me LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDn531757 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. .-.^i^-i^'V- '/■■ 7^' Tm: MGiAm OF TORTI-IINE SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PLAINS AND THE DIGGINGS BY DAVID ROHRER LEEPER illustrated By O. Marion Elbel, from Selections and Suggestions BY the Author 'Golden day8, remembered days, The days of 'Forty-Nine" /-TTfp' SOUTH BEND. INDIANA J. B. 8TOLL & COMPANY, PRINTERS 1894 K CJopyrig-ht, 1894 and 1895, By DAVID ROHRER LEEPER. All rights rese^-ved. IBX^XS.i&.'Z'.^. Page 13, bottom line, for "sixty" read "'twenty-two" or "sixty men." Page 45, line 11 from bottom, for "Headpath's" read "Hudspeth's." Page 59, line 1 of foot-note, for "Pike" read "Posey." TttE ARGONAUTS OF FORTY-NINE. I. HO, FOR THE SACRAMENTO ! N FEBRUARY 22, 1849, our little party of six set out from South Bend, Indiana, for the newly discovered gold-fields i lp^^\>^f*^rr"g||| of California. The members Ip^.^ ' ~ ' ' •''^^v^^^f f / ^^^ ^^^'^ P^^'ty were William S \}m-^ '^i^J^-^lll Good, Michael Donahue, Thomas Rockhill, William L. Earl, Thomas Dudley Neal, and the writer (David R. Leeper). . All were young — the oldest twenty-five, the youngest seventeen. Our equipment consisted of two wagons, seven yoke of oxen, and two years' sup- plies. The long journey before us, the comparatively unknown region through which it lay, and the glamour of the object for which it was undertaken, lent our ad- venture considerable local interest, so that many- friends and spectators were present to witness our de- parture, our two covered wagons being objects of much curious concern as they rolled out Washington street, with their three thousand miles chiefl}' of wilderness before them. But for us the occasion had few pangs. The diggings had been discovered but a twelvemonth before, and the glowing tales of their marvellous rich- 4 A BIT OF RETROSPECT. ness were on every tongue. Our enthusiasm was wrought up to the highest piteh, while the hardships and perils likely to be incident to such a journey were given scarcely a passing thought. Several parties of our acquaintance had already gone, and others were preparing to go, which still further intensified our eagerness. It was therefore with light hearts, and per- haps lighter heads, that we lustily joined in the chorus of the inspiring parod}' of the time: "Oh, California! That's the land for me; I'm going to Sacramento With tny washbowl on my knee." The West was still very new. Even Chicago had not heard the whistle of the locomotive. Illinois, Iowa and Missouri were, for the most part, an un- broken prairie expanse, with not infrequentl}' ten to twenty miles between the nearest settlers. The coo- ing of myriads of prairie chickens tilled the morning air like the roar of a distant waterfall, and the prairies were strewn over with the antlers of the deer and elk, attesting the abundance also of this more pretentious species of game. Westward of Iowa and Missouri, that vast area of mountain and plain stretching away to where the surf-beat of the Pacific laves the golden shore, was laid down on the maps as terra incognita. Except at three or four isolated spots, where a mis- sion or a military post had been located, not an abode of the white man was to be seen from the Missouri River to the Sacramento. True, the Later Da}" Saints, wandering about in search of the Hoi}- Land, like the Israelites of old, had dropped down by the Great Salt Lake two years before, but the bulk of «-vr?l I ■! /; 6 NOT A HOLIDAY JUNKET. gold-seekers went on other roads, and were therefore not permitted to feast eyes on the few mud huts that then adorned this newly adopted land of promise. We were not long in finding out that the adven- ture meant something more than poetry and romance. We left home in the midst of a thaw, and from the very start were beset with the mud, slush and flood incident to the breaking up of winter. Especially upon the murky prairies, of which we saw little else till we reached the frontier, the roads were wretched in the extreme. Several of the parties from South Bend drove their teams only as far as the Mississippi River, where, wearied of their tedious progress, they shipped their wagons and goods by boat to their in- tended point of departure on the frontier, driving their teams thence loose across the countr}'. Our party, however, braved it through overland from be- ginning to end. Nor did we indeed have much choice in the matter, for it so happened that we were out from home bvit a few days when all the hard cash in our compan3''s exchequer mysteriously took wing. We were frequently compelled to make wide detours, avoiding the roads altogether, so as to escape the floods and bottomless lowlands. Many of the streams were out of their banks, and the bridges ( if there had been any) were washed away. At LaSalle, Illinois, we were water-bound for a week or more by the swollen Little Vermillion Creek. We made an effort to cross by swimming a yoke of oxen over and at- taching a line from them to a wagon on the opposite bank. The wagon made the passage well enough; NOT A nOT.IDAY JUNKET. 7 but it had not occurred to us to lash down the box, and the vehicle had scarcely reached the current when the box lifted from its plnce, and dashed away on the foaming torrent as gail}' as if on a holida}' jaunt. Luckily, the jolly craft lodged at the aque- duct of the canal several miles below, and was thus prexented from being lost in the Illinois Ri\er, which was rushing by at flood- stage. Our goods had been removed from the box before we made the experiment. We tinally, as a last resort, were com- pelled to swim our oxen across, drag our wagons through the aqueduct, and carry our luggage over on the heel-path, the toe-path being on the op- posite side. At Burling- ton, Iowa, we had a sim- ilar detention. The bot- toms of the Mississippi were inundated for miles, and ferriage for a t i m e was wholh' suspended. When tinall}' we were enabled to make the pas- WILLIAM S. GOOD. (FROM A DAGl'ERREOTVPE, 1S52.) WILLIAM L. BARL. (FKOM AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH.) 8 DRIVING DULL CARE AWAY. sage, it was on board a rickety scow propelled b}' a horse treadmill, the distance between the landings on the opposite sides being seven miles. The current was against us at that, but a tortuous slough through a timbered bottom very much facilitated our progress. Added to the difficulties of travel, were the inconven- iences suffered from the scantiness of accommodations for ourselves and animals incident to the newness and sparseness of the settlements. More than once we could obtain no accommodations at all. I remember that on one such occasion in Missouri, when after trudging all day long through the mud, night over- took us in the middle of a wide prairie. We had no alternative but to chain our oxen to the wheels of our wagons, make our couches beneath the wagon covers as best we could, having no fire and no food for man or beast. As I lay upon that rude pallet reflecting on the situation, the winds meantime keeping up an om- inous refrain without, my thoughts naturally turned toward home, its blazing chimney-fire, its generous cupboard, and its other creature comforts. Onl}' on one other occasion was I touched with homesickness during my five years' absence on that ad\'enture. That was on receipt of my flrst letter from home, after an absence of two and a half years. We fared decidedly better after we had left all traces of civilization behind. Then the roads were easier; we carried our own food; and our animals subsisted on the native pastures. But the irksomeness of this part of the journey was somewhat relieved by the naturally buo3'ant proclivi- ties of most of the party. A little beyond Joliet, Illi- DRIVING DULI> CARE EWAY nois, our numbers were ;ui<;-mentcd by ;i part}' of South Benders about the size of ours. Thus reeruited, we were able to muster sev- eral musical instruments — \ iolin, banjo, tambour- ine and castanets. We were all vocal virtuosos from the backwoods con- servatories, and our re- pertoire was ampl}' equip- ped with the popular plantation melodies of the day. If our music was not exactly such as "e'en listening angels'' would "lean to hear," we were nevertheless enabled in this manner to while away many an evening by our camp-fires, which otherwise would have dragged heavil}' on our hands. In fact, our musical prepos- sessions were so pro- nounced that our fame spread far and near along our route, and won us the reputation of being the wildest and joUiest lot of Hoosiers ever let loose outside the hoop-pole and pumpkin state. Out on 4-U .^1 ,■„ i- 4.\ UAVID R. LEEPEK. the plains, too, there was (,,^,,, ^ photogkaph. i89t.) THOMAS ROCKHILL. (from a photograph, 1881.) td A TOUCH OF THE LUDICROUS. plenty of company. We were scarcely ever out of sight of other emigrants like ourselves, and our camps were often great villages, which were generally en- livened with music and dancing or some other sorts of amusements. It must be owned, however, that camp experience was by no means conducive to exuberance of spirit or sweetness of temper. In fact, it was a matter of com- mon remark that men were decidedl}^ more irascible on the plains than they had been at home, and this perverseness not infrequently culminated in hot words and sometimes in blows. The tilts thus occasioned were made the theme of man}- comic songs out on the plains. Our first experience of the kind occurred at our encampment on the Mississippi, where we were awaiting ferriage. On this occasion, the chef de cui- sine then on duty, had arranged a convenient seat for himself when preparing the meal, and it was noticed that he had not been altogether self-abnegating in ap- portioning the dried-apple sauce among the several plates. He had, in fact, served the delicacy in decid- edly less stinted measure to himself than to the others. One of the other members of the mess, observing this, did not propose to brook the offense, and with words, looks and gestures betokening blows brushed the of- fender as'ide and seated himself at the fa\ored plate. Trifling as this affair was, the particijants were never friends afterward. Good and Earl sported better clothes than their companions. On starting upon the journey, the one wore a silk hat and the other a swallowtail coat. The GOUl> MINING WITH KOCKKR AND LUNG-TOM IN "FOKTYMNE. 12 ON THE BORDER. hat soon became badly battered, and at the mid-prai- rie encampment, mentioned on another page, one of the sleeves of the coat worked down between the wagon cover and the wagon box within reach of the oxen chained to the wheel and was chewed into pulp up to the elbow. Earl, well knowing how his companions relished the mishap, continued out of spite to wear the garment as before. At one of our encampments shortl}^ after, one of our many visitors from the neigh- borhood was a rustic who was soon to be married, He was readily persuaded that the hat and coat could be made to answer for a part of his wedding suit. For a trifle, he was told, he could have the articles restored as good as new in St. Joseph, which was some thirty to forty miles distant. An exchange for a good rifle was quickly consum- mated. The weapon was thought to be a valuable ac- quisition, for mine had dis- appeared earl}' on the jour- ney, and we felt that surel}' we must be armed to the teeth after crossing the border. St. Joseph, Missouri, was our objective point on the frontier. We found this border city — the last outpost of civilization — thronged with gold-seekers like our- selves. The}' had flocked hither from every quarter to flt out for the overland journey. Many had pushed out before our arrival; man}- were still coming in; and JUST TUB THING. ADIKl' I'O CINllJZATION. I^ all was liLirry-scurry with excitement. The only trans- portation available for crossing the Missouri River w^as a big- clumsy scow or tiat-hoat proix'llcd In* long oars or sweeps. We chartered this craft for one night, several parties clubbing w^ith us for the purpose. The price stipulated was ninety dollars, we to perform the labor. The task was b}- no means a holida}' diver- sion. I tugged at the end of one of those sweeps m}^- self all night, and it seemed a long, long night, indeed. The Big Mudd}' was booming from the spring fresh- ets, and at this point hurled its entire volume sheer against a precipitous bluff just above the ferrying- place, thus lashing its waters, ordinarily very violent, into redoubled fur). But w^e were equal to the emer- gency, and succeeded in placing the turbulent flood behind not only ourselves, but also enough others ful- 1}' to idemnif}' us for our outlay. ^ On May i6, we pulled out from the Missouri River through the muddy timbered bottom to the open bluffs. We had now, sure enough, bid adieu to civilization. The wild beast and the sportive, hair-lifting savage rose up in grim visions before us, as the fancy painted forth the haunts of the cheerless solitude. Over two thousand miles of this sort of forbidding prospect la}' before us. A strong force and a rigid discipline were ver}' natunilh' conccixed of as the imperatixe needs of the hour. Many emigrants — as we were all denomi- nated at that time — were encamped about us, and all were impressed with a like portentous sense of the sit- uation. We were, therefore, not long in marshaling a train of some si.\t\' wagons, duh' ecpiiiipcd with of- 14 THE BEST LAID SCHEMES. ficers and a bristling code of rules. Guards were to pace their beats regularly of nights, and the stock was all to be carefully corralled by arranging the wagons in the form of an enclosure for this purpose. Johnson Ilorrell, who was for many years a conspicuous figure in the history of South Bend, was given the chief com- mand. As we pushed out from the ri\er bluffs into the open country beyond, our long line of "prairie schooners''' looked sightly indeed, as it gracefuU}- wound itself over the green, billowy landscape, "Stretching in airy undulations far away." But, as we soon found out, our "thing of beauty''^ was not to be "a joy forever."" It was ordered, among other regulations, that the teams retain permanently the order in which they had fallen into line on the first day, only that the procession should be operated as a sort of endless chain, each team in its turn occu- pying the lead one day and dropping to the rear the next day. Nothing could appear fairer or more im- partial than this arrangement. Yet, the spirit of re- volt was alive and imminent. The driver — James McCartney, a resolute South Bender — who enjoyed the post of honor on the tirst da}', insisted on retaining the same position on the next day, and he did, in spite of all expostulations and peremptor}- commands to the contrary. A court martial was ordered; but the re- calcitrant was inexorable. lie simpl}' scouted the au- thorit}' of that grave tribunal, and thereafter drove and encamped at a con\enient distance from the main body, thus largel}^ profiting b}- the supposed advan- '"^\.\ m <^ '^■M% .p A ,J ,-:^ ;> ^'^fl-' % A- -^l : 1 6 RECKLESS ABANDONMENT OF PROPERTY. tages of the organization, while wholly relieved of its duties and inconveniences. I may here relate a trifling incident illustrative of a conspicuous feature of the plains that season. We had not been out many da}S beyond the confines of ci\ili- zation, when, in a stroll some distance from* the train, I discovered a good w^agon tire. Such reckless aban- donment of property was something new to me. I rolled the val- u a b 1 e a 1 o n ij ^ for a while, striving vig- orously to reach the moving train with it, but had at last to abandon the effort in despair. From about this time onward, we saw castaway articles strewn b\- the roadside one after another in increasing profusion till we could have taken our choice of the best of wagons entire wnth much of their lading, had we been provided with the extra teams to draw them. Some of the draft animals perished, some stampeded, and all became more or less jaded and foot-worn. One train, from Columbus, Ohio, lost every animal it had through that inexplicable fright known as stampede. Hence the means for transportation became inade- quate thus early on the journey, and were ever}' day becoming more and more reduced. Many of the em- igrants had provided enough supplies to last thein a year or two; but they were not long in seeing the pro- l8 OUR DISSOLVING PAGEANT. prietv, if not the actual necessity, of reducing their lading as much as possible, with the view both of re- lieving their teams and facilitating their progress. Even the wagon boxes were in many cases shortened, and tons upon tons of bacon and other articles of the outfits were converted into fuel, the main purpose be- ing to favor the teams. Fuel was quite an object through that part of the route now known as Nebraska and Eastern Wyoming. On the lower part of the main Platte, the situation as to wood was somewhat like that described in the Grecian fable as to water: "So bends tormented Tantalus to drink, While from his lips the refluent waters shrink; Again the rising stream his bosom laves. And thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves." For a number of days, a heavy belt of cottonwoods was temptingly near at hand; but not in a single in- stance were we able to reach a trunk, limb, or twig because of an intervening section of the river. Weeds and buffalo "chips'' (bois de vache) were about our only resource, and the latter, I may sa}', made an ex- cellent fuel when it could be had. To husband as much as possible the scanty suppl}- of such fuel as was obtainable, we improvised a sort of furnace by cutting a narrow trench in the sod so that the coffee-pot and frying-pan would span the breadth of the lire and rest upon the walls of the opening. Coffee, flapjacks and bacon were about the only articles we had to prepare, and in the turning or "flipping" of the flapjacks, espe cially, we soon became \ery expert. As to our grand caravan, it steadily came to grief. The inexpediency of tra\eling in so large a body be- OUR DISSOLVING PAGEANT. I9 came more and more manifest as we approached the mountains, and the rough roads and difficult passages delayed progress b}' the necessity of one team having to wait on another, especially where the doubling of teams was required. Other influences tended to the same end. As we became accustomed to the plains, our wariness from visions of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife gradually wore away into stolid indif- ference, so that we cared nothing for the security that numbers might afford. I carried no arms, yet often wandered miles awa}' from the train alone as this or that object might happen to attract my attention. The parching winds and stifling dust, with the boun- tifully blotched and blistered lips that afflicted nearly every one in consequence, did not at all conduce to that geniality of temper that would incline men to so- cial solace. Besides, on the earlier part of the route, there was much sickness, and many deaths occurred, which occasioned annoyances and delays irksome to those not immediately interested. It is not very strange, therefore, that, with all these dismembering tendencies at work, our once imposing pageant should ha\ e so ingloriously faded that before we had fairly reached the mountains it had passed into "innocuous desuetude.''' Even our own little party underwent depletions from time to time until but three members of the original six remained. These three traveled and camped alone for many days, with the utmost un- concern as to whether anvbodv else was far or near. As for keeping watch, all thought of that had vanish- ed before we had proceeded a quarter of our way. 20 A SIOUX VILLAGE. Tents, too, were early abandoned as useless luxuries, and each individual when retiring for the night, sought out the most eligible site he could find ( usually among the sage-brush), and rolling himself up in his blankets and buffalo robes thus committed himself to the "sweet restorer,'^ with only the starry canopy for a shelter; — ^ "Weariness Can snore upon the flint, when rusty sl*th Finds the downy pillow hard." In connection with the matter of guard duty, a lit- tle digression here in the way of a personal allusion ma}' be excusable. The occurrence happened while some pretense of numbers and military formalities was still affected. My guard-shift came on at midnight. It was alleged that I failed to respond to the call of the sentinel whom I was to relieve. It was at the time raining and blustering forbiddingly without. It was much more inviting beneath the protecting wagon sheets than out upon the bleak, howling plain. Hence the presumption of guilt lay manifestly against me, and I was promptly arraigned and tried on the charge. A witty and brilliant attorney from Columbus, Ohio, volunteered to defend me. The counsel laid much stress on my unsophisticated make-up, and thus in a serio-comic vein affected to appeal to the sympathy of the court. But the court nevertheless remained in- exorable, and a double stent of guard duty was the finding. Whether or not that judgment was ever car- ried into effect, is a matter that does not appear of record. Near where we forded the South Platte we had the 1 Sec "Moonlight camp scene on the Humboldt," on page 52. 22 THE SCARCITY OF GAME. good fortune to come upon a large village of the Sioux which was squatted temporarily in the locality. These Indians struck me as being dejjidedly comely speci- mens of their race — neat, healthy, self-poised. Their dress was made chiefly of white-tanned skins, and looked very picturesque in its elaborate decorations of beadwork and other fanciful adornments peculiar to savagery. I had the honor of being one of a party that called upon the chief in his tepee, and of exchang- ing whiffs of the pipe of peace with that "much heap big Ingin." Our dignihed host at once bespoke our confidence by his gracious assurance that the Sioux had never shed the blood of the pale-face. During the whole of the ceremony, one of the attaches of his royal muckamuck regaled us with a half-gutteral, half-nasal chant, to which he marked time with the swing of the rattle. Game was bv no means as plentiful as one would ha^'e supposed. We found more of it in the states through which we passed than in the country beyond. In the region now known as Nebraska many ante- lopes were seen bounding over the plain or watch- ing our movements from elevated points; but they were shy, vigilant, and hard to capture. In the moun- tains, deer and mountain sheep {ovis montana) were occasionally sighted and brought dow^n, and when we struck the magnificent pasture ranges of California, deer, elk, antelope and bear abounded. At the "Big Meadows, '' on Feather River, where we lay by se^"eral days to recruit our oxen, Neal brought in se\en black- tail deer in one da}-. I was out at the same time l,''/''l- / f 24 THE SCARCITY OF GAME, equally eager on the chase, but the game did not ap- pear at all enamored of my presence, so I had my am- munition for my pains. But, on the whole, our ban- quets on the luxuries of the chase were few and far between. Strange to say, we saw but few buffaloes (properly bison), not more than a dozen or so, all told. Those few we saw near where we forded the South Platte.^ A spirited chase was being given the tempt- ing stragglers, and this within plain view of our mov- ing caravan. The spectacle was rendered none the less inspiring from the circumstance that a lad^' mount- ed on a fleet steed was one of the party making the pursuit. 1 The w^riter ^'as privileged, nearly thirtj' years later, ^vhen steaming down the Missouri River through the Bad Lands, to witness those noble beasts in their \vonted glory. It was in August, and they were on their northward run. The steamer w^as several days in passing through their scat- tered bands, gr' ups of which were well-nigh constantly in sight Several times the boat ran over clumps of them, as they were swimming the river. At one point we came upon perhaps thirty to forty of them, where they were confined on a narrow sand spit between the river and a high vertical bluff. The frightened animals took to the water, and a part of them became mired in a mud bank on the oiiposite side, where the captain ran the steamer upon them and sixteen were wantonly slaughtered. Squads of the passengers kept up a constant fusilade among the poor brutes from the hurricane deck, as the steamer was passing through their lines, killing and maiming many — all. too, with rifles and ammunition furnished the boat by the Government for de- fense against hostile Indians. II. A CHANGE OF 5GENE— TflE ARID REGION. WE forded the South Fork of the Platte. It was, at our phice of crossing, a broad, shallow stream, with a treacherous quicksand bot- tom. The accompanying cut presents a typical scene of the fording. From this branch of the Platte, our trail lay over a high, open, rolling country, via Ash Hollow, for a distance of about hfty miles, to the North Fork of the Platte. We then followed the course of the latter stream some three hundred miles. The country now graduall}- increased in ruggedness, thus heralding our approach toward the Rocky Mountains. The cliffs and highlands along the Platte became ob- jects of special interest. These cliffs, being composed of horizontal strata of different degrees of hardness, were in man}- instances wrought into various forms which, with a little assistance of the imagination, ap- peared to be artistic creations, such as churches, cas- tles, towers, embattlements, and architectural ruins of various sorts. As Washington Irving remarks, one could scarcely persuade himself that works of art were not here really mingled with the fantastic freaks of nature. We had now, very evidently, entered upon a land different from an}' to which we had ever before been A TRNDKR foot's IT.TATSION. 2 7 accustomed. The presence of the cacti and other arid-loN-ino- phmts assured us that we were treading- the soil of the so-called Arid Region, which comprises a third of the entire country. The villages of the prairie dog had become numerous, and the queer an- tics of this shy, Nigilant, nimble, barking marmot af- forded us much amusement. The stately owl antl the lazy rattlesnake were the constant but doubtless un- welcome co-partners with the prairie dog in the occu- pancy of these \illages. The Court House Rock and the Chimney Rock^ were among the more conspicuous of these natural curiosities, and both were "!k^^ visible a considerable dis- tance. We took our nooning _ ^ nearU' i^-'- »- '' '• '■ '-- -^--^^^^^" "^^''' THE CHIMNEY EOCK. named, which arose before us isolated and in bold re- lief out of the bosom of the plain. Ahead, in the di rection we were going, the spire of the other was peep- ing invitingl}- over the intervening hills. It would be easy enough, to all appearances, to step over to the Court House, cut across to the Chimnc}-, and reach the train by camping time. A party of us according- l I thus described this noted landmark in \ 64. when I last saw it: "It has a vertical column about seventy feet high, standing upon the apex of a conical base of about the same height and about a half mile in its largest cir- cumference. A few vears ago the lightning hurled some thirty feet of the chimney or spire to the ground, and the winds and the rains are slowly wear ing away the remainder. The mass is evidently a detached section of the adjacent blufls. and has been configured by the same processes of erosion as the formations of which it was once a part." ANOTHER ILLUSION. 29 ly determined upon the undertaking. We were all afoot, but the distance appeared so trifling as to give us no concern. Well, the upshot of it was, that we did not reach the Court House until about sundown. We hurriedly carved our names upon its walls; view ed for a moment the strange landscape roundabout ; gazed down upon tlie crystal waters of a generous brook that rippled at its base, and, giving the Chim- ney an askance glance, were glad to bear away for camp, which we did not make till far in the night. It required still two and a half days journeying before we stood under the shadow of the Chimney. The ex- treme transparency of the atmosphere in this section explains the illusory phenomenon. Objects appeared but a mile or two away when in reality they were often from tive to ten. Even the stars seemed to steal down from their wonted depths, and look vastly nearer, greater and o^rander as thev set their vigils over us for the night. Little wonder, therefore, that such il- lusions should have taken the tenderfoot unawares, and more than once set him will-o'-the-wisp chasing. About fifteen miles above Chimney Rock are Scott's Bluffs.^ The high, picturesque escarpments which had been occupying our attention for several days here fell abruptly into the Platte, necessitating a circuit of some thirty miles across the uplands. A cut in the face of the cliffs about the width of a common wagon road and with perpendicular walls at the entrance three 1 Irving, in hi» "Captain Bonneville." relates a very pathetic story of one Scott in connection with these bluffs. A number of years prior to the period in which he was writing (1832», Scott had been taken ill and was abandoned by his companions on the Laramie River: "On the ensuing summer these very individuals visiting these parts, in company with others, came suddenly upon ANOTHER ILLUSION. to four hundred feet high, furnished a natural and eas}- aseent. Near the summit were an excellent spring and an inviting camping ground. A blacksmith had here erected a temporar}- shop and was for the time industriously plying his trade. Even this rude make- shift of a habitation had a refreshing effect upon our spirits, as a reminder of the civilization we had left far behind. The bluffs, as we first sighted them, treated us to a magnificent optical illusion — a striking in- stance of the mirage. The Platte seemed to be lifted hiuh from its bed and swollen into a mighty fiood SCOTT'S BI UFFS — (REDRAWN BY '^^C^ PERMIS<5ION FROM THF CEN TVK\ 'FOR JULY 1891 ) sweepmg the entn-e val- ley. Out of this apparent expanse of rushing waters the rugged form of the bluffs loomed up in blunted, the bleached bones and grinning skull of a human skeleton, which, bj- certain signs, tjiey recognized for the remains of Scott. This was sixty long miles from the place where they had abandoned him; and it appeared that the wretched man had crawled that immense distance before death put an end to his miseries. The wild and picturesque bluffs in the neighborhood of his lonely grave have ever since borne his name." NEARIXG THE ROCKllCS. ^I blurred and c.\a' the aptitude of Nature to respond to her emironment what- e^'er its character. When upon the sunuiu't we were seven thousand four hundred and ninet\' feet abo\e sea-level, and about one thousand miles from our point of departure on the frontier. To the northward in the distance the ic}' crests of the sharp, craggy peaks of the Wind River ^Mountains were seen ii'litterin<>- in the 40 LOOKING I^\C'II-^rCWARD. sun; while far to the southward great snow\' ranges lay, like cloud-billows, sleepy and dim upon the horizon. Just beyond the South Pass we encamped at the Pa- cific Springs, where for the first time we looked upon water flowing Paciticward. The spring nourished a beautiful, meadow-like park spread out in gentle slopes. The situation was impressive. The great Rocky Range lay between us and home; a vast region to us a terra incognita, stretched away before us. In a less prosaic age, we could readil}' have peopled the wild, shadowy realm with all sorts of m3'thical mon- sters, as was the wont of the old-time Greek when alone musing beside his sea-shore; — "At ev«ntide when the shore is dim, And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim, Thej' rise on the wing of the freshened breeze, And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas." The trail at this point diverged, one branch going by way of Salt Lake, and the other by way of Bear River. We took the latter branch, which was known as Sublette's Cut-off. Green River, one of the two forks that form the Colorado of the West, was cross- ed about seventy miles be3'ond the South Pass. The stream was about four hundred feet wide, with a deep and violent current. Another Mormon had placed a good ferry-boat at this point; so that we had no trouble in getting our wagons over. But the water was so cold and the current so violent that we consumed a whole day in forcing our stock across. Finally, one of the party, Swift from Elkhart, mounting a mule, spur- red the animal across, and this broke the way for the herd to follow. The aspect of the river was barren 42 THE BEAR RIVER REGION. and desolate. Narrow strips of willow, perhaps a straggling- cottonwood at wide intervals, and oceasion- al patches of grass in the pinched bottoms, made up about the sum total of its vegetable life. Between Green River and Bear River we crossed a divide nearly a thousand feet higher than the South Pass. This is the watershed separating the waters of the Pacific from those of the Great Basin. We were now so far above sea-level that the humid atmosphere afforded sustenance to some of the higher forms of plant life. Our road led directly through a small grove of tamarack, alder, and aspen which crowned one of the more favored elevations. This grove was trul}' an enchanting spot; at least it so appeared to us after our thousand miles of timberless monotony. Comely trees and shrubs; bright foliage; refreshing shade; fra- grant flowers; pure, cold springs; sparkling rivulets; luxuriant grasses ; the chirp and chatter of many birds, — such was the scene as my memory now recalls it. It seemed indeed like a precious gem plucked from fairy land. No weary, parched and sand-beaten traveler of Sahara could have been more enraptured upon sight- ing an oasis than were we upon entering this cheery, sylvan spot. The Bear River is the largest tributary of the Great Salt Lake, and thus belongs to the water system of the Great Basin. The section of the route lying along this stream is one of the few of the journey that I now recall with pleasurable emotions. The abundance of good water, good fuel, and good grazing, were the characteristics that then most concerned us,' though A r.AXi) ()i- sii()-sii()-Ni:s m()\i.\(,. ^.3 there was much also in the natui-al S(.-eiier\ that would liave interested the tourist and the scientist. We here saw our first and only geyser. The oritiee or throat was about the size of a man's tlst, and from this open- \ng at rapid inter\als a column of frothing- steam and water was ejected into the air a number of feet. After each disehar^'e the water lemainino; in the oi'irice could be heard i>urglini>- downward, as if seeking an outlet in the nethermost pit. Near b}- were the Soda Springs. The water of these readily effervesced with soda, and thus treated made a very palatable drink. Xearh' all of these springs, many in number, had built up about themselves cones se\eral feet in height, from the apexes of which, when the tiow was not extinct, the water kept up a constant bubbling and spurting. We lay b}- here o\er Sunda}', refreshing ourselves and teams. Near where we left the Bear River, at a point where it doubles sharply to the southward in its haste to mingle with the waters of the Great Salt Lake, we were further regaled by seeing a large band of the Sho-sho-ne or vSnake bidians. These, too, were an in- teresting t}pe of the Aborigine. The}- were migrat- ing nomad-fashion, being generally mounted and car- rying with them their families, man\- ponies, and all their equipments of the camp, the chase, and the war- path. The mounted braves; the fantastic trappings; the squaws with their burdens; the motlev households; the pack-ponies; the lodge-poles dragging from the saddles of the ponies; the platform or litter here and there erec:ted on these poles to convey the sick, disa- bled and infirm; the whooping \aqueros driving the n?u rt A nisTi-^icssi'ur. f.xi'I'Ikirnc'R. 45^ loose ponies, — all combined to form a most interestin<;- panorama, and one the like of which is ne\ er a^ain to be witnessed in the wilds ot this countr\'. We now at once entered upon a sterile, volcanic plain. According- to recent scientific investio-ations, this plain was a vast lake of molten lava within a com- paratively recent o-eoloo-ical period. (''Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad," A. Gieke. ) I accident- ally came upon one of the craters, through which this sea of liquid tire had once been fed from beneath the earth's crust. The aperture was in the form of a long- seam or fissure, with irregular walls of black slag-rock, the lips of which were tiush with the general face of the plain. I dropped a pebble into the opening, and it went rattling down, bounding from side to side, till the sound, decreasing in volume, was wholly lost in un- known depths. We were now on the main Oregon emigrant trail; but instead of following this northward to Fort Hall, on Snake River, we soon after leaving Bear River struck to the westw^ard on what was known as Headpath's Cut-off. This route had not been opened till that season, and there were no guide-books to indicate the camping places, as there were for the other roads. We usually carried a keg of water, as a precaution against anv dearth of the natural supply, either expected or unexpected ; but for several days the region through which we were passing was quite mountainous, and afforded water in such abundance that we began to think it needless to exercise our usual practice of lay- ing in a supply. It so happened that on the very 46 A (il.IMPSE OF TUK (;Ri-:A'r s.\i/r T.AKl-:. morning- wc had nco'lectcd to till our cask, \vc came upon a desert stretch of forty miles. Bein,^- off duty I sauntered ahead of the teams. I had also that morning- neglected to till my canteen, which I usuall}' carried when not with the teams. It was an arid, saire-brush plain, which was not onh- destitute of wa- ter, but which had drank cNcry suggestion of moisture from the atmosphere, and seemed intent on wringing every object that came within its embrace as dry and parched as it was itself. It was by far the most try- ing day's experience I had on the trip. The famish- ing effects of the situation soon began to tell upon me. Plodding on and on, stirred with alternating hope and disappointment upon every apparent change of land- scape, I toward the last became so exhausted from thirst that I was compelled at frequent intervals to pause for a moment's rest and shelter, even welcoming for this purpose the presence of the scant}', unsa^•ory, detested sage-brush. "Traverse the desert, and ye can tell What treasures exist in the cold deep well; Sink in despair on the red, parched earth, And then ye can reckon what water is worth." But the co\eted liquid in ample quantit}' was at length reached. M3' companions with the teams came on in due time, but not of course without both having suf- fered greatly. It is astonishing how long one, if dri\ en to the test, will bear up^ when he would ordinarily think the last reserve force exhausted. On this part of the journey, m}- curiosity led me to climb a high, commanding eminence, at the loot ol which the road passed, and m\' toil v\ as happil}' and A COOL RECEPTION. 47 uiicxpcctcclly repaid with a tine \ icw of the (ircat Sah Lake in the bhie distaiiee. Here and there sti'eaks ot dust on the interxenino- desei't plain indicated the presenee ol pk)ddinir emisrrant trains on another route: as a streak of smoke on the j^reat lakes or on the oeean indieates the presenee of a steamer, thoui^'h nothin;^'- else |^_-_ than that stieak ma\' be be seen. Those t r a i n s % were ]')robabh' tortN" to fihy miles distant. OnK' the steach' elouds of dust with their stiflinLj," sii^"- i>"estions betokened the presenee of the animate objeets whose tread thus relie\ ed the sterile though somewhat pieturesque prospeet. No other member of the part}' was fortu- nate enough to eateh a glimpse ot this onl\- great brin\' inland sea of our hem- isplu-re. An ineident c^f not (]uite so poetie a nature niav be n-lated of our experi- enees on this eut-off. As I ha\e alieach' intimated, the ereatui-e eomforts of the plains wei\' not jxirtieu- larh fruitful of the fi'ame of mind that would in- eline ''the ]>rethren to dwell togt'ther in unit\." So far as our larder was t'oneerned, we had been tor se\- eral weeks redueed to bread, baeon, and blaek, sugar- less eoffee; and the tendeney to seur\\- had in some instanees beirun to diselose itself. We were i>'oinir A LESS FRIGID FIXAT.E. 49 thi'ouLih ;i narrow cam on, where llic i^oad (.'i-osscd and rc-crosscd a cold, rapid brook a branch of Rail Ki\ cr — many times, in jMckini;- its tortnons, dnbions wa\ . Xcal claimed to be ill, and was 1\ ini^- in one of the wa^-ons on an improxised couch w ith a substratum of a half ton or so of bacon. Rockhill was dri\ in<4', and. pionipt- ed perhaps b\- waii'iiMshness or malice aforethought, capsi/ed the wa^'on into the ic\' stream, sousing" the invalid into the shi\erinii- bath, anchored to the bottom imder bacon and all. .\s niii^ht be sui^mised, that prac- tical joke serxed effectualh' to dixest that \ehicle oi its use as an ambulance thcreaftei-. Nor was this serio-comic scene allowed to *>"() bv without its farce, which, if less chilling- to the actors, was no less amusing to the b3'standers. We encamped shortK' after the mishap just mentioned, to dr\' our drenched goods. One of the men was in the wagon handing down the \ arious articles to another to spread them out on the ground. A (piarrel sprang up between the two concerning the ownership of a pillow. I'hey were the same men that had the bout o\er the apple- sauce back on the Mississippi. The man below hap- pened to be holding a frying-pan in his hand at a mo- ment when his language and manner indicated that he was about to let tl\ this culinar\- imj)lement on a mis- sion of vengeance. The other, observing the imminent attitude, seized the water-cask and hurled it at his ad- versar\-, shouting with dire vehemence, ''D — n you I don't throw that at me I" Happily, the alTair termi- natetl, as so man\' on the route of a similar nature lei-- minated, without phxsical injur\- to anxone. III. TttE GREAT BA5IIS. ME were now in the heart of tlic arid wastes of the Great Basin; a region se\-en to eio^ht hundred miles in width by twice that dis- tance in length and its waters haxing no visible outlet to the ocean. In general feature this strange country is a high, irregular plateau/ liberally studded with bleak and bai-ren mountain peaks and fragmentary ranges, which, in a few instances, approach the dignity and magnitude of systems. Not indeed from the time w^e entered the Black Hills till we looked upon the blue expanse of the Pacific, did the eye an^■- where or for an instant rest upon a spot not hemmed in by mountain barriers. From the Bear River to the Sierra Nevadas, the prospect, as I now look back upon it, was dreary, monotonous, and irksome in the extreme. It struck me as if the Creator, disgusted with His ef- forts here at world-making, Iiad abandoned His job half finished. Through this region, for about three hundred miles, as we then reckoned the distance, our route lav along the Humboldt Rixer, whose banks from source to mouth were unrelie\ed b\- a single tree or e^•en a shrub larger than a stunted willow or sage-brush; and which, finallv, as if wearied of its own being, buried it- 1 Knibraced in past ages a sea, sevcr.il Ininilrcd thoiisanri scui.-irc miles in ex- tent, say the geologists. OIH PARTINGS EN ROirri:. 53 self in the tliirsty desert. Iloraee Greeley, ten years la- ter, in a thinii,- trip through this region by stage, saw enough of its eharaeter to stamp it as the aeme of abom- inations.* The emigrants, seeing and knowing more of it, eertainly regarded it with fully as hearty a detesta- tion, and generally execrated it as the source of their worst afflictions on the route. But its presence was verv opportune, nevertheless. The journey would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, with- out its nourishing help, little as that was. The emi- grant sought the river at the earliest practicable mo- ment, and was loth to quit it where its feeble waters vield up to the desert. The first transcontinental rail- wa\- was laid out and built along this water course, as the most feasible route to be found for the purpose. Indeed, much of this region, despite its barren and des- olate aspect, and contrary to the universal opinion held at that da\- as to its being utterly worthless, has since been found to afford fair range for stock, and is now all utilized by the ''cattle barons." The dwindling down of our party on the plains, one by one, from six members to three, has already been mentioned. The circumstances mav be noticed here 1 Greeley, in his 'Overland Journey." in speaking of the Humboldt River, among other deprecative things, sajs: " 1 only "'ish to record my opinion that the Humboldt all things considered, is the meanest river on earth of its length. Though three hundred and fifty miles longit is never more than a decent mill-stream. I presume it is the ©nly river of equal length that never had even a canoe launched upon its bosom. Its narrow bottom, or intervale, produces jrrass; hut so coarse in structure, and so alkaline by impregnation, that no sen- sible man would let his stock eat it, if there were any alternative. . . . Half a di>i!Cii specimens of a larjie, worthless shrub, known as buffalo-bush or bull- berry, with .-) prevalent fringe of willows about the proper size for a school- ma'am's use, comprise the entire timber of this delectable stream, whose gad- flies, musquitoes. gnats, etc , are so countless and so blood thirsty as to allow cattle so unhappy as to be stationed on, or driven along this river, no chance 54 OUR PARTINGS EN ROl'TE. with more particularity. Donahue left us on the Sweet- water, where he joined another party. At the Raft River camp, Good, having become restive at our slow progress, joined James Doane, a home acquaintance, who opportunely ()^•ertook us at this point, having come the most of the distance from the frontier on foot; and the two made the balance of the journey in that manner, packing their mea- gre outfit on their backs. Much better headway was possible tra\eling in this manner than in an}' other then available, while little additional discomfort or in- con\enience was suffered; since the emigrants that year were supplied with abundance of pro\ isions, and were so thickly strung along the route, probabl}- at that stage of the season all the way from the ^Slissouri Ri^ er to the Sacramento, that accommodations could generally be obtained when needed. Several weeks later, shortly after we entered the Humboldt Valley, EarFs share of the outfit, including a wagon and two yoke of oxen, was at his request set off to him, when, con\ erting the wagon into a cart, he also parted companv with us — finally, as it turned out; so that now of our original partv onl}' Rockhill, Xeal, and m\ self remained. We to eat or sleep. . . . Here famine sits entliioned, and waves his sceptre over a dominion expressly made for him The sage-bush and grease- wood, which cover the high, parched plain on either side of the river's bottom^ seems thinly set, with broad spaces of naked, shining, glaring, blinding clay be- tween them; the hills beyond, which bound the prospect, seem evcnuide naked. Not a tree, and hardly a shrwb, anywhere relieves their sterility; not a brook, save one small one, runs down between them to swell the scanty waters of the river." A RKFK1<:SHING EPISODE. :; l^ kept together till after we reaehed our destination, when, as will appear hereafter, we too were separated through the exi^Tneies of fortune. We had now plodded our wa^■ to a wear\'ino- leno'th. To hitcli up and start on with every returning sun liad long eomprised the ehief round of our existence. We came to wonder how we should feel when this trudg- ing routine should be a thing of the past. Thus drag- ging our slow lengths along, fatigued, half-hearted, nauseated with the e\ er-present sage odor, seeing not a single tree, and ha\ ing a dreary, inhospitable soli- tude everywhere staring us in the face, we were often prone to ask oursehes whether this sort of life was ever to ha\e an end. One dav, when groping along in this passi\ e, pensi\ e, half-forlorn mood, we perchance, on turning a jutting mountain spur, were suddenly awakened, amazed, electrified. We had run upon a part\- direct from the promised land — straight from the enchanting gold iields. The part^■ proN'ed to be Mormons with their families en route for Brighamland. Their clothing eclipsed any we had ever seen for tat- ters and patches; but their oxen, in striking contrast with ours, were rolling fat and sleek, and thus excited our en\ y. The members of the part}' were quite com- municatix e, and gave us a flaming account of the dig- gings, backing up their words with a liberal displav of the shining nuggets. This was the first real, tangible proof we had had of the existence of gold in California. We before believed; we now knew. The effect was ravishing — sent the mercurN' of our spirits bounding up to the extreme limit of our mental barometers. An Till-: gh1':knmt()rn ci^T-f)Fi<\ 57 eldcrl}' member of our party, upon viewing the yellow metal, eould not restrain his enthusiasm; but, capering about like an exuberant school bo\', and shying his hat into the air, shouted: ''Glory Hallelujah! Til be a rich man Net/' In marked contrast with this little episode, the words of the plaintive ditt}" of the gold-miner, which later actual experience had suggested, came to m\ mind times many and oft: "They told us of the heaps of dtist, And the lumps so mighty big; But they never said a single word Kow hard it was to dig." Along the Humboldt River, we were annoyed more or less with the visits of squads of the Digger Indians; a type chiefl}' distinguished for their tilth}' habits, re- pulsive appearance, and pilfering propensities. Their inflictions upon the emigrants up to this time had been chieriv in the way of persistent begging and petty stealing; but, later in the season, their depredations took a more serious turn, in the wa}' of running off and slaughtering stock, and sometimes in attacking and killing the emigrants themselves. When left to their own resources, the}^ seemed to subsist mainly on the fat black crickets of the valley and the plenitude of their own vermin. On a recent trip by rail through this section, I saw many of this same species of the red- skin orathered about several of the railroad stations. As at present fed, clothed, and pampered at the ex- pense of Uncle Sam, they show little of the nati\e Dig ofer distin- traits. At the Meadows, on Humboldt Ri\er, we took the Lassen (or Greenhorn) Cut-off. This route struck northward from this point across the desert, scaled the yS THE GREENHORN CUT-OFF. Sierra divide near tlie boundary line between Califor- nia and Oregon, and then, doubling a sharp angle to the southward, tinally entered the Sacramento Valle}' at a point near the present village of Vina, at which place the present immense Leland Stanford \ine}ard is located. We thus u n w i 1 1 i n gl}' added five hundred to seven hundred miles to our jour- ney, increasing to that extent the tax upon our teams, to sav nothing of the loss of s e \' e r a 1 wrecks of precious time. Our party, aiid that of our w^ii- lom captain, John- son Ilorrell, had chanced to fall in with each other again. Horrell had two ox teams. A party from Missou- ri with a like outfit also joined us at "l COME FROM OLD MISSOURI, ALL THE WAY FROM PIKK!"— t 1 These lines are from an old-time California comic ballad, which, as sung from the stage, took California audiences bystorm; and thus illustrated insome degree the levity and ridicule indulged in on the plains and in California in tlie early days at the expense of the emigrants from Missouri, seemingly because of their odd speech, manners, and dress. They were dubbed indifferently as "Pukes," "Pikes," or "I'ike Countians." A SRCriON Ol' I'LTTONIA. 59 about the same time: so that now our train, iuekid- ino- our two teams, numbered six wagons, and thus constituted, we made the balance of the distance to the Sacramento V^alley. From the Meadows to Mud Lake, about a hundred and sixty miles, the country w^as to all appearance destitute of feed; and from the Rabbit-IIole Wells ( thirt\- seven miles out ) to Mud Lake, there was no water except such as from its temperature or its mineral proper- ties rendered it a very poor makeshift. From the wells mentioned to Black Rock, a dis- tance of forty miles, there was no water of any sort. At Black Rock there w^as a ju^^t from •posev-scknts.-.amk.-i laro-e hot sulphur spring so strcMigh" impregnated that the atmosphere about the \icinit\' was surcharged al- 1 The Indiaman was known by the pseudonym ''Pike Countian," and was held in little less disfavor than the Missounan, as referred to in the note on preceding page. The mention of the name "Indiana" or "Hoosier" usually provoked some half-humorous, half-contemptuous remark about flat-boating on the Wabash, or about the alleged ill-behavior of the Indiana regiment at the battle of Buena Vista, the Mexican War being at that time recent history. 6o A S'lAR'IM.lNU; inNl). most to suffocation with the vaporous brimstone. "Schure, hell ist nielit more es one mile von dis blace," is the b\" no means inapt ejaculation ascribed to a matter-of-fact son of Teutonia, as he approached this steaming cauldron and sniffed its suggestive odors. The localit}' was rendered none the more enticing to mvself from the fact that, for miles back ahmg the road I had come, I could ha^•e stepped almost contin- uouslv from the carcass of one dead horse or ox to ano t h e r ; so g ]■ e a t h a d been the num- ber of an- imals that h a d here peris hed from hun- ger, thirst COYOTE. and general exhaustion.^ "For lengthening miles on miles they lie, These sad memorials grim and hoary, And every whitening heap we spy, Doth tell some way-worn pilgrim's story."' Innumerable co3'otes, too, attracted hither, snapping, barking, howling, were rendering the situation none the less hideous with their savage orgies over the loath- some carrion. We made no stop on this forty-mile stretch. Hap- pening to be off duty that da}', I wandered alone con- 1 I noticed on this stretch the familiar forms of Karl's four oxen, where side by side the pitiable creatures had perished on the desert. A MONSTER l'.()II.IX(; SI'KTNG. 6l siderably in advance of the teams, and far in the ni^'ht reached the Bhick Rock. (jropin<>- about the brim- stone pool at the foot of this huge, forbiddin<;- mass of black hua, in the i2;rim, weird-like starlight, 1 was startled by stumbling upon an object — -it was a man! He was 13'ing among" the sage-bushes, wrapped in his buffalo robes. Rousing him up, I learned he was from Elkhart, our neighboring burg, one John Arnold by name. lie had been packing through with a partN', and, taking ill, was unable to travel farther; so that he was thus left by his companions, sick, penniless, and alone. I remained with him till our teams ar- rived, when Captain Ilorrell, being better prepared for the purpose than an^■ of the rest of the party, con- sented to carry him through, not neglecting however to couple with his motives of benevolence the condi- tions of what he deemed a good bargain. Most of the emigrants that \'ear were furnished the means to make the journey on condition that they return as compen- sation a certain share of their earninjjfs durino- a stated period of time, this share usually being one-half, and the time two years. Plorrell exacted for the compar- atively small fraction of the journey remaining the same terms that ordinaril}' were fixed upon at the start. I never heard of Arnold after our dispersion upon reaching the mines till two or three vears ago, when I learned that he was living in VanBuren Coun- ty, Michigan. We had become accustomed to springs of almost every conceivable variety; but a few miles beyond Black Rock, at our tirst stop after leaving the Rabbit- MUD T.AKE. 63 Hole Wells, we encamped at the laro-cst and stroncrest boilino- spring of the journey. It tlirew out a stream several }ards in width and of ten to twelve miles in lentrth to the point where it succumbed to the thirsty soil. The water was o-urgling, bubbling hot, but when cooled was suitable for use. We had no other for camping purpt)ses, and so aNailcd ourselves of the chilly night air of that region to prepare as large a supply as was possible with our stock of vessels. Rockhill test- ed the temperature several hundred feet below the spring. The water was clear, and went rippling over a pebbly bottom, as harmless to appearance as water could be. Rockhill was of an original turn of mind and given to exper- imenting; as Neal was quite free to affirm after his dousing at Raft River. In yoking up his team he was always utterly indiffer- ent as to how the oxen were mated, or as to the side on which they worked. He had tried the cold water on Neal, and now he would try the hot on the oxen. He made the trial by driving his team through the creek, where he had tested its caloric qualities, and af- fected much surprise when he saw the innocent, unsus- pecting animals iiing their iioofs high in the air instant- 1}' upon touching the water. Forty miles more of desert brought us to Mud Lake, where, finding abundance of water and grass, we lay by several davs to recruit our famfshed stock. This so-called ^Make" we found to be simply an extensix c 64 HIGH ROCK CANYON. group of springs whose waters here came to the sur- face and radiated in ri^•ulets in sueli manner as to form a sort of morass containing several hundred acres. Some of these springs were cold, some hot, and others represented all the degrees of temperature between these extremes. I ha^■e a very pleasant recollection of one of the brooks that here took its rise soon to lose itself in the surrounding desert. This brook was per- haps three feet wide and three feet deep. The bottom was sandy, the water clear, and just warm enough for bathing purposes; as I can personally attest from hav- ing here enjoyed the most grateful and refreshing bath of my life. But, as usual, there was not a tree to be seen; onl)' the everlasting sage-brush. Twelve miles from Mud Lake, we entered the High Rock Canyon, which possesses some features that are unique and striking. It cuts through a range of lava that is some twent}' miles in width and as bare of veg- etation as if it had cooled but the da}' before. The tissure or gorge that afforded us passage is about the width of a common road, and is inclosed b}' high walls that are carved in irregular outline, as if by the action of an ancient ice-ri^•er. The floor is even, free from bowlders, and the slope so regular and gentle that it seems to descend either why from where nou stand. There are few lateral cuts by which egress or ingress is possible. A fair growth ot grass and an occa- sional clump of the choke-cherrv were the sole e\i- dences of life \ isible. Hut what appeared the most remarkable was the acoustic effects, as we \eritied b\' repeated tests. The report of a rifle would go AN IMPRESSIVE ALPINE VIEW. 65 crashiiiL;- aloiif]^ the ii^orgc, eclioin^- and re-echoing- as if all the i;-eiiii of tlie ch'ffs had been startled and were shouting- the alarm one to another and answerinj^r it back, till the recedini;- sonnd died awav in the solitude. This sintrular la\a formation passed, we entered a \alley, ei*2,-ht to ten miles in width; the siirfaee of which was ashy-like in color, bore the appearance of a dr\' lake bed, and was destitute of water and well-nioh of vcijetation.'^ On the farther side of this plain, \y\n<^ di- rectly across our front, and stretching- awa\' to the right and to the left as far as the eve could reach, arose a magnificent range of mountains. Looming up abruptly from the plain, and thus being unobscured h\ the usual foot-hill Bankings, this grand uphea^ al af- forded us the most interesting and imp)-essive Alpine view we had yet had on the journe\'. Our course now lay northward along the base of this range for a num- ber of days before we reached the pass or crossing. Meantime, the same \allev formation continued, fa- \-oring us with an excellent road-bed, while the side of the adjacent mountain supplied us, in con\ enient prox- imit}-, with luxuri(nis camping places — an abundance of water, timber, and wild clover and other nutritious grasses. We took this lofty di\ ide to be a part of the Sierra Nevada Range, beyond which lay California, the land of our dreams. We became impatient, now that we supposed ourselves so near, that the enchanting 1 Rockhill, whose lonjr residence in Nevada, antl whose bent for exploration has made him familiar with every jiart of the Far West, writes me that the al- kaline lands of this region, including those of this valley, on which scarce any- thing else grows, produces an herb known as white sage, which is better for cat- tle than alfalfa after the frosts come, when they can licH snow as a substitute for water. 66 WE REACH I.ASSEN PASS. prospect should be so long" withheld from our \ision. Thus impressed, the junior Horrell and myself deter- mined, one da\- when we were off duty, to scale the bar- rier and satisfy our cra\'ing curiosity. The outcome proved to be another "tenderfoot" exploitation. After climbing laboriously for hours, we finally surmounted what we had taken to be the summit; but, lo, another and still more formidable ascent loomed up grimly and tauntino-ly before us. Wearied and disgusted, we turned about for the train, determined to abide the regular sequence of events thereafter. When at length we reached the Lassen Pass, we found the altitude still but little diminished, and the gradient very heav}- and laborious. We occupied a part of two days in making the passage. A depression at the head of a ra\ ine in the face of the acclixitN' furnished us a \ery opportune half-wa\" station for camp and for rest. z-^S^^ IV. A WELCOME CHANGE. ^T"Tf IILS formidable mountain barrier^ crossed, we ill did indeed find a welcome change. The I moisture-laden, life-giving breezes from the Pacific, intercepted by this lofty land eleva- tion, had wrouufht the transformation. The \"ast des- ert area, with its wide-spread, death-dealing desolation, was no longer present. Grass, water, and fuel were now abundant. The streams once more went rippling "un\"exed''*' to the sea. The flora at times took on larger forms than we had ever before seen. We passed through miles upon miles of pine forests, whose giant growths \\'ere a source of constant surprise and admiration. JStill, we were not vet, b\ an\ means, to regale ourselves in an ever-recurring Utopia. We vet 1 Now known as the Warner Range, and, contrary tp what we supposed, and what seems still to be the popular notion, belongs to the Great Basin sys- tem, instead of either the Sierras or the Cascades. "The Cascade Ranee [Capt. C B.Duttoo. U. S Gcol. Survey. 1885—86] is usually represented as a northward continuation of the Sierra Nevada. [Fremont so represents it. Memoire. 363. — .Author.] In reality an interval of quite a hundred miles separates what may fairly be considered the southern end of the Cascades and the northern end of the Sierra; and. furthermore, if the trend of the Sierra were continuous north- westward, it would pass thirty or forty miles west of the Cascades. .Thesouth- crn end of the latter ranjj;e may be located with some approach to precision as due east of the base of Shasta." Had Lassen known of this .erap, and gone south of the Warner Range, instead of north of it, he would have found, as has since been found, , brown, sind yellow." 1^ A BAD STKEPCH OF ROAD. but mainly with the view to prepare for the exigencies that we were forewarned were immediately to follow. For from this point to the Sacramento Valley, some seventy-five miles, the country was, practically speak- ing, destitute of both feed and water. Over much of this distance, the track crept along on the crest of a very narrow% tortuous divide, or hogback, between buried down cipitous can- than two thou- At one point, came so ob- craggy, beet- that it could ed at all; thus ' the deflection ' through a deep zQ b o t t o m of ^compelled to night, without tor our stock, ^,the sage-brush for fuel.^ A DIGGER BELLE.— (FROM A PHO- • , C t. \ TOGHAPH.) ^Pite of the darkness, and by dint of heroic effort, succeeded in picking his way to the creek^ at the bottom of the can- two s t r e a m s in dark, pre- y o n s , more sand feet deep, the crest be- structed wnth ling ledges not be follow"- necessitating of the trail hollow, at tlic which we w ere L encamp for the I - feed or water and with onh of days agone Rockhill, in 1 Here, where it was bad enough in all conscience to have to remain a single night, a month or so later, a party of emigrants, including several families, were snowed in and compelled to remain during the entire winter. Among these, were the Reverend William Roberts and family, whose unhappy experi- ences while thus imprisoned I heard detailed from their own lips. 2 Deposits of rich auriferous gravel were afterward discovered on this stream,— Deer Creek. A TKAMSTKR FN TKIKtTI.ATlON. ^-^ yon, and bringing back enough water for our stinted personal needs. It fell to Neal to take a day at the whip on this ex- ceptional stretch of road. Now, courage and compos- ure under difficulties had little part in NeaTs composi- tion. He was always quick to yield the whip to some one else when a bad or dangerous piece of road oc- curred. But in this instance he had no alternative. J had been taking his relief, as well as my own, for sev- eral days consecutively, and, on that morning, stoutly demurred to doing so longer. The sequel was not at all beatifying — to Neal. AVHiat with the sharp ridge, the quick curves, the sudden jogs, the obtruding rocks, and the dizzy precipices, he was kept in a constant fer- ment of fright and excitement. Whipping from one side of the team to tlie other, and punching the wheel- oxen this wa\' or that, as some dreaded object ap- peared, constituted his chief di\ ersion for the day. I was trudging along, mute and stolid, behind the wag- on, while the most ot this grotesque shuttle-cock per- formance was going on. Neal demanded that I do the punching on one side while he did it on the other; but 1 was obdurate, protesting that I had asked him for no help when I was in similar straits, and that now he need ask no help from me. The result was, that I was the recipient of much fervid attention at his hands, as he rushed back and forth past me on his frantic rounds. Meanwhile, Rockhill came bowling: alonii' in our immediate rear with our other team, with his ox- en mated hit or miss as usual, and exhibiting the ut- most unconcern as to whether his team or himself was 74 NEARINCi THE SACRAMENTO. right side up or wrong side up; yet he managed to steer clear of all mishaps, just the same. We laid in as much liay and water at tlie Meadows as we were able to carry. Others, of course, took the same precaution. But the supply necessarily fell much short of being adequate, and the strain upon the stock was so great that much of it perished. A train from Columbus, Ohio, were compelled on this account to abandon all their wagons, fifteen in number, and of course the most of their goods, when within less than twenty miles of the Sacramento Valley. Our teams, however, bore up heroically until the worst was over and we were coursing along smoothly upon the bosom of the great valley. But the last straw, so to speak, broke the camel's back. We still had eight to ten miles to water and a camping place. Several of the oxen became exhausted, and one after another sank down in the yoke. We had no recourse but to aban- don them where the}' lay, and reconstruct our teams as best we could. Thus we worried our way to camp. We were delighted, the next morning, to find the oxen we had left behind grazing upon the wild oats with the rest of the cattle, as if nothing had happened. The coolness of the night had so refreshed tliem that the\ became able to follow us to feed and to water. Man}- of the outfits improvised from the sahage of the wrecks on the plains, similar to our own, but worse, would have been quite amusing, had they not told so serious a story. It was no uncommon thing to see emigrants — perhaps families — come in off the plains having all their worldly effects that they had been able THE SAt'KAMKNTO A'l' F.AST. 75 to save packed in an abbreviated cart drawn b\ a ca\- iise harnessed with a cow or an ox, or c\ en upon tlie back of a sinule ox or cow. "D — N THE HUMBOLDT!" This camp was at Lassen's ranch, where Peter Las- sen had erected a log cabin, and was keeping a small stock of staple goods. This was the first sign of ci\ - ilization we had seen for many a da}". It was a motley scene of emigrants, Indians, old-time Californians, etc., that greeted our \ ision. Not many rods awa\- flowed the poetic river — the Sacramento, — of whose ^'glitter- ing sands" we had sung upon leaving home. We were not long in hastening down to gaze upon its crystal, magic waters. It was a moment of strange, deep, soul-stirring emotions as we flrst stepped upon its banks. Was this indeed our journey ''s end.^ — this the goal of our man}- weary days, weeks, and months of toil, privation, peril.-' Had we undergone some Pytha- gorian transformation of soul, we could scarce ha\ e felt more strange, fanciful, etherial. The eleventh da} of October! Yes, seven months and nineteen days since we began the journey. It had been a trul}' event- ful perio.d in life's brief span; an episode of quaint, va- 76 THE "glittering SANDS/'' ried, and impressive scenes, incidents, and experiences, which must ever remain stamped in vivid oiitHne on memory's tablet. We had been singing, as already mentioned, of the "glittering sands" of the Sacramento. We were now, of course, anxious to verify our long-cherished antici- pations. There, surely enough, were "glittering sands" dazzling upon the eye, as the current whirled the tiak}- particles over and over in the sunlight. Were these particles gold.^ — were these really the "sands" we were to gather with wash-bowls on our knees .^ We would fain believe, but could not trust our senses. Captain Horrell had been to us a sort of Sir Oracle in all things. The Captain, moreover, had been a dili- gent student in geolog}' and mineralogy all the way out. We en\'ied him his knowledge in these now prac- tical sciences. He would have, we were sure, mucii the ad\ antage of us in discovering and identifying the precious stuff. The Captain was, therefore, at once besought to enlighten us as to the composition of these drifting atoms, 'i'he moment his ready eye was fo- cused upon the sparkling objects, he exclaimed, witii an air 6f perfect assurance: "Oh, yes; those are gold; but the particles are too tine to pay to gather them." It turned out that the bright flakes were simply scales of mica, mingled with the other ingredients of disinte- grated granite, of which substances the lower bottoms of the river are almost wholh composed. We were still fifty to sixty miles from the point where we decided to locate,— Redding's Diggings. A conspicuous landmark on this short journey was the SHASTA MUT'I K. 77 erreat white clonic of Sliasta Butte. Kisiiii'- direeth in our front, and far o\ ertoppin*;- all the other peaks and ranges within our scope of \ ision, it constantl}' chal- lensred attention, thouirh we were at no time less than seventy to eight}- miles awaw •'Behold the dread Mount Shasta, where it stands Imperial midst the lesser heights; and, like Some mighty impassioned mind, companionless And cold." This huge pile is said to be visible from Monte Dia- blo — two hundred and tift\- miles, "as the erow Hies;'' v> "\^f»,'l#p'^'*^ ' SHASTA BUTTE. QFROM A PHOTOGRAPH.) and, today, "■from the dome of the eapitol at Sacra- mento, it meets the eye of many a gazer who knows not its name or the great distance it lies to the nortli. The mariner on the ocean can see it, and emigrants on the parched deserts of Nevada have tra\ eled toward it day after day, an infallible guide to lead them, on to the land of gold.'' Little wonder, therefore, that the "Poet, of the Sierras," standing on the summit of this 7^ THOSE CHUNKS SO MIGHTY BIG. monarch of the mountains, in a presence suggesti\e of the thunderbolt, the volcano, the avalanche, and the earthquake, should thus give wing to his fancy: "I stood where thunderbolts were wont To smite thy Titan-fashioned front; I heard large mountains rock and roll ; 1 saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and smite on heaven's scroll The awful autograph of God." We pitched our camp at the extreme head of the Sacramento Valle}', upon very nearl}-, if not exactly, the site of the present town of Redding. These mines were known as ''dry diggings, '' which were worked chiefly with pick, spoon, and pan, there being no wa- ter convenient to run the rocker or the long-tom. Tlic diggings, so fer as our experience went, "panned out'' decidedly ''dry" indeed. During our week's trial, we averaged hardly a dollar a day to the man; and our geological and mineralogical expert did no better than the rest of the party. My first experience was to pros- ' pect a "pot-hole," which I discovered in winding my wa\' up the dr}- bed of a gulch, which had been scooped and swirled out through a hard granite ledge. I imagined that the nuggets, in being swept down the channel during freshets, would surely have lodged in a receptacle so convenient and befitting, and wondered that so promising a "lay-out" had not been discovered before. The pot-hole, or pocket, proved to be shaped like an inverted balloon; and it took a half day's \ ig- orous, feverish labor at my hands to reach the bottom, when with bated breath I discovered— well, not even so much as the "color." Any experienced miner would have known beforehand that such would be the out- A CHANGE OF BASE. 79 come. We all became thoroughly disgusted with our 'Muck'' here; and Rockhill, Neal, and myself deter- mined uj")on a change ot base. We were informed tliat at Sacramento— e\erybody called it wSacramento C/'/y in those da\s — sixteen dol- lars per cord was the current price paid for wood-chop- ping; and, being all of us accustomed to the woods and the ax, we at once decided to head for that point, which was about a hundred and se\ ent\-H\ e miles dis- tant. Good had rejoined us since our arrival off the plains, and was at the time awa\ prospecting with ex- Governor Redding and part\ . But we were too im- patient of delax' to aw ait his return. B\ arrangement, Neal and I started ahead on foot, and Rockhill was to follow with the team. The Sacramento River was forded a short distance aboxe the mouth of Antelope Creek, both as we went up and as we returned. Near the ford, we were treated to a California rodeo, or round-up, with the accompanying process of cattle- branding, which was the first exhibition of that sort we had ever seen. The vaqueros appeared all to be trained Indians. A calf would be singled out from the herd and pursued by several of the vaqueros, each swinging his coiled lariat over his head, and yelling with the \ehemence of true savagery. The animal was soon ensnaied about the head or the neck from opposite sides b\ two of the horsemen, when a third horseman came up from the rear and threw a noose around the hind legs. The three lariats, each secured to the ponmiel of a saddle, were now drawn taut in cliffer H M Si f O »> K5 : 86 A HEARTY MEAL A LITTLE OMINOUS. Tlie lawyer, who had so gallantly come to my defense hack on the plains, greeted me from the top of a high rick of sacked tiour, which he was cr^'ing off at auc- tion. A preacher, who had parted with us early on the route, because we sometimes traveled of Sundays when we did not have suitable camping places to lay o\ er, had changed the pulpit for the saloon. There was little ^''5^'^''^^^^^^'^%. leisure for choosing an j^P ^t occupation ; the first op- M. r^^ki^:^ W port unit}' offered had hli/wi^^ '^^ Wt to be laid hold of, for Iji' m Jftffm^. ||''|iiiiii '^ time at least. My i'lF *^^*' .' 'S/il , first and on- h' job in the much of be- fancy. Since ]M i c h i g a n the Feather had nothing a p p e t i t e , had become whetted my place ofuestsatthe cit}' lacked ing to my leaving my friends on River, I had to eat. My therefore, so keenly that I took among the first table 1 saw, taking my chances as to what might follow. This was at Knight's Hotel, probably the best of its kind in the cit}-. though constructed of canvas, like the rest of the makeshifts about it. One of the pro- prietors stood in the door to attend to the guests as they departed. This rendered the situation a little ominous for me; but, after fully satisfying my inner- A (iKL'KSOMK SI' Ja'IACl ,E. J^y man, I at once approached this dignitary as an apph'- cant for work. He quickl}- responded, "Yes; have you had youi" dinner.'" I replied that I had. He thereupon immediately put a man in his place, and bid me follow him to the boat-landing, where 1 shouldered up se\eral rough boards and packed them to the rear of the hotel. Here, clad in dirty red flannel shirts and blue o\ eralls, and ]\ ing upon a board outdoors, ex- posed to the were the re- two miners, work mak- es from the carried up ial of these that is the for m\' din- spectacle, as job, was far table, espe- was at the PHOTOGRAPH. SEE FOOT-NOTE, PAGE 80. pelting rain, mains of I w as set at ing two box- boards I had for the bur- bodies; and w^ay I paid n e r. T h e well as the from delec- c i a 11 y as I time afflict- plaint of // which these poor fellows had died. Dysenter\- of a malignant type was prevalent; and, as the doctors had not learned how to treat the disease as modified by that environment, the mortalit}' from this cause was very great. Later, such gruesome spectacles, I was told, were of every- day occurrence about this establishment; so common indeed as no longer to invoke coffin, winding-sheet, or ceremony of any sort, sa\e the dray and spade, as the i H SUT'I'ICK's I'OKI'. 89 carcass of a dog- would be treated. Many of these, no doubt, were well-to-do at the far-awa}- home, where all the cherished endearments of family and friends were awaiting their return; but, it may be, that the record- ing- angel alone will ever know of their hapless idnd on eai'th. "How little do we know of what we are, How less, of what we may he." Two miles from the Sacramento, and east of the city, was the famous Sutter's Fort, ^ which up to that season had been j the terminus of the only overland wagon trail entering California, and which for nearl}- a d( SUTTER"S FOKT, 1890. — (from a PHOTOGRAI'H.J cade had been the focal point of the American residents of the country. Hence, probably, the name of the river near b}', — Rio de los Americanos. The fort was 1 General John Bid well, of Chico. Cal., a pioneer of '41, who was long con- nected with this fort as Sutter's general manager, and who retains a vivid recollection of its plan in detail, has kindly furnished me \vith an outline sketch and other valuable data to aid in the drawing of this cut. which he upon exam- ining the proof pronounces substantially correct and a much truer picture than any of the many others that had come to his notice. I revisited the site of this fort in 1884.. and was pained to note that the central two-story adobe building was all thatremained of this monument of aunique and picturesquepast. This, too, was wholly neglected and in an advanced state of decay. A more apj)re- ciative public, however, h.as quite recently restored the whole structure, of which I have received a photograph since 1 wrote the foregoing. go OFF AGAIN FOR THE MINES. established by Captain John A. Sutter ( 1803-1880 ) as the headquarters of his great rancho, upon which he had other improvements, including the saw-mill, at which the gold was discovered. Captain Sutter was an ex-officer of the Swiss army, emigrated to this countr}- in 1H38, lived in Indiana for a while, and, final- ly, after several years of adventure, found his way to California, in 1840. He is said to have been liberal and hospitable to a fault. "Everybody was welcome — one man or a hundred, it was all the same.'^ Yet, it was his grim fate to die upon the verge of pauperism. The wood-chopping project not turning out as ex- pected, I again set face for the mines, a friend having loaned me the wherewith for the purpose. I did not wait for Neal, and it was well that I did not; for he drifted elsewhere, and I saw him no more. Nor did I again meet Rockhill until I met him at home, seven 3'ears thereafter. I then, for the first time, learned of his fate after we separated at Redding's. He had not been able, in consequence of the floods, to get the team any farther than Deer Creek, where he left all the prop- erty in charge of a ranchman, one Colonel Anthony- Davis; and, in the Spring, when an accounting was sought, both ranchman and propert}' had disappeared, not again to be found. ^ I now headed for Coloma, about tifty-tive miles dis- tant, of course still "tramping" it. At all stations along the road, beginning with the Ten Mile House, meals were two dollars each. The lodging accommo- 1 A statement which 1 was pleased to have verified thirty-five years latcr through my accidental meeting of the ranchman's widow in another and dis- tant part of the state. PLODl)IN(i TOWARD IHI-: MINES GA.MliLINC. 9I dations were overtaxed at e\ ery point. At Shingle Springs, I paid a dollai- for tlie privilege of lodging in a covered cart, in i-onipany with a barrel of pork. It was raining hard, and that was the only alternative. Of course one had to furnish his ow^n beddino- in those days, no matter lodge. The w retched that be got to the pack-an i nia 1 s. pound was the to Coloma and \v h i c h \\' c r e distance from (toUI dust was currency, and and the scales every place of weights were of- and of very du- gravity. The faro tables were ning flush. The indeed is the in all new m in- most pretentious gantly furnished K TVPICAT, <)1,1)-TIM KK.-1> where he might roads were so supplies could mines only b\- A doll a r per )\. customar\- rate '^) to Ha ngtown, about the same vSaera m e n t o. the universal the ^'blower''"" were a fixture in business. The ten home-made, bious s p e c ill c monte and the everywhere run- gambling table chief attraction ing regions. The and most ele- (juarters, wheth- er tents by the roadside or palaces in a city, are dedi- 1 A shallow sort of tra.v, usually of tin. triantjular-shapetl, with one corner open, used to blow black sand and other foreign substances from {lold dust, and to handle the dust about the scales 'J The "Panama" bat, silk sash, embroidered shirt, and absence of vest anU coat — somewhat after the Mexiean style — made up a costume much affected iu 92 AT THE "mountaineers' HOME." cated to this purpose. Such resorts are, in fact, about the onl}^ places in such regions where men can pass their leisure hours or find companionship and recrea- tion. 'Tis ever thus, — Brazen Vice rears his gilded temples before Modest Virtue scarce thinks of break- ing ground. The brood of "suckers" was especially bountiful while the intiow of the annual overland emi- gration lasted. 'Could fools to keep their own contrive, On what, on whom, could gamesters thrive?" My first a double-log the Sacra- loma road, a west of the It was called t a i n e e r s ' and was a ern and trad- combined, occupation was cutting at a dollar wood at five c o r d, t h e brittle and THEmSCOVEREROFGOLDATST'TTER'SMILL oaks. Board was six dollars per day, the sumptuous fare consisting of bacon, beans, coffee, and musty-sog- tbose days; and was the object of awe and admiration of the "tenderfoot." who looked upon the chaps thus pompously clad as being already surfeited with the precious dust. Everybody had also a penchant for gibbering Spanish. The typical miner, as usually represented in the prints, is mere caricature, the shabby clothes and the unkempt person being no more than the natural result ot the neglect and indifference that men drop into in the absence of society every- where. halt was at house, on m en to-Co- mile or two latter place, the " Moun- Home," sort of tav- i n g - p o s t My chief while here house 1 o gf s each and dollars p e r latter from .crooked SOME INFELICITOUS RECOLLECTIONS. 93 ory-buggy-worm\" bread. Flour was two dollars per pound, and a \ illainous article at that, the most of it having made the \ oyage round Cape Horn and heated in the ship's hold. Potatoes were eight dollars per pound, the chief use to which they were put being as a cure for scur\ \ , which complaint was then quite The locality \ er\- he a rt diggings in but we did this at the often picked s i / e d nug- d o o r - yard \y rain; but cur to any of pect for dig- er there or else in the c o m m o n. was in the of the best California, not know time. We u p g o o d - gets in the after a hea- it did notoc- us to pros- gings, eith- anywhere flat of sev- t^ 4^ (^er pound for transportation. lUit he di\erted from the proper destination, and tetehed up at Mormon Island, where he sold both team and i;-oods, and poeketed the proeeeds. lie next turned up at C'o- loma. Here he fell in with a (lerman. who was about Has \ (f/rr- w h o w a s to lea\ e tor lavd, and fond of dis- bulk\' purse with whieh to set the a b r o a d upshot was : missed his and his new- \v a s a e - in a '' peo - eonvicted, tenced to a lashes, half at onee, and .=^ p 1 a \' 1 \\)i a of nuo"g'ets, he intended e r o w d s agape. The the (jerman n n ii" g c t s, made friend cused, tried pie's court,'' a n d s e n- h u n d r e d to be ^-iven the rest af- ter a week's resi')ite. WHien he came to us, he had just undero-one the last installment. From his raw and bleeding back, it was evident that the thong had been robusth- applied, and the victim vowed eternal ven- geance upon the merciless hand that did it. The fellow, however, with refreshing facetiousness, justified the deed, upon the ground that no such fine American gold should be allowed to be taken from the country I 96 WHERE GOLD WAS FI^ST FOUND. Coloma, as is well known, is located on the South Fork of the American River, and is distinguished his- torically as the place where, on January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, in examining the tail-race of the Sutter sawmill, made the gold discovery, which set the world ablaze, and was so far-reaching and momentous in its results. I saw the mill man)' times. It was of the old- fashioned, flutter-wheel, sash-saw model, ^ and was pounding away day and night while I knew it. It was situated a little below the town on an extensive bar, which, through many re-workings, has since been al- most wholly washed awa\'; and thus, through these en- croachments of the eager, unsentimental gold-seeker, the old mill, and the race below it, where the first piece of gold was picked up, ha\e long since disappeared. E\"en the exact site of the mill can no longer be point ed out. "Yet. the years may chase each other Down the rugged steeps of time. The world may lose its harmony, Life's song its merry rhyme; Hnt forever and forever The story of the mill And the man who dug the mill-race. Will linger with us still." Marshall's discover\' at the mill w as not, it appears, the result of mere accident. The water-wheel had been set too low, and the water was being let into the tail-race of nights to cut out the channel so as to free the wheel. It was Marshall's custom to walk along the race in the morning, after the water had been shut 1 I have Ijeen at considerable pains to get an accurate picture of this mill, having had before me several cuts said to have been sketched on the spot from the original, among which is the print in "California Illustrated," by G V. Cooper, and a pencil sketch by C. B. Oillespie. I have also availed myself of suggestions frorn Gillespie, H. W. Bigler, St. George, Utah, and Azariah Smith, & ^s 98 HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE. off, SO as to orive the men directions in the work. On the day previous to the discovery, a section of bed-rock in the race, laid bare by the water, excited his curiosi- ty ; and, calling one of his men^ to him, he, after draw- ing- attention to this queer-looking rock, remarked that he believed there was gold thereabouts, this belief be- ing founded on the fact, he said, that he had noticed the "blossom of gold" ( quartz ) in the adjacent hills, and that he had read in some book that the presence of quartz was a sign of gold. vSo strong was he in this belief that he sent the man to the cabin for a pan, that he might make the test, by washing some of the sand and gravel from the tail-race. The test was un- successful ; but the failure did not satisfy Marshall. ''Well,''' he said to his attendant, "we will hoist the gates tonight and let in all the water we can, and to- morrow morning we will shut it off and come down here, antl I helie\e we v\'ill find gold or some other mineral." .\s he was a rather eccentric sort of man, no heed was paid to this seeming whim. But Marshall was in a different frame of mind. Tlu' next morning at an unusuallv earlv hour some one was heard pound- ing at the mill. It was Marshall. ''There was at the time a carpenter's work-bench standing in the mill- yard; a little way from it was a saw-pit for whip-saw- ing lumber; also men at work in the mill-yard fram- Manti, L'tah. the latter two n{ whom assisted Marshall in building the mill. The conspicuous forebay in the Nahl design, as printed in "'The Century," ap- pears to he merely an embellishment by the artist; for the water entered the mill from the front or east side, and not from the right or north side. 1 This man was James S. Hrown, whose ])ortrait is printed on page 95, and the facts narrated down to the iiiiotation "There was at the time a carpenter's work-bench," etc., Iglean from his interestingpaniphlct entitled. "California: An Authentic History of the First Find." j>uhlislie(l by himself. Salt Lake City, Utah. THE HANGTOWN CAMP. 99 in^ timbers and hewing with a broadaxe. Near the tlutter-wlieel there was a large bowlder to be blasted out. I was at the drill preparing to put in a blast of powder when Marshall came up from the tail-race car- r3ing his slouch hat in his arms, and, setting it on the work-bench, exclaimed: 'B03S, I belie\e I have found a gold mine.' At once the men gathered around, and sure enough in the top of his hat, the crown knocked in a little, was the pure stuff in small pieces or rather thin scales. All knew it was gold, although not one had ever seen the metal before in its natural state. "^ It was agreed on all hands that the discovery should be kept secret; but the news took wing in spite of all pre- cautions to the contrary. The public, however, were slow to believe, so that it was some time before the importance of the event came to be realized. The holidays found me at Hangtown, which took its suggesti\-e name from the circumstance that two men — a Frenchman and a Spaniard — were hanged here, for robbery and murder. The process was in pursuance of the usual miner's code, and occupied but twenty-four hours for its complete execution. The oak that did dut}- on the occasion may be seen in the annexed plate, be- tween two buildings, nearly opposite the ''El Dorado," from whose tall flag-staff a streamer is flying. In the fall of '50 the camp was the scene of another hanging- bee, the process being much more summary than that just mentioned. The subject was "Irish Dick," who killed a man across a gambling table in the "El Dora- 1 This last quotation is from a letter by Henry W. Bigler to the author dat ed St. George, Utah, May 31, 1894.. See portrait and note, p. 93. THE VILT.AIN DANGT.RD IN THE AIR. lOI do." The crowd on the inside, in less time than it takes to tell it, seized the wretch and thrust him out tlie door to the (^uickl}' assembled crowd on the out- side, wdien a noose was put about his neck and he was hurried off to the most convenient tree. The other end of the rope was thrown over a limb and grasped bv a number of men, when the fellow was asked if he had anything to say. He coolly took a monte deck from his vest pocket, 'and began to shuffle the cards, saying, "If an3'bod3' wants to buck, I'll give him a lay- out." A quick haul upon the cord, and a graceless, conscienceless villain dangled in the air.^ 1 'Dick" was brought across the plains the previous season by one of my partners, antl was a slim strippling of about twenty, thin visaged, and with large, uneven teeth, and a slight Irish accent. He drew a dirk upon rae as we were going up street one evening because of some pleasantry of mine; but I had no thought then that he was capable of murder. ^y ,^/^^r ^ VI. THE PICK AND SHOVEL AGAIN. w I ANGTOWN was, at this period, one of the 1^1 most important mining camps in the State. I I Claims were Hmited to fifteen feet square; so I the miners could not work long in a place. ^ Two men usuall}' formed the ephemeral min- ing partnerships, as by the methods of mining then in vogue that number could generally work together the most profitably. The best diggings I "struck^' about here were on Hangtown Creek, a half mile be- low town, where my partner and I took out, for awhile, with a long-tom,^ fifty to a hundred dollars apiece per day. We also found good mines in Kelsey's Canyon, in which the gold was mainly flax-seed shaped, and of a very uniform and beautiful variety. The largest piece I ever found was in a '' gutted " gulch, in the grease-wood hills, westward of town. Here, with the first stroke of the pick, I raked out of the clay an ounce chunk, and with the next stroke, one weighing two and a quarter ounces.^ This was certainly encouraging 1 The first loag-tom I saw was in the spring of '50. 2 Gold was usually found in small particles, buc it ranged from the size of almost impalpable powder up to verj' large nuggets. In September. 1871, a piece worth $6,000 was taken out by Bunker ^i: Co., in the State of Oregon, EXTRAVAGANT RUMORS. I03 for a beginning; but there was no water near, and the beginning proved also to be well-nigh the end. But, as a rule, mining, even at that day, eould not, by any means, be reekoned a protitable employment. A lady who kept boarders in Hangtown, in the winter of '49- 50, informed me that very few of her boarders paid or were able to pay; and one of these boarders, who ap- plied himself very diligently, owned to me that he had not taken out as much as a quarter of an ounce on any day during the winter.^ The diggings where the large nuggets were found, and where there were several cabins, were entirely de- serted at the time of our operations there; as was also Kelsey's Canyon. The notion generally entertained during the winter of '49-50, was that higher up in the Sierra lay in situ the original "big lumps," of which the flakes and other small particles lower down were but the float or waste. Many were the extravagant yet fully credited rumors whispered about from friend to friend as to the pound-a-day diggings that, up there, invitingly awaited the advent of spring to open up their treasures. Accordingly, when that longed- for time came round, the real mining belt was almost wholly deserted, in the stampedes for those fancied ophirs. My partner and I, not to be left napping un- der such circumstances, were among the very first to break from this camp. We went by the Carson emi- which is perhaps the largest specimen ever found on the Pacific Coast; but we have an account ot" much larger finds in the Australia mines, one diecovered in the DonoUy district, in 1869, weighing 2.520 oz., and worth $48,0O(). 1 Doubtless many old miners would agree with Hrigham Young in the decla- ration he made to the Colfax party, in 1865, "that every dollar of gold taken out ia the United States had cost one hundred dollars." NEAR THE BaCKBONE OF THE SIERRA.— (ADAPTED FROM "PACIFIC TOURIST." A WIT.D-GOOSE CHASE. T05 grant trail as far as Leek Springs, at which point we found ourselves up among the branches of the stately sugar pines, on the crust of the snow, which was so solidly packed that our horse^s hoofs made just indent- ation enough to make it comfortable traveling. At this point the backbone of the Sierra was in plain view and apparently but a few miles away. Swathed in winter snows of untold depth, as it now was, this great divide wore a most ominous and forbidding aspect, and sent a shudder of awe through the soul as we con- templated its awful majesty : "With foundations seamed and knit. And wrought and bound by golden bars, Sierra's peaks serenely sit And challenge heaven's sentry-stars." Well, it was on the South. Fork of the American Riv- er, or on a tributary thereto, somewhere in this region, that we were to find a party of miners that had been rolling out the pound chunks the whole winter long. That is to say, it had conlidingl}' come to our ears that some one had affirmed that he had seen a man who had heard another man say that he knew a fellow who was dead sure that he knew another fellow who, he was certain, belonged to a party that were thus shoveling up the big chunks^ — or something to that ef- fect. We now, of course, knew that we had been hoaxed; 3^et it was, doubtlessly, all round a case of — "Themselves deceiving and themselves deceived." But our frank and earnest avowals as to the facts made not the slightest impression upon the party after part}' we met on our return, that, having got wind of our slipping away, were on our track, determined upon lo6 AN ERRONEOUS THEORY. sharing in our supposed "good thing." They became convinced only when they saw the imprints of our horse^s hoofs in the snow where we had turned about from our fool's errand. And, forsooth, such is about as rational a foundation as miners** stampedes have usu- ally had from that day to this. For, be it known, that of all men the gold-miner is proverbially the readiest — "To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched, And count the chickens ere they're hatched."! Another notion then widely prevalent was, that, as the river-bars were rich in auriferous deposits, the riv- er-beds should be much more so, especially in the deep-water stretches between the rapids. Hence, in the summer of 1850 a large percentage of the miners clubbed together to turn the various rivers of the min- ing-belt from their beds, at the more favorable points, by means of canals, or flumes, or both, as necessity re- quired. One such compan}^ was organized to drain the South Fork at Spanish Bar, opposite Placerville. The conditions here, as the theory ran, were precisely what was desired. Here was the deep-water stretch, and into this emptied the Hangtown and the Kelsc}' Canyons, both of which were very rich. On the 1 The Sun River stampede in Montana, in the fall of 1865, may be cited as a typical instance. One McClellan had discovered a very rich gulch on the west side of the Range, and had thus acquired considerable fame locally as a pros- pector. He was afterward, at the time above-mentioned, leaving Helena with two mules packed with provisions A friend accosted liim as to his destination. "Oh;" he replied soto voce and with a sly twinkle of the eye. "I've got as good a thing out here as I want, this winter," The news of this incident got abroad, and touched off the percussion gold-htinters within reach, occasioning the most notable stampede of the country. When the rush was well under way, a tremen- dous blizzard came up, causing much and intense suflering. Four men were brought back frozen stark dead, and many had limbs or other members more or less seriously frozen. Now, it turned out that all McClellan had meant by his pleasantry was that somewhere out in the Sun River wilds, he had put up a cabin for the winter and taken to himself an Indian wife. THE DIGGERS DIGGING. I07 Strength of this favorable prospect, a large force of men spent the season in turning the river and pumping out the hole, when, to their great surprise and disap- pointment, but a few hundred dollars were realized, and this was at the moutli of the Hangtown Canyon, where evidently it had been but recently deposited. Such, generally, was the outcome of similar ventures that season; so gener- ally, indeed, that the phrase, "I've been damming the river,*" became a curreiit by- word, as the usual ex- planation given that fall by unlucky min- ers for their season's failure. The "float" ' gold, as was ultimate- ly found out, lodges on the riffles, or rap- ids, and not in the deep holes, some hint of which I might have taken from my experience as a neophyte in wrestling witli the pot-hole. In the gravel drift of the river-bars, the "pay-dirt" usually lay in "streaks" corresponding to the several strata as these had been successively super- posed one upon another. The Indians were frequent visitors at the mining camps in this section. While the placers were plenty, shallow, and easil}- worked, they did a good deal of 1 Adapted from Mark Twain's "Roughing It," by permission of American Publishing Co., Hartford, Conn. See Appendix, p. iv. ^^"-;il THE "emigrant's" FIRST APPEARANCE IN THE DIGGINGS. -1 io8 THE NOBLE SAVAGE. spasmodic mining. The pan and the wooden bowl — the batea (bah-ta-a) of the Mexicans — were the imple- ments they chiefly used for the purpose. A half doz- en or more of them would dig and wash diligently for two to three hours, when they would hie themselves off to the nearest store or trading-post to spend the proceeds. At the "Mountain- eer's Home/' we had a frequent customer, who ♦-^^ pompously point- ed to himself as "me Jim, Alcal- de,"^ and who rarely missed an opportunity to impress upon us the dignit}' of his personage. Jim evinced a decid- ed partiality for bright calico shirts — at five dollars apiece; for which he appropriated the bulk of the earnings of himself and his handful of followers. These shirts he would put on, one after another, until he had perhaps a half doz- en telescoped over his person at once, never taking the "the noble savage." 1 Al-cal-de is the Spanish equivalent for Justice of the Peace; but under the lax judicial methods of the Mexican regime, the functions and powers exercised by the officials bearing this title were often little, if any, short of absolute. Hence, to the unrefined Digger perception, as with Jim, alcalde came to be sy- nonymous with "chief," or headman ot the tribe or community. For full his- torj' of this office .see Shinn's "Mining Camps," New York, 1885. A FRIGHTENED SQUATTER. 109 trouble to remove or to cleanse the ones he had previ- ously successively donned. Thus arrayed, he was ful- 1}' satisfied to allow the rest of his august figure to re- main exposed in its natural grace and symmetry. Oc- casionail}', enough dust would be dug out to lay in a sack of flour, in which case the lord would mount the purchase — a hundred pounds — on the back of his spouse, and then stalk along in her rear with true savage self-complacency as she trotted home with the burden. One da}', the ordinary routine of the Placerville camp was broken by the appearance on the street of an elderly, lean, angu- lar man, who from his wagon proceeded to make a speech and exhibit sev- eral ugly gun-shot wounds about the groin. He soon drew a crowd around him. It appeared, according to his story, that he had been a participant in the armed collision which had taken place the day previous be- tween the squatters and the anti-squatters at Sacramen- to, and in which several men had been killed and wound- MODERN DIGGER BELLE, IN CEREMONIAL COSTUME. (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.) no DISAPPOINTED AND DISHEARTENED. ed. The speaker belonged, he said, to the squatters' side, and had been attacked and driven off by an armed posse, from whose vengeance he escaped only by plung- ing into the American River and swimming across be- yond their reach. But he had not quit the field, he de- clared, without having given his assailants a valiant fight; whereupon some one in the crowd sang out, "What is your name?" "My name is Allen," he re- sponded. "You must be some relation to old Ethan Allen," another spectator suggested. "Yes:" answered the speaker, "I am a grand-son of the hero of Ticonder- oga." But, notwithstanding this avowal as to "the great Jehovah" blood in his veins, he was, obviously, still very much frightened. He had traveled all night to make sure of getting out of harm's way, and he now appealed to his hearers to protect him. At this, of course, everybody present shouted, "We will, wc will!" and so the episode ended. ^ Placerville was the first point in the mines reached on the principal overland trail in the season of 1850, and, early in July, the stream of emigrants from this direction began to pour into the camp. The first ar- rival was a party froin my own town in Indiana — the Fowler brothers — who had made the journey from the Missouri River with an ox team in ninety days. The rush that season was very great, and soon every ave- nue was filled with the new recruits. A more disap- pointed and disheartened lot of mortals than they were 1 This collision occurred on August 14. 18r>0, Charles Robinson, the squat- ter leader, and later Governor of Kansas, being ainonj; the wounded. The con- tention Ijetween the squatters and the anti-squatters, which was a long and serious element o( disturbance in the State is treated of at considerable length in Royce's "History of California." A ULOOxMY OUTLOOK. I I I could scarcely be imagined. They believed, as did many of the old-timers also, that the diggings had been worked out, and that the whole country had collapsed into utter ruin. The gloomy outlook was f u r t h e r aggra\'ated by the prevalence of much sickness, which, at this camp, was ow- ing largel}' to the stagnant, polluted wa- ter, which was mostly obtained from the abandoned prospect- holes, of which the streets were full. I was myself taken with typhoid fever sev- Jl cral weeks prior to the tirst arrivals over- land, and did not re- cover so as to be able to work till this camp WOMAN'S CINCTUKE, HOOPA INDIAN MAKE. — 1 .| |-j (^ t ll C UCi O"hbor lU O" sections had become overcrowded with the newcomers. An ounce- a visit was the usual fee for medical attend- ance. 1 Reproduced bs' permission from Smithsonian Report for 1886, Part 1. 2 The current trade value of gold dust up to September, 1848, was $12 per oz., at which date the merchants of San Francisco, in a public meeting, nxed the value at $16 per oz , and, though the actual average value, as determined by assays, was not far from $18 per oz. the rating established by the merchants was universally accepted as the standard while' I was in California, and per- hajjs for years thereafter. Sec Hittell. "History of California." 112 OFF FOR THE TRINITY. In the latter part of August, Good arrived in Pla- eerville from the Trinity diggings. He had eonie to this eongested hibor market to employ men to work for his tirm — Brown, Pfouts & Co.— in that remote sec- tion, where the evil effects from the emiij^ration had not been, and were not likely to be, seriously felt. He soon engaged about thirty men, at three dollars per day and board. When we were going up the Sacra- mento Valley, the fall before, we met hundreds of men coming from these same mines, cursing them as utter- ly worthless; yet, as a matter of fact, the yield here was about as good as anywhere else in California. And thus we found it everywhere — some coming, some going; some praising, some damning. Through Good's representations, I accompanied him,^ driving an ox team as far as Shasta, which was the end of the wagon road in that direction, and which was but a few miles from the scene of our first mining exploitations. We had now to pack the rest of the distance, some seventy miles, to the head of the Big Can3'on on the Trinity, where we proposed to locate till the setting in of winter. Upon arriving at our destination, I at once struck ounce diggings, on a small sandy bar, near the river's edge; and one afternoon I scooped up eighty dollars out of the water, from the top of a bed of loose sand, inside of an aban- doned coffer-dam. The gold was all tine scales, and was ob\iouslv a cpiite recent deposit. Kendrick and D. K. Wall bailed out the water while I did the wash- 1 The two Wall brothers, I) K. and John D., of South Bend, Ind., and B. F. Kendrick, of Rochester, Ind., were also of the party as traveling companions. ABOUNDING WITH SALMON. II3 ing in a rocker, for wliich I paid cacli at tlic rate of ten dollars per day. The Trinity abounded with salmon, l^^very niorn- in^*- there was a school of them inside the coffer-dam near by; and, with a few moments' work closing up the mouth of the dam with cobble stones, the tish were easily caught by the gills and tail, with the hand, as with their heads poked into the openings of the stones, they were wriggling to escape. I thus supplied my- self with a su- perabundance «-^^>, '-_s=^^^^^=^ of this ''poor man's meat."" On one occa- sion I saw a large speci- men wriggling itself spasmod- ically to cross a riffle in the North Fork, where the wa- ter w^as scarce- ly deep enough to con er half its body. I crippled it with a stone, when it whirled over on its side and w^as floating away, as I caught it. Many were badly bruised from contact with the rocks when flinging themselves into the air in forcing the rapids. I saw one crazed in this WAV shoot across the river twice, the last time landing at nearly full length on the bank, where it was secured. Frequently, too, they were seen with one or I'KOSPECTING IN THE TRINITY RKGION. 114 DESERTED CAMPS. more lamper ells clinging to their bodies. Indeed, so many perished in various ways that the Sacramento River, in 1849, was said actually to smell from the pollution. In the course of a month or two, the approach of winter caused an almost total abandonment of the river. One day, I went down through the canyon to the Big Bar. This had been the largest mining camp on the river; but I now found it totally deserted. The uten- sils, implements, and camp debris of various sorts, not excepting bottles, were strewn about the brush shan- ties as if the occupants had decamped in a panic. Weaverville was the only camp west of the Coast Range that bore any semblance of a town, and to this point, as a winter quarters, flocked about everybody that intended to remain over winter in that region. I clung to my claim a fortnight or so, after the river be- low me had been wholly deserted, and when the near- est civilized habitation above me was six miles away, at Canyon Creek, where a sort of store was kept, and where, of Sundays, I obtained my week's supplies. On either side of the river, for practically an illimitable dis- tance, the wild beasts and savages still held their pris- tine sway. It was a very imprudent thing for me to do; but there had been no trouble with the Indians up to that time, and I did not realize the danger to which I was exposed. The spot, too, was not at all a blithe- some or an inspiring one; for all about me sharp, cragged mountains pressed one upon another, while immediately behind my little tent a sheer mountain wall, dark and frowning with its heav}^ growth of firs, COMMLTNES WITH SOT.ITUDE. II5 shut out the sun during- all but about three hours of the day. I, at length, followed the crowd to Wea\crville. Here, about a mile from town, between Ten Cent Gulch and East Weaver Creek, among the pines, I put up for myself an eight-by-twelve log cabin, with shake roof, and generous stick chimney. The mountain lions were very numerous in the vicinity, as their nightly serenades kept me constantly reminded; but, with a THE AUTHOR COMMUNES WITH SOLITUDE. strong door securely pinned, I felt amply assured against any undue intrusions on their part. I did hap- pen, however, on one occasion, to meet one of their lordships on a trail in the thick chaparral, east of town. I hardly need add that I was quite ready to yield him the right of way, had he not, through his superior nim- bleness, extended me that courtesy first. A 3^ouno- man, who had come from my count}- in Indiana, but ii6 LOCATE ON reading's BAR. whom I had never met there, came to my cabin here sometime during the winter, claiming that he was not able to support himself because of a crippled back. He was a body-maker by trade, and was very glib in recounting his travels and experiences, perhaps in con- trast to my conscious rustic simplicity. I shared my mite with him for six to eight months, and as a re- ward he generously taught me to use tobacco. The camp was by no means a live one; so that the break- ing out of the Scott River excitement, toward the close of winter, was hailed as a timely relief, and it precip- itated a general rush from Weaver- ville thitherward.' Good happened to be in Weaverville with his pack-train at the time, and was employed to remove several stocks of goods from this point to Scott's Bar, for which service he received a dollar per pound, the distance being not far from a hundred miles. - I did not join in the exodus, but earl}- in the spring returned to the Trinity, now locating on Reading's 1 Reproduced from Roosevelt's "The Wilderness Hunter," by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers, New York and London. 2 Good's firm also located on this bar where they kept a trading-post and carried on mining, and where Good, in a letter, now before me, dated Sacramen- to, June 1, 1851, writes that he had the "bigpest hick" mining he had had in California. His partner, Joseph H. Brown, took out "near $5,0()0" in two days, this including a nvigget, "clear of quartz — nothing but virgin gold," and "worth 9.t $16 per og. $3,X4.0." HEAD OF A CALIFORNIA LION.— 1 A BRILLIANT VENTURE. 117 Bar, where 1 found the digginf^^s pretty uniform and fairly good. One miner, a Missourian, assured me as to liis claim here, that he "could make an ounce a day d d easy by working d d hard." Some claims paid much better than this, but the average per day to the man was perhaps not far from ten dollars. The pay-dirt was borne by hand to the river, where it was washed in cradles, or rockers. With the exception of one or two wheel-barrow^s, the Holland yoke, with buckets made of ten-gallon casks sawed in two, was the contrivance used for this purpose. This process was slow and laborious, and became more and more so as the claims were worked back from the water. Besides, the carrying of the heavy buck- ets produced physical distortion, mak- ing one r o u n d -s h o u 1 d e r e d in a short time. In view of this unsatisfactory state of things, a party of us conceived the project of carrying the water to the dirt, instead of the dirt to the water, as was being done. A ditch from Weaver Creek to the bar would solve the prob- S'^^^ l<^'m. The idea was entirely feasible. The ditch need not be more than a mile or so long; the excavating could be done wnth the pick and sho\el; the volume of water was more than ample; and as for head, it was only a question as to how far we should ascend the creek whether we should ha\e barely enough or a thousand feet to spare. With this encouraging outlook, we began the work. The senior member undertook the part of eng-ineer. Il8 ANOTHER DIGGER RAID. and constructed what he called a "water-level" for the purpose. After a month or more of diligent toil with pick and shovel in the broiling sun, we turned in the water. What was our disappointment and cha- grin upon this test to tind that our ditch had been laid out wrong end first — that the mouth was about two feet higher than the head ! A bountiful catch of the worthless lamper eel, coupled with an equally copious outpouring of irreverent interjections, was the sum to- tal that the most of us realized out of the enterprise. A Digger raid was the next notable event of the camp. All the horses of the vicinity, to the "unlucky" number of thirteen, were herded by two men at a stip- ulated price per head, and were carefully looked after during the day and closely corralled at night. The corral was situated just across the river, opposite the head of the bar. As a further precaution against the well-known partiality of the Diggers for equine feasts, the tent in which the men lodged was pitched imme- diately by the only entrance to the enclosure. Yet, in spite of all this care, the men awoke one luckless morninu: to find the bars let down and not a hoof in sight. The cause was at once divined — the Diggers had got in their work. A party from the bar were soon on the trail. The thieves, it was found, had set out with their booty to the eastward, but after awhile veered around to the westward. Whatever may have been the motive for taking this circuitous, out-of-the- way course, whether to divert suspicion from them- selves at the expense of others of their kind, or to em- barrass and elude pursuit, it was a ruse they had long Several diggers bite tHe dust. it9 successful!}^ practised. In this instance, however, it failed to subserve either of these purposes. At a dis- tance of about thirty miles by the route taken, over a sinuous, wearisome mountain trail, the marauders were completely surprised at their rancheria (ran-che-re-a) and several of their number made to bite the dust. A deep, hidden ravine across their front partially foiled a charge upon their position, and enabled the rest to escape. One horse only, and that the sorriest of the lot, was recovered. The sliced carcasses of the oth- CALIFORNIA WOLF.— (REDK AWN FKOM C. NAHL, IN "HUTCHINS' CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE," 1858.) ers w^ere spread out upon poles to cure; for the wild Digger of that day made no other use of the horse than for food. A hurried reconnoisance of the locality disclosed signs of numerous abandoned rancherias, at all of which fragments of horses and cattle were strewn about, the latter attesting to the energy and persist- ence with which the Diggers had carried on their dep- redations upon the whites, and that too (except in the present instance) without detection or molestation in any way. VII. DIGGER VENGEANCE -HUMBOLDT BAY. nNOTHER collision of a somewhat more se- rious nature with the same band of sav- ages, followed close upon the Hay Fork affair, just detailed. The party, on their return from the Digger horse-thief expedition, reported that the section they had visited bore excellent aurif- erous indications, and that from appearances it had never before been penetrated by the whites. Accord- ingly, a party of ten of us was at once made up to test those indications; and, horses being now a rare com- modity at the bar, we took the necessary traps togeth- er with five days' rations, upon our backs, and set out in high spirits for the promised new El Dorado. Sev- eral of the former party were among our number, to pilot the way, and of course to share in our expected good fortune. Strangely enough, our only thought was of diggings, not of Diggers. Two rifles, a shot- gun, and perhaps a half dozen Allen "pepperboxes"^ 1 Mark Twain thus not inaptly discourses of this make-believe weapwn: ' To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probablj' never done with an "Allen" in the world. . . . Sometimes all its six barrels iwould go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the re- gion roundabout, except behind it. He might have added that "sometimes" none of the "six barrels would go off at all." A SCENE OF PRIMEVAL BEAUTY. 121 comprised our equipment of weapons offensive and de- fensive, all told. We made our first camp where we first struck the Hay Fork. Our savory repast of bread, bacon, and coffee was soon disposed of, when each man rolled up in his blankets for the night, utter- ly oblivious as to any possible danger. The next morn- ing, bright and early, our frugal breakfast was over, and we were pushing our way down the stream. Pres- ently, the site of the encounter with the Diggers a few d a }' s before was pointed out to us on the opposite side of the r i \' e r, all now silent and lifeless as the grave. But we still took no foi^e- b o d i n g s from the sit- 6''j:J''''^; CALIFORNIA LYNX. — (REDRAWN FROM C.NAHL, IN "HUTCHINS' CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE," 185S, nation. We were delighted with the prospect that opened up before us. The mountains swung away from the stream to the right and in front, leaving a space of se\'eral thousand acres intervening. This space was comparatively open and level, and was carved into a series of gentle, grass-clad undulations, which here and there sloped away into rich, alluvial bottoms, and through which, at frequent intervals, 122 A DIGGER HORNET'S NEST. bright, sparkling rivulets came plashing down from their mountain sources. The general surface was sparsely dotted with low, heavy-topped oaks, while the higher points were crowned with dark-green tufts of firs and pines, the whole being bordered about by sombrous, massive mountains, as if to complete the picture. We had so long been cooped up in the nar- row mountain confines that we now felt that we had room to breathe full and free once more. Yet, withal, how inscrutuable seemed the order of Providence, that the stolid, "untutored" Diofg-er should until now alone have been privileged to look upon this scene of prime- val beauty, one of the masterpieces of the great Ar- tist! Thus, ages upon ages, — "Summers and winters came and went, Bringing no change of scene; Unresting, unhasting, and unspent, Dwelt Nature here serene." But we had little leisure for indulging in the aesthetic or the sentimental, and were soon scattered out among the gulches, intent upon the more prosaic business in hand. I had wandered away from the rest of the part}' perhaps a quarter of mile, when I was startled by an unearthly noise bursting upon my ears. Glancing up, my eyes fell upon a Digger in uncomfortable proxim- ity to where I was standing, and a further glance be- yond revealed a dark, swarming mass of redskins on a mountain bench, not more than a half mile away. Their wild, frenzied whoops, yells, and contortions left no doubt as to their animus. I paused for no further hints. On the contrary, never before in my life, did I so thank my stars for suppleness of joint, lightness of CHARGING AND COUNTERCHARfilNG. I 23 heel, and length of reach as I now did till 1 rejoined my companions. 1 found them hastily consultinii^ as to what should be done. The unanimous Noice was for attack, and we at once charged at double-cjuick upon the savages. They, with a like celerit}', scampered up the mountain side. Pursuit, we thus saw, would be futile. Nor would it be prudent to re- main where we were. The position was dis- advantageous and un- tenable. Moreover, the traditional predi- lection of the redskin for midnight scalps, roasts, and the like now flitted athwart our visions. We, therefore, decided to retrace our steps to a more secure position. But, on our facing about for this pur- pose, the Diggers faced about upon us. We now held another moment's consultation, the re- sult being that we turned upon them; and again they fled as before. This sort of charging and counter- charging was repeated once or twice more, when we abandoned the child's play, and proceeded Anally to women's caps.-l hoopa make. (see note, p. 70). 1 Drawn from speciinins in a collection belonging to the author. 124 ^ LITTLE WARM WORK. withdraw. In doing this, we turned the point of an open ridge that lay across our course. No sooner had we reached the opposite side of this than the Indians, emboldened by our retreat, swept across the bottom we had just vacated, and came stringing along the crest of the ridge upon our flank, now supplementing their demoniacal yells and gyrations with volley after volley of arrow-shots. But a vigorous use of our few pieces kept the pusillanimous horde well at bay. We had to cross several deep ravines, where, as a precau- tion against the savages descending upon us while we were thus disadvantaged, our part}^ divided, one half in turn guarding on the bank while the other half made the passage. But presently an inward trend of the bluffs brought the enemy within effective arrow-range, when for a moment there was warm work. The Hy- ing missiles fairly streaked the air. Zip! zip! zip! they stuck in the ground among us and about us, their feathered ends quivering in the air. In quick succes- sion, a hat-brim was pierced, an arm grazed, a leg per- forated, a foot wounded. We scarcely dared look up lest the face or an eye be struck. A squad of the Dig- gers were skulking along in our rear, to recover the spent arrows. These now likewise pressed close upon us, skipping from clump to clump of chapparal to cover their approach. Several of our men began to waver. One turned to fly; but "Kentuck's" rifle, coupled with a vigorous admonition, brought this de- linquent back to his senses and into the ranks. We well knew what panic meant, and this nerved us for the worst. Fortunatel}', at this critical juncture, we WE REACH SHELTER I 25 were just entering an open circular space, where the distance from the bluffs assured us comparative safety. Near the centre of this space, stood a large lone pine, with wide-spreading and low-drooping branches. We hastened to this cover, where we stationed out pickets, and threw up around the tree a little earthwork, the crown of which we stuck thickly with chapparal to break or ward off arrow-shots. For we had not the slightest doubt that we should be stormed that night, if not before. This spot was, in fact, the very one we had in mind when we began our retreat. It was well, too, that this was so close at hand, for the man with the dart in his foot declared upon reaching the place that he could go no farther. When we began exca- vating, the Indians looked on for a few moments si- lently and queeringly, as if wondering whether some of our number had been killed and were being buried. But, when our real purpose dawned upon them, they broke forth with a vehemence greater, if possible, than before, in a prolonged and frantic effort to frighten us from our shelter. The squaws and children, from first to last, seemed to outvie the bucks in their demon-like performances. A pebble about the size of a hen's egg struck the ground with a thud near where one of the men was shoveling. It must have been hurled with a sling from the bluffs, a distance of more than three hundred yards. These wild, furious demonstrations to dislodge us were repeated a number of times dur- ing the afternoon, but with gradual abatement of en- ergy and frequency, till near sunset, when the savages broke out afresh in a prolonged and terrific pandemon- 126 FORT NECESSITY EFFECTIVE WEAPONS. iiim of their whoops and fantastic pranks. But, still failing of their end, they, to our great surprise and re- lief, now one by one tiled over the hills from view, and we s;iw them no more. At nightfall, one of our men, "Missouri Jim," volunteered to try to make his way to the bar for aid. It was certainly no trifling task — the running of that lonely twenty-flve-mile gant- let, infested as it was by wild beasts and hostile sav- ages. But "Jim" — a Wisconsin bo}', b}' the way — was equal to the emergency; and the next afternoon a ringing shout went up from our little breastwork, as we espied about sixty of our friends with several horses file toward us through the gap of the divide. The country was now scoured for Diggers ; but, aside from a superannuated squaw with a basketful of arrow- points, not a Digger appeared to view. Our little earthwork was thenceforward remembered as "Fort Necessity."^ The distance between us and the Indians when they did their most effective work was stepped the next day, and found to be two hundred and fifty paces. The ar- rows were elevated and discharged from a position considerably above us, which partly accounts for their long range. The leg-wound was mine. The outer and feathered end of the arrow was quivering with a sort of rotary motion when I tirst observed it, and I instantl}^ whisked it out, casting it away at the same time. The arrow was driven with such force as to cut through and through, perforating the pants-leg and 1 D. K. Wall, of Denver, Col.; A. B. I.iles.of Koswcll, N. Mexico; J. N. LauRh- lin and W. S. Robinson, of Humboldt County, Cal., are the only survivors of this relief party at present known to me. l?^«5»'^^ .... ]vm-^- ' ', I V V u^ 128 A SERIOUS WOUND. the high boot-leg twice In the other case, the arrow entered the foot just below the ankle, through the eye- seam of the hard, heavy grain-tanned boot, and fol- lowed around the bone of the foot till the point struck the boot -sole on the opposite side, the body of the dart lodging among the delicate muscles of the bottom of the foot. The arrow-head was glass, and made a painful wound. We tried to extract it, but our butcher-knives had so long been strangers to the grindstone that the operation had to be deferred for more skilled hands and better instruments, both of which awaited us at the bar.^ PIQGBR BOWS AND ARROWS. -ii 1 This man, one Willard, from Ohio, nev- er fully recovered from his wound; but, re- gaining the use of himself sufficiently, he engaged in packing supplies for the min- ers along the Trinity. Finally, however, he was missed, and search being made, his remains were found up in a dark ra- vine, where the Indians had murdered him, and stripped and horriblj' mutilated his body. 2 Drawn from the originals in a collec- tion in my possession. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 are of the Modoc make, and were present- ed to me by George Graham, Eureka, Cal., who assured me that they were captured fri^ni "Captain Jack" and his band on the I,ava Beds, at the time General Canbj' ADIEU TO THE DIGGINGS. I 29 I remained on the Trinity till sometime in Septem- ber, when a reeruiting otfieer appeared along- the ri\er enlisting volunteers for serviee against the Indians, un- der a call issued by the Governor. The miners of that region had acquired no very warm attachment for either the Diggers or the diggings; so that most of them were ripe for anvthing that promised a change. The inducement now offered was six dollars per day, the recruit to furnish his horse. About sixtv men on the Trinity, myself included, responded to the call; and, bidding a not over tearful adieu to the "dear, damned, distracted" diggings, we set out upon the extremely rough trail across range after range of mountains for Uniontown, Humboldt Bay, the place of rendezvous, the distance being some ninety miles. An incident oc- curred on this trip that may be of some interest from an ethnological point of view. The advance of our party, as we were strung along the trail, captured a young Indian woman. When I came up she was sit- ting on the ground beside the trail among a group of our men. She was evidently badly frightened. Look- ing up piteously into the faces of the brusque men about her, she milked from one of her breasts, thus •was killed. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 are of the Hoopa make. One of the arrow-heads is of copper and the other of flint. The bows are of j'ew wood, the backs of which (as of all of the Digger type) are "covered with a lining of sinew so care- fully put on as to mimic the bark of wood, its thickness exactly fitted to the ex- igencies of the work to be done." Several kinds of stone, together with bottle- glass and (later) iron, steel and copper, were used for arrow-heads; and the ar- row-shafts are usually in two parts, that to which the point is attached beiug about four inches long. This make of bow and arrow is probablj- the best and most artistic known. Fremont, in his "Memoirs," speaking of the metal-point- ed arrows, says: "they could be driven to the depth of about six inches into a pine tree " Captain John G. Bourke makes substantially the same assertion. See Smithsonian Reports, Part I, 1886, and also same document for 1893, for £V full description of these weapons and the method of their manufacture, 130 A NEW FIELD OF OPERATIONS. indicating; that she had a babe dependent upon her, and appealing, it would seem, to our humane instincts, a qualit}' of which the savage is credited with pos sessing very little, if any. Of course, she was allowed to go her way, unmolested. We carried no provisions, as we counted on supplying oursehes en route with abundance of game. Our rations turned out to be very short; for all that we killed was one deer, and that not until the last da}' late in the afternoon. Nor did we find things altogether to our liking after our arrival. The officer assigned to the command — Colonel J. H. Harper — was at the time engaged in a contest with the late General James W. Denver for a seat in the State Senate, and the canvass so engrossed his attention that he wholh" neglected his military engagements. The re- sult was, that, after remaining in camp several weeks, with no prospect of being enrolled, we disbanded, but not without visiting a profusion of epithets more vigor- ous than polite upon the head of the aforesaid Colonel. I remained at Uniontown ( now Areata ) that winter. This point was then a commercial center of considera- ble importance, being a seaport, and as such the seat of a quite heavy traffic with the outl3'ing mines. The sawmill had not yet been introduced in that section, and the frow and the whipsaw did duty as a substitute, the frow doing the major share of the work. The town la\' immediately at the edge of the great red- wood forests, and the timber \ielded so readily to the frow that the building material was chiefly manufac- tured in this way. I was occupied during most of the winter getting out siding, for which I received ten HISTORY OF HUMBOLDT COUNTY 4^^^<:^^X.^ A-t^ [Kinnian was a noted pioneer and hunter of Humboldt Bay. He was a na- tive Pennsylvanian, and when (Buch)anan was elected President he conceived the idea of tnaking for that "public functionary" a (buck)horn chair When Kinman, as he here appears, arrived at Washington with his novelty, he was so greatly lionized that he followed up the experiment upon the incoming of every succeeding President down to Oarfield, whose early assassination pre- vented the delivery of the gift. He took much pride in showing the many flat- tering notices he had received from the press. In 1884., when I last saw him, he was keeping at the stage station on Table Bluffa sort of frontier curiosity snop, where he served a limited assortment of '■ tangle-leg " to the thirsty wayfar- ing callers. Among his curiosities, was a fiddle he had constructed in part from the forehead of his favorite mule, whose spirit he hoped to meet in the Beyond.] 132 AN INDIAN SCARE. cents apiece. I made about a hundred pieces a day, after the timber was bolted. The axe, crosscut, frow, draw-knife, and jack-plane constituted my kit of tools for this purpose. The monotony of the winter was broken by a big fright from apprehended Indian hostilities. Two white men had been murdered on Eel River, presumably by the Indians. The deed and its supposed portent be came a subject of much public concern, and soon j^rew into a general apprehension that the Indians designed to wage a war of extermination upon the whites. Pub- lic meetings were held nightly to discuss the situation and to arrange for defense. It .was proposed to erect a stockade in the centre of the plaza for the safety of the women and children of nights and as a fortification in case of an attack. In the midst of the panic, a ca- noe containing several Indians was seen crossing the bay toward the peninsula. This incident was at once accepted as conclusive evidence that the Indians were collecting in that quarter preparatory to their general onslaught upon the settlers. That design, it was de- termined, should not be permitted to mature; it must be nipped in the bud. Accordingly, a whale-boat was brought into requisition ; and a party of a dozen or so of us, armed to the teeth, headed, with muffled oars and under cover of night, for the supposed hostile camp. The landing was made arid the rancheria surrounded before daylight, without our being discovered. One "Captain" Smith, an old, ponderous rustic, a typical "Kaintuck," was our commander, and he proved him- self to know about as much of military tactics as WANTON SAVAGERY. I33 a Digger would know of belles-lettres. Before it was fairly dawn we were ordered to fire upon the mis- erable shacks. The surprise was complete, and as quickly as the affrighted Diggers could crawl out they scampered for the nearest brush. Several of them were shot down as they ran. One big buck was per- forated with sixteen bullets. / a Ion Of heart-rend- dians were utterly their pitiable plight restrain our valor- ing down on the them of e\ erytliing any value, and then the torch. In ran- a h a 1 f -g r o w n boy away, and was little fellow begged life; but he was n o t w i t h s tanding. mately that these thought of attack- they had no connec- R i \' e r m u r d e r s ; over the anticipat- KI-WE-LAT-TAH, OR "COONSKIN."-! The women now set up ing moan. The In- defe useless; but did not in the least ous men from rush- huts, plundering that was deemed of putting the rest to sacking the lodges, was found hidden dragged out. The piteously for his coolly shot down. It turned out ulti- Indians h a d no ing the whites; that tion with the Eel and that the scare ed war of extermi- nation was based upon the veriest moonshine. The savages themselves, it may be added, could scarcely 1 Redrawn from a photograph of a life-size painting owned by the late L. K. Vood, at Areata, Cal. Ki-wc-lat-tah was a noted chief of the Humboldt Bay Indians, whose massive and dignified ngure I saw many times, and who was one of the very few of his race that commanded the general respect and confidence of the whites. I am indebted to David VVood (son) for the photo- graph used. 134 RAPID DEVELOPMENT. have exhibited a more fiendish rehsh for rapine and for blood than did the most of our men on this ocea- sion. I have ever sinee eongratuhited myself that up- on seeing the defenseless eondition of the Indians, 1 had not the heart to join in this wanton destruetion of life and propert}'. Humboldt Bay was discovered by a party of wan- HEAP OF A GRIZZLY. -1 (SKE APPENDIX. P. XI.) daring miners from the Trinitv on December 20, i• >• H . 71 :> 144 HOMEWARD BOUND. and thus worked their wa}^ down into the soil. These giants seem to lose their footing more frequently after the close of a storm than during its progress. Our logging cabin was located in the midst of a section of these forests, and I often, at such times, lay in my bunk of nights, as here and there one after another of these mighty chiefs of the forest lost their hold and came tumbling to the earth, resounding as if each had brought down with it the thunders of heaven in its death-agonies. A section of one was cut at Humboldt Bay, twenty-five feet in diameter, to be exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exposition, New York, in 1854; but no vessel that entered the bay had the space to re- ceive it, so that it was not shipped. This section was solid except a space of about a foot in diameter in the centre. Another, thirt3'-three feet through, stood on the pack-trail between the bay and the Klamath River. This was hollow and was used by packers as camping quarters. In April, 1854, 1 took passage on the schooner "Sier- ra Nevada" for San Francisco; and, on May i6th, I sailed for New York, via the Nicaragua route, taking the steamer "Brother Jonathan" on the Pacific side, and the steamer "Star of the West" on the Atlantic side. Both vessels became historic afterward. The one was lost on the Oregon coast with all on board, and the other ran the gantlet of the Confederate guns in Charleston harbor, when sent b}' the Government to relieve Fort Sumter at the outbreak of the Rebel- lion. The voyage could scarcely haxe been more pleasant — tine weather, no accidents, no sickness, no MARVELLOUS PLUCK AND ENTERPRISE. 1 45 deaths, good fare, accommodatinii; officers, and agree- able passengers. Distance from San Francisco, five thousand five hundred miles; time, twenty-three days; making, altogether, a journey of over ten thousand miles and an experience of five years and four months. I may now be permitted a few concluding reflec- tions. The subjects of this narrative — the California Argonauts — present a truly interesting spectacle in history. In 1849, forty-two thousand of their number reached the gold fields bv land and thirty-ti\e thou- sand by sea. In 1850, the rush hither was still greater, and the stream continued to flow in year after year with little abatement. From a population of perhaps thirty-five thousand before this tide set in, the number within four years swelled to three hundred thousand; and within the same period more than two hundred and sixty million dollars of gold was dug from the mines. This tide of humanity rushing hitherward and overrunning those mountain wilds can be likened only to those mighty race-waves that in ancient times swept over from beyond the Euxine and overran the Continent of Europe. In the present instance, nearly every race and clime of the globe was represented; yet the sturdy American type dominated all others, and impressed its character and its institutions upon the land. These Argonauts were for the most part un- der middle-age, and the degree of pluck and energy they displayed in this novel field has probably never been paralleled. They explored difficult and danger- ous mountain recesses ; upturned gulches and canyons ; washed away flats and bars; turned rivers from their 1^6 TRULY A UNIQUE LAND. beds; tunneled mountains; sluieed away hundreds of miles of earth; built up towns and eities; developed agriculture; established courts of justice; set up and put in motion a state government wholl}- within them- selves; and, in a word, gave an impetus to human prog- ress throughout the globe to an extent never before equalled in the same period of time since the dawn of human history. The Golden State itself is truly a unique land with a unique history. Widely isolated as it is betwixt desert and ocean from the great hives of humanity, it is a world of itself, and has built up a civilization in large measure peculiarl}' its own: "With high face held to her ultimate star, With swift feet set to her mountains of gold, This new-built world, where the wonders are. She has built new ways from the ways of old." Yet it is not a world without its drawbacks. To me^ surely, it did not afford an unceasing round of pleas- ure. Still, to me, as to most others that have once known and felt its peculiar fascinations, its mountains and valleys, its forests and streams, its fruits and flow- ers, its scenes and associations, are instinct with a ro- mance, a charm, an indescribable something, that ling- ers in the memory like a fairy dream, and which time, nor distance, nor aught else, can ever lessen or efface. APPENDIX. My Plains Companions.— Donahue I have never seen or heard of since we separated on the plains. Good died of blood poison on Carson River in 1853, when on his second trip across the plains to California. Earl and Neal never returned to the States. Earl still resides in California, where he married and has reared a large fam- ily. Neal died in 1883 at Shasta, near the scene of our first mining experiences. Rockhill has from the first been following the for- tunes of a mining life, and like most men in that calling has done much rambling, being familiar with about every important mining camp in the Rocky Mountains and beyond. He has been a resident of White Pine County, Nevada, for nearly thirty years, and has served that constituency acceptably in both branches of the Legis- lature. Postal Facilities —I received my first letter from home at Reading's Bar, on the Trinity,, after an absence of two and a half years It cost me two and a half dollars, and I considered it very cheap at that. Our nearest post office was at Sacramento. The method of obtaining mail from there was by private enterprise, and was without pretense of system or regularity. Some man would oc- casionally, as caprice happened to move him, procure a list of the names of persons at a certain camp t|r camps and make the trip to Sacramento, upon the stipulation that he receive a certain stated fee for each mail package delivered, two to three dollars being the usual charge. A Floral Paradise.— A local authority [Hittell, "History of Cal- fornia,"] thus speaks of this striking feature of a California land- scape: "There are grasses of various kinds and flowers in almost unlimited number, including the golden poppies, buttercups, mal- lows, pinks, nemophilas, roses, violets, larkspurs, and lilies without end. The grass starts and the hills and v.illeys grow green, soon after the first rains, in November and December: in February and March the flowers commence; at one time the prevailing hue is golden, at another yellow, at another blue, and at another purple, 9.ccording to the predominance of the blooms, and one tint or ano- II. DIGGKRS HARVESTING FOOD— CACHING GOLD DUST. ther or a variety covers the plains and clothes the hills to their very summits." I chanced to be favored with an opportunity for ob- serving this feature when probably at its best. It was in April, 1850, in the rolling oak openings westward of Hangtown, where I had gone in search of a horse that my partner and I had turned out to graze. The unusually copious rains of the preceding winter had been exceedingly favorable for the growth of herbage; and the section, being especially adapted for the purpose, now presented the aspect of a continuous meadow richly adorned with many species of variously colored and brilliant flowers. The billowy sweep of the land; the scattering, orchard-like oaks; the genial sky; the wealth of waving grasses and flowers; the playing«of perfume-laden zephyrs; the shadows of fleecy cloudlets chasing each other across the land- scape — such was the prospect as I beheld it. which in charm and gorgeousness of effect surely no artistic creation could equal, much less excel. Diggers Harvesting Food.— Quite to the contrary from the foregoing was the further spectacle presented to my senses on the same occasion. My attention was attracted by a number of squaws and children in a gentle sag among the rank herbage, and on ap- proaching them I found that each had the typical burden basket, and was busily engaged in harvesting their annual crop of worms. These worms were mounted on the stems of the herbage, and were large and plump, very much resembling the tobacco variety. The process of gathering was to pluck the delicate morsel with the fin- gers, take one end in the teeth, and strip out the insides, and repeat the process till a number were thus treated, when the bunch would be twisted into a sort of knot and cast into a basket. This product, I learned, was mixed with pulverized acorns, and used for food. It is to be observed in this connection that the Digger was necessarily more the creation of circumstances than his civilized brother. Knowing nothing of the arts of agriculture, and having little, if any, traffic outside of his tribe, he was compelled to draw his sub- sistence from such local bounties as nature supplies, whether good or bad, generous or otherwise. If his lot fell along the bays and in- lets, his chief dependence was upon shell-fish; if along streams, up- on the finny tribes: and if inland or upon the desert, anything ob- tainable, including the most loathsome insects and vermin. Caching Gold Dust. — There were no vaults or even safes in the mining camps in those days, and the inconvenience, to say nothing of the insecurity, of lugging gold dust aV)out on the person, induced the miners frequently to resort to the cache as the most available substitute for those conveniences. This practice led to many curious experiences. In one instance, two men were on their way from a CACHING GOLD DUST — THREE-CARD MONTE. III. mining camp to Sacramento, when at a certain point one of them stopped suddenly by a conspicuous tree near the road, which also had a conspicuous limb pointing toward the ground. The man be- gan to excavate with his mining-knife at the spot indicated by the pointer, and drew out two junk-bottles full of gold. One day, two strangers called at the only cabin on Reading's Bar — a small, rude round-log structure, covered with hides. It had been abandoned by its original owner or owners, and after that had many tempo- rary occupants in the constant shiftings incident to mining life. It was now occupied as a trading-post, and the strangers by permis- sion proceeded to remove a little earth in one corner, under the raw- hide bunk, and exhumed an oyster-can filled with gold dust. At another time, two men had started from the bar for the States, and had gone about thirty miles on their way, when it occurred to them that they had forgotten their gold-cache. Sometimes the cache could not be readily found, when much nerve-force and perspiration would be expended in the search. I acknowledge having had one such experience myself. In another instance, a man, one of our messmates, had buried his gold dust in a buckskin purse, which the squirrels dug out and dragged up the m(»untain side, strewing the contents along their trail for several hundred feet Not more than half of tht gold dust was recovered, while the purse itself was nev- er found Three-Card Monte.— The first I saw of this most artful device of all for baiting "suckers" was atPlacerviUe in 1850, after the first arrivals from across the plains. One evening, I was a spectator at Cold Springs, a neighboring camp, when the game was being dealt. A big crowd were around the table, among whom were four broth- ers, home acquaintances of mine, who were noted for their close- fisted, scrimping habits. The dealer aft'ected utter recklessness in flinging the cards, and it frequently appeared as if the "winning card"' could be pointed out with absolute certainty. The four broth- ers eyed the process with the keenest interest. The junior, a lad well in his teens, was made the custodian of the company's purse, which contained several hundred dollars in gold dust. At a certain deal, when one of those seeming "dead-open-and-shuts'' appeared, the lad, nudged by one of the older brothers, clapped the purse on the card. But the gambler, feigning surprise and embarrass- ment, brusquely pushed the purse away, at the same time averring that he took "no bets from old men, children, or fools." At this, an older brother interposed and assumed the responsibility. "Well, but I have two chances to win to your one," persisted the man with the cards. "And that's the wrong card anyway." This pretended reluctance to accept the wager had the desired effect, making the IV. I-AX ELECTION METHODS— A QUEER CONCEIT. dupes only the more eager and confident. The upshot was: the lad was handed a pointed stick with which to turn the card over. So over it went, and away went the purse and all. The gambler drew in the spoil, and with the utmost nonchalance began throwing the cards for a fresh deal as if nothing had happened — "the queen, the queen; the queen's the winning card; bet your dust on the queen." This incident is related simply as an illustration of spec- tacles at the gaming-table that became so common as scarcely to excite remark. Lax Election Methods.— I cast my first vote at Placerville, at the first election held in California after the division of the State into counties.' I lacked three years of the age required by the constitution; but this was accounted no bar at this precinct at this election, the board ruling that every one that had been able to make his way to the country and shift for himself after his arrival ought to be allowed to vote. There was a spirited contest waging between Placerville and Coloma for the seat of justice, 2 and the un- charitably inclined might have suspicioned that this fact had some- thing to do with determining the liberal views of the board. I vot- ed also, and served as a clerk of the election board, the next year, at Reading's Bar, at the first election held in Trinity County."^ The board here was:^ sworn in by one Bradley, whose only qualification for administering an oath was that once upon a time he had been a Justice of the Peace in the State of Mississippi. Here, as at Pla- cerville, the polls were thrown open wide to everybody. The coun- ty seat question was also in issue at this election, Weaverville and Eureka being the principal contestants. Weaverville gave the bar no attention, while a representative of Eureka, C S. Ricks, ap- peared among us and arranged for the opening of a polling-place, the result being that Eureka was honored with nearly every vote of the precinct. One precinct, "Syiumes' Hole," which returned a tally- sheet with seventy-five names, was proved to be an outright forgery; and, generally, so much irregularity appeared that a new election was ordered. The same disregard of formality obtained elsewhere in the State. Good avowed that on going down the Sacramento Valley on an election day with his pack-train, he and his men were solicited to vote and did vote at every precinct they came to. A Queer Conceit.— Local prejudice was a very conspicuous trait of the isolated communities of the gold regions, where the new- comers were regarded with about the same sort of irreverence as 1 Held on the first Monday in April, 1850. 2 I'lacerville won, the camp having meantime changed its name from Hang- town to the less suggestive and more euphoneous appellation adopted. .3 Held on the first Monday in June, 1851. A QUEER CONCEIT— LAW AND ORDER. V. old Jack Tar accords the land-lubber. They were dubbed "emi- grants" as a distinguishing mark from the older inhabitants who assumed blue blood because of their prior occupancy. The knight of the ante-gOld period, he of the sombrero, huge spurs, serape. etc., looked with no less commisseration, if not disdain, upon the arrivals of '49 than did these in turn upon the arrivals of '50. The prepos- session was not confined merely to the Coast, but followed upon the discovery and opening up of new camps everywhere. In later times, "pilgrim,"' "tenderfoot," and "stinkfoot" were indifferently substi- tuted for "emigrant" as epithets of derision, especially in the Rocky Mountains, in the sixties, when the great tidal wave of veteran gold-hunters swept over from the Coast and here dashed against an equally' formidable wave of "greenhorn" gold- hunters rushing hith- er from the States. Mark Twain, in his "Roughing It," has deline- ated some of his initiatory observations and experiences in this regard. After depicting how he had served as the butt of the street gamin, the boot-black, the half-breed, the stage-driver, the "bull- whacker," and other like choice spirits of the select for the con- doneless offense of being an "emigrant," he is moved to expatiate as follows: "Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or Cali- fornia, even in these latter days, and while communing with him- self upon the sorrowful banishment of those countries from what he considers 'the world,' he has had his wings clipped in finding that he is the one to be pitied, and that there are entire popula- tions around him ready and willing to do it for him — yea, who are doing it complacently for him already, wherever he steps his foot. Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt enough interest in to read about. And all the time he is thinking about what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far coun- try, that lonely land, the citizens around him are looking down upon him with a blighting compassion because he is an 'emigrant' instead of that proudest and blessedest creature that exists on all the face of the earth, a Forty-Ninek." Of course, the advent of the rail- road, that greatest of levelers, has done much toward softening down and rooting out this inordinate conceit, a relic of the barbar- ous ages. Law and Order.— We have heard much of the pistol and the bowie-knife in connection with the early mining camps. Those com- munities were certainly in a very chaotic state, and as the inhab- itants were constantly changing, there were few of those restraints operating that come of social stability and settled neighborship. VI. LAW AND ORDER. At first there was a total absence of technical law, and if there had been any such instrumentality there would have been no adequate machinery for its enforcement. Gambling was everywhere rife; the "social evil" was unrestrained and unblushing; and Sabbath desecration was well-nigh universal; yet, for all that, I doubt if men were ever anywhere more scrupulous in the meeting of their business obligations. The following instances may be cited as typ- ical: C M. Long, of the firm of Pickard& Long, general merchants, Eureka, California, informed me that during the several years that they had done business at that point, (and they were the principal merchants there,) they had credited everybody that had asked for it, and that the total of their losses on this account was but eight dollars. On board the vessel from Eureka to San Francisco, when I was en route for the States, I loaned an acquaintance, an ex-sail- or, a '"slug."! On our arrival at San Francisco, he went his way and I went mine. But, in a day or two, he called and paid me. On the same trip, I loaned another friend, one McLane, a hundred dollars. I did not see him again after our arrival till the steamer on which I was to sail was about to swing out from the wharf, when he came panting from nervousness and exhaustion, and handed me the mon- ey, explaining that he had been thus delayed in making collections, and evincing the utmost concern as to his honor in the premises. That these men paid me was entirely optional and voluntary on their part. They had no place of permanent residence, and prac- tically nothing but non-attachable personal effects. Moreover, each had good reason to believe that my departure, already fixed upon, would in effect liquidate the debt, and, as a matter of fact, I have never seen or heard of either of them since. Now as to felonies in any of the ( amps where I was located during the period that I per- sonally knew them: I can recall but a single instance of larceny: that at Coloma, where the thief paid the penalty at the whipping- post, mention of which has been made on pages 94 and 95 of the text. And I knew of the commission of but one capital offense where whites only were concerned, and that ,was one of murder and rob- bery, at Eureka, in 1852. Two men were hanged for the crime, one of whom voluntarily made a clean breast of his guilt and implicated the other. They were both tried by a people's court, which, under the circumstances, was the only expedient practicable. The organ- ization of this imi)rovised tribunal, and the proceedure of the trial, were entered into with the utmost gravity and deliberation possible; but in spite of all precautions the excitement inseparable from such an event finally overcame the crowd, and the trial of the last of the 1 An octagonal fifty-dollar gold piece, minted by private enterprise, and quite current as money in those days. THE DIGGERS AND THE WHITES. Vll. accused, who stoutly protested his innocence, and ag'ainst whom there was no evidence except that of the self-convicted criminal, deffenerated into a shameful farce. That it did so, however, was, I am convinced, the fault of the method and not of the intent, tem- perament, or moral obliquity of the actors in the atfair. The same outcome mi<:jht have ha]:'pened anywhere, however laudable the in- tent: so that we here have a most forceful argument against resort- ing' to such means where it is possible for the law to pursue its regu- lar course. Speaking generally, I must say that, during an experi- ence of about ten years in California and Montana, when society was in its most chaotic state, and the machinery of the law was well- nigh wholly wanting, I never personally witnessed a shooting or a stabbing affray. Nor did I ever go armed myself; and in going about in those regions, whether by day or by night, I felt not a whit more apprehensive as to my person or property than I would today at high noon in the lobby of the Palmer House, in Chicago. The Diggers and the Whites.— The Digger aptitude for thiev- ing was proverbial. This aptitude, especially among the mountain tribes, disclosed itself most in horse-stealing, in the pursuit of which marked boldness and dexterity were displayed. One instance was related where the lariat was cut and the horse taken when the picket end of the line was lashed to the owner himself. Good tells, in a letter now before me, how, on the Upper Sacramento River, in 1851, the Diggers ran oft' ten of his best pack-animals, seven of which he was unable to recover, though he pursued the thieves some forty miles, and several times had a brush with them. The robbing of the corral on the Trinity has already been noticed. Edwin Bryant, writing in 1847,1 asserts, upon what he considered trustworthy au- thority, that within the twenty years previous, the Indians had stolen from the settlements between Monterey and San Francisco, a total of two hundred thousand horses, one half of which number could be distinctly enumerated. Nearly all these horses, he adds, were slaughtered and eaten, the mountain Indians, who chiefly did the mischief, having become so habituated to horseflesh that it was their principal means of subsistence. We learii on the same au- thority that the first Indian horse-thief known to that region, set out on his predatory career from Santa Clara, in about 1827, and that from this point and this source the evil spread north and south as fast as the extension of the settlements made such depredations possible. As to the taking of life, however, it may well be doubted whether the Digger instinct was so inclined, when not actuated by motives of cupidity or of revenge. Fremont had difficulty with the 1 See his "What 1 Saw in California," New York, 184.8. VIII. ATROCIOUS MASSACRE i3Y WHITES. Indians near Klamath Lake, in 1846, being on one occasion surprised by them at nij^ht and a quarter of his force killed or wounded. But I heard of no troubles of this nature taking place anywhere in the country during the first three years succeeding the gold discovery. In the Sacramento Valley, in the central and southern mines, and at Humboldt Bay, (except in the single instance mentioned else- where) there was no trouble whatever and no apprehension of trou- ble as to Indian depredations, and the two races intermingled one with the other upon the best of terms. The Indians often came about our logging cabin, near Eureka, and sometimes a half dozen or more of them would bunk for the night upon the floor. It was astonishing to see how many of them could huddle under a single blanket. A number of the squaws became the wives of white men. But this friendly disposition on the part of the one race was not always reciprocated by the members of the other race. We have seen where, without a shadow of real provocation, a rancheria near Uniontown was attacked, destroyed, and a number of the occupants shot down. That the whites, in this instance, labored under a mis- apprehension, did not in the least atone to the sufferers for the mis- chief wrought. In another case, at Humboldt Bay, a large part of the lower lip and of the lower jaw of a middle-aged buck was shot off. The man who was currently understood to have committed the deed had no other pretext for so doing than that the Indians, at a point about a hundred and fifty miles away, had, some months be- fore, killed his brother and run off a large band of cattle that be- longed to the two. The surviving brother became so wrought up over this outrage that he vowed vengeance upon every Digger he should meet, and this buck was thus made to suffer for something of which he most probably had never even heard. Again: a log- ger's cabin near Eureka was rifled of some bedding and other traps. Some of the stuff' was found shortly afterward in possession of an Indian at a little rancheria in Eureka. A pistol-shot finished the Indian and the guilt was avenged. Nothing was done, or tried to be done, with the offending white men in either of these cases. But the crowning scene in the drama occurred one night in 1860, when an unknown party, evidently whites, attacked a rancheria on In- dian Island, almost within a stone's throw of the business portion of the city of Eureka. Not a man, woman, or child, save two or three that fled, was spared. Knives and hatchets or axes were from appearances the instruments principally used. On the same night similar attacks were made at several other points on the bay. Al- together, the number slain on that fateful night — bucks, squaws, and children — did not fall much short of one hundred and fifty. Within a few days, and apparently as a part of the same precon- DIGGERS NATURALLY PEACEABLE. IX. certed plot, several rancherias in other sections of the county were visited with similar summary treatment. In no case, apparently, was resistance offered or resistance possible. The victims were tak- en unawares, and the work was massacre, simple and complete. Ag^ain, the law and humanity went unvindicated.i The object, doubtlessly, was extermination, and the object was well-nigh ac- complished. In revisiting that section in 1884, I saw no Indians about the bay, except at Areata, where I did see a remnant of them, apparently several families, quartered in the hollow of a redwood stump, the internal capacity of which had been somewhat enlarged by the action of fire. I also saw a dozen or so of the race up in the Bald Hills, about fifty miles back from the bay. Born and grown up in this locality, they had been dispossessed of their lands by the Government, without compensation, and by order of the same authority removed to a reservation in another section. But, obviously, to the red man, no less than to the white, "Dear is the shed to which his soul conforms, And dear the hill that lifts him to the storm. And as a child, when scaring sounds molest. Clings close and closer to the mother's breast; So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more." This fragment of the race would not remain on the reservation, but returned to their "native mountains." Here, they were now re- garded as trespassers, and were compelled to pay for the little na- tive pasture upon which their few ponies subsisted, while they themselves eked out an existence as best they could, chiefly by means of such odd jobs as the whites might see fit to give them. Several of the women were the deserted wives of white men, and were now struggling for a living for themselves and children by making baskets and other wicker work. So competent and trust- worthy an authority as the late John Ross Brown, in speaking of the troubles bj- which the Indians of the Humboldt region became reduced to such an extremity, says: "I am satisfied, from an ac- quaintance of eleven years with the Indians, that, had the least care been taken of them, these disgraceful massacres would never have occurred. A more inoffensive and harmless race of beings does not exist on the face of the earth; but whenever they attempt- ed to proeure a subsistence they were hunted down; driven from the reservations from the instinct of self-preservation; shot down by the settlers upon the most frivolous pretexts; and abandoned to 1 The affair occupied the attention of the grand jury, which, after severely condemning the butchery, dismissed the case upon the alleged ground that no clue could be obtained as to the identity of the perpetrators. For further de- tails of this atrocity see "History of Humboldt County," San Francisco, 1882. X. EARLY CALIFORNIA PRICES CURRENT. their fate by the only power that could afford them protection." The characterization, "inoffensive and harmless," can hardly be ap- plied to the mountain tribes of Northeastern California, though possibly it might in the first instance. Early California Prices Current.— Dqlano's "Life on the Plains and at the Diggings," gives the following as the prices paid at Lassen's Ranch, on September 17, 1849: Flour, per 100 pounds $ 50.00 Fresh beef, per 100 pounds 35.00 Pork, " " " 75.00 Sugar, " " " 50.00 Cheese, per pound 1.50 H. A. Harrison, in a letter to the "Baltimore Clipper," dated San Francisco, February 3, 1849, gives the following price-list: Beef, per quarter $20.00 Fresh Pork, per pound .25 Butter, per pound 1.00 Cheese, per pound 1.00 Ham, per pound 1.00 Flour, per barrel 18.00 Pork, per barrel $35 to 40.00 Coffee, per pound .16 Rice, per pound .10 Teas, per pound 60 cents to 1.00 Board, per week 12.00 Labor, per day $6 to 10.00 Wood, per cord 20.00 Brick, per thousand $50 to 80.00 Lumber, per thousand 150.00 William D. Wilson, writing to the "St. Joseph Valley Register," on February 21, 1849, gives the following scliedule of prices at Sut- ter's Fort: Flour, per barrel $ -SO to $40.00 Salt Pork, per barrel 110 to 150.00 Salt Beef, " / 45 to 75 00 Molasses, '• 30 to 40.O0 Salt Salmon, " 40 to 50.00 Beans, per pound .20 Potatoes, " "14 Coffee, " 20 cents to ,33 Sugar, " 20 cents to .30 Rice, " 20 cents to ,30 Boots, per pair $20 to 25 00 Shoes, •' 3 to 12.00 Blankets, " 40 to 100 00 Transportation by river from San Francisco to Sacramento, he says, was $6 per one hundred pounds. From Sacramento to the mines by team at the rate of $10 for every twenty-live miles. PRICES CURRENT— THE GRIZZLY BEAR. XI. John H. Miller, writing to the "St. Joseph Valley ileg-ister," Oc- tober 6, 1849,