystal!

Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raisedcurtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and contemplating the firstsplendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountainpeaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, asif the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted witha smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, thepostmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshaland the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greetedus cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains informationin return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on upamong the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass Cityconsisted of four log cabins, one if which was unfinished, and thegentleman with all those offices and titles was the chiefest of the tencitizens of the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith, mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen all condensed intoone person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was "a perfectAllen's revolver of dignities. " And he said that if he were to die aspostmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith both, thepeople might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it would be afrightful loss to the community. 

Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time thatmysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of andfully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it withtheir own eyes, nevertheless--banks of snow in dead summer time. We werenow far up toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presentlyencounter lofty summits clad in the "eternal snow" which was so commonplace a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glitteringin the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was Augustand that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear it, I wasfull as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in August before. Truly, "seeing is believing"--and many a man lives a long life through, thinking he believes certain universally received and well establishedthings, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by those thingsonce, he would discover that he did not really believe them before, butonly thought he believed them. 

In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long clawsof glittering snow clasping them; and with here and there, in the shade, down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow looking no largerthan a lady's pocket-handkerchief but being in reality as large as a"public square. "

And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and whirlinggayly along high above the common world. We were perched upon theextreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which wehad been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days andnights together--and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kingsthat stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high--grand oldfellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations of theearth, that now and then when the obstructing crags stood out of the wayit seemed that we could look around and abroad and contemplate the wholegreat globe, with its dissolving views of mountains, seas and continentsstretching away through the mystery of the summer haze. 

As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley than asuspension bridge in the clouds--but it strongly suggested the latter atone spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purpledomes projected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense of ahidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about theirbases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and lookover. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumesof cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringedand torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and catchingpresently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded there--then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left thepurple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, thesemonstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over thespectator's head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that hisimpulse was to shrink when they came closet. In the one place I speakof, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags andcanyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in itwhich was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees, --apretty picture sleeping in the sunlight--but with a darkness stealingover it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of acoming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noonbrightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth downthere and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted raindrive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash androar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us anovelty. 

We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though ithad been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour ormore), we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets andsent it in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of thosestreams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey westwardto the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds andeven thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other wasjust leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar journey eastward--and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivuletit would still be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, andcanyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and bywould join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and desertsand unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage amongsnags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch thewharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rockychannels, then endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled withunbroken forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woodyislands, then the chained bends again, bordered with wide levels ofshining sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleansand still other chains of bends--and finally, after two long months ofdaily and nightly harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awfulperil of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enterinto its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon itssnow-peaks again or regret them. 

I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, anddropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held forpostage somewhere. 

On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tiredmen and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow. 

In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognizedJohn -----. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the RockyMountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should havelooked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years. But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it hadnever been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had beenaccustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the thirdstory of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gaveme a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, butchancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under itand an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his head, which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the melon, andJohn never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and parted, but nowmet again under these circumstances. 

We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as warmlyas if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion was madeto any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting afamiliar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was sufficient tomake us forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted again withsincere "good-bye" and "God bless you" from both. 

We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains formany tedious hours--we started down them, now. And we went spinning awayat a round rate too. 

We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, andsped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through longranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen--monuments of the hugeemigration of other days--and here and there were up-ended boards orsmall piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place ofmore precious remains. 

It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayoteand the raven--which is but another name for desolation and uttersolitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth asoft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vaguedesert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But noscientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he driftedby one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it. 

At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it--indeed, Idid not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down thecurtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in intwenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved hisfeet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved hisbody he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenchedblankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck. Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horsesstill. With the first abatement the conductor turned out with lanternsto look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm aboutfourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as hetouched bottom he sang out frantically:

"Don't come here!"

To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he haddisappeared, replied, with an injured air: "Think I'm a dam fool?"

The conductor was more than an hour finding the road--a matter whichshowed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking. He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in twoplaces. I have always been glad that we were not killed that night. I do not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad. In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream--stuck in it with the water just up to the top of ourmail-bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steepbank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find anyfresh place on us to wet. 

At the Green River station we had breakfast--hot biscuits, fresh antelopesteaks, and coffee--the only decent meal we tasted between the UnitedStates and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever reallythankful for. 

Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like ashot-tower after all these years have gone by!

At five P. M. We reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen milesfrom the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St. Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we metsixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they hadfired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposedgathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, butnobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get outand join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were fourhundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians. 

Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrowstreet, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormousperpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high inmany places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the mostfaultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would"let his team out. " He did, and if the Pacific express trains whizthrough there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envythe passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up ourwheels and fly--and the mail matter was lifted up free from everythingand held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say athing I mean it. 

However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summitof Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the worldwas glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama ofmountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out uponthis sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Eventhe overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!

Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with aMormon "Destroying Angel. "

"Destroying Angels, " as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who areset apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxiouscitizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels andthe dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one'shouse I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he wasnothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderousenough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have anykind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in anunclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with ahorse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?

There were other blackguards present--comrades of this one. And therewas one person that looked like a gentleman--Heber C. Kimball's son, talland well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of slatternly womenflitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives ofthe Angel--or some of them, at least. And of course they were; for ifthey had been hired "help" they would not have let an angel from abovestorm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place this onehailed from. 

This was our first experience of the western "peculiar institution, " andit was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, buthurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of theprophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America--Great SaltLake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt LakeHouse and unpacked our baggage. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables--agreat variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some, afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascinationin surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon. This was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes--a land ofenchantment, and goblins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to askevery child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart; andwe experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and shutas we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs andshoulders--for we so longed to have a good satisfying look at a Mormonfamily in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customaryconcentric rings of its home circle. 

By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other"Gentiles, " and we spent a sociable hour with them. "Gentiles" arepeople who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger, Bemis, took care ofhimself, during this part of the evening, and did not make anoverpowering success of it, either, for he came into our room in thehotel about eleven o'clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely, disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out aragged word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it. This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of achair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pantson the floor just in front of the same chair, and then comtemplating thegeneral result with superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it "toomany for him" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear thatsomething he had eaten had not agreed with him. 

But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It wasthe exclusively Mormon refresher, "valley tan. "

Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky, or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only inUtah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If Iremember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdomby Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, except they confined themselves to "valley tan. "

Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, levelstreets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteenthousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visibledrunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing throughevery street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trimdwellings, built of "frame" and sunburned brick--a great thriving orchardand garden behind every one of them, apparently--branches from the streetstream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit trees--and agrand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around andabout and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, factories, andall manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seenwherever one looked; and in one's ears was the ceaseless clink ofhammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and fly-wheels. 

The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bearsholding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making thepertinent remark, "UNITED, WE STAND--(hic!)--DIVIDED, WE FALL. " It wasalways too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crestwas easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at work!

The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State ofConnecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wallof mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whoseshoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long. 

Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, GreatSalt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of achild's toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinesewall. 

On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining everyday for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hotdays in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning andgrowling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorioussnow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance, at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets, or anywhere near them. 

Salt Lake City was healthy--an extremely healthy city. 

They declared there was only one physician in the place and he wasarrested every week regularly and held to answer under the vagrant actfor having "no visible means of support. " They always give you a goodsubstantial article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and goodweight, too. [Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiestlittle commonplace statements you would want the hay scales. ]

We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American "Dead Sea, " thegreat Salt Lake--seventeen miles, horseback, from the city--for we haddreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and yearnedto see it, all the first part of our trip; but now when it was only arm'slength away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its interest. Andso we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day--and that wasthe last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles;and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked long withthat shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since deceased), asaint of high degree and a mighty man of commerce. 

We saw the "Tithing-House, " and the "Lion House, " and I do not know orremember how many more church and government buildings of various kindsand curious names. We flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour, and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertainingnonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied. 

The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased)and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king. He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed oldgentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye thatprobably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just takingoff a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians, and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with oursecretary and certain government officials who came with us. But henever paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attemptsto "draw him out" on federal politics and his high handed attitude towardCongress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine. But hemerely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I haveseen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddlingwith her tail. 

By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the end, hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant savage. But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on assweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When theaudience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put hishand on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to mybrother:

"Ah--your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?"

CHAPTER XIV. 

Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters--and consideringthat he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabitedmountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to traverse withhis wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as busy aspossible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by theroad-side, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across thoseexhausting deserts--and it was two days' journey from water to water, inone or two of them. Mr. Street's contract was a vast work, every way onelooked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words "eight hundredmiles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts" mean, one must go over theground in person--pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the drearyreality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S. 's mightiest difficultyturned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all. Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his greatundertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going tomake little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their polesoverboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took thenotion, and drove home and went about their customary business! Theywere under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anythingfor that. They said they would "admire" to see a "Gentile" force aMormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! And they made themselvesvery merry over the matter. Street said--for it was he that told usthese things:

"I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in agiven time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was anastounding thing; it was such a wholly unlooked-for difficulty, that Iwas entirely nonplussed. I am a business man--have always been abusiness man--do not know anything but business--and so you can imaginehow like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a countrywhere written contracts were worthless!--that main security, thatsheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business. My confidence leftme. There was no use in making new contracts--that was plain. I talkedwith first one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathizedwith me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last aGentile said, 'Go to Brigham Young!--these small fry cannot do you anygood. ' I did not think much of the idea, for if the law could not helpme, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do witheither making the laws or executing them? He might be a very goodpatriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but somethingsterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundredrefractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do? Ithought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably beable to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I wentstraight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little, but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all thepapers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, eitherin the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the threadand follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result. Then he made a list of the contractors' names. Finally he said:

"'Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictlyand legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These menmanifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault orflaw anywhere. '

"Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room andsaid: 'Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have thesemen here at such-and-such an hour. '

"They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them anumber of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then hesaid to them:

"'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your ownfree will and accord?'

"'Yes. '

"'Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!'

"And they did go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, workinglike bees. And I never hear a word out of them. 

"There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here, shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republicanform of government--but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolutemonarchy and Brigham Young is king!"

Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him wellduring several years afterward in San Francisco. 

Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore wehad no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings ofpolygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory tocalling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. 

I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth Iwas feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--untilI saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than myhead. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely"creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, Isaid, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christiancharity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not theirharsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed ofopen-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncoveredin his presence and worship in silence. "

 [For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]

CHAPTER XV. 

It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories aboutassassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive ofanything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in aGentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton gallopedin among the pleading and defenceless "Morisites" and shot them down, menand women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt. And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And howheedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, orpolygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning atdaylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley, contentedly waiting for the hearse. 

And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to theseGentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister--likes her, marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries hermother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert youngthing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerablegrandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband'sesteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how thisdreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest of motherand daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own motherin rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to becausetheir religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, andthe more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have inthe world to come--and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to sayanything about that. 

According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young's haremcontains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grownold and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and caredfor in the henery--or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Alongwith each wife were her children--fifty altogether. The house wasperfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all tooktheir meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it waspronounced to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinnerwith Mr. Young, but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to haveenjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterousaccount of the "calling of the roll, " and other preliminaries, and thecarnage that ensued when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellishedrather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayingsof certain of his "two-year-olds, " observing with some pride that formany years he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one ofthe Eastern magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of thepets that had said the last good thing, but he could not find the child. 

He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decidewhich one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:

"I thought I would know the little cub again but I don't. " Mr. Johnsonsaid further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing--"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to beblighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride. " And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing inprivate, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin toNo. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go onwithout making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Youngreminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that ifthe state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and shewent away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in anddemanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Youngcut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, and it was "no use for him to try to impose on her--she hoped she knewher rights. " He gave his promise, and she went. And presently threeMrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest oftears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, andNo. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gonewhen nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempestburst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Ninebreast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And incame eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Elevenpromised breast-pins purchased peace once more. 

"That is a specimen, " said Mr. Young. "You see how it is. You see whata life I lead. A man can't be wise all the time. In a heedless moment Igave my darling No. 6--excuse my calling her thus, as her other name hasescaped me for the moment--a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-fivedollars--that is, apparently that was its whole cost--but its ultimatecost was inevitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seenit climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars--and alas, even that is notthe end! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I havedozens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in thefamily Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains andvalleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hearof this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one ordie. No. 6's breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars beforeI see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pinstogether, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all bethrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace inthe family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you werepresent with my children your every movement was watched by vigilantservitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stickof candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out ofthe house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left yourhand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make anexactly similar gift to all my children--and knowing by experience theimportance of the thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself thatyou did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of mychildren a tin whistle--a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and onewhich I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eightyor ninety children in your house. But the deed was done--the manescaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted forvengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they huntedthe man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they nevercaught him. I am not cruel, sir--I am not vindictive except when sorelyoutraged--but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I wouldhave locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!) therewas never anything on this earth like it! I knew who gave the whistle tothe child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. Theybelieved I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflectioncould have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles--I thinkwe had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them areoff at college now--I had to order a hundred and ten of those shriekingthings, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn't have totalk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children gottired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to achild of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher thanHaman! That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! You don'tknow anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. Iam benevolent, and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strongfatherly instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me. 

"Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brainto cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, awoman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort ofcomplexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine andshe my wife--that I had married her at such-and-such a time insuch-and-such a place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course Icould not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my attention to thefact that the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resembleme--a common thing in the Territory--and, to cut the story short, I putit in my nursery, and she left. And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, whenthey came to wash the paint off that child it was an Injun! Bless mysoul, you don't know anything about married life. It is a perfect dog'slife, sir--a perfect dog's life. You can't economize. It isn'tpossible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for alloccasions. But it is of no use. First you'll marry a combination ofcalico and consumption that's as thin as a rail, and next you'll get acreature that's nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then you'vegot to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is the way itgoes. And think of the wash-bill--(excuse these tears)--nine hundred andeighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a thing as economyin a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles--think of it!And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething rings! And 'papa's watches' forthe babies to play with! And things to scratch the furniture with! Andlucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass to cut themselveswith! The item of glass alone would support your family, I venture tosay, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I still can't get ahead asfast as I feel I ought to, with my opportunities. Bless you, sir, at atime when I had seventy-two wives in this house, I groaned under thepressure of keeping thousands of dollars tied up in seventy-two bedsteadswhen the money ought to have been out at interest; and I just sold outthe whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and built a bedstead seven feetlong and ninety-six feet wide. But it was a failure, sir. I could notsleep. It appeared to me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was deafening. And then the danger of it! That was what I waslooking at. They would all draw in their breath at once, and you couldactually see the walls of the house suck in--and then they would allexhale their breath at once, and you could see the walls swell out, andstrain, and hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. Myfriend, take an old man's advice, and don't encumber yourself with alarge family--mind, I tell you, don't do it. In a small family, and in asmall family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of mindwhich are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to affordus, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and noacquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take myword for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need--never go over it. "

Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable. And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of theinformation he gave us could have been acquired from any other source. He was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" haveseen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away acopy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such apretentious affair, and yet so "slow, " so sleepy; such an insipid mess ofinspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed thisbook, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at anyrate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certainancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares hefound under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work oftranslating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. 

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with theOld Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the NewTestament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of theScriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and halfancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained;the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found hisspeech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--heladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore, " "and it cameto pass, " etc. , and made things satisfactory again. "And it came topass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have beenonly a pamphlet. 

The title-page reads as follows:

 THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI. 

 Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God. An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which is a record of the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to Heaven. 

"Hid up" is good. And so is "wherefore"--though why "wherefore"? Anyother word would have answered as well--though--in truth it would nothave sounded so Scriptural. 

Next comes:

 THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true; and it is marvellous in our eyes; nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with Him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY, DAVID WHITMER, MARTIN HARRIS. 

Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can comeanywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when aman tells me that he has "seen the engravings which are upon the plates, "and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him seethem, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road toconviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, andeven if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either. 

Next is this:

 AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr. , the translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen; and we lie not, God bearing witness of it. CHRISTIAN WHITMER, JACOB WHITMER, PETER WHITMER, JR. , JOHN WHITMER, HIRAM PAGE, JOSEPH SMITH, SR. , HYRUM SMITH, SAMUEL H. SMITH. 

And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be theygrammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seenthe plates too; and not only seen those plates but "hefted" them, I amconvinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entireWhitmer family had testified. 

The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen "books"--being the books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two"books" of Mormon, and three of Nephi. 

In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, whichgives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the "children of Lehi";and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, duringeight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their number, aparty by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of"Bountiful, " and camped by the sea. After they had remained there "forthe space of many days"--which is more Scriptural than definite--Nephiwas commanded from on high to build a ship wherein to "carry the peopleacross the waters. " He travestied Noah's ark--but he obeyed orders inthe matter of the plan. He finished the ship in a single day, while hisbrethren stood by and made fun of it--and of him, too--"saying, ourbrother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship. " They didnot wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed thenext day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed byoutspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness--they all got on a spree!They, "and also their wives, began to make themselves merry, insomuchthat they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness;yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness. "

Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings; but they tied him neckand heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi theprophet circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers:

 And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three days; and they began to be frightened exceedingly, lest they should be drowned in the sea; nevertheless they did not loose me. And on the fourth day, which we had been driven back, the tempest began to be exceeding sore. And it came to pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea. 

Then they untied him. 

 And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm. 

Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had theadvantage of Noah. 

Their voyage was toward a "promised land"--the only name they give it. They reached it in safety. 

Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added byBrigham Young after Joseph Smith's death. Before that, it was regardedas an "abomination. " This verse from the Mormon Bible occurs in ChapterII. Of the book of Jacob:

 For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord God, will no suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old. 

However, the project failed--or at least the modern Mormon end of it--forBrigham "suffers" it. This verse is from the same chapter:

 Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should have, save it were one wife; and concubines they should have none. 

The following verse (from Chapter IX. Of the Book of Nephi) appears tocontain information not familiar to everybody:

 And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven, the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his children, and did return to his own home. 

 And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised from the dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name was Jonas, and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, and Kumenenhi, and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, and Isaiah; now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had chosen. 

In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur andpicturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied on of thetenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem tohave been aware of, I quote the following from the same "book"--Nephi:

 And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He had said these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it, and He took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them. And when He had done this He wept again, and He spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold your little ones. And as they looked to behold, they cast their eyes toward heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of heaven as it were, in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those little ones about, and they were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto them, and the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they know that their record is true, for they all of them did see and hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, and children. 

And what else would they be likely to consist of?

The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of if "history, " much ofit relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader haspossibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country which is not setdown in the geography. These was a King with the remarkable name ofCoriantumr, and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others, in the "plains of Heshlon"; and the "valley of Gilgal"; and the"wilderness of Akish"; and the "land of Moran"; and the "plains ofAgosh"; and "Ogath, " and "Ramah, " and the "land of Corihor, " and the"hill Comnor, " by "the waters of Ripliancum, " etc. , etc. , etc. "And itcame to pass, " after a deal of fighting, that Coriantumr, upon makingcalculation of his losses, found that "there had been slain two millionsof mighty men, and also their wives and their children"--say 5, 000, 000 or6, 000, 000 in all--"and he began to sorrow in his heart. " Unquestionablyit was time. So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of hostilities, andoffering to give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz declined, except upon condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut his headoff first--a thing which Coriantumr would not do. Then there was morefighting for a season; then four years were devoted to gathering theforces for a final struggle--after which ensued a battle, which, I takeit, is the most remarkable set forth in history, --except, perhaps, thatof the Kilkenny cats, which it resembles in some respects. This is theaccount of the gathering and the battle:

 7. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people, upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for Coriantumr, were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for Shiz, were gathered together to the army of Shiz; wherefore they were for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it was possible that they could receive. And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children; both men, women, and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did rend the air exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless they conquered not, and when the night came again, they did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people. 

 8. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. But behold, the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and Satan had full power over the hearts of the people, for they were given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again to battle. And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their swords; and on the morrow they fought even until the night came; and when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords; and on the morrow they fought again; and when the night came they had all fallen by the sword save it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty and nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they slept upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again, and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr. 

 9. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men, as to the strength of men. And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient strength, that they could walk, they were about to flee for their lives, but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his wrath that he would slay Coriantumr, or he would perish by the sword: wherefore he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said unto him, go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished his record; and the hundredth part I have not written. 

It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary formerchapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becominginteresting. 

The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there isnothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable--it is "smouched" [Milton] from the New Testament and no credit given. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

At the end of our two days' sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City heartyand well fed and happy--physically superb but not so very much wiser, asregards the "Mormon question, " than we were when we arrived, perhaps. We had a deal more "information" than we had before, of course, but wedid not know what portion of it was reliable and what was not--for it allcame from acquaintances of a day--strangers, strictly speaking. We weretold, for instance, that the dreadful "Mountain Meadows Massacre" was thework of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried tofasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the Indians wereto blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told, likewise, andjust as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not wholly andcompletely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery. We got the story in all these different shapes, but it was not tillseveral years afterward that Mrs. Waite's book, "The Mormon Prophet, "came out with Judge Cradlebaugh's trial of the accused parties in it andrevealed the truth that the latter version was the correct one and thatthe Mormons were the assassins. All our "information" had three sides toit, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle the "Mormon question"in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one. 

I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of thingsexisted there--and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether astate of things existed there at all or not. But presently I rememberedwith a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or threetrivial things there which we could be certain of; and so the two dayswere not wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at lastin a pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality. 

The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights andbewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, thesmallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallestpurchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallestcoin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of anarticle could be bought than "five cents' worth. " In Overland City thelowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in Salt Lake there didnot seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or anysmaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty-five cents'worth. We had always been used to half dimes and "five cents' worth" asthe minimum of financial negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted acigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; ifhe wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a littleGentile whiskey to rub on his corns to arrest indigestion and keep himfrom having the toothache, twenty-five cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to bewasting our substance in riotous living, but if we referred to theexpense account we could see that we had not been doing anything of thekind. 

But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fondand vain of both--it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices thatis hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one's toleration. Aftera month's acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the averagehuman being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his despicablefive-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada, every time I thought of my first financial experience in Salt Lake. It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great authors, anda very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody say on this wise when theyare talking). A young half-breed with a complexion like a yellow-jacketasked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at the Salt Lake Housethe morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then Ihanded him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a personwho is conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty and suffering. Theyellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed emotion, andlaid it reverently down in the middle of his broad hand. Then he beganto contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates a gnat's ear in theample field of his microscope. Several mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc. , drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell tosurveying the money with that attractive indifference to formality whichis noticeable in the hardy pioneer. Presently the yellow-jacket handedthe half dime back to me and told me I ought to keep my money in mypocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I wouldn't get it cramped andshriveled up so!

What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrelreptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detachinghis scalp, for the remark he made was good for an "Injun. "

Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices withoutletting the inward shudder appear on the surface--for even already we hadoverheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers, conductors, and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until we were wellaware that these superior beings despised "emigrants. " We permitted notell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seempioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, MountainMeadow assassins--anything in the world that the plains and Utahrespected and admired--but we were wretchedly ashamed of being"emigrants, " and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could notswear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way. 

And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember withhumiliation that we were "emigrants, " and consequently a low and inferiorsort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, orCalifornia, even in these latter days, and while communing with himselfupon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he considers"the world, " has had his wings clipped by finding that he is the one tobe pitied, and that there are entire populations around him ready andwilling to do it for him--yea, who are complacently doing it for himalready, wherever he steps his foot. 

Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New Yorkcoat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feebleprofanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never feltenough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinkingwhat a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land, the citizens around him are looking down on him with a blightingcompassion because he is an "emigrant" instead of that proudest andblessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a "FORTY-NINER. "

The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almostseemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacksat all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enoughbread, boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundredmiles of staging we had still to do. 

And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate themajestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eatham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternatelyin rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenerylike ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe--an old, rank, delicious pipe--ham and eggs and scenery, a "down grade, " a flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart--these make happiness. It is whatall the ages have struggled for. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had beenthe important military station of "Camp Floyd, " some forty-five or fiftymiles from Salt Lake City. At four P. M. We had doubled our distance andwere ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we entered uponone of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames thediffused and diluted horrors of Sahara--an "alkali" desert. Forsixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember thatthis was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but awatering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight miles. If mymemory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but thewater was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of thedesert. There was a stage station there. It was forty-five miles fromthe beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it. 

We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished theforty-five-mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where theimported water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough tocross a desert in the night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant toreflect, in the morning, that we in actual person had encountered anabsolute desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presenceof the ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect thatthis was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and verycomfortable and satisfactory--but now we were to cross a desert indaylight. This was fine--novel--romantic--dramatically adventurous--this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We wouldwrite home all about it. 

This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultryAugust sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour--andthen we were ashamed that we had "gushed" so. The poetry was all in theanticipation--there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, wavelessocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tuftedwith ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitudethat belong to such a place; imagine a coach, creeping like a bug throughthe midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dustas if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this aching monotony oftoiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as faraway as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers sodeeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagineash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulationson boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it. 

The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; theperspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely asign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed before it getsthere; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not amerciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not aliving creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blanklevel that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not asound--not a sigh--not a whisper--not a buzz, or a whir of wings, ordistant pipe of bird--not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtlesspeople that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the restingmules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel morelonesome and forsaken than before. 

The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would makeat stated intervals a "spurt, " and drag the coach a hundred or may be twohundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seemafloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing andbit-champing. Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest atthe end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mulesand without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was sohot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of theday and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! andthe tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a crueldeliberation! It was so trying to give one's watch a good longundisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been foolingaway the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cutthrough our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicatemembranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding--and truly andseriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left thedesert trip nothing but a harsh reality--a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality!

Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what weaccomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such asnail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten milesan hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert, we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, becausewe never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sortof dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there couldnot have been found in a whole library of dictionaries languagesufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-threemile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were, would be to "gild refined gold or paint the lily. "

Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit--but nomatter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractivething, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in whereit would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my minddistracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken anddisjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best toleave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporaryrespite from the wear and tear of trying to "lead up" to this really aptand beautiful quotation. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at theentrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake. It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitationof white men, except the stage stations, that we came across thewretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. Irefer to the Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we couldlearn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised DiggerIndians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent;inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, andactually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa. Indeed, Ihave been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood's "Uncivilized Racesof Men" clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded enough totake rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to thatshameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Suchof the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the stations, were small, lean, "scrawny" creatures; in complexion a dull black likethe ordinary American negro; their faces and hands bearing dirt whichthey had been hoarding and accumulating for months, years, and evengenerations, according to the age of the proprietor; a silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race; taking note of everything, covertly, like allthe other "Noble Red Men" that we (do not) read about, and betraying nosign in their countenances; indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; prideless beggars--for if the beggar instinctwere left out of an Indian he would not "go, " any more than a clockwithout a pendulum; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusinganything that a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog woulddecline; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to kill and eatjack-ass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion fromthe buzzards and cayotes; savages who, when asked if they have the commonIndian belief in a Great Spirit show a something which almost amounts toemotion, thinking whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race ofalmost naked black children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing atall, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictlydefined tribal communities--a people whose only shelter is a rag cast ona bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of themost rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other canexhibit. 

The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-samegorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever animal--Adam theDarwinians trace them to. 

One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yetthey used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few monthsand then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burndown the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a DistrictJudge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their firstvolley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter wasfull of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver's call Judge Mottswung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team, and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under ahurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on theboot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said hewould manage to keep hold of them until relieved. 

And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his headbetween Judge Mott's feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the road;he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun andleft behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be atan end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions aboutbad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the nextstation without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at lastrattled up to the station and knew that the night's perils were done; butthere was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierlydriver was dead. 

Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overlanddrivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple ofCooper and a worshipper of the Red Man--even of the scholarly savages inthe "Last of the Mohicans" who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmenwho divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part criticallygrammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just suchan attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerkmight make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett's works andstudying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks--I saythat the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set meto examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimatingthe Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance. The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious to see howquickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy and repulsive--and how quickly the evidences accumulated thatwherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more orless modified by circumstances and surroundings--but Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine--at thisdistance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's. 

There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington RailroadCompany and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error. There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough tomislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated bothtribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to startthe report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may havebeen, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class whohave a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the RockyMountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to givethose poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, inGod's name let us at least not throw mud at them. 

CHAPTER XX. 

On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yetseen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon itsheels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless. 

On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-boundtelegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to hisExcellency Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-sixmiles). 

On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert--fortymemorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk fromsix inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across. That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a longand thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desertto the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked theforty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was oneprodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rottingwrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we sawlog-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to reach across any Statein the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of thefearful suffering and privation the early emigrants to Californiaendured?

At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The "Sink" of theCarson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundredmiles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost--sinksmysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sunagain--for the lake has no outlet whatever. 

There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysteriousfate. They end in various lakes or "sinks, " and that is the last ofthem. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all greatsheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing intothem; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain alwayslevel full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with theirsurplus is only known to the Creator. 

On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. Itconsisted of one log house and is not set down on the map. 

This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on thePlatte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:

"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like tolisten to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he wasleaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had anengagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go throughquick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted thebuttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean throughthe roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him togo easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there ontime'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"

A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, andhe told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings. He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairsof Colorado. By and by he remarked:

"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like tolisten to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he wasleaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had anengagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go throughquick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. Thecoach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted thebuttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean throughthe roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him togo easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there ontime!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"

At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalrysergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other manduring the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise andwell-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in thedesolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted witheverything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferiorrank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listenedto him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject oftrans-continental travel, and presently said:

"I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like tolisten to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he wasleaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had anengagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go throughquick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. Thecoach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted thebuttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean throughthe roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him togo easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there ontime!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"

When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got inwith us at a way station--a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one whomany stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the pathosthat was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story of hispeople's wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence wasever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast's picture of the firstMormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward to theland of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves andwatering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was arelief to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerfulchannel and the natural features of the curious country we were in cameunder treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, andat length the stranger said:

"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like tolisten to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he wasleaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had anengagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go throughquick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. Thecoach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted thebuttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean throughthe roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him togo easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there ontime!'--and you bet you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"

Ten miles out of Ragtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down todie. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him atlast. Hunger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhumanto leave him there. We paid his fare to Carson and lifted him into thecoach. It was some little time before he showed any very decided signsof life; but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his lipswe finally brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we fed him alittle, and by and by he seemed to comprehend the situation and agrateful light softened his eye. We made his mail-sack bed ascomfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for him with our coats. He seemed very thankful. Then he looked up in our faces, and said in afeeble voice that had a tremble of honest emotion in it:

"Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; andalthough I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can atleast make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you arestrangers to this great thorough fare, but I am entirely familiar withit. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, ifyou would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley----"

I said, impressively:

"Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholywreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me tothis? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but surely, that tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined myconstitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me onlyjust this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his littlehatchet for a change. "

We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdotein his system he strained himself and died in our arms. 

I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizenof all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man; for, afterseven years' residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no passenger ordriver on the Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a stranger wasby, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and recrossedthe Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by stage andlistened to that deathless incident four hundred and eighty-one oreighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers always told it, conductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers told it, thevery Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had the samedriver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. It hascome to me in all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed toearth, and flavored with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont, tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers--everything that has a fragrance toit through all the long list of things that are gorged or guzzled by thesons of men. I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smeltthat one; never have smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated as thatone. And you never could learn to know it by its smell, because everytime you thought you had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with adifferent smell. Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote, Richardson has published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross Browne, and every other correspondence-inditing being that ever set his foot uponthe great overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San Francisco; andI have heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in print in ninedifferent foreign languages; I have been told that it is employed in theinquisition in Rome; and I now learn with regret that it is going to beset to music. I do not think that such things are right. 

Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a racedefunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald-headed anecdote to theirsuccessors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latterstill persecute the helpless passenger with it until he concludes, as didmany a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacificcoast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and hisadventure with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote themore aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefestvirtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to bedone to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If Iwere to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be calledextravagant--but what does the sixteenth chapter of Daniel say? Aha!]

CHAPTER XXI. 

We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning ofthe twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital ofNevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a finepleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now wellaccustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to astand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was notagreeable, but on the contrary depressing. 

Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-cladmountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation butthe endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. Wewere plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose inthick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burninghouse. 

We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, themail-bags, the driver--we and the sage-brush and the other scenery wereall one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distanceenvelope in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies onfire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burthen, with its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. Frequently a solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplatedthe passing coach with meditative serenity. 

By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of agreat plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like anassemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountainsoverlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionshipand consciousness of earthly things. 

We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a "wooden" town;its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four orfive blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit downon, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly highenough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room werescarce in that mighty plain. 

The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined torattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was the "plaza" which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains--a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it, and veryuseful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the plaza werefaced by stores, offices and stables. 

The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering. 

We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on theway up to the Governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris, who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himselfwith the remark:

"I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness thatswore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinentintermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man. "

Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols wereemptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr. Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet throughone of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued littlerivulets of blood that coursed down the horse's sides and made the animallook quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but itrecalled to mind that first day in Carson. 

This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and accordingto custom the daily "Washoe Zephyr" set in; a soaring dust-drift aboutthe size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and thecapital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view. 

Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninterestingto new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with thingsstrange to the upper air--things living and dead, that flitted hither andthither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rollingbillows of dust--hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the remoteheavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade lower;door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on thenext grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next; disruptedlumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and down onlythirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigratingroofs and vacant lots. 

It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I couldhave kept the dust out of my eyes. 

But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blowsflimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin oneslike sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills thepassengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald peoplethere, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they arelooking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive onSummer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping aroundtheir escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider. 

The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiarScriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh. " That is tosay, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from theWest, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on theother side! It probably is manufactured on the mountain-top for theoccasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in thesummer time. Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two thenext morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hoursneeds to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leewardof the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoevisitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds blow so, there!There is a good deal of human nature in that. 

We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consistof a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and astanchion supported shed in front--for grandeur--it compelled the respectof the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly arrivedChief and Associate Justices of the Territory, and other machinery of thegovernment, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding aroundprivately, and had their offices in their bedrooms. 

The Secretary and I took quarters in the "ranch" of a worthy French ladyby the name of Bridget O'Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency theGovernor. She had known him in his prosperity as commander-in-chief ofthe Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in hisadversity as Governor of Nevada. 

Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had gotour bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, andthe Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for avisitor--may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the wallscould stand it--at least the partitions could, for they consisted simplyof one thickness of white "cotton domestic" stretched from corner tocorner of the room. This was the rule in Carson--any other kind ofpartition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark room andyour neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas toldqueer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of oldflour sacks basted together; and then the difference between the commonherd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamentedsacks, while the walls of the aristocrat were overpowering withrudimental fresco--i. E. , red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks. 

Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas bypasting pictures from Harper's Weekly on them. In many cases, too, thewealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of asumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that Imust explain that the above description was only the rule; there weremany honorable exceptions in Carson--plastered ceilings and houses thathad considerable furniture in them. --M. T. ]

We had a carpet and a genuine queen's-ware washbowl. Consequently wewere hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O'Flannigan"ranch. " When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we simply tookour lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed up stairsand took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the fourteenwhite pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one soleroom of which the second story consisted. 

It was a jolly company, the fourteen. They were principally voluntarycamp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their ownelection at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that inthe scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not maketheir condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expectto make it better. They were popularly known as the "Irish Brigade, "though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the Governor'sretainers. 

His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmencreated--especially when there arose a rumor that they were paidassassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic votewhen desirable!

Mrs. O'Flannigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a weekapiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They wereperfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that couldnot be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carsonboarding-house. So she began to harry the Governor to find employmentfor the "Brigade. " Her importunities and theirs together drove him to agentle desperation at last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to thepresence. Then, said he:

"Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you--a service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes, and afford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds byobservation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson Citywestward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have thenecessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged. "

"What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?"

"Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!"

He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turnedthem loose in the desert. It was "recreation" with a vengeance!Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under asultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas. 

"Romantic adventure" could go no further. They surveyed very slowly, very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night during thefirst week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly. Theybrought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders--tarantulas--andimprisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the "ranch. " After thefirst week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting welleastward. They made a good many inquiries as to the location of thatindefinite "certain point, " but got no information. At last, to apeculiarly urgent inquiry of "How far eastward?" Governor Nyetelegraphed back:

"To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!--and then bridge it and go on!"

This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased fromtheir labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said Mrs. O'Flannigan would hold him for the Brigade's board anyhow, and heintended to get what entertainment he could out of the boys; he said, with his old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them intoUtah and then telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass!

The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quitea menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of thesespiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscularlegs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, theywere the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were upand spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?--proud? Indeed, theywould take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. There was as usual a furious "zephyr" blowing the first night of thebrigade's return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blewoff, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of thebrigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each otherin the narrow aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H---- sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf withhis head. Instantly he shouted:

"Turn out, boys--the tarantulas is loose!"

No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leavethe room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for atrunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence--asilence of grisly suspense it was, too--waiting, expectancy, fear. Itwas as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of thosefourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not athing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of thesilence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by hisvoice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings orchanges of position. The occasional voices were not given to muchspeaking--you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of "Ow!" followed by asolid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket orsomething touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:

"Su--su--something's crawling up the back of my neck!"

Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and asorrowful "O Lord!" and then you knew that somebody was getting away fromsomething he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear:

"I've got him! I've got him!" [Pause, and probable change ofcircumstances. ] "No, he's got me! Oh, ain't they never going to fetch alantern!"

The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O'Flannigan, whoseanxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had notprevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed andlighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a largercontract. 

The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room waspicturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us. Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and sostrangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and toogenuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not thesemblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable ofsuffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in thedark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I hadskipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and everytime I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I hadrather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had "got him" was mistaken--only a crackin a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas wasever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles andhunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we goback to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not havepersuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbageand keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weathersuperb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated withthe curious new country and concluded to put off my return to "theStates" awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged slouchhat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and gloried inthe absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdyish and "bully, " (asthe historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon thedestruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be sofine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the government, butthat was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I hadnothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty theSecretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So JohnnyK---- and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of anOhio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had heard aworld of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finallycuriosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of theBrigade had been there and located some timber lands on its shores andstored up a quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a coupleof blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started--for weintended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. We were told that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long timeon level ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about athousand miles high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on theother side, crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three orfour thousand miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lakeyet. We sat down tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen tocurse those people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presentlyresumed the march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on, two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us--a noblesheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above thelevel of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks thattowered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in travelingaround it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantlyphotographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be thefairest picture the whole earth affords. 

We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without lossof time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks thatsignified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row--not because Imind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards whenI am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the campjust as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishlyhungry. In a "cache" among the rocks we found the provisions and thecooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on aboulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper. Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to rest. 

It was a delicious supper--hot bread, fried bacon, and black coffee. It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles away was asaw-mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen other human beingsthroughout the wide circumference of the lake. As the darkness closeddown and the stars came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels, wesmoked meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and ourpains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand between twolarge boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of antsthat passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our persons. Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had been fairlyearned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they had to adjourncourt for that night, any way. The wind rose just as we were losingconsciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by the beating of the surfupon the shore. 

It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we had plentyof blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all night, butwaked at early dawn in the original positions, and got up at once, thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and brim full of friskiness. There is no end of wholesome medicine in such an experience. Thatmorning we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day before--sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to"water cures" and "movement cures" and to foreign lands for health. Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummyto his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I donot mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing anddelicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe. I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that aman cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under aroof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summertime. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it. He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had noappetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future. Three months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating all hecould hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains threethousand feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, butweighed part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. Hisdisease was consumption. I confidently commend his experience to otherskeletons. 

I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we got inthe boat and skirted along the lake shore about three miles anddisembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and so we claimedsome three hundred acres of it and stuck our "notices" on a tree. It wasyellow pine timber land--a dense forest of trees a hundred feet high andfrom one to five feet through at the butt. It was necessary to fence ourproperty or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary tocut down trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to forma sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down threetrees apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we decided to"rest our case" on those; if they held the property, well and good; ifthey didn't, let the property spill out through the gaps and go; it wasno use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few acres of land. Next day we came back to build a house--for a house was also necessary, in order to hold the property. We decided to build a substantiallog-house and excite the envy of the Brigade boys; but by the time we hadcut and trimmed the first log it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, and so we concluded to build it of saplings. However, two saplings, dulycut and trimmed, compelled recognition of the fact that a still modesterarchitecture would satisfy the law, and so we concluded to build a"brush" house. We devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much"sitting around" and discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon wehad achieved only a half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watchwhile the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not beable to find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to thesurrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied with it. 

We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within theprotection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence onour own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only suchan experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good longrest, we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions andcooking utensils we could carry off--borrow is the more accurate word--and just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timberranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which Ihave not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see ahuman being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but thosethat were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, andnow and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about uswas dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant withsunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled andbreezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature's mood; and itscircling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred withland-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glitteringsnow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was alwaysfascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing, night or day, in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that wasthat it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep. 

We slept in the sand close to the water's edge, between two protectingboulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We nevertook any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we werealways up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigorand exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was--but I held his hat. While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinelpeaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light asit swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forestsfree. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the watertill every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought inand finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to"business. "

That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantagethan it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yardsor so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and letthe boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxuriousrest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep, curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where thesand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space--roseup like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly woodedwith tall pines. 

So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty orthirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boatseemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, everyhand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a graniteboulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottomapparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presentlyit threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse toseize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and theboulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had beenexactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below thesurface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the waterwas not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objectsseen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, butof every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simplythrough the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spacesseem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft inmid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions "balloon-voyages. "

We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We couldsee trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, orsleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite--they could seethe line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently selected the trout wewanted, and rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of hisnose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off with anannoyed manner, and shift his position. 

We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all itlooked so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the "blue water, " a mile ortwo from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of theimmense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is onethousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep!

Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smokedpipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, weplayed euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind--and played them withcards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer's acquaintance withthem could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack ofdiamonds. 

We never slept in our "house. " It never recurred to us, for one thing;and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. Wedid not wish to strain it. 

By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the oldcamp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached homeagain about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry. While Johnny wascarrying the main bulk of the provisions up to our "house" for futureuse, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot, ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat toget the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises!Johnny was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames toget to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched thedevastation. 

The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the firetouched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful to see withwhat fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled! My coffee-pot wasgone, and everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seizedupon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high, and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific. We were driven to the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained, spell-bound. 

Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest offlame! It went surging up adjacent ridges--surmounted them anddisappeared in the canons beyond--burst into view upon higher and fartherridges, presently--shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove again--flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up themountain-side--threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, andsent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts andribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the loftymountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lavastreams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddyglare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell!

Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of thelake! Both pictures were sublime, both were beautiful; but that in thelake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and heldit with the stronger fascination. 

We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thoughtof supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o'clock theconflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darknessstole down upon the landscape again. 

Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The provisionswere all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homelesswanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our houseburned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the deadtrees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Ourblankets were on our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and wentto sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but whileout a long way from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared not tryto land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled heavilythrough the billows till we had reached a point three or four milesbeyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident that itwas better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down in ahundred fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps following, and I sat down in the stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to the shore. The instant the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed crewand cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee ofa boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night through. Inthe morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down to the campwithout any unnecessary delay. We were so starved that we ate up therest of the Brigade's provisions, and then set out to Carson to tell themabout it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon payment ofdamages. 

We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadthescape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in anyhistory. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-cladMexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carsonstreets every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out ofthe perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blownsquare up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they sweptthrough the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a sailingpuff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up gallantlyand gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go jiggering up anddown after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding-schools. I hadquickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety tolearn more. I was resolved to buy a horse. 

While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurryingthrough the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners onhim as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was "going, going, at twenty-two!--horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars, gentlemen!" and I could hardly resist. 

A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer's brother)noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a veryremarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddlealone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous'tapidaros', and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering withthe unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then thiskeen-eyed person appeared to me to be "taking my measure"; but Idismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full ofguileless candor and truthfulness. Said he:

"I know that horse--know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and soyou might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure you he isnot. He is nothing of the kind; but--excuse my speaking in a low voice, other people being near--he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a GenuineMexican Plug!"

I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was somethingabout this man's way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that Iwould own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die. 

"Has he any other--er--advantages?" I inquired, suppressing whateagerness I could. 

He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to oneside, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:

"He can out-buck anything in America!"

"Going, going, going--at twent--ty--four dollars and a half, gen--"

"Twenty-seven!" I shouted, in a frenzy. 

"And sold!" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plugto me. 

I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put theanimal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself. 

In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certaincitizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mountedhim. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together, lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot mestraight into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straightdown again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almoston the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse's neck--allin the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almoststraight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately, slid back into the saddle and held on. He came down, and immediatelyhoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, andstood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began theoriginal exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time Iwent up I heard a stranger say:

"Oh, don't he buck, though!"

While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with aleathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was notthere. A California youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if hemight have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine, got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fenceslike a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley. 

I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of myhands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. Ibelieve I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the humanmachinery--for I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pencannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive howdisjointed I was--how internally, externally and universally I wasunsettled, mixed up and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd aroundme, though. 

One elderly-looking comforter said:

"Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows thathorse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck; he isthe very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear me. I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine d--d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there's chancesto buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for thatbloody old foreign relic. "

I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer's brother'sfuneral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone allother recreations and attend it. 

After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the GenuineMexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like thespume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over awheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the "ranch. "

Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the redequine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was theimperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not. 

His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him togo down to the Capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over apile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to theCapitol--one mile and three quarters--remains unbeaten to this day. Butthen he took an advantage--he left out the mile, and only did the threequarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across lots, preferringfences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the Speaker got to theCapitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had madethe trip on a comet. 

In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got theGenuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned theanimal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, sixmiles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enoughexercise any other way. 

Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him, my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing everhappened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took andsurvived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to tryexperiments that had always before been considered impossible, but healways got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not gethis rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course Ihad tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which metwith little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets onhim for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, anddestroying children, and never got a bid--at least never any but theeighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, ifthey had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrewthe horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private venduenext, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron, temperance tracts--any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and weretired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more. Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing thematter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things. Finally I tried to give him away. But it was a failure. Parties saidearthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast--they did not wish toown one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use ofthe "Brigade. " His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable. 

Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks'keeping--stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse, two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of thearticle, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had lethim. 

I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hayduring that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fiftydollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at fivehundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that there was suchscarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities hadbrought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might beguessed without my telling it: peopled turned their stock loose tostarve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys werealmost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler therewill verify these statements. 

I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the GenuineMexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered intomy hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember thedonation. 

Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognizethe animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated--but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as afancy sketch, perhaps. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and apretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no endof hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers andfarmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from California, but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists. There waslittle or no friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself. TheMormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional advantage ofbeing peculiarly under the protection of the Mormon government of theTerritory. Therefore they could afford to be distant, and evenperemptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of CarsonValley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the time Ispeak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was Irish, anda Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the only personoutside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the Mormons. Sheasked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was a mystery toeverybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door, a large bowieknife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress asked for anexplanation she observed that she was going out to "borry a wash-tub fromthe Mormons!"

In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in "Carson County, " and then theaspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and theAmerican element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Youngand Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for"Washoe" was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first andonly chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed abill to organize "Nevada Territory, " and President Lincoln sent outGovernor Nye to supplant Roop. 

At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteenthousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorouslydeveloped and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active andprosperous and growing more so day by day. 

The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, butdid not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put inauthority over them--a sentiment that was natural enough. They thoughtthe officials should have been chosen from among themselves from amongprominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and whowould be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly acquaintedwith the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing the matterthus, without doubt. The new officers were "emigrants, " and that was notitle to anybody's affection or admiration either. 

The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was notonly a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth plucking--except by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such. Everybodyknew that Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand dollars a yearin greenbacks for its support--about money enough to run a quartz mill amonth. And everybody knew, also, that the first year's money was stillin Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be a tedious anddifficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise to open up acredit account with the imported bantling with anything like indecenthaste. 

There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-bornTerritorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a tryingtime of it. The Organic Act and the "instructions" from the StateDepartment commanded that a legislature should be elected atsuch-and-such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such adate. It was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day, although board was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has itscharm in Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patrioticsouls out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meetin was another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a roomrent-free, or let one to the government on credit. 

But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary andalone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloatagain. I refer to "Curry--Old Curry--Old Abe Curry. " But for him thelegislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered hislarge stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and itwas gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to thecapitol, and carried the legislators gratis. 

He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, andcovered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittooncombined. But for Curry the government would have died in its tenderinfancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House ofRepresentatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollarsand forty cents, but the United States declined to pay for it. Uponbeing reminded that the "instructions" permitted the payment of a liberalrent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to the countryby Mr. Curry's generosity, the United States said that did not alter thematter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be subtracted fromthe Secretary's eighteen hundred dollar salary--and it was!

The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature ofthe new government's difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey hisvolume of written "instructions, " and these commanded him to do twocertain things without fail, viz. :

1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2. For this work, pay one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand" forcomposition, and one dollar and fifty cents per "token" for press-work, in greenbacks. 

It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirelyimpossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down toforty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody byprinting establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand"and one dollar and fifty cents per "token, " in gold. The "instructions"commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued by thegovernment as equal to any other dollar issued by the government. Hencethe printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United Statessternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the "instructions, " andwarned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got some printing done, forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits of the high prices ofthings in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market reportwherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fiftydollars a ton. The United States responded by subtracting theprinting-bill from the Secretary's suffering salary--and moreoverremarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his"instructions" requiring him to purchase hay!

Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U. S. Treasury Comptroller's understanding. The very fires of the hereaftercould get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days Ispeak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twentythousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commoditiesranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories, whereexceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out forthe little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory kepthis office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged theUnited States no rent, although his "instructions" provided for that itemand he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I wouldhave done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretarymyself). But the United States never applauded this devotion. Indeed, Ithink my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in itsemploy. 

Those "instructions" (we used to read a chapter from them every morning, as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday schoolevery Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and hadmuch valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics)those "instructions" commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens andwriting-paper be furnished the members of the legislature. So theSecretary made the purchase and the distribution. The knives cost threedollars apiece. There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to theClerk of the House of Representatives. The United States said the Clerkof the House was not a "member" of the legislature, and took that threedollars out of the Secretary's salary, as usual. 

White men charged three or four dollars a "load" for sawing upstove-wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the UnitedStates would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to sawup a load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usualvoucher, but signed no name to it--simply appended a note explaining thatan Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable andsatisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of abilityin the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar and ahalf. He thought the United States would admire both his economy and hishonesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting apretended Indian's signature to the voucher, but the United States didnot see it in that light. 

The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-halfthieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation ofthe voucher as having any foundation in fact. 

But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make across at the bottom of the voucher--it looked like a cross that had beendrunk a year--and then I "witnessed" it and it went through all right. The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had not made thevoucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one. 

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artisticvillainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capablepickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two. 

That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature. They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars andordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they hadtheir little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies ofthe kind. A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation bydispensing with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed theChaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat withhis feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer. 

The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchisesall the time. When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizenowned about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congressgave the Territory another degree of longitude there would not be roomenough to accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging overthe boundary line everywhere like a fringe. 

The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such importantproportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenlyacquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. "Prospecting parties"were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and takingpossession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz. Plainlythis was the road to fortune. The great "Gould and Curry" mine was heldat three or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived; but in twomonths it had sprung up to eight hundred. The "Ophir" had been worthonly a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now it was selling at nearly fourthousand dollars a foot! Not a mine could be named that had notexperienced an astonishing advance in value within a short time. Everybody was talking about these marvels. Go where you would, you heardnothing else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So hadsold out of the "Amanda Smith" for $40, 000--hadn't a cent when he "tookup" the ledge six months ago. John Jones had sold half his interest inthe "Bald Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65, 000, gold coin, and gone to theStates for his family. The widow Brewster had "struck it rich" in the"Golden Fleece" and sold ten feet for $18, 000--hadn't money enough to buya crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson'swake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knewthey were "right on the ledge"--consequence, "feet" that went beggingyesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and seedy owners whocould not get trusted for a drink at any bar in the country yesterdaywere roaring drunk on champagne to-day and had hosts of warm personalfriends in a town where they had forgotten how to bow or shake hands fromlong-continued want of practice. Johnny Morgan, a common loafer, hadgone to sleep in the gutter and waked up worth a hundred thousanddollars, in consequence of the decision in the "Lady Franklin and Roughand Ready" lawsuit. And so on--day in and day out the talk pelted ourears and the excitement waxed hotter and hotter around us. 

I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like therest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, werearriving from the mills every day, and such sights as that gave substanceto the wild talk about me. I succumbed and grew as frenzied as thecraziest. 

Every few days news would come of the discovery of a bran-new miningregion; immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness, and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession. By thetime I was fairly inoculated with the disease, "Esmeralda" had just had arun and "Humboldt" was beginning to shriek for attention. "Humboldt!Humboldt!" was the new cry, and straightway Humboldt, the newest of thenew, the richest of the rich, the most marvellous of the marvellousdiscoveries in silver-land was occupying two columns of the public printsto "Esmeralda's" one. I was just on the point of starting to Esmeralda, but turned with the tide and got ready for Humboldt. That the reader maysee what moved me, and what would as surely have moved him had he beenthere, I insert here one of the newspaper letters of the day. It andseveral other letters from the same calm hand were the main means ofconverting me. I shall not garble the extract, but put it in just as itappeared in the Daily Territorial Enterprise:

 But what about our mines? I shall be candid with you. I shall express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination. Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's footstool. Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores. Humboldt is the true Golconda. 

 The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four thousand dollars to the ton. A week or two ago an assay of just such surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to the ton. Our mountains are full of rambling prospectors. Each day and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county. The metal is not silver alone. There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore. A late discovery plainly evinces cinnabar. The coarser metals are in gross abundance. Lately evidences of bituminous coal have been detected. My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous formation. I told Col. Whitman, in times past, that the neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no confidence in his lauded coal mines. I repeated the same doctrine to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt. I talked with my friend Captain Burch on the subject. My pyrhanism vanished upon his statement that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified trees of the length of two hundred feet. Then is the fact established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this remote section. I am firm in the coal faith. 

 Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county. They are immense--incalculable. 

Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to bettercomprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our near neighbor, Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada. Itwas from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver brickscame. "Very rich" (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from $100 to $400to the ton; but the usual yield was only $20 to $40 per ton--that is tosay, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars. But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in Humboldt fromone fourth to nearly half the mass was silver! That is to say, every onehundred pounds of the ore had from two hundred dollars up to about threehundred and fifty in it. Some days later this same correspondent wrote:

 I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this region--it is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are gorged with precious ore to plethora. I have said that nature has so shaped our mountains as to furnish most excellent facilities for the working of our mines. I have also told you that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill sites in the world. But what is the mining history of Humboldt? The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain machinery. The proprietors have combined the capital and labor hinted at in my exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their tunnel has reached the length of one hundred feet. From primal assays alone, coupled with the development of the mine and public confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared itself to eight hundred dollars market value. I do not know that one ton of the ore has been converted into current metal. I do know that there are many lodes in this section that surpass the Sheba in primal assay value. Listen a moment to the calculations of the Sheba operators. They purpose transporting the ore concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton; from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton. Their idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant. Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending any previous developments of our racy Territory. 

 A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield five hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould & Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the darkest shadow. I have given you the estimate of the value of a single developed mine. Its richness is indexed by its market valuation. The people of Humboldt county are feet crazy. As I write, our towns are near deserted. They look as languid as a consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and athletic fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines and over mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction. Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay office and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the morning, having renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already his feet by the thousands. He is the horse-leech. He has the craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer metallic worlds. 

This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article, four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We commenced getting ready atonce. And we also commenced upbraiding ourselves for not decidingsooner--for we were in terror lest all the rich mines would be found andsecured before we got there, and we might have to put up with ledges thatwould not yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. Anhour before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in a GoldHill mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton; now I wasalready annoyed at the prospect of having to put up with mines thepoorest of which would be a marvel in Gold Hill. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of fourpersons--a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundredpounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out ofCarson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and oldthat we soon found that it would be better if one or two of us got outand walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would bebetter if a third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was atthis time that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven aharnessed horse before and many a man in such a position would have feltfairly excused from such a responsibility. But in a little while it wasfound that it would be a fine thing if the drive got out and walked also. It was at this time that I resigned the position of driver, and neverresumed it again. Within the hour, we found that it would not only bebetter, but was absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two ata time, should put our hands against the end of the wagon and push itthrough the sand, leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out ofthe way and hold up the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know hisfate at first, and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours in oneafternoon. It was plain that we had to walk through the sand and shovethat wagon and those horses two hundred miles. So we accepted thesituation, and from that time forth we never rode. More than that, westood regular and nearly constant watches pushing up behind. 

We made seven miles, and camped in the desert. Young Clagett (now memberof Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses;Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cookwith; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking. This divisionof labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey. We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. Wewere so tired that we slept soundly. 

We were fifteen days making the trip--two hundred miles; thirteen, rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horsesrest. 

We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towedthe horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it wastoo late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when wemight have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally, advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whoseiron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would notdo, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horsesbeing "bituminous from long deprivation. " The reader will excuse me fromtranslating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a longword, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the bestand kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He wasgentleness and simplicity itself--and unselfishness, too. Although hewas more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself anyairs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a young man'sshare of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining fromthe general stand-point of any age--not from the arrogant, overawingsummit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was hisPartingtonian fashion of loving and using big words for their own sakes, and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he waspurposing to convey. He always let his ponderous syllables fall with aneasy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness. In truth his air was so natural and so simple that one was alwayscatching himself accepting his stately sentences as meaning something, when they really meant nothing in the world. If a word was long andgrand and resonant, that was sufficient to win the old man's love, and hewould drop that word into the most out-of-the-way place in a sentence ora subject, and be as pleased with it as if it were perfectly luminouswith meaning. 

We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the frozenground, and slept side by side; and finding that our foolish, long-leggedhound pup had a deal of animal heat in him, Oliphant got to admitting himto the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the dog's warm backto his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in the night the pupwould get stretchy and brace his feet against the old man's back andshove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then, being warm andsnug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man's back simply inexcess of comfort; and at yet other times he would dream of the chase andin his sleep tug at the old man's back hair and bark in his ear. The oldgentleman complained mildly about these familiarities, at last, and whenhe got through with his statement he said that such a dog as that was nota proper animal to admit to bed with tired men, because he was "someretricious in his movements and so organic in his emotions. " We turnedthe dog out. 

It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side; forafter each day was done and our wolfish hunger appeased with a hot supperof fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coffee, the pipe-smoking, song-singing and yarn-spinning around the evening camp-fire in the stillsolitudes of the desert was a happy, care-free sort of recreation thatseemed the very summit and culmination of earthly luxury. 

It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city orcountry-bred. We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and countlessages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of usthe nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at thethought of "camping out. "

Once we made twenty-five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles(through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond--fifty in all--in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To stretchout and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after pushing awagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that for themoment it almost seems cheap at the price. 

We camped two days in the neighborhood of the "Sink of the Humboldt. "We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would notanswer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left ataste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in thestomach that was very uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but thathelped it very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was theprominent taste and so it was unfit for drinking. 

The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yetinvented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated wateritself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage feltconstrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by littlesips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but finally threw outthe remainder, and said frankly it was "too technical for him. "

But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then, with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, weentered into our rest. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a littleway. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, growaccustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of waterygrandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when theystand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a "river"in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Eriecanal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four timesas deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one cancontrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he isoverheated, and then drink it dry. 

On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles andentered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a drivingsnow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole. Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and theother five faced them. The rest of the landscape was made up of bleakmountain walls that rose so high into the sky from both sides of thecanyon that the village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of acrevice. It was always daylight on the mountain tops a long time beforethe darkness lifted and revealed Unionville. 

We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed itwith canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through whichthe cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furnitureand interrupt our sleep. It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce. Indians brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs; and whenwe could catch a laden Indian it was well--and when we could not (whichwas the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it. 

I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lyingall about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in the sun on themountain summits. I said nothing about this, for some instinct told methat I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if Ibetrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself. Yet I was asperfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I wasgoing to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silverenough to make me satisfactorily wealthy--and so my fancy was alreadybusy with plans for spending this money. The first opportunity thatoffered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye onthe other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemedto be observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fledaway as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I wasfar beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverishexcitement that was brimful of expectation--almost of certainty. I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowingthe dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering atthem with anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heartbounded! I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it witha nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolutecertainty itself could have afforded. The more I examined the fragmentthe more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune. I markedthe spot and carried away my specimen. Up and down the rugged mountainside I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmentinggratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all theexperiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures ofsilver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a deliriousrevel. 

By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shiningyellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in mysimplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited thatI half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me. Then a fearcame upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret. Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended aknoll to reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returnedto my mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but myfears were groundless--the shining scales were still there. I set aboutscooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the windings of thestream and robbed its bed. But at last the descending sun warned me togive up the quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth. As I walkedalong I could not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited overmy fragment of silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. Inthis little time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once ortwice I was on the point of throwing it away. 

The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither couldI talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversationinterrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too. I despised the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But asthey proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hearthem planning their poor little economies and sighing over possibleprivations and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sightof the cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered hilaritybegan to oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the impulse toburst out with exultation and reveal everything; but I did resist. Isaid within myself that I would filter the great news through my lipscalmly and be serene as a summer morning while I watched its effect intheir faces. I said:

"Where have you all been?"

"Prospecting. "

"What did you find?"

"Nothing. "

"Nothing? What do you think of the country?"

"Can't tell, yet, " said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner, and hadlikewise had considerable experience among the silver mines. 

"Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion?"

"Yes, a sort of a one. It's fair enough here, may be, but overrated. Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though. 

"That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it; and besides, the rockis so full of base metals that all the science in the world can't workit. We'll not starve, here, but we'll not get rich, I'm afraid. "

"So you think the prospect is pretty poor?"

"No name for it!"

"Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?"

"Oh, not yet--of course not. We'll try it a riffle, first. "

"Suppose, now--this is merely a supposition, you know--suppose you couldfind a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a ton--would that satisfy you?"

"Try us once!" from the whole party. 

"Or suppose--merely a supposition, of course--suppose you were to find aledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton--would that satisfyyou?"

"Here--what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there some mysterybehind all this?"

"Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well thereare no rich mines here--of course you do. Because you have been aroundand examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had beenaround. But just for the sake of argument, suppose--in a kind of generalway--suppose some person were to tell you that two-thousand-dollar ledgeswere simply contemptible--contemptible, understand--and that right yonderin sight of this very cabin there were piles of pure gold and puresilver--oceans of it--enough to make you all rich in twenty-four hours!Come!"

"I should say he was as crazy as a loon!" said old Ballou, but wild withexcitement, nevertheless. 

"Gentlemen, " said I, "I don't say anything--I haven't been around, youknow, and of course don't know anything--but all I ask of you is to castyour eye on that, for instance, and tell me what you think of it!" and Itossed my treasure before them. 

There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together overit under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said:

"Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish andnasty glittering mica that isn't worth ten cents an acre!"

So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airycastle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn. 

Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not gold. "

Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among mytreasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learnedthen, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admirationof the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest ofthe world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men ofmica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We wentout "prospecting" with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides, andclambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to dropwith exhaustion, but found no silver--nor yet any gold. Day after day wedid this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into thedeclivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one ortwo listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of silver. These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drivethem hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hiddenledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, andvery hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed andsearched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of thepromiseless toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rockwhich projected from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou brokeoff some fragments with a hammer, and examined them long and attentivelywith a small eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said thisrock was quartz, and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver. Contained it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on theoutside of it like a kind of veneering. He still broke off pieces andcritically examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongueand applying the glass. At last he exclaimed:

"We've got it!"

We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, whereit was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said thatthat little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as leadand antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two ofgold visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern somelittle fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of themmassed together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were notjubilant, but Mr. Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world thanthat. He saved what he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in orderto determine its value by the process called the "fire-assay. " Then wenamed the mine "Monarch of the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is nota prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and stuck upthe following "notice, " preserving a copy to be entered upon the books inthe mining recorder's office in the town. 

 "NOTICE. "

 "We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each (and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode, extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of ground on either side for working the same. "

We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made. But when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt depressedand dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all there was ofour mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the "Monarch of theMountains, " extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the earth--he illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and maintained anearly uniform thickness-say twenty feet--away down into the bowels ofthe earth, and was perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each sideof it; and that it kept to itself, and maintained its distinctivecharacter always, no matter how deep it extended into the earth or howfar it stretched itself through and across the hills and valleys. Hesaid it might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we knew; andthat wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would find goldand silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it was casedbetween. And he said that down in the great depths of the ledge was itsrichness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew. Therefore, insteadof working here on the surface, we must either bore down into the rockwith a shaft till we came to where it was rich--say a hundred feet or so--or else we must go down into the valley and bore a long tunnel into themountain side and tap the ledge far under the earth. To do either wasplainly the labor of months; for we could blast and bore only a few feeta day--some five or six. But this was not all. He said that after wegot the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a distant silver-mill, ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious and costly process. Ourfortune seemed a century away!

But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week weclimbed the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels, cans of blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and main. At first the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks andthrew it out with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But therock became more compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came intoplay. But shortly nothing could make an impression but blasting powder. 

That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its placeand another would strike with an eight-pound sledge--it was like drivingnails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill wouldreach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches indiameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard offuse, pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse andrun. When the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air, we would go back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartzjolted out. Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned. Clagget and Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. Wedecided that a tunnel was the thing we wanted. 

So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of whichtime we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in, andjudged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the ledge. I resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day longer. We decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a ledge thatwas already "developed. " There were none in the camp. 

We dropped the "Monarch" for the time being. 

Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantlygrowing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to theepidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more "feet. " We prospectedand took up new claims, put "notices" on them and gave them grandiloquentnames. We traded some of our "feet" for "feet" in other people's claims. In a little while we owned largely in the "Gray Eagle, " the "Columbiana, "the "Branch Mint, " the "Maria Jane, " the "Universe, " the"Root-Hog-or-Die, " the "Samson and Delilah, " the "Treasure Trove, " the"Golconda, " the "Sultana, " the "Boomerang, " the "Great Republic, " the"Grand Mogul, " and fifty other "mines" that had never been molested by ashovel or scratched with a pick. We had not less than thirty thousand"feet" apiece in the "richest mines on earth" as the frenzied cantphrased it--and were in debt to the butcher. We were stark mad withexcitement--drunk with happiness--smothered under mountains ofprospective wealth--arrogantly compassionate toward the plodding millionswho knew not our marvellous canyon--but our credit was not good at thegrocer's. 

It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars'revel. There was nothing doing in the district--no mining--no milling--no productive effort--no income--and not enough money in the entire campto buy a corner lot in an eastern village, hardly; and yet a strangerwould have supposed he was walking among bloated millionaires. Prospecting parties swarmed out of town with the first flush of dawn, andswarmed in again at nightfall laden with spoil--rocks. Nothing butrocks. Every man's pockets were full of them; the floor of his cabin waslittered with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on his shelves. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand"feet" in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which theybelieved would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars--and asoften as any other way they were men who had not twenty-five dollars inthe world. Every man you met had his new mine to boast of, and his"specimens" ready; and if the opportunity offered, he would infalliblyback you into a corner and offer as a favor to you, not to him, to partwith just a few feet in the "Golden Age, " or the "Sarah Jane, " or someother unknown stack of croppings, for money enough to get a "square meal"with, as the phrase went. And you were never to reveal that he had madeyou the offer at such a ruinous price, for it was only out of friendshipfor you that he was willing to make the sacrifice. Then he would fish apiece of rock out of his pocket, and after looking mysteriously around asif he feared he might be waylaid and robbed if caught with such wealth inhis possession, he would dab the rock against his tongue, clap aneyeglass to it, and exclaim:

"Look at that! Right there in that red dirt! See it? See the specks ofgold? And the streak of silver? That's from the Uncle Abe. There's ahundred thousand tons like that in sight! Right in sight, mind you!And when we get down on it and the ledge comes in solid, it will be therichest thing in the world! Look at the assay! I don't want you tobelieve me--look at the assay!"

Then he would get out a greasy sheet of paper which showed that theportion of rock assayed had given evidence of containing silver and goldin the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ton. 

I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out the richest piece ofrock and get it assayed! Very often, that piece, the size of a filbert, was the only fragment in a ton that had a particle of metal in it--andyet the assay made it pretend to represent the average value of the tonof rubbish it came from!

On such a system of assaying as that, the Humboldt world had gone crazy. On the authority of such assays its newspaper correspondents werefrothing about rock worth four and seven thousand dollars a ton!

And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the calculations, of aquoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be mined and shipped all theway to England, the metals extracted, and the gold and silver contentsreceived back by the miners as clear profit, the copper, antimony andother things in the ore being sufficient to pay all the expensesincurred? Everybody's head was full of such "calculations" as those--such raving insanity, rather. Few people took work into theircalculations--or outlay of money either; except the work and expendituresof other people. 

We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again. Why? Because we judgedthat we had learned the real secret of success in silver mining--whichwas, not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our brows and thelabor of our hands, but to sell the ledges to the dull slaves of toil andlet them do the mining!

Before leaving Carson, the Secretary and I had purchased "feet" fromvarious Esmeralda stragglers. We had expected immediate returns ofbullion, but were only afflicted with regular and constant "assessments"instead--demands for money wherewith to develop the said mines. Theseassessments had grown so oppressive that it seemed necessary to look intothe matter personally. Therefore I projected a pilgrimage to Carson andthence to Esmeralda. I bought a horse and started, in company withMr. Ballou and a gentleman named Ollendorff, a Prussian--not the partywho has inflicted so much suffering on the world with his wretchedforeign grammars, with their interminable repetitions of questions whichnever have occurred and are never likely to occur in any conversationamong human beings. We rode through a snow-storm for two or three days, and arrived at "Honey Lake Smith's, " a sort of isolated inn on the Carsonriver. It was a two-story log house situated on a small knoll in themidst of the vast basin or desert through which the sickly Carson windsits melancholy way. Close to the house were the Overland stage stables, built of sun-dried bricks. There was not another building within severalleagues of the place. Towards sunset about twenty hay-wagons arrived andcamped around the house and all the teamsters came in to supper--a very, very rough set. There were one or two Overland stage drivers there, also, and half a dozen vagabonds and stragglers; consequently the housewas well crowded. 

We walked out, after supper, and visited a small Indian camp in thevicinity. The Indians were in a great hurry about something, and werepacking up and getting away as fast as they could. In their brokenEnglish they said, "By'm-by, heap water!" and by the help of signs madeus understand that in their opinion a flood was coming. The weather wasperfectly clear, and this was not the rainy season. There was about afoot of water in the insignificant river--or maybe two feet; the streamwas not wider than a back alley in a village, and its banks were scarcelyhigher than a man's head. 

So, where was the flood to come from? We canvassed the subject awhileand then concluded it was a ruse, and that the Indians had some betterreason for leaving in a hurry than fears of a flood in such anexceedingly dry time. 

At seven in the evening we went to bed in the second story--with ourclothes on, as usual, and all three in the same bed, for every availablespace on the floors, chairs, etc. , was in request, and even then therewas barely room for the housing of the inn's guests. An hour later wewere awakened by a great turmoil, and springing out of bed we picked ourway nimbly among the ranks of snoring teamsters on the floor and got tothe front windows of the long room. A glance revealed a strangespectacle, under the moonlight. The crooked Carson was full to the brim, and its waters were raging and foaming in the wildest way--sweepingaround the sharp bends at a furious speed, and bearing on their surface achaos of logs, brush and all sorts of rubbish. A depression, where itsbed had once been, in other times, was already filling, and in one or twoplaces the water was beginning to wash over the main bank. Men wereflying hither and thither, bringing cattle and wagons close up to thehouse, for the spot of high ground on which it stood extended only somethirty feet in front and about a hundred in the rear. Close to the oldriver bed just spoken of, stood a little log stable, and in this ourhorses were lodged. 

While we looked, the waters increased so fast in this place that in a fewminutes a torrent was roaring by the little stable and its marginencroaching steadily on the logs. We suddenly realized that this floodwas not a mere holiday spectacle, but meant damage--and not only to thesmall log stable but to the Overland buildings close to the main river, for the waves had now come ashore and were creeping about the foundationsand invading the great hay-corral adjoining. We ran down and joined thecrowd of excited men and frightened animals. We waded knee-deep into thelog stable, unfastened the horses and waded out almost waist-deep, sofast the waters increased. Then the crowd rushed in a body to thehay-corral and began to tumble down the huge stacks of baled hay and rollthe bales up on the high ground by the house. Meantime it was discoveredthat Owens, an overland driver, was missing, and a man ran to the largestable, and wading in, boot-top deep, discovered him asleep in his bed, awoke him, and waded out again. But Owens was drowsy and resumed hisnap; but only for a minute or two, for presently he turned in his bed, his hand dropped over the side and came in contact with the cold water!It was up level with the mattress! He waded out, breast-deep, almost, and the next moment the sun-burned bricks melted down like sugar and thebig building crumbled to a ruin and was washed away in a twinkling. 

At eleven o'clock only the roof of the little log stable was out ofwater, and our inn was on an island in mid-ocean. As far as the eyecould reach, in the moonlight, there was no desert visible, but only alevel waste of shining water. The Indians were true prophets, but howdid they get their information? I am not able to answer the question. We remained cooped up eight days and nights with that curious crew. Swearing, drinking and card playing were the order of the day, andoccasionally a fight was thrown in for variety. Dirt and vermin--but letus forget those features; their profusion is simply inconceivable--it isbetter that they remain so. 

There were two men----however, this chapter is long enough. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only onesong, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into onesmall, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person'smusic. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" andquarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in itstiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be contentto die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwartruffian called "Arkansas, " who carried two revolvers in his belt and abowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and alwayssuffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody wouldaccommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrapsomebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now andthen when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, butinvariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show adisappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was ameek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as apromising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On thefourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for anopportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable withwhisky, and said:

"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--"

Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansasrose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:

"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha--whatdo you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"

"I was only goin' to say--"

"You was only goin' to say. You was! You was only goin' to say--whatwas you goin' to say? That's it! That's what I want to know. I want toknow wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you'remakin' yourself so d---d free. Answer me that!"

"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--"

"Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't youdo it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' onlike a lunatic--don't you do it. 'Coz I won't stand it. If fight's whatyou want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with it!"

Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:

"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man nochance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have anelection next week--that was all--that was everything I was goin' to say--I wish I may never stir if it wasn't. "

"Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin' around thatway for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"

"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--"

"I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--"

"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish Imay die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke wellof you, and respected you more'n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain'tit so, Smith? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for aman that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give meArkansas? I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the verywords I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink--le's shakehands and take a drink. Come up--everybody! It's my treat. Come up, Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty--come up. I want you all to take a drink with meand Arkansas--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas. Gimme yourhand agin. Look at him, boys--just take a look at him. Thar stands thewhitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me, that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin!"

They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part andunresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink, was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was sohappy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought tohave marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansasshortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:

"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?"

"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year oldwhen he died. "

"Was that all that you said?"

"Yes, that was all. "

"Didn't say nothing but that?"

"No--nothing. "

Then an uncomfortable silence. 

Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on thecounter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his rightboot, while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed awaytoward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or threemen out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleepingdog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legsand his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In alittle while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched backto the bar and said:

"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin'about your father? Ain't this company agreeable to you? Ain't it? Ifthis company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave. Is thatyour idea? Is that what you're coming at?"

"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing. Myfather and my mother--"

"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but adisturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't rake up old bygonesand fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to bepeaceable if they could git a chance. What's the matter with you thismornin', anyway? I never see a man carry on so. "

"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it'sonpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what withthe flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for--"

"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it? You want us to leavedo you? There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Isthat it? Come!"

"Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now you know that I ain't the man to--"

"Are you a threatenin' me? Are you? By George, the man don't live thatcan skeer me! Don't you try to come that game, my chicken--'cuz I canstand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come out from behind that bartill I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin'underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! I'll learn you tobully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying tobefriend you and keep you out of trouble!"

"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be bloodshed--"

"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? Soit's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado! You'd made up yourmind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well. I'mthe man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't doit 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted, white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!"

With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber overbenches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape. In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glassdoor, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenlyappeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair ofscissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eyeshe stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. Theastonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such anothertongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before, perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applauseshook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one andthe same breath. 

The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, andthe Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the seasonof island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state ofpermanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast, and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantlyleveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas. "

By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, butthe stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was nopossibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for anentirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next toinsupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc. , and sowe made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm weembarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horsesafter us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow, with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the sternholding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began toswim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that thehorses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failedto land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almostsurely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now. Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would beswept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned. We warnedOllendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, butit was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring andthe canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water. 

Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and Ihad to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to thecanoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managedto push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold andwater-soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddleswere gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and therethey had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe andferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more nightin the inn before making another venture on our journey. 

The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with ournew stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. Thesnow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a roadperceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see morethan a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by themountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said hisinstinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike abee-line" for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if hewere to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct wouldassail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into hiswake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough, but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorffshouted proudly:

"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right insomebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble. Let's hurry up and join company with the party. "

So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow, and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end ofan hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher--but what surprised uswas, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadilyincrease. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at sucha time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be acompany of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution andjogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now. But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon ofsoldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they hadalready increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse andsaid:

"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing roundand round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blinddesert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!"

Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff allmanner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, andended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as muchas a logarythm!"

We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment. 

After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again, with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. Whilewe were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe andtook his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome songabout his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with itsmother, " and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the whiteoblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered andlost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him toDeath. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he becameexhausted and dropped. 

Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream andstarted toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. Wehesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trottedmerrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump oflocality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. Wewere soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deepruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in theafternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came--andnot with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like acellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still asthick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us;but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discernthe smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just infront of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily fillingand slowly disappearing wheel-tracks. 

Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height--three or four feet;they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each ofthem was a mere snow-mound, now; in any direction that you proceeded (thesame as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down adistinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either sideof it--an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in itsbreadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason ofthe mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chillythrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in thenight, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long agobeen buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brushavenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further awayfrom it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back isplacid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of bloodthat had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all thedrowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake atonce--and shaking and quaking with consternation, too. There was aninstant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning ofthe road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not bediscerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainlycould not with one's nose nearly against it. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this bywalking off in various directions--the regular snow-mounds and theregular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found thetrue road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly thesituation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses weretired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning. This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and thesnow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing tohopeless if we kept on. 

All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and sowe tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had evertried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted thatit could be done, and without any trouble--because every man in the partyhad read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believeit, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted andbelieved that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost huntersmaking a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together. 

We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses puttheir noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while thefeathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary, we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs from a sagebush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of ourbodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pileclear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was. 

This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror--the horseswere gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbinganxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them andthe released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to tryto follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one couldpass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave themup without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books thatsaid horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionshipin a distressful time like ours. 

We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now. Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them, and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, tolight a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience, and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a goodplace or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up andtried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafingthem together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled, and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the huntersand the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondereddismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Balloufished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. Tohave found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luckcompared to this. 

One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances--or howlovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time wegathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to lightthe first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him thatpages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully amoment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with itif it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge ofsuccess. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed asolicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our lasthope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into arobust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bentgradually down and every heart went with him--everybody, too, for thatmatter--and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticksat last, took gradual hold upon them--hesitated--took a stronger hold--hesitated again--held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave asort of human gasp and went out. 

Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence;even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noisethan the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversationbegan, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay theconviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hopedthat I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledgedtheir conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said:

"Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feelingtowards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that youhave felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing toomuch and leading you round and round in the snow--but I meant well;forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings againstMr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing Ido not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful andunbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and hashurt me a great deal--but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all myheart, and--"

Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for Iwas crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice againand forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out hisbottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would nevertouch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, andalthough ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that hewished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason, but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himselfto helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people toguard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life abeneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with theprecious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended bysaying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in thepresence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein toprosecute it to men's help and benefit--and with that he threw away thebottle of whisky. 

Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he couldnot live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that hadsolaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable. 

He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling withcards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be whollypure and blemishless without eschewing them. "And therefore, " continuedhe, "in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with thatspiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform. " Theserolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could havedone, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled withsatisfaction. 

My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I knowthat the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We wereall sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in thepresence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doingit felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had riddenme like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of thegood I might have done in the world and the still greater good I mightnow do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide meif I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tearscame again. We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited thewarning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing. 

It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a lastfarewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yieldingsenses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conqueredbody. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemedan age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came agathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. Ishuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, "this is death--this isthe hereafter. "

Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness:

"Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?"

It was Ballou--at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture, with Ballou's voice. 

I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, werethe frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our stillsaddled and bridled horses!

An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, andthe three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not"do the subject justice, " the whole situation was so painfully ridiculousand humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where tocommence anyhow. 

The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nighdissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, andsullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry ateverything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing andin unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them, and sought shelter in the station. 

I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurdadventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actuallywent into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn. 

For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses haddeserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of aminute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyedall our confessions and lamentations. 

After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever. Presently an uneasiness came over me--grew upon me--assailed me withoutceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete--I wanted to smoke!I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered awayalone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reformand preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But itwas all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-driftshunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, andcrept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn agood while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truercomrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, andno human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamedof being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I feltthat perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and soI turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorffturned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us satunconscious Ballou deep in a game of "solitaire" with the old greasycards!

Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no moreabout "reform" and "examples to the rising generation. "

The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert. If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we musthave heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were expectingsome sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would infalliblyget lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds. 

While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearlyexhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were neverheard of afterward. 

We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together withpreparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and thedelay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the greatland-slide case of Hyde vs. Morgan--an episode which is famous in Nevadato this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will setdown the history of this singular affair just as it transpired. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and WashoeValleys--very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to meltingoff fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten andsoften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know whata land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the wholeside of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in thevalley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain'sfront to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that hemay go on living within seventy miles of that place. 

General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorialofficers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyerof parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it--partlyfor the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary wasTerritorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the oldercitizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with acalm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way--when itgets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of apractical joke. 

One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe's door inCarson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie hishorse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted himto conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if heachieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world ofprofanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well knownthat for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the morecustomary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing ofit, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in theedge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately aboveit on the mountain side. 

And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slideshad come and slid Morgan's ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns andeverything down on top of his ranch and exactly covered up every singlevestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet. Morganwas in possession and refused to vacate the premises--said he wasoccupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else's--and saidthe cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had alwaysstood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate. 

"And when I reminded him, " said Hyde, weeping, "that it was on top of myranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask mewhy didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see hima-coming! Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic--by George, when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like thewhole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain side--splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow, odds andends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!--trees going end over endin the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet highand busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out anda-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!--andin the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan onhis gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession! Lawsbless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county inthree jumps exactly. 

"But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won't moveoff'n that ranch--says it's his'n and he's going to keep it--likes itbetter'n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad! Well, I've been somad for two days I couldn't find my way to town--been wandering around inthe brush in a starving condition--got anything here to drink, General?But I'm here now, and I'm a-going to law. You hear me!"

Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged aswere the General's. He said he had never heard of such high-handedconduct in all his life as this Morgan's. And he said there was no usein going to law--Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was--nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would takehis case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was wherehe was mistaken--everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a verysmart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it was tobe tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already beenappointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hallnear the hotel at two that afternoon. 

The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the peopleof that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy, rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certainas if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears andleft. 

At two in the afternoon referee Roop's Court opened and Roop appearedthroned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearingupon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of hisfellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillnessprevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly thecommand:

"Order in the Court!"

And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed hisway through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, andon his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectfulrecognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, andit trickled pleasantly through his whole system:

"Way for the United States Attorney!"

The witnesses were called--legislators, high government officers, ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them werecalled by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariablywent in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added newtestimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man'sproperty because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morganlawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones--they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; hepounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, andhowled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grandwar-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, theGlorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice![Applause. ]

When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if therewas anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing andadmiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's case was killed. Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stooderect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floorwith long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still theaudience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, andbegan impressively:

"Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day. This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is themost solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and haveperceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is infavor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks ofcounsel, with high interest--and especially will I commend the masterlyand irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents theplaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere humantestimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, toinfluence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, it ill becomesus, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plainto me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move thisdefendant's ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures, and we mustsubmit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in thismarked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with theposition of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to removeit to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, itill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act orinquire into the reasons that prompted it. No--Heaven created theranches and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experimentwith them around at its pleasure. It is for us to submit, withoutrepining. 

"I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which thesacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle. Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, RichardHyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And fromthis decision there is no appeal. "

Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-roomfrantic with indignation. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, aninspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstratedwith Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk thefloor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out somesort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up towalk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit uphappily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranchunderneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title tothe ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was ofopinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and--

The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always animpatient and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the factthat he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, likeanother Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to thecompany in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother. He hada good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combinationwhich gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered thetalk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of thejourney. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or twoother endowments of a marked character. One was a singular "handiness"about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad ororganizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse, or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodationthat prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities ofanybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, anddispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity--hence he alwaysmanaged to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in theemptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, incamp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had beenacquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comradewas never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way inwhich he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, verytired and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told thatthe house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley tospare for the horses--must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry onwhile it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile. We dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face. Capt. John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he hadaccomplished the following things, viz. : found old acquaintances in threeteamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord'smother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once inCalifornia, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child's broken toyand won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the hostlerbleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the "heaves";treated the entire party three times at the landlord's bar; produced alater paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat himself down to readthe news to a deeply interested audience. The result, summed up, was asfollows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our horses; we had a troutsupper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, anda surprising breakfast in the morning--and when we left, we left lamentedby all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonlyvaluable ones to offset them with. 

Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little moreforward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on wereentirely worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one croppedout of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspiredBoard of Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike theledge. The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would thenstrike the ledge at the same dept that a shaft twelve feet deep wouldhave reached! The Board were living on the "assessments. " [N. B. --Thishint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; theyhave already learned all about this neat trick by experience. ] The Boardhad no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren ofsilver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend'stunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the "Daley" till he waswell-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunneltwo hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the hillto look into matters. 

He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedinglysharp-pointed peak, and a couple of men up there "facing" the proposedtunnel. Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men:

"So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundredand fifty feet to strike this ledge?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive andarduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?"

"Why no--how is that?"

"Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side;and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of yourtunnel on trestle-work!"

The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous. 

We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, butnever finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work oneach to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after theexpiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing alittle work on them and then waiting for a buyer--who never came. Wenever found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; andas the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extractingthe silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none returned totake its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves; andaltogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one--for we never ceasedto expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day. 

At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not beborrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (Ibeing without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, atten dollars a week and board. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrowdown into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now Ilearned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get thesilver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it. We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark. This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, uprightrods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass ofiron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, andthese rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in aniron box called a "battery. " Each of these rods or stamps weighed sixhundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking upmasses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into thebattery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock topowder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it toa creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wirescreen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into greattubs warmed by super-heated steam--amalgamating pans, they are called. The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving"mullers. " A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, andthis seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held onto them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also, about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of coarsesalt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist theamalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silverand would not let it unite with the quicksilver. 

All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams ofdirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broadwooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of goldand silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; andin order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, andlittle obstructing "riffles" charged with quicksilver were placed hereand there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned andthe blankets washed out every evening, to get their preciousaccumulations--and after all this eternity of trouble one third of thesilver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of thetroughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day. There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was anyidle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pitythat Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, inorder to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by thesweat of his brow. " Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoopsome pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon--washit little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but somelittle dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they were soft andyielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or someother chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were crisp to thetouch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silverand gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pan needed afresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else to do, onecould always "screen tailings. " That is to say, he could shovel up thedried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs anddash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles andprepare it for working over. 

The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and thisincluded changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a greatdiversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of themethods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without"screening the tailings. " Of all recreations in the world, screeningtailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the mostundesirable. 

At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we "cleaned up. "That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washedthe mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulatingmass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made intoheavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heapfor inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring--thatand ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with thesame facility with which water saturates a sponge--separated itsparticles and the ring crumbled to pieces. 

We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipeleading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again. Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it. On opening theretort, there was our week's work--a lump of pure white, frosty lookingsilver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass wasgold, but the color of it did not show--would not have shown if twothirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of itby pouring it into an iron brick-mould. 

By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained. This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The firstone in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificantaffair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immenseestablishments afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere. 

From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the "fire-assay"--amethod used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metalsin the mass. This is an interesting process. The chip is hammered outas thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if youweigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on thepaper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will takemarked notice of the addition. 

Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silverand the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel, made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. Thebase metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of thecupel. A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is leftbehind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows theproportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the goldfrom the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put inthe furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it isrolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitricacid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready tobe weighed on its own merits. Then salt water is poured into the vesselcontaining the dissolved silver and the silver returns to palpable formagain and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it; thenthe proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known, and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its surface. 

The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that thespeculative miner, in getting a "fire-assay" made of a piece of rock fromhis mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of picking outthe least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but quite thecontrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless quartzfor an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert, whichwas rich in gold and silver--and this was reserved for a fire-assay! Ofcourse the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such rock wouldyield hundreds of dollars--and on such assays many an utterly worthlessmine was sold. 

Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it, occasionally, who were not strictly scientific and capable. One assayergot such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time heacquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achievesuccess, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayersentered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizensinto the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they brokea little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to takeit to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hourthe result came--whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield$1, 184. 40 in silver and $366. 36 in gold!

Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and thepopular assayer left town "between two days. "

I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling businessone week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advancein my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it;that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in soshort a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope tointellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, andnothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion andwashing blankets--still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary. He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good roundsum. How much did I want?

I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was aboutall I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times. 

I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those daysand call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in thatmill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand. 

Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of thepopulation, about the mysterious and wonderful "cement mine, " and to makepreparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer to goand help hunt for it. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellousWhiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would bereported that Mr. W. Had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead ofnight, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement--because hemust be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him. In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules anddonkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half thecommunity would be off for the mountains, following in the wake ofWhiteman. But W. Would drift about through the mountain gorges for daystogether, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of theminers ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known itreported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman hadjust passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, wouldbe swarming with men and animals. Every individual would be trying to bevery secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W. Had passed through. And long before daylight--this in the dead ofWinter--the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the wholepopulation gone chasing after W. 

The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty yearsago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacreon the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trailsand roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to findCalifornia before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge inthe mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed acurious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps ofdull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was afortune to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as acurbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of thewonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200. 

Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it, and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing ofthe locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and startedwestward again. But troubles thickened about them. In their wanderingsone brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go onand leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving, gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks ofincredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of Californiaexhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrownaway all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to seteverybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the cementcountry, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He wasentirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave Whiteman hismap, and described the cement region as well as he could and thustransferred the curse to that gentleman--for when I had my one accidentalglimpse of Mr. W. In Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, inhunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years. Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he hadnot. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to havebeen given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductivenature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a sliceof fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would besufficient for a man of reasonable desires. 

A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and afriend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and notonly that, but had Whiteman's promise that he should have a private hintin time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Van Dorn hadpromised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatlyexcited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town, disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication. In a little whileVan Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabinand with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers. 

We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three smallparties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the "divide"overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to make nonoise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under anycircumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman's presence wasunknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave brokeup at nine o'clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and withprofound secrecy. At eleven o'clock we saddled our horses, hitched themwith their long riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon, a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds offlour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some fewother necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back ofa led horse--and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to packan animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. Thatis impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. Heput on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property onit and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every whichway, " taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surgingback on it till the horse's sides sunk in and he gasped for breath--butevery time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another. We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it woulddo, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order, and without a word. It was a dark night. We kept the middle of theroad, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenevera miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on usan excite curiosity. But nothing happened. We began the long windingascent of the canyon, toward the "divide, " and presently the cabins beganto grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, andthen I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and amurderer. I was in the rear, leading the pack horse. As the ascent grewsteeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and beganto pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress. My comradeswere passing out of sight in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxedand bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and thenthe tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran. His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went byhe dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly onwithout me. But I was not alone--the loosened cargo tumbled overboardfrom the pack horse and fell close to me. It was abreast of almost thelast cabin. 

A miner came out and said:

"Hello!"

I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so verydark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another headappeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walkedtoward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:

"Sh! Listen. "

I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escapingjustice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down ona boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very surewhat they did. One said:

"I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to beabout there--"

A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like apostage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so littlehe would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execratedsecret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last, though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the mensaid:

"I'll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when he saidhe saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses--that was the noise. I am goingdown to Welch's, right away. "

They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so theywent. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better. 

As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from thegloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coastagain. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, andas day broke we reached the "divide" and joined Van Dorn. Then wejourneyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we haltedto cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hourslater the rest of the population filed over the "divide" in a longprocession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!

Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but atleast one thing was certain--the secret was out and Whiteman would notenter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled withchagrin. 

We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune andenjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it issometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California. " It is oneof the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it ishardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it liesaway off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get atthat only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to takeupon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of oursecond day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot onthe borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water enteredit from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. Wehired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who livedsome ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation. We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all itspeculiarities. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousandfeet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousandfeet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sail-less sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth--is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanseof grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with twoislands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blisteredlava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake hasseized upon and occupied. 

The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strongwith alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment intothem once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if ithad been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands. While we campedthere our laundry work was easy. We tied the week's washing astern ofour boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, allto the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them arub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This wateris not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had avaluable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on himthan sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumpedoverboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment. In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into thefire. 

The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and hestruck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped andbarked and howled as he went--and by the time he got to the shore therewas no bark to him--for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, andthe alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and heprobably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ranround and round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, andthrew double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, inthe most extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as ageneral thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and Inever saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finallystruck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about twohundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was aboutnine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day. 

A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly purelye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes, though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I eversaw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except toparties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received highcommendation from some of the ablest minds of the age. ]

There are no fish in Mono Lake--no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs--nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wildducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing existsunder the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inchlong, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. Ifyou dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand ofthese. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance. Thenthere is a fly, which looks something like our house fly. These settleon the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore--and any time, you can seethere a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this beltextends clear around the lake--a belt of flies one hundred miles long. If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they lookdense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as youplease--they do not mind it--they are only proud of it. When you letthem go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, andwalk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with aview to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particularway. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have theiruses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eatthe flies--the flies eat the worms--the Indians eat all three--the wildcats eat the Indians--the white folks eat the wild cats--and thus allthings are lovely. 

Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean--andbetween it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains--yetthousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and reartheir young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature'swisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coatedover with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation oranything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless toanybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring ofboiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I havemade during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boilingspring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome. 

So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge--and ifnature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who wascrusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables, or the railroad routes--or--anything--and was proud of it--I would notwish for a more desirable boarding-house. 

Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a streamof any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, andwhat it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery. 

There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake--and theseare, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. Morethan once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning openup with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen thesnow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer godown to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night. Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every singlemonth in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is theclimate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to beprepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm andher snow shoes under the other. When they have a Fourth of Julyprocession it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a generalthing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops itoff with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And itis further reported that the old soakers haven't any teeth--wore them outeating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse thatstatement--I simply give it for what it is worth--and it is worth--well, I should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straininghimself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July--because I knowthat to be true. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

About seven o'clock one blistering hot morning--for it was now deadsummer time--Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage ofdiscovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but hadbeen deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severeenough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without greatdifficulty--and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravestswimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire, and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelvemiles, straight out to the islands--a long pull and a warm one--but themorning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy anddead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two largetin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the localityof the spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie'sbrawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached ourdestination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles thantwelve. 

We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in thecanteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackishthat we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search forthe spring--for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that onehas no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderatelyhigh hill of ashes--nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which wesunk to our knees at every step--and all around the top was a forbiddingwall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and gotwithin the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpetedwith ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places, picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence thatalthough this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there wasstill some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets ofsteam stood the only tree on the island--a small pine of most gracefulshape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, forthe steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them alwaysmoist. It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautifuloutcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerfulspirit in a mourning household. 

We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of theisland (two or three miles), and crossing it twice--climbing ash-hillspatiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture, plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing butsolitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence. Finally we noticed thatthe wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greaterimportance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains aboutsecuring the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our landingplace, and then--but mere words cannot describe our dismay--the boat wasgone! The chances were that there was not another boat on the entirelake. The situation was not comfortable--in truth, to speak plainly, itwas frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggravatingproximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid us; andwhat was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neitherfood nor water. But presently we sighted the boat. It was driftingalong, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea. It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance fromland, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us. At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran aheadand posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. Ifwe failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving graduallyshoreward all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough tomake the connection or not was the momentous question. When it gotwithin thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I couldhear my own heart beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly alongand seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemedas if my heart stood still; and when it was exactly abreast him and beganto widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I knew myheart did stop. But when he gave a great spring, the next instant, andlit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke thesolitudes!

But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not beencaring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that itpassed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind toshut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that Iwas, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could befatal. 

The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late, too--three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward themainland or not, was a question of some moment. But we were sodistressed by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to workand I took the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile, laboriously, we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly augmented;the billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests, the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury. We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boataround, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she wouldupset, of course. Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas. It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belaboredthe billows with her rising and falling bows. Now and then one ofHigbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one wouldsnatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus. We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionallyshipped water. By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his greatexertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should changeplaces with him till he could rest a little. But I told him this wasimpossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while wechanged, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize, and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons ofsoap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even bepresent at our own inquest. 

But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we camebooming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah--I droppedmine to help--the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went!

The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blisteredhands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it--but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding. 

In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentionedthat at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-lookingmasses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resemblesinferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rockhe will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls' eggs deeplyimbedded in the mass. How did they get there? I simply state the fact--for it is a fact--and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at hisleisure and solve the problem after his own fashion. 

At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion, and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fishedsuccessfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface wasbetween ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; coolingourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feetdeep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowersflourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almostfreezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that thecement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back toEsmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect, set out alone for Humboldt. 

About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort ofinterest to me, from the fact that it came so near "instigating" myfuneral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizenshid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to handwhen wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in thebake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the openground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day neverthought of it again. We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing forus, and he took up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancientstove reposed within six feet of him, and before his face. Finally itoccurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went outand fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle ofwater. Then he returned to his tub. 

I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and wasabout to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, anddisappeared, leaving not a splinter behind. Fragments of it fell in thestreets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roofover our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting asmall stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between usand drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white asa sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayedno trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stoppedwashing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment, and then remarked:

"Mph! Dam stove heap gone!"--and resumed his scrubbing as placidly as ifit were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I will explain, that "heap" is "Injun-English" for "very much. " The reader will perceivethe exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance. 

CHAPTER XL. I now come to a curious episode--the most curious, I think, that had yetaccented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillsidetoward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish lookingquartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge thatextended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a companyentitled the "Wide West. " There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deepon the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with therock that came from it--and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothingextraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the inexperiencedstranger all the quartz of a particular "district" looks about alike, anold resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easilyas a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds andqualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article. 

All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement. In mining parlance the Wide West had "struck it rich!" Everybody went tosee the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd ofpeople about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposedthere was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic was discussedbut the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else. Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washedit out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelousresult. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could becrumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paperexhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of "native" silver. Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out hisamazement was beyond description. Wide West stock soared skywards. Itwas said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand dollarsa foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the "blues"--the meresky-blues--but mine were indigo, now--because I did not own in the WideWest. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I lost myappetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had tostay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money toget out of the camp with. 

The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of "specimens, " andwell they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sun of someconsequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark thata sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at themouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it"packed" it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over themountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate thatwould richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people alsocommanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permissionto enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my "blue"meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of adifferent sort. He puzzled over the "rock, " examined it with a glass, inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, andafter each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and thesame unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:

"It is not Wide West rock!"

He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide Westshaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether hegot a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night;failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay inambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or threehands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once, but was premature--one of the men came back for something; tried itagain, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men roseup from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on theground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to themouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope andslid down the shaft. 

He disappeared in the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared inthe mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he did notanswer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered thecabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, andexclaimed in a stage whisper:

"I knew it! We are rich! IT'S A BLIND LEAD!"

I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt--conviction--doubtagain--exultation--hope, amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotionimaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and Icould not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, Ishook myself to rights, and said:

"Say it again!"

"It's blind lead!"

"Cal, let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody! Let's get out wherethere's room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times toogood to be true. "

"It's a blind lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--claycasings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave three cheers, and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was wortha million dollars, and did not care "whether school kept or not!"

But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge thatdoes not "crop out" above the surface. A miner does not know where tolook for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in thecourse of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide Westrock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developmentsthe more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the WideWest vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, thatthere was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide Westpeople themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went downthe shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way throughthe Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed inits own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was publicproperty. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for anyminer to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not. 

We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought theforeman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the greatsurprise to him. Higbie said:

"We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it andestablish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take outany more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter--nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove toyour entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to takeyou in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do yousay?"

What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth hishand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind andwithout wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to hisname? He could only say, "Agreed. "

The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder'sbooks before ten o'clock. We claimed two hundred feet each--six hundredfeet in all--the smallest and compactest organization in the district, and the easiest to manage. 

No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night. Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awakeand think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace, the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled mebodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if anelectric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments ofconversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said:

"When are you going home--to the States?"

"To-morrow!"--with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position. "Well--no--but next month, at furthest. "

"We'll go in the same steamer. "

"Agreed. "

A pause. 

"Steamer of the 10th?"

"Yes. No, the 1st. "

"All right. "

Another pause. 

"Where are you going to live?" said Higbie. 

"San Francisco. "

"That's me!"

Pause. 

"Too high--too much climbing"--from Higbie. 

"What is?"

"I was thinking of Russian Hill--building a house up there. "

"Too much climbing? Shan't you keep a carriage?"

"Of course. I forgot that. "

Pause. 

"Cal. , what kind of a house are you going to build?"

"I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic. "

"But what kind?"

"Well, I don't hardly know. Brick, I suppose. "

"Brick--bosh. "

"Why? What is your idea?"

"Brown stone front--French plate glass--billiard-room off thedining-room--statuary and paintings--shrubbery and two-acre grass plat--greenhouse--iron dog on the front stoop--gray horses--landau, and acoachman with a bug on his hat!"

"By George!"

A long pause. 

"Cal. , when are you going to Europe?"

"Well--I hadn't thought of that. When are you?"

"In the Spring. "

"Going to be gone all summer?"

"All summer! I shall remain there three years. "

"No--but are you in earnest?"

"Indeed I am. "

"I will go along too. "

"Why of course you will. "

"What part of Europe shall you go to?"

"All parts. France, England, Germany--Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt--all over--everywhere. "

"I'm agreed. "

"All right. "

"Won't it be a swell trip!"

"We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one, anyway. "

Another long pause. 

"Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening tostop our--"

"Hang the butcher!"

"Amen. "

And so it went on. By three o'clock we found it was no use, and so wegot up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my weekto cook. I always hated cooking--now, I abhorred it. 

The news was all over town. The former excitement was great--this onewas greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie saidthe foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his thirdof the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any suchprice. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestlybelieve that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effectthan to make me hold off for more. 

I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me athree-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed notefor it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I wasactually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous otherevidences of a similar nature--among which I may mention the fact of thebutcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing aboutmoney. 

By the laws of the district, the "locators" or claimants of a ledge wereobliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new propertywithin ten days after the date of the location, or the property wasforfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So wedetermined to go to work the next day. About the middle of theafternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner, who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place(the "Nine-Mile Ranch"), and that he and his wife were not able to givehim nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if hewould wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a noteon the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner'swagon. 

CHAPTER XLI. 

Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the oldgentleman was himself--which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeablewhen comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did notgo well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a suddenspasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his smile intoa perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish, andfill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that strongconvictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity hecould swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerablejudgment; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him, he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself andput up patiently with the inconveniences of the situation, andconsequently I was willing that he should have full license now that hisown turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving andranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was alteringand amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety ofhaving the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor withthe dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue forthe upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blueI feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust andsunlight; likewise while I was content to put the coachman in a modestlivery, I was uncertain about a footman--I needed one, and was evenresolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform hisfunctions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show; and yet, inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things, butno liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him;--or beat his ghost, at anyrate; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get itall laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it--everything, with one exception--namely, whether to cross the desert fromCairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence downthrough the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the friendsat home every day, instructing them concerning all my plans andintentions, and directing them to look up a handsome homestead for mymother and agree upon a price for it against my coming, and alsodirecting them to sell my share of the Tennessee land and tender theproceeds to the widows' and orphans' fund of the typographical union ofwhich I had long been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee landhad been in the possession of the family many years, and promised toconfer high fortune upon us some day; it still promises it, but in a lessviolent way. ]

When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better, but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair andgave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on thebed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar producedpain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunatemoment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony oftorture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like amaniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table--but I got it. He ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he wouldkill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It wassimply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it inan hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, atthe moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined to go back toEsmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone, now, since he wason the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began mynine-mile journey, on foot. 

Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-milejaunt without baggage. 

As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes oftwelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the brightmoonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of thevillage massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave anexulting bound, and I said to myself, "They have made a new striketo-night--and struck it richer than ever, no doubt. " I started overthere, but gave it up. I said the "strick" would keep, and I had climbedhill enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I waspassing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come inand help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged shewas right--he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one. Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of asuccess of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out asleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled withthe maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour, and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and thedoctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends. 

It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered the cabin door, tiredbut jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting bythe pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers, and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at him. Helooked at me, stolidly. I said:

"Higbie, what--what is it?"

"We're ruined--we didn't do the work--THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED!"

It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved--broken-hearted, indeed. Aminute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, andvery meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain anduseless self-upbraidings, busy with "Why didn't I do this, and why didn'tI do that, " but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into mutualexplanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that Higbiehad depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on theforeman. The folly of it! It was the first time that ever staid andsteadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to betrue to his full share of a responsibility. 

But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was thefirst time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last. He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon--hadridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in ahurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through abroken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remainedundisturbed for nine days:

 "Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. Has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says he will find it this time, sure. CAL. "

"W. " meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed "cement!"

That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no morewithstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this"cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he wasfamishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement formonths; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and "takenthe chances" on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscoveredcement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out oftown in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it hadnot attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in thefastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they couldnot find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that somethingmight have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to holdthe blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible), and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have reachedEsmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a greatpart of the distance. And so it happened that as he came into Esmeraldaby one road, I entered it by another. His was the superior energy, however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning asideas I had done--and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late!The "notice" was already up, the "relocation" of our mine completedbeyond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some factsbefore he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about thestreets since the night we had located the mine--a telegram had calledhim to California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At anyrate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community weretaking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledgewould be "relocatable, " and by eleven o'clock the hill was black with menprepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when Ifancied a new "strike" had been made--idiot that I was. 

[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had, provided we were quick enough. ] As midnight was announced, fourteen men, duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their "notice" andproclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of the"Johnson. " But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a suddenappearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and saidhis name must be added to the list, or he would "thin out the Johnsoncompany some. " He was a manly, splendid, determined fellow, and known tobe as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected. Theyput in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customarytwo hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night's events, asHigbie gathered from a friend on the way home. 

Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning, glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month ortwo of hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more. Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies hadconsolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet, or shares; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, andconsidering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet forninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand sharesin the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have beenworth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the differencebetween six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. Wewould have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spadeone little day on our property and so secured our ownership!

It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses, and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, iseasily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always haveit to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a milliondollars, once, for ten days. 

A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionairepartner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp inCalifornia that after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving, he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-five hundreddollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in a modest way. How such a thought would have insulted him the night we lay in our cabinplanning European trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill!

CHAPTER XLII. 

What to do next?

It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift formyself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends;and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginianstock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could notlive on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I hadgained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybodywith my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest libertyin the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work--which I did not, after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day, but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved fromfurther duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that hecould have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then givenit up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in thestudy of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellowsso that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift indisgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller'sclerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not readwith any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot toput a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, butmy prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumpsthan soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerableprinter, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth openin the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slowcompositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprenticesof two years' standing; and when I took a "take, " foremen were in thehabit of suggesting that it would be wanted "some time during the year. "

I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no meansashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fiftydollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind awheel again and never roam any more--but I had been making such an ass ofmyself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and myEuropean excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointedminer had done before; said "It is all over with me now, and I will nevergo back home to be pitied--and snubbed. " I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less thannothing in each, and now--

What to do next?

I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more. We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a littlerubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbiedescended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosenedup a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handledshovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out. You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it isfull, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your leftshoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of theshaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardlyresolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself andshoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel. 

I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery--so tospeak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing lettersto the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily TerritorialEnterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to methat they might have found something better to fill up with than myliterature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home fromthe hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know whatEureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any whenno other that sounds pretty offers. ] It was a deliberate offer to me ofTwenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city editor ofthe Enterprise. 

I would have challenged the publisher in the "blind lead" days--I wantedto fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week--it lookedlike bloated luxury--a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of money. But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequentunfitness for the position--and straightway, on top of this, my longarray of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I mustpresently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thingnecessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such ahumiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of, since it is so common--but then it was all I had to be proud of. So Iwas scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise. Necessity is the mother of "taking chances. " I do not doubt that if, atthat time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from theoriginal Hebrew, I would have accepted--albeit with diffidence and somemisgivings--and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money. 

I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rustylooking city editor, I am free to confess--coatless, slouch hat, bluewoolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down tothe waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But Isecured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver. 

I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to doso, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and inorder that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and asubject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carriedrevolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I willcall him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for someinstructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over townand ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of theinformation gained, and write them out for publication. And he added:

"Never say 'We learn' so-and-so, or 'It is reported, ' or 'It is rumored, 'or 'We understand' so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get the absolutefacts, and then speak out and say 'It is so-and-so. ' Otherwise, peoplewill not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainly is thething that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation. "

It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find areporter commencing his article with "We understand, " I gather asuspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as heought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise wellwhen I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact toooften when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day'sexperience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the endof five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. Hesaid:

"Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time whenthere were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from theTruckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and allthat sort of thing, in the hay business, you know. 

"It isn't sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks businesslike. "

I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck draggingin from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it bysixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, madesixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hayas Virginia City had never seen in the world before. 

This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I wasgetting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, adesperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I neverwas so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to themurderer:

"Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this daywhich I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you anyslight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you haverelieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count meyour friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor. "

If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itchingdesire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention todetails, and when it was finished experienced but one regret--namely, that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could workhim up too. 

Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza andfound that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country andhad fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that thecircumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined withinrigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I couldadd particulars that would make the article much more interesting. However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made somejudicious inquiries of the proprietor. When I learned, through his shortand surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly going onand would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of theother papers, for I took down his list of names and added his party tothe killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this wagon throughan Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history. 

My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I feltthat I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned withinmyself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and Ifelt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired nohigher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I couldtake my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be andthe interests of the paper demanded it. 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned therun of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy toany large extent, and became able to fill my columns without divergingnoticeably from the domain of fact. 

I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and weswapped "regulars" with each other and thus economized work. "Regulars"are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, "clean-ups"at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, wehad an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally setdown among the "regulars. " We had lively papers in those days. My greatcompetitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union. He was anexcellent reporter. Once in three or four months he would get a littleintoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinkeralthough always ready to tamper a little with the enemy. He had theadvantage of me in one thing; he could get the monthly public schoolreport and I could not, because the principal hated the Enterprise. One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wonderinghow I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the almost desertedstreet I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going. 

"After the school report. "

"I'll go along with you. "

"No, sir. I'll excuse you. "

"Just as you say. "

A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, andBoggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after the boyand saw him start up the Enterprise stairs. I said:

"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let mehave a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin tosuppose they will. Good night. "

"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting aroundwith the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to drop downto the principal's with me. "

"Now you talk like a rational being. Come along. "

We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report andreturned to our office. It was a short document and soon copied. Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript backto him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shotsnear by. We got the particulars with little loss of time, for it wasonly an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to thepublic, and then we separated. Away at three o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual--for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers onthe guitar and on that atrocity the accordion--the proprietor of theUnion strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything ofBoggs or the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out tohelp hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on a table in asaloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in theother, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity ofsquandering the public moneys on education "when hundreds and hundreds ofhonest hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey. " [Riotousapplause. ] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties forhours. We dragged him away and put him to bed. 

Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held meaccountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compassits absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that themisfortune had occurred. 

But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was nextdue, the proprietor of the "Genessee" mine furnished us a buggy and askedus to go down and write something about the property--a very commonrequest and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In due timewe arrived at the "mine"--nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feetdeep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope andbeing lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off somewhereto dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk; so I took anunlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of therope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the startof him, and then swung out over the shaft. I reached the bottom muddyand bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made anexamination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs tohoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle ofdaylight away aloft, and a voice came down:

"Are you all set?"

"All set--hoist away. "

"Are you comfortable?"

"Perfectly. "

"Could you wait a little?"

"Oh certainly--no particular hurry. "

"Well--good by. "

"Why? Where are you going?"

"After the school report!"

And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen whenthey hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. I walked home, too--five miles--up hill. We had no school report nextmorning; but the Union had. 

Six months after my entry into journalism the grand "flush times" ofSilverland began, and they continued with unabated splendor for threeyears. All difficulty about filling up the "local department" ceased, and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns hold theworld of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net everyday. Virginia had grown to be the "livest" town, for its age andpopulation, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed withpeople--to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matterto stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded withquartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession wasendless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait halfan hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat onevery countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity inevery eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething inevery brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money wasas plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and amelancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were militarycompanies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, "hurdy-gurdy houses, " wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskeymill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second andThird Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large policeforce, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozenjails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building achurch. The "flush times" were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proofbrick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the woodensuburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up toprices that were amazing. 

The great "Comstock lode" stretched its opulent length straight throughthe town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligentprocess of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundredand seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, "asthe 'Gould and Curry' goes, so goes the city. " Laboring men's wages werefour and six dollars a day, and they worked in three "shifts" or gangs, and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, nightand day. 

The "city" of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of MountDavidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea, andin the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fiftymiles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand, and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like beesand the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the"Comstock, " hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those samestreets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of ablast down in the bowels of the earth under the office. 

The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to itlike a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the next streetbelow the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses werelevel with the street they faced, but their rear first floors werepropped on lofty stilts; a man could stand at a rear first floor windowof a C street house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses belowhim facing D street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere, to ascend from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath whenyou got there; but you could turn around and go down again like a housea-fire--so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of thegreat altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface always, and thescratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chanceswere that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, thethin atmosphere seemed to carry healing to gunshot wounds, and therefore, to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likelyto afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certainto be around looking for you within the month, and not with an operaglass, either. 

From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast, far-reachingpanorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and whether the day was brightor overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming in thezenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was alwaysimpressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its graydome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlementedhills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert wasglimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, borderedwith trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe;and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched theirlong barrier to the filmy horizon--far enough beyond a lake that burnedin the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty milesremoved. Look from your window where you would, there was fascination inthe picture. At rare intervals--but very rare--there were clouds in ourskies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify thismighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held theeye like a spell and moved the spirit like music. 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollargold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersomeabundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never comeinto use on the Pacific coast. ] Reporting was lucrative, and every manin the town was lavish with his money and his "feet. " The city and allthe great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were moremines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worthhauling to a mill, but everybody said, "Wait till the shaft gets downwhere the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!" So nobody wasdiscouraged. These were nearly all "wild cat" mines, and whollyworthless, but nobody believed it then. The "Ophir, " the "Gould &Curry, " the "Mexican, " and other great mines on the Comstock lead inVirginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock everyday, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good asany on the "main lead" and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars afoot when he "got down where it came in solid. " Poor fellow, he wasblessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So thethousand wild cat shafts burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day byday, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. Howthey labored, prophesied, exulted! Surely nothing like it was ever seenbefore since the world began. Every one of these wild cat mines--notmines, but holes in the ground over imaginary mines--was incorporated andhad handsomely engraved "stock" and the stock was salable, too. It wasbought and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. Youcould go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (therewas no lack of them), put up a "notice" with a grandiloquent name in it, start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to provethat your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the marketand sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money, and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner. 

Every man owned "feet" in fifty different wild cat mines and consideredhis fortune made. Think of a city with not one solitary poor man in it!One would suppose that when month after month went by and still not awild cat mine (by wild cat I mean, in general terms, any claim notlocated on the mother vein, i. E. , the "Comstock") yielded a ton of rockworth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if they were not puttingtoo much faith in their prospective riches; but there was not a thoughtof such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and sold, and were happy. 

New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to runstraight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty"feet, " and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice ofit. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so you saidsomething. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the effectthat the "indications" were good, or that the ledge was "six feet wide, "or that the rock "resembled the Comstock" (and so it did--but as ageneral thing the resemblance was not startling enough to knock youdown). If the rock was moderately promising, we followed the custom ofthe country, used strong adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a verymarvel in silver discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a"developed" one, and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn't), wepraised the tunnel; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels inthe land; driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely outof ecstasies--but never said a word about the rock. We would squanderhalf a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressedpine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst ofadmiration of the "gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent" of the mine--but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those people were alwayspleased, always satisfied. Occasionally we patched up and varnished ourreputation for discrimination and stern, undeviating accuracy, by givingsome old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have made its dry bonesrattle--and then somebody would seize it and sell it on the fleetingnotoriety thus conferred upon it. 

There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable. We received presents of "feet" every day. If we needed a hundred dollarsor so, we sold some; if not, we hoarded it away, satisfied that it wouldultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I had a trunk about halffull of "stock. " When a claim made a stir in the market and went up to ahigh figure, I searched through my pile to see if I had any of its stock--and generally found it. 

The prices rose and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed uslittle, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we werecontent to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished theirclaims "noticed. " At least half of it was given me by persons who had nothought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal"thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples inyour hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take afew. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flushtimes. " Every man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actualcustom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friendswithout the asking. 

Very often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when aman offered a stock present to a friend, for the offer was only good andbinding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortlyafterward the procrastination was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart(Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me he would give me twenty feetof "Justis" stock if I would walk over to his office. It was worth fiveor ten dollars a foot. I asked him to make the offer good for next day, as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town; so Irisked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week theprice went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty, but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock ofmine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge willbe found in the accompanying portrait. ] I met three friends oneafternoon, who said they had been buying "Overman" stock at auction ateight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he wouldgive me fifteen feet; another said he would add fifteen; the third saidhe would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could notstop. A few weeks afterward they sold all their "Overman" at six hundreddollars a foot and generously came around to tell me about it--and alsoto urge me to accept of the next forty-five feet of it that people triedto force on me. 

These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and stillconfine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us asmuch as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollarsa foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering aguest a cigar. These were "flush times" indeed! I thought they weregoing to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet. 

To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community, I will remark that "claims" were actually "located" in excavations forcellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be quartz veins--andnot cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very heart of the city;and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It wassmall matter who the cellar belonged to--the "ledge" belonged to thefinder, and unless the United States government interfered (inasmuch asthe government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals inNevada--or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege towork it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costlyshrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste theground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often donein California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets ofVirginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. Hegave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit ofclothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and suefor damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle ofanother street; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India"stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancienttunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it andsee that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotelyresembled one. 

One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to "salt" a wild cat claim andsell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple. 

The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagonload of rich "Comstock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft andpiled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property toa simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagonload of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase. A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir. "It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original"Ophir, " a valuable mine on the "Comstock. " For a few days everybody wastalking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said thatit yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to theplace with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in thebottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish, unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in agrindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle, and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black, bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable "native" silver. Nobody had everheard of such a thing before; science could not account for such a queernovelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figurethe world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commandinginterest and prepared to quit the stage once more--he was always doingthat. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"--and not inany hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced andpeculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of"native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF, " andthen it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with meltedhalf-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till theyresembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock inthe bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price ofthe stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But forthis calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage. 

CHAPTER XLV. 

The "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars andset out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city ofVirginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-strickenweekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time. The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartmentand it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on thefloor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was thegeneral dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was agreat daily, printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-threecompositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; theadvertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paperwas clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the"Enterprise Building" was finished and ready for occupation--a statelyfireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columnsof "live" advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic andirregular "supplements. "

The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill ata cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars. Gould &Curry stock paid heavy dividends--a rare thing, and an experienceconfined to the dozen or fifteen claims located on the "main lead, " the"Comstock. " The Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, ina fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair ofhorses which were a present from the company, and his salary was twelvethousand dollars a year. The superintendent of another of the greatmines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousanddollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that he was tohave had one per cent. On the gross yield of the bullion likewise. 

Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it, --buthow to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so itwas a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wiresthat a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and moneywas wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of theUnion languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of itcame word that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegramwas half a day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee washurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C streetand tried to make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of thecommittee were flying hither and thither and working with all their mightand main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office wouldbe ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receivecontributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in aceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now--they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but, deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rainedchecks of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Handsclutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped thiseloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not open. The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their halfdollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about. Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to thecart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel ina state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia hadever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and when at last itabated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket. 

To use its own phraseology, it came there "flush" and went away "busted. "

After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, andfor weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generousstream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied uponthemselves a regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduatedaccording to their means, and there was not another grand universaloutburst till the famous "Sanitary Flour Sack" came our way. Its historyis peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name ofReuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reeseriver country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated manshould be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by thesuccessful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley wasdefeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered itand carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in UpperAustin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrivedthere, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the peoplethought he had better do with it. A voice said:

"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund. "

The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounteda dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higherand higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till atlast the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fiftydollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flourdelivered, and he said:

"Nowhere--sell it again. "

Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in thespirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspiredtill the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sackto three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousanddollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession. 

The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:

"Fetch along your flour sack!"

Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meetingwas held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack hadcome sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused, and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had beensecured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However, there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledgevanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in thenight the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow'scampaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended byclamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags, filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaingmultitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the floursack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and giltlettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder. The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors andreporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressedto the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there, but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for thecavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, andtook its way over the "divide, " toward the small town of Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and thosecommunities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a veryhot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour wedescended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, andenveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population--men, womenand children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, allthe flags in town were at the mast head, and the blare of the bands wasdrowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the firstbid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. Said:

"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars, coin!"

A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia, and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in thestreets devouring the tidings--for it was part of the programme that thebulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a newdispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew. Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bringback the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At theend of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for theflour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand totalwas displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade movedon, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it--for thepeople brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it--andwithin three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Daytonby storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had beentelegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia andfiled down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroadin the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing, cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender atdiscretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts ofapplause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteenthousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sumequal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! It was at a rate in theneighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of thepopulation. The grand total would have been twice as large, but thestreets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not getwithin a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. Thesegrew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auctionwas over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps. 

Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; alsoin San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or twoAtlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that hefinally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was beingheld, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on theenthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donationhad produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailedthem at high prices. 

It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had beensold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars ingreenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where commonfamily flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market. 

It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of hissanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going andreturning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his ownpocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted. 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

There were nabobs in those days--in the "flush times, " I mean. Everyrich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several ofthese. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, andthe community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they werethemselves--possibly more, in some cases. 

Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take asmall segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. Theygave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. Butnot long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying eachowner $8, 000 to $10, 000 a month--say $100, 000 a year. 

One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6, 000 worthof diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could notspend his money as fast as he made it. 

Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16, 000 amonth; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very minethat yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to thecountry. 

The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets offortune--lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a singlenight--who was able to offer $100, 000 for a position of high officialdistinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it--but failed to get it, his politics not being as sound as his bank account. 

Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul, born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant. He drove a team, and owned a small ranch--a ranch that paid him acomfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what littleit did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market. Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undevelopedsilver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a littleunpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired fromthe hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortablefigure. Some people said it was $30, 000 a month, and others said it was$60, 000. Smith was very rich at any rate. 

And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he wasnever tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, andthe gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he hadnoticed in the vicinity of Rome. He was full of wonders of the oldworld, and advised everybody to travel. He said a man never imaginedwhat surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled. 

One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which wasto be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the runof the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, thefigures were all in the purser's hands in sealed envelopes. Smith wasserene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But anotherparty won the prize! Smith said:

"Here, that won't do! He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did. "

The purser said, "Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board. We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday. "

"Well, sir, " said Smith, "that's just where I've got you, for I guessedtwo hundred and nine. If you'll look at my figgers again you'll find a 2and two 0's, which stands for 200, don't it?--and after 'em you'll find a9 (2009), which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I'll take thatmoney, if you please. "

The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it allbelonged originally to the two men whose names it bears. Mr. Curry ownedtwo thirds of it--and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five hundreddollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market value inhay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that Gouldsold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bottle ofwhisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffendingstranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterwardthe mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market sevenmillions six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin. 

In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a canyondirectly back of Virginia City, had a stream of water as large as a man'swrist trickling from the hill-side on his premises. The Ophir Companysegregated a hundred feet of their mine and traded it to him for thestream of water. The hundred feet proved to be the richest part of theentire mine; four years after the swap, its market value (including itsmill) was $1, 500, 000. 

An individual who owned twenty feet in the Ophir mine before its greatriches were revealed to men, traded it for a horse, and a very sorrylooking brute he was, too. A year or so afterward, when Ophir stock wentup to $3, 000 a foot, this man, who had not a cent, used to say he was themost startling example of magnificence and misery the world had everseen--because he was able to ride a sixty-thousand-dollar horse--yetcould not scrape up cash enough to buy a saddle, and was obliged toborrow one or ride bareback. He said if fortune were to give him anothersixty-thousand-dollar horse it would ruin him. 

A youth of nineteen, who was a telegraph operator in Virginia on a salaryof a hundred dollars a month, and who, when he could not make out Germannames in the list of San Francisco steamer arrivals, used to ingeniouslyselect and supply substitutes for them out of an old Berlin citydirectory, made himself rich by watching the mining telegrams that passedthrough his hands and buying and selling stocks accordingly, through afriend in San Francisco. Once when a private dispatch was sent fromVirginia announcing a rich strike in a prominent mine and advising thatthe matter be kept secret till a large amount of the stock could besecured, he bought forty "feet" of the stock at twenty dollars a foot, and afterward sold half of it at eight hundred dollars a foot and therest at double that figure. Within three months he was worth $150, 000, and had resigned his telegraphic position. 

Another telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company fordivulging the secrets of the office, agreed with a moneyed man in SanFrancisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuitwithin an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in SanFrancisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits onpurchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went, disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in themountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office dayafter day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out andunable to travel--and meantime listening to the dispatches as they passedclicking through the machine from Virginia. Finally the private dispatchannouncing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon ashe heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco:

"Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home. "

It was the signal agreed upon. The word "waiting" left out, would havesignified that the suit had gone the other way. 

The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at lowfigures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result. 

For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had beenincorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in thehands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers. The stockbecame very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but hehad disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one ortwo speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news camethat he was in the Bermudas, and straightway a speculator or two hurriedeast and sailed for Bermuda--but he was not there. Finally he was heardof in Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scrapedtogether a little money and sought him out, bought his "feet" for ahundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75, 000. 

But why go on? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instanceslike these, and I would never get through enumerating them were I toattempt do it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of apeculiarity of the "flush times" which I could not present so strikinglyin any other way, and which some mention of was necessary to a realizingcomprehension of the time and the country. 

I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I havereferred to, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I have shifted theiroccupations and experiences around in such a way as to keep the Pacificpublic from recognizing these once notorious men. No longer notorious, for the majority of them have drifted back into poverty and obscurityagain. 

In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adventure of two ofher nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it isworth:

Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the world, and knew more or less of itsways; but Col. Jack was from the back settlements of the States, had leda life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessedwith sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York, --Col. Jack to see thesights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. Theyreached San Francisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrivedin New York, Col. Jack said:

"I've heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to have a ridein one; I don't care what it costs. Come along. "

They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche. But Col. Jack said:

"No, sir! None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me. I'm here to have agood time, and money ain't any object. I mean to have the nobbiest rigthat's going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop that yaller one withthe pictures on it--don't you fret--I'll stand all the expenses myself. "

So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack:

"Ain't it gay, though? Oh, no, I reckon not! Cushions, and windows, andpictures, till you can't rest. What would the boys say if they could seeus cutting a swell like this in New York? By George, I wish they couldsee us. "

Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver:

"Say, Johnny, this suits me!--suits yours truly, you bet, you! I wantthis shebang all day. I'm on it, old man! Let 'em out! Make 'em go!We'll make it all right with you, sonny!"

The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for hisfare--it was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took thehand, and shook it cordially. He said:

"You twig me, old pard! All right between gents. Smell of that, and seehow you like it!"

And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand. After amoment the driver said he could not make change. 

"Bother the change! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket. "

Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh:

"Ain't it style, though? Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day fora week. "

The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment, then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow:

"Don't say a word, " he whispered. "Let her ride, if she wants to. Gracious, there's room enough. "

The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col. Jack. 

"What's this for?" said he. 

"Give it to the driver, please. "

"Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ridehere as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can'tlet you pay a cent. "

The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basketclimbed in, and proffered her fare. 

"Excuse me, " said Col. Jack. "You're perfectly welcome here, madam, butwe can't allow you to pay. Set right down there, mum, and don't you bethe least uneasy. Make yourself just as free as if you was in your ownturn-out. "

Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple ofchildren, entered. 

"Come right along, friends, " said Col. Jack; "don't mind us. This is afree blow-out. " Then he whispered to Col. Jim, "New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon--it ain't no name forit!"

He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybodycordially welcome. The situation dawned on the people, and they pocketedtheir money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of theepisode. Half a dozen more passengers entered. 

"Oh, there's plenty of room, " said Col. Jack. "Walk right in, and makeyourselves at home. A blow-out ain't worth anything as a blow-out, unless a body has company. " Then in a whisper to Col. Jim: "But ain'tthese New Yorkers friendly? And ain't they cool about it, too? Icebergsain't anywhere. I reckon they'd tackle a hearse, if it was going theirway. "

More passengers got in; more yet, and still more. Both seats werefilled, and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleatsoverhead. Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof. Half-suppressed laughter rippled up from all sides. 

"Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don't bang anythingthat ever I saw, I'm an Injun!" whispered Col. Jack. 

A Chinaman crowded his way in. 

"I weaken!" said Col. Jack. "Hold on, driver! Keep your seats, ladies, and gents. Just make yourselves free--everything's paid for. Driver, rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go--friends ofours, you know. Take them everywheres--and if you want more money, cometo the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey toyou, ladies and gents--go it just as long as you please--it shan't costyou a cent!"

The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said:

"Jimmy, it's the sociablest place I ever saw. The Chinaman waltzed in ascomfortable as anybody. If we'd staid awhile, I reckon we'd had someniggers. B' George, we'll have to barricade our doors to-night, or someof these ducks will be trying to sleep with us. "

CHAPTER XLVII. 

Somebody has said that in order to know a community, one must observe thestyle of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with mostceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with most eclat in our"flush times, " the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguishedrough--possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of societyhonored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, no doubt thephilosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see tworepresentative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of thepeople. 

There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was arepresentative citizen. He had "killed his man"--not in his own quarrel, it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashinghelpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and been a veryWarwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughoutthe town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society. 

On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of awasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken hisneck--and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but withintelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death "bythe visitation of God. " What could the world do without juries?

Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles intown were hired, all the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal andfire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered tomuster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now--let us remark in parenthesis--as all the peoples of the earth hadrepresentative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer hadbrought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combinationmade the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied andcopious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps, except inthe mines of California in the "early days. " Slang was the language ofNevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. Such phrases as "You bet!" "Oh, no, I reckon not!" "No Irish needapply, " and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lipsof a speaker unconsciously--and very often when they did not touch thesubject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything. 

After Buck Fanshaw's inquest, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhoodwas held, for nothing can be done on the Pacific coast without a publicmeeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions werepassed and various committees appointed; among others, a committee of onewas deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle, spiritual newfledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet unacquaintedwith the ways of the mines. The committeeman, "Scotty" Briggs, made hisvisit; and in after days it was worth something to hear the minister tellabout it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary suit, when onweighty official business, like committee work, was a fire helmet, flaming red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and revolverattached, coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed into boot tops. He formed something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It isfair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart, anda strong love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when hecould reasonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said thatwhenever one of Scotty's fights was investigated, it always turned outthat it had originally been no affair of his, but that out of nativegood-heartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man whowas getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, foryears, and had often taken adventurous "pot-luck" together. On oneoccasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in afight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turnedand found that the men they were helping had deserted early, and not onlythat, but had stolen their coats and made off with them! But to returnto Scotty's visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now, and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence hesat down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinishedmanuscript sermon under the minister's nose, took from it a red silkhandkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness, explanatory of his business. 

He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voiceand said in lugubrious tones:

"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"

"Am I the--pardon me, I believe I do not understand?"

With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:

"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe youwould give us a lift, if we'd tackle you--that is, if I've got the rightsof it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next door. "

"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door. "

"The which?"

"The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuaryadjoins these premises. "

Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:

"You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can't call that hand. Anteand pass the buck. "

"How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?"

"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we've both got thebulge, somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see, oneof the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a goodsend-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerka little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome. "

"My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observationsare wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way?At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would itnot expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statementsof fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor andallegory?"

Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty:

"I'll have to pass, I judge. "

"How?"

"You've raised me out, pard. "

"I still fail to catch your meaning. "

"Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me--that's the idea. Ican't neither-trump nor follow suit. "

The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his headon his hand and gave himself up to thought. 

Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident. 

"I've got it now, so's you can savvy, " he said. "What we want is agospel-sharp. See?"

"A what?"

"Gospel-sharp. Parson. "

"Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman--a parson. "

"Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put itthere!"--extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister's smallhand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and ferventgratification. 

"Now we're all right, pard. Let's start fresh. Don't you mind mysnuffling a little--becuz we're in a power of trouble. You see, one ofthe boys has gone up the flume--"

"Gone where?"

"Up the flume--throwed up the sponge, you understand. "

"Thrown up the sponge?"

"Yes--kicked the bucket--"

"Ah--has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne notraveler returns. "

"Return! I reckon not. Why pard, he's dead!"

"Yes, I understand. "

"Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled somemore. Yes, you see he's dead again--"

"Again? Why, has he ever been dead before?"

"Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat?But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd neverseen this day. I don't want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw. I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze tohim--you hear me. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullierman in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on afriend. But it's all up, you know, it's all up. It ain't no use. They've scooped him. "

"Scooped him?"

"Yes--death has. Well, well, well, we've got to give him up. Yesindeed. It's a kind of a hard world, after all, ain't it? But pard, hewas a rustler! You ought to seen him get started once. He was a bullyboy with a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room accordingto his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in. He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he was onit! He was on it bigger than an Injun!"

"On it? On what?"

"On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand. He didn't give a continental for any body. Beg your pardon, friend, forcoming so near saying a cuss-word--but you see I'm on an awful strain, inthis palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything somild. But we've got to give him up. There ain't any getting aroundthat, I don't reckon. Now if we can get you to help plant him--"

"Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?"

"Obs'quies is good. Yes. That's it--that's our little game. We aregoing to get the thing up regardless, you know. He was always niftyhimself, and so you bet you his funeral ain't going to be no slouch--solid silver door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and anigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat--how's that for high?And we'll take care of you, pard. We'll fix you all right. There'll bea kerridge for you; and whatever you want, you just 'scape out and we'll'tend to it. We've got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, inNo. 1's house, and don't you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn, if you don't sell a clam. Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, for anybody that knowed him will tell you that he was one of the whitestmen that was ever in the mines. You can't draw it too strong. He nevercould stand it to see things going wrong. He's done more to make thistown quiet and peaceable than any man in it. I've seen him lick fourGreasers in eleven minutes, myself. If a thing wanted regulating, hewarn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he wouldprance in and regulate it himself. He warn't a Catholic. Scasely. Hewas down on 'em. His word was, 'No Irish need apply!' But it didn'tmake no difference about that when it came down to what a man's rightswas--and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and startedin to stake out town-lots in it he went for 'em! And he cleaned 'em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself. "

"That was very well indeed--at least the impulse was--whether the act wasstrictly defensible or not. Had deceased any religious convictions?That is to say, did he feel a dependence upon, or acknowledge allegianceto a higher power?"

More reflection. 

"I reckon you've stumped me again, pard. Could you say it over oncemore, and say it slow?"

"Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or rather had he ever beenconnected with any organization sequestered from secular concerns anddevoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?"

"All down but nine--set 'em up on the other alley, pard. "

"What did I understand you to say?"

"Why, you're most too many for me, you know. When you get in with yourleft I hunt grass every time. Every time you draw, you fill; but I don'tseem to have any luck. Lets have a new deal. "

"How? Begin again?"

"That's it. "

"Very well. Was he a good man, and--"

"There--I see that; don't put up another chip till I look at my hand. A good man, says you? Pard, it ain't no name for it. He was the bestman that ever--pard, you would have doted on that man. He could lam anygaloot of his inches in America. It was him that put down the riot lastelection before it got a start; and everybody said he was the only manthat could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one hand and atrumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter in lessthan three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented nicebefore anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always forpeace, and he would have peace--he could not stand disturbances. Pard, he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you couldchip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micksgot to throwing stones through the Methodis' Sunday school windows, BuckFanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple ofsix-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday school. Says he, 'NoIrish need apply!' And they didn't. He was the bulliest man in themountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and holdmore tangle-foot whisky without spilling it than any man in seventeencounties. Put that in, pard--it'll please the boys more than anythingyou could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother. "

"Never shook his mother?"

"That's it--any of the boys will tell you so. "

"Well, but why should he shake her?"

"That's what I say--but some people does. "

"Not people of any repute?"

"Well, some that averages pretty so-so. "

"In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his ownmother, ought to--"

"Cheese it, pard; you've banked your ball clean outside the string. What I was a drivin' at, was, that he never throwed off on his mother--don't you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to live in, and townlots, and plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of herall the time; and when she was down with the small-pox I'm d---d if hedidn't set up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your pardon for sayingit, but it hopped out too quick for yours truly. 

"You've treated me like a gentleman, pard, and I ain't the man to hurtyour feelings intentional. I think you're white. I think you're asquare man, pard. I like you, and I'll lick any man that don't. I'lllick him till he can't tell himself from a last year's corpse! Put itthere!" [Another fraternal hand-shake--and exit. ]

The obsequies were all that "the boys" could desire. Such a marvel offuneral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, thedirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flagsdrooping at half mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secretsocieties, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines, carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attractedmultitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and foryears afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display inVirginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw's funeral. 

Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent placeat the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last sentence ofthe prayer for the dead man's soul ascended, he responded, in a lowvoice, but with feelings:

"AMEN. No Irish need apply. "

As the bulk of the response was without apparent relevancy, it wasprobably nothing more than a humble tribute to the memory of the friendthat was gone; for, as Scotty had once said, it was "his word. "

Scotty Briggs, in after days, achieved the distinction of becoming theonly convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia roughs;and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the quarrelof the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber whereofto construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his generosityor diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent direction tothe one and a broader field to the other. 

If his Sunday-school class progressed faster than the other classes, wasit matter for wonder? I think not. He talked to his pioneer small-fryin a language they understood! It was my large privilege, a month beforehe died, to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethrento his class "without looking at the book. " I leave it to the reader tofancy what it was like, as it fell, riddled with slang, from the lips ofthat grave, earnest teacher, and was listened to by his little learnerswith a consuming interest that showed that they were as unconscious as hewas that any violence was being done to the sacred proprieties!

CHAPTER XLVIII. 

The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied bymurdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they willalways say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughteringdone, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates, and a person is not respected until he has "killed his man. " That wasthe very expression used. 

If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable, honest, industrious, but--had he killed his man? If he had not, hegravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of smallconsequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduatedaccording to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling upto a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came withthe blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized atonce and his acquaintance sought. 

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chiefdesperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper, occupied the samelevel in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest wayto become an influential man and be looked up to by the community atlarge, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sellwhisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higherrank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It washis privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movementcould succeed without the countenance and direction of thesaloon-keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon-keeperconsented to serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen. 

Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the law, or thearmy and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon. 

To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious. Hence thereader will not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killedin Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was theslayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of beingheld in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths whotried to "kill their men" for no other reason--and got killed themselvesfor their pains. "There goes the man that killed Bill Adams" was higherpraise and a sweeter sound in the ears of this sort of people than anyother speech that admiring lips could utter. 

The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupantswere never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he inventedtrial by jury and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justicein his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century thecondition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose fromthe grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would provethe most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that humanwisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that we simpletons wouldgo on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of itsusefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go on using hiscandle-clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day news couldnot travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try--but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swearin juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidlyexcludes honest men and men of brains. 

I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call ajury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B. , a good citizen, in the mostwanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, andall men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men notdeaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B. L. , a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questionedprecisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:

"Have you heard of this homicide?"

"Yes. "

"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"

"Yes. "

"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"

"Yes. "

"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"

"Yes. "

"We do not want you. "

A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant ofhigh character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligenceand unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing, were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said thepublic talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but thatsworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enablehim to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with thefacts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice. 

When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve menwas impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talkedabout nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattlein the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in thestreets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who couldnot read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came outafterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson werethe same thing. 

The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could oneexpect?

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premiumupon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we mustcontinue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand yearsago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligenceand probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, heis worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance andstupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs. Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains andhonesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to showthe present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability onanother, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free andequal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper withthe jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligenceand character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, andpeople who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated--every effort I make to save the country "misses fire. "

My idea, when I began this chapter, was to say something aboutdesperadoism in the "flush times" of Nevada. To attempt a portrayal ofthat era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage, would belike portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy. The desperadostalked the streets with a swagger graded according to the number of hishomicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make ahumble admirer happy for the rest of the day. The deference that waspaid to a desperado of wide reputation, and who "kept his privategraveyard, " as the phrase went, was marked, and cheerfully accorded. When he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailedfrock-coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hattipped over left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty;when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers andmerchants to overwhelm him with obsequious service; when he shoulderedhis way to a bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognizedhim, and--apologized. 

They got a look in return that froze their marrow, and by that time acurled and breast-pinned bar keeper was beaming over the counter, proudof the established acquaintanceship that permitted such a familiar formof speech as:

"How're ye, Billy, old fel? Glad to see you. What'll you take--the oldthing?"

The "old thing" meant his customary drink, of course. 

The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging tothese long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, butit seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men asSam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered Pete, etc. , etc. There was a long list of them. They werebrave, reckless men, and traveled with their lives in their hands. Togive them their due, they did their killing principally among themselves, and seldom molested peaceable citizens, for they considered it smallcredit to add to their trophies so cheap a bauble as the death of a manwho was "not on the shoot, " as they phrased it. They killed each otheron slight provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves--for they held it almost shame to die otherwise than "with their bootson, " as they expressed it. 

I remember an instance of a desperado's contempt for such small game as aprivate citizen's life. I was taking a late supper in a restaurant onenight, with two reporters and a little printer named--Brown, forinstance--any name will do. Presently a stranger with a long-tailed coaton came in, and not noticing Brown's hat, which was lying in a chair, satdown on it. Little Brown sprang up and became abusive in a moment. Thestranger smiled, smoothed out the hat, and offered it to Brown withprofuse apologies couched in caustic sarcasm, and begged Brown not todestroy him. Brown threw off his coat and challenged the man to fight--abused him, threatened him, impeached his courage, and urged and evenimplored him to fight; and in the meantime the smiling stranger placedhimself under our protection in mock distress. But presently he assumeda serious tone, and said:

"Very well, gentlemen, if we must fight, we must, I suppose. But don'trush into danger and then say I gave you no warning. I am more than amatch for all of you when I get started. I will give you proofs, andthen if my friend here still insists, I will try to accommodate him. "

The table we were sitting at was about five feet long, and unusuallycumbersome and heavy. He asked us to put our hands on the dishes andhold them in their places a moment--one of them was a large oval dishwith a portly roast on it. Then he sat down, tilted up one end of thetable, set two of the legs on his knees, took the end of the tablebetween his teeth, took his hands away, and pulled down with his teethtill the table came up to a level position, dishes and all! He said hecould lift a keg of nails with his teeth. He picked up a common glasstumbler and bit a semi-circle out of it. Then he opened his bosom andshowed us a net-work of knife and bullet scars; showed us more on hisarms and face, and said he believed he had bullets enough in his body tomake a pig of lead. He was armed to the teeth. He closed with theremark that he was Mr. ---- of Cariboo--a celebrated name whereat we shookin our shoes. I would publish the name, but for the suspicion that hemight come and carve me. He finally inquired if Brown still thirsted forblood. Brown turned the thing over in his mind a moment, and then--askedhim to supper. 

With the permission of the reader, I will group together, in the nextchapter, some samples of life in our small mountain village in the olddays of desperadoism. I was there at the time. The reader will observepeculiarities in our official society; and he will observe also, aninstance of how, in new countries, murders breed murders. 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish aphotograph that can need no embellishment:

 FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY. --An affray occurred, last evening, in a billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams and Wm. Brown, which resulted in the immediate death of the latter. There had been some difficulty between the parties for several months. 

 An inquest was immediately held, and the following testimony adduced:

 Officer GEO. BIRDSALL, sworn, says:--I was told Wm. Brown was drunk and was looking for Jack Williams; so soon as I heard that I started for the parties to prevent a collision; went into the billiard saloon; saw Billy Brown running around, saying if anybody had anything against him to show cause; he was talking in a boisterous manner, and officer Perry took him to the other end of the room to talk to him; Brown came back to me; remarked to me that he thought he was as good as anybody, and knew how to take care of himself; he passed by me and went to the bar; don't know whether he drank or not; Williams was at the end of the billiard-table, next to the stairway; Brown, after going to the bar, came back and said he was as good as any man in the world; he had then walked out to the end of the first billiard-table from the bar; I moved closer to them, supposing there would be a fight; as Brown drew his pistol I caught hold of it; he had fired one shot at Williams; don't know the effect of it; caught hold of him with one hand, and took hold of the pistol and turned it up; think he fired once after I caught hold of the pistol; I wrenched the pistol from him; walked to the end of the billiard-table and told a party that I had Brown's pistol, and to stop shooting; I think four shots were fired in all; after walking out, Mr. Foster remarked that Brown was shot dead. 

Oh, there was no excitement about it--he merely "remarked" the smallcircumstance!

Four months later the following item appeared in the same paper (theEnterprise). In this item the name of one of the city officers abovereferred to (Deputy Marshal Jack Williams) occurs again:

 ROBBERY AND DESPERATE AFFRAY. --On Tuesday night, a German named Charles Hurtzal, engineer in a mill at Silver City, came to this place, and visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B street. The music, dancing and Teutonic maidens awakened memories of Faderland until our German friend was carried away with rapture. He evidently had money, and was spending if freely. Late in the evening Jack Williams and Andy Blessington invited him down stairs to take a cup of coffee. Williams proposed a game of cards and went up stairs to procure a deck, but not finding any returned. On the stairway he met the German, and drawing his pistol knocked him down and rifled his pockets of some seventy dollars. Hurtzal dared give no alarm, as he was told, with a pistol at his head, if he made any noise or exposed them, they would blow his brains out. So effectually was he frightened that he made no complaint, until his friends forced him. Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had disappeared. 

This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation ofbeing a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he hadseveral times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions oncitizens at dead of night in the public streets of Virginia. 

Five months after the above item appeared, Williams was assassinatedwhile sitting at a card table one night; a gun was thrust through thecrack of the door and Williams dropped from his chair riddled with balls. It was said, at the time, that Williams had been for some time aware thata party of his own sort (desperadoes) had sworn away his life; and it wasgenerally believed among the people that Williams's friends and enemieswould make the assassination memorable--and useful, too--by a wholesaledestruction of each other. 

It did not so happen, but still, times were not dull during the nexttwenty-four hours, for within that time a woman was killed by a pistolshot, a man was brained with a slung shot, and a man named Reeder wasalso disposed of permanently. Some matters in the Enterprise account ofthe killing of Reeder are worth nothing--especially the accommodatingcomplaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace. The italics in thefollowing narrative are mine:

 MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING. --The devil seems to have again broken loose in our town. Pistols and guns explode and knives gleam in our streets as in early times. When there has been a long season of quiet, people are slow to wet their hands in blood; but once blood is spilled, cutting and shooting come easy. Night before last Jack Williams was assassinated, and yesterday forenoon we had more bloody work, growing out of the killing of Williams, and on the same street in which he met his death. It appears that Tom Reeder, a friend of Williams, and George Gumbert were talking, at the meat market of the latter, about the killing of Williams the previous night, when Reeder said it was a most cowardly act to shoot a man in such a way, giving him "no show. " Gumbert said that Williams had "as good a show as he gave Billy Brown, " meaning the man killed by Williams last March. Reeder said it was a d---d lie, that Williams had no show at all. At this, Gumbert drew a knife and stabbed Reeder, cutting him in two places in the back. One stroke of the knife cut into the sleeve of Reeder's coat and passed downward in a slanting direction through his clothing, and entered his body at the small of the back; another blow struck more squarely, and made a much more dangerous wound. Gumbert gave himself up to the officers of justice, and was shortly after discharged by Justice Atwill, on his own recognizance, to appear for trial at six o'clock in the evening. In the meantime Reeder had been taken into the office of Dr. Owens, where his wounds were properly dressed. One of his wounds was considered quite dangerous, and it was thought by many that it would prove fatal. But being considerably under the influence of liquor, Reeder did not feel his wounds as he otherwise would, and he got up and went into the street. He went to the meat market and renewed his quarrel with Gumbert, threatening his life. Friends tried to interfere to put a stop to the quarrel and get the parties away from each other. In the Fashion Saloon Reeder made threats against the life of Gumbert, saying he would kill him, and it is said that he requested the officers not to arrest Gumbert, as he intended to kill him. After these threats Gumbert went off and procured a double-barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot or revolver balls, and went after Reeder. Two or three persons were assisting him along the street, trying to get him home, and had him just in front of the store of Klopstock & Harris, when Gumbert came across toward him from the opposite side of the street with his gun. He came up within about ten or fifteen feet of Reeder, and called out to those with him to "look out! get out of the way!" and they had only time to heed the warning, when he fired. Reeder was at the time attempting to screen himself behind a large cask, which stood against the awning post of Klopstock & Harris's store, but some of the balls took effect in the lower part of his breast, and he reeled around forward and fell in front of the cask. Gumbert then raised his gun and fired the second barrel, which missed Reeder and entered the ground. At the time that this occurred, there were a great many persons on the street in the vicinity, and a number of them called out to Gumbert, when they saw him raise his gun, to "hold on, " and "don't shoot!" The cutting took place about ten o'clock and the shooting about twelve. After the shooting the street was instantly crowded with the inhabitants of that part of the town, some appearing much excited and laughing--declaring that it looked like the "good old times of '60. " Marshal Perry and officer Birdsall were near when the shooting occurred, and Gumbert was immediately arrested and his gun taken from him, when he was marched off to jail. Many persons who were attracted to the spot where this bloody work had just taken place, looked bewildered and seemed to be asking themselves what was to happen next, appearing in doubt as to whether the killing mania had reached its climax, or whether we were to turn in and have a grand killing spell, shooting whoever might have given us offence. It was whispered around that it was not all over yet --five or six more were to be killed before night. Reeder was taken to the Virginia City Hotel, and doctors called in to examine his wounds. They found that two or three balls had entered his right side; one of them appeared to have passed through the substance of the lungs, while another passed into the liver. Two balls were also found to have struck one of his legs. As some of the balls struck the cask, the wounds in Reeder's leg were probably from these, glancing downwards, though they might have been caused by the second shot fired. After being shot, Reeder said when he got on his feet --smiling as he spoke--"It will take better shooting than that to kill me. " The doctors consider it almost impossible for him to recover, but as he has an excellent constitution he may survive, notwithstanding the number and dangerous character of the wounds he has received. The town appears to be perfectly quiet at present, as though the late stormy times had cleared our moral atmosphere; but who can tell in what quarter clouds are lowering or plots ripening?

Reeder--or at least what was left of him--survived his wounds two days!Nothing was ever done with Gumbert. 

Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what apalladium is, having never seen a palladium, but it is a good thing nodoubt at any rate. Not less than a hundred men have been murdered inNevada--perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred--and asfar as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death penaltythere. However, four or five who had no money and no political influencehave been punished by imprisonment--one languished in prison as much aseight months, I think. However, I do not desire to be extravagant--itmay have been less. 

However, one prophecy was verified, at any rate. It was asserted by thedesperadoes that one of their brethren (Joe McGee, a special policeman)was known to be the conspirator chosen by lot to assassinate Williams;and they also asserted that doom had been pronounced against McGee, andthat he would be assassinated in exactly the same manner that had beenadopted for the destruction of Williams--a prophecy which came true ayear later. After twelve months of distress (for McGee saw a fanciedassassin in every man that approached him), he made the last of manyefforts to get out of the country unwatched. He went to Carson and satdown in a saloon to wait for the stage--it would leave at four in themorning. But as the night waned and the crowd thinned, he grew uneasy, and told the bar-keeper that assassins were on his track. The bar-keepertold him to stay in the middle of the room, then, and not go near thedoor, or the window by the stove. But a fatal fascination seduced him tothe neighborhood of the stove every now and then, and repeatedly thebar-keeper brought him back to the middle of the room and warned him toremain there. But he could not. At three in the morning he againreturned to the stove and sat down by a stranger. Before the bar-keepercould get to him with another warning whisper, some one outside firedthrough the window and riddled McGee's breast with slugs, killing himalmost instantly. By the same discharge the stranger at McGee's sidealso received attentions which proved fatal in the course of two or threedays. 

CHAPTER L. 

These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain veryextraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap ofhistory familiar to all old Californians, and worthy to be known by otherpeoples of the earth that love simple, straightforward justiceunencumbered with nonsense. I would apologize for this digression butfor the fact that the information I am about to offer is apology enoughin itself. And since I digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as wellto eschew apologies altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome. 

Capt. Ned Blakely--that name will answer as well as any other fictitiousone (for he was still with the living at last accounts, and may notdesire to be famous)--sailed ships out of the harbor of San Francisco formany years. He was a stalwart, warm-hearted, eagle-eyed veteran, who hadbeen a sailor nearly fifty years--a sailor from early boyhood. He was arough, honest creature, full of pluck, and just as full of hard-headedsimplicity, too. He hated trifling conventionalities--"business" was theword, with him. He had all a sailor's vindictiveness against the quipsand quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and lastaim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice. 

He sailed for the Chincha Islands in command of a guano ship. He had afine crew, but his negro mate was his pet--on him he had for yearslavished his admiration and esteem. It was Capt. Ned's first voyage tothe Chinchas, but his fame had gone before him--the fame of being a manwho would fight at the dropping of a handkerchief, when imposed upon, andwould stand no nonsense. It was a fame well earned. Arrived in theislands, he found that the staple of conversation was the exploits of oneBill Noakes, a bully, the mate of a trading ship. This man had created asmall reign of terror there. At nine o'clock at night, Capt. Ned, allalone, was pacing his deck in the starlight. A form ascended the side, and approached him. Capt. Ned said:

"Who goes there?"

"I'm Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands. "

"What do you want aboard this ship?"

"I've heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better man than'tother--I'll know which, before I go ashore. "

"You've come to the right shop--I'm your man. I'll learn you to comeaboard this ship without an invite. "

He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded his face to apulp, and then threw him overboard. 

Noakes was not convinced. He returned the next night, got the pulprenewed, and went overboard head first, as before. 

He was satisfied. 

A week after this, while Noakes was carousing with a sailor crowd onshore, at noonday, Capt. Ned's colored mate came along, and Noakes triedto pick a quarrel with him. The negro evaded the trap, and tried to getaway. Noakes followed him up; the negro began to run; Noakes fired onhim with a revolver and killed him. Half a dozen sea-captains witnessedthe whole affair. Noakes retreated to the small after-cabin of his ship, with two other bullies, and gave out that death would be the portion ofany man that intruded there. There was no attempt made to follow thevillains; there was no disposition to do it, and indeed very littlethought of such an enterprise. There were no courts and no officers;there was no government; the islands belonged to Peru, and Peru was faraway; she had no official representative on the ground; and neither hadany other nation. 

However, Capt. Ned was not perplexing his head about such things. Theyconcerned him not. He was boiling with rage and furious for justice. At nine o'clock at night he loaded a double-barreled gun with slugs, fished out a pair of handcuffs, got a ship's lantern, summoned hisquartermaster, and went ashore. He said:

"Do you see that ship there at the dock?"

"Ay-ay, sir. "

"It's the Venus. "

"Ay-ay, sir. "

"You--you know me. "

"Ay-ay, sir. "

"Very well, then. Take the lantern. Carry it just under your chin. I'll walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your shoulder, p'intingforward--so. Keep your lantern well up so's I can see things ahead ofyou good. I'm going to march in on Noakes--and take him--and jug theother chaps. If you flinch--well, you know me. "

"Ay-ay, sir. "

In this order they filed aboard softly, arrived at Noakes's den, thequartermaster pushed the door open, and the lantern revealed the threedesperadoes sitting on the floor. Capt. Ned said:

"I'm Ned Blakely. I've got you under fire. Don't you move withoutorders--any of you. You two kneel down in the corner; faces to the wall--now. Bill Noakes, put these handcuffs on; now come up close. Quartermaster, fasten 'em. All right. Don't stir, sir. Quartermaster, put the key in the outside of the door. Now, men, I'm going to lock youtwo in; and if you try to burst through this door--well, you've heard ofme. Bill Noakes, fall in ahead, and march. All set. Quartermaster, lock the door. "

Noakes spent the night on board Blakely's ship, a prisoner under strictguard. Early in the morning Capt. Ned called in all the sea-captains inthe harbor and invited them, with nautical ceremony, to be present onboard his ship at nine o'clock to witness the hanging of Noakes at theyard-arm!

"What! The man has not been tried. "

"Of course he hasn't. But didn't he kill the nigger?"

"Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him without atrial?"

"Trial! What do I want to try him for, if he killed the nigger?"

"Oh, Capt. Ned, this will never do. Think how it will sound. "

"Sound be hanged! Didn't he kill the nigger?"

"Certainly, certainly, Capt. Ned, --nobody denies that, --but--"

"Then I'm going to hang him, that's all. Everybody I've talked to talksjust the same way you do. Everybody says he killed the nigger, everybodyknows he killed the nigger, and yet every lubber of you wants him triedfor it. I don't understand such bloody foolishness as that. Tried!Mind you, I don't object to trying him, if it's got to be done to givesatisfaction; and I'll be there, and chip in and help, too; but put itoff till afternoon--put it off till afternoon, for I'll have my handsmiddling full till after the burying--"

"Why, what do you mean? Are you going to hang him any how--and try himafterward?"

"Didn't I say I was going to hang him? I never saw such people as you. What's the difference? You ask a favor, and then you ain't satisfiedwhen you get it. Before or after's all one--you know how the trial willgo. He killed the nigger. Say--I must be going. If your mate wouldlike to come to the hanging, fetch him along. I like him. "

There was a stir in the camp. The captains came in a body and pleadedwith Capt. Ned not to do this rash thing. They promised that they wouldcreate a court composed of captains of the best character; they wouldempanel a jury; they would conduct everything in a way becoming theserious nature of the business in hand, and give the case an impartialhearing and the accused a fair trial. And they said it would be murder, and punishable by the American courts if he persisted and hung theaccused on his ship. They pleaded hard. Capt. Ned said:

"Gentlemen, I'm not stubborn and I'm not unreasonable. I'm alwayswilling to do just as near right as I can. How long will it take?"

"Probably only a little while. "

"And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you are done?"

"If he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without unnecessary delay. "

"If he's proven guilty. Great Neptune, ain't he guilty? This beats mytime. Why you all know he's guilty. "

But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothingunderhanded. Then he said:

"Well, all right. You go on and try him and I'll go down and overhaulhis conscience and prepare him to go--like enough he needs it, and Idon't want to send him off without a show for hereafter. "

This was another obstacle. They finally convinced him that it wasnecessary to have the accused in court. Then they said they would send aguard to bring him. 

"No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself--he don't get out of my hands. Besides, I've got to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway. "

The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and presentlyCapt. Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one hand and carrying aBible and a rope in the other. He seated himself by the side of hiscaptive and told the court to "up anchor and make sail. " Then he turneda searching eye on the jury, and detected Noakes's friends, the twobullies. 

He strode over and said to them confidentially:

"You're here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you hear?--orelse there'll be a double-barreled inquest here when this trial's off, and your remainders will go home in a couple of baskets. "

The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit--the verdict. "Guilty. "

Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said:

"Come along--you're my meat now, my lad, anyway. Gentlemen you've doneyourselves proud. I invite you all to come and see that I do it allstraight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here. "

The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do thehanging, and--

Capt. Ned's patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless. Thesubject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped. 

When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree andarranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened hisBible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read itthrough, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity. Then he said:

"Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and thelighter a man's manifest is, as far as sin's concerned, the better forhim. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you that'll bearinspection. You killed the nigger?"

No reply. A long pause. 

The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time, to impressthe effect. Then he talked an earnest, persuasive sermon to him, andended by repeating the question:

"Did you kill the nigger?"

No reply--other than a malignant scowl. The captain now read the firstand second chapters of Genesis, with deep feeling--paused a moment, closed the book reverently, and said with a perceptible savor ofsatisfaction:

"There. Four chapters. There's few that would have took the pains withyou that I have. "

Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast; stood by andtimed him half an hour with his watch, and then delivered the body to thecourt. A little after, as he stood contemplating the motionless figure, a doubt came into his face; evidently he felt a twinge of conscience--amisgiving--and he said with a sigh:

"Well, p'raps I ought to burnt him, maybe. But I was trying to do forthe best. "

When the history of this affair reached California (it was in the "earlydays") it made a deal of talk, but did not diminish the captain'spopularity in any degree. It increased it, indeed. California had apopulation then that "inflicted" justice after a fashion that wassimplicity and primitiveness itself, and could therefore admireappreciatively when the same fashion was followed elsewhere. 

CHAPTER LI. 

Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times. " Thesaloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, thegambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of highprosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter. Is it notso? A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that tradeis brisk and money plenty. Still, there is one other sign; it comeslast, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flushtimes" are at the flood. This is the birth of the "literary" paper. The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature, " made its appearance inVirginia. 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 whocould say happy things in a crisp, neat way. Once, while editor of theUnion, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack madeupon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance, seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz. : "THE LOGIC OFOUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD, "--and left it to the reader'smemory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "moredifferent" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure therest of the Scripture--"in that it passeth understanding. " He once saidof a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistenceexcept what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stoppedover with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in theirChurch service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us thisday our daily stranger!"

We expected great things of the Occidental. Of course it could not getalong without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl intothe work the full strength of the company. Mrs. F. Was an able romancistof the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whoseheroes are all dainty and all perfect. She wrote the opening chapter, and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but pearlsand poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity. She alsointroduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with theblonde. Mr. F. Followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set aboutgetting the Duke's estates into trouble, and a sparkling young lady ofhigh society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the appetiteof the blonde. Mr. D. , a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies, followed Mr. F. , the third week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucianwho transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave atdead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroinesin such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careersand breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel. He alsointroduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on asalary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoneddagger. He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placedhim in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission tocarry billet-doux to the Duke. 

About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with aliterary turn of mind--rather seedy he was, but very quiet andunassuming; almost diffident, indeed. He was so gentle, and his mannerswere so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that hemade friends of all who came in contact with him. He applied forliterary work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy andpracticed 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 whatdoes this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to hisquarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, andthat chaos in a condition of extravagant activity. The result may beguessed. He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty ofheroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; hedecided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whiskyinspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he thenlaunched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to thesociety-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to theblonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped thedesperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and theRoscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands;made the lawyer's upbraiding conscience drive him to drink, thence todelirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman's neck; let hiswidow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and consumption; caused theblonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on the bank with thecustomary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and hoping he would behappy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual strawberry mark onleft arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother and destroyed hislong-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary suicide of the Dukeand the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice; opened the earthand let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the accustomed smokeand thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the promise that inthe next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he would take up thesurviving character of the novel and tell what became of the devil!It read with singular smoothness, and with a "dead" earnestness that wasfunny enough to suffocate a body. But there was war when it came in. The other novelists were furious. The mild stranger, not yet more thanhalf sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of vituperation, meek andbewildered, looking from one to another of his assailants, and wonderingwhat he could have done to invoke such a storm. When a lull came atlast, he said his say gently and appealingly--said he did not rightlyremember what he had written, but was sure he had tried to do the best hecould, and knew his object had been to make the novel not only pleasantand plausible but instructive and----

The bombardment began again. The novelists assailed his ill-chosenadjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule. And so the siege went on. Every time the stranger tried to appease theenemy he only made matters worse. Finally he offered to rewrite thechapter. This arrested hostilities. The indignation gradually quieteddown, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got himto 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 awilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincingair of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work. He gotthe characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them throughthe most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk!But the chapter cannot be described. It was symmetrically crazy; it wasartistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully ascurious as the text. I remember one of the "situations, " and will offerit as an example of the whole. He altered the character of the brilliantlawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him fame andriches, and set his age at thirty-three years. Then he made the blondediscover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramaticmiscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, hesecretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady. Stung tothe quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them withtenfold power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal. Butthe 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 nextto the Duke the lawyer had their preference. Necessarily the blonde nowwent into a decline. The parents were alarmed. They pleaded with her tomarry the Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on. Then theylaid a plan. They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the endof that time she still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she mightmarry the lawyer with their full consent. The result was as they hadforeseen: gladness came again, and the flush of returning health. Thenthe parents took the next step in their scheme. They had the familyphysician recommend a long sea voyage and much land travel for thethorough restoration of the blonde's strength; and they invited the Duketo be of the party. They judged that the Duke's constant presence andthe lawyer's protracted absence would do the rest--for they did notinvite the lawyer. 

So they set sail in a steamer for America--and the third day out, whentheir sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their firstmeal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke andparty made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, andthe 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, onlythirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and allnight long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhumanexertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forthtwo hundred yards and bringing one each time--(the girl first). The Dukehad saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the sceneand sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation wasattended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his dutylike a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents andsome others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child felloverboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither andhelped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of itsmother's screams. Then he ran back--a few seconds too late--the blonde'sboat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to theother ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight ofeach other--drove them whither it would. 

When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde's ship was sevenhundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south ofthat port. The blonde's captain was bound on a whaling cruise in theNorth Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a portwithout orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer's captain was tocruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a portwithout orders. All the lawyer's money and baggage were in the blonde'sboat and went to the blonde's ship--so his captain made him work hispassage as a common sailor. When both ships had been cruising nearly ayear, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring'sStrait. The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyerhad been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reachedthe raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke shewas at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, andprepare 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--awedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all wouldbe over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where washer true love--and why, why did he not come and save her? At that momenthe was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring's Strait, fivethousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousandby the way of the Horn--that was the reason. He struck, but not withperfect aim--his foot slipped and he fell in the whale's mouth and wentdown his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came to himselfand heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in thewhale's roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who werehoisting blubber up a ship's side. He recognized the vessel, flewaboard, 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 theauthor endeavored to show that the whole thing was within thepossibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling fromBehring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in fivedays, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little LoveMe Long, " and considered that that established the fact that the thingcould be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a mancould live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could standit three days a lawyer could surely stand it five!

There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and thestranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at hishead. But he had already delayed things so much that there was not timefor some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came outwithout any novel in it. It was but a feeble, struggling, stupidjournal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence;at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, theWeekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant. 

An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of atelling new title, and Mr. F. Said that The Phenix would be just the namefor it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its deadashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but somelow-priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it theLazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scripturalmatters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicantthat begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, thename became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for goodand all. 

I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with aliterary 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 agreat grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of theissue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light. But timebrings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of atear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental. The idea (not thechief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by theold song called "The Raging Canal, " but I cannot remember now. I doremember, though, that at that time I thought my doggerel was one of theablest 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 parentsFar away to Albany. 

From out the clouds at noon that dayThere 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 onesI 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 mulesTore 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 shoreCrying, "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 outAcross the stormy scene:The tossing wake of billows aft, The bending forests green, The chickens sheltered under cartsIn 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 saidA 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 craftWould have swum in the saving lock!

Then gathered together the shipwrecked crewAnd took one last embrace, While sorrowful tears from despairing eyesRan down each hopeless face;And some did think of their little onesWhom 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 thereOn 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 lipsThe dauntless prophet say'th, When every soul about him seethA 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 nailsAnd 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 amazedThat 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 aboutthe silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if hechooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culminationof the "flush times. " Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to thatdegree that the place looked like a very hive--that is when one's visioncould pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generallyblowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you droveten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it asixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was auniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dustin it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by theassayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yetsome of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it wouldget in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales. 

Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial businessgoing on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains fromCalifornia (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagonsdrawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animalsstretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long route wastraceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhingserpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over thathundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price forall 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 wasusually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1, 500to $3, 000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and thefreight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter percent. Of its intrinsic value. 

So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25each. 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 aton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lotand take it off. However, these were extraordinary events. [Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo's agent, has handled all the bullion shippedthrough the Virginia office for many a month. To his memory--which isexcellent--we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company'sbusiness in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: FromJanuary 1st to April 1st, about $270, 000 worth of bullion passed throughthat office, during the next quarter, $570, 000; next quarter, $800, 000;next quarter, $956, 000; next quarter, $1, 275, 000; and for the quarterending on the 30th of last June, about $1, 600, 000. Thus in a year and ahalf, the Virginia office only shipped $5, 330, 000 in bullion. During theyear 1862 they shipped $2, 615, 000, so we perceive the average shipmentshave more than doubled in the last six months. This gives us room topromise for the Virginia office $500, 000 a month for the year 1863(though perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, we areunder 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 willallow 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 notbe before the year is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullionthis year will be about $30, 000, 000. Placing the number of mills in theTerritory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing$300, 000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run threehundred days in the year (which none of them more than do), this makestheir work average $1, 000 a day. Say the mills average twenty tons ofrock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have theactual work of our one hundred mills figured down "to a spot"--$1, 000 aday 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 ofordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twentypassengers at from $25 to $30 a head. With six stages going all thetime, Wells, Fargo and Co. 's Virginia City business was important andlucrative. 

All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple ofmiles, ran the great Comstock silver lode--a vein of ore from fifty toeighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock--a vein as wide as someof New York's streets. I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania acoal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample. 

Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under itwas another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a greatpopulation of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnelsand drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle oflights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbersthat held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were aslarge as a man's body, and the framework stretched upward so far that noeye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was likepeering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossalskeleton. Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, andhigher than any church spire in America. Imagine this statelylattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wallstreet, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading ontop of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinitysteeple. One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what thatforest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineriesbeyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrociousrates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mineand built up there. Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of thegreatest of those silver mines. The Spanish proverb says it requires agold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true. A beggar with a silvermine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell. 

I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould and Curry isonly one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet theGould and Curry's streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles inextent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as awhole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and apopulation of five or six thousand. In this present day some of thosepopulations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet underVirginia and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what thesuperintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph aswe strike a fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, athousand 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 tunnelabout half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker planof shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is liketumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach thebottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels wherethrongs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs fullof great lumps of stone--silver ore; you select choice specimens from themass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; youreflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feetbelow daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery"to "gallery, " up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; whenyour 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 daylightfeeling 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 ascendingcars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows ofbins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rowsof wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down thelong street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silvermills 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 haveforgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making thesilver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chaptersif so disposed. 

Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it isworth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observingthe crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain. I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it Iwill 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 toget one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather's oldram--but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jimwas drunk at the time--just comfortably and sociably drunk. They keptthis up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got tohaunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault withhis condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk. I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, suchanxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunkbefore. At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned thatthis time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could findno fault with it--he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk--not ahiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough toobscure his memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an emptypowder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to commandsilence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bareand his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwartminer of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim lightrevealed "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 morebullier 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 haveheard 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 ThankfulYates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with mygrandfather 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 thatwas ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. Shecould 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 abrowsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn'ttrot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, itwarn'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 meetingdrunk, 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 liton old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul--had aglass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, toreceive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn'tnoticing, 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 lookingas straight ahead as a spy-glass. 

'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, itwas so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but itwouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and lookso kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She wasalways dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the companyempty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when ithopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have tohunch 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 inagain--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 wrongside before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye wassky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever wayshe turned it it didn't match nohow. 

'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had aquilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed MissHiggins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter thanher other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn't abidecrutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she hadcompany 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 thathe judged would fit the can'idate; and if it was a slow customer and kindof uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in thecoffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, forabout three weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; andafter that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking termswith the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him. He got one of hisfeet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turnand got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make upwith him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; butold Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to bepowerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to payit back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffinafter he'd tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral hebursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to letup 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 hetook the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made the trip it wasmoney in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. Andby George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set upthe 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 thingacted. 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 mixedlicker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see. His second wifewas the widder Billings--she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deaconDunlap's first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary anddied 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 tofriends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, thatthey'd tried missionaries every other way and never could get any goodout of 'em--and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that thatman'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 thatpeople can't understand and don't see the reason of does good if you onlyhold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blankca'tridges, boys. That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns tohimself, actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took achance at the barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don't tellme it was an accident that he was biled. There ain't no such a thing asan 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 thethird story and broke the old man's back in two places. People said itwas an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn't knowwhat he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn'tbeen there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make mebelieve anything different from that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Whydidn't the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him acoming 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 mywords it was a put-up thing. Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle Lem'sdog--I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd--orruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged toparson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to theWestern Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of hissisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he gotnipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less thana quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had hisremains 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 theyhad to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn'tbury 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--them-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containingall 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 headnodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, andhe fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys' cheeks--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from thestart, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold. "I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reacheda certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him fromsetting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventurewhich he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention ofthe ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard himget, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from onething 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 isa 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 thecase with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmlessrace when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse thandogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldomthink of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They arequiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are asindustrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and alazy one does not exist. So long as a Chinaman has strength to use hishands he needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of wantof work, but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages tofind something to do. He is a great convenience to everybody--even tothe 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 lifeaway 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, newscomes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned aninoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessedthe shameful deed, no one interfered. 

There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamenon the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. Theywere penned into a "Chinese quarter"--a thing which they do notparticularly object to, as they are fond of herding together. Theirbuildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thicklytogether along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through. Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chiefemployment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send abill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere ceremony, forit does not enlighten the customer much. Their price for washing was$2. 50 per dozen--rather cheaper than white people could afford to washfor at that time. A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: "SeeYup, Washer and Ironer"; "Hong Wo, Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing. "The house servants, cooks, etc. , in California and Nevada, were chieflyChinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quickto learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught athing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman wereto see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle afire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniturefor fuel forever afterward. 

All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility--pity but allour petted voters could. In California they rent little patches ofground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops ofvegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to aChristian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way oranother. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that whitepeople throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them bymelting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure. In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white menhave abandoned as exhausted and worthless--and then the officers comedown on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which thelegislature has given the broad, general name of "foreign" mining tax, but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindlehas in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in thecourse of the same month--but the public treasury was no additionallyenriched by it, probably. 

Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence--they worship their departedancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, orany other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, inorder that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore thathuge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from itscentre to its circumference with graves--and inasmuch as every foot ofground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarmingpopulation suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield aharvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since thedeparted are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bearthat any indignity be offered the places where they sleep. Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition torailroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire withoutdisturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends. 

A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his bodylay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, afterdeath, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him. Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to havehis bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to aforeign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation thathis body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sellsa gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it isspecified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China incase of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one oranother of several great companies or organizations, and these companieskeep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodieshome when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest ofthese. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousandmembers on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where ithas a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regalstate in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and anumerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, withthe dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every shipthat sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinesecorpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingeniousrefinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neatunderhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There wasanother bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to bevaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctorwould defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, thelaw-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chineseimmigration. 

What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what theChinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may begathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reportingfor 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 Wangstreet. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliestway. 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 ofporcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neatsausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosento try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse, and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articlesof merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, andbeyond our ability to describe. 

His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former weresplit open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in thatshape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste whichkept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage. 

We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lotteryscheme--in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way invarious parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs alottery, and the balance of the tribe "buck" at it. "Tom, " who speaksfaultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the TerritorialEnterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago, said that "Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two treehundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight umseventy--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 thatthese lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that thefigures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeedin telling "t'other from which;" the manner of drawing is similar toours. 

Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans ofwhite feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled likeLimburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stoneunscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like theinner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presentedthe party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed withpeacocks' feathers. 

We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; ourcomrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for theirwant of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from ourhosts and "dickered" for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressedwith the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on amachine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the differentrows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered themwith incredible rapidity--in fact, he pushed them from place to place asfast 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 welltreated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californiangentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under anycircumstances, 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 aswell 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 reportthe proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races andpumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins andpotatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements ofthe legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fairto show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in--however, theterritorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum"). I wantedto see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted--I did notknow what I wanted. I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change, principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a StateConstitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed thatthese gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible amongthe population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killingthe 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 minescould not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there wasbut little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going tothink of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder). I believed that a State government would destroy the "flush times, " and Iwanted to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on handwould soon be worth $100, 000, and thought if they reached that before theConstitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself secure fromthe crash the change of government was going to bring. I considered$100, 000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a smallamount compared to what I had been expecting to return with. I feltrather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with thereflection that with such a sum I could not fall into want. About thistime a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, cametramping 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 brimlesshat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself, " as he pleasantlyremarked. 

He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars--twenty-six to take him to SanFrancisco, 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 laidup. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay backthat forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of theProdigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And sowould the banker. 

I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodmanwent away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyedme. 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 putit off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the"American Cyclopedia, " that steadfast friend of the editor, all over thisland. The fourth day I "fooled around" till midnight, and then fell backon the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain tillmidnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitterpersonalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored inanguish till far into the night and brought forth--nothing. The paperwent to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On theeighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands--mypersonalities had borne fruit. 

Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It iseasy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easyto clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out acorrespondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to writeeditorials. Subjects are the trouble--the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag--think, and worry and suffer--all theworld 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 towrite it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brainsdry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one lowspirited simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a dailypaper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four toeight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a library an editor'swork would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet people oftenmarvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc. , have been able toproduce so many books. If these authors had wrought as voluminously asnewspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed. How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhaustingconsumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a meremechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and yearafter year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two months' holiday inmidsummer, 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, howan editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from tento twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the yearround, is farther beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survivedmy week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaperthat 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 becomea reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranksafter being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and goabroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, myassociate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that twocitizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York andaid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and securedin a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered topay 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 abusedhim for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He saidit had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he hadrecommended 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 themen had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to taketo New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rockin Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had secured atract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My first ideawas 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 nomeans lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and would not bein Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that they hadrequested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that hewould either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time theygot back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, andthen fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them. 

It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobodyhad yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was whitefor the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Danwould bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay ordifficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles inthe air. It was the "blind lead" come again. 

Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attendingdepartures of old citizens, --for if you have only half a dozen friendsout there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem togo away neglected and unregretted--and Dan promised to keep strict watchfor the men that had the mine to sell. 

The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurredjust as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passengergot out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silverbricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkwardexpress employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbledand let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the groundand began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowdgathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamedlouder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and betweenthe gasps ejaculated "Brandy! for Heaven's sake, brandy!" They pouredhalf 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 hedeclined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along withhim, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would begrateful and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and wedrove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could notrefrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with acrushed foot. 

"Well, " said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't acent to my name. I was most perishing--and so, when that duffer droppedthat hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance. Got a cork leg, youknow!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and proved it. 

He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over histimely ingenuity. 

One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once heard agentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californianbar-room. He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink. " It was nothingbut a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthyof Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer andother matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price foranything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down ahalf dollar; calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes changeand lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest manfumbles at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holdsit; he contemplates it, and tries again; same result; observes thatpeople are interested in what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarteragain--blushes--puts his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sureof 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. Hesaid he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered thewrong 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; venturedto say "Be (hic) begone!" No effect. Then he approached warily, andadopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, butfailed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!--doggy, doggy, doggy!--poordoggy-dog!" Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names; tillmaster of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"--planted avindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, ofcourse. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in areflective 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 aman--('ic!)--if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him feed him onrocks; '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 himwhen they ain't noticin'!"

It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (itwas thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady'shandkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feetabove Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanentfarewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment oflife I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident whichthe dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened mustvividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summerafternoon 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 anymerchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chiefwonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were stilltalking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blacknessas of midnight. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, over-looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only thenearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintlydistinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they restedagainst. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain;and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen wavingand quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extremesummit! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing withhardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding worldof darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; butwith such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. Itwas the flag!--though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like asupernatural visitor of some kind--a mysterious messenger of goodtidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation's emblemtransfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled fromview; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broadpanorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of theflag--for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouchedby the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour theweird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still thethousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How thepeople were wrought up! The superstition grew apace that this was amystic courier come with great news from the war--the poetry of the ideaexcusing and commending it--and on it spread, from heart to heart, fromlip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse tohave out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo ofartillery!

And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn toofficial secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with asilence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all thespeculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seenthat day in the east--Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious atGettysburg!

But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealmentof eastern news till a day after its publication in the Californiapapers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted andre-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge ofpowder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and everyman that had any respect for himself would have got drunk, --as was thecustom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at thisdistant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunitywithout regret. What a time we might have had!

CHAPTER LVI. 

We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to theclouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remarkhere, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance togive it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimityand their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view--but onemust have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings;a Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sadpoverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonousfamily--redwood, pine, spruce, fir--and so, at a near view there is awearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down wardand 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; thereis a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; onewalks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines ofthe 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 topensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California, iswhat it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance, because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictivelystraight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, withuncomely spots of barren sand between. 

One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from "theStates" go into ecstasies over the loveliness of "ever-bloomingCalifornia. " And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. Butperhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, withthe memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summergreens of Californian "verdure, " stand astonished, and filled withworshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, thebrilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of formand species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision ofParadise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave andsombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expansesand her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comesvery 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 arenot, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautifulat first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is thehandmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that hasfour well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching ofits unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminatinggraces--and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and aradical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in itsturn, seems the loveliest. 

San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately andhandsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that thearchitecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up ofdecaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills towardthe outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindlyclimate is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personallyexperienced, 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 playfulearthquake is better contemplated at a dis----

However there are varying opinions about that. 

The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. Thethermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardlychanges at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer andWinter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, justthe same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than theother. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is aspleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and isdoubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there agood deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, ifyou choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there. It hasonly snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it onlyremained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set themto wondering what the feathery stuff was. 

During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright andcloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other fourmonths come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Becauseyou will require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty daysin hardly varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attendchurch, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether itis likely to rain or not--you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, itwill 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 neverlightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, everynight, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in yourheart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skiesonce, and make everything alive--you will wish the prisoned lightningswould cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blindingglare for one little instant. You would give anything to hear the oldfamiliar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody. And alongin the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead forrain--hail--snow--thunder and lightning--anything to break the monotony--you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better. And thechances 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 andgreen-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the yearround. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, mossroses--I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know thatwhile New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they onlykeep their hands off and let them grow. And I have heard that they havealso that rarest and most curious of all the flowers, the beautifulEspiritu 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 hasbeen conveyed to the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has beentaken 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, andbut this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travela hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer ofSacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in SanFrancisco--but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always andunvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelveyears, perhaps. Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easilybelieve--people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, andwear 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 isprobably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at onehundred and twenty in the shade there all the time--except when it variesand goes higher. It is a U. S. Military post, and its occupants get soused to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is atradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fiftydifferent scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamedto 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 doubtabout the truth of this statement--there can be no doubt about it. Ihave seen the place where that soldier used to board. In Sacramento itis fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberriesand ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, ateight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noonput on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen DonnerLake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feetdeep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frostycrags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. 

There is a transition for you! Where will you find another like it inthe Western hemisphere? And some of us have swept around snow-walledcurves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet abovethe sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer ofthe Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchantedatmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance--adreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming andstriking 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 themost lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfiguredby the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may seesuch disfigurements far and wide over California--and in some suchplaces, where only meadows and forests are visible--not a livingcreature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not asound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness--you will findit hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishinglittle city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper, fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourthof July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobaccosmoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, withtables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a Germanprincipality--streets crowded and rife with business--town lots worthfour hundred dollars a front foot--labor, laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing--a bloody inquest and a man forbreakfast every morning--everything that delights and adorns existence--all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous andpromising young city, --and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless, homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even thename of the place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, havetowns so absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions ofCalifornia. 

It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was acurious population. It was the only population of the kind that theworld has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that theworld will ever see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage oftwo hundred thousand young men--not simpering, dainty, kid-glovedweaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful ofpush and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes tomake up a peerless and magnificent manhood--the very pick and choice ofthe world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stoopingveterans, --none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed younggiants--the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallanthost that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth--orprematurely aged and decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--ordead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all--victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf--the noblest holocaustthat ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful tothink upon. 

It was a splendid population--for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brainedsloths staid at home--you never find that sort of people among pioneers--you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was thatpopulation that gave to California a name for getting up astoundingenterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daringand a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto thisday--and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles asusual, 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 minerraked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, andwhat with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't acent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their ownbacon 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 anyannoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirtor a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those peoplehated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity towardwhat they called a "biled shirt. "

It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! Men--only swarminghosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visibleanywhere!

In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of thatrare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in acertain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman wascome! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at thecamping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybodywent down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress wasdiscovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible. Theminers said:

"Fetch her out!"

He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed ofmoney, 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 rousingcheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touchedher dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened toa memory rather than a present reality--and then they collectedtwenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swungtheir hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied. 

Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talkedwith his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Franciscowas an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was onlytwo or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landingfrom the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading theparty with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just downfrom a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stoppedthe servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratificationand astonishment. Then he said, reverently:

"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sackout of his pocket and said to the servant:

"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it toyou to let me kiss the child!"

That anecdote is true. 

But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening tothat anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege ofkissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added yearshave far more than doubled the price. 

And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in theHumboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office singlefile of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack inthe cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation--a genuine, liveWoman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eyeto the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossingflap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other. 

And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, Ivoluntarily knock off a hundred from that. --M. T. ] years old, and hadn't atooth in her head. 

CHAPTER LVIII. 

For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase ofexistence--a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsibleto, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with themost cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush andalkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived atthe best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music whichoftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had thevulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worsethan 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 eveningdress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkad andschottisched with a step peculiar to myself--and the kangaroo. In aword, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars(prospectively, ) and likely to reach absolute affluence when thatsilver-mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spentmoney with a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with aninterested eye and looked to see what might happen in Nevada. 

Something very important happened. The property holders of Nevada votedagainst the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to losewere in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. Butafter all it did not immediately look like a disaster, thoughunquestionably it was one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and thenconcluded not to sell. Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad;bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the verywasherwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silverstocks, and every sun that rose in the morning went down on paupersenriched and rich men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was! Gouldand Curry soared to six thousand three hundred dollars a foot! And then--all of a sudden, out went the bottom and everything and everybody wentto ruin and destruction! The wreck was complete. 

The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was anearly beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth thepaper they were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerfulidiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myselfbeyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars whenI gathered together my various debts and paid them. I removed from thehotel to a very private boarding house. I took a reporter's berth andwent to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was buildingconfidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east. But I could nothear from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered. 

One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. Thenext day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my deskwhich had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed "Marshall"--theVirginia reporter--and contained a request that I should call at thehotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail forthe east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a bigmining speculation! I was hardly ever so sick in my life. I abusedmyself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter Iought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away fromthe 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 andarrived just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream andunder way. 

I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation wouldamount to nothing--poor comfort at best--and then went back to myslavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forgetall about it. 

A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which waslong called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguishedtill this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I wascoming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sightin that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behindme, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, allwas solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around aframe house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me thathere was an item!--no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could turnand seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground seemedto 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 watchand noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer shockcame, 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 inThird street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across thestreet, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here came thebuggy--overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it thevehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards ofstreet. 

One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-roundsand rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horseswere 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 sideof the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like animpaled madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye couldreach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one couldexecute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of peoplestretching 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 thatcame under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and wideover the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days. 

The destruction of property was trifling--the injury to it waswide-spread and somewhat serious. 

The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply endless. Gentlemen andladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till alate hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into the public streetsin all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all. One womanwho had been washing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by theankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent citizens who weresupposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons in theirshirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Dozens of men withnecks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyesor with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairystubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up ashort attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over hadnot the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up. 

A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothingon 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 ladiesin the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayedthemselves similarly. One man who had suffered considerably and growledaccordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and thenext instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with noother apology for clothing than--a bath-towel! The sufferer rosesuperior 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, wouldhave covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups ofeyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at longzig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet ofthe tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turnedaround in such a way as to completely stop the draft. 

A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle ofone street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge upthe meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rockingand quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shuttwice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like atooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she aroseand went out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs wasastonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if tostrike her with its club. They both reached the bottom of the flight atthe same time, --the woman insensible from the fright. Her child, bornsome little time afterward, was club-footed. However--on secondthought, --if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it athis own risk. 

The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of thechurches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing theservices. He glanced up, hesitated, and said:

"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there wasa 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 theearthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly agirl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspendedpictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of theearthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their facesto the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to thecourse or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed outof various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were madeso sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that theywere weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even daysafterward. --Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely. 

The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Franciscogossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and soI will diverge from the subject. 

By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of theEnterprise 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 amillion! It was the "blind lead" over again. 

Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing thesethings, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too trueto be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, andyet 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 tohave captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not thenreceived $50, 000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist ofuncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However, when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, andincontinently wilted and went to seed under it. ] Suffice it that I solost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings andfoolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietorstook me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself thedisgrace of a dismissal. 

CHAPTER LIX. 

For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb hadestablished a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, buthigh merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out tothree printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I wasemployed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal stilllanguished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and apleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensiveluxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired ofthe novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died apeaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention thesethings but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downsthat characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumbleinto such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country. 

For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for duringthat time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or paymy board. I became a very adept at "slinking. " I slunk from back streetto 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 everymouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, afterwanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, Islunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than theworms. During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver tencent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lestthe consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless, might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes I hadon; 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 beingentertained by him, ) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill forforty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal. " Thisman 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 percent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud init and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his mightfor any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, onaccount. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. Heimmediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigarsand 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 aworld 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 ina 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 hisvisit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, atlast 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, dimlylighted 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 withhim and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing towardeach other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling togetheroftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did notspeak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out ofboth of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we wouldidle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at homelights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very muchenjoying our dumb companionship. 

Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes wereidentical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, andthis was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losinghis berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from aboarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street;from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thenceto 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 ofgrain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there aschance 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, andcannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day. 

This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendidcreature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well readand a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master ofsatire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyesand changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to acrown. 

He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the mostpleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had beenwithout a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature tohim. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause wassufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he couldnot endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a backstreet, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that hecould trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the breaddoubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imaginewhat one might do if one only had it. 

Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--lookedagain--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to trythem, then looked again. It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspireddelusion--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 lookedaround--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where itwas before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending hedid not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury offinding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points; thensauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signsand 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. Heidled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners totake it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings--anempty queens-ware hogshead, --and employed himself till night trying tomake up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get themost for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant hecould get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or afish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with onefish-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 atleast--and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by theeighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than thatin the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and stillhis 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 starvingmen. 

He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocraticin the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, inbetter days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of therange of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the showwindow, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet andsome prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go inthere and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungryinterest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he wasconscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touchedhis arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a veryallegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hungwith rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleadedpiteously. This phantom said:

"Come with me--please. "

He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where thepassengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, putout his hands in a beseeching way, and said:

"Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placidand content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eatenyour sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, andthought 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'tknow what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on apoor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tastedfood for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Giveme the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything--twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please. It will be nothingto you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lickthe dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship thevery 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. Hereflected. 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, seatedhim 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 theman stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five centsa plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth twodollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destructionhad been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher wentdown to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, andthree 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 fromthe myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps. 

CHAPTER LX. 

By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of thedecayed 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 fiveother cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet aflourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied thisgrassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen yearsbefore, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeminghive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell intodecay, and in a few years wholly disappeared--streets, dwellings, shops, everything--and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smoothand desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The merehandful 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, andpass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest oflife. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceasedto correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes towardtheir early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world andbeen forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs andrailroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to theevents that stirred the globe's great populations, dead to the commoninterests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind. It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholyexile that fancy can imagine. --One of my associates in this locality, fortwo or three months, was a man who had had a university education; butnow for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded, rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings andsoliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin andGreek sentences--dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughtsof one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure; atired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; aman without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end. 

In that one little corner of California is found a species of miningwhich is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called "pocketmining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that littlecorner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, asin ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they arevery wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find oneyou reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twentypocket miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one ofthem personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about thehill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to makea snuff-box--his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time--andthen find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips ofhis shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in twohours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on adazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the nightwas 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 huntingpockets again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all thedifferent kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage ofvictims to the lunatic asylum. 

Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spadeful of earthfrom the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash itgradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment. Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being theheaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will findhalf a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You aredelighted. You move off to one side and wash another pan. If you findgold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan. If youfind no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you areon the right scent. 

You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up thehill--for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the richdeposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and beenwashed down the hill, spreading farther and farther apart as theywandered. And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth andnarrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows thatyou are outside the spread of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up thehill your lines have converged to a point--a single foot from that pointyou cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you arefeverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, youpay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a franticinterest--and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earthand quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays ofgold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all--$500. Sometimes the nestcontains $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 menexhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10, 000 to aparty who never got $300 out of it afterward. 

The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around thebushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the minerslong for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and washthem down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pocketswere found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5, 000 in itand the other $8, 000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had acent for about a year. 

In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village inthe afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part ofthe distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to reston a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteenyears they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By andby two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began toamuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with asledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich withgold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravatingcircumstance was that these "Greasers" knew that there must be more goldwhere that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill andfound what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced. It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120, 000. The twoAmerican miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and theytake turn about in getting up early in the morning to curse thoseMexicans--and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the nativeAmerican is gifted above the sons of men. 

I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because itis a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judgedthat it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attachesto novelty. 

CHAPTER LXI. 

One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years ofunrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits thatever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple DickBaker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch. --He was forty-six, gray as arat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed andclay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel everbrought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted. 

Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall tomourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where womenand children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for theymust love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity ofthat cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart thatthere was something human about it--may be even supernatural. 

I heard him talking about this animal once. He said:

"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, whichyou'd a took an interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had himhere eight year--and he was the remarkablest cat I ever see. He was alarge gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sensethan any man in this camp--'n' a power of dignity--he wouldn't let theGov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in hislife--'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see. You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for pocketmining, why he was just born for it. 

"He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hillsprospect'n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as five mile, if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining ground--whyyou never see anything like it. When we went to work, he'd scatter aglance around, 'n' if he didn't think much of the indications, he wouldgive a look as much as to say, 'Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me, ''n' without another word he'd hyste his nose into the air 'n' shove forhome. But if the ground suited him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark tillthe first pan was washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an'if there was about six or seven grains of gold he was satisfied--hedidn't want no better prospect 'n' that--'n' then he would lay down onour coats and snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, an'then get up 'n' superintend. He was nearly lightnin' on superintending. 

"Well, bye an' bye, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Every body wasinto it--every body was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt onthe hill side--every body was put'n' down a shaft instead of scrapin' thesurface. Noth'n' would do Jim, but we must tackle the ledges, too, 'n'so we did. We commenced put'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin towonder what in the Dickens it was all about. He hadn't ever seen anymining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you may say--hecouldn't come to a right understanding of it no way--it was too many forhim. He was down on it, too, you bet you--he was down on it powerful--'n' always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness out. Butthat cat, you know, was always agin new fangled arrangements--somehow henever could abide'em. You know how it is with old habits. But by an' byTom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he nevercould altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' neverpannin' out any thing. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the blues, 'n' feelkind o'scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n' disgusted--knowin' as he did, that thebills was runnin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent--he wouldcurl up on a gunny sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one daywhen the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that wehad to put in a blast--the first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartzwas born. An' then we lit the fuse 'n' clumb out 'n' got off 'bout fiftyyards--'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack. 

"In 'bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n'then everything let go with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton ofrocks 'n' dirt 'n' smoke 'n; splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a halfinto the air, an' by George, right in the dead centre of it was old TomQuartz a goin' end over end, an' a snortin' an' a sneez'n', an' a clawin'an' a reachin' for things like all possessed. But it warn't no use, youknow, it warn't no use. An' that was the last we see of him for abouttwo minutes 'n' a half, an' then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocksand rubbage, an' directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off f'mwhere we stood Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest lookin' beastyou ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, 'n' his tail was stoveup, 'n' his eye-winkers was swinged off, 'n' he was all blacked up withpowder an' smoke, an' all sloppy with mud 'n' slush f'm one end to theother. 

"Well sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize--we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself, 'n' then he looked at us--an' it was just exactly the same as if he had said--'Gents, may be youthink it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experienceof quartz minin', but I think different'--an' then he turned on his heel'n' marched off home without ever saying another word. 

"That was jest his style. An' may be you won't believe it, but afterthat you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as what he was. An' by an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd 'abeen astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd tetch off a blast 'n'the fuse'd begin to sizzle, he'd give a look as much as to say: 'Well, I'll have to git you to excuse me, ' an' it was surpris'n' the way he'dshin out of that hole 'n' go f'r a tree. Sagacity? It ain't no name forit. 'Twas inspiration!"

I said, "Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining wasremarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him ofit?"

"Cure him! No! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was always sot--and youmight a blowed him up as much as three million times 'n' you'd never abroken him of his cussed prejudice agin quartz mining. "

The affection and the pride that lit up Baker's face when he deliveredthis tribute to the firmness of his humble friend of other days, willalways be a vivid memory with me. 

At the end of two months we had never "struck" a pocket. We had pannedup and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field; we couldhave put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no way toget it to market. We got many good "prospects, " but when the gold gaveout in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we found onlyemptiness--the pocket that should have been there was as barren as ourown. --At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and struck out over thehills to try new localities. We prospected around Angel's Camp, inCalaveras county, during three weeks, but had no success. Then wewandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night, for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the lastrose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony withthe circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves. In accordance withthe custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our boardwelcome to tramping miners--they drifted along nearly every day, dumpedtheir paust shovels by the threshold and took "pot luck" with us--and nowon our own tramp we never found cold hospitality. 

Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give thereader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the YoSemite--but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him?I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and takehis blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else. 

Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely, and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In "placer diggings"the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggingsit is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in asolid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of someother kind of stone--and this is the most laborious and expensive of allthe different kinds of mining. "Prospecting" is hunting for a "placer";"indications" are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to thewashing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt;a "prospect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt--and its valuedetermines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it isworth while to tarry there or seek further. 

CHAPTER LXII. 

After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again, without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had becometoo mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were novacancies on the evening journals, ) I was created San Franciscocorrespondent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was outof debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence beinga daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it. I wanted another change. The vagabond instinct was strong upon me. Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one. It was to godown to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the SacramentoUnion, an excellent journal and liberal with employees. 

We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanaccalled it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromisebetween spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summeraltogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them a cheerful soulby the name of Williams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains goingdown to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the smokingroom day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky withoutbeing in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I thinkI ever saw. And then there was "the old Admiral--" a retired whaleman. He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder, and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he wastender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastatingtyphoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in thecentre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the"Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I thinkno friend of his would know which to choose--to be cursed by him orprayed for by a less efficient person. 

His Title of "Admiral" was more strictly "official" than any ever worn bya naval officer before or since, perhaps--for it was the voluntaryoffering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselveswithout any intermediate red tape--the people of the Sandwich Islands. It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, andappreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of thegenuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flagshould be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wavehim God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship wassignaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea, that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house andthe nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord. 

Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. When I knewhim on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed thesalt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and outof the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen morehad been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island passenger packetand had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knewhim for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as childrenregard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when theroaring Admiral was around. 

Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on acompetence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would"never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as helived. " And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, heconsidered he had kept it, and it would have been more than dangerous tosuggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven long seavoyages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired sincehe "retired, " was only keeping the general spirit of it and not thestrict letter. 

The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and allcases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straightin without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take thepart of the weaker side. --And this was the reason why he was always sureto be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal tooppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what hewould do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was whyharried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuaryunder his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the mostfrantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of theFlag; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweepof the Northern armies, he ran up the Confederate colors and from thattime till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist. 

He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising animosity than anyindividual I have ever met, of either sex; and he was never tired ofstorming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be waryand drink with moderation. And yet if any creature had been guilelessenough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of "straight" whiskeyduring our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexibleabstemiousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun himto the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath. Mind, I am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it didnot, in even the slightest degree. He was a capacious container, but hedid not hold enough for that. He took a level tumblerful of whisky everymorning before he put his clothes on--"to sweeten his bilgewater, " hesaid. --He took another after he got the most of his clothes on, "tosettle his mind and give him his bearings. " He then shaved, and put on aclean shirt; after which he recited the Lord's Prayer in a fervent, thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and suspended allconversation in the main cabin. Then, at this stage, being invariably"by the head, " or "by the stern, " or "listed to port or starboard, " hetook one more to "put him on an even keel so that he would mind hishellum and not miss stays and go about, every time he came up in thewind. "--And now, his state-room door swung open and the sun of hisbenignant face beamed redly out upon men and women and children, and heroared his "Shipmets a'hoy!" in a way that was calculated to wake thedead and precipitate the final resurrection; and forth he strode, apicture to look at and a presence to enforce attention. Stalwart andportly; not a gray hair; broadbrimmed slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery ofblue navy flannel--roomy and ample; a stately expanse of shirt-front anda liberal amount of black silk neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot; largechain and imposing seals impending from his fob; awe-inspiring feet, and"a hand like the hand of Providence, " as his whaling brethren expressedit; wrist-bands and sleeves pushed back half way to the elbow, out ofrespect for the warm weather, and exposing hairy arms, gaudy with red andblue anchors, ships, and goddesses of liberty tattooed in India ink. But these details were only secondary matters--his face was the lodestonethat chained the eye. It was a sultry disk, glowing determinedly outthrough a weather beaten mask of mahogany, and studded with warts, seamedwith scars, "blazed" all over with unfailing fresh slips of the razor;and with cheery eyes, under shaggy brows, contemplating the world fromover the back of a gnarled crag of a nose that loomed vast and lonely outof the undulating immensity that spread away from its foundations. At his heels frisked the darling of his bachelor estate, his terrier"Fan, " a creature no larger than a squirrel. The main part of his dailylife was occupied in looking after "Fan, " in a motherly way, anddoctoring her for a hundred ailments which existed only in hisimagination. 

The Admiral seldom read newspapers; and when he did he never believedanything they said. He read nothing, and believed in nothing, but "TheOld Guard, " a secession periodical published in New York. He carried adozen copies of it with him, always, and referred to them for allrequired information. If it was not there, he supplied it himself, outof a bountiful fancy, inventing history, names, dates, and every thingelse necessary to make his point good in an argument. Consequently hewas a formidable antagonist in a dispute. Whenever he swung clear of therecord and began to create history, the enemy was helpless and had tosurrender. Indeed, the enemy could not keep from betraying some littlespark of indignation at his manufactured history--and when it came toindignation, that was the Admiral's very "best hold. " He was alwaysready for a political argument, and if nobody started one he would do ithimself. With his third retort his temper would begin to rise, andwithin five minutes he would be blowing a gale, and within fifteen hissmoking-room audience would be utterly stormed away and the old man leftsolitary and alone, banging the table with his fist, kicking the chairs, and roaring a hurricane of profanity. It got so, after a while, thatwhenever the Admiral approached, with politics in his eye, the passengerswould drop out with quiet accord, afraid to meet him; and he would campon a deserted field. 

But he found his match at last, and before a full company. At one timeor another, everybody had entered the lists against him and been routed, except the quiet passenger Williams. He had never been able to get anexpression of opinion out of him on politics. But now, just as theAdmiral drew near the door and the company were about to slip out, Williams said:

"Admiral, are you certain about that circumstance concerning theclergymen you mentioned the other day?"--referring to a piece of theAdmiral's manufactured history. 

Every one was amazed at the man's rashness. The idea of deliberatelyinviting annihilation was a thing incomprehensible. The retreat came toa halt; then everybody sat down again wondering, to await the upshot ofit. The Admiral himself was as surprised as any one. He paused in thedoor, with his red handkerchief half raised to his sweating face, andcontemplated the daring reptile in the corner. 

"Certain of it? Am I certain of it? Do you think I've been lying aboutit? What do you take me for? Anybody that don't know that circumstance, don't know anything; a child ought to know it. Read up your history!Read it up-----, and don't come asking a man if he's certain about a bitof ABC stuff that the very southern niggers know all about. "

Here the Admiral's fires began to wax hot, the atmosphere thickened, thecoming earthquake rumbled, he began to thunder and lighten. Within threeminutes his volcano was in full irruption and he was discharging flamesand ashes of indignation, belching black volumes of foul history aloft, and vomiting red-hot torrents of profanity from his crater. MeantimeWilliams sat silent, and apparently deeply and earnestly interested inwhat the old man was saying. By and by, when the lull came, he said inthe most deferential way, and with the gratified air of a man who has hada mystery cleared up which had been puzzling him uncomfortably:

"Now I understand it. I always thought I knew that piece of history wellenough, but was still afraid to trust it, because there was not thatconvincing particularity about it that one likes to have in history; butwhen you mentioned every name, the other day, and every date, and everylittle circumstance, in their just order and sequence, I said to myself, this sounds something like--this is history--this is putting it in ashape that gives a man confidence; and I said to myself afterward, I willjust ask the Admiral if he is perfectly certain about the details, and ifhe is I will come out and thank him for clearing this matter up for me. And that is what I want to do now--for until you set that matter right itwas nothing but just a confusion in my mind, without head or tail to it. "

Nobody ever saw the Admiral look so mollified before, and so pleased. Nobody had ever received his bogus history as gospel before; itsgenuineness had always been called in question either by words or looks;but here was a man that not only swallowed it all down, but was gratefulfor the dose. He was taken a back; he hardly knew what to say; even hisprofanity failed him. Now, Williams continued, modestly and earnestly:

"But Admiral, in saying that this was the first stone thrown, and thatthis precipitated the war, you have overlooked a circumstance which youare perfectly familiar with, but which has escaped your memory. Now Igrant you that what you have stated is correct in every detail--to wit:that on the 16th of October, 1860, two Massachusetts clergymen, namedWaite and Granger, went in disguise to the house of John Moody, inRockport, at dead of night, and dragged forth two southern women andtheir two little children, and after tarring and feathering them conveyedthem to Boston and burned them alive in the State House square; and Ialso grant your proposition that this deed is what led to the secessionof South Carolina on the 20th of December following. Very well. " [Herethe company were pleasantly surprised to hear Williams proceed to comeback at the Admiral with his own invincible weapon--clean, pure, manufactured history, without a word of truth in it. ] "Very well, I say. But Admiral, why overlook the Willis and Morgan case in South Carolina?You are too well informed a man not to know all about that circumstance. Your arguments and your conversations have shown you to be intimatelyconversant with every detail of this national quarrel. You developmatters of history every day that show plainly that you are no smattererin it, content to nibble about the surface, but a man who has searchedthe depths and possessed yourself of everything that has a bearing uponthe great question. Therefore, let me just recall to your mind thatWillis and Morgan case--though I see by your face that the whole thing isalready passing through your memory at this moment. On the 12th ofAugust, 1860, two months before the Waite and Granger affair, two SouthCarolina clergymen, named John H. Morgan and Winthrop L. Willis, one aMethodist and the other an Old School Baptist, disguised themselves, andwent at midnight to the house of a planter named Thompson--Archibald F. Thompson, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson, --and took thence, atmidnight, his widowed aunt, (a Northern woman, ) and her adopted child, anorphan--named Mortimer Highie, afflicted with epilepsy and suffering atthe time from white swelling on one of his legs, and compelled to walk oncrutches in consequence; and the two ministers, in spite of the pleadingsof the victims, dragged them to the bush, tarred and feathered them, andafterward burned them at the stake in the city of Charleston. Youremember perfectly well what a stir it made; you remember perfectly wellthat even the Charleston Courier stigmatized the act as being unpleasant, of questionable propriety, and scarcely justifiable, and likewise that itwould not be matter of surprise if retaliation ensued. And you rememberalso, that this thing was the cause of the Massachusetts outrage. Who, indeed, were the two Massachusetts ministers? and who were the twoSouthern women they burned? I do not need to remind you, Admiral, withyour intimate knowledge of history, that Waite was the nephew of thewoman burned in Charleston; that Granger was her cousin in the seconddegree, and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife of John H. Morgan, and the still loved but divorced wife of Winthrop L. Willis. Now, Admiral, it is only fair that you should acknowledge that the firstprovocation came from the Southern preachers and that the Northern oneswere justified in retaliating. In your arguments you never yet haveshown the least disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywiseunfair, when authoritative history condemned your position, and thereforeI have no hesitation in asking you to take the original blame from theMassachusetts ministers, in this matter, and transfer it to the SouthCarolina clergymen where it justly belongs. "

The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken creature who swallowed hisfraudulent history as if it were the bread of life; basked in his furiousblasphemy as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm, even-handedjustice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him with inventedhistory so sugarcoated with flattery and deference that there was norejecting it, was "too many" for him. He stammered some awkward, profanesentences about the-----Willis and Morgan business having escaped hismemory, but that he "remembered it now, " and then, under pretence ofgiving Fan some medicine for an imaginary cough, drew out of the battleand went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter went up, andWilliams, the ship's benefactor was a hero. The news went about thevessel, champagne was ordered, and enthusiastic reception instituted inthe smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake hands with theconqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behindthe pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosenedthe smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail. 

The Admiral's power was broken. After that, if he began argument, somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and beginto quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in hisdulcet, insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof, to the old man's own excellent memory and to copies of "The Old Guard"known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completelyand leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to sodread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when hesaw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, andfrom that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship. 

CHAPTER LXIII. 

On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on thelonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After twothousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As weapproached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of theocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently thedetails of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line ofbeach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of thenatives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelveand fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streetsfrom twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of themstraight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew. 

The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I wasunaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts ofSan Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-coloredpebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid incement; also a great number of neat white cottages, with greenwindow-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables with ironfences around them, I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thicklyclad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose densefoliage the sun could scarcely penetrate; in place of the customarygeranium, calla lily, etc. , languishing in dust and general debility, Isaw luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after arain, and glowing with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors ofSan Francisco's pleasure grove, the "Willows, " I saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance--trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to standalone without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wigglingaround in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees ofdistortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of theirtransparent prison houses, I saw cats--Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyedcats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individualcats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments ofcats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all ofthem sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude ofpeople, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white clothshoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majorityof the people were almost as dark as negroes--women with comely features, fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in asingle bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined fromshoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircledwith wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty ofdark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a batteredstove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout;--certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but sunshine--a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed. 

In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners, I saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on theground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever orwhoever happened along; instead of wretched cobble-stone pavements, Iwalked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the seaby the absurd but persevering insect of that name, with a light layer oflava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomlessperdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater that standsdead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped and crowdedstreet-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as the wind, onfleet horses and astride, with gaudy riding-sashes, streaming likebanners behind them; instead of the combined stenches of Chinadom andBrannan street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance ofjessamine, oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry andbustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of aSummer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of theGolden City's skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the oneside a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad inrefreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys--and infront the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green nearthe shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashingagainst the reef, and further out the dead blue water of the deep sea, flecked with "white caps, " and in the far horizon a single, lonely sail--a mere accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm and a solitude thatwere without sound or limit. When the sun sunk down--the one intruderfrom other realms and persistent in suggestions of them--it was trancedluxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world butthese enchanted islands. 

It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream--till you got a bite. 

A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass andkill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol orbrandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future. Thencame an adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up theday's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with theother--a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemyapproaching, --a hairy tarantula on stilts--why not set the spittoon onhim? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminousidea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenadefor a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enoughto burn a hole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and aresolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled inunder the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefullyon the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse thetropics in occasional wakeful intervals. 

We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges, pine-apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas, melons, and a rare and curious luxury called the chirimoya, which isdeliciousness itself. Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarindswere made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, andit seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up mylips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take mysustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. 

They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave thema "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, itwill come off when the enamel does"--which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds--but they only eatthem once. 

CHAPTER LXIV. 

In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:

I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night--especially aboutsitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen ortwenty miles on horse-back since 5 P. M. And to tell the honest truth, Ihave a delicacy about sitting down at all. 

An excursion to Diamond Head and the King's Coacoanut Grove was plannedto-day--time, 4:30 P. M. --the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemenand three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself. I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and anotherwhaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips, ) and got so interested in itsexamination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing. Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and thatwoke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips wasalong with his "turn out, " as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cookbrought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain Cook came. Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the speed ofhis horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that we wereonly sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel--adistance which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it tooksome fearful driving. The Captain's whip came down fast, and the blowsstarted so much dust out of the horse's hide that during the last half ofthe journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocketcompass in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six yearsexperience, who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessedas if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said, "Port your helm--port, " from time to time, and "Hold her a little free--steady--so--so, " and "Luff--hard down to starboard!" and never oncelost his presence of mind or betrayed the least anxiety by voice ormanner. When we came to anchor at last, and Captain Phillips looked athis watch and said, "Sixteen minutes--I told you it was in her! that'sover three miles an hour!" I could see he felt entitled to a compliment, and so I said I had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I neverhad. 

The landlord of the American said the party had been gone nearly an hour, but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could overtakethem. I said, never mind--I preferred a safe horse to a fast one--Iwould like to have an excessively gentle horse--a horse with no spiritwhatever--a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes Iwas mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time tolabel him "This is a horse, " and so if the public took him for a sheep Icannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I couldsee that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung myhat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration frommy face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu" (pronouncedO-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whipnor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resistedargument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out ofthat gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards hecrossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen gates, and inthe meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cavethe top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration. He abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceablyenough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance, and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I said to my self, thiscreature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other--nohorse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing justfor nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy Ibecame, until the suspense became almost unbearable and I dismounted tosee if there was anything wild in his eye--for I had heard that the eyeof this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive. 

I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when Ifound that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into afaster walk, and then the villainy of his nature came out again. Hetried to climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I saw that Imust apply force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first aslast. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment hesaw it, he surrendered. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded mealternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake, and thesweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm. 

And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce aleft-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle. There is no seat to speak of about it--one might as well sit in a shovel--and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance. If I were towrite down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would makea large book, even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so farthrough, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimesboth feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and sometimesmy feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling about myshins. Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced uponthe balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of mynervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in amoment. But the subject is too exasperating to write about. 

A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feetand topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters ofcocoa-nuts--not more picturesque than a forest of collossal raggedparasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be. 

I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might bepoetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck bylightning. I think that describes it better than a picture--and yet, without any question, there is something fascinating about a cocoa-nuttree--and graceful, too. 

About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native grass, nestled sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass cabins are of agrayish color, are shaped much like our own cottages, only with higherand steeper roofs usually, and are made of some kind of weed stronglybound together in bundles. The roofs are very thick, and so are thewalls; the latter have square holes in them for windows. At a littledistance these cabins have a furry appearance, as if they might be madeof bear skins. They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King's flagwas flying from the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty wasprobably within. He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and passes histime there frequently, on sultry days "laying off. " The spot is called"The King's Grove. "

Near by is an interesting ruin--the meagre remains of an ancient heathentemple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those oldbygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to sinwhen sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection hadshown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up hisgrandmother as an atoning sacrifice--in those old days when the lucklesssinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodicalhappiness as long as his relations held out; long, long before themissionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make thempermanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful aplace heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and showedthe poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what unnecessarilyliberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him how, in hisignorance he had gone and fooled away all his kinfolks to no purpose;showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buyfood for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime and lollingin the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the bounty that nobodylabored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the multitudeswho have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knewthere was a hell!

This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was simply aroofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and seventy wide--nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much higher than a man'shead. They will last for ages no doubt, if left unmolested. Its threealtars and other sacred appurtenances have crumbled and passed away yearsago. It is said that in the old times thousands of human beings wereslaughtered here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If thesemute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures theycould describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massedforms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up bythe sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly trees; of the darkpyramid of Diamond Head standing sentinel over the uncanny scene, and thepeaceful moon looking down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack!

When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great--who was a sortof a Napoleon in military genius and uniform success--invaded this islandof Oahu three quarters of a century ago, and exterminated the army sentto oppose him, and took full and final possession of the country, hesearched out the dead body of the King of Oahu, and those of theprincipal chiefs, and impaled their heads on the walls of this temple. 

Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in its prime. The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a rod of iron; madethem gather all the provisions the masters needed; build all the housesand temples; stand all the expenses, of whatever kind; take kicks andcuffs for thanks; drag out lives well flavored with misery, and thensuffer death for trifling offences or yield up their lives on thesacrificial altars to purchase favors from the gods for their hardrulers. The missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up thetyrannous authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and the rightto enjoy whatever their hands and brains produce with equal laws for all, and punishment for all alike who transgress them. The contrast is sostrong--the benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is soprominent, so palpable and so unquestionable, that the frankestcompliment I can pay them, and the best, is simply to point to thecondition of the Sandwich Islanders of Captain Cook's time, and theircondition to-day. 

Their work speaks for itself. 

CHAPTER LXV. 

By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill whichcommanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain andvalley and ocean with a mellow radiance, and out of the shadows of thefoliage the distant lights of Honolulu glinted like an encampment offireflies. The air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. The haltwas brief. --Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped on, and Iclung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we came to a placewhere no grass grew--a wide expanse of deep sand. They said it was anold battle ground. All around everywhere, not three feet apart, thebleached bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We picked up a lotof them for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones and leg bones--of great chiefs, may be, who had fought savagely in that fearful battlein the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now stood--and worethe choicest of them out on Oahu afterward, trying to make him go. Allsorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a citizen said, irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of "skull-hunters"there lately--a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before. 

Nothing whatever is known about this place--its story is a secret thatwill never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of beingpossessed of its history. They say these bones were here when they werechildren. They were here when their grandfathers were children--but howthey came here, they can only conjecture. Many people believe this spotto be an ancient battle-ground, and it is usual to call it so; and theybelieve that these skeletons have lain for ages just where theirproprietors fell in the great fight. Other people believe thatKamehameha I. Fought his first battle here. On this point, I have hearda story, which may have been taken from one of the numerous books whichhave been written concerning these islands--I do not know where thenarrator got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely asubordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought alarge army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marchedagainst him, and so confident were they of success that they readilyacceded to a demand of their priests that they should draw a line wherethese bones now lie, and take an oath that, if forced to retreat at all, they would never retreat beyond this boundary. The priests told themthat death and everlasting punishment would overtake any who violated theoath, and the march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step bystep; the priests fought in the front rank and exhorted them both byvoice and inspiriting example to remember their oath--to die, if need be, but never cross the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained, but at last the chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear, andthe unlucky omen fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his back;with a triumphant shout the invaders pressed forward--the line wascrossed--the offended gods deserted the despairing army, and, acceptingthe doom their perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled overthe plain where Honolulu stands now--up the beautiful Nuuanu Valley--paused a moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either hand andthe frightful precipice of the Pari in front, and then were driven over--a sheer plunge of six hundred feet!

The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves' excellent history says theOahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted them, routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over theprecipice. He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book. 

Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over thebeautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to mythoughts. I said:

"What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! Howstrong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against theclear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over thelong, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain!How soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border thedream-haunted Mauoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy cloudstowers above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seemflocking in ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again--how thewails of the dying well up from the--"

At this point the horse called Oahu sat down in the sand. Sat down tolisten, I suppose. Never mind what he heard, I stopped apostrophisingand convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt of Court on thepart of a horse. I broke the back-bone of a Chief over his rump and setout to join the cavalcade again. 

Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o'clock at night, myself in the lead--for when my horse finally came to understand that hewas homeward bound and hadn't far to go, he turned his attention strictlyto business. 

This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is noregular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the Kingdomof Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy residents(who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the wretchedestdescription from the Kanakas. (i. E. Natives. ) Any horse you hire, eventhough it be from a white man, is not often of much account, because itwill be brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily beenleading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him(inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every daythemselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing byproxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. Theresult is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, orlook well or feel well, and so strangers go about the Islands mounted asI was to-day. 

In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you, because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewdunprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunkunlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle with yourproperty; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robberyon a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business, he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This traits ischaracteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He willovercharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night(anybody's--may be the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view), and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it isthe same animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it wasnot himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, "who went outin the country this morning. " They have always got a "brother" to shiftthe responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one day:

"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on yourcheek. "

The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!"

A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanakawarranting him to be in excellent condition. 

Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka toput these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectlywilling to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on theanimal, but Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smithnoticed that the Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left theoriginal blanket on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets, and so, to cut the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horsewent lame a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up someextraordinary capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but theblanket stuck fast to the horse--glued to a procession of raw places. The Kanaka's mysterious conduct stood explained. 

Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day ortwo ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. Hediscovered today that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. Hemeant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion thathe had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the attempthis attention was called to something else by his victimizer. 

One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informedthat when a certain Mr. L. , a visiting stranger, was here, he bought apair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They werein a little stable with a partition through the middle of it--one horsein each apartment. Mr. L. Examined one of them critically through awindow (the Kanaka's "brother" having gone to the country with the key), and then went around the house and examined the other through a window onthe other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen, andpaid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to joinhis brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L. Therewas only one "match" horse, and he had examined his starboard sidethrough one window and his port side through another! I decline tobelieve this story, but I give it because it is worth something as afanciful illustration of a fixed fact--namely, that the Kanakahorse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience. 

You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a goodenough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. Iestimate "Oahu" to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-fivecents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day beforeyesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day fortwo dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and livelylittle pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse onthe island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexicansaddle and bridle, for seventy dollars--a horse which is well and widelyknown, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition andeverlasting bottom. 

You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from SanFrancisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as muchhay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and isnot very good it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of alarge man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six footpole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streetsbetween the upright bales in search of customers. These hay bales, thuscarried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital 'H. '

The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horseabout a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week's hay for anothersong, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass inyour neighbor's broad front yard without a song at all--you do it atmidnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been at noexpense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they willcost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a horse, saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner willtake care of them at his own expense. 

It is time to close this day's record--bed time. As I prepare for sleep, a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock istoward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air. But thewords seem somewhat out of joint:

"Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo. "

Translated, that means "When we were marching through Georgia. "

CHAPTER LXVI. 

Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu underits most favorable auspices--that is, in the full glory of Saturdayafternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls bytwos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoonsand companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets astrideof fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits streaminglike banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy riders, in theirnatural home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful spectacle. The ridinghabit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern table clothbrilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparentlypassed between the limbs and each end thrown backward over the same, andfloating and flapping behind on both sides beyond the horse's tail like acouple of fancy flags; then, slipping the stirrup-irons between her toes, the girl throws her chest for ward, sits up like a Major General and goessweeping by like the wind. 

The girls put on all the finery they can on Saturday afternoon--fineblack silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put your eyes out; othersas white as snow; still others that discount the rainbow; and they weartheir hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats with fresh flowers, andencircle their dusky throats with home-made necklaces of the brilliantvermillion-tinted blossom of the ohia; and they fill the markets and theadjacent street with their bright presences, and smell like a rag factoryon fire with their offensive cocoanut oil. 

Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in theSouth Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like thecustomary mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine. Someare tattooed a dead blue color down to the upper lip--masked, as it were--leaving the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained fromthence down; some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on bothsides of the face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two incheswide, down the center--a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some withthe entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relievedonly by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running acrossthe face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, fromunder shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the moon. 

Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants, squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, andsurrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on theirhams, and who knows but they may be the old original "ham sandwiches?"The thought is pregnant with interest. ) The poi looks like common flourpaste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, andcapable of holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chiefarticle of food among the natives, and is prepared from the taro plant. 

The taro root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweetpotato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. Whenboiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakasbake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mixwater with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment, and then it is poi--and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tastelessbefore it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing ismore nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, afact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of theKanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi asthere is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into themess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out, thickly coated, just as it it were poulticed; the head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off andswallowed--the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort ofecstasy. Many a different finger goes into the same bowl and many adifferent kind of dirt and shade and quality of flavor is added to thevirtues of its contents. 

Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awaroot. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction ofthe people in former times by certain imported diseases would have beenfar greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely afancy. All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and hisvitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds ofdiseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but allare not willing to allow to the awa the virtues claimed for it. Thenatives manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in itseffects when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with dry, white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude. Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay aGovernment license of eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusiveright to sell awa root, it is said that he makes a small fortune everytwelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year forthe privilege of retailing whiskey, etc. , only make a bare living. 

We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish, and eats the article raw and alive! Let us change the subject. 

In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the nativepopulation of the town forsook their labors, and those of the surroundingcountry journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to stay indoors, for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and cavalieressesthat it was next to impossible to thread one's way through the cavalcadeswithout getting crippled. 

At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula--adance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion oflimb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity ofmovement and accuracy of "time. " It was performed by a circle of girlswith no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite varietyof motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their"time, " and in such perfect concert did they move that when they wereplaced in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads waved, swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted andundulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual; and itwas difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some exquisitepiece of mechanism. 

Of late years, however, Saturday has lost most of its quondam galafeatures. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much withlabor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a lawhere, and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, theygradually broke it up. The demoralizing hula hula was forbidden to beperformed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of fewspectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities andthe payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-daysable to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection ofthe art. 

The missionaries have christianized and educated all the natives. Theyall belong to the Church, and there is not one of them, above the age ofeight years, but can read and write with facility in the native tongue. It is the most universally educated race of people outside of China. They have any quantity of books, printed in the Kanaka language, and allthe natives are fond of reading. They are inveterate church-goers--nothing can keep them away. All this ameliorating cultivation has atlast built up in the native women a profound respect for chastity--inother people. Perhaps that is enough to say on that head. The nationalsin will die out when the race does, but perhaps not earlier. --Butdoubtless this purifying is not far off, when we reflect that contactwith civilization and the whites has reduced the native population fromfour hundred thousand (Captain Cook's estimate, ) to fifty-five thousandin something over eighty years!

Society is a queer medley in this notable missionary, whaling andgovernmental centre. If you get into conversation with a stranger andexperience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you aretreading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strikeout boldly and address him as "Captain. " Watch him narrowly, and if yousee by his countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him where hepreaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain ofa whaler. I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two captains andninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of thepopulation; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantileforeigners and their families, and the final fourth is made up of highofficers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about catsenough for three apiece all around. 

A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said:

"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, nodoubt?"

"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher. "

"Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season. Howmuch oil"--

"Oil? What do you take me for? I'm not a whaler. "

"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. 

"Major General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of theInterior, likely? Secretary of war? First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?Commissioner of the Royal"--

"Stuff! I'm no official. I'm not connected in any way with theGovernment. "

"Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief areyou? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did youcome from?"

"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrivedfrom America. "

"No? Not a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty'sGovernment! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is tooblissful to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honestcountenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapableof--of--anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excusethese tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment likethis, and"--

Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitiedthis poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. Ished a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took whatsmall change he had and "shoved". 

CHAPTER LXVII. 

I still quote from my journal:

I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men andsome thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles andMinisters (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left ofthe hall, with David Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince Williamat the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princelyrank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Underother monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracinggenealogies, but here the opposite is the case--the female line takesprecedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and Irecommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to knowwho a man's mother was, but, etc. , etc. ] and the Vice President (thelatter a white man, ) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it. The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years ofage or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coatand white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish uponthem. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man ofnoble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior underthat terrific fighter, Kamehameha I. , more than half a century ago. Aknowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has chargedat the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages morethan a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage;has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds ofhis race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, ata time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he hadnever heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretlypray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was acrime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for aplebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King--and now look at him; aneducated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegantgentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honoredguest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of anenlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his countryand in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting therepresiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom arewhite men--a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seeminglynatural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and hadnever been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this oldman's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!"

The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of theirbarbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referredto one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can gethold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over itand pray you to death. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merelybecause he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course ofdamaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enoughat a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpitefforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible. 

In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives wascustomary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women ofnoble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did notreside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with eachin turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. Whenthe sign was taken down, it meant "NEXT. "

In those days woman was rigidly taught to "know her place. " Her placewas to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, andcontent herself with what was left after her lord had finished hisdinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty ofdeath, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, underthe same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and otherchoice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herselfpretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seemto have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit inthe garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances. But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things. They liberated woman and made her the equal of man. 

The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their childrenalive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionariesinterfered in this matter too, and stopped it. 

To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they wantto, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanakatakes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him tohold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him. 

A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral. If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is onlynecessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will beon hand to the minute--at least his remains will. 

All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to theGreat Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption ofthe great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal oflatent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is commonreport that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christiangentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathersfor help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one ofhis christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall ofancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashionforbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torturehim. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refusedfood, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinnedagainst the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He wasproof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or twotook to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease. His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within theweek. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it isonly natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever onegoes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside, covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evilspirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days. 

In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comesupon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the seawithout any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in thematter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took uptheir residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their familiesfrequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was ratherindelicate. Finally the missionaries provided them with long, loosecalico robes, and that ended the difficulty--for the women would troopthrough the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms, march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!--The nativessoon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortlyapparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionariesimported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearingapparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not tocome to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but thenational spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors whowere not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers couldhardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst ofthe reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle witha world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and apair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man'sshirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, withsimply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and therest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; astately "buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong sidebefore--only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow, with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest ofhis person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simplygotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest. 

The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconsciousof any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other withhappy admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls weretaking note of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had alwayslived in a land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here wasthe evidence of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which thecongregation presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, thatthe missionaries found it difficult to keep to the text and go on withthe services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began ageneral swapping of garments in open meeting and produced someirresistibly grotesque effects in the course of re-dressing, there wasnothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction anddismiss the fantastic assemblage. 

In our country, children play "keep house;" and in the same high-soundingbut miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material ofslender territory and meagre population, play "empire. " There is hisroyal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty orthirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the"royal domain. " He lives in a two-story frame "palace. "

And there is the "royal family"--the customary hive of royal brothers, sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy, --all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles ashis or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of themcan carry their royal splendors far enough to ride in carriages, however;they sport the economical Kanaka horse or "hoof it" with the plebeians. 

Then there is his Excellency the "royal Chamberlain"--a sinecure, for hismajesty dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizingat Waikiki and then he requires no dressing. 

Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the HouseholdTroops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usuallyplaced under a corporal in other lands. 

Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting--highdignitaries with modest salaries and little to do. 

Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber--anoffice as easy as it is magnificent. 

Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade Americanfrom New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of"shyster" calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of the sceptreabove him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of his birth orglorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him--salary, $4, 000 ayear, vast consequence, and no perquisites. 

Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handlesa million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget"with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance, " suggests imposingschemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150, 000, ) and does it allfor $4, 000 a year and unimaginable glory. 

Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over theroyal armies--they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas, mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble witha foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an Americanwhose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:"Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry. " To say that he was proud ofthis distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has alsoin his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royalsalutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port. 

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the"royal fleet, " (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner. )

And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitaryof the "Established Church"--for when the American Presbyterianmissionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compactcondition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected thegrand dignity of an "Established (Episcopal) Church" over it, andimported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. Thechagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, tothis day, profanity not being admissible. 

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction. 

Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc. , and afterthem a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous forcomputation. 

Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and MinisterPlenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; herBritish Majesty's Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States;and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all withsounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state. 

Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose populationfalls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!

The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnatesthat a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than aWestern Congressman does in New York. 

And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined "courtcostume" of so "stunning" a nature that it would make the clown in acircus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiianofficial dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniformpeculiar to his office--no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tellwhich one is the "loudest. " The King had a "drawing-room" at statedintervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregatethere--weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smokedglass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-dayexhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates affordedthe missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing?Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!

CHAPTER LXVIII. 

While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King'ssister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royalcustom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watchedday and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a greatmultitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace groundswell crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with theirhowlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at othertimes) forbidden "hula-hula" by half-clad maidens to the music of songsof questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printedprogramme of the funeral procession interested me at the time; and afterwhat I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter of"playing empire, " I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest thereader:

 After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc. , and remembering the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to "Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured:

Undertaker. Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Maemae School. Honolulu Fire Department. Mechanics' Benefit Union. Attending Physicians. Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private Lands of Her late RoyalHighness. Governor of Oahu and Staff. Hulumanu (Military Company). Household Troops. The Prince of Hawaii's Own (Military Company). The King's household servants. Servants of Her late Royal Highness. Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea, Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands. The Clergy of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church. His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu. Her Majesty Queen Emma's Carriage. His Majesty's Staff. Carriage of Her late Royal Highness. Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen Dowager. The King's Chancellor. Cabinet Ministers. His Excellency the Minister Resident of the United States. H. B. M's Commissioner. H. B. M's Acting Commissioner. Judges of Supreme Court. Privy Councillors. Members of Legislative Assembly. Consular Corps. Circuit Judges. Clerks of Government Departments. Members of the Bar. Collector General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs. Marshal and Sheriffs of the different Islands. King's Yeomanry. Foreign Residents. Ahahui Kaahumanu. Hawaiian Population Generally. Hawaiian Cavalry. Police Force. 

I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at theroyal mausoleum:

 As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which the long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was borne through the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls, Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van Valkenburgh). Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a frame-work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay and fall to pieces, or, forestalling this, until another scion of royalty dies. At this point of the proceedings the multitude set up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again. 

The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry--the wailing beingpreviously silenced to permit of the guns being heard. His HighnessPrince William, in a showy military uniform (the "true prince, " this--scion of the house over-thrown by the present dynasty--he was formerlybetrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry her), stood guardand paced back and forth within the door. The privileged few whofollowed the coffin into the mausoleum remained sometime, but the Kingsoon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A strangercould have guessed his rank (although he was so simply andunpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by allpersons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his quietorders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by observinghow careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were to avoid"crowding" him (although there was room enough in the doorway for a wagonto pass, for that matter); how respectfully they edged out sideways, scraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a front viewof their persons to his Majesty, and never putting their hats on untilthey were well out of the royal presence. 

He was dressed entirely in black--dress-coat and silk hat--and lookedrather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him. On hisbreast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the lapel ofhis coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally gave anorder to the men who were erecting the kahilis [Ranks of long-handledmops made of gaudy feathers--sacred to royalty. They are stuck in theground around the tomb and left there. ] before the tomb. He had thegood taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinaryhempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortlybegan to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one manwho attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (theYankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape enough aroundhis hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as usual heneglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and exciting theadmiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of this modernRichelieu!

It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the PrincessVictoria with those of her noted ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror, whodied fifty years ago--in 1819, the year before the first missionariescame. 

 "On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced his religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not only great, but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of their old warrior King; they love his name; his deeds form their historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes the firmest pillar of the throne of his dynasty. 

 "In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when their national value and the estimation in which they were held are considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations. "

The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the nativehistorians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of itwhich does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country. In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet metwith. I will quote it entire:

 "When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable to cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for the god' (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover. ' The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the evening. They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu (pronounced tah-boo, ) means prohibition (we have borrowed it, ) or sacred. The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred to the purpose for which it was set apart. In the above case the victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice] in which destruction impended, was past. It is doubtful whether Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred for the King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor. This information was derived from Liholiho, his son. 

 "After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season, consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said to his son, Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home. ' When his devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god, suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might be removed. The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae. Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he was very low, returned him to his own house. In the evening he was carried to the eating house, where he took a little food in his mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup of water. The chiefs requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply, and was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near midnight--ten o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear. ' Then Kamehameha inquired, 'What do you say?' Kaikioewa repeated, 'Your counsels for us. '

 "He then said, 'Move on in my good way and--. ' He could proceed no further. The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed him. Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after which he was taken back to the house. About twelve he was carried once more to the house for eating, into which his head entered, while his body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining. It should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then in force. There were at that time six houses (huts) connected with an establishment--one was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals, the women might dwell in seclusion. 

 "The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this was at two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his name. As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house to order those in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus directed to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love to the King, by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained. The children also were sent away. Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and the chiefs had a consultation. One of them spoke thus: 'This is my thought--we will eat him raw. [This sounds suspicious, in view of the fact that all Sandwich Island historians, white and black, protest that cannibalism never existed in the islands. However, since they only proposed to "eat him raw" we "won't count that". But it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked him. --M. T. ] Kaahumanu (one of the dead King's widows) replied, 'Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with his successor. Our part in him--his breath--has departed; his remains will be disposed of by Liholiho. '

 "After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the new King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog was baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a god, the King at the same time repeating the customary prayers. 

 "Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said: 'I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is deposited in the grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning there will be a tabu, and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die. '

 "Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, 'Where shall be the residence of King Liholiho?' They replied, 'Where, indeed? You, of all men, ought to know. ' Then the priest observed, 'There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala. ' The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. The priest added, 'These are proper places for the King's residence; but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted. ' This was agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to the place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the chiefs who were carrying the King's body; he desired to die with him on account of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in making numerous attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio. 

 "The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement terminated. If the deceased were not a chief, the house only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body. Such were the laws on this subject. 

 "On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala, the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chief's death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also, put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places sticks with a strip of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun's brother, came in a state of intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends had been instrumental in the King's death. On this account they were subjected to abuse. "

You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen, Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" during the frightful orgies thatfollowed the King's death, in accordance with ancient custom, afterwardbecame a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend of themissionaries. 

Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives--hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs. 

Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for acertain number of days after the death of a royal personage; and then asaturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, butnot in the full horror of the reality. The people shaved their heads, knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised, mutilated or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other's huts, maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the moment, and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbridled licentiousness. 

And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation slowly emergedbewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare. They were not the salt of the earth, those "gentle children of the sun. "

The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which cannot becomforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die, a couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafeningwailing night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt thisarrangement has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointedtime. 

They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken way when itsoccupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome. A very little of it would go a great way with most of us. 

CHAPTER LXIX. 

Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant, ) to visit the greatvolcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that islandabove the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certainSaturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang. 

The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide asone. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of theinter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but littlesmaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had aman-of-war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under astrong breeze. When the Captain and my comrade (a Mr. Billings), myselfand four other persons were all assembled on the little after portion ofthe deck which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full--there wasnot room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twiceas large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customarydogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuriesand baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the natives alllay down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked, conversed, and spit on each other, and were truly sociable. 

The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and asdark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side--I mean two bunks. A small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner, stoodagainst the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest whale oillantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostly shapes. The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat init, perhaps, but not a long cat. The hold forward of the bulkhead hadbut little freight in it, and from morning till night a portly oldrooster, with a voice like Baalam's ass, and the same disposition to useit, strutted up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. Heusually took dinner at six o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted tomeditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed a good part of the night. He got hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personalconsideration to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors indefiance of threatened diphtheria. 

Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a sourceof genuine aggravation and annoyance. It was worse than useless to shoutat him or apply offensive epithets to him--he only took these things forapplause, and strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, duringthe day, I threw potatoes at him through an aperture in the bulkhead, buthe only dodged and went on crowing. 

The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lampswinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors ofbilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presentlysomething galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed oneon deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillowshowed me repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches aslarge as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, andappeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard thatthese reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toenails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I laydown on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterwarda procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a fewmoments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleaswere throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they struck. I was beginning to feel reallyannoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck. 

The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-islandschooner life. There is no such thing as keeping a vessel in elegantcondition, when she carries molasses and Kanakas. 

It was compensation for my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon sobeautiful a scene as met my eye--to step suddenly out of the sepulchralgloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon--in thecentre, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver--to see thebroad sails straining in the gale, the ship heeled over on her side, theangry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of spraydashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks; to brace myselfand hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with hat jammeddown and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilarationthat thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knowsthat every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through thewaves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, noobscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; everypuppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; howeverminute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline; and the shadow ofthe broad mainsail lay black as a pall upon the deck, leaving Billings'swhite upturned face glorified and his body in a total eclipse. Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its highmountains were in view--Mauna Loa and Hualaiai. 

The latter is an imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high isseldom mentioned or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousandfeet high. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summitlike a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate wewere in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets andfurs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle toquench his thirst he could look down the long sweep of its sides and seespots where plants are growing that grow only where the bitter cold ofWinter prevails; lower down he could see sections devoted to productionthat thrive in the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of themountain he could see the home of the tufted cocoa-palms and otherspecies of vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternalSummer. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance ofthe eye, and that glance would only pass over a distance of four or fivemiles as the bird flies!

By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing to ridehorseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, andrejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is wellworth taking. The trail passes along on high ground--say a thousand feetabove sea level--and usually about a mile distant from the ocean, whichis always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried inthe forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a dense growthof trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun and sea andeverything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisiblesinging birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant toride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon theever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its manytints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweepinggently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, atintervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depthsof this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under theinspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage. We rode through one orange grove that had ten thousand tree in it!They were all laden with fruit. 

At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor. This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands. It takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter. It needsfrost, they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have a goodopportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it. The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had beenplanted and replanted sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietorof the orchard attributed his-success. 

We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive. The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [NOTE. --The first crop iscalled "plant cane;" subsequent crops which spring from the originalroots, without replanting, are called "rattoons. "] Almost everywhere onthe island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoonsand plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels, no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four monthsafterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is two tonsof sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these islands, butwould be astounding for Louisiana and most other sugar growing countries. The plantations in Kona being on pretty high ground--up among the lightand frequent rains--no irrigation whatever is required. 

CHAPTER LXX. 

We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves andrefresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemenpresent; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent lookin his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed againinto the meditations which our coming had interrupted. The planterswhispered us not to mind him--crazy. They said he was in the Islands forhis health; was a preacher; his home, Michigan. They said that if hewoke up presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he hadsome time held with Mr. Greeley about a trifle of some kind, we musthumor him and listen with interest; and we must humor his fancy that thiscorrespondence was the talk of the world. 

It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness hadnothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if withperplexing thought and anxiety of mind. He sat a long time, looking atthe floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his headacquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest. He was lost in his thought, or in his memories. We continued our talk with the planters, branchingfrom subject to subject. But at last the word "circumstance, " casuallydropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention andbrought an eager look into his countenance. He faced about in his chairand said:

"Circumstance? What circumstance? Ah, I know--I know too well. So youhave heard of it too. " [With a sigh. ] "Well, no matter--all the worldhas heard of it. All the world. The whole world. It is a large world, too, for a thing to travel so far in--now isn't it? Yes, yes--theGreeley correspondence with Erickson has created the saddest andbitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean--and still they keep itup! It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice! I was sosorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful warover there in Italy. It was little comfort to me, after so muchbloodshed, to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquishedwith Greeley. --It is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley isresponsible for the battle of Sadowa, and not me. 

"Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it--she saidthat as much as she was opposed to Greeley and the spirit he showed inthe correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen forhundreds of dollars. I can show you her letter, if you would like to seeit. But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappycorrespondence, you cannot know the straight of it till you hear it frommy lips. It has always been garbled in the journals, and even inhistory. Yes, even in history--think of it! Let me--please let me, giveyou the matter, exactly as it occurred. I truly will not abuse yourconfidence. "

Then he leaned forward, all interest, all earnestness, and told hisstory--and told it appealingly, too, and yet in the simplest and mostunpretentious way; indeed, in such a way as to suggest to one, all thetime, that this was a faithful, honorable witness, giving evidence in thesacred interest of justice, and under oath. He said:

"Mrs. Beazeley--Mrs. Jackson Beazeley, widow, of the village ofCampbellton, Kansas, --wrote me about a matter which was near her heart--a matter which many might think trivial, but to her it was a thing ofdeep concern. I was living in Michigan, then--serving in the ministry. She was, and is, an estimable woman--a woman to whom poverty and hardshiphave proven incentives to industry, in place of discouragements. Her only treasure was her son William, a youth just verging upon manhood;religious, amiable, and sincerely attached to agriculture. He was thewidow's comfort and her pride. And so, moved by her love for him, shewrote me about a matter, as I have said before, which lay near her heart--because it lay near her boy's. She desired me to confer withMr. Greeley about turnips. Turnips were the dream of her child's youngambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivolousamusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given themfor useful preparation, this boy was patiently enriching his mind withinformation concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward theturnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip withoutemotion; he could not speak of it calmly; he could not contemplate itwithout exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All thepoetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the graciousvegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and whenthe curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his booksand garnered statistics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he satand talked hours together with his mother about turnips. When companycame, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else andconverse with them all the day long of his great joy in the turnip. 

"And yet, was this joy rounded and complete? Was there no secret alloy ofunhappiness in it? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at hisheart; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor--viz: hecould not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by; the bloomforsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye; sighings andabstraction usurped the place of smiles and cheerful converse. But awatchful eye noted these things and in time a motherly sympathy unsealedthe secret. Hence the letter to me. She pleaded for attention--she saidher boy was dying by inches. 

"I was a stranger to Mr. Greeley, but what of that? The matter wasurgent. I wrote and begged him to solve the difficult problem ifpossible and save the student's life. My interest grew, until it partookof the anxiety of the mother. I waited in much suspense. --At last theanswer came. 

"I found that I could not read it readily, the handwriting beingunfamiliar and my emotions somewhat wrought up. It seemed to refer inpart to the boy's case, but chiefly to other and irrelevant matters--suchas paving-stones, electricity, oysters, and something which I took to be'absolution' or 'agrarianism, ' I could not be certain which; still, theseappeared to be simply casual mentions, nothing more; friendly in spirit, without doubt, but lacking the connection or coherence necessary to makethem useful. --I judged that my understanding was affected by my feelings, and so laid the letter away till morning. 

"In the morning I read it again, but with difficulty and uncertaintystill, for I had lost some little rest and my mental vision seemedclouded. The note was more connected, now, but did not meet theemergency it was expected to meet. It was too discursive. It appearedto read as follows, though I was not certain of some of the words:

 "Polygamy dissembles majesty; extracts redeem polarity; causes hitherto exist. Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and condemn. Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall allay? We fear not. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ. '

"But there did not seem to be a word about turnips. There seemed to beno suggestion as to how they might be made to grow like vines. There wasnot even a reference to the Beazeleys. I slept upon the matter; I ate nosupper, neither any breakfast next morning. So I resumed my work with abrain refreshed, and was very hopeful. Now the letter took a differentaspect-all save the signature, which latter I judged to be only aharmless affectation of Hebrew. The epistle was necessarily from Mr. Greeley, for it bore the printed heading of The Tribune, and I hadwritten to no one else there. The letter, I say, had taken a differentaspect, but still its language was eccentric and avoided the issue. Itnow appeared to say:

 "Bolivia extemporizes mackerel; borax esteems polygamy; sausages wither in the east. Creation perdu, is done; for woes inherent one can damn. Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall allay. My beer's out. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ. '

"I was evidently overworked. My comprehension was impaired. Therefore Igave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task greatlyrefreshed. The letter now took this form:

 "Poultices do sometimes choke swine; tulips reduce posterity; causes leather to resist. Our notions empower wisdom, her let's afford while we can. Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we'll wean him from his filly. We feel hot. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ. '

"I was still not satisfied. These generalities did not meet thequestion. They were crisp, and vigorous, and delivered with a confidencethat almost compelled conviction; but at such a time as this, with ahuman life at stake, they seemed inappropriate, worldly, and in badtaste. At any other time I would have been not only glad, but proud, toreceive from a man like Mr. Greeley a letter of this kind, and would havestudied it earnestly and tried to improve myself all I could; but now, with that poor boy in his far home languishing for relief, I had no heartfor learning. 

"Three days passed by, and I read the note again. Again its tenor hadchanged. It now appeared to say:

 "Potations do sometimes wake wines; turnips restrain passion; causes necessary to state. Infest the poor widow; her lord's effects will be void. But dirt, bathing, etc. , etc. , followed unfairly, will worm him from his folly--so swear not. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ. '

"This was more like it. But I was unable to proceed. I was too muchworn. The word 'turnips' brought temporary joy and encouragement, but mystrength was so much impaired, and the delay might be so perilous for theboy, that I relinquished the idea of pursuing the translation further, and resolved to do what I ought to have done at first. I sat down andwrote Mr. Greeley as follows:

 "DEAR SIR: I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note. It cannot be possible, Sir, that 'turnips restrain passion'--at least the study or contemplation of turnips cannot--for it is this very employment that has scorched our poor friend's mind and sapped his bodily strength. --But if they do restrain it, will you bear with us a little further and explain how they should be prepared? I observe that you say 'causes necessary to state, ' but you have omitted to state them. 

 "Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested motives in this matter--to call it by no harsher term. But I assure you, dear sir, that if I seem to be 'infesting the widow, ' it is all seeming, and void of reality. It is from no seeking of mine that I am in this position. She asked me, herself, to write you. I never have infested her--indeed I scarcely know her. I do not infest anybody. I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right as I can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out insinuations. As for 'her lord and his effects, ' they are of no interest to me. I trust I have effects enough of my own--shall endeavor to get along with them, at any rate, and not go mousing around to get hold of somebody's that are 'void. ' But do you not see?--this woman is a widow--she has no 'lord. ' He is dead--or pretended to be, when they buried him. Therefore, no amount of 'dirt, bathing, ' etc. , etc. , howsoever 'unfairly followed' will be likely to 'worm him from his folly'--if being dead and a ghost is 'folly. ' Your closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled for; and if report says true you might have applied it to yourself, sir, with more point and less impropriety. Very Truly Yours, SIMON ERICKSON. 

"In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did what would have saved aworld of trouble, and much mental and bodily suffering andmisunderstanding, if he had done it sooner. To wit, he sent anintelligible rescript or translation of his original note, made in aplain hand by his clerk. Then the mystery cleared, and I saw that hisheart had been right, all the time. I will recite the note in itsclarified form:

 [Translation. ] 'Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips remain passive: cause unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will be vain. But diet, bathing, etc. Etc. , followed uniformly, will wean him from his folly--so fear not. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. '

"But alas, it was too late, gentlemen--too late. The criminal delay haddone its work--young Beazely was no more. His spirit had taken itsflight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed away, all desiresgratified, all ambitions realized. Poor lad, they laid him to his restwith a turnip in each hand. "

So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, andabstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did notsay what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I forgot to ask. 

CHAPTER LXXI. 

At four o'clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain ofdreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant landjourney. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fireafter another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the islandstructure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves;it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place; they would not holdwater--you would not find any for them to hold, for that matter. Consequently, the planters depend upon cisterns. 

The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none nowliving who witnessed it. In one place it enclosed and burned down agrove of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunksstood are still visible; their sides retain the impression of the bark;the trees fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged, left in it the perfect counterpart of every knot and branch and leaf, and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze uponand wonder at. 

There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts atthat time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava asthe Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it isso, because such things are so interesting; but so it is. They probablywent away. They went away early, perhaps. However, they had theirmerits; the Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas showed thesounder judgment. 

Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar toevery school-boy in the wide world--Kealakekua Bay--the place whereCaptain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the natives, nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was flaming upon it, aSummer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificentrainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of theseand for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discoverythe Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you atevery turn; they are common in all the islands; they are visible everyday, and frequently at night also--not the silvery bow we see once in anage in the States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautifulcolors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a fewnights ago. What the sailors call "raindogs"--little patches of rainbow--are often seen drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, likestained cathedral windows. 

Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail-shell, winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide fromshore to shore. It is bounded on one side--where the murder was done--bya little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove and some ruinedhouses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end andthree or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain andbounds the inner extremity of it. From this wall the place takes itsname, Kealakekua, which in the native tongue signifies "The Pathway ofthe Gods. " They say, (and still believe, in spite of their liberaleducation in Christianity), that the great god Lono, who used to liveupon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when urgent businessconnected with heavenly affairs called him down to the seashore in ahurry. 

As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, cleanstems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through thebars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on theflat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt whichtook away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed manstruggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages--the menin the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismaytoward the shore--the--but I discovered that I could not do it. 

It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that thedistant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned tothe cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, and wish the ship would make the land--for we had not eaten much for tenhours and were viciously hungry. 

Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook'sassassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide. Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received andwelcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with allmanner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult andill-treatment. Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanishedand lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake ofthe limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance atthis spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteenthousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthlyorigin with a groan. It was his death-warrant. Instantly a shout wentup: "He groans!--he is not a god!" So they closed in upon him anddispatched him. 

His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds ofit which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in anative hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistookit for the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very oldman, and died in Honolulu a few years ago. Some of Cook's bones wererecovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships. 

Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. They treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his meninflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killedat least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation. 

Near the shore we found "Cook's Monument"--only a cocoanut stump, fourfeet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt. It had lava boulderspiled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it wasentirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored sheetsof copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with. Each sheet had arude inscription scratched upon it--with a nail, apparently--and in everycase the execution was wretched. Most of these merely recorded thevisits of British naval commanders to the spot, but one of them bore thislegend:

 "Near this spot fell CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, The Distinguished Circumnavigator, Who Discovered these Islands A. D. 1778. "

After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, openedfire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon ballscut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump standing. It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy twilight. But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up on the mountainside we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen, built oflava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh was stripped fromhis bones and burned; but this is not properly a monument since it waserected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to thecircumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him. A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorableoccurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have longago so defaced it as to render it illegible. 

Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon workedherself into the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, andin a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone. The moon wasbeaming tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched uponthe deck sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams thatare only vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent. 

CHAPTER LXXII. 

In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of thelast god Lono. The high chief cook of this temple--the priest whopresided over it and roasted the human sacrifices--was uncle to Obookia, and at one time that youth was an apprentice-priest under him. Obookiawas a young native of fine mind, who, together with three other nativeboys, was taken to New England by the captain of a whaleship during thereign of Kamehameha I, and they were the means of attracting theattention of the religious world to their country. This resulted in thesending of missionaries there. And this Obookia was the very samesensitive savage who sat down on the church steps and wept because hispeople did not have the Bible. That incident has been very elaboratelypainted in many a charming Sunday School book--aye, and told soplaintively and so tenderly that I have cried over it in Sunday Schoolmyself, on general principles, although at a time when I did not knowmuch and could not understand why the people of the Sandwich Islandsneeded to worry so much about it as long as they did not know there was aBible at all. 

Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have returned to hisnative land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other nativeyouths made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third, William Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the goldexcitement broke out in California he journeyed thither and went tomining, although he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, butthe failure of Page, Bacon & Co. Relieved him of six thousand dollars, and then, to all intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt in his old ageand he resumed service in the pulpit again. He died in Honolulu in 1864. 

Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea tothe mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times--so sacredthat if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it wasjudicious for him to make his will, because his time had come. He mightgo around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkledwith pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out oflogs of wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain--and withfine sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain sidethat if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would belikely to get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen beforeyou would have to hoist your umbrella. 

And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a singlenight, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly handsof dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning anoiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far upthe mountain side at dead of night--flitting hither and thither andbearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers--appearingand disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and fadedaway again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dreadstructure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night. 

At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea, and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen. I begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfiedthat they were running some risk. But they were not afraid, andpresently went on with their sport. They were finished swimmers anddivers, and enjoyed themselves to the last degree. 

They swam races, splashed and ducked and tumbled each other about, andfilled the air with their laughter. It is said that the first thing anIslander learns is how to swim; learning to walk being a matter ofsmaller consequence, comes afterward. One hears tales of native men andwomen swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea--more miles, indeed, than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diverwho went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil!I think he swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me. However I will not urge this point. 

I have spoken, several times, of the god Lono--I may as well furnish twoor three sentences concerning him. 

The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented stafftwelve feet long. Tradition says he was a favorite god on the Island ofHawaii--a great king who had been deified for meritorious services--justour own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we wouldhave made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angrymoment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Aiii. Remorse ofconscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singularspectacle of a god traveling "on the shoulder;" for in his gnawing griefhe wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling with all whomhe met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as itmust necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent afrail human opponent "to grass" he never came back any more. Therefore, he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they should be heldin his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands on a three-cornered raft, stating that he would return some day--and that was the last of Lono. He was never seen any more; his raft got swamped, perhaps. But thepeople always expected his return, and thus they were easily led toaccept Captain Cook as the restored god. 

Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death;but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if hewas a god. 

Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic interest--theplace where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of course wevisited it, and came away as wise as most people do who go and gaze uponsuch mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood. 

While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, theidolatrous customs which had obtained in the island, as far back astradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I. , was dead, and his son, Liholiho, the new King was a free liver, a roystering, dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. Hisassistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud andhigh-spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges ofher sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes. So the case stood. Liholiho had half a mind to put his foot down, Kaahumahu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whiskey didthe rest. It was probably the rest. It was probably the first timewhiskey ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholihocame up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast; thedetermined Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, andthen, while all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moveddeliberately forward and sat down with the women!

They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled!Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still helived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld!Then conviction came like a revelation--the superstitions of a hundredgenerations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout wentup, "the tabu is broken! the tabu is broken!"

Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whiskey preach the first sermonand prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward overthe waves of the Atlantic. 

The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege, the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has alwayscharacterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weakand wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion thatCaptain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killedhim without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well asa man if it suited his convenience to do it; and satisfied that the idolswere powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulledthem down--hacked them to pieces--applied the torch--annihilated them!

The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had heldthe fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they hadbeen great--they had stood above the chiefs--and now they were vagabonds. They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into joining theirstandard, and Bekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty, was easilypersuaded to become their leader. 

In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sentagainst them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua. The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very nearbeing an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused tolisten to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forthunder Major General Kalaimoku and the two host met a Kuamoo. The battlewas long and fierce--men and women fighting side by side, as was thecustom--and when the day was done the rebels were flying in everydirection in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in theland!

The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the newdispensation. "There is no power in the gods, " said they; "they are avanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army without idolswas strong and victorious!"

The nation was without a religion. 

The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed byprovidential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was plantedas in a virgin soil. 

CHAPTER LXXIII. 

At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins atHonaunan in his canoe--price two dollars--reasonable enough, for a seavoyage of eight miles, counting both ways. 

The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot thinkof anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and thatdoes not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, andso narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him outagain. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outriggerand does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger is formedof two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side, and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremelylight wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves youfrom an upset on that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easilylifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatlyfeared. Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon thisknifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be morecomfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also. I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, whooccupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling. With the firststroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow. There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of thereef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the largebunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lostthat, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep. But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against thecrag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air. 

There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combedwith quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of thedilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of therestless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned oureyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forestsstretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses inthe rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily atanchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst ofa school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game ofarching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again andkeeping it up--always circling over, in that way, like so manywell-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, andthen we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutesto discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weatherwas of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too. In oneplace we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes andall ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (takinga short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularlyprodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling hisboard upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he wouldcome whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightningexpress train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I triedsurf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got theboard placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed theconnection myself. --The board struck the shore in three quarters of asecond, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever masterthe art of surf-bathing thoroughly. 

At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a levelpoint of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many atall cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City ofRefuge--a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at thebase, and fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feetone way and a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within thisinclosure, in early times, has been three rude temples; each two hundredand ten feet long by one hundred wide, and thirteen high. 

In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island therelatives were privileged to take the murderer's life; and then a chasefor life and liberty began--the outlawed criminal flying through pathlessforests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon theprotecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of bloodfollowing hotly after him!

Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and thepanting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched thecontest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the huntedrefugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringingshout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheatedpursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flyingcriminal fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when onemore brave stride, one more brief second of time would have brought hisfeet upon the sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where didthese isolated pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge--this ancientOriental custom?

This old sanctuary was sacred to all--even to rebels in arms and invadingarmies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest andabsolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go forthwithout fear and without danger--he was tabu, and to harm him was death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this place toclaim sanctuary, and many were thus saved. 

Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone, some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve indiameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanutpiles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Herecriminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, andthe bones secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man hadbeen guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned. 

The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation thatis offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here--themystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted withscience and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own forhoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have nevereven shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of thelava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and builtinto this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious sizeand would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them?

Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front andare very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all mannerof shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatestexactness. The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward isaccurately preserved. 

No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable ofresisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and howwas it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled. Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone elevenfeet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it wouldweigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway overthis district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one dayto use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the mostreliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, andkeep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no"soldiering" done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention tobusiness on the part of an employee. 

He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at fulllength on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snoredhe woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragabletradition. 

On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, elevenfeet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot ora foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen littlestony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from themountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and proppedit up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for itwould take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They saythat fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly tothis rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with herfierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. Butthese Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablestefforts--for Kaahumanu was six feet high--she was bulky--she was builtlike an ox--and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rockthan she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. Whatcould she gain by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused bya savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her highspirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's reposeunder that rock would. 

We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a roadpaved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerabledegree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan, Kamehameha I planned and built it, but others say it was built so longbefore his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed outof the traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of anuntaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. Thestones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the roadhas the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out ofRome which one sees in pictures. 

The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at thebase of the foothills--a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgottenvolcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain sidehere, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluffsome fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled inthe winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothedand rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal sonatural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller streamtrickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirtyfeet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knottedvines and roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together. 

We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluffpierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed along distance. 

Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining abilities. Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their roofs aregently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed throughone a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill and opensout well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in thewaves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there areoccasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof islava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed iciclesan inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as closelytogether as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will stand upstraight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free ofcharge. 

CHAPTER LXXIV. 

We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau, where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day webought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces, toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly atwo days' journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Towardsunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousandfeet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowywastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climaxof its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence ofthe volcano--signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged jetsof sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in thebowels of the mountain. 

Shortly the crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but itwas a mere toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this. Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high; its crateran inverted cone only three hundred feet deep, and not more than athousand feet in diameter, if as much as that; its fires meagre, modest, and docile. --But here was a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar, ninehundred feet deep in some places, thirteen hundred in others, level-floored, and ten miles in circumference! Here was a yawning pitupon whose floor the armies of Russia could camp, and have room to spare. 

Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end from where westood, was a small look-out house--say three miles away. It assisted us, by comparison, to comprehend and appreciate the great depth of the basin--it looked like a tiny martin-box clinging at the eaves of a cathedral. After some little time spent in resting and looking and ciphering, wehurried on to the hotel. 

By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to thelookout-house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughlydark and then started to the crater. The first glance in that directionrevealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the craterand it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below. Theillumination was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps; and if youever, on a dark night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty orforty blocks of distant buildings all on fire at once, reflected stronglyagainst over-hanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what this lookedlike. 

A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the airimmediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of itsvast folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to apale rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffledtorch and stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. Ithought it just possible that its like had not been seen since thechildren of Israel wandered on their long march through the desert somany centuries ago over a path illuminated by the mysterious "pillar offire. " And I was sure that I now had a vivid conception of what themajestic "pillar of fire" was like, which almost amounted to arevelation. 

Arrived at the little thatched lookout house, we rested our elbows on therailing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down over thesheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was astartling improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see theeffect on the balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set ofmen I almost ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed likered-hot iron, every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shadedrearward into dingy, shapeless obscurity! The place below looked likethe infernal regions and these men like half-cooled devils just come upon a furlough. 

I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The "cellar" was tolerably welllighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile oneither side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated; beyondthese limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast adeceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remotecorners of the crater seem countless leagues removed--made them seem likethe camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for theimagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of acontinent away--and that hidden under the intervening darkness werehills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert--and eventhen the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on!--to the fires andfar beyond! You could not compass it--it was the idea of eternity madetangible--and the longest end of it made visible to the naked eye!

The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black asink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it wasringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams ofliquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroadmap of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnightsky. Imagine it--imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tanglednet-work of angry fire!

Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diameter, broken inthe dark crust, and in them the melted lava--the color a dazzling whitejust tinged with yellow--was boiling and surging furiously; and fromthese holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, likethe spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for a whileand then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succession ofsharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the fiercest jaggedlightning. These streams met other streams, and they mingled with andcrossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, likeskate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes streams twenty orthirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance without dividing--and through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white at their source, but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained with alternatelines of black and gold. Every now and then masses of the dark crustbroke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts down a river. Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust brokethrough--split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feetlong, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of thecold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of icewhen a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in thecrimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained a ruddyglow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a "thaw, " every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering whiteborder which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, whichwere a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from thencetoward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, palecarmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment andthen dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingletogether in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they looked somethinglike the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she has justtaken in sail and dropped anchor--provided one can imagine those ropes onfire. 

Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked verybeautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and dischargedsprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, forinstance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower ofbrilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of bloodand snow-flakes!

We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined andwreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more thana mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was notstrictly "square"), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation thatwe reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen sucha splendid display--since any visitor had seen anything more than the nowsnubbed and insignificant "North" and "South" lakes in action. We hadbeen reading old files of Hawaiian newspapers and the "Record Book" atthe Volcano House, and were posted. 

I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in theouter edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a web-work of lavastreams. In its individual capacity it looked very little morerespectable than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundredfeet long and two or three hundred wide, but then, under the presentcircumstances, it necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besidesit was so distant from us. 

I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great, heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinctsounds--a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if youstand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imaginethat you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, andthat you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffingfrom her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft herwheels. The smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner. 

We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition, because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrapping up in blankets, for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel. 

CHAPTER LXXV. 

The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, forwe desired to traverse its floor and see the "North Lake" (of fire) whichlay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a dozen ofus set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy, thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, andreached the bottom in safety. 

The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floorlooked black and cold; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet, to the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed theunderlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron wasthreatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of thesituation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, andthen every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said hehad been in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he couldfind his way through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundredyards would carry us over the hottest part of the floor and leave us ourshoe-soles. His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern andinstructed the guides to hang the other to the roof of the look-out houseto serve as a beacon for us in case we got lost, and then the partystarted back up the precipice and Marlette and I made our run. We skipped over the hot floor and over the red crevices with briskdispatch and reached the cold lava safe but with pretty warm feet. Thenwe took things leisurely and comfortably, jumping tolerably wide andprobably bottomless chasms, and threading our way through picturesquelava upheavals with considerable confidence. When we got fairly awayfrom the cauldrons of boiling fire, we seemed to be in a gloomy desert, and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed totower to the sky. The only cheerful objects were the glinting stars highoverhead. 

By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never stopped quicker in my life. I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He saidwe must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were surroundedwith beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break and plungedown a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for me, andwas about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement byaccidentally crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits. 

He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said therewas only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not findit. The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was aningenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him thatwe were out of the path, but his feet. He had noticed a crisp grindingof fine lava-needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded him thatin the path these were all worn away. So he put the lantern behind him, and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was goodsagacity. The first time his foot touched a surface that did not grindunder it he announced that the trail was found again; and after that wekept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always warned usin time. 

It was a long tramp, but an exciting one. We reached the North Lakebetween ten and eleven o'clock, and sat down on a huge overhanginglava-shelf, tired but satisfied. The spectacle presented was worthcoming double the distance to see. Under us, and stretching away beforeus, was a heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent. Theglare from it was so blinding that it was some time before we could bearto look upon it steadily. 

It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was notquite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lakewere nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feethigh, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts andgem spangles, some white, some red and some golden--a ceaselessbombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachablesplendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an interveninggossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curvingranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful theyappeared. 

Now and then the surging bosom of the lake under our noses would calmdown ominously and seem to be gathering strength for an enterprise; andthen all of a sudden a red dome of lava of the bulk of an ordinarydwelling would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burstasunder, and out of its heart would flit a pale-green film of vapor, andfloat upward and vanish in the darkness--a released soul soaring homewardfrom captivity with the damned, no doubt. The crashing plunge of theruined dome into the lake again would send a world of seething billowslashing against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch. Byand by, a loosened mass of the hanging shelf we sat on tumbled into thelake, jarring the surroundings like an earthquake and delivering asuggestion that may have been intended for a hint, and may not. We didnot wait to see. 

We got lost again on our way back, and were more than an hour hunting forthe path. We were where we could see the beacon lantern at the look-outhouse at the time, but thought it was a star and paid no attention to it. We reached the hotel at two o'clock in the morning pretty well faggedout. 

Kilauea never overflows its vast crater, but bursts a passage for itslava through the mountain side when relief is necessary, and then thedestruction is fearful. About 1840 it rent its overburdened stomach andsent a broad river of fire careering down to the sea, which swept awayforests, huts, plantations and every thing else that lay in its path. The stream was five miles broad, in places, and two hundred feet deep, and the distance it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and bore awayacre-patches of land on its bosom like rafts--rocks, trees and allintact. At night the red glare was visible a hundred miles at sea; andat a distance of forty miles fine print could be read at midnight. Theatmosphere was poisoned with sulphurous vapors and choked with fallingashes, pumice stones and cinders; countless columns of smoke rose up andblended together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and glowed witha ruddy flush reflected from the fires below; here and there jets of lavasprung hundreds of feet into the air and burst into rocket-sprays thatreturned to earth in a crimson rain; and all the while the laboringmountain shook with Nature's great palsy and voiced its distress inmoanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders. 

Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore, where the lavaentered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss of human life, and aprodigious tidal wave swept inland, carrying every thing before it anddrowning a number of natives. The devastation consummated along theroute traversed by the river of lava was complete and incalculable. Onlya Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to makethe story of the irruption immortal. 

CHAPTER LXXVI. 

We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked roadmaking the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey verymuch. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanakahorses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping--whip and spurcould not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that iteconomized time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery wasexplained: the natives are such thorough-going gossips that they neverpass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horseslearn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole dutyof man, and his salvation not to be compassed without it. However, at aformer crisis of my life I had once taken an aristocratic young lady outdriving, behind a horse that had just retired from a long and honorablecareer as the moving impulse of a milk wagon, and so this presentexperience awoke a reminiscent sadness in me in place of the exasperationmore natural to the occasion. I remembered how helpless I was that day, and how humiliated; how ashamed I was of having intimated to the girlthat I had always owned the horse and was accustomed to grandeur; howhard I tried to appear easy, and even vivacious, under suffering that wasconsuming my vitals; how placidly and maliciously the girl smiled, andkept on smiling, while my hot blushes baked themselves into a permanentblood-pudding in my face; how the horse ambled from one side of thestreet to the other and waited complacently before every third house twominutes and a quarter while I belabored his back and reviled him in myheart; how I tried to keep him from turning corners and failed; how Imoved heaven and earth to get him out of town, and did not succeed; howhe traversed the entire settlement and delivered imaginary milk at ahundred and sixty-two different domiciles, and how he finally brought upat a dairy depot and refused to budge further, thus rounding andcompleting the revealment of what the plebeian service of his life hadbeen; how, in eloquent silence, I walked the girl home, and how, when Itook leave of her, her parting remark scorched my soul and appeared toblister me all over: she said that my horse was a fine, capable animal, and I must have taken great comfort in him in my time--but that if Iwould take along some milk-tickets next time, and appear to deliver themat the various halting places, it might expedite his movements a little. There was a coolness between us after that. 

In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataractof limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high;but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmeticrather than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by apoem of Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesquerocks, glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, and failing water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent isthe charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such anexperience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (N. Y. ), on the Erierailway, is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance ifthe callous tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for thehonors simply on scenic grace and beauty--the grand, the august and thesublime being barred the contest--it could challenge the old world andthe new to produce its peer. 

In one locality, on our journey, we saw some horses that had been bornand reared on top of the mountains, above the range of running water, andconsequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had beenalways accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden orshower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see themsniff suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses andtry to take a bite out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Finding itliquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, snorting and showing other evidences of fright. When they becameconvinced at last that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrustin their noses up to their eyes, brought out a mouthful of water, andproceeded to chew it complacently. We saw a man coax, kick and spur oneof them five or ten minutes before he could make it cross a runningstream. It spread its nostrils, distended its eyes and trembled allover, just as horses customarily do in the presence of a serpent--and foraught I know it thought the crawling stream was a serpent. 

In due course of time our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usuallypronounced To-a-hi--and before we find fault with this elaborateorthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result, letus lop off the ugh from our word "though"). I made this horseback tripon a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau (Kah-oo), added four to gethim shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then sold him for fifteendollars. I mark the circumstance with a white stone (in the absence ofchalk--for I never saw a white stone that a body could mark anythingwith, though out of respect for the ancients I have tried it oftenenough); for up to that day and date it was the first strictly commercialtransaction I had ever entered into, and come out winner. We returned toHonolulu, and from thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent severalweeks there very pleasantly. I still remember, with a sense of indolentluxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the IaoValley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottomof the gorge--a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdantdomes of forest trees. Through openings in the foliage we glimpsedpicturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms withevery step of our progress. Perpendicular walls from one to threethousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed withvaried foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns. Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shiningfronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid theturreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background ofgleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veilingmists, like islands drifting in a fog; sometimes the cloudy curtaindescended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded graduallyaway till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it--thenswept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then, as ourposition changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin ofcastellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hungwith garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back againand hid themselves once more in the foliage. Presently a verdure-cladneedle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley. It seemed to me thatif Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made--therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?

But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala--whichmeans, translated, "the house of the sun. " We climbed a thousand feet upthe side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and nextday climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night. Withthe first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silentwonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surfaceseeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley belowappeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantationsalternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminishedto mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely groupedtogether; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at thesethings--not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowlten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted awayinto the sky above us! It was curious; and not only curious, butaggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb tenthousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery. However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, allwe could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds. Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of thissingular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy. 

I have spoken of the outside view--but we had an inside one, too. Thatwas the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering downthe almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump;kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view asthey sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and onlybetraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to ahalt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feetdown from where they started! It was magnificent sport. We woreourselves out at it. 

The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit abouta thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilaueais somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference. But what are eitherof them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala? I will not offerany figures of my own, but give official ones--those of Commander Wilkes, U. S. N. , who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles incircumference! If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for acity like London. It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplatingin the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger. 

Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea andthe valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposingsquadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidlytogether, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean--not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rimof the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for aghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had driftedthrough a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, andgathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to thebrim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silencereigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floorstretched without a break--not level, but in rounded folds, with shallowcreases between, and with here and there stately piles of vaporyarchitecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain--some nearat hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotonyof the remote solitudes. There was little conversation, for theimpressive scene overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected ofthe judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of avanished world. 

While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrectionappeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soonthe sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars ofruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massyvapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendingsand combinations of rich coloring. 

It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memoryof it will remain with me always. 

CHAPTER LXXVII. 

I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani. He became asore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him wasin a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair atthe opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party withinterest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we weresaying as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him toreply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in thecourse of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject underdiscussion--and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothingextraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of apoint at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out withrapid utterance and feverish anxiety:

"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought tohave seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir! Smoke!I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you mustremember that chimney! No, no--I recollect, now, you warn't living onthis side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but thetruth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn'tsmoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it outwith a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got ahunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easyfor you to go and examine for yourselves. "

The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun tolag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest. 

Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up anddetected this same man boring through and through me with his intenseeye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety tospeak. The moment I paused, he said:

"Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be consideredremarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir, contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, itinstantly becomes commonplace. No, not that--for I will not speak sodiscourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and agentleman--but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would notever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as Ihave, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea ofKamtchatka--a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteenfeet in solid diameter!--and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so!Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen; here's old Cap Saltmarshcan say whether I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed him thetree. "

Captain Saltmarsh--"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad--you're heaving tootaut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more thaneleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle I ever see, a huntingfor it; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big around as a beercask, and you know that your own self, Markiss. "

"Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn'tI explain it? Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could haveseen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called menames, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas hadbeen wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did yous'pose the tree could last for-ever, con-found it? I don't see why youwant to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that'snever done you any harm. "

Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when anative arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the mostcompanionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands, desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had foundtrespassing on his grounds. 

I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement Iwas making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances, and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a familiar voicechimed instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said:

"But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse, or thecircumstance either--nothing in the world! I mean no sort of offencewhen I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever aboutspeed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my mare Margaretta;there was a beast!--there was lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no namefor it--she flew! How she could whirl a buggy along! I started her outonce, sir--Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well--I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of theawfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards ofeighteen miles! It did, by the everlasting hills! And I'm telling younothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop ofrain fell on me--not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dogwas a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!"

For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet thisperson everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But oneevening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had asociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about amerchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remarkslipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying hisworkmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on theopposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot--and for a moment Itrembled on the imminent verge of profanity:

"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as asurprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant ofthe very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant asunborn twins! You don't know anything about it! It is pitiable to seeyou, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such anenormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance isperfectly humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in theeye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in theState of Mississippi--boyhood friend of mine--bosom comrade in lateryears. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John JamesGodfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to dosome blasting for them--the "Incorporated Company of Mean Men, " the boysused to call it. 

"Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awfulblast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an ironcrowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark andfired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higherand higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a boy--and he kept goingon up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a doll--andhe kept on going up higher and higher, till he didn't look any biggerthan a little small bee--and then he went out of sight! Presently hecame in sight again, looking like a little small bee--and he came alongdown further and further, till he looked as big as a doll again--and downfurther and further, till he was as big as a boy again--and further andfurther, till he was a full-sized man once more; and then him and hiscrowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same oldtracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming downagain, just the same as if nothing had happened! Now do you know, thatpoor cuss warn't gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that IncorporatedCompany of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE LOST TIME!"

I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And onmy diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this offensive loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company. Andthe very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Island. 

Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar. 

The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of whichtime the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyinglyand remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The manMarkiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (thedoors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on hisbreast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends tosuspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, forthat it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought inthe astounding verdict that deceased came to his death "by the hands ofsome person or persons unknown!" They explained that the perfectlyundeviating consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years toweredaloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statementhe chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance asa lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that hewas dead--and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long aspossible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina thecoffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave himup. But they sat on him again, and changed their verdict to "suicideinduced by mental aberration"--because, said they, with penetration, "hesaid he was dead, and he was dead; and would he have told the truth if hehad been in his right mind? No, sir. "

CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

After half a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping ina sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco--a voyage inevery way delightful, but without an incident: unless lying two longweeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land, mayrank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after daythey played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without theleast apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lackof better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would bestill lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the shiphad not moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutelybreathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. For a whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship thathad drifted to our vicinity, that we carried on conversations with herpassengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimatelyacquainted with people we had never heard of before, and have never heardof since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonelyvoyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed theywere at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that thegentlemen gave a good part of their time every day, during the calm, totrying to sit on an empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), andthread a needle without touching their heels to the deck, or fallingover; and the ladies sat in the shade of the mainsail, and watched theenterprise with absorbing interest. We were at sea five Sundays; andyet, but for the almanac, we never would have known but that all theother days were Sundays too. 

I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without employment. I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last apublic lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever ofhopeful anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shooktheir heads. They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make ahumiliating failure of it. 

They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in thedelivery, anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slappedme on the back and told me to "go ahead. " He said, "Take the largesthouse in town, and charge a dollar a ticket. " The audacity of theproposition was charming; it seemed fraught with practical worldlywisdom, however. The proprietor of the several theatres endorsed theadvice, and said I might have his handsome new opera-house at half price--fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it--on credit, forsufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars'worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed andfrightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep--who could, under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness inthe last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang whenI wrote it:

 "Doors open at 7 1/2. The trouble will begin at 8. "

That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed itfrequently. I have even seen it appended to a newspaper advertisementreminding school pupils in vacation what time next term would begin. Asthose three days of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy. I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I fearedthey might not come. My lecture, which had seemed "humorous" to me, atfirst, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of funseemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stageand turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken, at last, that I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature, and stormy-voiced, and said:

"This thing is going to be a failure; the jokes in it are so dim thatnobody will ever see them; I would like to have you sit in the parquette, and help me through. "

They said they would. Then I went to the wife of a popular citizen, andsaid that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness, I would beglad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-handstage-box, where the whole house could see them. I explained that Ishould need help, and would turn toward her and smile, as a signal, whenI had been delivered of an obscure joke--"and then, " I added, "don't waitto investigate, but respond!"

She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. Hehad been drinking, and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said:

"My name's Sawyer. You don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven'tgot a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to laugh, you'd give me aticket. Come, now, what do you say?"

"Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger?--that is, is it critical, or canyou get it off easy?"

My drawling infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed aspecimen or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and Igave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in thecentre, and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave himminute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then wentaway, and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea. 

I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days--I only suffered. I had advertised that on this third day the box-office would be openedfor the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theater at four inthe afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller wasgone, the box-office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or myheart would have got out. "No sales, " I said to myself; "I might haveknown it. " I thought of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thoughtof these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But ofcourse I had to drive them away, and prepare to meet my fate. I couldnot wait for half-past seven--I wanted to face the horror, and end it--the feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no doubt. I went down backstreets at six o'clock, and entered the theatre by the back door. I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery, andstood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent, and its emptinessdepressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hourand a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious ofeverything else. Then I heard a murmur; it rose higher and higher, andended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise, it was soclose to me, and so loud. 

There was a pause, and then another; presently came a third, and before Iwell knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring ata sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quakingin every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. Thehouse was full, aisles and all!

The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute beforeI could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity andthe friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my frightmelted away, and I began to talk Within three or four minutes I wascomfortable, and even content. My three chief allies, with threeauxiliaries, were on hand, in the parquette, all sitting together, allarmed with bludgeons, and all ready to make an onslaught upon thefeeblest joke that might show its head. And whenever a joke did fall, their bludgeons came down and their faces seemed to split from ear toear. 

Sawyer, whose hearty countenance was seen looming redly in the centre ofthe second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely. Inferior jokes never fared so royally before. Presently I delivered abit of serious matter with impressive unction (it was my pet), and theaudience listened with an absorbed hush that gratified me more than anyapplause; and as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened toturn and catch Mrs. --'s intent and waiting eye; my conversation with herflashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took itfor the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched offthe whole audience; and the explosion that followed was the triumph ofthe evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself;and as for the bludgeons, they performed like pile-drivers. But my poorlittle morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as anintentional joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wiselylet it go at that. 

All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had aabundance of money. All's well that ends well. 

CHAPTER LXXIX. 

I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the fieldall to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity inthe Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an oldpersonal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks weroamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it. Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbedwithin two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn, by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presentedrevolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded ageneral dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took theirwatches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew upthe express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of therobbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorousmanner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived. 

The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate "divide"and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stoppedto talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The "divide"was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twentymidnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and steppedout on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at ourbacks, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. A sharp wind sweptthe place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through. 

"I tell you I don't like this place at night, " said Mike the agent. 

"Well, don't speak so loud, " I said. "You needn't remind anybody that weare here. "

Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia--aman, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let himpass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that hehad a mask on and was holding something in my face--I heard a click-clickand recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside withmy hand and said:

"Don't!"

He ejaculated sharply:

"Your watch! Your money!"

I said:

"You can have them with pleasure--but take the pistol away from my face, please. It makes me shiver. "

"No remarks! Hand out your money!"

"Certainly--I--"

"Put up your hands! Don't you go for a weapon! Put 'em up! Higher!"

I held them above my head. 

A pause. Then:

"Are you going to hand out your money or not?"

I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:

"Certainly! I--"

"Put up your hands! Do you want your head blown off? Higher!"

I put them above my head again. 

Another pause. 

"Are you going to hand out your money or not? Ah-ah--again? Put up yourhands! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!"

"Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You tell me to give upmy money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my hands. If youwould only--. Oh, now--don't! All six of you at me! That other manwill get away while. --Now please take some of those revolvers out of myface--do, if you please! Every time one of them clicks, my liver comesup into my throat! If you have a mother--any of you--or if any of youhave ever had a mother--or a--grandmother--or a--"

"Cheese it! Will you give up your money, or have we got to--. There--there--none of that! Put up your hands!"

"Gentlemen--I know you are gentlemen by your--"

"Silence! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times andplaces more fitting. This is a serious business. "

"You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in mytime were comedies compared to it. Now I think--"

"Curse your palaver! Your money!--your money!--your money! Hold!--putup your hands!"

"Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated--now don't putthose pistols so close--I smell the powder. 

"You see how I am situated. If I had four hands--so that I could hold uptwo and--"

"Throttle him! Gag him! Kill him!"

"Gentlemen, don't! Nobody's watching the other fellow. Why don't someof you--. Ouch! Take it away, please!

"Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands; and so I can't takeout my money--but if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I willdo as much for you some--"

"Search him Beauregard--and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wagsit again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall. "

Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike andfell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy torturedme to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebelbrother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they hadreceived, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything hadbeen taken from me, --watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of smallvalue, --I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into myempty pockets and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and stir upsome latent courage--but instantly all pistols were at my head, and theorder came again:

They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his handsabove his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said:

"Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide behindthat other one; Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that sage-bushthere. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take downtheir hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them have it!"

Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and theother three disappeared down the road toward Virginia. 

It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. Now this whole thing wasa practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours indisguise, and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during thewhole operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, butI suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine. When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like acouple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches, Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said:

"The time's up, now, aint it?"

"No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these bloodysavages?"

Presently Mike said:

"Now the time's up, anyway. I'm freezing. "

"Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket. Maybe the time is up, but how do we know?--got no watch to tell by. I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteenminutes or die. Don't you move. "

So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract. When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold andfatigue, and when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in that the timemight not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was notsufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked mystiffened body. 

The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke uponthemselves; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two fullhours before I came, and there was very little fun in that; they were sochilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover, I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it wasso perfectly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did notreally frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the troublethey had taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go offaccidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that noblood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart; they ought tohave sent only one highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if theydesired to see the author of this volume climb a tree. 

However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of thejoke at last; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen; for thechilly exposure on the "divide" while I was in a perspiration gave me acold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my handsidle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills. Since then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose mytemper when one is played upon me. 

When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japanand thence westward around the world; but a desire to see home againchanged my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye tothe friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent, and came by the way of the Isthmus to New York--a trip that was not muchof a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passageand we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home adreary place after my long absence; for half the children I had knownwere now wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people Ihad been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous andhappy--some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, andthe rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I wentaway and joined the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried mytears to foreign lands. 

Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a "pleasure trip" to thesilver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy onlythree months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that. 

MORAL. 

If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral toit, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are "noaccount, " go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether youwant to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing tobe a nuisance to them--if the people you go among suffer by theoperation. 

APPENDIX. A. 

BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY. 

Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full ofstir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to theend. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of thecountry to the other, and the result is that for years they have hatedall "Gentiles" indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith, the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was drivenfrom State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculousstones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his"church" in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began topersecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and workedhard. He arrested desertion. He did more--he added converts in themidst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren. He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly foughthis way to a higher post and a more powerful--President of the Twelve. The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settledin Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out andthey retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered there, and built atemple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achievedsome celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with atin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe. But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy andrepudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; the people of theneighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that polygamy waspractised by the Mormons, and not only polygamy but a little ofeverything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England, where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with himseveral hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among thebrethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invadedby the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormonnamed Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government, in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But agreater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hourand without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and hepronounced Rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by"handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousandyears"--probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The peoplerecognized their master. They straightway elected Brigham YoungPresident, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in theirdevotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a qualitywhich no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed. He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved. By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turnedtheir backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, andon a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across thefrozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burningtemple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired! They camped, several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and manysuccumbed and died--martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might havebeen. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a smallparty crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposelychoosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of thehated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved hispeople there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fallagain. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to theenemy--the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free andindependent" government and erected the "State of Deseret, " with BrighamYoung as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbedit and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation ofmountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation, --but made BrighamGovernor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plainsto California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the churchremained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive theMormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst forgold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nationswas not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experimentthat could survive that was an experiment with some substance to itsomewhere. 

Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the lastthings which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear inthe pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophetSmith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!" The peopleaccepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's powerwas sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward heopenly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a"revelation" which he pretended had been received nine years before byJoseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing polygamy tothe day of his death. 

Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning andsteady progress of his official grandeur. He had served successively asa disciple in the ranks; home missionary; foreign missionary; editor andpublisher; Apostle; President of the Board of Apostles; President of allMormondom, civil and ecclesiastical; successor to the great Joseph by thewill of heaven; "prophet, " "seer, " "revelator. " There was but onedignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly andtook that--he proclaimed himself a God!

He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that hewill be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes andprincesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with theirfamilies, and will take rank and consequence according to the number oftheir wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time toaccumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable inthe next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few childrenfor him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account andhis heavenly status advanced accordingly. 

Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always beenignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted withthe world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives ofthese Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their childrenlikely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let itbe remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven, driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed, despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither theyjourneyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudeswith their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of theirdead--and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God inthe way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be thetrue one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not behard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear ourpeople and our government. 

That hatred has "fed fat its ancient grudge" ever since Mormon Utahdeveloped into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich andstrong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom wasfor the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that byappointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormonlocalities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into hisdominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to goacross the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they werein office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made lawswhich nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judgesopened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holidayspectacles for insolent crowds to gape at--for there was nothing to try, nothing to do nothing on the dockets! And if a Gentile brought a suit, the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict, and when the judgment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for itand no officer could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo ofofficials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same--theysat in a blight for awhile they fairly feasted on scowls and insults dayby day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find itsreward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings ofa more and more dismal nature--and at last they either succumbed andbecame despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared anddiscomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a braveofficer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliantBuchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge!--two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murkycomprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from thedictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would havemade in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility andhelplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together inUtah. 

Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorialrecord. The Territorial government established there had been a hopelessfailure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He wasan absolute monarch--a monarch who defied our President--a monarch wholaughed at our armies when they camped about his capital--a monarch whoreceived without emotion the news that the august Congress of the UnitedStates had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forthcalmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives. 

B. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE. 

The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long--and which theyconsider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves--they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almostforgotten "Mountain Meadows massacre" was their work. It was very famousin its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few itemswill refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouriand Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormonsjoined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for theirescape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by theMormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundredand fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where anoted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part fromMissouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor ofthe saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here weresubstantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers. And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules andother property--and how could the Mormons consistently keep up theircoveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the "spoil"of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly "delivered it into theirhand?"

Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The MormonProphet, " it transpired that--

"A 'revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, wasdispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee(adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces theycould muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read therevelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of theAlmighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; andif they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians astheir allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to beneither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual insending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was themandate of Almighty God. "

The command of the "revelation" was faithfully obeyed. A large party ofMormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train ofemigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, andmade an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortressesof their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully forfive days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of thesort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utahaffords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them. 

At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. Theyretired to the upper end of the "Meadows, " resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons tothe beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrantssaw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them withcheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flagof truce!

The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight andBishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served aterm as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress fromNevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders nextproceeded:

"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and representedthem as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle thematter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having(apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages;which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leavingeverything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormonbishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to thesettlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous ofsaving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, andsubsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants weremarched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, theMormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way abouta mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almostall shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, whofled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles beforethey were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, twoor three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aidof the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of allthe emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, theeldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day ofSeptember, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly andbloody murders known in our history. "

The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was onehundred and twenty. 

With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceededto make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it musthave been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride andhis pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings andslaughter!"

An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and ofthe occasion:

"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson;but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, whilethreats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on theU. S. Troops intimated, if he persisted in his course. 

"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were dischargedwith a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committingmagistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, madearrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of thesaints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondomwas born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decampingto save their necks; and developments of the most starling character werebeing made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the manymurders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eightyears. "

Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in hiswork, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in thismassacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferredgratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to usethem. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curiouspretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demandsof justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish hisprotest against the use of the U. S. Troops in aid of Cradlebaugh'sproceedings. 

Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre withthe following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and thesummary is concise, accurate and reliable:

"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt ofYoung and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collatedand circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fastenconviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:'

"1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shownby the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U. S. Marshall Rodgers. 

"2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in hisReport as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make anyallusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after theoccurrence. 

"3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the MormonChurch and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of ajudicial investigation. 

"4. The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the onlypaper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre untilseveral months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engagedin it. 

"5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre. 

"6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in possessionof the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after themassacre. 

"7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of themassacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh andRodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was, in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To allthese were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians. 

"8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent inthe Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road toCalifornia and to inquire into Indian depredations. "

C. CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED

If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill, Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfiredgunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was anoyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to aswamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or asummer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand. Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks theworld listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look;and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I metConrad, he was "Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office"--and he wasnot only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a streetpreacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby heexpected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here latterlyhe has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might beexpected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagantgrandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double lettersheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, allalone; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a blockand employs a thousand men. 

[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several peoplemercilessly in his little "People's Tribune, " and got himself intotrouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the "Territorial Enterprise, "in a communication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce ithere, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long asit is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen ofjournalistic literature the history of America can furnish, perhaps:]

From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870. 

SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED. 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentallyexposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me toprotest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that anyattempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action, aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, mustentail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its costs, (c)personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d)assassination, and after all nothing would be effected. 

YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING. In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a)assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (ofwhich I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has beentaken elsewhere, so the President of one of the companies assures me. With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one ortwo important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of thegleanings of the vicinity. (b) Though my own personal donations to thePeople's Tribune Association have already exceeded $1, 500, outside of ourown numbers we have received (in money) less than $300 as contributionsand subscriptions for the journal. (c) On Thursday last, on the mainstreet in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned, by a powerful blow I was felled to the ground, and while down I waskicked by a man who it would seem had been led to believe that I hadspoken derogatorily of him. By whom he was so induced to believe I am asyet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by aman who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making hisassault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was atfirst laboring had been clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This sameman, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names ofour editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to bepledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, andthen pantingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if everagain I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutesbefore his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was"permitted" to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which timethe PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted, and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kickedby a man who seemed to be prepared for flight. 

[He sees doom impending:]

WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN?How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannotsay, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, andwith such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponentsof the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole communitydefiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do youblame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall everwrite for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personalself-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community, and of American fealty to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, andeach more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of thatprominent man to be JOHN B. WINTERS, President of the Yellow JacketCompany, a political aspirant and a military General? The name of hispartially duped accomplice and abettor in this last marvelous assault, isno other than PHILIP LYNCH, Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News. 

Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, onSaturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to affordyour readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a seriousmistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and notself-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at thetime and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am farfrom sure that I should not have given him space for repentance beforeexposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matteras to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me. That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to bealso, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with manywould be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim inpublishing the article, or else that my "non-combatant" principles arebut a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral cowardice. Itherefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of thiswhole affair, but shall forbear all comments, presuming that the editorsof our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittinglyupon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then be dead orliving, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend, thepublication of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. [The "non-combatant" sticks toprinciple, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently differentstripe:]

THE TRAP SET. On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Gold HillAssay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow Jacket office. Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his ownrecent discourtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as astockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me morelike a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another fora favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to thebetterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I feltstrongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight incourtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruisedand beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution wassomewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousnessof manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt itneedful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he wouldnot dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me mightsecure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbor toaccompany me. 

THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED. Although I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previousto my request this same neighbor had heard Dr. Zabriskie state publiclyin a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to killor to horsewhip me, but had not finally decided on which. My neighbor, therefore, felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called onMr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interviewhe assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe Iwould have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he (Winters) wouldcall on me at four o'clock in my own office. 

MY OWN PRECAUTIONS. As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired toconverse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office, and he came. Although a half hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr. Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home. Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in andsaid, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing good news:

"Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you. "

I replied, "Indeed! Why he sent me word that he would call on me herethis afternoon at four o'clock!"

"O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office, and that will do as well--come on in, Winters wants to consult with youalone. He's got something to say to you. "

Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that inan editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would be withinhail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered my dimapprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep nearenough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do sowhile waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voiceor thought I had need of protection. 

On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from thestreet is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose. Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invitedSheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said: "This way, Wiegand--it's best to be private, " or some such remark. 

[I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy, hurtfully, and yet itwould be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, orthe duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee--M. T. :]

I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never door will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come tofeel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a necessaryVigilance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Followingwas entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caughtshould expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to comewill prove. 

Traps commonly are not set for benevolence. [His body-guard is shut out:]

THE TRAP INSIDE. I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to the left openedinto a small room. From that room another door opened into yet anotherroom, and once entered I found myself inveigled into what many will everhenceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold Hill den, admirablyadapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw or disguised, forfrom it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that Icould not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, BY VIOLENCE AND BYFORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit, when I thought I sawthe studious object of this "consultation" was no other than to compassmy killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as byinsult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point ofassailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by hiswell known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would becompelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegandin "self-defence. " But I am going too fast. 

OUR HOST. Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a little short ofan hour), but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore, would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On enteringthis carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room. Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat (at first) nearthe door, and began his remarks essentially as follows:

"I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, ofthose damnably false charges which you have preferred against me inthat---infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself theirauthor, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that yourmotives were malicious. "

"Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand anenormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted orcoerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at yourrequest. "

"Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I amhere for a very different purpose. "

"Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strongexcitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or callin Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outsidethe door. "

"No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not. Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why! Months ago you put yourproperty out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing iton prosecution for libel. "

"It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personalproperty, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escaperuin through possible libel suits. "

"Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, mayGod help your soul if you DON'T make precisely such a retraction as Ihave demanded. I've got you now, and by--before you can get out of thisroom you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I havedemanded, and before you go, anyhow--you---low-lived--lying---, I'llteach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by--, Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides, can't save you, you---, etc. ! No, sir. I'm alone now, and I'm preparedto be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as Ihave been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges, not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I amnot personally known and may be injured. "

I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly impliedthreat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrifiedme, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possiblepitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one ofseeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire, so I replied:

"Well, if I've got to sign--, " and then I paused some time. Resuming, I said, "But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see youare laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not toinflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you willonly point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as'charges' what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such. Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events; and if it becomesplain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can benothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand aretraction. You should beware of making so serious a mistake, forhowever honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend. Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain article which youhave not pointed out. It is hasty to do so. "

He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed"What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket?" saying "That's what I refer to. "

To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paperand looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped, cooling. I then resumed saying, "As I supposed. I do not admit havingwritten that article, nor have you any right to assume so important apoint, and then base important action upon your assumption. You mightdeeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, Inotified the world that no information as to the authorship of anyarticle would be given without the consent of the writer. I thereforecannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it. "

"If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?"

"I must decline to say. "

"Then, by--, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly. "

"Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I noticeis, that you regard them as 'charges' at all, when their context, both attheir beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them:'Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think MIGHT result inshowing some of the following points. ' Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation'might EXONERATE those who are generally believed guilty. ' You see, therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and thisyou seem to have overlooked. "

While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me insuch a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to considercandidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it thatthey were charges, and "By--, " he would make me take them back ascharges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I thenappealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling hisattention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted. He replied, "if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations, "whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely suchas he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who didwrite the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist inmy face with more cursings and epithets. 

When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried torise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he didevery other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminentdanger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than thatafter the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely tohimself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me. 

This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that byplan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hands, andthat he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot, which hepossessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that Philip Lynch (and forwhat reason I wondered) would do absolutely nothing to protect me in hisown house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found itequally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal forpity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainestpossible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. Iwas helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch wasthe only "witness. " The statements demanded, if given and not explained, would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and inthe eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author'sname how could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I shouldno longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my lifethan the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dearand each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerelytrust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none withfamilies, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to deathwhile obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz. : Whatshould I do--I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, "alone. "[The reader is requested not to skip the following. --M. T. :]

STRATEGY AND MESMERISM. To gain time for further reflection, and hoping that by a seemingacquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at least till I couldgive an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence ofWinters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write acertain kind of retraction, but previously had inwardly decided:

First. --That I would studiously avoid every action which might beconstrued into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man, nomatter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to methat this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet mustbe more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some object. "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. " Therefore, as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away frommy pockets, and generally in sight and spread upon my knees. 

Second. --I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which couldpossibly be construed into aggression. 

Third. --I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and suppressindignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that, by forceof imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to resolve myselfinto an unnatural mental state and see all things through the eyes of anassumed character. 

Fourth. --I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously tohimself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people, and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the loweranimals. 

Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever beingobliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you havingbut four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full forceunshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth ofwill, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it mayhelp you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious ofpower coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters wascorrespondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure hewould not even have struck me. 

It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. Thattime, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I firstwrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me, my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in factit should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it wasfinished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draftit should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any materialchange. 

COPY. To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News: I learn that Gen. John B. Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the PEOPLE'STRIBUNE of January to contain distinct charges of mine against himpersonally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly. 

In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr. Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelingsin the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those "charges" (ifsuch they are) to be true, and I hope that a critical examination wouldaltogether disprove them. CONRAD WIEGAND. Gold Hill, January 15, 1870. 

I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr. Winters said:

"That's not satisfactory, and it won't do;" and then addressing himselfto Mr. Lynch, he further said: "How does it strike you?"

"Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything. "

"Nor do I, " said Winters; "in fact, I regard it as adding insult toinjury. Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that. You are not theman who can pull wool over my eyes. "

"That, sir, is the only retraction I can write. "

"No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at yourperil, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and, by--, sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch either. I wantyou to understand I have asked you for a very different paper, and thatpaper you've got to sign. "

"Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but, atthe same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paperthan that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to signsomething, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if, whenwritten, I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say youmust have from me, I never can sign. I mean what I say. "

"Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been herelong enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape (and thenpointing to the paper); don't you know those charges to be false?"

"I do not. "

"Do you know them to be true?"

"Of my own personal knowledge I do not. "

"Why then did you print them?"

"Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, butpertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of acorrespondent who stated facts which are inexplicable. "

"Don't you know that I know they are false?"

"If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court aninvestigation. "

"And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you maychoose to write and print?"

To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said:

"Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your finalanswer--did you write that article or not?"

"I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it. "

"Did you not see it before it was printed?"

"Most certainly, sir. "

"And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?"

"Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance. Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication Iassume full, sole and personal responsibility. "

"And do you then retract it or not?"

"Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demandedmust entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies, then I ask a few minutes for prayer. "

"Prayer!---you, this is not your hour for prayer--your time to pray waswhen you were writing those--lying charges. Will you sign or not?"

"You already have my answer. "

"What! do you still refuse?"

"I do, sir. "

"Take that, then, " and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drewonly a rawhide instead of what I expected--a bludgeon or pistol. Withit, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear itoff, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get abetter chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained achance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottomof my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, powerand nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunateassociations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in suchbrutality anything which he could call satisfaction--but the great hopefor us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, willyet be able to comprehend my feelings. 

He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary, exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose ofnon-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defendmy head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising fromthe blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and myclothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides allremaining traces. 

When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon andshaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, ofmore yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introducehis name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he wouldcut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me hometo my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to alllow-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure theirgood names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that hisimplement would not be a whip but a knife. 

When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, heleft the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming: "The man is mad--he is utterly mad--this step is his ruin--it is a mistake--it would beungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, toexpose him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon thematter. I shall be in no haste. "

"Winters is very mad just now, " replied Mr. Lynch, "but when he ishimself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me thereason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of abeating in the sight of others. "

I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him ofhaving been privy in advance to Mr. Winters' intentions whatever they mayhave been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but Ileave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves forinveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of hisown to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what isverbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon thestreet. 

While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possiblytrue respecting this most remarkable assault:

First--The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions asin the hands of money and influence would have sent me to thePenitentiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because anystatements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law orcould be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted sobadly must have been desired for some other purpose. 

Second--The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that Ishrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at theearliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should doall I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break upthat aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada oftrue freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer thishypothesis as a "charge, " I feel that as an American citizen I still havea right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharonand Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault(especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any otherapparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which mayexplain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they shouldrepresent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysteriousfact. The scheme of the assault may have been:

First--To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness aftermaking actual though not legal threats against my life. 

Second--To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signingcertain specific statements which if not subsequently explained wouldeternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my familyto shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of therich. 

Third--To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventingme from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove theinfamy. 

Fourth--Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by JohnB. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bringhim in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters'mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when thatrefusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death. 

The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only sparedmy life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that atfirst he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why Iwas allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisibleinfluence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, themore probable as true does this horrible interpretation become. 

The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters andto the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has bothverbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts toappear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to thiscommunity, and to the entire independent press of America and GreatBritain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News haspronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because ofsome alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received theerroneous telegrams?]

Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, thepublication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (withhis peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) toresolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it. Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and WilliamSharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ringfeel that he above all other men in this State and California is the mostfitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I amable to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained tograce his present post. 

Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of importantvillainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it ifthey felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), tocommunicate with the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE; for until I am murdered, so longas I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts atleast to revive the liberties of the State, to curb oppression, and tobenefit man's world and God's earth. 

 CONRAD WIEGAND. 

[It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good senseof a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach themthat the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted child was a thingthat ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing couldhave a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attackshis good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it, even if he is a "non-combatant" weakling; but a generous adversary wouldat least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time. --M. T. ]