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author: Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> 2025-10-15 05:20:44 -0700
committer: Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> 2025-10-15 05:20:44 -0700
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>Roughing It | Project Gutenberg</title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+<style>
+
+
+body { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify;}
+
+H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+
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+
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+
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+blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+
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+    </style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 3177 ***</div>
+
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="bookcover.jpg (90K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="spine.jpg (54K)" src="images/spine.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      ROUGHING IT
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class='ph2'>
+      By Mark Twain
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="frontispiece1.jpg (168K)" src="images/frontispiece1.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br> <a id="linkfrontispiece2"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="frontispiece2.jpg (184K)" src="images/frontispiece2.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="titlepage.jpg (95K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="dedication.jpg (18K)" src="images/dedication.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2>
+      PREFATORY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or
+      a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of
+      variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting
+      reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad
+      him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information
+      concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about
+      which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in
+      person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude
+      to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a
+      curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind,
+      that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to
+      occur in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the
+      book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped:
+      information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar
+      of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give
+      worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up
+      the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I
+      can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE AUTHOR.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+    <h2>
+      CONTENTS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br> <a href="#linkch01">CHAPTER I.</a> My Brother appointed Secretary of
+      Nevada—I Envy His Prospective Adventures—Am Appointed Private
+      Secretary Under Him—My Contentment Complete—Packed in One Hour—Dreams
+      and Visions—On the Missouri River—A Bully Boat<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch02">CHAPTER II.</a> Arrive at St. Joseph—Only
+      Twenty-five Pounds Baggage Allowed—Farewell to Kid Gloves and Dress
+      Coats—Armed to the Teeth—The “Allen”—A
+      Cheerful Weapon—Persuaded to Buy a Mule—Schedule of Luxuries—We
+      Leave the “States”—“Our Coach”—Mails
+      for the Indians—Between a Wink and an Earthquake—A Modern
+      Sphynx and How She Entertained Us—A Sociable Heifer<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch03">CHAPTER III.</a> “The Thoroughbrace is Broke”—Mails
+      Delivered Properly—Sleeping Under Difficulties—A Jackass
+      Rabbit Meditating, and on Business—A Modern Gulliver—Sage-brush—Overcoats
+      as an Article of Diet—Sad Fate of a Camel—Warning to
+      Experimenters<br><br> <a href="#linkch04">CHAPTER IV.</a> Making Our Bed—Assaults
+      by the Unabridged—At a Station—Our Driver a Great and Shining
+      Dignitary—Strange Place for a Frontyard—Accommodations—Double
+      Portraits—An Heirloom—Our Worthy Landlord—“Fixings
+      and Things”—An Exile—Slumgullion—A Well Furnished
+      Table—The Landlord Astonished—Table Etiquette—Wild
+      Mexican Mules—Stage-coaching and Railroading<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch05">CHAPTER V.</a> New Acquaintances—The Cayote—A
+      Dog’s Experiences—A Disgusted Dog—The Relatives of the
+      Cayote—Meals Taken Away from Home<br><br> <a href="#linkch06">CHAPTER
+      VI.</a> The Division Superintendent—The Conductor—The Driver—One
+      Hundred and Fifty Miles’ Drive Without Sleep—Teaching a
+      Subordinate—Our Old Friend Jack and a Pilgrim—Ben Holliday
+      Compared to Moses<br><br> <a href="#linkch07">CHAPTER VII.</a> Overland
+      City—Crossing the Platte—Bemis’s Buffalo Hunt—Assault
+      by a Buffalo—Bemis’s Horse Goes Crazy—An Impromptu
+      Circus—A New Departure—Bemis Finds Refuge in a Tree—Escapes
+      Finally by a Wonderful Method<br><br> <a href="#linkch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a>
+      The Pony Express—Fifty Miles Without Stopping—“Here he
+      Comes”—Alkali Water—Riding an Avalanche—Indian
+      Massacre<br><br> <a href="#linkch09">CHAPTER IX.</a> Among the Indians—An
+      Unfair Advantage—Laying on our Arms—A Midnight Murder—Wrath
+      of Outlaws—A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch10">CHAPTER X.</a> History of Slade—A Proposed
+      Fist-fight—Encounter with Jules—Paradise of Outlaws—Slade
+      as Superintendent—As Executioner—A Doomed Whisky Seller—A
+      Prisoner—A Wife’s Bravery—An Ancient Enemy Captured—Enjoying
+      a Luxury—Hob-nobbing with Slade—Too Polite—A Happy
+      Escape<br><br> <a href="#linkch11">CHAPTER XI</a>. Slade in Montana—“On
+      a Spree”—In Court—Attack on a Judge—Arrest by the
+      Vigilantes—Turn out of the Miners—Execution of Slade—Lamentations
+      of His Wife—Was Slade a Coward?<br><br> <a href="#linkch12">CHAPTER
+      XII.</a> A Mormon Emigrant Train—The Heart of the Rocky Mountains—Pure
+      Saleratus—A Natural Ice-House—An Entire Inhabitant—In
+      Sight of “Eternal Snow”—The South Pass—The Parting
+      Streams—An Unreliable Letter Carrier—Meeting of Old Friends—A
+      Spoiled Watermelon—Down the Mountain—A Scene of Desolation—Lost
+      in the Dark—Unnecessary Advice—U.S. Troops and Indians—Sublime
+      Spectacle—Another Delusion Dispelled—Among the Angels<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch13">CHAPTER XIII.</a> Mormons and Gentiles—Exhilarating
+      Drink, and its Effect on Bemis—Salt Lake City—A Great Contrast—A
+      Mormon Vagrant—Talk with a Saint—A Visit to the “King”—A
+      Happy Simile<br><br> <a href="#linkch14">CHAPTER XIV.</a> Mormon
+      Contractors—How Mr. Street Astonished Them—The Case Before
+      Brigham Young, and How he Disposed of it—Polygamy Viewed from a New
+      Position<br><br> <a href="#linkch15">CHAPTER XV.</a> A Gentile Den—Polygamy
+      Discussed—Favorite Wife and D. 4—Hennery for Retired Wives—Children
+      Need Marking—Cost of a Gift to No. 6—A Penny- whistle Gift and
+      its Effects—Fathering the Foundlings—It Resembled Him—The
+      Family Bedstead<br><br> <a href="#linkch16">CHAPTER XVI.</a> The Mormon
+      Bible—Proofs of its Divinity—Plagiarism of its Authors—Story
+      of Nephi—Wonderful Battle—Kilkenny Cats Outdone<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch17">CHAPTER XVII.</a> Three Sides to all Questions—Everything
+      “A Quarter”—Shriveled Up—Emigrants and White
+      Shirts at a Discount—“Forty-Niners”—Above Par—Real
+      Happiness<br><br> <a href="#linkch18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a> Alkali Desert—Romance
+      of Crossing Dispelled—Alkali Dust—Effect on the Mules—Universal
+      Thanksgiving<br><br> <a href="#linkch19">CHAPTER XIX.</a> The Digger
+      Indians Compared with the Bushmen of Africa—Food, Life and
+      Characteristics—Cowardly Attack on a Stage Coach—A Brave
+      Driver—The Noble Red Man<br><br> <a href="#linkch20">CHAPTER XX.</a>
+      The Great American Desert—Forty Miles on Bones—Lakes Without
+      Outlets—Greely’s Remarkable Ride—Hank Monk, the Renowned
+      Driver—Fatal Effects of “Corking” a Story—Bald-Headed
+      Anecdote<br><br> <a href="#linkch21">CHAPTER XXI.</a> Alkali Dust—Desolation
+      and Contemplation—Carson City—Our Journey Ended—We are
+      Introduced to Several Citizens—A Strange Rebuke—A Washoe
+      Zephyr at Play—Its Office Hours—Governor’s Palace—Government
+      Offices—Our French Landlady Bridget O’Flannigan—Shadow
+      Secrets—Cause for a Disturbance at Once—The Irish Brigade—Mrs.
+      O’Flannigan’s Boarders—The Surveying Expedition—Escape
+      of the Tarantulas<br><br> <a href="#linkch22">CHAPTER XXII.</a> The Son
+      of a Nabob—Start for Lake Tahoe—Splendor of the Views—Trip
+      on the Lake—Camping Out—Reinvigorating Climate—Clearing
+      a Tract of Land—Securing a Title—Outhouse and Fences<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a> A Happy Life—Lake Tahoe and
+      its Moods—Transparency of the Waters—A Catastrophe—Fire!
+      Fire!—A Magnificent Spectacle—Homeless Again—We take to
+      the Lake—A Storm—Return to Carson<br><br> <a href="#linkch24">CHAPTER
+      XXIV.</a> Resolve to Buy a Horse—Horsemanship in Carson—A
+      Temptation—Advice Given Me Freely—I Buy the Mexican Plug—My
+      First Ride—A Good Bucker—I Loan the Plug—Experience of
+      Borrowers—Attempts to Sell—Expense of the Experiment—A
+      Stranger Taken In<br><br> <a href="#linkch25">CHAPTER XXV.</a> The
+      Mormons in Nevada—How to Persuade a Loan from Them—Early
+      History of the Territory—Silver Mines Discovered—The New
+      Territorial Government—A Foreign One and a Poor One—Its Funny
+      Struggles for Existence—No Credit, no Cash—Old Abe Currey
+      Sustains it and its Officers—Instructions and Vouchers—An
+      Indian’s Endorsement—Toll-Gates<br><br> <a href="#linkch26">CHAPTER
+      XXVI.</a> The Silver Fever—State of the Market—Silver Bricks—Tales
+      Told—Off for the Humboldt Mines<br><br> <a href="#linkch27">CHAPTER
+      XXVII.</a> Our manner of going—Incidents of the Trip—A Warm
+      but Too Familiar a Bedfellow—Mr. Ballou Objects—Sunshine amid
+      Clouds—Safely Arrived<br><br> <a href="#linkch28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a>
+      Arrive at the Mountains—Building Our Cabin—My First
+      Prospecting Tour—My First Gold Mine—Pockets Filled With
+      Treasures—Filtering the News to My Companions—The Bubble
+      Pricked—All Not Gold That Glitters<br><br> <a href="#linkch29">CHAPTER
+      XXIX.</a> Out Prospecting—A Silver Mine At Last—Making a
+      Fortune With Sledge and Drill—A Hard Road to Travel—We Own in
+      Claims—A Rocky Country<br><br> <a href="#linkch30">CHAPTER XXX.</a>
+      Disinterested Friends—How “Feet” Were Sold—We Quit
+      Tunnelling—A Trip to Esmeralda—My Companions—An Indian
+      Prophesy—A Flood—Our Quarters During It<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch31">CHAPTER XXXI.</a> The Guests at “Honey Lake Smith’s”—“Bully
+      Old Arkansas”—“Our Landlord”—Determined to Fight—The
+      Landlord’s Wife—The Bully Conquered by Her—Another Start—Crossing
+      the Carson—A Narrow Escape—Following Our Own Track—A New
+      Guide—Lost in the Snow<br><br> <a href="#linkch32">CHAPTER XXXII.</a>
+      Desperate Situation—Attempts to Make a Fire—Our Horses leave
+      us—We Find Matches—One, Two, Three and the Last—No Fire—Death
+      Seems Inevitable—We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives—Discarded Vices—We
+      Forgive Each Other—An Affectionate Farewell—The Sleep of
+      Oblivion<br><br> <a href="#linkch33">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a> Return of
+      Consciousness—Ridiculous Developments—A Station House—Bitter
+      Feelings—Fruits of Repentance—Resurrected Vices<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch34">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a> About Carson—General Buncombe—Hyde
+      vs. Morgan—How Hyde Lost His Ranch—The Great Landslide Case—The
+      Trial—General Buncombe in Court—A Wonderful Decision—A
+      Serious Afterthought<br><br> <a href="#linkch35">CHAPTER XXXV.</a> A New
+      Travelling Companion—All Full and No Accommodations—How
+      Captain Nye found Room—and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented—The
+      Uses of Tunnelling—A Notable Example—We Go into the “Claim”
+      Business and Fail—At the Bottom<br><br> <a href="#linkch36">CHAPTER
+      XXXVI.</a> A Quartz Mill—Amalgamation—“Screening
+      Tailings”—First Quartz Mill in Nevada—Fire Assay—A
+      Smart Assayer—I stake for an advance<br><br> <a href="#linkch37">CHAPTER
+      XXXVII.</a> The Whiteman Cement Mine—Story of its Discovery—A
+      Secret Expedition—A Nocturnal Adventure—A Distressing Position—A
+      Failure and a Week’s Holiday<br><br> <a href="#linkch38">CHAPTER
+      XXXVIII.</a> Mono Lake—Shampooing Made Easy—Thoughtless Act of
+      Our Dog and the Results—Lye Water—Curiosities of the Lake—Free
+      Hotel—Some Funny Incidents a Little Overdrawn<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch39">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a> Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono—Ashes
+      and Desolation—Life Amid Death Our Boat Adrift—A Jump For Life—A
+      Storm On the Lake—A Mass of Soap Suds—Geological Curiosities—A
+      Week On the Sierras—A Narrow Escape From a Funny Explosion—“Stove
+      Heap Gone”<br><br> <a href="#linkch40">CHAPTER XL.</a> The “Wide
+      West” Mine—It is “Interviewed” by Higbie—A
+      Blind Lead—Worth a Million—We are Rich At Last—Plans for
+      the Future<br><br> <a href="#linkch41">CHAPTER XLI.</a> A Rheumatic
+      Patient—Day Dreams—An Unfortunate Stumble—I Leave
+      Suddenly—Another Patient—Higbie in the Cabin—Our Balloon
+      Bursted—Worth Nothing—Regrets and Explanations—Our Third
+      Partner<br><br> <a href="#linkch42">CHAPTER XLII.</a> What to do Next?—Obstacles
+      I Had Met With—“Jack of All Trades”—Mining Again—Target
+      Shooting—I Turn City Editor—I Succeed Finely<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch43">CHAPTER XLIII.</a> My Friend Boggs—The School
+      Report—Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt—Virginia City<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch44">CHAPTER XLIV.</a> Flush Times—Plenty of Stock—Editorial
+      Puffing—Stocks Given Me—Salting Mines—A Tragedian In a
+      New Role<br><br> <a href="#linkch45">CHAPTER XLV.</a> Flush Times
+      Continue—Sanitary Commission Fund—Wild Enthusiasm of the
+      People—Would not wait to Contribute—The Sanitary Flour Sack—It
+      is Carried to Gold Hill and Dayton—Final Reception in Virginia—Results
+      of the Sale—A Grand Total<br><br> <a href="#linkch46">CHAPTER
+      XLVI.</a> The Nabobs of Those Days—John Smith as a Traveler—Sudden
+      Wealth—A Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse—A Smart Telegraph
+      Operator—A Nabob in New York City—Charters an Omnibus—“Walk
+      in, It’s All Free”—“You Can’t Pay a Cent”—“Hold
+      On, Driver, I Weaken”—Sociability of New Yorkers<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch47">CHAPTER XLVII.</a> Buck Fanshaw’s Death—The
+      Cause Thereof—Preparations for His Burial—Scotty Briggs the
+      Committee Man—He Visits the Minister—Scotty Can’t Play
+      His Hand—The Minister Gets Mixed—Both Begin to See—“All
+      Down Again But Nine”—Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen—How To
+      “Shook Your Mother”—The Funeral—Scotty Briggs as a
+      Sunday School Teacher<br><br> <a href="#linkch48">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a>
+      The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada—The Prominent Men of the
+      County—The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen—Trial by Jury—Specimen
+      Jurors—A Private Grave Yard—The Desperadoes—Who They
+      Killed—Waking up the Weary Passenger—Satisfaction Without
+      Fighting<br><br> <a href="#linkch49">CHAPTER XLIX.</a> Fatal Shooting
+      Affray—Robbery and Desperate Affray—A Specimen City Official—A
+      Marked Man—A Street Fight—Punishment of Crime<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch50">CHAPTER L.</a> Captain Ned Blakely—Bill Nookes
+      Receives Desired Information—Killing of Blakely’s Mate—A
+      Walking Battery—Blakely Secures Nookes—Hang First and Be Tried
+      Afterwards—Captain Blakely as a Chaplain—The First Chapter of
+      Genesis Read at a Hanging—Nookes Hung—Blakely’s Regrets<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch51">CHAPTER LI.</a> The Weekly Occidental—A Ready
+      Editor—A Novel—A Concentration of Talent—The Heroes and
+      the Heroines—The Dissolute Author Engaged—Extraordinary Havoc
+      With the Novel—A Highly Romantic Chapter—The Lovers Separated—Jonah
+      Out-done—A Lost Poem—The Aged Pilot Man—Storm On the
+      Erie Canal—Dollinger the Pilot Man—Terrific Gale—Danger
+      Increases—A Crisis Arrived—Saved as if by a Miracle<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch52">CHAPTER LII.</a> Freights to California—Silver
+      Bricks—Under Ground Mines—Timber Supports—A Visit to the
+      Mines—The Caved Mines—Total of Shipments in 1863<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch53">CHAPTER LIII.</a> Jim Blaine and his Grandfather’s
+      Ram—Filkin’s Mistake—Old Miss Wagner and her Glass Eye—Jacobs,
+      the Coffin Dealer—Waiting for a Customer—His Bargain With Old
+      Robbins—Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects—A New Use for
+      Missionaries—The Effect—His Uncle Lem and the Use Providence
+      Made of Him—Sad Fate of Wheeler—Devotion of His Wife—A
+      Model Monument—What About the Ram?<br><br> <a href="#linkch54">CHAPTER
+      LIV.</a> Chinese in Virginia City—Washing Bills—Habit of
+      Imitation—Chinese Immigration—A Visit to Chinatown—Messrs.
+      Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &amp;c.<br><br> <a href="#linkch55">CHAPTER
+      LV.</a> Tired of Virginia City—An Old Schoolmate—A Two Years’
+      Loan—Acting as an Editor—Almost Receive an Offer—An
+      Accident—Three Drunken Anecdotes—Last Look at Mt. Davidson—A
+      Beautiful Incident<br><br> <a href="#linkch56">CHAPTER LVI.</a> Off for
+      San Francisco—Western and Eastern Landscapes—The Hottest place
+      on Earth—Summer and Winter<br><br> <a href="#linkch57">CHAPTER
+      LVII.</a> California—Novelty of Seeing a Woman—“Well if
+      it ain’t a Child!”—One Hundred and Fifty Dollars for a
+      Kiss—Waiting for a turn<br><br> <a href="#linkch58">CHAPTER LVIII.</a>
+      Life in San Francisco—Worthless Stocks—My First Earthquake—Reportorial
+      Instincts—Effects of the Shocks—Incidents and Curiosities—Sabbath
+      Breakers—The Lodger and the Chambermaid—A Sensible Fashion to
+      Follow—Effects of the Earthquake on the Ministers<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch59">CHAPTER LIX.</a> Poor Again—Slinking as a Business—A
+      Model Collector—Misery loves Company—Comparing Notes for
+      Comfort—A Streak of Luck—Finding a Dime—Wealthy by
+      Comparison—Two Sumptuous Dinners<br><br> <a href="#linkch60">CHAPTER
+      LX.</a> An Old Friend—An Educated Miner—Pocket Mining—Freaks
+      of Fortune<br><br> <a href="#linkch61">CHAPTER LXI.</a> Dick Baker and
+      his Cat—Tom Quartz’s Peculiarities—On an Excursion—Appearance
+      On His Return—A Prejudiced Cat—Empty Pockets and a Roving Life<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch62">CHAPTER LXII.</a> Bound for the Sandwich Islands—The
+      Three Captains—The Old Admiral—His Daily Habits—His Well
+      Fought Fields—An Unexpected Opponent—The Admiral Overpowered—The
+      Victor Declared a Hero<br><br> <a href="#linkch63">CHAPTER LXIII.</a>
+      Arrival at the Islands—Honolulu—What I Saw There—Dress
+      and Habits of the Inhabitants—The Animal Kingdom—Fruits and
+      Delightful Effects<br><br> <a href="#linkch64">CHAPTER LXIV.</a> An
+      Excursion—Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out—A Horseback Ride—A
+      Vicious Animal—Nature and Art—Interesting Ruins—All
+      Praise to the Missionaries<br><br> <a href="#linkch65">CHAPTER LXV.</a>
+      Interesting Mementoes and Relics—An Old Legend of a Frightful Leap—An
+      Appreciative Horse—Horse Jockeys and Their Brothers—A New
+      Trick—A Hay Merchant—Good Country for Horse Lovers<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch66">CHAPTER LXVI.</a> A Saturday Afternoon—Sandwich
+      Island Girls on a Frolic—The Poi Merchant—Grand Gala Day—A
+      Native Dance—Church Membership—Cats and Officials—An
+      Overwhelming Discovery<br><br> <a href="#linkch67">CHAPTER LXVII.</a>
+      The Legislature of the Island—What Its President Has Seen—Praying
+      for an Enemy—Women’s Rights—Romantic Fashions—Worship
+      of the Shark—Desire for Dress—Full Dress—Not Paris Style—Playing
+      Empire—Officials and Foreign Ambassadors—Overwhelming
+      Magnificence<br><br> <a href="#linkch68">CHAPTER LXVIII.</a> A Royal
+      Funeral—Order of Procession—Pomp and Ceremony—A Striking
+      Contrast—A Sick Monarch—Human Sacrifices at His Death—Burial
+      Orgies<br><br> <a href="#linkch69">CHAPTER LXIX.</a> “Once more
+      upon the Waters.”—A Noisy Passenger—Several Silent Ones—A
+      Moonlight Scene—Fruits and Plantations<br><br> <a href="#linkch70">CHAPTER
+      LXX.</a> A Droll Character—Mrs. Beazely and Her Son—Meditations
+      on Turnips—A Letter from Horace Greeley—An Indignant Rejoinder—The
+      Letter Translated but too Late<br><br> <a href="#linkch71">CHAPTER LXXI.</a>
+      <i>Kealakekua</i> Bay—Death of Captain Cook—His Monument—Its
+      Construction—On Board the Schooner<br><br> <a href="#linkch72">CHAPTER
+      LXXII.</a> Young Kanakas in New England—A Temple Built by Ghosts—Female
+      Bathers—I Stood Guard—Women and Whiskey—A Fight for
+      Religion—Arrival of Missionaries<br><br> <a href="#linkch73">CHAPTER
+      LXXIII.</a> Native Canoes—Surf Bathing—A Sanctuary—How
+      Built—The Queen’s Rock—Curiosities—Petrified Lava<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch74">CHAPTER LXXIV.</a> Visit to the Volcano—The
+      Crater—Pillar of Fire—Magnificent Spectacle—A Lake of
+      Fire<br><br> <a href="#linkch75">CHAPTER LXXV.</a> The North Lake—Fountains
+      of Fire—Streams of Burning Lava—Tidal Waves<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkch76">CHAPTER LXXVI.</a> A Reminiscence—Another Horse
+      Story—My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse—A Picnicing Excursion—Dead
+      Volcano of Holeakala—Comparison with Vesuvius—An Inside View<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch77">CHAPTER LXXVII.</a> A Curious Character—A Series
+      of Stories—Sad Fate of a Liar—Evidence of Insanity<br><br>
+      <a href="#linkch78">CHAPTER LXXVIII.</a> Return to San Francisco—Ship
+      Amusements—Preparing for Lecturing—Valuable Assistance Secured—My
+      First Attempt—The Audience Carried—“All’s Well
+      that Ends Well.”<br><br> <a href="#linkch79">CHAPTER LXXIX.</a>
+      Highwaymen—A Predicament—A Huge Joke—Farewell to
+      California—At Home Again—Great Changes. Moral.<br><br> <a
+      href="#linkAPPENDIX">APPENDIX. A.</a>—Brief Sketch of Mormon History
+      B.—The Mountain Meadows Massacre C.—Concerning a Frightful
+      Assassination that was never Consummated<br><br> <br><br><br><br>
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2>
+      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br> 1. <a href="#linkfrontispiece2">THE MINERS’ DREAM</a><br><br>
+      2. <a href="#link020">ENVIOUS CONTEMPLATIONS</a><br><br> 3. <a
+      href="#link021">INNOCENT DREAMS</a><br><br> 4. <a href="#link023a">LIGHT
+      TRAVELING ORDER</a><br><br> 5. <a href="#link023b">THE “ALLEN”</a><br><br>
+      6. <a href="#link024">INDUCEMENTS TO PURCHASE</a><br><br> 7. <a
+      href="#link025">THE FACETIOUS DRIVER</a><br><br> 8. <a href="#link026">PLEASING
+      NEWS</a><br><br> 9. <a href="#link027">THE SPHYNX</a><br><br> 10. <a
+      href="#link032">MEDITATION</a><br><br> 11. <a href="#link033a">ON
+      BUSINESS</a><br><br> 12. <a href="#link033b">AUTHOR AS GULLIVER</a><br><br>
+      13. <a href="#link035">A TOUCH STATEMENT</a><br><br> 14. <a
+      href="#link038">THIRD TRIP OF THE UNABRIDGED</a><br><br> 15. <a
+      href="#link041">A POWERFUL GLASS</a><br><br> 16. <a href="#link042a">AN
+      HEIRLOOM</a><br><br> 17. <a href="#link042b">OUR LANDLORD</a><br><br>
+      18. <a href="#link043">DIGNIFIED EXILE</a><br><br> 19. <a href="#link044">DRINKING
+      SLUMGULLION</a><br><br> 20. <a href="#link045">A JOKE WITHOUT CREAM</a><br><br>
+      21. <a href="#link047">PULLMAN CAR DINING-SALOON</a><br><br> 22. <a
+      href="#link049">OUR MORNING RIDE</a><br><br> 23. <a href="#link050">PRAIRIE
+      DOGS</a><br><br> 24. <a href="#link051">A CAYOTE</a><br><br> 25. <a
+      href="#link052">SHOWING RESPECT TO RELATIVES</a><br><br> 26. <a
+      href="#link055">THE CONDUCTOR</a><br><br> 27. <a href="#link057">TEACHING
+      A SUBORDINATE</a><br><br> 28. <a href="#link058">JACK AND THE ELDERLY
+      PILGRIM</a><br><br> 29. <a href="#link061">CROSSING THE PLATTE</a><br><br>
+      30. <a href="#link062">I BEGAN TO PRAY</a><br><br> 31. <a href="#link063">A
+      NEW DEPARTURE</a><br><br> 32. <a href="#link065">SUSPENDED OPERATIONS</a><br><br>
+      33. <a href="#link068">A WONDERFUL LIE</a><br><br> 34. <a href="#link069">TALL
+      PIECE</a><br><br> 35. <a href="#link071">HERE HE COMES</a><br><br> 36.
+      <a href="#link072">CHANGING HORSES</a><br><br> 37. <a href="#link073">RIDING
+      THE AVALANCHE</a><br><br> 38. <a href="#link076">INDIAN COUNTRY</a><br><br>
+      39. <a href="#link081">A PROPOSED FIST FIGHT</a><br><br> 40. <a
+      href="#link082">FROM BEHIND THE DOOR</a><br><br> 41. <a href="#link084">SLADE
+      AS AN EXECUTIONER</a><br><br> 42. <a href="#link085">AN UNPLEASANT VIEW</a><br><br>
+      43. <a href="#link088">UNAPPRECIATED POLITENESS</a><br><br> 44. <a
+      href="#link092">SLADE IN COURT</a><br><br> 45. <a href="#link095">A WIFE’S
+      LAMENTATIONS</a><br><br> 46. <a href="#link099">THE CONCENTRATED
+      INHABITANT</a><br><br> 47. <a href="#link100">THE SOUTH PASS</a><br><br>
+      48. <a href="#link101">THE PARTED STREAMS</a><br><br> 49. <a
+      href="#link102">IT SPOILED THE MELON</a><br><br> 50. <a href="#link103">THE
+      CAYOTE AND THE RAVEN</a><br><br> 51. <a href="#link104">“DON’T
+      COME HERE ...</a><br><br> 52. <a href="#link105">“THINK I’M A FOOL
+      ...</a><br><br> 53. <a href="#link106">THE “DESTROYING ANGEL...</a><br><br>
+      54. <a href="#link109">EFFECTS OF “VALLEY TAN”</a><br><br> 55. <a
+      href="#link110a">ONE CREST</a><br><br> 56. <a href="#link110b">THE OTHER</a><br><br>
+      57. <a href="#link111">THE VAGRANT</a><br><br> 58. <a href="#link112">PORTRAIT
+      OF EBER KIMBALL</a><br><br> 59. <a href="#link113">PORTRAIT OR BRIGHAM
+      YOUNG</a><br><br> 60. <a href="#link116">THE CONTRACTORS BEFORE THE KING</a><br><br>
+      61. <a href="#link117">I WAS TOUCHED</a><br><br> 62. <a href="#link118">THE
+      ENDOWMENT</a><br><br> 63. <a href="#link120">FAVORITE WIFE AND D.4</a><br><br>
+      64. <a href="#link121">NEEDED MARKING</a><br><br> 65. <a href="#link124">A
+      REMARKABLE RESEMBLANCE</a><br><br> 66. <a href="#link126">THE FAMILY
+      BEDSTEAD</a><br><br> 67. <a href="#link131">THE MIRACULOUS COMPASS</a><br><br>
+      68. <a href="#link137">THREE SIDES TO A QUESTION</a><br><br> 69. <a
+      href="#link138">RESULT OF HFGH FREIGHTS</a><br><br> 70. <a
+      href="#link139">A SHRIVELED QUARTER</a><br><br> 71. <a href="#link140">AN
+      OBJECT OF PITY</a><br><br> 72. <a href="#link141">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      73. <a href="#link145">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 74. <a href="#link147">GOSHOTT
+      INDIANS HANGING AROUND</a><br><br> 75. <a href="#link148">THE DRIVE FOR
+      LIFE</a><br><br> 76. <a href="#link151">GREELEY’S RIDE</a><br><br>
+      77. <a href="#link154">BOTTLING AN ANECDOTE</a><br><br> 78. <a
+      href="#link156">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 79. <a href="#link158">CONTEMPLATION</a><br><br>
+      80. <a href="#link159">THE WASHOE ZEPHYR</a><br><br> 81. <a
+      href="#link161">THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE</a><br><br> 82. <a
+      href="#link162">DARK DISCLOSURES</a><br><br> 83. <a href="#link163">THE
+      IRISH BRIGADE</a><br><br> 84. <a href="#link164">RECREATION</a><br><br>
+      85. <a href="#link165">THE TARANTULA</a><br><br> 86. <a href="#link166">LIGHT
+      THROWN ON THE SUBJECT</a><br><br> 87. <a href="#link169">I STEERED</a><br><br>
+      88. <a href="#link170">THE INVALID</a><br><br> 89. <a href="#link171">THE
+      RESTORED</a><br><br> 90. <a href="#link172">OUR HOUSE</a><br><br> 91.
+      <a href="#link174">AT BUSINESS</a><br><br> 92. <a href="#link176">FIGHT
+      AT LAKE TAHOE</a><br><br> 93. <a href="#link179">“THINK HIM AN AMERICAN
+      HORSE”</a><br><br> 94. <a href="#link180">UNEXPECTED ELEVATION</a><br><br>
+      95. <a href="#link181">UNIVERSALLY UNSETTLED</a><br><br> 96. <a
+      href="#link182">RIDING THE PLUG</a><br><br> 97. <a href="#link183">WANTED
+      EXERCISE</a><br><br> 98. <a href="#link186">BORROWING MADE EASY</a><br><br>
+      99. <a href="#link188">FREE RIDES</a><br><br> 100. <a href="#link190">SATISFACTORY
+      VOUCHERS</a><br><br> 101. <a href="#link191">NEEDS PRAYING FOR</a><br><br>
+      102. <a href="#link192">MAP OF TOLL ROADS</a><br><br> 103. <a
+      href="#link194">UNLOADING SILVER BRICKS</a><br><br> 104. <a
+      href="#link196">VIEW IN HUMBOLDT MOUNTAINS</a><br><br> 105. <a
+      href="#link199">GOING TO HUMBOLDT</a><br><br> 106. <a href="#link201">BALLOU’S
+      BEDFELLOW</a><br><br> 107. <a href="#link202">PLEASURES OF CAMPING OUT</a><br><br>
+      108. <a href="#link205">THE SECRET SEARCH</a><br><br> 109. <a
+      href="#link207">“CAST YOUR EYE ON THAT ...</a><br><br> 110. <a
+      href="#link210">“WE’VE GOT IT”</a><br><br> 111. <a href="#link212">INCIPIENT
+      MILLIONAIRES</a><br><br> 112. <a href="#link214">ROCKS-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      113. <a href="#link216">“DO YOU SEE IT?”</a><br><br> 114. <a
+      href="#link218">FAREWELL SWEET RIVER</a><br><br> 115. <a href="#link219">THE
+      RESCUE</a><br><br> 116. <a href="#link222">“MR. ARKANSAS ...</a><br><br>
+      117. <a href="#link225">AN ARMED ALLY</a><br><br> 118. <a href="#link227">CROSSING
+      THE FLOOD</a><br><br> 119. <a href="#link229">ADVANCE IN A CIRCLE</a><br><br>
+      120, <a href="#link230">THE SONGSTER</a><br><br> 121. <a href="#link231">THE
+      FOXES HAVE HOLES-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 122. <a href="#link233">A FLAT
+      FAILURE</a><br><br> 123. <a href="#link234">THE LAST MATCH</a><br><br>
+      124. <a href="#link236">DISCARDED VICES</a><br><br> 125. <a
+      href="#link237">FLAMES-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 127. <a href="#link240">IT
+      WAS THUS WE MET</a><br><br> 128. <a href="#link242">TAKING POSSESSION</a><br><br>
+      129. <a href="#link244">A GREAT EFFORT</a><br><br> 130. <a
+      href="#link246">REARRANGING AND SHIFTING</a><br><br> 131. <a
+      href="#link249">WE LEFT LAMENTED</a><br><br> 132. <a href="#link250">PICTURE
+      OF TOWNSEND’S TUNNEL</a><br><br> 133. <a href="#link253">QUARTZ
+      MILL</a><br><br> 134. <a href="#link254">ANOTHER PROCESS OF AMALGAMATION</a> <br><br>
+      135. <a href="#link256">FIRST QUARTZ MILL IN NEVADA</a><br><br> 136. <a
+      href="#link257">A SLICE OF RICH ORE</a><br><br> 137. <a href="#link260">THE
+      SAVED BROTHER</a><br><br> 138. <a href="#link263">ON A SECRET EXPEDITION</a><br><br>
+      139. <a href="#link265">LAKE MONO</a><br><br> 140. <a href="#link266a">RATHER
+      SOAPY</a><br><br> 141. <a href="#link266b">A BARK UNDER FULL SAIL</a><br><br>
+      142. <a href="#link268">A MODEL BOARDING HOUSE</a><br><br> 143. <a
+      href="#link271">LIFE AMID DEATH</a><br><br> 144. <a href="#link273">A
+      JUMP FOR LIFE</a><br><br> 145. <a href="#link275">“STOVE HEAP GONE”</a><br><br>
+      146. <a href="#link279">INTERVIEWING THE “WIDE WEST”</a><br><br>
+      147. <a href="#link280">WORTH A MILLION</a><br><br> 148. <a
+      href="#link282">MILLIONAIRES LAYING PLANS</a><br><br> 149. <a
+      href="#link287">DANGEROUSLY SICK</a><br><br> 150. <a href="#link288">WORTH
+      NOTHING</a><br><br> 151. <a href="#link294">THE COMPROMISE</a><br><br>
+      152. <a href="#link293">ONE OF MY FAILURES</a><br><br> 153. <a
+      href="#link294">TARGET SHOOTING</a><br><br> 154. <a href="#link295">AS
+      CITY EDITOR</a><br><br> 155. <a href="#link296">THE ENTIRE MARKET</a><br><br>
+      156. <a href="#link297">A FRIEND INDEED</a><br><br> 157. <a
+      href="#link298">UNION-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 158. <a href="#link301">AN
+      EDUCATIONAL REPORT</a><br><br> 159. <a href="#link302">NO PARTICULAR
+      HURRY</a><br><br> 160. <a href="#link304">VIEW OF VIRGINIA CITY AND MT.
+      DAVIDSON</a><br><br> 161. <a href="#link307">A NEW MINE</a><br><br>
+      162. <a href="#link309">TRY A FEW</a><br><br> 163. <a href="#link310">PORTRAIT
+      OF MR. STEWART</a><br><br> 164. <a href="#link311">SELLING A MINE</a><br><br>
+      165. <a href="#link315">COULDN’T WAIT</a><br><br> 166. <a
+      href="#link317">THE GREAT “FLOUR SACS” PROCESSION</a><br><br>
+      167. <a href="#link319">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 168. <a href="#link321">A
+      NABOB</a><br><br> 169. <a href="#link323">MAGNIFICENCE AND MISERY</a><br><br>
+      170. <a href="#link326">A FRIENDLY DRIVER</a><br><br> 171. <a
+      href="#link327">ASTONISHES THE NATIVES</a><br><br> 172. <a
+      href="#link328">COL. JACK WEAKENS</a><br><br> 173. <a href="#link331">SCOTTY
+      BRIGGS AND THE MINISTER</a><br><br> 174. <a href="#link335">REGULATING
+      MATTERS</a><br><br> 175. <a href="#link337">DIDN’T SHOOK HIS
+      MOTHER</a><br><br> 176. <a href="#link338">SCOTTY AS S. S. TEACHER</a><br><br>
+      177. <a href="#link340">THE MAN WHO HAD KILLED HIS DOZEN</a><br><br>
+      178. <a href="#link342">THE UNPREJUDICED JURY</a><br><br> 179. <a
+      href="#link344">A DESPERADO GIVING REFERENCE</a><br><br> 180. <a
+      href="#link346">SATISFYING A FOE</a><br><br> 181. <a href="#link351">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      182. <a href="#link353">GIVING INFORMATION</a><br><br> 183. <a
+      href="#link355">A WALKING BATTERY</a><br><br> 184. <a href="#link358">OVERHAULING
+      HIS MANIFEST</a><br><br> 185. <a href="#link359">SHIP-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      186. <a href="#link361">THE HEROES AND HEROINES OF THE STORY</a><br><br>
+      187. <a href="#link362">DISSOLUTE AUTHOR</a><br><br> 188. <a
+      href="#link365">THERE SAT THE LAWYER</a><br><br> 189. <a href="#link367">JONAH
+      OUTDONE</a><br><br> 190. <a href="#link370">DOLLINGER</a><br><br> 191.
+      <a href="#link371">LOW BRIDGE</a><br><br> 192. <a href="#link372">SHORTENING
+      SAIL</a><br><br> 193. <a href="#link374">LIGHTENING SHIP</a><br><br>
+      194. <a href="#link375">THE MARVELLOUS RESCUE</a><br><br> 195. <a
+      href="#link377">SILVER BRICKS</a><br><br> 196. <a href="#link379">TIMBER
+      SUPPORTS</a><br><br> 197. <a href="#link380">FROM GALLERY TO GALLERY</a><br><br>
+      198. <a href="#link384">JIM BLAINE</a><br><br> 199. <a href="#link385">HURRAH
+      FOR NIXON</a><br><br> 200. <a href="#link386">MISS WAGNER</a><br><br>
+      201. <a href="#link387">WAITING FOR A CUSTOMER</a><br><br> 202. <a
+      href="#link388">WAS TO BE THERE</a><br><br> 209. <a href="#link389">THE
+      MONUMENT</a><br><br> 205. <a href="#link390">WHERE IS THE RAM-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      205. <a href="#link392">CHINESE WASH BILL</a><br><br> 206. <a
+      href="#link393">IMITATION</a><br><br> 207. <a href="#link396">CHINESE
+      LOTTERY</a><br><br> 208. <a href="#link397">CHINESE MERCHANT AT HOME</a><br><br>
+      209. <a href="#link399">AN OLD FRIEND</a><br><br> 210. <a href="#link403">FAREWELL
+      AND ACCIDENT</a><br><br> 211. <a href="#link404">“GIMME A CIGAR”</a><br><br>
+      212. <a href="#link406">THE HERALD OF GLAD NEWS</a><br><br> 213. <a
+      href="#link407">FLAG-TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br> 214. <a href="#link409">A
+      NEW ENGLAND SCENE</a><br><br> 215. <a href="#link410">A VARIABLE CLIMATE</a><br><br>
+      216. <a href="#link413">SACRAMENTO AND THREE NODES AWAY</a><br><br> 217.
+      <a href="#link416">“FETCH HER OUT ...</a><br><br> 218. <a href="#link417">“WELL
+      IF IT AINT A CHILD ...</a><br><br> 219. <a href="#link418">A GENUINE
+      LIVE WOMAN</a><br><br> 220. <a href="#link420">THE GRACE OF A KANGAROO</a><br><br>
+      221. <a href="#link421">DREAMS DISSIPATED</a><br><br> 222. <a
+      href="#link422">THE “ONE HORSE SHAY” OUTDONE</a><br><br>
+      223. <a href="#link423a">HARD ON THE INNOCENTS</a><br><br> 224. <a
+      href="#link423b">DRY BONES SHAKEN</a><br><br> 225. <a href="#link424">“OH!
+      WHAT, SHALL I DO!...</a><br><br> 226. <a href="#link425">“GET OUT YOUR
+      TOWEL MY DEAR”</a><br><br> 227. <a href="#link426">“WE WILL OMIT THE
+      BENEDICTION...</a><br><br> 228. <a href="#link429">SLINKING</a><br><br>
+      229. <a href="#link431">A PRIZE</a><br><br> 230. <a href="#link432">A
+      LOOK IN AT THE WINDOW</a><br><br> 231. <a href="#link433">“DO IT
+      STRANGER”</a><br><br> 232. <a href="#link436">THE OLD COLLEGIATE</a><br><br>
+      233. <a href="#link437">STRIKING A POCKET</a><br><br> 234. <a
+      href="#link440">TOM QUARTZ</a><br><br> 235. <a href="#link441">AN
+      ADVANTAGE TAKEN</a><br><br> 236. <a href="#link442">AFTER AN EXCURSION</a><br><br>
+      237. <a href="#link445">THE THREE CAPTAINS</a><br><br> 238. <a
+      href="#link448">THE OLD ADMIRAL</a><br><br> 239. <a href="#link449">THE
+      DESERTED FIELD</a><br><br> 240. <a href="#link453">WILLIAMS</a><br><br>
+      241. <a href="#link455">SCENE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS</a><br><br> 242.
+      <a href="#link456">FASHIONABLE ATTIRE</a><br><br> 243. <a href="#link457">A
+      BITE</a><br><br> 244. <a href="#link458">RECONNOITERING</a><br><br>
+      246. <a href="#link461">LOOKING FOR MISCHIEF</a><br><br> 247. <a
+      href="#link462">A FAMILY LIKENESS</a><br><br> 248. <a href="#link467">SIT
+      DOWN To LISTEN</a><br><br> 249. <a href="#link469">“MY BROTHER, WE
+      TWINS”</a><br><br> 250. <a href="#link470">EXTRAORDINARY CAPERS</a><br><br>
+      251. <a href="#link471">A LOAD OF HAY</a><br><br> 252. <a href="#link472">MARCHING
+      THROUGH GEORGIA</a><br><br> 253. <a href="#link474">SANDWICH ISLAND
+      GIRLS</a><br><br> 254. <a href="#link475">ORIGINAL HAM SANDWICH</a><br><br>
+      255. <a href="#link478">“I KISSED HIM FOR HIS MOTHER”</a><br><br> 256.
+      <a href="#link479">AN OUTSIDER</a><br><br> 257. <a href="#link482">AN
+      ENEMY’S PRAYER</a><br><br> 258. <a href="#link484">VISITING THE
+      MISSIONARIES</a><br><br> 259. <a href="#link485">FULL CHURCH DRESS</a><br><br>
+      260. <a href="#link486">PLAYING EMPIRE</a><br><br> 261. <a
+      href="#link488">ROYALTY AND ITS SATELLITES</a><br><br> 262. <a
+      href="#link489">A HIGH PRIVATE</a><br><br> 263. <a href="#link492">A
+      MODERN FUNERAL</a><br><br> 264. <a href="#link497">FORMER FUNERAL ORGIES</a><br><br>
+      265. <a href="#link499">A PASSENGER</a><br><br> 266. <a href="#link501">MOONLIGHT
+      ON THE WATER</a><br><br> 267. <a href="#link502">GOING INTO THE
+      MOUNTAINS</a><br><br> 268. <a href="#link503">EVENING</a><br><br> 289.
+      <a href="#link505">THE DEMENTED</a><br><br> 270. <a href="#link507">DISCUSSING
+      TURNIPS</a><br><br> 271. <a href="#link509">GREELEY’S LETTER</a><br><br>
+      272. <a href="#link514">KEALAKEKUA BAY AND COOK’S MONUMENT</a><br><br>
+      273. <a href="#link518">THE GHOSTLY BUILDERS</a><br><br> 274. <a
+      href="#link519">ON GUARD</a><br><br> 275. <a href="#link521">BREAKING
+      THE TABU</a><br><br> 276. <a href="#link525">SURF BATHING</a><br><br>
+      277. <a href="#link526">SURF BATHING A FAILURE</a><br><br> 278. <a
+      href="#link527">CITY OF REFUGE</a><br><br> 279. <a href="#link529">THE
+      QUEEN’S ROCK</a><br><br> 280. <a href="#link531">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      281. <a href="#link533">THE PILLAR OF FIRE</a><br><br> 282. <a
+      href="#link535">THE CRATER</a><br><br> 283. <a href="#link539">BROKE
+      THROUGH</a><br><br> 284. <a href="#link540">FIRE FOUNTAINS</a><br><br>
+      285. <a href="#link542">LAVA STREAM</a><br><br> 286. <a href="#link543">A
+      TIDAL WAVE</a><br><br> 287. <a href="#link545">TRIP ON THE MILKY WAY</a><br><br>
+      288. <a href="#link547">A VIEW IN THE TAO VALLEY</a><br><br> 289. <a
+      href="#link549">MAGNIFICENT SPORT</a><br><br> 290. <a href="#link553">ELEVEN
+      MILES TO SEE</a><br><br> 291. <a href="#link554">CHASED BY A STORM</a><br><br>
+      292. <a href="#link555">LEAVING WORK</a><br><br> 293. <a href="#link557">TAIL-PIECE</a><br><br>
+      294. <a href="#link559">OUR AMUSEMENTS</a><br><br> 295. <a
+      href="#link561">SEVERE CASE OF STAGE FRIGHT</a><br><br> 296. <a
+      href="#link562">MY THREE PARQUETTE ALLIES</a><br><br> 297. <a
+      href="#link562">SAWYER IN THE CIRCLE</a><br><br> 298. <a href="#link567">A
+      PREDICAMENT</a><br><br> 299. <a href="#link569">THE BEST OF THE JOKE</a><br><br>
+      300. <a href="#link570">THE END</a>
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch01"></a>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an
+      office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and
+      dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting
+      Governor in the Governor’s absence. A salary of eighteen hundred
+      dollars a year and the title of “Mr. Secretary,” gave to the
+      great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and
+      ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his
+      financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange
+      journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to
+      explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and that
+      word “travel” had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he
+      would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and
+      deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes
+      and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of
+      adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine
+      time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would
+      see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an
+      afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of
+      shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and
+      by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk
+      as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean, and “the isthmus”
+      as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link020"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="020.jpg (69K)" src="images/020.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And
+      so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private
+      secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and the earth
+      passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll! I had
+      nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing
+      up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage from the
+      Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small
+      quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those fine
+      times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only
+      proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying
+      longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and
+      then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end
+      of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long
+      years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due
+      time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a
+      steamboat bound up the Missouri River.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link021"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="021.jpg (82K)" src="images/021.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were six days going from St. Louis to “St. Jo.”—a
+      trip that was so dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more
+      impression on my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead
+      of that many days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a
+      confused jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked over
+      with one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and
+      then retired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of sand-bars
+      which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out our
+      crutches and sparred over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for
+      she was walking most of the time, anyhow—climbing over reefs and
+      clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The captain
+      said she was a “bully” boat, and all she wanted was more
+      “shear” and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of
+      stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say so.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch02"></a>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph
+      was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars
+      apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link023a"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="023a.jpg (31K)" src="images/023a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, and hurried
+      to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself which we had
+      not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot make a heavy
+      traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage—because it
+      weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take—twenty-five
+      pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a selection in
+      a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five pounds apiece all in
+      one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis again. It was a sad
+      parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves to wear
+      at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and no stove-pipe hats nor
+      patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary to make life calm and
+      peaceful. We were reduced to a war-footing. Each of us put on a rough,
+      heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and “stogy” boots
+      included; and into the valise we crowded a few white shirts, some
+      under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, took along
+      about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of Unabridged
+      Dictionary; for we did not know—poor innocents—that such
+      things could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in Carson
+      City the next. I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith &amp;
+      Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic
+      pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I
+      thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only
+      had one fault—you could not hit anything with it. One of our “conductors”
+      practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and
+      behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and
+      he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretary had a
+      small-sized Colt’s revolver strapped around him for protection
+      against the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it
+      uncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was our
+      fellow-traveler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link023b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="023b.jpg (11K)" src="images/023b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original “Allen”
+      revolver, such as irreverent people called a “pepper-box.”
+      Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the
+      trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn
+      over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the
+      ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a
+      feat which was probably never done with an “Allen” in the
+      world. But George’s was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as
+      one of the stage-drivers afterward said, “If she didn’t get
+      what she went after, she would fetch something else.” And so she
+      did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and
+      fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did
+      not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun
+      and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon—the
+      “Allen.” Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once,
+      and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link024"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="024.jpg (96K)" src="images/024.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in the
+      mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest—we took none
+      along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two large
+      canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we also
+      took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in the
+      way of breakfasts and dinners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By eight o’clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side
+      of the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and
+      we bowled away and left “the States” behind us. It was a
+      superb summer morning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine.
+      There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of
+      emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost
+      made us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling
+      and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along
+      through Kansas, and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly
+      abroad on the great Plains. Just here the land was rolling—a grand
+      sweep of regular elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach—like
+      the stately heave and swell of the ocean’s bosom after a storm. And
+      everywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this
+      limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground
+      was to lose its “rolling” character and stretch away for seven
+      hundred miles as level as a floor!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous
+      description—an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six
+      handsome horses, and by the side of the driver sat the “conductor,”
+      the legitimate captain of the craft; for it was his business to take
+      charge and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We
+      three were the only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat,
+      inside. About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags—for we
+      had three days’ delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a
+      perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great
+      pile of it strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots
+      were full. We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver
+      said—“a little for Brigham, and Carson, and ’Frisco, but
+      the heft of it for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome ’thout
+      they get plenty of truck to read.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link026"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="026.jpg (65K)" src="images/026.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance which
+      was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we guessed that
+      his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we would unload
+      the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it to the
+      Indians, or whosoever wanted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link025"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="025.jpg (32K)" src="images/025.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the
+      hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the
+      coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, and
+      we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and
+      conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit there
+      in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito
+      rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she
+      had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would have
+      jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the corpse with
+      tranquil satisfaction—for she never missed her mosquito; she was a
+      dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left them there
+      for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill thirty or forty
+      mosquitoes—watched her, and waited for her to say something, but she
+      never did. So I finally opened the conversation myself. I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You bet!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did I understand you to say, madam?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You BET!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link027"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="027.jpg (31K)" src="images/027.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Danged if I didn’t begin to think you fellers was deef and
+      dumb. I did, b’gosh. Here I’ve sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust’n
+      muskeeters and wonderin’ what was ailin’ ye. Fust I thot you
+      was deef and dumb, then I thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin’,
+      and then by and by I begin to reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that
+      couldn’t think of nothing to say. Wher’d ye come from?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were
+      broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty
+      nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge
+      of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder projecting
+      above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposed
+      pronunciation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How we suffered, suffered, suffered! She went on, hour after hour, till I
+      was sorry I ever opened the mosquito question and gave her a start. She
+      never did stop again until she got to her journey’s end toward
+      daylight; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for we
+      were nodding, by that time), and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o’
+      days, and I’ll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any
+      good by edgin’ in a word now and then, I’m right thar. Folks’ll
+      tell you’t I’ve always ben kind o’ offish and partic’lar
+      for a gal that’s raised in the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and
+      bob-tail, and a gal <i>has</i> to be, if she wants to <i>be</i> anything,
+      but when people comes along which is my equals, I reckon I’m a
+      pretty sociable heifer after all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We resolved not to “lay by at Cottonwood.”
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch03"></a>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly
+      over the road—so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle,
+      lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our
+      consciousness—when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware
+      of it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and
+      conductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and
+      swearing because they could not find it—but we had no interest in
+      whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those
+      people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest with
+      the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be an
+      examination going on, and then the driver’s voice said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This startled me broad awake—as an undefined sense of calamity is
+      always apt to do. I said to myself: “Now, a thoroughbrace is
+      probably part of a horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay
+      in the driver’s voice. Leg, maybe—and yet how could he break
+      his leg waltzing along such a road as this? No, it can’t be his leg.
+      That is impossible, unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can
+      be the thoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall
+      not air my ignorance in this crowd, anyway.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the conductor’s face appeared at a lifted curtain, and his
+      lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said: “Gents,
+      you’ll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless and dreary.
+      When I found that the thing they called a “thoroughbrace” was
+      the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itself
+      in, I said to the driver:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can
+      remember. How did it happen?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days’
+      mail—that’s how it happened,” said he. “And right
+      here is the very direction which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which
+      was to be put out for the Injuns for to keep ’em quiet. It’s
+      most uncommon lucky, becuz it’s so nation dark I should ’a’
+      gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace hadn’t broke.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though I
+      could not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing him
+      a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks.
+      It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When they had
+      mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no mail on
+      top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The conductor bent
+      all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach just half full of
+      mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly to this, for it left us no
+      seats. But the conductor was wiser than we, and said a bed was better than
+      seats, and moreover, this plan would protect his thoroughbraces. We never
+      wanted any seats after that. The lazy bed was infinitely preferable. I had
+      many an exciting day, subsequently, lying on it reading the statutes and
+      the dictionary, and wondering how the characters would turn out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to
+      take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length on
+      the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes
+      of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectant
+      look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a
+      tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking
+      gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most
+      exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering
+      of the horses’ hoofs, the cracking of the driver’s whip, and
+      his “Hi-yi! g’lang!” were music; the spinning ground and
+      the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and
+      then slack up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and
+      as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with
+      the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that
+      there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we
+      had found it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten, we three
+      climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have our
+      bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down on
+      my face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and slept
+      for an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of those
+      matchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold of the
+      railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, no grip
+      is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in their places
+      and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good roads, while spinning
+      along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I saw them do it, often.
+      There was no danger about it; a sleeping man <i>will</i> seize the irons
+      in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard worked, and it <i>was</i>
+      not possible for them to stay awake all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and Little
+      Sandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile further on,
+      we came to the Big Sandy—one hundred and eighty miles from St.
+      Joseph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known
+      familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert—from
+      Kansas clear to the Pacific Ocean—as the “jackass rabbit.”
+      He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from
+      one third to twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size,
+      and has the most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature
+      <i>but</i> a jackass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link032"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="032.jpg (27K)" src="images/032.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or
+      unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him
+      conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death,
+      and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can
+      see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out
+      straight and “streaking it” through the low sage-brush, head
+      erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing
+      you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib.
+      Now and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the
+      stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious.
+      Presently he comes down to a long, graceful “lope,” and
+      shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush,
+      and will sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of
+      him, when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature
+      once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the
+      best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his
+      long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick
+      every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy
+      indifference that is enchanting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link033a"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="033a.jpg (35K)" src="images/033a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our party made this specimen “hump himself,” as the conductor
+      said. The secretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I commenced
+      spitting at him with my weapon; and all in the same instant the old
+      “Allen’s” whole broadside let go with a rattling crash,
+      and it is not putting it too strong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He
+      dropped his ears, set up his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed
+      which can only be described as a flash and a vanish! Long after he was out
+      of sight we could hear him whiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not remember where we first came across “sage-brush,” but
+      as I have been speaking of it I may as well describe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and venerable
+      live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet-high, with its rough
+      bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture the
+      “sage-brush” exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the
+      mountains, I have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and
+      entertained myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were
+      liliputian birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its
+      base were liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from
+      Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link033b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="033b.jpg (30K)" src="images/033b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the
+      “sage-brush.” Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that
+      tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and “sage-tea”
+      made from it taste like the sage-tea which all boys are so well acquainted
+      with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the
+      midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing else in the
+      vegetable world would try to grow, except “bunch-grass.”—[“Bunch-grass”
+      grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada and neighboring territories,
+      and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the dead of winter, wherever
+      the snow is blown aside and exposes it; notwithstanding its unpromising
+      home, bunch-grass is a better and more nutritious diet for cattle and
+      horses than almost any other hay or grass that is known—so stock-men
+      say.]—The sage-bushes grow from three to six or seven feet apart,
+      all over the mountains and deserts of the Far West, clear to the borders
+      of California. There is not a tree of any kind in the deserts, for
+      hundreds of miles—there is no vegetation at all in a regular desert,
+      except the sage-brush and its cousin the “greasewood,” which
+      is so much like the sage-brush that the difference amounts to little.
+      Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be impossible but for the
+      friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as a boy’s wrist (and
+      from that up to a man’s arm), and its crooked branches are half as
+      large as its trunk—all good, sound, hard wood, very like oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and
+      in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a
+      foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush
+      chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing
+      coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently no
+      swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little replenishing;
+      and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most
+      impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly
+      entertaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished
+      failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his
+      illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is
+      worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass
+      filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and
+      then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner.
+      Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything will relieve
+      temporarily, but nothing satisfy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of
+      my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a
+      critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of
+      getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an
+      article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He
+      put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and
+      chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening
+      and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never
+      tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then he
+      smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next
+      he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it
+      was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an
+      overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough
+      candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link035"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="035.jpg (95K)" src="images/035.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in
+      that—manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was
+      treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in
+      those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally
+      he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth;
+      it was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with
+      good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements
+      that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and
+      gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about
+      a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter’s
+      work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the
+      manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had
+      choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that
+      I ever laid before a trusting public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally one
+      finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and
+      foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual height.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch04"></a>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation
+      for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty
+      canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
+      ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and
+      redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. And
+      we <i>did</i> improve it, too, though after all our work it had an
+      upheaved and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea.
+      Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they
+      had settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests,
+      pantaloons and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been
+      swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them—for, there being no
+      ladies either at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot,
+      we had looked to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o’clock
+      in the morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy
+      Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the
+      water-canteens and pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we
+      smoked a final pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the
+      pipes, tobacco and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the
+      mail-bags, and then fastened down the coach curtains all around, and made
+      the place as “dark as the inside of a cow,” as the conductor
+      phrased it in his picturesque way. It was certainly as dark as any place
+      could be—nothing was even dimly visible in it. And finally, we
+      rolled ourselves up like silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and
+      sank peacefully to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to
+      recollect where we were—and succeed—and in a minute or two the
+      stage would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country,
+      now, threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep
+      banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up
+      the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
+      in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture,
+      and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads.
+      And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail-
+      bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from
+      the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would
+      grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: “Take your elbow
+      out of my ribs!—can’t you quit crowding?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the
+      Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged
+      somebody. One trip it “barked” the Secretary’s elbow;
+      the next trip it hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis’s
+      nose up till he could look down his nostrils—he said. The pistols
+      and coin soon settled to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco
+      and canteens clattered and floundered after the Dictionary every time it
+      made an assault on us, and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco
+      in our eyes, and water down our backs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link038"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="038.jpg (54K)" src="images/038.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore
+      gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through the
+      puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with
+      satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was
+      necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled
+      off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in
+      time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his
+      bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low
+      hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter of
+      our six horses’ hoofs, and the driver’s crisp commands, awoke
+      to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the
+      station at our smartest speed. It was fascinating—that old overland
+      stagecoaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins out
+      on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy
+      buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking
+      not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his health,
+      and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of
+      service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and
+      hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team
+      out of the stables—for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day,
+      station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures,
+      useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind of
+      beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himself with;
+      while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the hostler,
+      the stage-driver was a hero—a great and shining dignitary, the world’s
+      favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the nations. When
+      they spoke to him they received his insolent silence meekly, and as being
+      the natural and proper conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips
+      they all hung on his words with admiration (he never honored a particular
+      individual with a remark, but addressed it with a broad generality to the
+      horses, the stables, the surrounding country <i>and</i> the human
+      underlings); when he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a
+      hostler, that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his one jest—old
+      as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same
+      audience, in the same language, every time his coach drove up there—the
+      varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing
+      they’d ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly around
+      when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same, or a light for his
+      pipe!—but they would instantly insult a passenger if he so far
+      forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. They could do that sort
+      of insolence as well as the driver they copied it from—for, let it
+      be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little less contempt for his
+      passengers than he had for his hostlers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful <i>conductor</i>
+      of the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but
+      the <i>driver</i> was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped.
+      How admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved
+      himself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held the
+      bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And how
+      they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his long
+      whip and went careering away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-colored
+      bricks, laid up without mortar (<i>adobes</i>, the Spaniards call these
+      bricks, and Americans shorten it to ’<i>dobies</i>). The roofs,
+      which had no slant to them worth speaking of, were thatched and then
+      sodded or covered with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a
+      pretty rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we had ever
+      seen a man’s front yard on top of his house. The building consisted
+      of barns, stable-room for twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an
+      eating-room for passengers. This latter had bunks in it for the
+      station-keeper and a hostler or two. You could rest your elbow on its
+      eaves, and you had to bend in order to get in at the door. In place of a
+      window there was a square hole about large enough for a man to crawl
+      through, but this had no glass in it. There was no flooring, but the
+      ground was packed hard. There was no stove, but the fire-place served all
+      needful purposes. There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a
+      corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its base were a
+      couple of black and venerable tin coffee-pots, a tin teapot, a little bag
+      of salt, and a side of bacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the door of the station-keeper’s den, outside, was a tin
+      wash-basin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of
+      yellow bar soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt,
+      significantly—but this latter was the station-keeper’s private
+      towel, and only two persons in all the party might venture to use it—the
+      stage-driver and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of
+      decency; the former would not, because he did not choose to encourage the
+      advances of a station-keeper. We had towels—in the valise; they
+      might as well have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used
+      our handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door,
+      inside, was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with two
+      little fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it.
+      This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when
+      you looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple of inches
+      above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a
+      string—but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I
+      would order some sample coffins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link041"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="041.jpg (47K)" src="images/041.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br> <a id="link042a"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="042a.jpg (11K)" src="images/042a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair ever
+      since—along with certain impurities. In one corner of the room stood
+      three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches of
+      ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven
+      stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample
+      additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode
+      horseback—so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and
+      unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of high
+      boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose little
+      iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a huge beard
+      and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no suspenders, no
+      vest, no coat—in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great long “navy”
+      revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from
+      his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link042b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="042b.jpg (42K)" src="images/042b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The
+      rocking-chairs and sofas were not present, and never had been, but they
+      were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet
+      long, and two empty candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts,
+      and the table-cloth and napkins had not come—and they were not
+      looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a
+      tin pint cup, were at each man’s place, and the driver had a
+      queens-ware saucer that had seen better days. Of course this duke sat at
+      the head of the table. There was one isolated piece of table furniture
+      that bore about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the
+      caster. It was German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so
+      preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered
+      exiled king among barbarians, and the majesty of its native position
+      compelled respect even in its degradation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked,
+      broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen
+      preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link043"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="043.jpg (23K)" src="images/043.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station-keeper upended a disk of last week’s bread, of the shape
+      and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were
+      as good as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced old
+      hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the United
+      States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage company
+      had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and employees.
+      We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on the plains than
+      the section I am locating it in, but we <i>found</i> it—there is no
+      gainsaying that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he poured for us a beverage which he called “Slumgullion,”
+      and it is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really
+      pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old
+      bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link044"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="044.jpg (64K)" src="images/044.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no sugar and no milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients
+      with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the “slumgullion.”
+      And when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the
+      anecdote (a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat
+      down to a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of
+      mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>All</i>! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was
+      mackerel enough there for six.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But I don’t like mackerel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh—then help yourself to the mustard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but there
+      was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor out of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. The
+      station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last,
+      when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with himself
+      upon a matter too vast to grasp:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Coffee</i>! Well, if that don’t go clean ahead of me, I’m
+      d——d!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link045"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="045.jpg (40K)" src="images/045.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and
+      herdsmen—we all sat at the same board. At least there was no
+      conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from one
+      employee to another. It was always in the same form, and always gruffly
+      friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at first, and
+      interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost its charm. It
+      was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!” No, I forget—skunk
+      was not the word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know
+      it was, in fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is
+      no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the
+      landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the
+      vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to our
+      mail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right here we
+      suffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our six fine
+      horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild Mexican
+      fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and hold him
+      fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at last he
+      grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away from the
+      mules’ heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had issued
+      from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a fierce and
+      furious gallop—and the gait never altered for a moment till we
+      reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of
+      little station-huts and stables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we flew along all day. At 2 P.M. the belt of timber that fringes the
+      North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the
+      Plains came in sight. At 4 P.M. we crossed a branch of the river, and at 5
+      P.M. we crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney, fifty-six
+      hours out from <i>St. Joe</i>—THREE HUNDRED MILES!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years
+      ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to
+      live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the railroad
+      is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and contrasts in
+      my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times, of a recent
+      trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. I can scarcely
+      comprehend the new state of things:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and
+        started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner was
+        announced—an “event” to those of us who had yet to
+        experience what it is to eat in one of Pullman’s hotels on wheels;
+        so, stepping into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found
+        ourselves in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first
+        dinner on Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had
+        as many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire
+        the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results achieved.
+        Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with services of
+        solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless white, placed
+        as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could have had no
+        occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it would be hard for
+        that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in addition to all that
+        ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak
+        (the gormand who has not experienced this—bah! what does he know
+        of the feast of fat things?) our delicious mountain-brook trout, and
+        choice fruits and berries, and (sauce piquant and unpurchasable!) our
+        sweet-scented, appetite-compelling air of the prairies?
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link047"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="047.jpg (88K)" src="images/047.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things,
+        and as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we
+        sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the
+        fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two days
+        afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven minutes, while
+        our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not a drop!) After
+        dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as it was Sabbath eve,
+        intoned some of the grand old hymns—“Praise God from whom,”
+        etc.; “Shining Shore,” “Coronation,” etc.—the
+        voices of the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in
+        the evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus
+        eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and the
+        Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the sleep of the
+        just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight o’clock, to
+        find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte, three hundred miles
+        from Omaha—fifteen hours and forty minutes out.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch05"></a>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came, by
+      and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses of
+      level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly without
+      visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of such
+      amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand were
+      more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed a-top of
+      the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted occasionally at
+      our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears back and scamper
+      faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away, and leveled
+      an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things new and strange
+      to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and through to think of
+      the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the
+      blood dance in my veins on those fine overland mornings!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link049"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="049.jpg (43K)" src="images/049.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link050"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="050.jpg (51K)" src="images/050.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog villages,
+      the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter
+      was the regular <i>cayote</i> (pronounced ky-<i>o</i>-te) of the farther
+      deserts. And if it <i>was</i>, he was not a pretty creature or respectable
+      either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak
+      with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking
+      skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail
+      that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and
+      misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly
+      lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all
+      over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is <i>always</i>
+      hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures
+      despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is
+      so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are
+      pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is
+      so <i>homely</i>!—so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and
+      pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth
+      out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses
+      his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the
+      sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he
+      is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a
+      deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another
+      fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with
+      the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make
+      no demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier
+      interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such
+      a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time
+      you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the
+      time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time
+      you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that
+      nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him
+      where he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will
+      enjoy it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good
+      opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something
+      about speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link051"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="051.jpg (42K)" src="images/051.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and
+      every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that
+      will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition,
+      and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck
+      further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out
+      straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and
+      leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand
+      smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain! And all
+      this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to
+      save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get
+      perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him
+      madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never
+      pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more
+      incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger,
+      and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is; and next
+      he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has to
+      slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him—and <i>then</i>
+      that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and
+      swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with
+      concentrated and desperate energy. This “spurt” finds him six
+      feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then,
+      in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote
+      turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it
+      which seems to say: “Well, I shall have to tear myself away from
+      you, bub—business is business, and it will not do for me to be
+      fooling along this way all day”—and forthwith there is a
+      rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the
+      atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a
+      vast solitude!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the nearest
+      sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head reflectively, and
+      then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to his train, and takes
+      up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and feels unspeakably mean,
+      and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at half-mast for a week. And for as
+      much as a year after that, whenever there is a great hue and cry after a
+      cayote, that dog will merely glance in that direction without emotion, and
+      apparently observe to himself, “I believe I do not wish any of the
+      pie.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link052"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="052.jpg (145K)" src="images/052.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert, along
+      with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an uncertain
+      and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsist almost wholly on
+      the carcases of oxen, mules and horses that have dropped out of emigrant
+      trains and died, and upon windfalls of carrion, and occasional legacies of
+      offal bequeathed to him by white men who have been opulent enough to have
+      something better to butcher than condemned army bacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the desert-
+      frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anything they can
+      bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only creatures known
+      to history who will eat nitro-glycerine and ask for more if they survive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly hard
+      time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, are just as
+      apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desert breeze, and
+      follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he is himself;
+      and when this occurs he has to content himself with sitting off at a
+      little distance watching those people strip off and dig out everything
+      edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens explore the
+      skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that the cayote, and the
+      obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify their blood kinship
+      with each other in that they live together in the waste places of the
+      earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, while hating all
+      other creature and yearning to assist at their funerals. He does not mind
+      going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty to dinner,
+      because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and he can
+      just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lying around doing
+      nothing and adding to the burdens of his parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as it
+      came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the
+      mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, made
+      shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day’s good luck and
+      a limitless larder the morrow.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch06"></a>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours.
+      Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento,
+      California, by stage-coach, was nearly nineteen hundred miles, and the
+      trip was often made in fifteen days (the cars do it in four and a half,
+      now), but the time specified in the mail contracts, and required by the
+      schedule, was eighteen or nineteen days, if I remember rightly. This was
+      to make fair allowance for winter storms and snows, and other unavoidable
+      causes of detention. The stage company had everything under strict
+      discipline and good system. Over each two hundred and fifty miles of road
+      they placed an agent or superintendent, and invested him with great
+      authority. His beat or jurisdiction of two hundred and fifty miles was
+      called a “division.” He purchased horses, mules harness, and
+      food for men and beasts, and distributed these things among his stage
+      stations, from time to time, according to his judgment of what each
+      station needed. He erected station buildings and dug wells. He attended to
+      the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and blacksmiths, and
+      discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very great man in his
+      “division”—a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the
+      Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner, and
+      in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driver dwindled to
+      a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, all told, on the
+      overland route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link055"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="055.jpg (39K)" src="images/055.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the “conductor.”
+      His beat was the same length as the agent’s—two hundred and
+      fifty miles. He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that
+      fearful distance, night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he
+      could get perched thus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had
+      absolute charge of the mails, express matter, passengers and stage-coach,
+      until he delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision and considerable
+      executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man, who attended
+      closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman. It was not
+      absolutely necessary that the division-agent should be a gentleman, and
+      occasionally he wasn’t. But he was always a general in
+      administrative ability, and a bull-dog in courage and determination—otherwise
+      the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overland service
+      would never in any instance have been to him anything but an equivalent
+      for a month of insolence and distress and a bullet and a coffin at the end
+      of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen conductors on the overland,
+      for there was a daily stage each way, and a conductor on every stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next in <i>real</i> and official rank and importance, <i>after</i> the
+      conductor, came my delight, the driver—next in real but not in <i>apparent</i>
+      importance—for we have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the
+      driver was to the conductor as an admiral is to the captain of the
+      flag-ship. The driver’s beat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time
+      at the stations pretty short, sometimes; and so, but for the grandeur of
+      his position his would have been a sorry life, as well as a hard and a
+      wearing one. We took a new driver every day or every night (for they drove
+      backward and forward over the same piece of road all the time), and
+      therefore we never got as well acquainted with them as we did with the
+      conductors; and besides, they would have been above being familiar with
+      such rubbish as passengers, anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we were
+      always eager to get a sight of each and every new driver as soon as the
+      watch changed, for each and every day we were either anxious to get rid of
+      an unpleasant one, or loath to part with a driver we had learned to like
+      and had come to be sociable and friendly with. And so the first question
+      we asked the conductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange
+      drivers, was always, “Which is him?” The grammar was faulty,
+      maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go into a book some day.
+      As long as everything went smoothly, the overland driver was well enough
+      situated, but if a fellow driver got sick suddenly it made trouble, for
+      the coach <i>must</i> go on, and so the potentate who was about to climb
+      down and take a luxurious rest after his long night’s siege in the
+      midst of wind and rain and darkness, had to stay where he was and do the
+      sick man’s work. Once, in the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver
+      sound asleep on the box, and the mules going at the usual break-neck pace,
+      the conductor said never mind him, there was no danger, and he was doing
+      double duty—had driven seventy-five miles on one coach, and was now
+      going back over it on this without rest or sleep. A hundred and fifty
+      miles of holding back of six vindictive mules and keeping them from
+      climbing the trees! It sounds incredible, but I remember the statement
+      well enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough characters, as
+      already described; and from western Nebraska to Nevada a considerable
+      sprinkling of them might be fairly set down as outlaws—fugitives
+      from justice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which
+      was without law and without even the pretence of it. When the “division-
+      agent” issued an order to one of these parties he did it with the
+      full understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navy
+      six-shooter, and so he always went “fixed” to make things go
+      along smoothly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostler
+      through the head to teach him some simple matter that he could have taught
+      him with a club if his circumstances and surroundings had been different.
+      But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, and when they tried
+      to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinate generally “got it
+      through his head.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link057"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="057.jpg (53K)" src="images/057.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great portion of this vast machinery—these hundreds of men and
+      coaches, and thousands of mules and horses—was in the hands of Mr.
+      Ben Holliday. All the western half of the business was in his hands. This
+      reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, so
+      I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in my
+      Holy Land note-book:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday—a man of prodigious
+        energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the
+        continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind—two
+        thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch! But this
+        fragment of history is not about Ben Holliday, but about a young New
+        York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small party of
+        pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to California in Mr.
+        Holliday’s overland coaches three years before, and had by no
+        means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of Mr. H.) Aged
+        nineteen. Jack was a good boy—a good-hearted and always
+        well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New York, and
+        although he was bright and knew a great many useful things, his
+        Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected—to such a
+        degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new to him, and
+        all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his virgin ear.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of Jack, in
+        that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast concerning them.
+        He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired of listening to his
+        speeches, nor he of making them. He never passed a celebrated locality,
+        from Bashan to Bethlehem, without illuminating it with an oration. One
+        day, when camped near the ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with
+        something like this:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds
+        the Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of it, my boy—the
+        actual mountains of Moab—renowned in Scripture history! We are
+        actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags and peaks—and
+        for all we know” [dropping his voice impressively], “our
+        eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WHERE LIES THE
+        MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES! Think of it, Jack!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Moses who?” (falling inflection).
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link058"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="058.jpg (62K)" src="images/058.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—you
+        ought to be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great
+        guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot
+        where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles
+        in extent—and across that desert that wonderful man brought the
+        children of Israel!—guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty
+        years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and
+        hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this
+        very spot; and where we now stand they entered the Promised Land with
+        anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack!
+        Think of it!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would
+        have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything that
+        was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended with
+        him—and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of
+        excusing the heedless blunders of a boy.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the “Crossing of the
+      South Platte,” <i>alias</i> “Julesburg,” <i>alias</i>
+      “Overland City,” four hundred and seventy miles from St.
+      Joseph—the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our
+      untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch07"></a>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us
+      such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless
+      solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric people
+      crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up suddenly in
+      this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City as if we had
+      never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to spare was because
+      we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous affair, called a “mud-wagon”)
+      and transfer our freight of mails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy
+      South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and
+      pigmy islands—a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of
+      the enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with
+      the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either
+      bank. The Platte was “up,” they said—which made me wish
+      I could see it when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier.
+      They said it was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands
+      were liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was
+      made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or
+      twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so
+      threateningly that we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all
+      our lives to be shipwrecked in a “mud-wagon” in the middle of
+      a desert at last. But we dragged through and sped away toward the setting
+      sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link061"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="061.jpg (69K)" src="images/061.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles
+      from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or
+      six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a party
+      who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping
+      over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the
+      hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the
+      passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse and took
+      to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for some twenty-four
+      hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, and finally he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link062"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="062.jpg (81K)" src="images/062.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks
+      making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest
+      for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank,
+      if I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people—but
+      of course I couldn’t, the old ‘Allen’s’ so
+      confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree;
+      they wouldn’t have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a
+      cent—but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him and
+      give a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on his heels.
+      The saddle began to slip, and I took him round the neck and laid close to
+      him, and began to pray. Then he came down and stood up on the other end
+      awhile, and the bull actually stopped pawing sand and bellowing to
+      contemplate the inhuman spectacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded
+      perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally
+      prostrate my horse’s reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of
+      him, and I wish I may die if he didn’t stand on his head for a
+      quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind—he
+      was, as sure as truth itself, and he really didn’t know what he was
+      doing. Then the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all
+      fours and took a fresh start—and then for the next ten minutes he
+      would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull
+      began to get unsettled, too, and didn’t know where to start in—and
+      so he stood there sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and
+      bellowing every now and then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred
+      dollar circus horse for breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his
+      neck—the horse’s, not the bull’s—and then
+      underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head up, and sometimes
+      heels—but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be ripping and
+      tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you might say.
+      Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away some of my
+      horse’s tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the
+      time), but <i>something</i> made him hungry for solitude and suggested to
+      him to get up and hunt for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link063"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="063.jpg (63K)" src="images/063.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go!
+      and you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too—head
+      down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing
+      down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a
+      whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the
+      rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with
+      both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass
+      rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when
+      the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left,
+      and as the saddle went down over the horse’s rump he gave it a lift
+      with his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I
+      wish I may die in a minute if he didn’t. I fell at the foot of the
+      only solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature
+      could see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark
+      with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was
+      astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my
+      breath smell of brimstone. I <i>had</i> the bull, now, if he did not think
+      of one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously.
+      There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there
+      were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in
+      case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I
+      sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your <i>saddle</i>? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with
+      you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn’t.
+      No man could do that. It <i>fell</i> in the tree when it came down.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh—exactly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the
+      limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining tons.
+      I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see the
+      length. It reached down twenty-two feet—half way to the ground. I
+      then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt
+      satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that <i>one</i> thing
+      that I dread, all right—but if he does, all right anyhow—I am
+      fixed for him. But don’t you know that the very thing a man dreads
+      is the thing that always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull,
+      now, with anxiety—anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not
+      been in such a situation and felt that at any moment death might come.
+      Presently a thought came into the bull’s eye. I knew it! said I—if
+      my nerve fails now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded,
+      he started in to climb the tree—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What, the bull?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course—who else?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But a bull can’t climb a tree.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link065"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="065.jpg (75K)" src="images/065.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He can’t, can’t he? Since you know so much about it,
+      did you ever see a bull try?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No! I never dreamt of such a thing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because
+      you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can’t be done?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, all right—go on. What did you do?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then
+      slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again—got up a
+      little higher—slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this
+      time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits
+      went down more and more. Up he came—an inch at a time—with his
+      eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher—hitched his
+      foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, ‘You
+      are my meat, friend.’ Up again—higher and higher, and getting
+      more excited the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a
+      long breath,—and then said I, ‘It is now or never.’ I
+      had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it out slowly, till it hung
+      right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of the slack, and the
+      slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than lightning I out with
+      the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was an awful roar, and must
+      have scared the bull out of his senses. When the smoke cleared away, there
+      he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of
+      one convulsion into another faster than you could count! I didn’t
+      stop to count, anyhow—I shinned down the tree and shot for home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we can’t refuse to believe it, and we don’t. But
+      if there were some proofs—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did I bring back my horse?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you ever see the bull again?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as
+      particular as you are about a little thing like that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by the
+      skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my brief
+      sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town in the
+      neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of Eckert, an
+      Englishman—a person famous for the number, ingenuity and imposing
+      magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most celebrated
+      falsehoods, and always trying to “draw him out” before
+      strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house
+      where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie.
+      One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and
+      sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on
+      Eckert. As we jogged along, said he:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on
+      his guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly
+      well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody
+      might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than
+      that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself—let him drop it
+      or change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to
+      draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget himself
+      and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don’t get impatient—just
+      keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem to me
+      that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple trick
+      as that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eckert received us heartily—a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered
+      creature. We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking
+      about the king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all
+      manner of things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation
+      himself or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert’s lead, and
+      betrayed no solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was
+      shortly perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and
+      more at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour
+      passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to
+      astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard of—I’ve
+      got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut—and not only
+      eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so—I’ll swear to it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quick glance from Bascom—a glance that I understood—then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
+      impossible.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I knew you would say it. I’ll fetch the cat.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went in the house. Bascom said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There—what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle
+      Eckert. You see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions
+      to sleep. I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back.
+      Cat eat a cocoanut—oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly—he
+      will tell the absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cat eat a cocoanut—the innocent fool!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link068"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="068.jpg (84K)" src="images/068.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bascom smiled. Said he:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll hold the cat—you bring a cocoanut.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a wink
+      to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it,
+      swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent,
+      though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal, notwithstanding
+      the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off homeward, Bascom
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep the horse till morning. And—you need not speak of this—foolishness
+      to the boys.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link069"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="069.jpg (50K)" src="images/069.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch08"></a>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and
+      watching for the “pony-rider”—the fleet messenger who
+      sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters
+      nineteen hundred miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse
+      and human flesh and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit
+      of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day
+      or night his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer,
+      raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his “beat”
+      was a level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and
+      precipices, or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that
+      swarmed with hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the
+      saddle and be off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider
+      on duty. He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight,
+      starlight, or through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened.
+      He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like
+      a gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
+      came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh,
+      impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the
+      twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight
+      before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider and
+      horse went “flying light.” The rider’s dress was thin,
+      and fitted close; he wore a “round-about,” and a skull-cap,
+      and tucked his pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried
+      no arms—he carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for
+      even the postage on his literary freight was worth <i>five dollars a
+      letter</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link071"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="071.jpg (120K)" src="images/071.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry—his bag had
+      business letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary
+      weight, too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible
+      blanket. He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets
+      strapped under the rider’s thighs would each hold about the bulk of
+      a child’s primer. They held many and many an important business
+      chapter and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and
+      thin as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The
+      stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a
+      day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There
+      were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and day,
+      stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to California,
+      forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among them making
+      four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and see a deal of
+      scenery every single day in the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider,
+      but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to
+      streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the
+      swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of
+      the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would
+      see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “HERE HE COMES!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across
+      the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the
+      sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
+      rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing
+      more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and
+      still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another
+      instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s
+      hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go
+      winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link072"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="072.jpg (33K)" src="images/072.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the
+      flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after the
+      vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we
+      had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rattled through Scott’s Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here
+      somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali water
+      in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and a
+      thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home. This
+      water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places the ground
+      looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkali water
+      excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know we felt
+      very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we had
+      added it to our list of things which <i>we</i> had seen and some other
+      people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons as
+      those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the
+      Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it
+      isn’t a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties
+      trips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sitting posture,
+      making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to bench,
+      and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, and still
+      glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now
+      and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things to save himself,
+      taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and all,
+      starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice
+      and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering as he goes,
+      adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a
+      three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves his hat magnificently
+      and rides into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link073"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="073.jpg (48K)" src="images/073.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excitement, but
+      ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments next
+      day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and
+      massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also all
+      the passengers but one, it was supposed; but this must have been a
+      mistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific coast I was
+      personally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people who
+      were wounded during that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives.
+      There was no doubt of the truth of it—I had it from their own lips.
+      One of these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in his
+      system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another of them told
+      me that he was struck so literally full of arrows that after the Indians
+      were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could not restrain
+      his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, a person
+      named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperately wounded. He
+      dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg was broken) to a
+      station several miles away. He did it during portions of two nights, lying
+      concealed one day and part of another, and for more than forty hours
+      suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and bodily pain. The
+      Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained, including quite an
+      amount of treasure.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch09"></a>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we
+      found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow
+      (apparently) looming vast and solitary—a deep, dark, rich indigo
+      blue in hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling
+      brows of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but
+      he only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We
+      breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out
+      from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during
+      the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort
+      all the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the
+      trees we dashed by at arm’s length concealed a lurking Indian or
+      two. During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet
+      through the pony-rider’s jacket, but he had ridden on, just the
+      same, because pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such
+      things except when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them
+      they had to stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been
+      waiting for them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two
+      hours and a half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in
+      charge of it had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an
+      injured air that the Indian had “skipped around so’s to spile
+      everything—and ammunition’s blamed skurse, too.” The
+      most natural inference conveyed by his manner of speaking was, that in
+      “skipping around,” the Indian had taken an unfair advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front—a
+      reminiscence of its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it
+      wounded the driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the
+      place to keep a man “huffy” was down on the Southern Overland,
+      among the Apaches, before the company moved the stage line up on the
+      northern route. He said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down
+      there, and that he came as near as anything to starving to death in the
+      midst of abundance, because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that
+      he “couldn’t hold his vittles.” This person’s
+      statements were not generally believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link076"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="076.jpg (53K)" src="images/076.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostile
+      Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of
+      the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and
+      listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were
+      among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that
+      when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The
+      driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long
+      intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible
+      dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding
+      of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the wind;
+      and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel
+      at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly
+      still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the
+      vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. We
+      listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath; every time
+      one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to say
+      something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden “Hark!”
+      and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the
+      tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our
+      tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one
+      might call such a condition by so strong a name—for it was a sleep
+      set with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird
+      and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams—a sleep
+      that was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the
+      night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by <i>such</i> a long,
+      wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard—ten steps from the stage—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Help! help! help!” [It was our driver’s voice.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Kill him! Kill him like a dog!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look out! head him off! head him off!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet,
+      as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object;
+      several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly,
+      “Don’t, gentlemen, please don’t—I’m a dead
+      man!” Then a fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped the
+      stage into the darkness, and left the grisly mystery behind us.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time it
+      occupied—maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at
+      a curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering
+      flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and
+      thundering away, down a mountain “grade.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We fed on that mystery the rest of the night—what was left of it,
+      for it was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we
+      could get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that
+      sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like “Tell you in the
+      morning!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney, and
+      lay there in the dark, listening to each other’s story of how he
+      first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled
+      themselves upon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds was,
+      and the order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was
+      never a theory that would account for our driver’s voice being out
+      there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good English,
+      if they <i>were</i> Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our
+      boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence
+      of something to be anxious <i>about</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All that we
+      could make out of the odds and ends of the information we gathered in the
+      morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station; that we changed
+      drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had been talking
+      roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region (“for
+      there wasn’t a man around there but had a price on his head and didn’t
+      dare show himself in the settlements,” the conductor said); he had
+      talked roughly about these characters, and ought to have “drove up
+      there with his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him, and
+      begun business himself, because any softy would know they would be laying
+      for him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the conductor
+      nor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They plainly had
+      little respect for a man who would deliver offensive opinions of people
+      and then be so simple as to come into their presence unprepared to “back
+      his judgment,” as they pleasantly phrased the killing of any
+      fellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise they plainly had
+      a contempt for the man’s poor discretion in venturing to rouse the
+      wrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws—and the
+      conductor added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I tell you it’s as much as Slade himself wants to do!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I cared nothing
+      now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdered driver.
+      There was such magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, I stood
+      always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something new about
+      Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland City, we
+      had begun to hear about Slade and his “division” (for he was a
+      “division-agent”) on the Overland; and from the hour we had
+      left Overland City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only
+      three things—“Californy,” the Nevada silver mines, and
+      this desperado Slade. And a deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We
+      had gradually come to have a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a
+      man whose heart and hands and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders
+      against his dignity; a man who awfully avenged all injuries, affront,
+      insults or slights, of whatever kind—on the spot if he could, years
+      afterward if lack of earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate
+      tortured him day and night till vengeance appeased it—and not an
+      ordinary vengeance either, but his enemy’s absolute death—nothing
+      less; a man whose face would light up with a terrible joy when he
+      surprised a foe and had him at a disadvantage. A high and efficient
+      servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless
+      scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous and the
+      most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the
+      mountains.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch10"></a>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors had
+      been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached Julesburg.
+      In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conception of what a
+      Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state of development, I will
+      reduce all this mass of overland gossip to one straightforward narrative,
+      and present it in the following shape:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six years
+      of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph,
+      Missouri, he joined one of the early California-bound emigrant trains, and
+      was given the post of train-master. One day on the plains he had an angry
+      dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their revolvers. But
+      the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon cocked first. So
+      Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a matter, and proposed
+      that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the quarrel settled by a
+      fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, and threw down his pistol—whereupon
+      Slade laughed at his simplicity, and shot him dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his time
+      between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had been
+      sent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indian
+      battle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut their
+      ears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link081"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="081.jpg (55K)" src="images/081.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was sufficient
+      merit to procure for him the important post of overland division-agent at
+      Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some time previously, the
+      company’s horses had been frequently stolen, and the coaches
+      delayed, by gangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the idea of any
+      man’s having the temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented
+      them promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did not fear
+      anything that breathed the breath of life. He made short work of all
+      offenders. The result was that delays ceased, the company’s property
+      was let alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade’s
+      coaches went through, every time! True, in order to bring about this
+      wholesome change, Slade had to kill several men—some say three,
+      others say four, and others six—but the world was the richer for
+      their loss. The first prominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent
+      Jules, who bore the reputation of being a reckless and desperate man
+      himself. Jules hated Slade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion
+      for a fight was all he was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ a
+      man whom Jules had once discharged. Next, Slade seized a team of
+      stage-horses which he accused Jules of having driven off and hidden
+      somewhere for his own use. War was declared, and for a day or two the two
+      men walked warily about the streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with
+      a double-barreled shot gun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver.
+      Finally, as Slade stepped into a store Jules poured the contents of his
+      gun into him from behind the door. Slade was pluck, and Jules got several
+      bad pistol wounds in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link082"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="082.jpg (157K)" src="images/082.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both
+      swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both were
+      bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering his
+      possessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to the
+      Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day of reckoning.
+      For many months he was not seen or heard of, and was gradually dropped out
+      of the remembrance of all save Slade himself. But Slade was not the man to
+      forget him. On the contrary, common report said that Slade kept a reward
+      standing for his capture, dead or alive!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After awhile, seeing that Slade’s energetic administration had
+      restored peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the
+      overland stage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the
+      Rocky Mountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there. It was
+      the very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely no
+      semblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the only
+      recognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled on the
+      spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day, and
+      with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them. It
+      was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private
+      reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon as
+      indelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette required of
+      a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game—otherwise
+      his churlishness would surely be remembered against him the first time he
+      killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn in interring him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this
+      hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them
+      aired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead! He began
+      a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he had
+      completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered a
+      large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of
+      the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that they
+      respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He wrought the same
+      marvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked his
+      administration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolen
+      overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supreme
+      judge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise—and
+      not only in the case of offences against his employers, but against
+      passing emigrants as well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock
+      lost or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a
+      single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected, and
+      opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the
+      fourth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.—[“The
+      Vigilantes of Montana,” by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]—I take
+      this paragraph:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down
+        to a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and
+        maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means of
+        redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link084"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="084.jpg (67K)" src="images/084.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the fine
+        little half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with his
+        widow after his execution. Stories of Slade’s hanging men, and of
+        innumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he was
+        a principal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As for
+        minor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minute
+        history of Slade’s life would be one long record of such
+        practices.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “The Vigilantes of Montana” by Prof. Thomas J. Dimsdale
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say that
+      one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he saw a man
+      approaching who had offended him some days before—observe the fine
+      memory he had for matters like that—and, “Gentlemen,”
+      said Slade, drawing, “it is a good twenty-yard shot—I’ll
+      clip the third button on his coat!” Which he did. The bystanders all
+      admired it. And they all attended the funeral, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station did
+      something which angered Slade—and went and made his will. A day or
+      two afterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reached
+      under the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle—possibly to get
+      something else), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and
+      satisfied smile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to
+      recognize as a death-warrant in disguise, and told him to “none of
+      that!—pass out the high-priced article.” So the poor
+      bar-keeper had to turn his back and get the high-priced brandy from the
+      shelf; and when he faced around again he was looking into the muzzle of
+      Slade’s pistol. “And the next instant,” added my
+      informant, impressively, “he was one of the deadest men that ever
+      lived.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link085"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="085.jpg (94K)" src="images/085.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would leave
+      a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for weeks
+      together—had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said they
+      believed he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, so
+      that he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed he
+      saved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and made
+      the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation. One
+      of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade. To the
+      surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but let him
+      alone for a considerable time. Finally, however, he went to the Frenchman’s
+      house very late one night, knocked, and when his enemy opened the door,
+      shot him dead—pushed the corpse inside the door with his foot, set
+      the house on fire and burned up the dead man, his widow and three
+      children! I heard this story from several different people, and they
+      evidently believed what they were saying. It may be true, and it may not.
+      “Give a dog a bad name,” etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him.
+      They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed a
+      guard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, so that
+      he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving, spirited
+      woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When she arrived
+      they let her in without searching her, and before the door could be closed
+      she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and her lord marched forth
+      defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, they mounted double and
+      galloped away unharmed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fulness of time Slade’s myrmidons captured his ancient enemy
+      Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remote
+      fastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious livelihood with his
+      rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, and deposited
+      him in the middle of the cattle-yard with his back against a post. It is
+      said that the pleasure that lit Slade’s face when he heard of it was
+      something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to see that he was
+      securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wait till morning before
+      enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night in the
+      cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never known. In the
+      morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping the flesh here
+      and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while Jules begged him
+      to kill him outright and put him out of his misery. Finally Slade
+      reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made some characteristic
+      remarks and then dispatched him. The body lay there half a day, nobody
+      venturing to touch it without orders, and then Slade detailed a party and
+      assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut off the dead man’s
+      ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carried them for some time
+      with great satisfaction. That is the story as I have frequently heard it
+      told and seen it in print in California newspapers. It is doubtless
+      correct in all essential particulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to breakfast
+      with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and bearded
+      mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most gentlemanly-
+      appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found along the road in
+      the Overland Company’s service was the person who sat at the head of
+      the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did when I
+      heard them call him SLADE!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!—looking upon
+      it—touching it—hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here, right by
+      my side, was the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways,
+      <i>had taken the lives of twenty-six human beings</i>, or all men lied
+      about him! I suppose I was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to
+      see strange lands and wonderful people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of
+      his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant
+      person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-
+      bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified their children with.
+      And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that
+      his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones
+      were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But that was enough to
+      leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I seldom see a face
+      possessing those characteristics without fancying that the owner of it is
+      a dangerous man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link088"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="088.jpg (57K)" src="images/088.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade
+      was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely
+      declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might
+      be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on
+      filling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved it
+      than he—and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the
+      last drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I
+      could not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had
+      given it away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the
+      loss. But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six
+      dead people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the
+      thought that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that
+      breakfast-table I had pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to
+      the coach and saw us off, first ordering certain rearrangements of the
+      mail-bags for our comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that
+      we should hear of him again, some day, and wondering in what connection.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="089.jpg (31K)" src="images/089.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch11"></a>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again. News
+      came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana (whither
+      Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. I find an account of
+      the affair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraph from in the
+      last chapter—“The Vigilantes of Montana; being a Reliable
+      Account of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer’s
+      Notorious Road Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M.T.”
+      Mr. Dimsdale’s chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how
+      the people of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law
+      prove inefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of
+      which are accurately descriptive, and one of which is exceedingly
+      picturesque: “Those who saw him in his natural state only, would
+      pronounce him to be a kind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous
+      gentleman; on the contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor
+      and surrounded by a gang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend
+      incarnate.” And this: “From Fort Kearney, west, <i>he was
+      feared A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN THE ALMIGHTY</i>.” For compactness,
+      simplicity and vigor of expression, I will “back” that
+      sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale’s narrative is
+      as follows. In all places where italics occur, they are mine:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the
+        Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had freed
+        the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and they
+        determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority they would
+        establish a People’s Court where all offenders should be tried by
+        judge and jury. This was the nearest approach to social order that the
+        circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal authority was wanting,
+        yet the people were firmly determined to maintain its efficiency, and to
+        enforce its decrees. It may here be mentioned that the overt act which
+        was the last round on the fatal ladder leading to the scaffold on which
+        Slade perished, was the tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of
+        this court, followed by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by
+        authority of a presented Derringer, and with his own hands.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he openly
+        boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew. He was never
+        accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery, committed in
+        this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his charge, in any
+        place); but that he had killed several men in other localities was
+        notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was a most powerful
+        argument in determining his fate, when he was finally arrested for the
+        offence above mentioned. On returning from Milk River he became more and
+        more addicted to drinking, until at last it was a common feat for him
+        and his friends to “take the town.” He and a couple of his
+        dependents might often be seen on one horse, galloping through the
+        streets, shouting and yelling, firing revolvers, etc. On many occasions
+        he would ride his horse into stores, break up bars, toss the scales out
+        of doors and use most insulting language to parties present. Just
+        previous to the day of his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one
+        of his followers; but such was his influence over them that the man wept
+        bitterly at the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power. It
+        had become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers
+        and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being
+        fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of
+        goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he had
+        money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small
+        satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal enemies.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew
+        would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was not
+        a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public did not
+        expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his very name, and
+        the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who followed him alone
+        prevented a resistance which must certainly have ended in the instant
+        murder or mutilation of the opposing party.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose organization
+        we have described, and had treated it with respect by paying one or two
+        fines and promising to pay the rest when he had money; but in the
+        transaction that occurred at this crisis, he forgot even this caution,
+        and goaded by passion and the hatred of restraint, he sprang into the
+        embrace of death.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Slade had been drunk and “cutting up” all night. He and his
+        companions had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M. Fox,
+        the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and commenced
+        reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of arraignment. He
+        became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the writ, he tore it up,
+        threw it on the ground and stamped upon it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link092"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="092.jpg (121K)" src="images/092.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The clicking of the locks of his companions’ revolvers was
+        instantly heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt
+        his retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he
+        succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the conqueror
+        and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a declaration of
+        war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Committee now felt that the
+        question of social order and the preponderance of the law-abiding
+        citizens had then and there to be decided. They knew the character of
+        Slade, and they were well aware that they must submit to his rule
+        without murmur, or else that he must be dealt with in such fashion as
+        would prevent his being able to wreak his vengeance on the committee,
+        who could never have hoped to live in the Territory secure from outrage
+        or death, and who could never leave it without encountering his friends,
+        whom his victory would have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that
+        would have rendered them reckless of consequences. The day previous he
+        had ridden into Dorris’s store, and on being requested to leave,
+        he drew his revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to
+        him. Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of
+        wine, he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered an
+        uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and commenced
+        firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the
+        quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is
+        saying: “Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will
+        be——to pay.” Slade started and took a long look, with
+        his dark and piercing eyes, at the gentleman. “What do you mean?”
+        said he. “You have no right to ask me what I mean,” was the
+        quiet reply, “get your horse at once, and remember what I tell
+        you.” After a short pause he promised to do so, and actually got
+        into the saddle; but, being still intoxicated, he began calling aloud to
+        one after another of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten
+        the warning he had received and became again uproarious, shouting the
+        name of a well-known courtezan in company with those of two men whom he
+        considered heads of the committee, as a sort of challenge; perhaps,
+        however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems probable that the
+        intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten
+        entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way of showing his
+        remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of the
+        Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his head, and
+        told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own safety. As the
+        judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no resistance to his captor, no
+        further outrage followed on this score. Previous to this, on account of
+        the critical state of affairs, the committee had met, and at last
+        resolved to arrest him. His execution had not been agreed upon, and, at
+        that time, would have been negatived, most assuredly. A messenger rode
+        down to Nevada to inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was
+        desirable to show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject,
+        all along the gulch.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and forming in
+        solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the teeth, they marched
+        up to Virginia. The leader of the body well knew the temper of his men
+        on the subject. He spurred on ahead of them, and hastily calling a
+        meeting of the executive, he told them plainly that the miners meant
+        “business,” and that, if they came up, they would not stand
+        in the street to be shot down by Slade’s friends; but that they
+        would take him and hang him. The meeting was small, as the Virginia men
+        were loath to act at all. This momentous announcement of the feeling of
+        the Lower Town was made to a cluster of men, who were deliberating
+        behind a wagon, at the rear of a store on Main street.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All the
+        duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task before them;
+        but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was finally agreed that if
+        the whole body of the miners were of the opinion that he should be
+        hanged, that the committee left it in their hands to deal with him. Off,
+        at hot speed, rode the leader of the Nevada men to join his command.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him
+        instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts’ store, where Davis was, and
+        apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched up at
+        quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive officer of the
+        committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was at once informed
+        of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he had any business to
+        settle. Several parties spoke to him on the subject; but to all such
+        inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being entirely absorbed in the
+        terrifying reflections on his own awful position. He never ceased his
+        entreaties for life, and to see his dear wife. The unfortunate lady
+        referred to, between whom and Slade there existed a warm affection, was
+        at this time living at their ranch on the Madison. She was possessed of
+        considerable personal attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful
+        carriage, pleasing manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her husband’s
+        arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all the energy
+        that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament and a strong
+        physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve miles of rough and
+        rocky ground that intervened between her and the object of her
+        passionate devotion.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations for
+        the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath the site
+        of Pfouts and Russell’s stone building there was a corral, the
+        gate-posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was laid a
+        beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box served for the
+        platform. To this place Slade was marched, surrounded by a guard,
+        composing the best armed and most numerous force that has ever appeared
+        in Montana Territory.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
+        lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the
+        fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, “My God! my God! must I die?
+        Oh, my dear wife!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of
+        Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee, but
+        who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of his
+        sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his handkerchief
+        and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still begged to see his
+        wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny his request; but the
+        bloody consequences that were sure to follow the inevitable attempt at a
+        rescue, that her presence and entreaties would have certainly incited,
+        forbade the granting of his request. Several gentlemen were sent for to
+        see him, in his last moments, one of whom (Judge Davis) made a short
+        address to the people; but in such low tones as to be inaudible, save to
+        a few in his immediate vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting
+        his powers of entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the
+        prisoner could not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns
+        were instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being
+        brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a promise
+        of future peaceable demeanor.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of the
+        citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made. All
+        lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Everything being ready, the command was given, “Men, do your duty,”
+        and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died
+        almost instantaneously.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a
+        darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and
+        bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to find
+        that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and
+        heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her
+        attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed
+        before she could regain the command of her excited feelings.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link095"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="095.jpg (48K)" src="images/095.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly unaccountable—at
+      least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true desperado is gifted
+      with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of
+      his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before a host and fight until
+      he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under the gallows and
+      helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are cheap, and it is
+      easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not “die game”
+      are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when we read of
+      Slade that he “had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
+      lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal
+      beam,” the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment—yet in
+      frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain
+      cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never
+      offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless
+      bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a
+      chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying
+      speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with
+      what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in
+      believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not <i>moral</i>
+      courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not the
+      requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted Slade
+      lacked?—this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman,
+      who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill
+      them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a
+      conundrum worth investigating.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch12"></a>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of
+      thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd of
+      loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-looking men, women and
+      children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for eight
+      lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance our stage had
+      come in <i>eight days and three hours</i>—seven hundred and
+      ninety-eight miles! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless and
+      ragged, and they did look so tired!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid,
+      sparkling stream—an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that
+      our furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. We
+      changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours—changed
+      mules, rather—six mules—and did it nearly every time in <i>four
+      minutes</i>. It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station
+      six harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of
+      an eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and
+      away again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock, Devil’s
+      Gate and the Devil’s Gap. The latter were wild specimens of rugged
+      scenery, and full of interest—<i>we were in the heart of the Rocky
+      Mountains, now</i>. And we also passed by “Alkali” or “Soda
+      Lake,” and we woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a
+      long way across the world when the driver said that the Mormons often came
+      there from Great Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few
+      days gone by they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground
+      (it was a <i>dry</i> lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got
+      these two wagons-loads of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake,
+      they could sell it for twenty-five cents a pound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had been
+      hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were suffering to see.
+      This was what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now, and
+      sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the men
+      could scape the soil on the hill-side under the lee of a range of
+      boulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice—hard,
+      compactly frozen, and clear as crystal!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raised
+      curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and contemplating the first
+      splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain
+      peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as if
+      the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with a
+      smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the
+      postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal and
+      the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted us
+      cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, and a
+      little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information in
+      return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on up among
+      the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City consisted of
+      four log cabins, one of which was unfinished, and the gentleman with all
+      those offices and titles was the chiefest of the ten citizens of the
+      place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith, mayor, constable,
+      city marshal and principal citizen all condensed into one person and
+      crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was “a perfect Allen’s
+      revolver of dignities.” And he said that if he were to die as
+      postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith both, the
+      people might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it would be a
+      frightful loss to the community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link099"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="099.jpg (57K)" src="images/099.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time that mysterious
+      marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of and fully believe
+      in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it with their own eyes,
+      nevertheless—banks of snow in dead summer time. We were now far up
+      toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presently encounter
+      lofty summits clad in the “eternal snow” which was so common
+      place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering
+      in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was August
+      and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear it, I was
+      full as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in August before.
+      Truly, “seeing is believing”—and many a man lives a long
+      life through, thinking he believes certain universally received and well
+      established things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by
+      those things once, he would discover that he did not really believe them
+      before, but only thought he believed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long claws
+      of glittering snow clasping them; and with here and there, in the shade,
+      down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow looking no larger
+      than a lady’s pocket-handkerchief but being in reality as large as a
+      “public square.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and whirling
+      gayly along high above the common world. We were perched upon the extreme
+      summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which we had been
+      climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights
+      together—and about us was gathered a convention of Nature’s
+      kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high—grand
+      old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the
+      twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations
+      of the earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags stood out of
+      the way it seemed that we could look around and abroad and contemplate the
+      whole great globe, with its dissolving views of mountains, seas and
+      continents stretching away through the mystery of the summer haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link100"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="100.jpg (164K)" src="images/100.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley than a
+      suspension bridge in the clouds—but it strongly suggested the latter
+      at one spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purple
+      domes projected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense of a
+      hidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about their
+      bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and look
+      over. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes
+      of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringed
+      and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and catching
+      presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded there—then
+      shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left the purple
+      domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, these monstrous
+      rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the spectator’s
+      head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his impulse was to
+      shrink when they came closest. In the one place I speak of, one could look
+      below him upon a world of diminishing crags and canyons leading down,
+      down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in it which was a road, and
+      bunches of feathers in it which were trees,—a pretty picture
+      sleeping in the sunlight—but with a darkness stealing over it and
+      glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a coming storm;
+      and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon brightness of his high
+      perch, he could watch the tempest break forth down there and see the
+      lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain drive along the
+      canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and roar. We had this
+      spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a novelty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link101"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="101.jpg (164K)" src="images/101.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it had
+      been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or more),
+      we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets and sent it
+      in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of those streams which
+      we were looking at, was just starting on a journey westward to the Gulf of
+      California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds and even thousands of
+      miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other was just leaving its
+      home among the snow-peaks on a similar journey eastward—and we knew
+      that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet it would still
+      be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, and canyon-beds, and
+      between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by would join the broad
+      Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts and unvisited
+      wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among snags and
+      wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch the wharves of St.
+      Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky channels, then
+      endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled with unbroken
+      forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woody islands,
+      then the chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of shining
+      sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans and still
+      other chains of bends—and finally, after two long months of daily
+      and nightly harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful peril
+      of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter into
+      its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its
+      snow-peaks again or regret them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and
+      dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for
+      postage somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired men
+      and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized
+      John ——. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the
+      Rocky Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should
+      have looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years.
+      But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it had
+      never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been
+      accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third
+      story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave me
+      a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but chancing
+      to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under it and an
+      irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his head, which I
+      immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the melon, and John never
+      forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and parted, but now met again
+      under these circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link102"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="102.jpg (41K)" src="images/102.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as warmly
+      as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion was made to
+      any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting a familiar
+      face in that isolated spot so far from home, was sufficient to make us
+      forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted again with sincere
+      “good-bye” and “God bless you” from both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for many
+      tedious hours—we started <i>down</i> them, now. And we went spinning
+      away at a round rate too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and
+      sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long
+      ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen—monuments of the huge
+      emigration of other days—and here and there were up-ended boards or
+      small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of
+      more precious remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote and
+      the raven—which is but another name for desolation and utter
+      solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a
+      soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague
+      desert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no scientific
+      explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by one of
+      those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link103"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="103.jpg (35K)" src="images/103.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it—indeed,
+      I did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down the
+      curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in
+      twenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved his
+      feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved his
+      body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched
+      blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck.
+      Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it,
+      for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road,
+      and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horses
+      still. With the first abatement the conductor turned out with lanterns to
+      look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm about
+      fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as he
+      touched bottom he sang out frantically:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link104"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="104.jpg (30K)" src="images/104.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t come here!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had
+      disappeared, replied, with an injured air: “Think I’m a dam
+      fool?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link105"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="105.jpg (30K)" src="images/105.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conductor was more than an hour finding the road—a matter which
+      showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking. He
+      traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two places. I
+      have always been glad that we were not killed that night. I do not know
+      any particular reason, but I have always been glad. In the morning, the
+      tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream—stuck
+      in it with the water just up to the top of our mail-bed, and waited till
+      extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep bank. But it was nice cool
+      water, and besides it could not find any fresh place on us to wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot biscuits, fresh
+      antelope steaks, and coffee—the only decent meal we tasted between
+      the United States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever
+      really thankful for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it,
+      to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot-
+      tower after all these years have gone by!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles from
+      the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St. Joseph.
+      Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty
+      United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had fired
+      upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered
+      together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four Indians
+      were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but nobody killed.
+      This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and join the sixty
+      soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four hundred of the Indians,
+      we concluded to go on and join the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow
+      street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous
+      perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in many
+      places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most faultless
+      piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would “let
+      his team out.” He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz
+      through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy
+      the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our
+      wheels and fly—and the mail matter was lifted up free from
+      everything and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when
+      I say a thing I mean it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit
+      of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world was
+      glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of
+      mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon this
+      sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even the
+      overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a
+      Mormon “Destroying Angel.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Destroying Angels,” as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints
+      who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of
+      obnoxious citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying
+      Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered
+      this one’s house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our
+      romances, he was nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard!
+      He was murderous enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but
+      would you have <i>any</i> kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you
+      abide an Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an
+      Angel with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link106"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="106.jpg (47K)" src="images/106.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other blackguards present—comrades of this one. And there
+      was one person that looked like a gentleman—Heber C. Kimball’s
+      son, tall and well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of
+      slatternly women flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots,
+      plates of bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to
+      be the wives of the Angel—or some of them, at least. And of course
+      they were; for if they had been hired “help” they would not
+      have let an angel from above storm and swear at them as he did, let alone
+      one from the place this one hailed from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was our first experience of the western “peculiar institution,”
+      and it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it,
+      but hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the
+      prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America—Great
+      Salt Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake
+      House and unpacked our baggage.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch13"></a>
+      CHAPTER XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables—a
+      great variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some,
+      afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination
+      in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon. This
+      was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes—a land of
+      enchantment, and goblins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask
+      every child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart; and
+      we experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and shut
+      as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs and shoulders—for
+      we so longed to have a good satisfying look at a Mormon family in all its
+      comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customary concentric rings of its
+      home circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other
+      “Gentiles,” and we spent a sociable hour with them. “Gentiles”
+      are people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger, Bemis, took care of
+      himself, during this part of the evening, and did not make an overpowering
+      success of it, either, for he came into our room in the hotel about eleven
+      o’clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely, disjointedly and
+      indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a ragged word by the
+      roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it. This, together with his
+      hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a chair, and his vest on the
+      floor on the other side, and piling his pants on the floor just in front
+      of the same chair, and then comtemplating the general result with
+      superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it “too many for <i>him</i>”
+      and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that something he had
+      eaten had not agreed with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was
+      the exclusively Mormon refresher, “valley tan.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky, or
+      first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in Utah.
+      Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If I remember
+      rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom by Brigham
+      Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, except they
+      confined themselves to “valley tan.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link109"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="109.jpg (55K)" src="images/109.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level
+      streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen
+      thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible
+      drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through
+      every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim
+      dwellings, built of “frame” and sunburned brick—a great
+      thriving orchard and garden behind every one of them, apparently—branches
+      from the street stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and
+      fruit trees—and a grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and
+      comfort, around and about and over the whole. And everywhere were
+      workshops, factories, and all manner of industries; and intent faces and
+      busy hands were to be seen wherever one looked; and in one’s ears
+      was the ceaseless clink of hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented
+      hum of drums and fly-wheels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link110a"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="110a.jpg (25K)" src="images/110a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears
+      holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the
+      pertinent remark, “UNITED, WE STAND—(hic!)—DIVIDED, WE
+      FALL.” It was always too figurative for the author of this book. But
+      the Mormon crest was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted
+      like a glove. It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees
+      all at work!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link110b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="110b.jpg (23K)" src="images/110b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of
+      Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall of
+      mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose shoulders
+      bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great
+      Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a
+      child’s toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the
+      Chinese wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every
+      day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot days
+      in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and
+      growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious
+      snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance,
+      at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets,
+      or anywhere near them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link111"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="111.jpg (83K)" src="images/111.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Salt Lake City was healthy—an extremely healthy city. They declared
+      there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week
+      regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act for having “no
+      visible means of support.” They always give you a good substantial
+      article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and good weight, too.
+      [Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiest little
+      commonplace statements you would want the hay scales.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American “Dead Sea,”
+      the great Salt Lake—seventeen miles, horseback, from the city—for
+      we had dreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and
+      yearned to see it, all the first part of our trip; but now when it was
+      only arm’s length away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its
+      interest. And so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day—and
+      that was the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable
+      Gentiles; and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked
+      long with that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since
+      deceased), a saint of high degree and a mighty man of commerce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link112"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="112.jpg (21K)" src="images/112.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We saw the “Tithing-House,” and the “Lion House,”
+      and I do not know or remember how many more church and government
+      buildings of various kinds and curious names. We flitted hither and
+      thither and enjoyed every hour, and picked up a great deal of useful
+      information and entertaining nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased)
+      and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king. He
+      seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed old
+      gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that
+      probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just taking
+      off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians, and
+      Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our secretary and
+      certain government officials who came with us. But he never paid any
+      attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts to “draw
+      him out” on federal politics and his high handed attitude toward
+      Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine. But he
+      merely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I have seen
+      a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddling with her
+      tail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the end,
+      hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant savage.
+      But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on as
+      sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When the
+      audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his hand
+      on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my brother:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah—your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link113"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="113.jpg (49K)" src="images/113.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch14"></a>
+      CHAPTER XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters—and
+      considering that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy,
+      uninhabited mountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to
+      traverse with his wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as
+      busy as possible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by
+      the road-side, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across those
+      exhausting deserts—and it was two days’ journey from water to
+      water, in one or two of them. Mr. Street’s contract was a vast work,
+      every way one looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words
+      “eight hundred miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts”
+      mean, one must go over the ground in person—pen and ink descriptions
+      cannot convey the dreary reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.’s
+      mightiest difficulty turned out to be one which he had never taken into
+      the account at all. Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest
+      half of his great undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that
+      they were going to make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw
+      their poles overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they
+      took the notion, and drove home and went about their customary business!
+      They were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care
+      anything for that. They said they would “admire” to see a
+      “Gentile” force a Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah!
+      And they made themselves very merry over the matter. Street said—for
+      it was he that told us these things:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in
+      a given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was an
+      astounding thing; it was such a wholly unlooked-for difficulty, that I was
+      entirely nonplussed. I am a business man—have always been a business
+      man—do not know anything <i>but</i> business—and so you can
+      imagine how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a
+      country <i>where written contracts were worthless!</i>—that main
+      security, that sheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business. My
+      confidence left me. There was no use in making new contracts—that
+      was plain. I talked with first one prominent citizen and then another.
+      They all sympathized with me, first rate, but they did not know how to
+      help me. But at last a Gentile said, ‘Go to Brigham Young!—these
+      small fry cannot do you any good.’ I did not think much of the idea,
+      for if the <i>law</i> could not help me, what could an individual do who
+      had not even anything to do with either making the laws or executing them?
+      He might be a very good patriarch of a church and preacher in its
+      tabernacle, but something sterner than religion and moral suasion was
+      needed to handle a hundred refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But
+      what was a man to do? I thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else,
+      he might probably be able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or
+      two, and so I went straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He
+      said very little, but he showed strong interest all the way through. He
+      examined all the papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like
+      a hitch, either in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take
+      up the thread and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and
+      satisfactory result. Then he made a list of the contractors’ names.
+      Finally he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are
+      strictly and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men
+      manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or flaw
+      anywhere.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room
+      and said: ‘Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to
+      have these men here at such-and-such an hour.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a
+      number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he
+      said to them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of
+      your own free will and accord?’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Yes.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “‘Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of
+      you! Go!’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link116"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="116.jpg (101K)" src="images/116.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And they <i>did</i> go, too! They are strung across the deserts
+      now, working like bees. And I never hear a word out of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials
+      here, shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a
+      republican form of government—but the petrified truth is that Utah
+      is an absolute monarchy and Brigham Young is king!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well during
+      several years afterward in San Francisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had
+      no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy
+      and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the
+      attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link117"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="117.jpg (104K)" src="images/117.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was
+      feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until
+      I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my
+      head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically “homely”
+      creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I
+      said, “No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of
+      Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind,
+      not their harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has
+      done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should
+      stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow
+      massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link118"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="118.jpg (82K)" src="images/118.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch15"></a>
+      CHAPTER XV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about
+      assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of
+      anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a Gentile
+      den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped in among
+      the pleading and defenceless “Morisites” and shot them down,
+      men and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying
+      Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a
+      debt. And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how
+      heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or
+      polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at
+      daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,
+      contentedly waiting for the hearse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these Gentiles
+      talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a
+      bishop, marries a girl—likes her, marries her sister—likes
+      her, marries another sister—likes her, takes another—likes
+      her, marries her mother—likes her, marries her father, grandfather,
+      great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how
+      the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her
+      own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their
+      mutual husband’s esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like
+      as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one
+      foul nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter
+      superior to her own mother in rank and authority, are things which Mormon
+      women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a
+      man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place
+      they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe,
+      though they do not seem to say anything about that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link120"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="120.jpg (96K)" src="images/120.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young’s harem
+      contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown old
+      and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared for
+      in the henery—or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along
+      with each wife were her children—fifty altogether. The house was
+      perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took
+      their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was pronounced
+      to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner with Mr. Young,
+      but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have enjoyed a sociable
+      breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous account of the “calling
+      of the roll,” and other preliminaries, and the carnage that ensued
+      when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished rather too much. He
+      said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings of certain of his
+      “two-year-olds,” observing with some pride that for many years
+      he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one of the Eastern
+      magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the pets that had
+      said the last good thing, but he could not find the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide
+      which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link121"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="121.jpg (86K)" src="images/121.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I thought I would know the little cub again but I don’t.”
+      Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad
+      thing—“because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted
+      was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent
+      bride.” And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were
+      pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and
+      demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been
+      giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and <i>she</i>, for one, did not propose to
+      let this partiality go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble
+      about it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs.
+      Young said that if the state of things inside the house was not agreeable
+      to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the
+      breast-pin, and she went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young
+      came in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but
+      Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was
+      promised one, and it was “no use for him to try to impose on her—she
+      hoped she knew her rights.” He gave his promise, and she went. And
+      presently three Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband
+      a tempest of tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6,
+      No. 11, and No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly
+      gone when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest
+      burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine
+      breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in
+      came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven
+      promised breast-pins purchased peace once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That is a specimen,” said Mr. Young. “You see how it
+      is. You see what a life I lead. A man <i>can’t</i> be wise all the
+      time. In a heedless moment I gave my darling No. 6—excuse my calling
+      her thus, as her other name has escaped me for the moment—a
+      breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five dollars—that is, <i>apparently</i>
+      that was its <i>whole</i> cost—but its ultimate cost was inevitably
+      bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen it climb up to six
+      hundred and fifty dollars—and alas, even that is not the end! For I
+      have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have dozens of wives whose
+      <i>numbers</i>, even, I do not know without looking in the family Bible.
+      They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of my
+      realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear of this wretched
+      breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or die. No. 6’s
+      breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end
+      of it. And these creatures will compare these pins together, and if one is
+      a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown on my hands, and I
+      will have to order a new lot to keep peace in the family. Sir, you
+      probably did not know it, but all the time you were present with my
+      children your every movement was watched by vigilant servitors of mine. If
+      you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick of candy, or any trifle
+      of the kind, you would have been snatched out of the house instantly,
+      provided it could be done before your gift left your hand. Otherwise it
+      would be absolutely necessary for you to make an exactly similar gift to
+      all my children—and knowing by experience the importance of the
+      thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that you did it, and
+      did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle—a
+      veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable
+      horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your
+      house. But the deed was done—the man escaped. I knew what the result
+      was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of
+      Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the
+      Nevada mountains. But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir—I
+      am not vindictive except when sorely outraged—but if I had caught
+      him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him into the
+      nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of
+      St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil!) there was never anything on this earth
+      like it! <i>I</i> knew who gave the whistle to the child, but I could, not
+      make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed <i>I</i> did it, and
+      the result was just what any man of reflection could have foreseen: I had
+      to order a hundred and ten whistles—I think we had a hundred and ten
+      children in the house then, but some of them are off at college now—I
+      had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking things, and I wish I may
+      never speak another word if we didn’t have to talk on our fingers
+      entirely, from that time forth until the children got tired of the
+      whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I
+      get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman! That is the word
+      with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! <i>You</i> don’t know anything
+      about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I am benevolent,
+      and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong fatherly instinct and
+      all the foundlings are foisted on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her
+      brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a
+      woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of complexion
+      (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and she my wife—that
+      I had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place, but
+      she had forgotten her number, and of course I could not remember her name.
+      Well, sir, she called my attention to the fact that the child looked like
+      me, and really it did seem to resemble me—a common thing in the
+      Territory—and, to cut the story short, I put it in my nursery, and
+      she left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link124"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="124.jpg (68K)" src="images/124.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when they came to wash the paint
+      off that child it was an Injun! Bless my soul, you don’t know
+      anything about married life. It is a perfect dog’s life, sir—a
+      perfect dog’s life. You can’t economize. It isn’t
+      possible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for all occasions.
+      But it is of no use. First you’ll marry a combination of calico and
+      consumption that’s as thin as a rail, and next you’ll get a
+      creature that’s nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then
+      you’ve got to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is
+      the way it goes. And think of the wash-bill—(excuse these tears)—nine
+      hundred and eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a thing
+      as economy in a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles—think
+      of it! And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething rings! And ‘papa’s
+      watches’ for the babies to play with! And things to scratch the
+      furniture with! And lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass
+      to cut themselves with! The item of glass alone would support <i>your</i>
+      family, I venture to say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I
+      still can’t get ahead as fast as I feel I ought to, with my
+      opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a time when I had seventy-two wives in
+      this house, I groaned under the pressure of keeping thousands of dollars
+      tied up in seventy-two bedsteads when the money ought to have been out at
+      interest; and I just sold out the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and
+      built a bedstead seven feet long and ninety-six feet wide.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link126"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="126.jpg (99K)" src="images/126.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But it was a failure, sir. I could <i>not</i> sleep. It appeared to
+      me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was
+      deafening. And then the danger of it! That was what I was looking at. They
+      would all draw in their breath at once, and you could actually see the
+      walls of the house suck in—and then they would all exhale their
+      breath at once, and you could see the walls swell out, and strain, and
+      hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. My friend, take
+      an old man’s advice, and <i>don’t</i> encumber yourself with a
+      large family—mind, I tell you, don’t do it. In a small family,
+      and in a small family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of
+      mind which are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to
+      afford us, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no
+      acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take my
+      word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need—never go over it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable.
+      And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of the
+      information he gave us could have been acquired from any other source. He
+      was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch16"></a>
+      CHAPTER XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect”
+      have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a
+      copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a
+      pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an
+      insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith
+      composed this book, the act was a miracle—keeping awake while he did
+      it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it
+      from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he
+      declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work
+      of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the
+      Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New
+      Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint,
+      old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of
+      the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness,
+      and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and
+      constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever
+      he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every
+      sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as
+      “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and
+      made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his
+      pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The title-page reads as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON
+        PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and
+        also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of
+        the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written by way of
+        commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation.
+        Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be
+        destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the
+        interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto
+        the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the
+        interpretation thereof by the gift of God. An abridgment taken from the
+        Book of Ether also; which is a record of the people of Jared; who were
+        scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people
+        when they were building a tower to get to Heaven.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “Hid up” is good. And so is “wherefore”—though
+      why “wherefore”? Any other word would have answered as well—though—in
+      truth it would not have sounded so Scriptural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations,
+        kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that we,
+        through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have
+        seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the
+        people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of
+        the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken;
+        and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of
+        God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a
+        surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the
+        engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us
+        by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of
+        soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought
+        and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the
+        engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the
+        Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that
+        these things are true; and it is marvellous in our eyes; nevertheless
+        the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it;
+        wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear
+        testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in
+        Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found
+        spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with Him
+        eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the
+        Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY,
+        DAVID WHITMER, MARTIN HARRIS.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere
+      in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a man tells me
+      that he has “seen the engravings which are upon the plates,”
+      and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see
+      them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to
+      conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and
+      even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next is this:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations,
+        kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that
+        Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of this work, has shown unto us the
+        plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and
+        as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated, we did handle
+        with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has
+        the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we
+        bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto
+        us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said
+        Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names
+        unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen; and
+        we lie not, God bearing witness of it. CHRISTIAN WHITMER, JACOB WHITMER,
+        PETER WHITMER, JR., JOHN WHITMER, HIRAM PAGE, JOSEPH SMITH, SR., HYRUM
+        SMITH, SAMUEL H. SMITH.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they
+      grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen the
+      plates too; and not only seen those plates but “hefted” them,
+      I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire
+      Whitmer family had testified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen “books”—being the
+      books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether,
+      Moroni, two “books” of Mormon, and three of Nephi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which
+      gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the “children of
+      Lehi”; and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness,
+      during eight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their
+      number, a party by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of
+      “Bountiful,” and camped by the sea. After they had remained
+      there “for the space of many days”—which is more
+      Scriptural than definite—Nephi was commanded from on high to build a
+      ship wherein to “carry the people across the waters.” He
+      travestied Noah’s ark—but he obeyed orders in the matter of
+      the plan. He finished the ship <i>in a single day</i>, while his brethren
+      stood by and made fun of it—and of him, too—“saying, our
+      brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship.” They
+      did not wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed
+      the next day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed by
+      outspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness—they all got on a spree!
+      They, “and also their wives, began to make themselves merry,
+      insomuch that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much
+      rudeness; yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings; but they tied him neck
+      and heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi the prophet
+      circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could
+        not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to
+        work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship,
+        insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible
+        tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three
+        days; and they began to be frightened exceedingly, lest they should be
+        drowned in the sea; nevertheless they did not loose me. And on the
+        fourth day, which we had been driven back, the tempest began to be
+        exceeding sore. And it came to pass that we were about to be swallowed
+        up in the depths of the sea.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Then they untied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link131"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="131.jpg (77K)" src="images/131.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the
+        compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that
+        I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did cease, and
+        the storm did cease, and there was a great calm.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had the
+      advantage of Noah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their voyage was toward a “promised land”—the only name
+      they give it. They reached it in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added by
+      Brigham Young after Joseph Smith’s death. Before that, it was
+      regarded as an “abomination.” This verse from the Mormon Bible
+      occurs in Chapter II. of the book of Jacob:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in iniquity;
+        they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to excuse themselves
+        in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written
+        concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly
+        had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me,
+        saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people
+        forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I
+        might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of
+        Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord God, will no suffer that this people shall
+        do like unto them of old.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      However, the project failed—or at least the modern Mormon end of it—for
+      Brigham “suffers” it. This verse is from the same chapter:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their
+        filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are more
+        righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the
+        Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should have, save it
+        were one wife; and concubines they should have none.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The following verse (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to
+      contain information not familiar to everybody:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven, the
+        multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his
+        children, and did return to his own home.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was gathered
+        together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised from the
+        dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name was Jonas,
+        and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, and Kumenenhi,
+        and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, and Isaiah; now
+        these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had chosen.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and
+      picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied one of the
+      tenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem to have
+      been aware of, I quote the following from the same “book”—Nephi:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And
+        they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye because
+        of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He had said
+        these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it, and He took
+        their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the
+        Father for them. And when He had done this He wept again, and He spake
+        unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold your little ones. And as
+        they looked to behold, they cast their eyes toward heaven, and they saw
+        the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of heaven as it
+        were, in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those
+        little ones about, and they were encircled about with fire; and the
+        angels did minister unto them, and the multitude did see and hear and
+        bear record; and they know that their record is true, for they all of
+        them did see and hear, every man for himself; and they were in number
+        about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men,
+        women, and children.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      And what else would they be likely to consist of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of “history,”
+      much of it relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader
+      has possibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country which is not set
+      down in the geography. There was a King with the remarkable name of
+      Coriantumr, and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others, in
+      the “plains of Heshlon”; and the “valley of Gilgal”;
+      and the “wilderness of Akish”; and the “land of Moran”;
+      and the “plains of Agosh”; and “Ogath,” and
+      “Ramah,” and the “land of Corihor,” and the
+      “hill Comnor,” by “the waters of Ripliancum,”
+      etc., etc., etc. “And it came to pass,” after a deal of
+      fighting, that Coriantumr, upon making calculation of his losses, found
+      that “there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also
+      their wives and their children”—say 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 in
+      all—“and he began to sorrow in his heart.”
+      Unquestionably it was time. So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of
+      hostilities, and offering to give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz
+      declined, except upon condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut
+      his head off first—a thing which Coriantumr would not do. Then there
+      was more fighting for a season; then <i>four years</i> were devoted to
+      gathering the forces for a final struggle—after which ensued a
+      battle, which, I take it, is the most remarkable set forth in history,—except,
+      perhaps, that of the Kilkenny cats, which it resembles in some respects.
+      This is the account of the gathering and the battle:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        7. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people,
+        upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was
+        Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the doings of the
+        people; and he beheld that the people who were for Coriantumr, were
+        gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for
+        Shiz, were gathered together to the army of Shiz; wherefore they were
+        for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they
+        might get all who were upon the face of the land, and that they might
+        receive all the strength which it was possible that they could receive.
+        And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one
+        to the army which he would, with their wives and their children; both
+        men, women, and children being armed with weapons of war, having
+        shields, and breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the
+        manner of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and
+        they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass that
+        when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after
+        they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling and a
+        lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were
+        their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did rend the air
+        exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to
+        battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless they conquered
+        not, and when the night came again, they did rend the air with their
+        cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the
+        slain of their people.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        8. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto Shiz,
+        desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he would take
+        the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. But behold, the Spirit
+        of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and Satan had full power over
+        the hearts of the people, for they were given up unto the hardness of
+        their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be
+        destroyed; wherefore they went again to battle. And it came to pass that
+        they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their
+        swords; and on the morrow they fought even until the night came; and
+        when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is
+        drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords; and on the
+        morrow they fought again; and when the night came they had all fallen by
+        the sword save it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and
+        sixty and nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they
+        slept upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again,
+        and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their
+        shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and two
+        of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        9. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death
+        on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men, as to the strength of
+        men. And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours,
+        and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when
+        the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient strength, that they could
+        walk, they were about to flee for their lives, but behold, Shiz arose,
+        and also his men, and he swore in his wrath that he would slay
+        Coriantumr, or he would perish by the sword: wherefore he did pursue
+        them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with
+        the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the
+        sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with
+        loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon
+        his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And
+        it came to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz
+        raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for
+        breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth,
+        and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said
+        unto him, go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the
+        Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished his record; and the
+        hundredth part I have not written.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary former
+      chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming
+      interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is
+      nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable—it
+      is “smouched” [Milton] from the New Testament and no credit
+      given.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch17"></a>
+      CHAPTER XVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of our two days’ sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City
+      hearty and well fed and happy—physically superb but not so very much
+      wiser, as regards the “Mormon question,” than we were when we
+      arrived, perhaps. We had a deal more “information” than we had
+      before, of course, but we did not know what portion of it was reliable and
+      what was not—for it all came from acquaintances of a day—strangers,
+      strictly speaking. We were told, for instance, that the dreadful “Mountain
+      Meadows Massacre” was the work of the Indians entirely, and that the
+      Gentiles had meanly tried to fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told,
+      likewise, that the Indians were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons;
+      and we were told, likewise, and just as positively, that the Mormons were
+      almost if not wholly and completely responsible for that most treacherous
+      and pitiless butchery. We got the story in all these different shapes, but
+      it was not till several years afterward that Mrs. Waite’s book,
+      “The Mormon Prophet,” came out with Judge Cradlebaugh’s
+      trial of the accused parties in it and revealed the truth that the latter
+      version was the correct one and that the Mormons <i>were</i> the
+      assassins. All our “information” had three sides to it, and so
+      I gave up the idea that I could settle the “Mormon question”
+      in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link137"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="137.jpg (62K)" src="images/137.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things
+      existed there—and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether
+      a state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered
+      with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three trivial
+      things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days were not
+      wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last in a
+      pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and
+      bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the
+      smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallest
+      purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest
+      coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of an
+      article could be bought than “five cents’ worth.” In
+      Overland City the lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in
+      Salt Lake there did not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a
+      quarter, or any smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than
+      twenty-five cents’ worth. We had always been used to half dimes and
+      “five cents’ worth” as the minimum of financial
+      negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted a cigar, it was a quarter; if
+      he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; if he wanted a peach, or a
+      candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little Gentile whiskey to rub on
+      his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him from having the toothache,
+      twenty-five cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the
+      shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be wasting our substance in
+      riotous living, but if we referred to the expense account we could see
+      that we had not been doing anything of the kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link138"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="138.jpg (21K)" src="images/138.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond and
+      vain of both—it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that
+      is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one’s toleration.
+      After a month’s acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the
+      average human being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his
+      despicable five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in
+      gaudy Nevada, every time I thought of my first financial experience in
+      Salt Lake. It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great
+      authors, and a very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody <i>say</i> on
+      this wise when they are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion
+      like a yellow-jacket asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at
+      the Salt Lake House the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he
+      blacked them. Then I handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the
+      benevolent air of a person who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon
+      poverty and suffering. The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be
+      suppressed emotion, and laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad
+      hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates
+      a gnat’s ear in the ample field of his microscope. Several
+      mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into
+      the tableau and fell to surveying the money with that attractive
+      indifference to formality which is noticeable in the hardy pioneer.
+      Presently the yellow-jacket handed the half dime back to me and told me I
+      ought to keep my money in my pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I
+      wouldn’t get it cramped and shriveled up so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link139"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="139.jpg (61K)" src="images/139.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrel reptile
+      on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detaching his
+      scalp, for the remark he made <i>was</i> good for an “Injun.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without
+      letting the inward shudder appear on the surface—for even already we
+      had overheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers,
+      conductors, and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until
+      we were well aware that these superior beings despised “emigrants.”
+      We permitted no tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we
+      wanted to seem pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters,
+      stage-drivers, Mountain Meadow assassins—anything in the world that
+      the plains and Utah respected and admired—but we were wretchedly
+      ashamed of being “emigrants,” and sorry enough that we had
+      white shirts and could not swear in the presence of ladies without looking
+      the other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember with
+      humiliation that we were “emigrants,” and consequently a low
+      and inferior sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah,
+      Nevada, or California, even in these latter days, and while communing with
+      himself upon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he
+      considers “the world,” has had his wings clipped by finding
+      that <i>he</i> is the one to be pitied, and that there are entire
+      populations around him ready and willing to do it for him—yea, who
+      are complacently doing it for him already, wherever he steps his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 that he is thinking what a sad
+      fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land, the
+      citizens around him are looking down on him with a blighting compassion
+      because he is an “emigrant” instead of that proudest and
+      blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a “FORTY-NINER.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link140"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="140.jpg (30K)" src="images/140.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost
+      seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks at
+      all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enough bread,
+      boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred miles of
+      staging we had still to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the
+      majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat ham
+      and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately in
+      rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like
+      ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—an old, rank,
+      delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a “down grade,”
+      a flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart—these make
+      happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link141"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="141.jpg (29K)" src="images/141.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch18"></a>
+      CHAPTER XVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been
+      the important military station of “Camp Floyd,” some
+      forty-five or fifty miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M. we had doubled
+      our distance and were ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we
+      entered upon one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness
+      shames the diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara—an “<i>alkali</i>”
+      desert. For sixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not
+      remember that this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was
+      nothing but a watering depot <i>in the midst</i> of the stretch of
+      sixty-eight miles. If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at
+      this place, but the water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the
+      further side of the desert. There was a stage station there. It was
+      forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from
+      the end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at
+      the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the forty-five mile
+      part of the desert and got to the stage station where the imported water
+      was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert in the
+      night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to reflect, in the
+      morning, that we in actual person <i>had</i> encountered an absolute
+      desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the
+      ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was
+      not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the
+      metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very
+      comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in <i>daylight</i>.
+      This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—<i>this</i>,
+      indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home all
+      about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry
+      August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour—and
+      then we were ashamed that we had “gushed” so. The poetry was
+      all in the anticipation—there is none in the reality. Imagine a
+      vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this
+      solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless
+      silence and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a coach,
+      creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending
+      up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine
+      this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and
+      the shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver,
+      coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one
+      colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows
+      like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the
+      perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a
+      sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it
+      gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not
+      a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a
+      living creature visible in <i>any</i> direction whither one searches the
+      blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is
+      not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a
+      whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost
+      souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing
+      of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the
+      grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one
+      feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make
+      at stated intervals a “spurt,” and drag the coach a hundred or
+      may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled
+      back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it
+      seem afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and
+      bit-champing. Then another “spurt” of a hundred yards and
+      another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water
+      for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up
+      ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an
+      alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon.
+      And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the
+      middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and
+      dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a
+      cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one’s watch a good long
+      undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling
+      away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through
+      our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes
+      and made our noses bleed and <i>kept</i> them bleeding—and truly and
+      seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the
+      desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering,
+      longing, hateful reality!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what we
+      accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a
+      snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles an
+      hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert, we
+      were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because we
+      never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort of
+      dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could not
+      have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language sufficient to
+      tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three mile pull. To try
+      to give the reader an idea of how <i>thirsty</i> they were, would be to
+      “gild refined gold or paint the lily.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit—but
+      no matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive
+      thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where it
+      <i>would</i> fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind
+      distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and
+      disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to
+      leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary respite
+      from the wear and tear of trying to “lead up” to this really
+      apt and beautiful quotation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link145"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="145.jpg (32K)" src="images/145.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch19"></a>
+      CHAPTER XIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the
+      entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake. It
+      was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitation of
+      white men, except the stage stations, that we came across the wretchedest
+      type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I refer to the
+      Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could learn, they are
+      very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger Indians of
+      California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; inferior to
+      even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and actually
+      inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa. Indeed, I have been
+      obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood’s “Uncivilized Races
+      of Men” clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded
+      enough to take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open
+      to that shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa.
+      Such of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the
+      stations, were small, lean, “scrawny” creatures; in complexion
+      a dull black like the ordinary American negro; their faces and hands
+      bearing dirt which they had been hoarding and accumulating for months,
+      years, and even generations, according to the age of the proprietor; a
+      silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race; taking note of everything,
+      covertly, like all the other “Noble Red Men” that we (do not)
+      read about, and betraying no sign in their countenances; indolent,
+      everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; prideless
+      beggars—for if the beggar instinct were left out of an Indian he
+      would not “go,” any more than a clock without a pendulum;
+      hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing anything that a hog would
+      eat, though often eating what a hog would decline; hunters, but having no
+      higher ambition than to kill and eat jack-ass rabbits, crickets and
+      grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from the buzzards and cayotes; savages
+      who, when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great Spirit
+      show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking whiskey is
+      referred to; a thin, scattering race of almost naked black children, these
+      Goshoots are, who produce nothing at all, and have no villages, and no
+      gatherings together into strictly defined tribal communities—a
+      people whose only shelter is a rag cast on a bush to keep off a portion of
+      the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive
+      wastes that our country or any other can exhibit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link147"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="147.jpg (86K)" src="images/147.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same
+      gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, whichever animal-Adam the Darwinians
+      trace them to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet
+      they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months
+      and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn down
+      the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. And once,
+      in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge, of
+      Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley of
+      arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a
+      horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was full of
+      pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver’s call Judge Mott
+      swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team,
+      and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a
+      hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the boot
+      as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he would
+      manage to keep hold of them until relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head
+      between Judge Mott’s feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the
+      road; he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun
+      and left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be
+      at an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about
+      bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the next
+      station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last rattled
+      up to the station and knew that the night’s perils were done; but
+      there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly
+      driver was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link148"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="148.jpg (43K)" src="images/148.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland
+      drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper
+      and a worshipper of the Red Man—even of the scholarly savages in the
+      “Last of the Mohicans” who are fittingly associated with
+      backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part
+      critically grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part
+      just such an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway
+      clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett’s works
+      and studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks—I
+      say that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set
+      me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been
+      over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine
+      of romance. The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious
+      to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him
+      treacherous, filthy and repulsive—and how quickly the evidences
+      accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found
+      Goshoots more or less modified by circumstances and surroundings—but
+      Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have
+      mine—at this distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody’s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad
+      Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error. There
+      is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to mislead
+      the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both tribes.
+      But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start the
+      report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have been,
+      the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who have a
+      hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky Mountains,
+      Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to give those poor naked
+      creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in God’s name let
+      us at least not throw mud at them.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch20"></a>
+      CHAPTER XX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet
+      seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its
+      heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-
+      constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his Excellency
+      Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert—forty
+      memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from
+      six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across. That
+      is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long and
+      thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert to the
+      other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would
+      hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty miles
+      and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one prodigious
+      graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting wrecks of vehicles
+      were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw log-chains enough
+      rusting there in the desert, to reach across any State in the Union. Do
+      not these relics suggest something of an idea of the fearful suffering and
+      privation the early emigrants to California endured?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The “Sink” of
+      the Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred
+      miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost—sinks
+      mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun
+      again—for the lake has no outlet whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious
+      fate. They end in various lakes or “sinks,” and that is the
+      last of them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all
+      great sheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing
+      into them; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain
+      always level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with
+      their surplus is only known to the Creator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. It
+      consisted of one log house and is not set down on the map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on the
+      Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
+      listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving
+      Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to
+      lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk
+      cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up
+      and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of
+      Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of
+      the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said
+      he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk
+      said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time’—and
+      you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link151"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="151.jpg (54K)" src="images/151.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, and
+      he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings. He
+      seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs of
+      Colorado. By and by he remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
+      listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving
+      Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to
+      lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk
+      cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up
+      and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of
+      Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of
+      the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said
+      he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk
+      said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and
+      you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalry
+      sergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man
+      during the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and well-
+      arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the desolate
+      wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with everything useful
+      to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior rank and
+      unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened to him with
+      unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of trans-continental
+      travel, and presently said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
+      listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving
+      Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to
+      lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk
+      cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up
+      and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of
+      Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of
+      the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said
+      he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk
+      said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and
+      you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got in
+      with us at a way station—a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one
+      whom any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the
+      pathos that was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story of
+      his people’s wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence
+      was ever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast’s picture of the
+      first Mormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward
+      to the land of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves and
+      watering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was a relief
+      to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerful channel and
+      the natural features of the curious country we were in came under
+      treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and at
+      length the stranger said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
+      listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving
+      Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to
+      lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank
+      Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced
+      up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of
+      Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of
+      the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said
+      he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk
+      said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and
+      you bet you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten miles out of Ragtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down to
+      die. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him at
+      last. Hunger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhuman to
+      leave him there. We paid his fare to Carson and lifted him into the coach.
+      It was some little time before he showed any very decided signs of life;
+      but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his lips we finally
+      brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we fed him a little, and by
+      and by he seemed to comprehend the situation and a grateful light softened
+      his eye. We made his mail-sack bed as comfortable as possible, and
+      constructed a pillow for him with our coats. He seemed very thankful. Then
+      he looked up in our faces, and said in a feeble voice that had a tremble
+      of honest emotion in it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; and
+      although I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can at
+      least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are
+      strangers to this great thorough fare, but I am entirely familiar with it.
+      In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you
+      would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley——”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link154"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="154.jpg (51K)" src="images/154.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, impressively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the
+      melancholy wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has
+      brought me to this? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but
+      surely, that tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my
+      constitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me only just
+      this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his little
+      hatchet for a change.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote in
+      his system he strained himself and died in our arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizen
+      of all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man; for, after
+      seven years’ residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no
+      passenger or driver on the Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a
+      stranger was by, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and
+      recrossed the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by
+      stage and listened to that deathless incident four hundred and eighty-one
+      or eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers always told it,
+      conductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers told it, the very
+      Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had the same driver tell
+      it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. It has come to me in
+      all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed to earth, and flavored
+      with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont, tobacco, garlic, onions,
+      grasshoppers—everything that has a fragrance to it through all the
+      long list of things that are gorged or guzzled by the sons of men. I never
+      have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smelt that one; never have
+      smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated as that one. And you never
+      could learn to know it by its smell, because every time you thought you
+      had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with a different smell.
+      Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote, Richardson has
+      published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross Browne, and every other
+      correspondence-inditing being that ever set his foot upon the great
+      overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San Francisco; and I have
+      heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in print in nine different
+      foreign languages; I have been told that it is employed in the inquisition
+      in Rome; and I now learn with regret that it is going to be set to music.
+      I do not think that such things are right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a race
+      defunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald-headed anecdote to their
+      successors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latter
+      still persecute the helpless passenger with it until he concludes, as did
+      many a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacific coast
+      are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his adventure with
+      Horace Greeley.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        [And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating, is, that the
+        adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that
+        seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs
+        to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly
+        contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be
+        done to him, I should be called extravagant—but what does the
+        sixteenth chapter of Daniel say? Aha!]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link156"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="156.jpg (17K)" src="images/156.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch21"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of the
+      twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of Nevada
+      Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine pleasure trip;
+      we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well accustomed to stage
+      life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a stand-still and
+      settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not agreeable, but
+      on the contrary depressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad
+      mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but the
+      endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We were
+      plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in thick
+      clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the
+      mail-bags, the driver—we and the sage-brush and the other scenery
+      were all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the
+      distance enveloped in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of
+      prairies on fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw.
+      Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. Every
+      twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burthen, with
+      its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. Frequently a
+      solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated the passing
+      coach with meditative serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link158"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="158.jpg (17K)" src="images/158.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a
+      great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an
+      assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountains
+      overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionship and
+      consciousness of earthly things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a “wooden”
+      town; its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four
+      or five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit
+      down on, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly high
+      enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were
+      scarce in that mighty plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to
+      rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores,
+      was the “plaza” which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky
+      Mountains—a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in
+      it, and very useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass
+      meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the
+      plaza were faced by stores, offices and stables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the way
+      up to the Governor’s from the hotel—among others, to a Mr.
+      Harris, who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted
+      himself with the remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the
+      witness that swore I helped to rob the California coach—a piece of
+      impertinent intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, and
+      the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were emptied,
+      the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr. Harris rode
+      by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through one of his
+      lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little rivulets of
+      blood that coursed down the horse’s sides and made the animal look
+      quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it
+      recalled to mind that first day in Carson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was all we saw that day, for it was two o’clock, now, and
+      according to custom the daily “Washoe Zephyr” set in; a
+      soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise
+      came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to
+      new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things
+      strange to the upper air—things living and dead, that flitted hither
+      and thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the
+      rolling billows of dust—hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the
+      remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade
+      lower; door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles
+      on the next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next;
+      disrupted lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and
+      down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of
+      emigrating roofs and vacant lots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link159"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="159.jpg (92K)" src="images/159.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have
+      kept the dust out of my eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows
+      flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones
+      like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the
+      passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people
+      there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are
+      looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on
+      Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around
+      their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “Washoe Zephyr” (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a
+      peculiar Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth “whence it cometh.”
+      That is to say, where it <i>originates</i>. It comes right over the
+      mountains from the West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find
+      any of it on the other side! It probably is manufactured on the
+      mountain-top for the occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty
+      regular wind, in the summer time. Its office hours are from two in the
+      afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during
+      those twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile
+      or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first
+      complaint a Washoe visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds
+      blow so, there! There is a good deal of human nature in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consist
+      of a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and a
+      stanchion supported shed in front—for grandeur—it compelled
+      the respect of the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly
+      arrived Chief and Associate Justices of the Territory, and other machinery
+      of the government, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding
+      around privately, and had their offices in their bedrooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link161"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="161.jpg (63K)" src="images/161.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Secretary and I took quarters in the “ranch” of a worthy
+      French lady by the name of Bridget O’Flannigan, a camp follower of
+      his Excellency the Governor. She had known him in his prosperity as
+      commander-in-chief of the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would
+      not desert him in his adversity as Governor of Nevada.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had got our
+      bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, and the
+      Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for a
+      visitor—may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the
+      walls could stand it—at least the partitions could, for they
+      consisted simply of one thickness of white “cotton domestic”
+      stretched from corner to corner of the room. This was the rule in Carson—any
+      other kind of partition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark
+      room and your neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas
+      told queer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of old
+      flour sacks basted together; and then the difference between the common
+      herd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamented sacks,
+      while the walls of the aristocrat were overpowering with rudimental fresco—<i>i.e.</i>,
+      red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link162"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="162.jpg (42K)" src="images/162.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas by pasting
+      pictures from <i>Harper’s Weekly</i> on them. In many cases, too,
+      the wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a
+      sumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that I
+      must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were many
+      honorable exceptions in Carson—plastered ceilings and houses that
+      had considerable furniture in them.—M. T.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had a carpet and a genuine queen’s-ware washbowl. Consequently we
+      were hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O’Flannigan
+      “ranch.” When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we
+      simply took our lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed
+      up stairs and took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the
+      fourteen white pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one
+      sole room of which the second story consisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a jolly company, the fourteen. They were principally voluntary
+      camp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their own
+      election at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that in the
+      scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not make
+      their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expect
+      to make it better. They were popularly known as the “Irish Brigade,”
+      though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the Governor’s
+      retainers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link163"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="163.jpg (95K)" src="images/163.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmen
+      created—especially when there arose a rumor that they were paid
+      assassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic vote when
+      desirable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. O’Flannigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a week
+      apiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They were
+      perfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that could not
+      be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carson boarding-house.
+      So she began to harry the Governor to find employment for the “Brigade.”
+      Her importunities and theirs together drove him to a gentle desperation at
+      last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to the presence. Then, said he:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you—a
+      service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes, and
+      afford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by
+      observation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City
+      westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the
+      necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned them
+      loose in the desert. It was “recreation” with a vengeance!
+      Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under a
+      sultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link164"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="164.jpg (15K)" src="images/164.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Romantic adventure” could go no further. They surveyed very
+      slowly, very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night
+      during the first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly.
+      They brought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders—tarantulas—and
+      imprisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the “ranch.”
+      After the first week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting
+      well eastward. They made a good many inquiries as to the location of that
+      indefinite “certain point,” but got no information. At last,
+      to a peculiarly urgent inquiry of “How far eastward?” Governor
+      Nye telegraphed back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!—and then bridge it and go
+      on!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased from
+      their labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said Mrs. O’Flannigan
+      would hold him for the Brigade’s board anyhow, and he intended to
+      get what entertainment he could out of the boys; he said, with his
+      old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them into Utah and then
+      telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite
+      a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these spiders
+      could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular legs, and
+      when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the
+      wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. If their glass
+      prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and spoiling for a
+      fight in a minute. Starchy?—proud? Indeed, they would take up a
+      straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. There was as usual a
+      furious “zephyr” blowing the first night of the brigade’s
+      return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew off, and a
+      corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. There was a
+      simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the
+      dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow
+      aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H——sprung
+      up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly
+      he shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Turn out, boys—the tarantulas is loose!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link165"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="165.jpg (15K)" src="images/165.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave
+      the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk
+      or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence—a
+      silence of grisly suspense it was, too—waiting, expectancy, fear. It
+      was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those
+      fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a
+      thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the
+      silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice,
+      or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or changes of
+      position. The occasional voices were not given to much speaking—you
+      simply heard a gentle ejaculation of “Ow!” followed by a solid
+      thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or something
+      touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another
+      silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Su-su-something’s crawling up the back of my neck!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a
+      sorrowful “O Lord!” and then you knew that somebody was
+      getting away from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any
+      time about it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and
+      clear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” [Pause, and probable
+      change of circumstances.] “No, he’s got me! Oh, ain’t
+      they never going to fetch a lantern!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link166"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="166.jpg (89K)" src="images/166.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O’Flannigan,
+      whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had
+      not prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed
+      and lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a
+      larger contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was
+      picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us.
+      Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so
+      strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too genuinely
+      miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the semblance of a
+      smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of suffering more than I
+      did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those
+      creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had skipped from bed to bed and from
+      box to box in a cold agony, and every time I touched anything that was
+      furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had rather go to war than live that
+      episode over again. Nobody was hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had
+      “got him” was mistaken—only a crack in a box had caught
+      his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. There
+      were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted the place high and
+      low for them, but with no success. Did we go back to bed then? We did
+      nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us to do it. We sat up
+      the rest of the night playing cribbage and keeping a sharp lookout for the
+      enemy.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch22"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather
+      superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with the
+      curious new country and concluded to put off my return to “the
+      States” awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged
+      slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and
+      gloried in the absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdyish and
+      “bully,” (as the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine
+      chapter upon the destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing
+      could be so fine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the
+      government, but that was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique
+      sinecure. I had nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to
+      his majesty the Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of
+      us. So Johnny K——and I devoted our time to amusement. He was
+      the young son of an Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got
+      it. We had heard a world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake
+      Tahoe, and finally curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four
+      members of the Brigade had been there and located some timber lands on its
+      shores and stored up a quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a
+      couple of blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started—for
+      we intended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We
+      were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. We
+      were told that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long time on
+      level ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about a thousand
+      miles high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on the other side,
+      crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or four thousand
+      miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake yet. We sat down
+      tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to curse those people
+      who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently resumed the march with
+      renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on, two or three hours longer,
+      and at last the Lake burst upon us—a noble sheet of blue water
+      lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and
+      walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full
+      three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have
+      to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it lay
+      there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its
+      still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole
+      earth affords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link169"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="169.jpg (80K)" src="images/169.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without loss
+      of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks that
+      signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row—not because
+      I mind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards
+      when I am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the camp
+      just as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly
+      hungry. In a “cache” among the rocks we found the provisions
+      and the cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on a
+      boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper.
+      Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a delicious supper—hot bread, fried bacon, and black coffee.
+      It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles away was a saw-
+      mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen other human beings
+      throughout the wide circumference of the lake. As the darkness closed down
+      and the stars came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels, we
+      smoked meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and our
+      pains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand between two
+      large boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of ants
+      that passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our persons.
+      Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had been fairly
+      earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they had to adjourn
+      court for that night, any way. The wind rose just as we were losing
+      consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by the beating of the surf upon
+      the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we had plenty
+      of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all night, but
+      waked at early dawn in the original positions, and got up at once,
+      thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and brim full of friskiness.
+      There is no end of wholesome medicine in such an experience. That morning
+      we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day before—sick
+      ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to “water
+      cures” and “movement cures” and to foreign lands for
+      health. Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian
+      mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I
+      do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher
+      ones. The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and
+      delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels
+      breathe. I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered
+      together that a man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side.
+      Not under a roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the
+      summer time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of
+      it. He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no
+      appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future. Three
+      months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating all he could
+      hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains three thousand
+      feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but weighed
+      part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His disease was
+      consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other skeletons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br> <a id="link170"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="170.jpg (19K)" src="images/170.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+                  <a
+      id="link171"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="171.jpg (34K)" src="images/171.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we got in the
+      boat and skirted along the lake shore about three miles and disembarked.
+      We liked the appearance of the place, and so we claimed some three hundred
+      acres of it and stuck our “notices” on a tree. It was yellow
+      pine timber land—a dense forest of trees a hundred feet high and
+      from one to five feet through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our
+      property or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to cut
+      down trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to form a
+      sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down three trees
+      apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we decided to “rest
+      our case” on those; if they held the property, well and good; if
+      they didn’t, let the property spill out through the gaps and go; it
+      was no use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few acres of land.
+      Next day we came back to build a house—for a house was also
+      necessary, in order to hold the property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link172"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="172.jpg (142K)" src="images/172.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We decided to build a substantial log-house and excite the envy of the
+      Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut and trimmed the first log it
+      seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, and so we concluded to build it of
+      saplings. However, two saplings, duly cut and trimmed, compelled
+      recognition of the fact that a still modester architecture would satisfy
+      the law, and so we concluded to build a “brush” house. We
+      devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much “sitting
+      around” and discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon we had
+      achieved only a half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watch while
+      the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be able to
+      find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the surrounding
+      vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within the
+      protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence on
+      our own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only such
+      an experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good long rest,
+      we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions and cooking
+      utensils we could carry off—borrow is the more accurate word—and
+      just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch23"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber
+      ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I
+      have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a human
+      being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but those that
+      were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and now and
+      then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us was dense
+      and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with sunshine, the
+      broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and breezy, or black
+      and storm-tossed, according to Nature’s mood; and its circling
+      border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with land-slides,
+      cloven by cañons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering snow, fitly
+      framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always fascinating,
+      bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing, night or day,
+      in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that was that it could
+      not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We slept in the sand close to the water’s edge, between two
+      protecting boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We
+      never took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we
+      were always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical
+      vigor and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was—but I held his
+      hat. While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the
+      sentinel peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering
+      light as it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and
+      forests free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the
+      water till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was
+      wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then
+      to “business.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link174"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="174.jpg (84K)" src="images/174.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There,
+      the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives
+      the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has
+      elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from
+      shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat
+      drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the
+      Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious rest and indolence
+      brought. The shore all along was indented with deep, curved bays and
+      coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the sand ended, the
+      steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space—rose up like a
+      vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded with tall
+      pines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty
+      feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed
+      floating in the air! Yes, where it was even <i>eighty</i> feet deep. Every
+      little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s-breadth
+      of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as large as a
+      village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem
+      climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to touch
+      our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and avert
+      the danger. But the boat would float on, and the boulder descend again,
+      and then we could see that when we had been exactly above it, it must
+      still have been twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Down through the
+      transparency of these great depths, the water was not <i>merely</i>
+      transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects seen through it
+      had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but of every minute
+      detail, which they would not have had when seen simply through the same
+      depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces seem below us, and
+      so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in mid-nothingness, that we
+      called these boat-excursions “balloon-voyages.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could
+      see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or
+      sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite—they could
+      see the line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently selected the trout we
+      wanted, and rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of his
+      nose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off with an
+      annoyed manner, and shift his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all it looked
+      so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the “blue water,” a mile
+      or two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of the
+      immense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is one
+      thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smoked
+      pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, we
+      played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind—and played them
+      with cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer’s
+      acquaintance with them could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs
+      from the jack of diamonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never slept in our “house.” It never recurred to us, for
+      one thing; and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was
+      enough. We did not wish to strain it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the old
+      camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached home
+      again about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry. While Johnny was carrying
+      the main bulk of the provisions up to our “house” for future
+      use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot,
+      ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat to
+      get the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, and
+      looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises! Johnny
+      was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to get to
+      the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the devastation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the fire touched
+      them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful to see with what
+      fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled! My coffee-pot was gone, and
+      everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seized upon a dense
+      growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high, and then the
+      roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific. We were driven
+      to the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained, spell-bound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link176"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="176.jpg (161K)" src="images/176.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of
+      flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges—surmounted them and
+      disappeared in the cañons beyond—burst into view upon higher and
+      farther ridges, presently—shed a grander illumination abroad, and
+      dove again—flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up
+      the mountain-side threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there,
+      and sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts
+      and ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty
+      mountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lava
+      streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy
+      glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the
+      lake! Both pictures were sublime, both were beautiful; but that in the
+      lake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and held
+      it with the stronger fascination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought
+      of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o’clock the
+      conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness
+      stole down upon the landscape again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The provisions
+      were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homeless
+      wanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our house
+      burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the dead
+      trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Our
+      blankets were on our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and went
+      to sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but while out
+      a long way from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared not try to
+      land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled heavily
+      through the billows till we had reached a point three or four miles beyond
+      the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident that it was
+      better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down in a hundred
+      fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps following, and I sat
+      down in the stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to the shore. The instant
+      the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed crew and cargo
+      ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee of a boulder
+      all the rest of the day, and froze all the night through. In the morning
+      the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down to the camp without any
+      unnecessary delay. We were so starved that we ate up the rest of the
+      Brigade’s provisions, and then set out to Carson to tell them about
+      it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon payment of damages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth
+      escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any
+      history.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch24"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free,
+      magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad
+      Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carson
+      streets every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out of the
+      perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown
+      square up in front, and long <i>riata</i> swinging above the head as they
+      swept through the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a
+      sailing puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up
+      gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go
+      jiggering up and down after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the
+      riding-schools. I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was
+      full of anxiety to learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying
+      through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on
+      him as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was “going,
+      going, at twenty-two!—horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two
+      dollars, gentlemen!” and I could hardly resist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer’s
+      brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a
+      very remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the
+      saddle alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous
+      ‘<i>tapidaros</i>’, and furnished with the ungainly
+      sole-leather covering with the unspellable name. I said I had half a
+      notion to bid. Then this keen-eyed person appeared to me to be “taking
+      my measure”; but I dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his
+      manner was full of guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I know that horse—know him well. You are a stranger, I take
+      it, and so you might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure
+      you he is not. He is nothing of the kind; but—excuse my speaking in
+      a low voice, other people being near—he is, without the shadow of a
+      doubt, a Genuine Mexican Plug!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link179"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="179.jpg (96K)" src="images/179.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something
+      about this man’s way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that
+      I would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Has he any other—er—advantages?” I inquired,
+      suppressing what eagerness I could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one
+      side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He can out-buck anything in America!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Going, going, going—at twent—ty—four dollars and
+      a half, gen—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Twenty-seven!” I shouted, in a frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And sold!” said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine
+      Mexican Plug to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put the
+      animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain
+      citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mounted
+      him. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together,
+      lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me straight
+      into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straight down
+      again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost on the
+      high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse’s neck—all
+      in the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almost
+      straight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately,
+      slid back into the saddle and held on. He came down, and immediately
+      hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and
+      stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began the
+      original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I went
+      up I heard a stranger say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link180"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="180.jpg (50K)" src="images/180.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, don’t he <i>buck</i>, though!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a
+      leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was not
+      there. A California youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he
+      might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine, got
+      lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, and the
+      horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences like a
+      bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my
+      hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I believe
+      I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human machinery—for
+      I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pen cannot describe how I
+      was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how disjointed I was—how
+      internally, externally and universally I was unsettled, mixed up and
+      ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around me, though.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link181"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="181.jpg (38K)" src="images/181.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One elderly-looking comforter said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stranger, you’ve been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows
+      that horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he’d
+      buck; he is the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You
+      hear <i>me</i>. I’m Curry. <i>Old</i> Curry. Old <i>Abe</i> Curry.
+      And moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine d—d Mexican
+      plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. Why, you turnip, if you had
+      laid low and kept dark, there’s chances to buy an <i>American</i>
+      horse for mighty little more than you paid for that bloody old foreign
+      relic.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer’s
+      brother’s funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would
+      postpone all other recreations and attend it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine
+      Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the
+      spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a
+      wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the “ranch.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link182"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="182.jpg (45K)" src="images/182.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the red equine
+      nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was the imperial beast
+      subjugated? Indeed he was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to
+      go down to the Capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over a
+      pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the
+      Capitol—one mile and three quarters—remains unbeaten to this
+      day. But then he took an advantage—he left out the mile, and only
+      did the three quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across
+      lots, preferring fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the
+      Speaker got to the Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt
+      as if he had made the trip on a comet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link183"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="183.jpg (50K)" src="images/183.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the
+      Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the animal
+      to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six miles,
+      and <i>he</i> walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. Everybody
+      I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enough exercise
+      any other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him,
+      my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower’s
+      hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing
+      ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and
+      survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try
+      experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he
+      always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get
+      his rider through intact, but <i>he</i> always got through himself. Of
+      course I had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which
+      met with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets
+      on him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and
+      destroying children, and never got a bid—at least never any but the
+      eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make.
+      The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if
+      they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew the
+      horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue next,
+      offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron,
+      temperance tracts—any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and
+      we retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any
+      more. Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing
+      the matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things.
+      Finally I tried to <i>give</i> him away. But it was a failure. Parties
+      said earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast—they did not
+      wish to own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the
+      use of the “Brigade.” His face lit up eagerly at first, but
+      toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks’
+      keeping—stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the
+      horse, two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of
+      the article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay
+      during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty
+      dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five
+      hundred a ton, in <i>gold</i>, and during the winter before that there was
+      such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities
+      had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might be
+      guessed without my telling it: people turned their stock loose to starve,
+      and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were almost
+      literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there will verify
+      these statements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine
+      Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into my
+      hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the donation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize
+      the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated—but
+      the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a fancy
+      sketch, perhaps.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch25"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and a
+      pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no end of
+      hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers and farmers
+      to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from California, but no
+      love was lost between the two classes of colonists. There was little or no
+      friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself. The Mormons were largely
+      in the majority, and had the additional advantage of being peculiarly
+      under the protection of the Mormon government of the Territory. Therefore
+      they could afford to be distant, and even peremptory toward their
+      neighbors. One of the traditions of Carson Valley illustrates the
+      condition of things that prevailed at the time I speak of. The hired girl
+      of one of the American families was Irish, and a Catholic; yet it was
+      noted with surprise that she was the only person outside of the Mormon
+      ring who could get favors from the Mormons. She asked kindnesses of them
+      often, and always got them. It was a mystery to everybody. But one day as
+      she was passing out at the door, a large bowie knife dropped from under
+      her apron, and when her mistress asked for an explanation she observed
+      that she was going out to “borry a wash-tub from the Mormons!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link186"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="186.jpg (88K)" src="images/186.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in “Carson County,” and
+      then the aspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the
+      American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young and
+      Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for “Washoe”
+      was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first and only chief
+      magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a bill to organize
+      “Nevada Territory,” and President Lincoln sent out Governor
+      Nye to supplant Roop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen
+      thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorously
+      developed and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and
+      prosperous and growing more so day by day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, but
+      did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in
+      authority over them—a sentiment that was natural enough. They
+      thought the officials should have been chosen from among themselves from
+      among prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who
+      would be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly acquainted
+      with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing the matter
+      thus, without doubt. The new officers were “emigrants,” and
+      that was no title to anybody’s affection or admiration either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not
+      only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth plucking—except
+      by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such. Everybody knew that
+      Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand dollars a year in
+      greenbacks for its support—about money enough to run a quartz mill a
+      month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year’s money was
+      still in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be a tedious
+      and difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise to open up a
+      credit account with the imported bantling with anything like indecent
+      haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born
+      Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying
+      time of it. The Organic Act and the “instructions” from the
+      State Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at
+      such-and-such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such a
+      date. It was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day,
+      although board was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has its
+      charm in Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patriotic
+      souls out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meet in
+      was another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room
+      rent-free, or let one to the government on credit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary and
+      alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloat
+      again. I refer to “Curry—<i>Old</i> Curry—Old <i>Abe</i>
+      Curry.” But for him the legislature would have been obliged to sit
+      in the desert. He offered his large stone building just outside the
+      capital limits, rent-free, and it was gladly accepted. Then he built a
+      horse-railroad from town to the capitol, and carried the legislators
+      gratis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and covered
+      the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon combined. But
+      for Curry the government would have died in its tender infancy. A canvas
+      partition to separate the Senate from the House of Representatives was put
+      up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars and forty cents, but the
+      United States declined to pay for it. Upon being reminded that the “instructions”
+      permitted the payment of a liberal rent for a legislative hall, and that
+      that money was saved to the country by Mr. Curry’s generosity, the
+      United States said that did not alter the matter, and the three dollars
+      and forty cents would be subtracted from the Secretary’s eighteen
+      hundred dollar salary—and it was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link188"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="188.jpg (30K)" src="images/188.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of
+      the new government’s difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey
+      his volume of written “instructions,” and these commanded him
+      to do two certain things without fail, viz.:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2. For this work, pay
+      one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand” for composition, and
+      one dollar and fifty cents per “token” for press-work, in
+      greenbacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely
+      impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to
+      forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by
+      printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand”
+      and one dollar and fifty cents per “token,” in <i>gold</i>.
+      The “instructions” commanded that the Secretary regard a paper
+      dollar issued by the government as equal to any other dollar issued by the
+      government. Hence the printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the
+      United States sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the “instructions,”
+      and warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got some printing done,
+      forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits of the high prices of
+      things in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market report
+      wherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fifty
+      dollars a ton. The United States responded by subtracting the printing-
+      bill from the Secretary’s suffering salary—and moreover
+      remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his “instructions”
+      requiring him to purchase hay!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S.
+      Treasury Comptroller’s understanding. The very fires of the
+      hereafter could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the
+      days I speak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that
+      twenty thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all
+      commodities ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other
+      Territories, where exceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who
+      looked out for the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the
+      Territory kept his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he
+      charged the United States no rent, although his “instructions”
+      provided for that item and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a
+      thing which I would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had
+      been Secretary myself). But the United States never applauded this
+      devotion. Indeed, I think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a
+      person in its employ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those “instructions” (we used to read a chapter from them
+      every morning, as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in
+      Sunday school every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the
+      sun and had much valuable religious matter in them along with the other
+      statistics) those “instructions” commanded that pen-knives,
+      envelopes, pens and writing-paper be furnished the members of the
+      legislature. So the Secretary made the purchase and the distribution. The
+      knives cost three dollars apiece. There was one too many, and the
+      Secretary gave it to the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The United
+      States said the Clerk of the House was not a “member” of the
+      legislature, and took that three dollars out of the Secretary’s
+      salary, as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White men charged three or four dollars a “load” for sawing up
+      stove-wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United
+      States would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to saw
+      up a load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usual
+      voucher, but signed no name to it—simply appended a note explaining
+      that an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and
+      satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability
+      in the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar and a
+      half. He thought the United States would admire both his economy and his
+      honesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting a pretended
+      Indian’s signature to the voucher, but the United States did not see
+      it in that light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-half
+      thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation of
+      the voucher as having any foundation in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link190"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="190.jpg (22K)" src="images/190.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a
+      cross at the bottom of the voucher—it looked like a cross that had
+      been drunk a year—and then I “witnessed” it and it went
+      through all right. The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had
+      not made the voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic
+      villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable
+      pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature.
+      They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and
+      ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they had their
+      little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of the kind.
+      A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by dispensing
+      with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed the Chaplain more
+      than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with his feet on his
+      desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link191"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="191.jpg (99K)" src="images/191.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchises all
+      the time. When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizen owned
+      about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congress gave the
+      Territory another degree of longitude there would not be room enough to
+      accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over the
+      boundary line everywhere like a fringe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link192"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="192.jpg (29K)" src="images/192.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important
+      proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly
+      acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch26"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. “Prospecting parties”
+      were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking
+      possession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz. Plainly this
+      was the road to fortune. The great “Gould and Curry” mine was
+      held at three or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived; but in two
+      months it had sprung up to eight hundred. The “Ophir” had been
+      worth only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now it was selling at nearly
+      <i>four thousand dollars a foot</i>! Not a mine could be named that had
+      not experienced an astonishing advance in value within a short time.
+      Everybody was talking about these marvels. Go where you would, you heard
+      nothing else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So had sold
+      out of the “Amanda Smith” for $40,000—hadn’t a
+      cent when he “took up” the ledge six months ago. John Jones
+      had sold half his interest in the “Bald Eagle and Mary Ann”
+      for $65,000, gold coin, and gone to the States for his family. The widow
+      Brewster had “struck it rich” in the “Golden Fleece”
+      and sold ten feet for $18,000—hadn’t money enough to buy a
+      crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson’s
+      wake last spring. The “Last Chance” had found a “clay
+      casing” and knew they were “right on the ledge”—consequence,
+      “feet” that went begging yesterday were worth a brick house
+      apiece to-day, and seedy owners who could not get trusted for a drink at
+      any bar in the country yesterday were roaring drunk on champagne to-day
+      and had hosts of warm personal friends in a town where they had forgotten
+      how to bow or shake hands from long-continued want of practice. Johnny
+      Morgan, a common loafer, had gone to sleep in the gutter and waked up
+      worth a hundred thousand dollars, in consequence of the decision in the
+      “Lady Franklin and Rough and Ready” lawsuit. And so on—day
+      in and day out the talk pelted our ears and the excitement waxed hotter
+      and hotter around us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like the
+      rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, were
+      arriving from the mills every day, and such sights as that gave substance
+      to the wild talk about me. I succumbed and grew as frenzied as the
+      craziest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link194"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="194.jpg (65K)" src="images/194.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every few days news would come of the discovery of a bran-new mining
+      region; immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness,
+      and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession. By the
+      time I was fairly inoculated with the disease, “Esmeralda” had
+      just had a run and “Humboldt” was beginning to shriek for
+      attention. “Humboldt! Humboldt!” was the new cry, and
+      straightway Humboldt, the newest of the new, the richest of the rich, the
+      most marvellous of the marvellous discoveries in silver-land was occupying
+      two columns of the public prints to “Esmeralda’s” one. I
+      was just on the point of starting to Esmeralda, but turned with the tide
+      and got ready for Humboldt. That the reader may see what moved me, and
+      what would as surely have moved him had he been there, I insert here one
+      of the newspaper letters of the day. It and several other letters from the
+      same calm hand were the main means of converting me. I shall not garble
+      the extract, but put it in just as it appeared in the <i>Daily Territorial
+      Enterprise</i>:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        But what about our mines? I shall be candid with you. I shall express an
+        honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination. Humboldt county is
+        the richest mineral region upon God’s footstool. Each mountain
+        range is gorged with the precious ores. Humboldt is the true Golconda.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four thousand
+        dollars to the ton. A week or two ago an assay of just such surface
+        developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to the ton. Our
+        mountains are full of rambling prospectors. Each day and almost every
+        hour reveals new and more startling evidences of the profuse and
+        intensified wealth of our favored county. The metal is not silver alone.
+        There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore. A late discovery plainly
+        evinces cinnabar. The coarser metals are in gross abundance. Lately
+        evidences of bituminous coal have been detected. My theory has ever been
+        that coal is a ligneous formation. I told Col. Whitman, in times past,
+        that the neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous
+        manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no
+        confidence in his lauded coal mines. I repeated the same doctrine to the
+        exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt. I talked with my friend Captain
+        Burch on the subject. My pyrhanism vanished upon his statement that in
+        the very region referred to he had seen petrified trees of the length of
+        two hundred feet. Then is the fact established that huge forests once
+        cast their grim shadows over this remote section. I am firm in the coal
+        faith. Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county. They
+        are immense—incalculable.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to better
+      comprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our near neighbor,
+      Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada. It
+      was from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver bricks
+      came. “Very rich” (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from $100
+      to $400 to the ton; but the usual yield was only $20 to $40 per ton—that
+      is to say, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two
+      dollars. But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in
+      Humboldt from one fourth to nearly half the mass was silver! That is to
+      say, every one hundred pounds of the ore had from two hundred dollars up
+      to about three hundred and fifty in it. Some days later this same
+      correspondent wrote:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this region—it
+        is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are gorged with precious
+        ore to plethora. I have said that nature has so shaped our mountains as
+        to furnish most excellent facilities for the working of our mines. I
+        have also told you that the country about here is pregnant with the
+        finest mill sites in the world. But what is the mining history of
+        Humboldt? The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco
+        capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals that
+        render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain machinery.
+        The proprietors have combined the capital and labor hinted at in my
+        exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their tunnel has reached the
+        length of one hundred feet. From primal assays alone, coupled with the
+        development of the mine and public confidence in the continuance of
+        effort, the stock had reared itself to eight hundred dollars market
+        value. I do not know that one ton of the ore has been converted into
+        current metal. I do know that there are many lodes in this section that
+        surpass the Sheba in primal assay value. Listen a moment to the
+        calculations of the Sheba operators. They purpose transporting the ore
+        concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its locality) to
+        Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton; from Virginia to San
+        Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from thence to Liverpool, its
+        destination, ten dollars per ton. Their idea is that its conglomerate
+        metals will reimburse them their cost of original extraction, the price
+        of transportation, and the expense of reduction, and that then a ton of
+        the raw ore will net them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be
+        extravagant. Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far
+        transcending any previous developments of our racy Territory.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield five
+        hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould &amp; Curry,
+        the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the darkest shadow.
+        I have given you the estimate of the value of a single developed mine.
+        Its richness is indexed by its market valuation. The people of Humboldt
+        county are feet crazy. As I write, our towns are near deserted. They
+        look as languid as a consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and
+        athletic fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines and over
+        mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction. Occasionally
+        a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays hard usage. He alights
+        before his adobe dwelling, hastily exchanges courtesies with his
+        townsmen, hurries to an assay office and from thence to the District
+        Recorder’s. In the morning, having renewed his provisional
+        supplies, he is off again on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the
+        fellow numbers already his feet by the thousands. He is the horse-leech.
+        He has the craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer
+        metallic worlds.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link196"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="196.jpg (187K)" src="images/196.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article,
+      four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We commenced getting ready at once.
+      And we also commenced upbraiding ourselves for not deciding sooner—for
+      we were in terror lest all the rich mines would be found and secured
+      before we got there, and we might have to put up with ledges that would
+      not yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An hour
+      before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in a Gold Hill
+      mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton; now I was already
+      annoyed at the prospect of having to put up with mines the poorest of
+      which would be a marvel in Gold Hill.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch27"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four
+      persons—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and
+      myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen
+      hundred pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out
+      of Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and old
+      that we soon found that it would be better if one or two of us got out and
+      walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would be better if a
+      third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was at this time that
+      I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven a harnessed horse
+      before and many a man in such a position would have felt fairly excused
+      from such a responsibility. But in a little while it was found that it
+      would be a fine thing if the driver got out and walked also. It was at this
+      time that I resigned the position of driver, and never resumed it again.
+      Within the hour, we found that it would not only be better, but was
+      absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two at a time, should
+      put our hands against the end of the wagon and push it through the sand,
+      leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out of the way and hold up
+      the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know his fate at first, and get
+      reconciled to it. We had learned ours in one afternoon. It was plain that
+      we had to walk through the sand and shove that wagon and those horses two
+      hundred miles. So we accepted the situation, and from that time forth we
+      never rode. More than that, we stood regular and nearly constant watches
+      pushing up behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We made seven miles, and camped in the desert. Young Clagett (now member
+      of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses;
+      Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cook
+      with; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking. This division of
+      labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey. We had
+      no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. We were so
+      tired that we slept soundly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link199"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="199.jpg (54K)" src="images/199.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were fifteen days making the trip—two hundred miles; thirteen,
+      rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses
+      rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towed
+      the horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it was too
+      late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when we might
+      have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally, advised us to
+      put the <i>horses</i> in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose
+      iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not
+      do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses being
+      “bituminous from long deprivation.” The reader will excuse me
+      from translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long
+      word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the best
+      and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He was
+      gentleness and simplicity itself—and unselfishness, too. Although he
+      was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any
+      airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a <i>young</i> man’s
+      share of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining from
+      the general stand-point of any age—not from the arrogant, overawing
+      summit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was his
+      Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words <i>for their own sakes</i>,
+      and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was
+      purposing to convey. He always let his ponderous syllables fall with an
+      easy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness. In truth
+      his air was so natural and so simple that one was always catching himself
+      accepting his stately sentences as meaning something, when they really
+      meant nothing in the world. If a word was long and grand and resonant,
+      that was sufficient to win the old man’s love, and he would drop
+      that word into the most out-of-the-way place in a sentence or a subject,
+      and be as pleased with it as if it were perfectly luminous with meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link201"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="201.jpg (62K)" src="images/201.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the frozen
+      ground, and slept side by side; and finding that our foolish, long-legged
+      hound pup had a deal of animal heat in him, Oliphant got to admitting him
+      to the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the dog’s warm
+      back to his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in the night the
+      pup would get stretchy and brace his feet against the old man’s back
+      and shove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then, being warm
+      and snug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man’s back simply
+      in excess of comfort; and at yet other times he would dream of the chase
+      and in his sleep tug at the old man’s back hair and bark in his ear.
+      The old gentleman complained mildly about these familiarities, at last,
+      and when he got through with his statement he said that such a dog as that
+      was not a proper animal to admit to bed with tired men, because he was
+      “so meretricious in his movements and so organic in his emotions.”
+      We turned the dog out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side; for
+      after each day was done and our wolfish hunger appeased with a hot supper
+      of fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coffee, the pipe-smoking, song-
+      singing and yarn-spinning around the evening camp-fire in the still
+      solitudes of the desert was a happy, care-free sort of recreation that
+      seemed the very summit and culmination of earthly luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city or
+      country-bred. We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and countless
+      ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of us
+      the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at the thought
+      of “camping out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once we made twenty-five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles
+      (through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond—fifty in
+      all—in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To
+      stretch out and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after
+      pushing a wagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that
+      for the moment it almost seems cheap at the price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We camped two days in the neighborhood of the “Sink of the Humboldt.”
+      We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not
+      answer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left a
+      taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in the
+      stomach that was very uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but that
+      helped it very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the prominent
+      taste and so it was unfit for drinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link202"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="202.jpg (58K)" src="images/202.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet
+      invented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated water
+      itself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage felt
+      constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little
+      sips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but finally threw out
+      the remainder, and said frankly it was “too technical for <i>him</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then, with
+      nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we
+      entered into our rest.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch28"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little way.
+      People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to
+      associating the term “river” with a high degree of watery
+      grandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they
+      stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a “river”
+      in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie
+      canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times
+      as deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can
+      contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is
+      overheated, and then drink it dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles and
+      entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a driving snow-
+      storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole. Six of
+      the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and the other five
+      faced them. The rest of the landscape was made up of bleak mountain walls
+      that rose so high into the sky from both sides of the canyon that the
+      village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of a crevice. It was
+      always daylight on the mountain tops a long time before the darkness
+      lifted and revealed Unionville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed it with
+      canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through which the
+      cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furniture and
+      interrupt our sleep. It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce. Indians
+      brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs; and when we could
+      catch a laden Indian it was well—and when we could not (which was
+      the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link205"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="205.jpg (58K)" src="images/205.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying
+      all about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the
+      mountain summits. I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me
+      that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if I
+      betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself. Yet I was as
+      perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was
+      going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver
+      enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy—and so my fancy was already
+      busy with plans for spending this money. The first opportunity that
+      offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on the
+      other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed to be
+      observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled away
+      as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was far
+      beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverish excitement
+      that was brimful of expectation—almost of certainty. I crawled about
+      the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from
+      them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with anxious
+      hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart bounded! I hid
+      behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with a nervous
+      eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolute certainty
+      itself could have afforded. The more I examined the fragment the more I
+      was convinced that I had found the door to fortune. I marked the spot and
+      carried away my specimen. Up and down the rugged mountain side I searched,
+      with always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I had
+      come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all the experiences of my life, this
+      secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the nearest to
+      unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious revel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining
+      yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in my
+      simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited that I
+      half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me. Then a fear
+      came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret.
+      Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a knoll
+      to reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returned to my
+      mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but my fears were
+      groundless—the shining scales were still there. I set about scooping
+      them out, and for an hour I toiled down the windings of the stream and
+      robbed its bed. But at last the descending sun warned me to give up the
+      quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth. As I walked along I could
+      not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited over my fragment of
+      silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. In this little time
+      the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or twice I was on the
+      point of throwing it away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither could I
+      talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversation interrupted
+      the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too. I despised
+      the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But as they
+      proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear them
+      planning their poor little economies and sighing over possible privations
+      and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sight of the
+      cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered hilarity began to
+      oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the impulse to burst out with
+      exultation and reveal everything; but I did resist. I said within myself
+      that I would filter the great news through my lips calmly and be serene as
+      a summer morning while I watched its effect in their faces. I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where have you all been?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Prospecting.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did you find?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nothing? What do you think of the country?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Can’t tell, yet,” said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold
+      miner, and had likewise had considerable experience among the silver
+      mines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, haven’t you formed any sort of opinion?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, a sort of a one. It’s fair enough here, may be, but
+      overrated. Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don’t own it; and
+      besides, the rock is so full of base metals that all the science in the
+      world can’t work it. We’ll not starve, here, but we’ll
+      not get rich, I’m afraid.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So you think the prospect is pretty poor?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No name for it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, we’d better go back, hadn’t we?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, not yet—of course not. We’ll try it a riffle,
+      first.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Suppose, now—this is merely a supposition, you know—suppose
+      you could find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars
+      a ton—would <i>that</i> satisfy you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Try us once!” from the whole party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Or suppose—merely a supposition, of course—suppose you
+      were to find a ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton—would
+      that satisfy you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here—what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there some
+      mystery behind all this?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well there
+      are no rich mines here—of course you do. Because you have been
+      around and examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had been
+      around. But just for the sake of argument, suppose—in a kind of
+      general way—suppose some person were to tell you that
+      two-thousand-dollar ledges were simply contemptible—contemptible,
+      understand—and that right yonder in sight of this very cabin there
+      were piles of pure gold and pure silver—oceans of it—enough to
+      make you all rich in twenty-four hours! Come!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I should say he was as crazy as a loon!” said old Ballou, but
+      wild with excitement, nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen,” said I, “I don’t say anything—<i>I</i>
+      haven’t been around, you know, and of course don’t know
+      anything—but all I ask of you is to cast your eye on <i>that</i>,
+      for instance, and tell me what you think of it!” and I tossed my
+      treasure before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link207"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="207.jpg (92K)" src="images/207.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together over
+      it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and
+      nasty glittering mica that isn’t worth ten cents an acre!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy castle
+      to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moralizing, I observed, then, that “all that glitters is not gold.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my
+      treasures of knowledge, that <i>nothing</i> that glitters is gold. So I
+      learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull,
+      unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of
+      the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the
+      world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.
+      Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch29"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went
+      out “prospecting” with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain
+      sides, and clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready
+      to drop with exhaustion, but found no silver—nor yet any gold. Day
+      after day we did this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet
+      into the declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found
+      one or two listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of
+      silver. These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to
+      drive them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden
+      ledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and very
+      hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and searched,
+      and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the promiseless
+      toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock which projected
+      from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke off some fragments
+      with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively with a small
+      eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this rock was quartz,
+      and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver. <i>Contained</i>
+      it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on the outside of it
+      like a kind of veneering. He still broke off pieces and critically
+      examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongue and applying
+      the glass. At last he exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ve got it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link210"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="210.jpg (74K)" src="images/210.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, where
+      it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said that
+      that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead
+      and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of gold
+      visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some little
+      fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them massed
+      together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were not jubilant, but Mr.
+      Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than that. He saved what
+      he called the “richest” piece of the rock, in order to
+      determine its value by the process called the “fire-assay.”
+      Then we named the mine “Monarch of the Mountains” (modesty of
+      nomenclature is not a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou
+      wrote out and stuck up the following “notice,” preserving a
+      copy to be entered upon the books in the mining recorder’s office in
+      the town.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “NOTICE.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each
+        (and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode,
+        extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs,
+        and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of
+        ground on either side for working the same.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made. But
+      when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt depressed and
+      dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all there was of our
+      mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the “Monarch of the
+      Mountains,” extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the
+      earth—he illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and
+      maintained a nearly uniform thickness—say twenty feet—away
+      down into the bowels of the earth, and was perfectly distinct from the
+      casing rock on each side of it; and that it kept to itself, and maintained
+      its distinctive character always, no matter how deep it extended into the
+      earth or how far it stretched itself through and across the hills and
+      valleys. He said it might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we
+      knew; and that wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would
+      find gold and silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it
+      was cased between. And he said that down in the great depths of the ledge
+      was its richness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew. Therefore,
+      instead of working here on the surface, we must either bore down into the
+      rock with a shaft till we came to where it was rich—say a hundred
+      feet or so—or else we must go down into the valley and bore a long
+      tunnel into the mountain side and tap the ledge far under the earth. To do
+      either was plainly the labor of months; for we could blast and bore only a
+      few feet a day—some five or six. But this was not all. He said that
+      after we got the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a distant
+      silver-mill, ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious and costly
+      process. Our fortune seemed a century away!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week we climbed
+      the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels, cans of
+      blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and main. At first
+      the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks and threw it out
+      with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But the rock became more
+      compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came into play. But shortly
+      nothing could make an impression but blasting powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its place and
+      another would strike with an eight-pound sledge—it was like driving
+      nails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill would
+      reach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches in
+      diameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard of fuse,
+      pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse and run. When
+      the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air, we would go
+      back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartz jolted out.
+      Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned. Clagget and
+      Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. We decided that a
+      tunnel was the thing we wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link212"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="212.jpg (89K)" src="images/212.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of which
+      time we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in, and
+      judged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the ledge. I
+      resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day longer. We
+      decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a ledge that was
+      already “developed.” There were none in the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dropped the “Monarch” for the time being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantly
+      growing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to the
+      epidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more “feet.” We
+      prospected and took up new claims, put “notices” on them and
+      gave them grandiloquent names. We traded some of our “feet”
+      for “feet” in other people’s claims. In a little while
+      we owned largely in the “Gray Eagle,” the “Columbiana,”
+      the “Branch Mint,” the “Maria Jane,” the “Universe,”
+      the “Root-Hog-or-Die,” the “Samson and Delilah,”
+      the “Treasure Trove,” the “Golconda,” the “Sultana,”
+      the “Boomerang,” the “Great Republic,” the “Grand
+      Mogul,” and fifty other “mines” that had never been
+      molested by a shovel or scratched with a pick. We had not less than thirty
+      thousand “feet” apiece in the “richest mines on earth”
+      as the frenzied cant phrased it—and were in debt to the butcher. We
+      were stark mad with excitement—drunk with happiness—smothered
+      under mountains of prospective wealth—arrogantly compassionate
+      toward the plodding millions who knew not our marvellous canyon—but
+      our credit was not good at the grocer’s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars’
+      revel. There was nothing doing in the district—no mining—no
+      milling—no productive effort—no income—and not enough
+      money in the entire camp to buy a corner lot in an eastern village,
+      hardly; and yet a stranger would have supposed he was walking among
+      bloated millionaires. Prospecting parties swarmed out of town with the
+      first flush of dawn, and swarmed in again at nightfall laden with spoil—rocks.
+      Nothing but rocks. Every man’s pockets were full of them; the floor
+      of his cabin was littered with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on
+      his shelves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link214"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="214.jpg (51K)" src="images/214.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch30"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand
+      “feet” in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which
+      they believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars—and
+      as often as any other way they were men who had not twenty-five dollars in
+      the world. Every man you met had his new mine to boast of, and his “specimens”
+      ready; and if the opportunity offered, he would infallibly back you into a
+      corner and offer as a favor to you, not to him, to part with just a few
+      feet in the “Golden Age,” or the “Sarah Jane,” or
+      some other unknown stack of croppings, for money enough to get a “square
+      meal” with, as the phrase went. And you were never to reveal that he
+      had made you the offer at such a ruinous price, for it was only out of
+      friendship for you that he was willing to make the sacrifice. Then he
+      would fish a piece of rock out of his pocket, and after looking
+      mysteriously around as if he feared he might be waylaid and robbed if
+      caught with such wealth in his possession, he would dab the rock against
+      his tongue, clap an eyeglass to it, and exclaim:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Look at that! Right there in that red dirt! See it? See the specks
+      of gold? And the streak of silver? That’s from the ‘Uncle Abe.’ There’s
+      a hundred thousand tons like that in sight! Right in sight, mind you! And
+      when we get down on it and the ledge comes in solid, it will be the
+      richest thing in the world! Look at the assay! I don’t want you to
+      believe <i>me</i>—look at the assay!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link216"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="216.jpg (63K)" src="images/216.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he would get out a greasy sheet of paper which showed that the
+      portion of rock assayed had given evidence of containing silver and gold
+      in the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out the <i>richest</i>
+      piece of rock and get it assayed! Very often, that piece, the size of a
+      filbert, was the only fragment in a ton that had a particle of metal in it—and
+      yet the assay made it pretend to represent the average value of the ton of
+      rubbish it came from!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On such a system of assaying as that, the Humboldt world had gone crazy.
+      On the authority of such assays its newspaper correspondents were frothing
+      about rock worth four and seven thousand dollars a ton!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the calculations, of a
+      quoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be mined and shipped all the
+      way to England, the metals extracted, and the gold and silver contents
+      received back by the miners as clear profit, the copper, antimony and
+      other things in the ore being sufficient to pay all the expenses incurred?
+      Everybody’s head was full of such “calculations” as
+      those—such raving insanity, rather. Few people took <i>work</i> into
+      their calculations—or outlay of money either; except the work and
+      expenditures of other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again. Why? Because we judged
+      that we had learned the <i>real</i> secret of success in silver mining—which
+      was, <i>not</i> to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our brows and
+      the labor of our hands, but to <i>sell</i> the ledges to the dull slaves
+      of toil and let them do the mining!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before leaving Carson, the Secretary and I had purchased “feet”
+      from various Esmeralda stragglers. We had expected immediate returns of
+      bullion, but were only afflicted with regular and constant “assessments”
+      instead—demands for money wherewith to develop the said mines. These
+      assessments had grown so oppressive that it seemed necessary to look into
+      the matter personally. Therefore I projected a pilgrimage to Carson and
+      thence to Esmeralda. I bought a horse and started, in company with Mr.
+      Ballou and a gentleman named Ollendorff, a Prussian—not the party
+      who has inflicted so much suffering on the world with his wretched foreign
+      grammars, with their interminable repetitions of questions which never
+      have occurred and are never likely to occur in any conversation among
+      human beings. We rode through a snow-storm for two or three days, and
+      arrived at “Honey Lake Smith’s,” a sort of isolated inn
+      on the Carson river. It was a two-story log house situated on a small
+      knoll in the midst of the vast basin or desert through which the sickly
+      Carson winds its melancholy way. Close to the house were the Overland
+      stage stables, built of sun-dried bricks. There was not another building
+      within several leagues of the place. Towards sunset about twenty
+      hay-wagons arrived and camped around the house and all the teamsters came
+      in to supper—a very, very rough set. There were one or two Overland
+      stage drivers there, also, and half a dozen vagabonds and stragglers;
+      consequently the house was well crowded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked out, after supper, and visited a small Indian camp in the
+      vicinity. The Indians were in a great hurry about something, and were
+      packing up and getting away as fast as they could. In their broken English
+      they said, “By’m-by, heap water!” and by the help of
+      signs made us understand that in their opinion a flood was coming. The
+      weather was perfectly clear, and this was not the rainy season. There was
+      about a foot of water in the insignificant river—or maybe two feet;
+      the stream was not wider than a back alley in a village, and its banks
+      were scarcely higher than a man’s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, where was the flood to come from? We canvassed the subject awhile and
+      then concluded it was a ruse, and that the Indians had some better reason
+      for leaving in a hurry than fears of a flood in such an exceedingly dry
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link218"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="218.jpg (37K)" src="images/218.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At seven in the evening we went to bed in the second story—with our
+      clothes on, as usual, and all three in the same bed, for every available
+      space on the floors, chairs, etc., was in request, and even then there was
+      barely room for the housing of the inn’s guests. An hour later we
+      were awakened by a great turmoil, and springing out of bed we picked our
+      way nimbly among the ranks of snoring teamsters on the floor and got to
+      the front windows of the long room. A glance revealed a strange spectacle,
+      under the moonlight. The crooked Carson was full to the brim, and its
+      waters were raging and foaming in the wildest way—sweeping around
+      the sharp bends at a furious speed, and bearing on their surface a chaos
+      of logs, brush and all sorts of rubbish. A depression, where its bed had
+      once been, in other times, was already filling, and in one or two places
+      the water was beginning to wash over the main bank. Men were flying hither
+      and thither, bringing cattle and wagons close up to the house, for the
+      spot of high ground on which it stood extended only some thirty feet in
+      front and about a hundred in the rear. Close to the old river bed just
+      spoken of, stood a little log stable, and in this our horses were lodged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link219"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="219.jpg (173K)" src="images/219.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we looked, the waters increased so fast in this place that in a few
+      minutes a torrent was roaring by the little stable and its margin
+      encroaching steadily on the logs. We suddenly realized that this flood was
+      not a mere holiday spectacle, but meant damage—and not only to the
+      small log stable but to the Overland buildings close to the main river,
+      for the waves had now come ashore and were creeping about the foundations
+      and invading the great hay-corral adjoining. We ran down and joined the
+      crowd of excited men and frightened animals. We waded knee-deep into the
+      log stable, unfastened the horses and waded out almost <i>waist</i>-deep,
+      so fast the waters increased. Then the crowd rushed in a body to the
+      hay-corral and began to tumble down the huge stacks of baled hay and roll
+      the bales up on the high ground by the house. Meantime it was discovered
+      that Owens, an overland driver, was missing, and a man ran to the large
+      stable, and wading in, boot-top deep, discovered him asleep in his bed,
+      awoke him, and waded out again. But Owens was drowsy and resumed his nap;
+      but only for a minute or two, for presently he turned in his bed, his hand
+      dropped over the side and came in contact with the cold water! It was up
+      level with the mattress! He waded out, breast-deep, almost, and the next
+      moment the sun-burned bricks melted down like sugar and the big building
+      crumbled to a ruin and was washed away in a twinkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eleven o’clock only the roof of the little log stable was out of
+      water, and our inn was on an island in mid-ocean. As far as the eye could
+      reach, in the moonlight, there was no desert visible, but only a level
+      waste of shining water. The Indians were true prophets, but how did they
+      get their information? I am not able to answer the question. We remained
+      cooped up eight days and nights with that curious crew. Swearing, drinking
+      and card playing were the order of the day, and occasionally a fight was
+      thrown in for variety. Dirt and vermin—but let us forget those
+      features; their profusion is simply inconceivable—it is better that
+      they remain so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two men——however, this chapter is long enough.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch31"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. One
+      was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one song,
+      and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one small,
+      stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person’s music.
+      Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, “old sledge” and
+      quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its
+      tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content
+      to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart
+      ruffian called “Arkansas,” who carried two revolvers in his
+      belt and a bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk
+      and always suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would
+      accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap
+      somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and
+      then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but invariably
+      his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a disappointment
+      that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a meek, well-meaning
+      fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a promising subject, and
+      gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the fourth morning, Arkansas
+      got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an opportunity. Presently
+      Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with whisky, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I reckon the Pennsylvania ’lection—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas rose
+      unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Wh—what do you know a—about Pennsylvania? Answer me
+      that. Wha—what do you know ’bout Pennsylvania?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was only goin’ to say—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You was only goin’ to say. You was! You was only goin’
+      to say—what was you goin’ to say? That’s it! That’s
+      what <i>I</i> want to know. I want to know wha-what you (’<i>ic</i>)
+      what you know about Pennsylvania, since you’re makin’ yourself
+      so d——d free. Answer me that!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mr. Arkansas, if you’d only let me—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link222"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="222.jpg (55K)" src="images/222.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who’s a henderin’ you? Don’t you insinuate
+      nothing agin me!—don’t you do it. Don’t you come in here
+      bullyin’ around, and cussin’ and goin’ on like a lunatic—don’t
+      you do it. ’Coz <i>I</i> won’t stand it. If fight’s what
+      you want, out with it! I’m your man! Out with it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, <i>I</i> never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don’t
+      give a man no chance. I was only goin’ to say that Pennsylvania was
+      goin’ to have an election next week—that was all—that
+      was everything I was goin’ to say—I wish I may never stir if
+      it wasn’t.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well then why d’n’t you say it? What did you come
+      swellin’ around that way for, and tryin’ to raise trouble?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why I didn’t come swellin’ around, Mr. Arkansas—I
+      just—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar’s ghost—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I
+      wish I may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I’ve always
+      spoke well of you, and respected you more’n any man in the house.
+      Ask Smith. Ain’t it so, Smith? Didn’t I say, no longer ago
+      than last night, that for a man that was a gentleman <i>all</i> the time
+      and every way you took him, give me Arkansas? I’ll leave it to any
+      gentleman here if them warn’t the very words I used. Come, now, Mr.
+      Arkansas, le’s take a drink—le’s shake hands and take a
+      drink. Come up—everybody! It’s my treat. Come up, Bill, Tom,
+      Bob, Scotty—come up. I want you all to take a drink with me and
+      Arkansas—<i>old</i> Arkansas, I call him—bully old Arkansas.
+      Gimme your hand agin. Look at him, boys—just take a <i>look</i> at
+      him. Thar stands the whitest man in America!—and the man that denies
+      it has got to fight <i>me</i>, that’s all. Gimme that old flipper
+      agin!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord’s part and
+      unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink,
+      was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so
+      happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to
+      have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas
+      shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lan’lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you
+      please?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was a-sayin’ to Scotty that my father was up’ards of
+      eighty year old when he died.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Was that <i>all</i> that you said?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, that was all.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Didn’t say nothing but that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No—nothing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then an uncomfortable silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the
+      counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right boot,
+      while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed away toward
+      the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three men out
+      of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping dog a kick
+      that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs and his
+      blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In a little while
+      he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back to the bar and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lan’lord, what’s your idea for rakin’ up old
+      personalities and blowin’ about your father? Ain’t this
+      company agreeable to you? Ain’t it? If this company ain’t
+      agreeable to you, p’r’aps we’d better leave. Is that
+      your idea? Is that what you’re coming at?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn’t thinking of such a
+      thing. My father and my mother—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lan’lord, <i>don’t</i> crowd a man! Don’t do it.
+      If nothing’ll do you but a disturbance, out with it like a man (’<i>ic</i>)—but
+      <i>don’t</i> rake up old bygones and fling’em in the teeth of
+      a passel of people that wants to be peaceable if they could git a chance.
+      What’s the matter with you this mornin’, anyway? I never see a
+      man carry on so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Arkansas, I reely didn’t mean no harm, and I won’t go
+      on with it if it’s onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker’s got
+      into my head, and what with the flood, and havin’ so many to feed
+      and look out for—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So <i>that’s</i> what’s a-ranklin’ in your heart,
+      is it? You want us to leave do you? There’s too many on us. You want
+      us to pack up and swim. Is that it? Come!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now <i>you</i> know that I ain’t
+      the man to—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Are you a threatenin’ me? Are you? By George, the man don’t
+      live that can skeer me! Don’t you try to come that game, my chicken—’cuz
+      I can stand a good deal, but I won’t stand that. Come out from
+      behind that bar till I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you
+      sneakin’ underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! <i>I’ll</i>
+      learn you to bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that’s
+      forever trying to befriend you and keep you out of trouble!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Please, Arkansas, please don’t shoot! If there’s got to
+      be bloodshed—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed?
+      So it’s blood you want, is it, you ravin’ desperado! You’d
+      made up your mind to murder somebody this mornin’—I knowed it
+      perfectly well. I’m the man, am I? It’s me you’re goin’
+      to murder, is it? But you can’t do it ’thout I get one chance
+      first, you thievin’ black-hearted, white-livered son of a nigger!
+      Draw your weepon!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over
+      benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape. In
+      the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass door,
+      and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord’s wife suddenly
+      appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of
+      scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye she
+      stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The astonished
+      ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. She backed him
+      step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, while the
+      wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another
+      tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before,
+      perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause shook
+      the house, and every man ordered “drinks for the crowd” in one
+      and the same breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link225"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="225.jpg (102K)" src="images/225.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and the
+      Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season of
+      island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of permanent
+      humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast, and never
+      resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly leveled at
+      him, and that man was “Arkansas.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but
+      the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no
+      possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an
+      entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to
+      insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so
+      we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we
+      embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses after
+      us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow, with a
+      paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern holding the
+      halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to swim, Ollendorff
+      got frightened, for there was great danger that the horses would make our
+      aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed to land at a certain
+      spot the current would throw us off and almost surely cast us into the
+      main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now. Such a catastrophe would be
+      death, in all probability, for we would be swept to sea in the “Sink”
+      or overturned and drowned. We warned Ollendorff to keep his wits about him
+      and handle himself carefully, but it was useless; the moment the bow
+      touched the bank, he made a spring and the canoe whirled upside down in
+      ten-foot water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link227"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="227.jpg (95K)" src="images/227.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I
+      had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to the
+      canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managed
+      to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold and water-
+      soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles were
+      gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there they had
+      to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and ferried over
+      some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night in the inn
+      before making another venture on our journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with our
+      new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The snow
+      lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road perceptible,
+      and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more than a hundred
+      yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the mountain ranges.
+      The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his instinct was as sensitive
+      as any compass, and that he could “strike a bee-line” for
+      Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he were to straggle
+      a single point out of the true line his instinct would assail him like an
+      outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his wake happy and
+      content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough, but at the end of
+      that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff shouted proudly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right
+      in somebody’s tracks that will hunt the way for us without any
+      trouble. Let’s hurry up and join company with the party.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow,
+      and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors,
+      for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of an
+      hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher—but what surprised us
+      was, that the <i>number</i> of travelers in advance of us seemed to
+      steadily increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling
+      at such a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be
+      a company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and
+      jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now. But
+      the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of soldiers
+      was miraculously expanding into a regiment—Ballou said they had
+      already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Boys, these are our own tracks, and we’ve actually been
+      circussing round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here
+      in this blind desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link229"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="229.jpg (83K)" src="images/229.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all manner
+      of hard names—said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and
+      ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he “did not know as
+      much as a logarythm!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his “mental
+      compass” were in disgrace from that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
+      with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While we
+      were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and
+      took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song about
+      his “sister and his brother” and “the child in the grave
+      with its mother,” and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the
+      white oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered
+      and lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him
+      to Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
+      exhausted and dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link230"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="230.jpg (20K)" src="images/230.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
+      started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We hesitated
+      no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted merrily
+      along, for we had good confidence in the driver’s bump of locality.
+      But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We were soon left
+      out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts the wheels
+      made for a guide. By this time it was three in the afternoon, and
+      consequently it was not very long before night came—and not with a
+      lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door, as
+      is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as thick as ever, and
+      of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all about us the
+      white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the smooth sugar-loaf
+      mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in front of us the two
+      faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling and slowly
+      disappearing wheel-tracks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height—three or four
+      feet; they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert;
+      each of them was a mere snow-mound, now; in <i>any</i> direction that you
+      proceeded (the same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself
+      moving down a distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds
+      an either side of it—an avenue the customary width of a road, nice
+      and level in its breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way,
+      by reason of the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the
+      chilly thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in
+      the night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long
+      ago been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere
+      sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and
+      further away from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one’s
+      back is placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of
+      blood that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the
+      drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at
+      once—and shaking and quaking with consternation, too. There was an
+      instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of
+      the road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be
+      discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly
+      could not with one’s nose nearly against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link231"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="231.jpg (33K)" src="images/231.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch32"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by
+      walking off in various directions—the regular snow-mounds and the
+      regular avenues between them convinced each man that <i>he</i> had found
+      the true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the
+      situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were tired.
+      We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning. This was
+      wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the snow-storm
+      continued another day our case would be the next thing to hopeless if we
+      kept on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, now,
+      and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so we tried
+      to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever tried to
+      do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that it <i>could</i>
+      be done, and without any trouble—because every man in the party had
+      read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe it,
+      with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and believed
+      that <i>other</i> common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters making
+      a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put
+      their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the
+      feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary,
+      we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs from a sage
+      bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our
+      bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then,
+      while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense,
+      Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile
+      clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link233"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="233.jpg (89K)" src="images/233.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror—the
+      horses were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my
+      absorbing anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped
+      them and the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless
+      to try to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one
+      could pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave
+      them up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books
+      that said horses would stay by their masters for protection and
+      companionship in a distressful time like ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now.
+      Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them,
+      and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to light
+      a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience, and the
+      middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good place or
+      time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and tried the
+      other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing them together.
+      At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled, and so were the
+      sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters and the books that
+      had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered dismally what was next
+      to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou fished out four matches
+      from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To have found four gold bars
+      would have seemed poor and cheap good luck compared to this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances—or
+      how lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we
+      gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light the
+      first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that pages
+      of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a moment, and
+      then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it if it had
+      been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. The wind puffed
+      the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of success. We
+      gathered together closer than ever, and developed a solicitude that was
+      rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last hope on his leg. It
+      lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame. Shading
+      it with his hands, the old gentleman bent gradually down and every heart
+      went with him—everybody, too, for that matter—and blood and
+      breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks at last, took gradual
+      hold upon them—hesitated—took a stronger hold—hesitated
+      again—held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a sort
+      of human gasp and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link234"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="234.jpg (42K)" src="images/234.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence;
+      even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise
+      than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation began,
+      and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the conviction
+      that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped that I was
+      the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledged their
+      conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard
+      feeling towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that
+      you have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing
+      too much and leading you round and round in the snow—but I meant
+      well; forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings
+      against Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a
+      thing I do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and
+      unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has
+      hurt me a great deal—but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my
+      heart, and—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I was
+      crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again and
+      forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his bottle of
+      whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never touch another
+      drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and although ill-prepared,
+      was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he wished he could be spared
+      a little longer, not for any selfish reason, but to make a thorough reform
+      in his character, and by devoting himself to helping the poor, nursing the
+      sick, and pleading with the people to guard themselves against the evils
+      of intemperance, make his life a beneficent example to the young, and lay
+      it down at last with the precious reflection that it had not been lived in
+      vain. He ended by saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even
+      here in the presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed
+      wherein to prosecute it to men’s help and benefit—and with
+      that he threw away the bottle of whisky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link236"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="236.jpg (21K)" src="images/236.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could
+      not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had
+      solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with
+      cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly
+      pure and blemishless without eschewing them. “And therefore,”
+      continued he, “in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy
+      with that spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform.”
+      These rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could
+      have done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know
+      that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We were
+      all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the presence
+      of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing it felt that
+      at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden me like a
+      tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the good I might
+      have done in the world and the still greater good I might <i>now</i> do,
+      with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me if I
+      could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears came
+      again. We put our arms about each other’s necks and awaited the
+      warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last
+      farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding senses,
+      while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered body.
+      Oblivion came. The battle of life was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link237"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="237.jpg (34K)" src="images/237.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch33"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an
+      age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a
+      gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I
+      shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, “this is death—this
+      is the hereafter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ballou—at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting
+      posture, with Ballou’s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were the
+      frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still
+      saddled and bridled horses!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and
+      the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We
+      really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not
+      “do the subject justice,” the whole situation was so painfully
+      ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where
+      to commence anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh
+      dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and
+      sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at
+      everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and in
+      unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them, and
+      sought shelter in the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd adventure.
+      It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually went into camp
+      in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, forlorn and hopeless,
+      within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The
+      mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had deserted
+      us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a minute after
+      they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed all our
+      confessions and lamentations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. The
+      world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever.
+      Presently an uneasiness came over me—grew upon me—assailed me
+      without ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete—I wanted to
+      smoke! I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered
+      away alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of
+      reform and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively.
+      But it was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts
+      hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and
+      crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a good
+      while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer
+      comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and no
+      human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed of
+      being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt that
+      perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so I
+      turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff turned
+      the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat unconscious
+      Ballou deep in a game of “solitaire” with the old greasy
+      cards!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link240"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="240.jpg (102K)" src="images/240.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more
+      about “reform” and “examples to the rising generation.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert. If
+      we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must have
+      heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were expecting some
+      sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would infallibly get
+      lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly
+      exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were never
+      heard of afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with
+      preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the
+      delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great
+      land-slide case of Hyde <i>vs</i>. Morgan—an episode which is famous
+      in Nevada to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I
+      will set down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch34"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe
+      Valleys—very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to
+      melting off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to
+      moisten and soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot
+      know what a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen
+      the whole side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited
+      down in the valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the
+      mountain’s front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all
+      the years that he may go on living within seventy miles of that place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial
+      officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer of
+      parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it—partly
+      for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was
+      Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older
+      citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a
+      calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way—when
+      it gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of
+      a practical joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe’s door
+      in Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his
+      horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him to
+      conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he
+      achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of
+      profanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well known that
+      for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more customary term
+      is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of it, and
+      furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the edge of
+      the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above it on the
+      mountain side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link242"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="242.jpg (114K)" src="images/242.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides
+      had come and slid Morgan’s ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and
+      everything down on top of <i>his</i> ranch and exactly covered up every
+      single vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet.
+      Morgan was in possession and refused to vacate the premises—said he
+      was occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else’s—and
+      said the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always
+      stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And when I reminded him,” said Hyde, weeping, “that it
+      was on top of my ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal
+      meanness to ask me why didn’t I <i>stay</i> on my ranch and hold
+      possession when I see him a-coming! Why didn’t I <i>stay</i> on it,
+      the blathering lunatic—by George, when I heard that racket and
+      looked up that hill it was just like the whole world was a-ripping and
+      a-tearing down that mountain side—splinters, and cord-wood, thunder
+      and lightning, hail and snow, odds and ends of hay stacks, and awful
+      clouds of dust!—trees going end over end in the air, rocks as big as
+      a house jumping ’bout a thousand feet high and busting into ten
+      million pieces, cattle turned inside out and a-coming head on with their
+      tails hanging out between their teeth!—and in the midst of all that
+      wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wondering
+      why <i>I</i> didn’t <i>stay</i> and hold possession! Laws bless me,
+      I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out’n the county in three
+      jumps exactly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won’t
+      move off’n that ranch—says it’s his’n and he’s
+      going to keep it—likes it better’n he did when it was higher
+      up the hill. Mad! Well, I’ve been so mad for two days I couldn’t
+      find my way to town—been wandering around in the brush in a starving
+      condition—got anything here to drink, General? But I’m here <i>now</i>,
+      and I’m a-going to law. You hear <i>me</i>!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man’s feelings so outraged
+      as were the General’s. He said he had never heard of such
+      high-handed conduct in all his life as this Morgan’s. And he said
+      there was no use in going to law—Morgan had no shadow of right to
+      remain where he was—nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it,
+      and no lawyer would take his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said
+      that right there was where he was mistaken—everybody in town
+      sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a very smart lawyer, had taken his case;
+      the courts being in vacation, it was to be tried before a referee, and
+      ex-Governor Roop had already been appointed to that office and would open
+      his court in a large public hall near the hotel at two that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people of
+      that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy, rest
+      easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain as if
+      the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At two in the afternoon referee Roop’s Court opened and Roop
+      appeared throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and
+      wearing upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his
+      fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended,
+      after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed,
+      for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the command:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Order in the Court!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his way
+      through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and on
+      his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectful
+      recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and
+      it trickled pleasantly through his whole system:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Way for the United States Attorney!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The witnesses were called—legislators, high government officers,
+      ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were
+      called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably
+      went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added new
+      testimony to the absurdity of a man’s claiming to own another man’s
+      property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan
+      lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones—they
+      did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, with
+      exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he pounded
+      the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and howled, he
+      quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, statistics,
+      history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand war-whoop
+      for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of
+      America and the principles of eternal justice! [Applause.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link244"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="244.jpg (96K)" src="images/244.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there was
+      anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and
+      admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan’s case was killed. Ex-
+      Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, and
+      the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood
+      erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor with
+      long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the audience
+      waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and began
+      impressively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this
+      day. This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the
+      most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. Gentlemen,
+      I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have perceived that the
+      weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in favor of the plaintiff
+      Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of counsel, with high interest—and
+      especially will I commend the masterly and irrefutable logic of the
+      distinguished gentleman who represents the plaintiff. But gentlemen, let
+      us beware how we allow mere human testimony, human ingenuity in argument
+      and human ideas of equity, to influence us at a moment so solemn as this.
+      Gentlemen, it ill becomes us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees
+      of Heaven. It is plain to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has
+      seen fit to move this defendant’s ranch for a purpose. We are but
+      creatures, and we must submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant
+      Morgan in this marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied
+      with the position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen
+      to remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its
+      owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of
+      the act or inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No—Heaven
+      created the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange
+      them, to experiment with them around at its pleasure. It is for us to
+      submit, without repining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link246"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="246.jpg (92K)" src="images/246.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which
+      the sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle.
+      Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard
+      Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And from
+      this decision there is no appeal.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room
+      frantic with indignation. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an
+      inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated
+      with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the
+      floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some
+      sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up to
+      walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up happily
+      and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch underneath the
+      new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to the ground was
+      just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of opinion that
+      Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an impatient
+      and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the fact that he had
+      been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, like another
+      Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch35"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the
+      company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor’s brother. He
+      had a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination
+      which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the
+      talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the
+      journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two other
+      endowments of a marked character. One was a singular “handiness”
+      about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or
+      organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse,
+      or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodation
+      that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of
+      anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and
+      dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity—hence he always
+      managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the
+      emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in
+      camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been
+      acquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comrade was
+      never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in which
+      he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, very tired
+      and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that the
+      house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to spare
+      for the horses—must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry on while
+      it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile. We
+      dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face. Capt.
+      John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had
+      accomplished the following things, viz.: found old acquaintances in three
+      teamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord’s
+      mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in
+      California, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child’s broken
+      toy and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the
+      hostler bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the
+      “heaves”; treated the entire party three times at the landlord’s
+      bar; produced a later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat
+      himself down to read the news to a deeply interested audience. The result,
+      summed up, was as follows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our
+      horses; we had a trout supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good
+      beds to sleep in, and a surprising breakfast in the morning—and when
+      we left, we left lamented by all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he
+      had some uncommonly valuable ones to offset them with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link249"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="249.jpg (53K)" src="images/249.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more
+      forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were entirely
+      worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped out of the
+      top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired Board of
+      Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the ledge. The
+      tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then strike the ledge
+      at the same dept that a <i>shaft</i> twelve feet deep would have reached!
+      The Board were living on the “assessments.” [N.B.—This
+      hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they
+      have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board
+      had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of silver
+      as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend’s
+      tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the “Daley”
+      till he was well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a
+      tunnel two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on
+      the hill to look into matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly sharp-
+      pointed peak, and a couple of men up there “facing” the
+      proposed tunnel. Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two
+      hundred and fifty feet to strike this ledge?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and
+      arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why no—how is that?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to
+      side; and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of
+      your tunnel on trestle-work!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link250"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="250.jpg (61K)" src="images/250.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We took up various claims, and <i>commenced</i> shafts and tunnels on
+      them, but never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of
+      work on each to “hold” it, else other parties could seize our
+      property after the expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new
+      claims and doing a little work on them and then waiting for a buyer—who
+      never came. We never found any ore that would yield more than fifty
+      dollars a ton; and as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for <i>working</i>
+      ore and extracting the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and
+      none returned to take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for
+      ourselves; and altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one—for
+      we never ceased to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be
+      borrowed on the best security at less than <i>eight per cent a month</i>
+      (I being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to
+      milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz
+      mill, at ten dollars a week and board.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch36"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow
+      down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I
+      learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get the
+      silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it. We
+      had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark. This mill
+      was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright rods of iron,
+      as large as a man’s ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of iron and
+      steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and these
+      rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an iron box
+      called a “battery.” Each of these rods or stamps weighed six
+      hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up
+      masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the
+      battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to powder,
+      and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to a creamy
+      paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire screen which
+      fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great tubs warmed by
+      super-heated steam—amalgamating pans, they are called. The mass of
+      pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving “mullers.”
+      A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and this seized
+      some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on to them;
+      quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also, about every
+      half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of coarse salt and sulphate
+      of copper were added, from time to time to assist the amalgamation by
+      destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver and would not let
+      it unite with the quicksilver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link253"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="253.jpg (73K)" src="images/253.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams of dirty
+      water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad wooden
+      troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold and silver
+      would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and in order to
+      catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and little
+      obstructing “riffles” charged with quicksilver were placed
+      here and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned
+      and the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious
+      accumulations—and after all this eternity of trouble one third of
+      the silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the
+      troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day.
+      There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any
+      idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity
+      that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in
+      order to understand the full force of his doom to “earn his bread by
+      the sweat of his brow.” Every now and then, during the day, we had
+      to scoop some pulp out of the pans, and tediously “wash” it in
+      a horn spoon—wash it little by little over the edge till at last
+      nothing was left but some little dull globules of quicksilver in the
+      bottom. If they were soft and yielding, the pan needed some salt or some
+      sulphate of copper or some other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if
+      they were crisp to the touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted
+      with all the silver and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently
+      the pan needed a fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else
+      to do, one could always “screen tailings.” That is to say, he
+      could shovel up the dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through
+      the troughs and dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from
+      pebbles and prepare it for working over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this
+      included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great
+      diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the
+      methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without “screening
+      the tailings.” Of all recreations in the world, screening tailings
+      on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most undesirable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link254"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="254.jpg (78K)" src="images/254.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we “cleaned up.”
+      That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed
+      the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulating
+      mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made into
+      heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap
+      for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring—that
+      and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the same
+      facility with which water saturates a sponge—separated its particles
+      and the ring crumbled to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe
+      leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. The
+      quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and
+      the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again. Quicksilver is
+      very costly, and they never waste it. On opening the retort, there was our
+      week’s work—a lump of pure white, frosty looking silver, twice
+      as large as a man’s head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was gold, but
+      the color of it did not show—would not have shown if two thirds of
+      it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it by pouring
+      it into an iron brick-mould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained. This
+      mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first one in
+      Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant affair and
+      compared most unfavorably with some of the immense establishments
+      afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link256"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="256.jpg (96K)" src="images/256.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the “fire-assay”—a
+      method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals
+      in the mass. This is an interesting process. The chip is hammered out as
+      thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you
+      weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the
+      paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will take
+      marked notice of the addition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver
+      and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel,
+      made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. The base
+      metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the cupel.
+      A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left behind, and
+      by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the proportion of
+      base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold from the silver
+      now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in the furnace and kept
+      some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is rolled up like a quill
+      and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric acid; the acid dissolves
+      the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to be weighed on its own
+      merits. Then salt water is poured into the vessel containing the dissolved
+      silver and the silver returns to palpable form again and sinks to the
+      bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it; then the proportions of the
+      several metals contained in the brick are known, and the assayer stamps
+      the value of the brick upon its surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the
+      speculative miner, in getting a “fire-assay” made of a piece
+      of rock from his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of
+      picking out the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but
+      quite the contrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless
+      quartz for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert,
+      which was rich in gold and silver—and this was reserved for a
+      fire-assay! Of course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such
+      rock would yield hundreds of dollars—and on such assays many an
+      utterly worthless mine was sold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it, occasionally,
+      who were not strictly scientific and capable. One assayer got such rich
+      results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he acquired
+      almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve success,
+      he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers entered into
+      a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens into the secret
+      in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke a little fragment
+      off a carpenter’s grindstone and got a stranger to take it to the
+      popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hour the result
+      came—whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield
+      $1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link257"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="257.jpg (34K)" src="images/257.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the popular
+      assayer left town “between two days.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business
+      one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance in
+      my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it; that
+      I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so short
+      a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to intellectual
+      activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and nothing so
+      stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and washing blankets—still,
+      I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary. He said he was paying me
+      ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round sum. How much did I want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said about <i>four hundred thousand</i> dollars a month, and board, was
+      about all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those days
+      and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that
+      mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the
+      population, about the mysterious and wonderful “cement mine,”
+      and to make preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might
+      offer to go and help hunt for it.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch37"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous
+      Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be
+      reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of
+      night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement—because
+      he must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow
+      him. In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and
+      donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the
+      community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of
+      Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days
+      together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the miners
+      ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known it reported at
+      eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman had just passed
+      through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, would be swarming
+      with men and animals. Every individual would be trying to be very secret,
+      but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W. had passed
+      through. And long before daylight—this in the dead of Winter—the
+      stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole population
+      gone chasing after W.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years
+      ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre on
+      the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails and
+      roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find
+      California before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in the
+      mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed a
+      curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of
+      dull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was a fortune
+      to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as a curbstone,
+      and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the wonderful
+      cement was worth well-nigh $200.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link260"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="260.jpg (59K)" src="images/260.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it,
+      and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of
+      the locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and started
+      westward again. But troubles thickened about them. In their wanderings one
+      brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on and
+      leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving, gave
+      up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of
+      incredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of California
+      exhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown
+      away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to set
+      everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the cement
+      country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He was
+      entirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave Whiteman his
+      map, and described the cement region as well as he could and thus
+      transferred the curse to that gentleman—for when I had my one
+      accidental glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost
+      mine, in hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen
+      years. Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he
+      had not. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to
+      have been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive
+      nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice of
+      fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would be
+      sufficient for a man of reasonable desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a
+      friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and not only
+      that, but had Whiteman’s promise that he should have a private hint
+      in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Van Dorn had
+      promised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatly
+      excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town,
+      disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication. In a little while Van
+      Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabin and
+      with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small
+      parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the “divide”
+      overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to make no
+      noise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under any
+      circumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman’s presence was
+      unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke up
+      at nine o’clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and
+      with profound secrecy. At eleven o’clock we saddled our horses,
+      hitched them with their long <i>riatas</i> (or lassos), and then brought
+      out a side of bacon, a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar,
+      a hundred pounds of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying
+      pan and some few other necessary articles. All these things were “packed”
+      on the back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a
+      Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by
+      natural smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but
+      was not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck),
+      piled the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and
+      under it, “every which way,” taking a hitch in it every now
+      and then, and occasionally surging back on it till the horse’s sides
+      sunk in and he gasped for breath—but every time the lashings grew
+      tight in one place they loosened in another. We never did get the load
+      tight all over, but we got it so that it would do, after a fashion, and
+      then we started, in single file, close order, and without a word. It was a
+      dark night. We kept the middle of the road, and proceeded in a slow walk
+      past the rows of cabins, and whenever a miner came to his door I trembled
+      for fear the light would shine on us and excite curiosity. But nothing
+      happened. We began the long winding ascent of the canyon, toward the
+      “divide,” and presently the cabins began to grow infrequent,
+      and the intervals between them wider and wider, and then I began to
+      breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a murderer. I was
+      in the rear, leading the pack horse. As the ascent grew steeper he grew
+      proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began to pull back on
+      his <i>riata</i> occasionally and delay progress. My comrades were passing
+      out of sight in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed and bullied the
+      pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then the tin cups and
+      pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran. His <i>riata</i>
+      was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by he dragged
+      me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on without me. But I
+      was not alone—the loosened cargo tumbled overboard from the pack
+      horse and fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the last cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A miner came out and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hello!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very
+      dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head appeared
+      in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked toward
+      me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “St! Listen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link263"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="263.jpg (75K)" src="images/263.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping
+      justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on a
+      boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure
+      what they did. One said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be
+      about there—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a
+      postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little
+      he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated secret
+      expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last, though the
+      Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when
+      he said he saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses—that was the noise. I
+      am going down to Welch’s, right away.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they went.
+      I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the
+      gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast
+      again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and as
+      day broke we reached the “divide” and joined Van Dorn. Then we
+      journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted
+      to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours
+      later the rest of the population filed over the “divide” in a
+      long procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the
+      Lake!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at
+      least one thing was certain—the secret was out and Whiteman would
+      not enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with
+      chagrin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and enjoy
+      a week’s holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is
+      sometimes called, and sometimes the “Dead Sea of California.”
+      It is one of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but
+      it is hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it
+      lies away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to
+      get at that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to
+      take upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our
+      second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on
+      the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered
+      it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We hired
+      a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived some ten
+      miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation. We soon got
+      thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its peculiarities.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch38"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand
+      feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand
+      feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn,
+      silent, sailless sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on
+      earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending
+      expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two
+      islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered
+      lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes,
+      the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has
+      seized upon and occupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link265"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="265.jpg (138K)" src="images/265.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong
+      with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into
+      them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it
+      had been through the ablest of washerwomen’s hands. While we camped
+      there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week’s washing astern
+      of our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all
+      to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a
+      rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water is
+      not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a valuable
+      dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him than sound
+      ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped overboard one day
+      to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment. In his condition, it
+      would have been just as comfortable to jump into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link266a"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="266a.jpg (44K)" src="images/266a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he
+      struck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped and barked
+      and howled as he went—and by the time he got to the shore there was
+      no bark to him—for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and
+      the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he probably
+      wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran round and
+      round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, and threw
+      double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in the most
+      extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a general thing,
+      but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I never saw him take
+      so much interest in anything before. He finally struck out over the
+      mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two hundred and fifty
+      miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about nine years ago. We look
+      for what is left of him along here every day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link266b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="266b.jpg (51K)" src="images/266b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure
+      lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes,
+      though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever
+      saw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to parties
+      requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high commendation
+      from some of the ablest minds of the age.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are no fish in Mono Lake—no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs—nothing,
+      in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild ducks and
+      sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists <i>under</i>
+      the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch long,
+      which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If you dip
+      up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of these. They
+      give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance. Then there is a fly,
+      which looks something like our house fly. These settle on the beach to eat
+      the worms that wash ashore—and any time, you can see there a belt of
+      flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt extends clear around
+      the lake—a belt of flies one hundred miles long. If you throw a
+      stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look dense, like a
+      cloud. You can hold them under water as long as you please—they do
+      not mind it—they are only proud of it. When you let them go, they
+      pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and walk off as
+      unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a view to
+      affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular way.
+      Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have their uses and
+      their part and proper place in Nature’s economy: the ducks eat the
+      flies—the flies eat the worms—the Indians eat all three—the
+      wild cats eat the Indians—the white folks eat the wild cats—and
+      thus all things are lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean—and
+      between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains—yet
+      thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear
+      their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And in
+      this connection let us observe another instance of Nature’s wisdom.
+      The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over with
+      ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or anything
+      that would burn; and sea-gull’s eggs being entirely useless to
+      anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of
+      boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there,
+      and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have made
+      during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling spring is a
+      spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge—and
+      if nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who
+      was crusty and disobliging, and didn’t know anything about the time
+      tables, or the railroad routes—or—anything—and was proud
+      of it—I would not wish for a more desirable boarding-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link268"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="268.jpg (51K)" src="images/268.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream
+      of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and
+      what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake—and
+      these are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next.
+      More than once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning
+      open up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o’clock, and
+      seen the snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical
+      thermometer go down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o’clock
+      at night. Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every
+      single month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the
+      climate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be
+      prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and
+      her snow shoes under the other. When they have a Fourth of July procession
+      it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general thing when a
+      man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it off with a
+      hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And it is further
+      reported that the old soakers haven’t any teeth—wore them out
+      eating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse that statement—I
+      simply give it for what it is worth—and it is worth—well, I
+      should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining
+      himself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July—because I
+      know that to be true.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch39"></a>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About seven o’clock one blistering hot morning—for it was now
+      dead summer time—Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage
+      of discovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but had
+      been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe
+      enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great difficulty—and
+      once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest swimming, for
+      that venomous water would eat a man’s eyes out like fire, and burn
+      him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve miles,
+      straight out to the islands—a long pull and a warm one—but the
+      morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and
+      dead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two large tin
+      canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality of the
+      spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie’s
+      brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our
+      destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than twelve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in the
+      canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackish
+      that we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search for the
+      spring—for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one
+      has no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderately
+      high hill of ashes—nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which
+      we sunk to our knees at every step—and all around the top was a
+      forbidding wall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and
+      got within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin,
+      carpeted with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places,
+      picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that
+      although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was
+      still some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets of steam
+      stood the only tree on the island—a small pine of most graceful
+      shape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, for
+      the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always
+      moist. It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful
+      outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerful
+      spirit in a mourning household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link271"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="271.jpg (56K)" src="images/271.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of the
+      island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice—climbing
+      ash-hills patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting
+      posture, plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing
+      but solitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence. Finally we noticed that
+      the wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater
+      importance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about
+      securing the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our landing
+      place, and then—but mere words cannot describe our dismay—the
+      boat was gone! The chances were that there was not another boat on the
+      entire lake. The situation was not comfortable—in truth, to speak
+      plainly, it was frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in
+      aggravating proximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid
+      us; and what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had
+      neither food nor water. But presently we sighted the boat. It was drifting
+      along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea. It
+      drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance from land,
+      and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us. At the
+      end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead and
+      posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. If we
+      failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving gradually shoreward
+      all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough to make the
+      connection or not was the momentous question. When it got within thirty
+      steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could hear my own heart
+      beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly along and seemed about to go
+      by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed as if my heart stood
+      still; and when it was exactly abreast him and began to widen away, and he
+      still standing like a watching statue, I knew my heart did stop. But when
+      he gave a great spring, the next instant, and lit fairly in the stern, I
+      discharged a war-whoop that woke the solitudes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link273"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="273.jpg (62K)" src="images/273.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been
+      caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it
+      passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to
+      shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that I
+      was, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could be
+      fatal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late,
+      too—three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward the
+      mainland or not, was a question of some moment. But we were so distressed
+      by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to work and I took
+      the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile, laboriously, we were
+      evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly augmented; the
+      billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests, the heavens
+      were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury. We would have
+      gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat around, because as
+      soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would upset, of course. Our
+      only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas. It was hard work to do
+      this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored the billows with her
+      rising and falling bows. Now and then one of Higbie’s oars would
+      trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would snatch the boat half
+      around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus. We were drenched by
+      the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally shipped water. By and by,
+      powerful as my comrade was, his great exertions began to tell on him, and
+      he was anxious that I should change places with him till he could rest a
+      little. But I told him this was impossible; for if the steering oar were
+      dropped a moment while we changed, the boat would slue around into the
+      trough of the sea, capsize, and in less than five minutes we would have a
+      hundred gallons of soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we
+      could not even be present at our own inquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we came
+      booming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah—I
+      dropped mine to help—the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she
+      went!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered
+      hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it—but
+      we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned
+      that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking
+      masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles
+      inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock
+      he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls’ eggs
+      deeply imbedded in the mass. How did they get there? I simply state the
+      fact—for it is a fact—and leave the geological reader to crack
+      the nut at his leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion,
+      and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished
+      successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was
+      between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling
+      ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet
+      deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers
+      flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost
+      freezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the
+      cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to
+      Esmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect,
+      set out alone for Humboldt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort of
+      interest to me, from the fact that it came so near “instigating”
+      my funeral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the
+      citizens hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to
+      hand when wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the
+      bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open ground
+      near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never thought
+      of it again. We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for us, and
+      he took up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancient stove reposed
+      within six feet of him, and before his face. Finally it occurred to him
+      that hot water would be better than cold, and he went out and fired up
+      under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle of water. Then he
+      returned to his tub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was
+      about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, and
+      disappeared, leaving not a splinter behind. Fragments of it fell in the
+      streets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roof over
+      our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a small
+      stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us and drove
+      partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white as a sheet and
+      as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayed no
+      trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stopped washing,
+      leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment, and then
+      remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link275"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="275.jpg (68K)" src="images/275.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mph! Dam stove heap gone!”—and resumed his scrubbing as
+      placidly as if it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I
+      will explain, that “heap” is “Injun-English” for
+      “very much.” The reader will perceive the exhaustive
+      expressiveness of it in the present instance.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="276.jpg (30K)" src="images/276.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch40"></a>
+      CHAPTER XL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had
+      yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside
+      toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking
+      quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended
+      deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled
+      the “Wide West.” There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep
+      on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the
+      rock that came from it—and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but
+      nothing extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the
+      inexperienced stranger all the quartz of a particular “district”
+      looks about alike, an old resident of the camp can take a glance at a
+      mixed pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you which mine each
+      came from, as easily as a confectioner can separate and classify the
+      various kinds and qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement.
+      In mining parlance the Wide West had “struck it rich!”
+      Everybody went to see the new developments, and for some days there was
+      such a crowd of people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would
+      have supposed there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic
+      was discussed but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about
+      anything else. Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand
+      mortar, washed it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the
+      marvelous result. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which
+      could be crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on
+      a paper exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of “native”
+      silver. Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it
+      out his amazement was beyond description. Wide West stock soared skywards.
+      It was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand
+      dollars a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the “blues”—the
+      mere sky-blues—but mine were indigo, now—because I did not own
+      in the Wide West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I
+      lost my appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had
+      to stay, and listen to other people’s rejoicings, because I had no
+      money to get out of the camp with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of “specimens,”
+      and well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sum of some
+      consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that a
+      sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the mouth
+      of the shaft, at <i>one dollar a pound</i>; and the man who bought it
+      “packed” it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles,
+      over the mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a
+      rate that would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West
+      people also commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives
+      permission to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my
+      “blue” meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too,
+      but of a different sort. He puzzled over the “rock,” examined
+      it with a glass, inspected it in different lights and from different
+      points of view, and after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy,
+      of one and the same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It is <i>not</i> Wide West rock!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West
+      shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he
+      got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night;
+      failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in
+      ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three
+      hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once,
+      but was premature—one of the men came back for something; tried it
+      again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose
+      up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the
+      ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the
+      mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and
+      slid down the shaft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link279"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="279.jpg (47K)" src="images/279.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He disappeared in the gloom of a “side drift” just as a head
+      appeared in the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted “Hello!”—which
+      he did not answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered
+      the cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and
+      exclaimed in a stage whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I knew it! We are rich! IT’S A BLIND LEAD!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt—conviction—doubt
+      again—exultation—hope, amazement, belief, unbelief—every
+      emotion imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain,
+      and I could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I
+      shook myself to rights, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Say it again!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s blind lead!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cal. let’s—let’s burn the house—or kill
+      somebody! Let’s get out where there’s room to hurrah! But what
+      is the use? It is a hundred times too good to be true.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s a blind lead, for a million!—hanging wall—foot
+      wall—clay casings—everything complete!” He swung his hat
+      and gave three cheers, and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a
+      will. For I was worth a million dollars, and did not care “whether
+      school kept or not!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link280"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="280.jpg (50K)" src="images/280.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps I ought to explain. A “blind lead” is a lead or
+      ledge that does not “crop out” above the surface. A miner does
+      not know where to look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by
+      accident in the course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew
+      the Wide West rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new
+      developments the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come
+      from the Wide West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the
+      camp, that there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the
+      Wide West people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went
+      down the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way
+      through the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was
+      enclosed in its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was
+      public property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for
+      any miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the
+      foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great
+      surprise to him. Higbie said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and
+      establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any
+      more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter—nobody
+      can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire
+      satisfaction that it <i>is</i> a blind lead. Now we propose to take you in
+      with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his
+      hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and without
+      wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his name? He
+      could only say, “Agreed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder’s
+      books before ten o’clock. We claimed two hundred feet each—six
+      hundred feet in all—the smallest and compactest organization in the
+      district, and the easiest to manage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.
+      Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake
+      and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace,
+      the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each
+      new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me bodily
+      over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an electric
+      battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of conversation back and
+      forth at each other. Once Higbie said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “When are you going home—to the States?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “To-morrow!”—with an evolution or two, ending with a
+      sitting position. “Well—no—but next month, at furthest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ll go in the same steamer.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Agreed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Steamer of the 10th?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes. No, the 1st.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All right.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Where are you going to live?” said Higbie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “San Francisco.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s me!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Too high—too much climbing”—from Higbie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What is?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was thinking of Russian Hill—building a house up there.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Too much climbing? Shan’t you keep a carriage?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course. I forgot that.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link282"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="282.jpg (70K)" src="images/282.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But what <i>kind</i>?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, I don’t hardly know. Brick, I suppose.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Brick—bosh.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why? What is your idea?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Brown stone front—French plate glass—billiard-room off
+      the dining-room—statuary and paintings—shrubbery and two-acre
+      grass plat—greenhouse—iron dog on the front stoop—gray
+      horses—landau, and a coachman with a bug on his hat!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “By George!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cal., when are you going to Europe?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well—I hadn’t thought of that. When are you?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the Spring.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Going to be gone all summer?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All summer! I shall remain there three years.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No—but are you in earnest?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Indeed I am.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I will go along too.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why of course you will.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What part of Europe shall you go to?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All parts. France, England, Germany—Spain, Italy,
+      Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt—all
+      over—everywhere.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m agreed.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All right.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Won’t it be a swell trip!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’ll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it
+      one, anyway.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another long pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening
+      to stop our—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hang the butcher!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Amen.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it went on. By three o’clock we found it was no use, and so
+      we got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my
+      week to cook. I always hated cooking—now, I abhorred it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news was all over town. The former excitement was great—this one
+      was greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said the
+      foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third of the
+      mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such price. My
+      ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly believe that
+      if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect than to make
+      me hold off for more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a three-
+      hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note for
+      it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was
+      actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other
+      evidences of a similar nature—among which I may mention the fact of
+      the butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about
+      money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the laws of the district, the “locators” or claimants of a
+      ledge were obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new
+      property within ten days after the date of the location, or the property
+      was forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we
+      determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the afternoon,
+      as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner, who told me
+      that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place (the “Nine-Mile
+      Ranch”), and that he and his wife were not able to give him nearly
+      as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if he would wait
+      for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. I ran to the
+      cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note on the table for
+      him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner’s wagon.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch41"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old
+      gentleman was himself—which is to say, he was kind-hearted and
+      agreeable when comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things
+      did not go well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a
+      sudden spasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his
+      smile into a perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the
+      anguish, and fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that
+      strong convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity
+      he could swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerable
+      judgment; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him,
+      he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself and
+      put up patiently with the inconveniences of the situation, and
+      consequently I was willing that he should have full license now that his
+      own turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving and
+      ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, night
+      and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering and
+      amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety of having
+      the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with the
+      dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for the
+      upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue I
+      feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust and
+      sunlight; likewise while I was content to put the coachman in a modest
+      livery, I was uncertain about a footman—I needed one, and was even
+      resolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform his
+      functions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show; and yet,
+      inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things, but no
+      liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him;—or beat his ghost, at any
+      rate; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get it
+      all laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it—everything,
+      with one exception—namely, whether to cross the desert from Cairo to
+      Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence down through the
+      country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the friends at home every
+      day, instructing them concerning all my plans and intentions, and
+      directing them to look up a handsome homestead for my mother and agree
+      upon a price for it against my coming, and also directing them to sell my
+      share of the Tennessee land and tender the proceeds to the widows’
+      and orphans’ fund of the typographical union of which I had long
+      been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee land had been in the
+      possession of the family many years, and promised to confer high fortune
+      upon us some day; it still promises it, but in a less violent way.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link287"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="287.jpg (69K)" src="images/287.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better, but
+      very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and gave him
+      an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the bed again.
+      We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced pain.
+      Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunate moment I
+      stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of torture. I
+      never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a maniac, and tried
+      to snatch a revolver from the table—but I got it. He ordered me out
+      of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would kill me wherever he
+      caught me when he got on his feet again. It was simply a passing fury, and
+      meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in an hour, and maybe be sorry
+      for it, too; but it angered me a little, at the moment. So much so,
+      indeed, that I determined to go back to Esmeralda. I thought he was able
+      to get along alone, now, since he was on the war path. I took supper, and
+      as soon as the moon rose, began my nine-mile journey, on foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile
+      jaunt without baggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I “raised the hill” overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen
+      minutes of twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in
+      the bright moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of
+      the village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave an
+      exulting bound, and I said to myself, “They have made a new strike
+      to-night—and struck it richer than ever, no doubt.” I started
+      over there, but gave it up. I said the “strick” would keep,
+      and I had climbed hill enough for one night. I went on down through the
+      town, and as I was passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and
+      begged me to come in and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went
+      in, and judged she was right—he appeared to have a hundred of them,
+      compressed into one. Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not
+      making much of a success of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and
+      routed out a sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four
+      wrestled with the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more
+      than an hour, and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet,
+      now, and the doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a little after one o’clock. As I entered the cabin door,
+      tired but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie,
+      sitting by the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his
+      fingers, and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at him.
+      He looked at me, stolidly. I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Higbie, what—what is it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We’re ruined—we didn’t do the work—THE
+      BLIND LEAD’S RELOCATED!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link288"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="288.jpg (57K)" src="images/288.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved—broken-hearted, indeed. A
+      minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and
+      very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and
+      useless self-upbraidings, busy with “Why <i>didn’t</i> I do
+      this, and why <i>didn’t</i> I do that,” but neither spoke a
+      word. Then we dropped into mutual explanations, and the mystery was
+      cleared away. It came out that Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him,
+      and as both of us had on the foreman. The folly of it! It was the first
+      time that ever staid and steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to
+      chance or failed to be true to his full share of a responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the
+      first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last. He,
+      also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon—had
+      ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a
+      hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a
+      broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained undisturbed
+      for nine days:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. has
+      passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at Mono Lake, and we
+      shall go on from there to-night. He says he will find it this time, sure.
+      CAL.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “W.” meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed “cement!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more withstand
+      the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this “cement”
+      foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was famishing.
+      Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for months; and now,
+      against his better judgment, he had gone off and “taken the chances”
+      on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered cement veins.
+      They had not been followed this time. His riding out of town in broad
+      daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had not attracted any
+      attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the fastnesses of the
+      mountains during nine days, without success; they could not find the
+      cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that something might have
+      happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold the blind lead
+      (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible), and forthwith he
+      started home with all speed. He would have reached Esmeralda in time, but
+      his horse broke down and he had to walk a great part of the distance. And
+      so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda by one road, I entered it by
+      another. His was the superior energy, however, for he went straight to the
+      Wide West, instead of turning aside as I had done—and he arrived
+      there about five or ten minutes too late! The “notice” was
+      already up, the “relocation” of our mine completed beyond
+      recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts before he
+      left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about the streets since the
+      night we had located the mine—a telegram had called him to
+      California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At any rate he had
+      done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were taking note of
+      the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge would be “relocatable,”
+      and by eleven o’clock the hill was black with men prepared to do the
+      relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when I fancied a new “strike”
+      had been made—idiot that I was.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="290.jpg (141K)" src="images/290.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had,
+      provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men,
+      duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their “notice”
+      and proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of
+      the “Johnson.” But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put
+      in a sudden appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his
+      hand, and said his name must be added to the list, or he would “thin
+      out the Johnson company some.” He was a manly, splendid, determined
+      fellow, and known to be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise
+      was effected. They put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to
+      themselves the customary two hundred feet each. Such was the history of
+      the night’s events, as Higbie gathered from a friend on the way
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning, glad
+      to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month or two of
+      hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more. Then we
+      learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had consolidated;
+      that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet, or shares; that
+      the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and considering such a huge
+      concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for ninety thousand dollars in
+      gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. If the stock was worth such
+      a gallant figure, with five thousand shares in the corporation, it makes
+      me dizzy to think what it would have been worth with only our original six
+      hundred in it. It was the difference between six hundred men owning a
+      house and five thousand owning it. We would have been millionaires if we
+      had only worked with pick and spade one little day on our property and so
+      secured our ownership!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses, and
+      likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is easily
+      obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have it to say
+      that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars, once,
+      for ten days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionaire partner,
+      Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in California that
+      after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving, he was at last in
+      a position where he could command twenty-five hundred dollars, and said he
+      meant to go into the fruit business in a modest way. How such a thought
+      would have insulted him the night we lay in our cabin planning European
+      trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill!
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch42"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What to do next?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for
+      myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends;
+      and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian
+      stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not
+      live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had
+      gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody with
+      my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty in the
+      matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work—which I did not, after
+      being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day, but had
+      consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from further duty
+      by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he could have my
+      custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given it up because it
+      was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the study of
+      blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows so that
+      it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in disgrace, and
+      told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller’s clerk for
+      awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any
+      comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a
+      limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but my
+      prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps
+      than soda water. So I had to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link293"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="293.jpg (43K)" src="images/293.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I
+      would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection
+      thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda <i>Union</i>, and
+      besides I had always been such a slow compositor that I looked with envy
+      upon the achievements of apprentices of two years’ standing; and
+      when I took a “take,” foremen were in the habit of suggesting
+      that it would be wanted “some time during the year.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means
+      ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty
+      dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a
+      wheel again and never roam any more—but I had been making such an
+      ass of myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and
+      my European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed
+      miner had done before; said “It is all over with me now, and I will
+      never go back home to be pitied—and snubbed.” I had been a
+      private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and
+      amounted to less than nothing in each, and now—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What to do next?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I yielded to Higbie’s appeals and consented to try the mining once
+      more. We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little
+      rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie
+      descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened up
+      a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled shovel
+      (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out. You
+      must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is full,
+      and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your left shoulder.
+      I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the shaft and it
+      all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I never said a
+      word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly resolved that I would
+      starve before I would make a target of myself and shoot rubbish at it with
+      a long-handled shovel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link294"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="294.jpg (50K)" src="images/294.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery—so to
+      speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters to
+      the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial
+      Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My
+      good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to me
+      that they might have found something better to fill up with than my
+      literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from
+      the hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know what
+      Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when
+      no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of
+      Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city editor of
+      the Enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have challenged the publisher in the “blind lead” days—I
+      wanted to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week—it
+      looked like bloated luxury—a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of
+      money. But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and
+      consequent unfitness for the position—and straightway, on top of
+      this, my long array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this
+      place I must presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a
+      thing necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a
+      humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to <i>be</i> proud
+      of, since it is so common—but then it was all I had to <i>be</i>
+      proud of. So I was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined,
+      otherwise. Necessity is the mother of “taking chances.” I do
+      not doubt that if, at that time, I had been offered a salary to translate
+      the Talmud from the original Hebrew, I would have accepted—albeit
+      with diffidence and some misgivings—and thrown as much variety into
+      it as I could for the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link295"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="295.jpg (34K)" src="images/295.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty
+      looking city editor, I am free to confess—coatless, slouch hat, blue
+      woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to
+      the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I secured
+      a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do so,
+      but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in order
+      that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and a
+      subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carried
+      revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I will
+      call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for some
+      instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town
+      and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the
+      information gained, and write them out for publication. And he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never say ‘We learn’ so-and-so, or ‘It is
+      reported,’ or ‘It is rumored,’ or ‘We understand’
+      so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get the absolute facts, and then
+      speak out and say ‘It <i>is</i> so-and-so.’ Otherwise, people
+      will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainty is the thing
+      that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a
+      reporter commencing his article with “We understand,” I gather
+      a suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he
+      ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well
+      when I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too often
+      when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day’s
+      experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody,
+      boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end of
+      five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time
+      when there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the
+      Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and all
+      that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link296"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="296.jpg (34K)" src="images/296.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It isn’t sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks
+      business like.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging
+      in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by
+      sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, made
+      sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay
+      as Virginia City had never seen in the world before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was
+      getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a
+      desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never was
+      so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the murderer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this
+      day which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you
+      any slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you
+      have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count
+      me your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link297"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="297.jpg (44K)" src="images/297.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching
+      desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to details,
+      and when it was finished experienced but one regret—namely, that
+      they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work him up
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and
+      found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and had
+      fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the circumstances
+      permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within rigid limits by the
+      presence of the reporters of the other papers I could add particulars that
+      would make the article much more interesting. However, I found one wagon
+      that was going on to California, and made some judicious inquiries of the
+      proprietor. When I learned, through his short and surly answers to my
+      cross-questioning, that he was certainly going on and would not be in the
+      city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the other papers, for I took
+      down his list of names and added his party to the killed and wounded.
+      Having more scope here, I put this wagon through an Indian fight that to
+      this day has no parallel in history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt
+      that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within
+      myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and I
+      felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr.
+      Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no higher
+      commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could take my
+      pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and the
+      interests of the paper demanded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link298"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="298.jpg (22K)" src="images/298.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch43"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the run
+      of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to any
+      large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging
+      noticeably from the domain of fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we
+      swapped “regulars” with each other and thus economized work.
+      “Regulars” are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion
+      returns, “clean-ups” at the quartz mills, and inquests.
+      Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we had an inquest about every day, and
+      so this department was naturally set down among the “regulars.”
+      We had lively papers in those days. My great competitor among the
+      reporters was Boggs of the <i>Union</i>. He was an excellent reporter.
+      Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated, but as a
+      general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker although always ready to
+      tamper a little with the enemy. He had the advantage of me in one thing;
+      he could get the monthly public school report and I could not, because the
+      principal hated the <i>Enterprise</i>. One snowy night when the report was
+      due, I started out sadly wondering how I was going to get it. Presently, a
+      few steps up the almost deserted street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him
+      where he was going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “After the school report.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll go along with you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, <i>sir</i>. I’ll excuse you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Just as you say.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A saloon-keeper’s boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot
+      punch, and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after
+      the boy and saw him start up the <i>Enterprise</i> stairs. I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you
+      can’t, I must run up to the <i>Union</i> office and see if I can get
+      them to let me have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don’t
+      begin to suppose they will. Good night.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hold on a minute. I don’t mind getting the report and sitting
+      around with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you’re willing
+      to drop down to the principal’s with me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now you talk like a rational being. Come along.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and returned
+      to our office. It was a short document and soon copied. Meantime Boggs
+      helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript back to him and we
+      started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots near by. We got
+      the particulars with little loss of time, for it was only an inferior sort
+      of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the public, and then we
+      separated. Away at three o’clock in the morning, when we had gone to
+      press and were having a relaxing concert as usual—for some of the
+      printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on
+      that atrocity the accordion—the proprietor of the <i>Union</i>
+      strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of Boggs or
+      the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for
+      the delinquent. We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old
+      tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a
+      gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity of squandering the
+      public moneys on education “when hundreds and hundreds of honest
+      hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey.” [Riotous
+      applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for
+      hours. We dragged him away and put him to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link301"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="301.jpg (93K)" src="images/301.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was no school report in the <i>Union</i>, and Boggs held
+      me accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to
+      compass its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the
+      misfortune had occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was next
+      due, the proprietor of the “Genessee” mine furnished us a
+      buggy and asked us to go down and write something about the property—a
+      very common request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished
+      buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In
+      due time we arrived at the “mine”—nothing but a hole in
+      the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of getting down into it but by
+      holding on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass. The workmen had
+      just gone off somewhere to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs’s
+      bulk; so I took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot
+      in the end of the rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the
+      windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over the shaft. I
+      reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the
+      candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some specimens and
+      shouted to Boggs to hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in
+      the circle of daylight away aloft, and a voice came down:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Are you all set?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All set—hoist away.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Are you comfortable?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Perfectly.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Could you wait a little?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh certainly—no particular hurry.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well—good by.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why? Where are you going?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “After the school report!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link302"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="302.jpg (71K)" src="images/302.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when
+      they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. I
+      walked home, too—five miles—up hill. We had no school report
+      next morning; but the <i>Union</i> had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Six months after my entry into journalism the grand “flush times”
+      of Silverland began, and they continued with unabated splendor for three
+      years. All difficulty about filling up the “local department”
+      ceased, and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns
+      hold the world of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net
+      every day. Virginia had grown to be the “livest” town, for its
+      age and population, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed
+      with people—to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy
+      matter to stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded
+      with quartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession was
+      endless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half
+      an hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on every
+      countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in every eye,
+      that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in every brain
+      and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was as plenty as
+      dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a melancholy
+      countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military companies, fire
+      companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, “hurdy-gurdy
+      houses,” wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic
+      processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every
+      fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City
+      Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and Third
+      Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police force, two
+      Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen jails and
+      station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a church. The
+      “flush times” were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proof
+      brick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the wooden
+      suburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up to
+      prices that were amazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great “Comstock lode” stretched its opulent length
+      straight through the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in
+      diligent process of development. One of these mines alone employed six
+      hundred and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage
+      was, “as the ‘Gould and Curry’ goes, so goes the city.”
+      Laboring men’s wages were four and six dollars a day, and they
+      worked in three “shifts” or gangs, and the blasting and
+      picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night and day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “city” of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep
+      side of Mount Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of
+      the sea, and in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of
+      fifty miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen
+      thousand, and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets
+      like bees and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the
+      “Comstock,” hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under
+      those same streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom
+      of a blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to it like
+      a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the next street below
+      the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses were level
+      with the street they faced, but their rear first floors were propped on
+      lofty stilts; a man could stand at a rear first floor window of a C street
+      house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses below him facing D
+      street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere, to ascend from
+      D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when you got there;
+      but you could turn around and go down again like a house a-fire—so
+      to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of the great
+      altitude, that one’s blood lay near the surface always, and the
+      scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chances were
+      that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, the thin
+      atmosphere seemed to carry healing to gunshot wounds, and therefore, to
+      simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likely to
+      afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain to
+      be around looking for you within the month, and not with an opera glass,
+      either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link304"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="304.jpg (102K)" src="images/304.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Virginia’s airy situation one could look over a vast,
+      far-reaching panorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and whether the day
+      was bright or overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming
+      in the zenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was
+      always impressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its
+      gray dome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented
+      hills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was
+      glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, bordered
+      with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe;
+      and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their
+      long barrier to the filmy horizon—far enough beyond a lake that
+      burned in the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty
+      miles removed. Look from your window where you would, there was
+      fascination in the picture. At rare intervals—but very rare—there
+      were clouds in our skies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush
+      and glorify this mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of
+      color that held the eye like a spell and moved the spirit like music.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch44"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. I
+      had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar gold
+      pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome
+      abundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never come into
+      use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative, and every man in the
+      town was lavish with his money and his “feet.” The city and
+      all the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were
+      more mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock
+      worth hauling to a mill, but everybody said, “Wait till the shaft
+      gets down where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!” So
+      nobody was discouraged. These were nearly all “wild cat”
+      mines, and wholly worthless, but nobody believed it then. The “Ophir,”
+      the “Gould &amp; Curry,” the “Mexican,” and other
+      great mines on the Comstock lead in Virginia and Gold Hill were turning
+      out huge piles of rich rock every day, and every man believed that his
+      little wild cat claim was as good as any on the “main lead”
+      and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a foot when he “got
+      down where it came in solid.” Poor fellow, he was blessedly blind to
+      the fact that he never would see that day. So the thousand wild cat shafts
+      burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day by day, and all men were
+      beside themselves with hope and happiness. How they labored, prophesied,
+      exulted! Surely nothing like it was ever seen before since the world
+      began. Every one of these wild cat mines—not mines, but holes in the
+      ground over imaginary mines—was incorporated and had handsomely
+      engraved “stock” and the stock was salable, too. It was bought
+      and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. You could go up
+      on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there was no lack
+      of them), put up a “notice” with a grandiloquent name in it,
+      start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove
+      that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market
+      and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money,
+      and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link307"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="307.jpg (54K)" src="images/307.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every man owned “feet” in fifty different wild cat mines and
+      considered his fortune made. Think of a city with not one solitary poor
+      man in it! One would suppose that when month after month went by and still
+      not a wild cat mine (by wild cat I mean, in general terms, <i>any</i>
+      claim not located on the mother vein, i.e., the “Comstock”)
+      yielded a ton of rock worth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if
+      they were not putting too much faith in their prospective riches; but
+      there was not a thought of such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and
+      sold, and were happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run
+      straight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty
+      “feet,” and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a
+      notice of it. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so
+      you said something. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the
+      effect that the “indications” were good, or that the ledge was
+      “six feet wide,” or that the rock “resembled the
+      Comstock” (and so it did—but as a general thing the
+      resemblance was not startling enough to knock you down). If the rock was
+      moderately promising, we followed the custom of the country, used strong
+      adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a very marvel in silver
+      discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a “developed” one,
+      and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn’t), we praised the
+      tunnel; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels in the land;
+      driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely out of
+      ecstasies—but never said a word about the rock. We would squander
+      half a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressed
+      pine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst of
+      admiration of the “gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent”
+      of the mine—but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those
+      people were always pleased, always satisfied. Occasionally we patched up
+      and varnished our reputation for discrimination and stern, undeviating
+      accuracy, by giving some old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have
+      made its dry bones rattle—and then somebody would seize it and sell
+      it on the fleeting notoriety thus conferred upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was <i>nothing</i> in the shape of a mining claim that was not
+      salable. We received presents of “feet” every day. If we
+      needed a hundred dollars or so, we sold some; if not, we hoarded it away,
+      satisfied that it would ultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I
+      had a trunk about half full of “stock.” When a claim made a
+      stir in the market and went up to a high figure, I searched through my
+      pile to see if I had any of its stock—and generally found it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prices rose and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us little,
+      because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were content
+      to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of
+      stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims “noticed.”
+      At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a
+      thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal “thank you;”
+      and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. If you are coming up
+      the street with a couple of baskets of apples in your hands, and you meet
+      a friend, you naturally invite him to take a few. That describes the
+      condition of things in Virginia in the “flush times.” Every
+      man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actual <i>custom</i> of
+      the country to part with small quantities of it to friends without the
+      asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link309"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="309.jpg (41K)" src="images/309.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when a
+      man offered a stock present to a friend, for the offer was only good and
+      binding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortly
+      afterward the procrastination was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart
+      (Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me he would give me twenty feet
+      of “Justis” stock if I would walk over to his office. It was
+      worth five or ten dollars a foot. I asked him to make the offer good for
+      next day, as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town;
+      so I risked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week
+      the price went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty,
+      but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock of
+      mine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge will be
+      found in the accompanying portrait.] I met three friends one afternoon,
+      who said they had been buying “Overman” stock at auction at
+      eight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he would
+      give me fifteen feet; another said he would add fifteen; the third said he
+      would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could not stop. A
+      few weeks afterward they sold all their “Overman” at six
+      hundred dollars a foot and generously came around to tell me about it—and
+      also to urge me to accept of the next forty-five feet of it that people
+      tried to force on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link310"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="310.jpg (27K)" src="images/310.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and still
+      confine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us as much
+      as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollars a
+      foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering a guest a
+      cigar. These were “flush times” indeed! I thought they were
+      going to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community, I
+      will remark that “claims” were actually “located”
+      in excavations for cellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be
+      quartz veins—and not cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very
+      heart of the city; and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the
+      market. It was small matter who the cellar belonged to—the “ledge”
+      belonged to the finder, and unless the United States government interfered
+      (inasmuch as the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble
+      metals in Nevada—or at least did then), it was considered to be his
+      privilege to work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among
+      the costly shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste
+      the ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often
+      done in California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets
+      of Virginia, a man “located” a mining claim and began a shaft
+      on it. He gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine
+      suit of clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft
+      and sue for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the
+      middle of another street; and to show how absurd people can be, that
+      “East India” stock (as it was called) sold briskly although
+      there was an ancient tunnel running directly under the claim and any man
+      could go into it and see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything
+      that remotely resembled one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to “salt” a wild cat
+      claim and sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link311"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="311.jpg (69K)" src="images/311.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagon
+      load of rich “Comstock” ore, dumped a portion of it into the
+      shaft and piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the
+      property to a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the
+      wagon load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his
+      purchase. A most remarkable case of “salting” was that of the
+      “North Ophir.” It was claimed that this vein was a “remote
+      extension” of the original “Ophir,” a valuable mine on
+      the “Comstock.” For a few days everybody was talking about the
+      rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that it yielded
+      perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the place with the
+      owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the bottom of which
+      was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish, unpromising rock. One would
+      as soon expect to find silver in a grindstone. We got out a pan of the
+      rubbish and washed it in a puddle, and sure enough, among the sediment we
+      found half a dozen black, bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable “native”
+      silver. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing before; science could not
+      account for such a queer novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a
+      foot, and at this figure the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan,
+      bought a commanding interest and prepared to quit the stage once more—he
+      was always doing that. And then it transpired that the mine had been
+      “salted”—and not in any hackneyed way, either, but in a
+      singularly bold, barefaced and peculiarly original and outrageous fashion.
+      On one of the lumps of “native” silver was discovered the
+      minted legend, “TED STATES OF,” and then it was plainly
+      apparent that the mine had been “salted” with melted
+      half-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they
+      resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in
+      the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of the
+      stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for this
+      calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch45"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “flush times” held bravely on. Something over two years
+      before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty
+      dollars and set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new
+      city of Virginia. They found the <i>Territorial Enterprise</i>, a
+      poverty-stricken weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die.
+      They bought it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars,
+      on long time. The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication
+      office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one
+      apartment and it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on
+      the floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the “imposing-stone”
+      was the general dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was a
+      great daily, printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-three
+      compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; the
+      advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paper was
+      clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the “Enterprise
+      Building” was finished and ready for occupation—a stately
+      fireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns of
+      “live” advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic
+      and irregular “supplements.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “Gould &amp; Curry” company were erecting a monster
+      hundred-stamp mill at a cost that ultimately fell little short of a
+      million dollars. Gould &amp; Curry stock paid heavy dividends—a rare
+      thing, and an experience confined to the dozen or fifteen claims located
+      on the “main lead,” the “Comstock.” The
+      Superintendent of the Gould &amp; Curry lived, rent free, in a fine house
+      built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of horses which
+      were a present from the company, and his salary was twelve thousand
+      dollars a year. The superintendent of another of the great mines traveled
+      in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousand dollars a year, and
+      in a law suit in after days claimed that he was to have had one per cent.
+      on the gross yield of the bullion likewise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it,—but
+      how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it
+      was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wires
+      that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money
+      was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the Union
+      languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it came word
+      that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram was half a
+      day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was hurriedly
+      organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street and tried to
+      make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of the committee
+      were flying hither and thither and working with all their might and main,
+      and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would be ready,
+      books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive contributions. His
+      voice was drowned and his information lost in a ceaseless roar of cheers,
+      and demands that the money be received <i>now</i>—they swore they
+      would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but, deaf to all
+      entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rained checks of
+      gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands clutching money,
+      were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this eloquent appeal
+      would cleave a road their strugglings could not open. The very Chinamen
+      and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half dollars into the
+      cart without knowing or caring what it was all about. Women plunged into
+      the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the cart with their coin,
+      and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in a state of hopeless
+      dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had ever seen and the most
+      determined and ungovernable; and when at last it abated its fury and
+      dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link315"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="315.jpg (125K)" src="images/315.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To use its own phraseology, it came there “flush” and went
+      away “busted.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and
+      for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous stream.
+      Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon themselves a
+      regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduated according to their
+      means, and there was not another grand universal outburst till the famous
+      “Sanitary Flour Sack” came our way. Its history is peculiar
+      and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of Reuel
+      Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese river
+      country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. He and
+      the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man should be
+      publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the successful one,
+      and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was defeated. The new
+      mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it and carried it a
+      mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper Austin, attended by a
+      band of music and the whole population. Arrived there, he said he did not
+      need the flour, and asked what the people thought he had better do with
+      it. A voice said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary
+      fund.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted a
+      dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher and
+      higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at last
+      the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars,
+      and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered,
+      and he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Nowhere—sell it again.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the
+      spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till
+      the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack to
+      three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in
+      gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link317"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="317.jpg (157K)" src="images/317.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fetch along your flour sack!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting
+      was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had come
+      sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused, and
+      the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been
+      secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However,
+      there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge
+      vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the night
+      the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow’s campaign,
+      and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. At eleven the
+      next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by clamorous bands
+      of music and adorned with a moving display of flags, filed along C street
+      and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing multitude of citizens. In
+      the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour sack in prominent view, the
+      latter splendid with bright paint and gilt lettering; also in the same
+      carriage sat the mayor and the recorder. The other carriages contained the
+      Common Council, the editors and reporters, and other people of imposing
+      consequence. The crowd pressed to the corner of C and Taylor streets,
+      expecting the sale to begin there, but they were disappointed, and also
+      unspeakably surprised; for the cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had
+      ceased to be of importance, and took its way over the “divide,”
+      toward the small town of Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill,
+      Silver City and Dayton, and those communities were at fever heat and rife
+      for the conflict. It was a very hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end
+      of a short half hour we descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and
+      colors flying, and enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole
+      population—men, women and children, Chinamen and Indians, were
+      massed in the main street, all the flags in town were at the mast head,
+      and the blare of the bands was drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and
+      asked who would make the first bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack.
+      Gen. W. said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars,
+      coin!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia,
+      and fifteen minutes afterward that city’s population was massed in
+      the streets devouring the tidings—for it was part of the programme
+      that the bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes
+      a new dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement
+      grew. Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to
+      bring back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At
+      the end of an hour Gold Hill’s small population had paid a figure
+      for the flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the
+      grand total was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley
+      cavalcade moved on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it—for
+      the people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it—and
+      within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton
+      by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been
+      telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia and
+      filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad
+      in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing,
+      cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at
+      discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of
+      applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen
+      thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum
+      equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! It was at a rate in the
+      neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the
+      population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the
+      streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get
+      within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These
+      grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction
+      was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also in
+      San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two Atlantic
+      cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he finally carried
+      it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held, and after
+      selling it there for a large sum and helping on the enthusiasm by
+      displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada’s donation had
+      produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed them at
+      high prices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was estimated that when the flour sack’s mission was ended it had
+      been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
+      greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common
+      family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is due to Mr. Gridley’s memory to mention that the expenses of
+      his sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and
+      returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own pocket.
+      The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr. Gridley was a
+      soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. He died at Stockton,
+      California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link319"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="319.jpg (51K)" src="images/319.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch46"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were nabobs in those days—in the “flush times,” I
+      mean. Every rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind
+      several of these. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general
+      thing, and the community at large was as much benefited by their riches as
+      they were themselves—possibly more, in some cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a small
+      segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They gave an
+      outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But not long.
+      Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each owner $8,000
+      to $10,000 a month—say $100,000 a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth
+      of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not
+      spend his money as fast as he made it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a month;
+      and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine that
+      yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link321"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="321.jpg (31K)" src="images/321.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of
+      fortune—lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single
+      night—who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official
+      distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it—but failed to get
+      it, his politics not being as sound as his bank account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul, born
+      and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant. He drove
+      a team, and owned a small ranch—a ranch that paid him a comfortable
+      living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little it did yield
+      was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market. Presently Smith
+      traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped silver mine in
+      Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little unpretending ten-stamp
+      mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired from the hay business, for his
+      mining income had reached a most comfortable figure. Some people said it
+      was $30,000 a month, and others said it was $60,000. Smith was very rich
+      at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he was
+      never tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, and the
+      gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had noticed in
+      the vicinity of Rome. He was full of wonders of the old world, and advised
+      everybody to travel. He said a man never imagined what surprising things
+      there were in the world till he had traveled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which was
+      to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the run
+      of the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the
+      figures were all in the purser’s hands in sealed envelopes. Smith
+      was serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But another
+      party won the prize! Smith said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Here, that won’t do! He guessed two miles wider of the mark
+      than I did.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The purser said, “Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on
+      board. We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, sir,” said Smith, “that’s just where I’ve
+      got you, for I guessed two hundred and nine. If you’ll look at my
+      figgers again you’ll find a 2 and two 0’s, which stands for 200, don’t
+      it?—and after ’em you’ll find a 9 (2009), which stands
+      for two hundred and nine. I reckon I’ll take that money, if you
+      please.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Gould &amp; Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it all
+      belonged originally to the two men whose names it bears. Mr. Curry owned
+      two thirds of it—and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five
+      hundred dollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market
+      value in hay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that
+      Gould sold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bottle
+      of whisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffending
+      stranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterward
+      the mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market seven
+      millions six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a canyon
+      directly back of Virginia City, had a stream of water as large as a man’s
+      wrist trickling from the hill-side on his premises. The Ophir Company
+      segregated a hundred feet of their mine and traded it to him for the
+      stream of water. The hundred feet proved to be the richest part of the
+      entire mine; four years after the swap, its market value (including its
+      mill) was $1,500,000.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An individual who owned twenty feet in the Ophir mine before its great
+      riches were revealed to men, traded it for a horse, and a very sorry
+      looking brute he was, too. A year or so afterward, when Ophir stock went
+      up to $3,000 a foot, this man, who had not a cent, used to say he was the
+      most startling example of magnificence and misery the world had ever seen—because
+      he was able to ride a sixty-thousand-dollar horse—yet could not
+      scrape up cash enough to buy a saddle, and was obliged to borrow one or
+      ride bareback. He said if fortune were to give him another
+      sixty-thousand-dollar horse it would ruin him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link323"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="323.jpg (46K)" src="images/323.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A youth of nineteen, who was a telegraph operator in Virginia on a salary
+      of a hundred dollars a month, and who, when he could not make out German
+      names in the list of San Francisco steamer arrivals, used to ingeniously
+      select and supply substitutes for them out of an old Berlin city
+      directory, made himself rich by watching the mining telegrams that passed
+      through his hands and buying and selling stocks accordingly, through a
+      friend in San Francisco. Once when a private dispatch was sent from
+      Virginia announcing a rich strike in a prominent mine and advising that
+      the matter be kept secret till a large amount of the stock could be
+      secured, he bought forty “feet” of the stock at twenty dollars
+      a foot, and afterward sold half of it at eight hundred dollars a foot and
+      the rest at double that figure. Within three months he was worth $150,000,
+      and had resigned his telegraphic position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company for
+      divulging the secrets of the office, agreed with a moneyed man in San
+      Francisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuit
+      within an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in San
+      Francisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits on
+      purchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went,
+      disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the
+      mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day
+      after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and
+      unable to travel—and meantime listening to the dispatches as they
+      passed clicking through the machine from Virginia. Finally the private
+      dispatch announcing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as
+      soon as he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the signal agreed upon. The word “waiting” left out,
+      would have signified that the suit had gone the other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mock teamster’s friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at
+      low figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had been
+      incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the
+      hands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers. The stock
+      became very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but he
+      had disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one or two
+      speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news came that he
+      was in the Bermudas, and straightway a speculator or two hurried east and
+      sailed for Bermuda—but he was not there. Finally he was heard of in
+      Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scraped together a
+      little money and sought him out, bought his “feet” for a
+      hundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75,000.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why go on? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instances like
+      these, and I would never get through enumerating them were I to attempt do
+      it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of a peculiarity of the
+      “flush times” which I could not present so strikingly in any
+      other way, and which some mention of was necessary to a realizing
+      comprehension of the time and the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I have
+      referred to, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I have shifted their
+      occupations and experiences around in such a way as to keep the Pacific
+      public from recognizing these once notorious men. No longer notorious, for
+      the majority of them have drifted back into poverty and obscurity again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adventure of two of her
+      nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it is
+      worth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the world, and knew more or less of its
+      ways; but Col. Jack was from the back settlements of the States, had led a
+      life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessed with
+      sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York,—Col. Jack to see the
+      sights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. They
+      reached San Francisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrived in
+      New York, Col. Jack said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to
+      have a ride in one; I don’t care what it costs. Come along.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche.
+      But Col. Jack said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>No</i>, sir! None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me. I’m
+      here to have a good time, and money ain’t any object. I mean to have
+      the nobbiest rig that’s going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop
+      that yaller one with the pictures on it—don’t you fret—I’ll
+      stand all the expenses myself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ain’t it gay, though? Oh, no, I reckon not! Cushions, and
+      windows, and pictures, till you can’t rest. What would the boys say
+      if they <i>could</i> see us cutting a swell like this in New York? By
+      George, I wish they could see us.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Say, Johnny, this suits <i>me</i>!—suits yours truly, you
+      bet, you! I want this shebang all day. I’m <i>on</i> it, old man!
+      Let ’em out! Make ’em go! We’ll make it all right with
+      <i>you</i>, sonny!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for his fare—it
+      was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took the hand, and
+      shook it cordially. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link326"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="326.jpg (51K)" src="images/326.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You twig me, old pard! All right between gents. Smell of <i>that</i>,
+      and see how you like it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver’s hand. After a
+      moment the driver said he could not make change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bother the change! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Ain’t</i> it style, though? Hanged if I don’t hire
+      this thing every day for a week.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment,
+      then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t say a word,” he whispered. “Let her ride,
+      if she wants to. Gracious, there’s room enough.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col.
+      Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What’s this for?” said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Give it to the driver, please.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Take back your money, madam. We can’t allow it. You’re
+      welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this shebang’s
+      chartered, and we can’t let you pay a cent.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link327"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="327.jpg (34K)" src="images/327.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basket
+      climbed in, and proffered her fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Excuse me,” said Col. Jack. “You’re perfectly
+      welcome here, madam, but we can’t allow you to pay. Set right down
+      there, mum, and don’t you be the least uneasy. Make yourself just as
+      free as if you was in your own turn-out.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of
+      children, entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come right along, friends,” said Col. Jack; “don’t
+      mind <i>us</i>. This is a free blow-out.” Then he whispered to Col.
+      Jim,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “New York ain’t no sociable place, I don’t reckon—it
+      ain’t no <i>name</i> for it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybody
+      cordially welcome. The situation dawned on the people, and they pocketed
+      their money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of the
+      episode. Half a dozen more passengers entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, there’s <i>plenty</i> of room,” said Col. Jack.
+      “Walk right in, and make yourselves at home. A blow-out ain’t
+      worth anything <i>as</i> a blow-out, unless a body has company.”
+      Then in a whisper to Col. Jim: “But <i>ain’t</i> these New
+      Yorkers friendly? And ain’t they cool about it, too? Icebergs ain’t
+      anywhere. I reckon they’d tackle a hearse, if it was going their
+      way.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More passengers got in; more yet, and still more. Both seats were filled,
+      and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleats overhead.
+      Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof.
+      Half-suppressed laughter rippled up from all sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don’t bang
+      anything that ever I saw, I’m an Injun!” whispered Col. Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Chinaman crowded his way in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I weaken!” said Col. Jack. “Hold on, driver! Keep your
+      seats, ladies, and gents. Just make yourselves free—everything’s
+      paid for. Driver, rustle these folks around as long as they’re a
+      mind to go—friends of ours, you know. Take them everywheres—and
+      if you want more money, come to the St. Nicholas, and we’ll make it
+      all right. Pleasant journey to you, ladies and gents—go it just as
+      long as you please—it shan’t cost you a cent!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link328"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="328.jpg (93K)" src="images/328.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Jimmy, it’s the sociablest place <i>I</i> ever saw. The
+      Chinaman waltzed in as comfortable as anybody. If we’d staid awhile,
+      I reckon we’d had some niggers. B’ George, we’ll have to
+      barricade our doors to-night, or some of these ducks will be trying to
+      sleep with us.”
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch47"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody has said that in order to know a community, one must observe the
+      style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most
+      ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with most eclat in our
+      “flush times,” the distinguished public benefactor or the
+      distinguished rough—possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions
+      of society honored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, no
+      doubt the philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two
+      representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a
+      representative citizen. He had “killed his man”—not in
+      his own quarrel, it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset
+      by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of
+      a dashing helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a
+      divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and been a
+      very Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation
+      throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a
+      wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body,
+      cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck—and
+      after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence
+      unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death “by the
+      visitation of God.” What could the world do without juries?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles in
+      town were hired, all the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal and
+      fire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered to
+      muster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now—let
+      us remark in parenthesis—as all the peoples of the earth had
+      representative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had
+      brought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combination
+      made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and
+      copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps, except in
+      the mines of California in the “early days.” Slang was the
+      language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be
+      understood. Such phrases as “You bet!” “Oh, no, I reckon
+      not!” “No Irish need apply,” and a hundred others,
+      became so common as to fall from the lips of a speaker unconsciously—and
+      very often when they did not touch the subject under discussion and
+      consequently failed to mean anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Buck Fanshaw’s inquest, a meeting of the short-haired
+      brotherhood was held, for nothing can be done on the Pacific coast without
+      a public meeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions
+      were passed and various committees appointed; among others, a committee of
+      one was deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle, spiritual new
+      fledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet unacquainted
+      with the ways of the mines. The committeeman, “Scotty” Briggs,
+      made his visit; and in after days it was worth something to hear the
+      minister tell about it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary suit,
+      when on weighty official business, like committee work, was a fire helmet,
+      flaming red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and revolver
+      attached, coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed into boot tops. He formed
+      something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It is fair to say
+      of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart, and a strong
+      love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when he could
+      reasonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said that whenever one
+      of Scotty’s fights was investigated, it always turned out that it
+      had originally been no affair of his, but that out of native
+      goodheartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man who
+      was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for
+      years, and had often taken adventurous “pot-luck” together. On
+      one occasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in
+      a fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turned
+      and found that the men they were helping had deserted early, and not only
+      that, but had stolen their coats and made off with them! But to return to
+      Scotty’s visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now,
+      and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he sat
+      down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinished manuscript
+      sermon under the minister’s nose, took from it a red silk
+      handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness,
+      explanatory of his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voice
+      and said in lugubrious tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Am I the—pardon me, I believe I do not understand?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe
+      you would give us a lift, if we’d tackle you—that is, if I’ve
+      got the rights of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next
+      door.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The which?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose
+      sanctuary adjoins these premises.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link331"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="331.jpg (76K)" src="images/331.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can’t call that
+      hand. Ante and pass the buck.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, you’ve ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we’ve
+      both got the bulge, somehow. You don’t smoke me and I don’t
+      smoke you. You see, one of the boys has passed in his checks and we want
+      to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I’m on now is to roust
+      out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through
+      handsome.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your
+      observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them
+      in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now.
+      Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical
+      statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor
+      and allegory?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ll have to pass, I judge.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve raised me out, pard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I still fail to catch your meaning.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me—that’s
+      the idea. I can’t neither trump nor follow suit.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head on
+      his hand and gave himself up to thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve got it now, so’s you can savvy,” he said.
+      “What we want is a gospel-sharp. See?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A what?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gospel-sharp. Parson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman—a parson.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it
+      there!”—extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister’s
+      small hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and
+      fervent gratification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now we’re all right, pard. Let’s start fresh. Don’t
+      you mind my snuffling a little—becuz we’re in a power of
+      trouble. You see, one of the boys has gone up the flume—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gone where?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Up the flume—throwed up the sponge, you understand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Thrown up the sponge?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes—kicked the bucket—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ah—has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne
+      no traveler returns.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Return! I reckon not. Why pard, he’s <i>dead</i>!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes, I understand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some
+      more. Yes, you see he’s dead again—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Again</i>? Why, has he ever been dead before?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a
+      cat? But you bet you he’s awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I’d
+      never seen this day. I don’t want no better friend than Buck
+      Fanshaw. I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I
+      freeze to him—you hear <i>me</i>. Take him all round, pard, there
+      never was a bullier man in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to
+      go back on a friend. But it’s all up, you know, it’s all up.
+      It ain’t no use. They’ve scooped him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Scooped him?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes—death has. Well, well, well, we’ve got to give him
+      up. Yes indeed. It’s a kind of a hard world, after all, ain’t
+      it? But pard, he was a rustler! You ought to seen him get started once. He
+      was a bully boy with a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room
+      according to his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and
+      go in. He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he
+      was on it! He was on it bigger than an Injun!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “On it? On what?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand. He
+      didn’t give a continental for anybody. <i>Beg</i> your pardon,
+      friend, for coming so near saying a cuss-word—but you see I’m
+      on an awful strain, in this palaver, on account of having to cramp down
+      and draw everything so mild. But we’ve got to give him up. There ain’t
+      any getting around that, I don’t reckon. Now if we can get you to
+      help plant him—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Obs’quies is good. Yes. That’s it—that’s
+      our little game. We are going to get the thing up regardless, you know. He
+      was always nifty himself, and so you bet you his funeral ain’t going
+      to be no slouch—solid silver door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on
+      the hearse, and a nigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat—how’s
+      that for high? And we’ll take care of you, pard. We’ll fix you
+      all right. There’ll be a kerridge for you; and whatever you want,
+      you just ’scape out and we’ll ’tend to it. We’ve
+      got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in No. 1’s house, and don’t
+      you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn, if you don’t sell a
+      clam. Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, for anybody that knowed
+      him will tell you that he was one of the whitest men that was ever in the
+      mines. You can’t draw it too strong. He never could stand it to see
+      things going wrong. He’s done more to make this town quiet and
+      peaceable than any man in it. I’ve seen him lick four Greasers in
+      eleven minutes, myself. If a thing wanted regulating, he warn’t a
+      man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would prance in
+      and regulate it himself. He warn’t a Catholic. Scasely. He was down
+      on ’em. His word was, ‘No Irish need apply!’ But it didn’t
+      make no difference about that when it came down to what a man’s
+      rights was—and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard
+      and started in to stake out town-lots in it he went for ’em! And he
+      cleaned ’em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link335"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="335.jpg (105K)" src="images/335.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That was very well indeed—at least the impulse was—whether
+      the act was strictly defensible or not. Had deceased any religious
+      convictions? That is to say, did he feel a dependence upon, or acknowledge
+      allegiance to a higher power?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I reckon you’ve stumped me again, pard. Could you say it over
+      once more, and say it slow?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or rather had he ever been
+      connected with any organization sequestered from secular concerns and
+      devoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All down but nine—set ’em up on the other alley, pard.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What did I understand you to say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, you’re most too many for me, you know. When you get in
+      with your left I hunt grass every time. Every time you draw, you fill; but
+      I don’t seem to have any luck. Lets have a new deal.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How? Begin again?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very well. Was he a good man, and—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There—I see that; don’t put up another chip till I look
+      at my hand. A good man, says you? Pard, it ain’t no name for it. He
+      was the best man that ever—pard, you would have doted on that man.
+      He could lam any galoot of his inches in America. It was him that put down
+      the riot last election before it got a start; and everybody said he was
+      the only man that could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one
+      hand and a trumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter
+      in less than three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented
+      nice before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for
+      peace, and he would have peace—he could not stand disturbances.
+      Pard, he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you
+      could chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the
+      Micks got to throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday school
+      windows, Buck Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took
+      a couple of six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday school. Says
+      he, ‘No Irish need apply!’ And they didn’t. He was the
+      bulliest man in the mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit
+      harder, and hold more tangle-foot whisky without spilling it than any man
+      in seventeen counties. Put that in, pard—it’ll please the boys
+      more than anything you could say. And you can say, pard, that he never
+      shook his mother.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link337"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="337.jpg (60K)" src="images/337.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Never shook his mother?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s it—any of the boys will tell you so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, but why should he shake her?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That’s what I say—but some people does.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Not people of any repute?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, some that averages pretty so-so.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own
+      mother, ought to—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cheese it, pard; you’ve banked your ball clean outside the
+      string. What I was a drivin’ at, was, that he never throwed off on
+      his mother—don’t you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to
+      live in, and town lots, and plenty of money; and he looked after her and
+      took care of her all the time; and when she was down with the small-pox I’m
+      d——d if he didn’t set up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your
+      pardon for saying it, but it hopped out too quick for yours truly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve treated me like a gentleman, pard, and I ain’t
+      the man to hurt your feelings intentional. I think you’re white. I
+      think you’re a square man, pard. I like you, and I’ll lick any
+      man that don’t. I’ll lick him till he can’t tell himself
+      from a last year’s corpse! Put it there!” [Another fraternal
+      hand-shake—and exit.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The obsequies were all that “the boys” could desire. Such a
+      marvel of funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse,
+      the dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags
+      drooping at half mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secret
+      societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines,
+      carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted
+      multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and for
+      years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display in
+      Virginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw’s funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent place
+      at the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last sentence of
+      the prayer for the dead man’s soul ascended, he responded, in a low
+      voice, but with feelings:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “AMEN. No Irish need apply.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the bulk of the response was without apparent relevancy, it was
+      probably nothing more than a humble tribute to the memory of the friend
+      that was gone; for, as Scotty had once said, it was “his word.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scotty Briggs, in after days, achieved the distinction of becoming the
+      only convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia roughs;
+      and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the quarrel of
+      the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber whereof to
+      construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his generosity or
+      diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent direction to the
+      one and a broader field to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If his Sunday-school class progressed faster than the other classes, was
+      it matter for wonder? I think not. He talked to his pioneer small-fry in a
+      language they understood! It was my large privilege, a month before he
+      died, to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren to
+      his class “without looking at the book.” I leave it to the
+      reader to fancy what it was like, as it fell, riddled with slang, from the
+      lips of that grave, earnest teacher, and was listened to by his little
+      learners with a consuming interest that showed that they were as
+      unconscious as he was that any violence was being done to the sacred
+      proprieties!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link338"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="338.jpg (52K)" src="images/338.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch48"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by
+      murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will
+      always say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughtering
+      done, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates,
+      and a person is not respected until he has “killed his man.”
+      That was the very expression used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable,
+      honest, industrious, but—had he killed his man? If he had not, he
+      gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small
+      consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated
+      according to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling up to
+      a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came with the
+      blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized at once
+      and his acquaintance sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief
+      desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper, occupied the same
+      level in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest way to
+      become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at large,
+      was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell whisky. I
+      am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher rank than any
+      other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was his privilege to
+      say how the elections should go. No great movement could succeed without
+      the countenance and direction of the saloon-keepers. It was a high favor
+      when the chief saloon-keeper consented to serve in the legislature or the
+      board of aldermen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the law, or the
+      army and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious. Hence the
+      reader will not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killed in
+      Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was the
+      slayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of being held
+      in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths who tried to
+      “kill their men” for no other reason—and got killed
+      themselves for their pains. “There goes the man that killed Bill
+      Adams” was higher praise and a sweeter sound in the ears of this
+      sort of people than any other speech that admiring lips could utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link340"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="340.jpg (115K)" src="images/340.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men who murdered Virginia’s original twenty-six
+      cemetery-occupants were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great,
+      when he invented trial by jury and knew that he had admirably framed it to
+      secure justice in his age of the world, was not aware that in the
+      nineteenth century the condition of things would be so entirely changed
+      that unless he rose from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the
+      emergency, it would prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for
+      defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive. For how could he
+      imagine that we simpletons would go on using his jury plan after
+      circumstances had stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could
+      imagine that we would go on using his candle-clock after we had invented
+      chronometers? In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he could
+      easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the
+      case they were called to try—but in our day of telegraphs and
+      newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and
+      rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a
+      jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most
+      wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all
+      men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and
+      dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B.
+      L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as
+      he would have been questioned in any court in America:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you heard of this homicide?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you held conversations upon the subject?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Yes.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “We do not want you.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of
+      high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence
+      and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing,
+      were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the
+      public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that
+      sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable
+      him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the
+      facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case.
+      Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men
+      was impaneled—a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked
+      about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle
+      in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the
+      streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two
+      low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not
+      read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out
+      afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the
+      same thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link342"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="342.jpg (52K)" src="images/342.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one
+      expect?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium
+      upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue
+      to use a worthless system because it <i>was</i> good a thousand years ago.
+      In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence and
+      probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with
+      him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he is
+      worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and
+      stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs. Why
+      could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty
+      and <i>equal chance</i> with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show the
+      present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on
+      another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and
+      equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with the
+      jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and
+      character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people
+      who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated—every
+      effort I make to save the country “misses fire.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My idea, when I began this chapter, was to say something about
+      desperadoism in the “flush times” of Nevada. To attempt a
+      portrayal of that era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage,
+      would be like portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy. The desperado
+      stalked the streets with a swagger graded according to the number of his
+      homicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make a
+      humble admirer happy for the rest of the day. The deference that was paid
+      to a desperado of wide reputation, and who “kept his private
+      graveyard,” as the phrase went, was marked, and cheerfully accorded.
+      When he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailed frock-
+      coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat tipped
+      over left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; when he
+      entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and merchants to
+      overwhelm him with obsequious service; when he shouldered his way to a
+      bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized him, and—apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got a look in return that froze their marrow, and by that time a
+      curled and breast-pinned bar keeper was beaming over the counter, proud of
+      the established acquaintanceship that permitted such a familiar form of
+      speech as:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “How’re ye, Billy, old fel? Glad to see you. What’ll you
+      take—the old thing?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “old thing” meant his customary drink, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link344"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="344.jpg (47K)" src="images/344.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to
+      these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists
+      and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but it seemed
+      local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as Sam Brown,
+      Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock Marked
+      Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered
+      Pete, etc., etc. There was a long list of them. They were brave, reckless
+      men, and traveled with their lives in their hands. To give them their due,
+      they did their killing principally among themselves, and seldom molested
+      peaceable citizens, for they considered it small credit to add to their
+      trophies so cheap a bauble as the death of a man who was “not on the
+      shoot,” as they phrased it. They killed each other on slight
+      provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves—for they
+      held it almost shame to die otherwise than “with their boots on,”
+      as they expressed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember an instance of a desperado’s contempt for such small game
+      as a private citizen’s life. I was taking a late supper in a
+      restaurant one night, with two reporters and a little printer named—Brown,
+      for instance—any name will do. Presently a stranger with a
+      long-tailed coat on came in, and not noticing Brown’s hat, which was
+      lying in a chair, sat down on it. Little Brown sprang up and became
+      abusive in a moment. The stranger smiled, smoothed out the hat, and
+      offered it to Brown with profuse apologies couched in caustic sarcasm, and
+      begged Brown not to destroy him. Brown threw off his coat and challenged
+      the man to fight—abused him, threatened him, impeached his courage,
+      and urged and even implored him to fight; and in the meantime the smiling
+      stranger placed himself under our protection in mock distress. But
+      presently he assumed a serious tone, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very well, gentlemen, if we must fight, we must, I suppose. But don’t
+      rush into danger and then say I gave you no warning. I am more than a
+      match for all of you when I get started. I will give you proofs, and then
+      if my friend here still insists, I will try to accommodate him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The table we were sitting at was about five feet long, and unusually
+      cumbersome and heavy. He asked us to put our hands on the dishes and hold
+      them in their places a moment—one of them was a large oval dish with
+      a portly roast on it. Then he sat down, tilted up one end of the table,
+      set two of the legs on his knees, took the end of the table between his
+      teeth, took his hands away, and pulled down with his teeth till the table
+      came up to a level position, dishes and all! He said he could lift a keg
+      of nails with his teeth. He picked up a common glass tumbler and bit a
+      semi-circle out of it. Then he opened his bosom and showed us a net-work
+      of knife and bullet scars; showed us more on his arms and face, and said
+      he believed he had bullets enough in his body to make a pig of lead. He
+      was armed to the teeth. He closed with the remark that he was Mr.——of
+      Cariboo—a celebrated name whereat we shook in our shoes. I would
+      publish the name, but for the suspicion that he might come and carve me.
+      He finally inquired if Brown still thirsted for blood. Brown turned the
+      thing over in his mind a moment, and then—asked him to supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link346"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="346.jpg (73K)" src="images/346.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the permission of the reader, I will group together, in the next
+      chapter, some samples of life in our small mountain village in the old
+      days of desperadoism. I was there at the time. The reader will observe
+      peculiarities in our official society; and he will observe also, an
+      instance of how, in new countries, murders breed murders.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch49"></a>
+      CHAPTER XLIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a photograph
+      that can need no embellishment:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY.—An affray occurred, last evening, in a
+        billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams and
+        Wm. Brown, which resulted in the immediate death of the latter. There
+        had been some difficulty between the parties for several months.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        An inquest was immediately held, and the following testimony adduced:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Officer GEO. BIRDSALL, sworn, says:—I was told Wm. Brown was drunk
+        and was looking for Jack Williams; so soon as I heard that I started for
+        the parties to prevent a collision; went into the billiard saloon; saw
+        Billy Brown running around, saying if anybody had anything against him
+        to show cause; he was talking in a boisterous manner, and officer Perry
+        took him to the other end of the room to talk to him; Brown came back to
+        me; remarked to me that he thought he was as good as anybody, and knew
+        how to take care of himself; he passed by me and went to the bar; don’t
+        know whether he drank or not; Williams was at the end of the
+        billiard-table, next to the stairway; Brown, after going to the bar,
+        came back and said he was as good as any man in the world; he had then
+        walked out to the end of the first billiard-table from the bar; I moved
+        closer to them, supposing there would be a fight; as Brown drew his
+        pistol I caught hold of it; he had fired one shot at Williams; don’t
+        know the effect of it; caught hold of him with one hand, and took hold
+        of the pistol and turned it up; think he fired once after I caught hold
+        of the pistol; I wrenched the pistol from him; walked to the end of the
+        billiard-table and told a party that I had Brown’s pistol, and to
+        stop shooting; I think four shots were fired in all; after walking out,
+        Mr. Foster remarked that Brown was shot dead.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Oh, there was no excitement about it—he merely “remarked”
+      the small circumstance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four months later the following item appeared in the same paper (the
+      Enterprise). In this item the name of one of the city officers above
+      referred to (Deputy Marshal Jack Williams) occurs again:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        ROBBERY AND DESPERATE AFFRAY.—On Tuesday night, a German named
+        Charles Hurtzal, engineer in a mill at Silver City, came to this place,
+        and visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B street. The music, dancing and
+        Teutonic maidens awakened memories of Faderland until our German friend
+        was carried away with rapture. He evidently had money, and was spending
+        if freely. Late in the evening Jack Williams and Andy Blessington
+        invited him down stairs to take a cup of coffee. Williams proposed a
+        game of cards and went up stairs to procure a deck, but not finding any
+        returned. On the stairway he met the German, and drawing his pistol
+        knocked him down and rifled his pockets of some seventy dollars. Hurtzal
+        dared give no alarm, as he was told, with a pistol at his head, if he
+        made any noise or exposed them, they would blow his brains out. So
+        effectually was he frightened that he made no complaint, until his
+        friends forced him. Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had
+        disappeared.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation of
+      being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had
+      several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on
+      citizens at dead of night in the public streets of Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five months after the above item appeared, Williams was assassinated while
+      sitting at a card table one night; a gun was thrust through the crack of
+      the door and Williams dropped from his chair riddled with balls. It was
+      said, at the time, that Williams had been for some time aware that a party
+      of his own sort (desperadoes) had sworn away his life; and it was
+      generally believed among the people that Williams’s friends and
+      enemies would make the assassination memorable—and useful, too—by
+      a wholesale destruction of each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not so happen, but still, times were not dull during the next
+      twenty-four hours, for within that time a woman was killed by a pistol
+      shot, a man was brained with a slung shot, and a man named Reeder was also
+      disposed of permanently. Some matters in the Enterprise account of the
+      killing of Reeder are worth noting—especially the accommodating
+      complaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace. The italics in the
+      following narrative are mine:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING.—The devil seems to have again broken
+        loose in our town. Pistols and guns explode and knives gleam in our
+        streets as in early times. When there has been a long season of quiet,
+        people are slow to wet their hands in blood; but once blood is spilled,
+        cutting and shooting come easy. Night before last Jack Williams was
+        assassinated, and yesterday forenoon we had more bloody work, growing
+        out of the killing of Williams, and on the same street in which he met
+        his death. It appears that Tom Reeder, a friend of Williams, and George
+        Gumbert were talking, at the meat market of the latter, about the
+        killing of Williams the previous night, when Reeder said it was a most
+        cowardly act to shoot a man in such a way, giving him “no show.”
+        Gumbert said that Williams had “as good a show as he gave Billy
+        Brown,” meaning the man killed by Williams last March. Reeder said
+        it was a d——d lie, that Williams had no show at all. At this,
+        Gumbert drew a knife and stabbed Reeder, cutting him in two places in
+        the back. One stroke of the knife cut into the sleeve of Reeder’s
+        coat and passed downward in a slanting direction through his clothing,
+        and entered his body at the small of the back; another blow struck more
+        squarely, and made a much more dangerous wound. Gumbert gave himself up
+        to the officers of justice, and was shortly after discharged by Justice
+        Atwill, on his own recognizance, to appear for trial at six o’clock
+        in the evening. In the meantime Reeder had been taken into the office of
+        Dr. Owens, where his wounds were properly dressed. One of his wounds was
+        considered quite dangerous, and it was thought by many that it would
+        prove fatal. But being considerably under the influence of liquor,
+        Reeder did not feel his wounds as he otherwise would, and he got up and
+        went into the street. He went to the meat market and renewed his quarrel
+        with Gumbert, threatening his life. Friends tried to interfere to put a
+        stop to the quarrel and get the parties away from each other. In the
+        Fashion Saloon Reeder made threats against the life of Gumbert, saying
+        he would kill him, and it is said that he requested the officers not to
+        arrest Gumbert, as he intended to kill him. After these threats Gumbert
+        went off and procured a double-barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot
+        or revolver balls, and went after Reeder. Two or three persons were
+        assisting him along the street, trying to get him home, and had him just
+        in front of the store of Klopstock &amp; Harris, when Gumbert came
+        across toward him from the opposite side of the street with his gun. He
+        came up within about ten or fifteen feet of Reeder, and called out to
+        those with him to “look out! get out of the way!” and they
+        had only time to heed the warning, when he fired. Reeder was at the time
+        attempting to screen himself behind a large cask, which stood against
+        the awning post of Klopstock &amp; Harris’s store, but some of the
+        balls took effect in the lower part of his breast, and he reeled around
+        forward and fell in front of the cask. Gumbert then raised his gun and
+        fired the second barrel, which missed Reeder and entered the ground. At
+        the time that this occurred, there were a great many persons on the
+        street in the vicinity, and a number of them called out to Gumbert, when
+        they saw him raise his gun, to “hold on,” and “don’t
+        shoot!” The cutting took place about ten o’clock and the
+        shooting about twelve. After the shooting the street was instantly
+        crowded with the inhabitants of that part of the town, some appearing
+        much excited and laughing—declaring that it looked like the
+        “good old times of ‘60.” Marshal Perry and officer
+        Birdsall were near when the shooting occurred, and Gumbert was
+        immediately arrested and his gun taken from him, when he was marched off
+        to jail. Many persons who were attracted to the spot where this bloody
+        work had just taken place, looked bewildered and seemed to be asking
+        themselves what was to happen next, appearing in doubt as to whether the
+        killing mania had reached its climax, or whether we were to turn in and
+        have a grand killing spell, shooting whoever might have given us
+        offence. It was whispered around that it was not all over yet—five
+        or six more were to be killed before night. Reeder was taken to the
+        Virginia City Hotel, and doctors called in to examine his wounds. They
+        found that two or three balls had entered his right side; one of them
+        appeared to have passed through the substance of the lungs, while
+        another passed into the liver. Two balls were also found to have struck
+        one of his legs. As some of the balls struck the cask, the wounds in
+        Reeder’s leg were probably from these, glancing downwards, though
+        they might have been caused by the second shot fired. After being shot,
+        Reeder said when he got on his feet—smiling as he spoke—“It
+        will take better shooting than that to kill me.” The doctors
+        consider it almost impossible for him to recover, but as he has an
+        excellent constitution he may survive, notwithstanding the number and
+        dangerous character of the wounds he has received. The town appears to
+        be perfectly quiet at present, as though the late stormy times had
+        cleared our moral atmosphere; but who can tell in what quarter clouds
+        are lowering or plots ripening?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Reeder—or at least what was left of him—survived his wounds
+      two days! Nothing was ever done with Gumbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a
+      palladium is, having never seen a palladium, but it is a good thing no
+      doubt at any rate. Not less than a hundred men have been murdered in
+      Nevada—perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred—and
+      as far as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death penalty
+      there. However, four or five who had no money and no political influence
+      have been punished by imprisonment—one languished in prison as much
+      as eight months, I think. However, I do not desire to be extravagant—it
+      may have been less.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        However, one prophecy was verified, at any rate. It was asserted by the
+        desperadoes that one of their brethren (Joe McGee, a special policeman)
+        was known to be the conspirator chosen by lot to assassinate Williams;
+        and they also asserted that doom had been pronounced against McGee, and
+        that he would be assassinated in exactly the same manner that had been
+        adopted for the destruction of Williams—a prophecy which came true
+        a year later. After twelve months of distress (for McGee saw a fancied
+        assassin in every man that approached him), he made the last of many
+        efforts to get out of the country unwatched. He went to Carson and sat
+        down in a saloon to wait for the stage—it would leave at four in
+        the morning. But as the night waned and the crowd thinned, he grew
+        uneasy, and told the bar-keeper that assassins were on his track. The
+        bar-keeper told him to stay in the middle of the room, then, and not go
+        near the door, or the window by the stove. But a fatal fascination
+        seduced him to the neighborhood of the stove every now and then, and
+        repeatedly the bar-keeper brought him back to the middle of the room and
+        warned him to remain there. But he could not. At three in the morning he
+        again returned to the stove and sat down by a stranger. Before the
+        bar-keeper could get to him with another warning whisper, some one
+        outside fired through the window and riddled McGee’s breast with
+        slugs, killing him almost instantly. By the same discharge the stranger
+        at McGee’s side also received attentions which proved fatal in the
+        course of two or three days.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link351"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="351.jpg (9K)" src="images/351.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch50"></a>
+      CHAPTER L.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very extraordinary
+      trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap of history familiar
+      to all old Californians, and worthy to be known by other peoples of the
+      earth that love simple, straightforward justice unencumbered with
+      nonsense. I would apologize for this digression but for the fact that the
+      information I am about to offer is apology enough in itself. And since I
+      digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as well to eschew apologies
+      altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Ned Blakely—that name will answer as well as any other
+      fictitious one (for he was still with the living at last accounts, and may
+      not desire to be famous)—sailed ships out of the harbor of San
+      Francisco for many years. He was a stalwart, warm-hearted, eagle-eyed
+      veteran, who had been a sailor nearly fifty years—a sailor from
+      early boyhood. He was a rough, honest creature, full of pluck, and just as
+      full of hard-headed simplicity, too. He hated trifling conventionalities—“business”
+      was the word, with him. He had all a sailor’s vindictiveness against
+      the quips and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first
+      and last aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sailed for the Chincha Islands in command of a guano ship. He had a
+      fine crew, but his negro mate was his pet—on him he had for years
+      lavished his admiration and esteem. It was Capt. Ned’s first voyage
+      to the Chinchas, but his fame had gone before him—the fame of being
+      a man who would fight at the dropping of a handkerchief, when imposed
+      upon, and would stand no nonsense. It was a fame well earned. Arrived in
+      the islands, he found that the staple of conversation was the exploits of
+      one Bill Noakes, a bully, the mate of a trading ship. This man had created
+      a small reign of terror there. At nine o’clock at night, Capt. Ned,
+      all alone, was pacing his deck in the starlight. A form ascended the side,
+      and approached him. Capt. Ned said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Who goes there?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link353"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="353.jpg (77K)" src="images/353.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What do you want aboard this ship?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’ve heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better
+      man than ’tother—I’ll know which, before I go ashore.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’ve come to the right shop—I’m your man. I’ll
+      learn you to come aboard this ship without an <i>in</i>vite.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded his face to a
+      pulp, and then threw him overboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noakes was not convinced. He returned the next night, got the pulp
+      renewed, and went overboard head first, as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week after this, while Noakes was carousing with a sailor crowd on
+      shore, at noonday, Capt. Ned’s colored mate came along, and Noakes
+      tried to pick a quarrel with him. The negro evaded the trap, and tried to
+      get away. Noakes followed him up; the negro began to run; Noakes fired on
+      him with a revolver and killed him. Half a dozen sea-captains witnessed
+      the whole affair. Noakes retreated to the small after-cabin of his ship,
+      with two other bullies, and gave out that death would be the portion of
+      any man that intruded there. There was no attempt made to follow the
+      villains; there was no disposition to do it, and indeed very little
+      thought of such an enterprise. There were no courts and no officers; there
+      was no government; the islands belonged to Peru, and Peru was far away;
+      she had no official representative on the ground; and neither had any
+      other nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, Capt. Ned was not perplexing his head about such things. They
+      concerned him not. He was boiling with rage and furious for justice. At
+      nine o’clock at night he loaded a double-barreled gun with slugs,
+      fished out a pair of handcuffs, got a ship’s lantern, summoned his
+      quartermaster, and went ashore. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Do you see that ship there at the dock?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay-ay, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “It’s the Venus.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay-ay, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You—you know <i>me</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay-ay, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Very well, then. Take the lantern. Carry it just under your chin. I’ll
+      walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your shoulder, p’inting
+      forward—so. Keep your lantern well up so’s I can see things
+      ahead of you good. I’m going to march in on Noakes—and take
+      him—and jug the other chaps. If you flinch—well, you know <i>me</i>.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Ay-ay, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this order they filed aboard softly, arrived at Noakes’s den, the
+      quartermaster pushed the door open, and the lantern revealed the three
+      desperadoes sitting on the floor. Capt. Ned said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link355"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="355.jpg (93K)" src="images/355.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m Ned Blakely. I’ve got you under fire. Don’t
+      you move without orders—any of you. You two kneel down in the
+      corner; faces to the wall—now. Bill Noakes, put these handcuffs on;
+      now come up close. Quartermaster, fasten ’em. All right. Don’t
+      stir, sir. Quartermaster, put the key in the outside of the door. Now,
+      men, I’m going to lock you two in; and if you try to burst through
+      this door—well, you’ve heard of <i>me</i>. Bill Noakes, fall
+      in ahead, and march. All set. Quartermaster, lock the door.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noakes spent the night on board Blakely’s ship, a prisoner under
+      strict guard. Early in the morning Capt. Ned called in all the
+      sea-captains in the harbor and invited them, with nautical ceremony, to be
+      present on board his ship at nine o’clock to witness the hanging of
+      Noakes at the yard-arm!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What! The man has not been tried.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Of course he hasn’t. But didn’t he kill the nigger?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him without a
+      trial?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Trial</i>! What do I want to try him for, if he killed the
+      nigger?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, Capt. Ned, this will <i>never</i> do. Think how it will sound.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sound be hanged! Didn’t he kill the nigger?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly, certainly, Capt. Ned,—nobody denies that,—but—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Then I’m <i>going to hang him</i>, that’s all.
+      Everybody I’ve talked to talks just the same way you do. Everybody
+      says he killed the nigger, everybody knows he killed the nigger, and yet
+      every lubber of you wants him <i>tried</i> for it. I don’t
+      understand such bloody foolishness as that. <i>Tried</i>! Mind you, I don’t
+      object to trying him, if it’s got to be done to give satisfaction;
+      and I’ll be there, and chip in and help, too; but put it off till
+      afternoon—put it off till afternoon, for I’ll have my hands
+      middling full till after the burying—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Why, what do you mean? Are you going to <i>hang</i> him any how—and
+      try him afterward?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Didn’t I say I was going to <i>hang</i> him? I never saw such
+      people as you. What’s the difference? You ask a favor, and then you
+      ain’t satisfied when you get it. Before or after’s all one—<i>you</i>
+      know how the trial will go. He killed the nigger. Say—I must be
+      going. If your mate would like to come to the hanging, fetch him along. I
+      like him.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a stir in the camp. The captains came in a body and pleaded with
+      Capt. Ned not to do this rash thing. They promised that they would create
+      a court composed of captains of the best character; they would empanel a
+      jury; they would conduct everything in a way becoming the serious nature
+      of the business in hand, and give the case an impartial hearing and the
+      accused a fair trial. And they said it would be murder, and punishable by
+      the American courts if he persisted and hung the accused on his ship. They
+      pleaded hard. Capt. Ned said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, I’m not stubborn and I’m not unreasonable. I’m
+      always willing to do just as near right as I can. How long will it take?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Probably only a little while.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you are
+      done?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>If</i> he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without
+      unnecessary delay.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If he’s proven guilty. Great Neptune, <i>ain’t</i> he
+      guilty? This beats my time. Why you all <i>know</i> he’s guilty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothing
+      underhanded. Then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, all right. You go on and try him and I’ll go down and
+      overhaul his conscience and prepare him to go—like enough he needs
+      it, and I don’t want to send him off without a show for hereafter.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was another obstacle. They finally convinced him that it was
+      necessary to have the accused in court. Then they said they would send a
+      guard to bring him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself—he don’t get out
+      of <i>my</i> hands. Besides, I’ve got to go to the ship to get a
+      rope, anyway.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and presently
+      Capt. Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one hand and carrying a Bible
+      and a rope in the other. He seated himself by the side of his captive and
+      told the court to “up anchor and make sail.” Then he turned a
+      searching eye on the jury, and detected Noakes’s friends, the two
+      bullies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode over and said to them confidentially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You’re here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you
+      hear?—or else there’ll be a double-barreled inquest here when
+      this trial’s off, and your remainders will go home in a couple of
+      baskets.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit—the verdict.
+      “Guilty.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come along—you’re my meat <i>now</i>, my lad, anyway.
+      Gentlemen you’ve done yourselves proud. I invite you all to come and
+      see that I do it all straight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the
+      hanging, and—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Ned’s patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless. The
+      subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree and
+      arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened his
+      Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read it
+      through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity. Then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and
+      the lighter a man’s manifest is, as far as sin’s concerned,
+      the better for him. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you
+      that’ll bear inspection. You killed the nigger?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link358"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="358.jpg (61K)" src="images/358.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No reply. A long pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time, to impress
+      the effect. Then he talked an earnest, persuasive sermon to him, and ended
+      by repeating the question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Did you kill the nigger?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No reply—other than a malignant scowl. The captain now read the
+      first and second chapters of Genesis, with deep feeling—paused a
+      moment, closed the book reverently, and said with a perceptible savor of
+      satisfaction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There. Four chapters. There’s few that would have took the
+      pains with you that I have.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast; stood by and timed
+      him half an hour with his watch, and then delivered the body to the court.
+      A little after, as he stood contemplating the motionless figure, a doubt
+      came into his face; evidently he felt a twinge of conscience—a
+      misgiving—and he said with a sigh:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, p’raps I ought to burnt him, maybe. But I was trying to
+      do for the best.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the history of this affair reached California (it was in the “early
+      days”) it made a deal of talk, but did not diminish the captain’s
+      popularity in any degree. It increased it, indeed. California had a
+      population then that “inflicted” justice after a fashion that
+      was simplicity and primitiveness itself, and could therefore admire
+      appreciatively when the same fashion was followed elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link359"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="359.jpg (38K)" src="images/359.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch51"></a>
+      CHAPTER LI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our “flush times.”
+      The saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the
+      gambling dens, the brothels and the jails—unfailing signs of high
+      prosperity in a mining region—in any region for that matter. Is it
+      not so? A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that
+      trade is brisk and money plenty. Still, there is one other sign; it comes
+      last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the “flush
+      times” are at the flood. This is the birth of the “literary”
+      paper. The Weekly Occidental, “devoted to literature,” made
+      its appearance in Virginia. All the literary people were engaged to write
+      for it. Mr. F. was to edit it. He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen,
+      and a man who could say happy things in a crisp, neat way. Once, while
+      editor of the <i>Union</i>, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent,
+      two-column attack made upon him by a contemporary, with a single line,
+      which, at first glance, seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous
+      compliment—viz.: “THE LOGIC OF OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE
+      PEACE OF GOD,”—and left it to the reader’s memory and
+      after-thought to invest the remark with another and “more different”
+      meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the rest of the
+      Scripture—“<i>in that it passeth understanding.</i>” He
+      once said of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no
+      subsistence except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers
+      who stopped over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage,
+      that in their Church service they had altered the Lord’s Prayer to
+      read: “Give us this day our daily stranger!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We expected great things of the Occidental. Of course it could not get
+      along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into
+      the work the full strength of the company. Mrs. F. was an able romancist
+      of the ineffable school—I know no other name to apply to a school
+      whose heroes are all dainty and all perfect. She wrote the opening
+      chapter, and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but
+      pearls and poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity. She
+      also introduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with
+      the blonde. Mr. F. followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set
+      about getting the Duke’s estates into trouble, and a sparkling young
+      lady of high society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the
+      appetite of the blonde. Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the
+      dailies, followed Mr. F., the third week, introducing a mysterious
+      Roscicrucian who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a
+      cave at dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and
+      heroines in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future
+      careers and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel. He also
+      introduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on a
+      salary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoned
+      dagger. He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placed
+      him in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission to
+      carry billet-doux to the Duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link361"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="361.jpg (79K)" src="images/361.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with a
+      literary turn of mind—rather seedy he was, but very quiet and
+      unassuming; almost diffident, indeed. He was so gentle, and his manners
+      were so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that he
+      made friends of all who came in contact with him. He applied for literary
+      work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy and practiced
+      pen, and so Mr. F. engaged him at once to help write the novel. His
+      chapter was to follow Mr. D.’s, and mine was to come next. Now what
+      does this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to his
+      quarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, and
+      that chaos in a condition of extravagant activity. The result may be
+      guessed. He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of
+      heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he
+      decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky inspires
+      and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then launched
+      himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the
+      society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the
+      blonde’s stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the
+      desperado’s salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and
+      the Roscicrucian; threw the Duke’s property into the wicked lawyer’s
+      hands; made the lawyer’s upbraiding conscience drive him to drink,
+      thence to delirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman’s
+      neck; let his widow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and
+      consumption; caused the blonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on
+      the bank with the customary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and
+      hoping he would be happy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual
+      strawberry mark on left arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother
+      and destroyed his long-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary
+      suicide of the Duke and the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice;
+      opened the earth and let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the
+      accustomed smoke and thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the
+      promise that in the next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he
+      would take up the surviving character of the novel and tell what became of
+      the devil!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link362"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="362.jpg (39K)" src="images/362.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It read with singular smoothness, and with a “dead”
+      earnestness that was funny enough to suffocate a body. But there was war
+      when it came in. The other novelists were furious. The mild stranger, not
+      yet more than half sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of
+      vituperation, meek and bewildered, looking from one to another of his
+      assailants, and wondering what he could have done to invoke such a storm.
+      When a lull came at last, he said his say gently and appealingly—said
+      he did not rightly remember what he had written, but was sure he had tried
+      to do the best he could, and knew his object had been to make the novel
+      not only pleasant and plausible but instructive and—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bombardment began again. The novelists assailed his ill-chosen
+      adjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule.
+      And so the siege went on. Every time the stranger tried to appease the
+      enemy he only made matters worse. Finally he offered to rewrite the
+      chapter. This arrested hostilities. The indignation gradually quieted
+      down, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got him
+      to his own citadel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the way thither the evil angel tempted him and he got drunk again.
+      And again his imagination went mad. He led the heroes and heroines a
+      wilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincing
+      air of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work. He got the
+      characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them through the
+      most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk! But
+      the chapter cannot be described. It was symmetrically crazy; it was
+      artistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully as
+      curious as the text. I remember one of the “situations,” and
+      will offer it as an example of the whole. He altered the character of the
+      brilliant lawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him
+      fame and riches, and set his age at thirty-three years. Then he made the
+      blonde discover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramatic
+      miscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, he
+      secretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady. Stung to
+      the quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them with tenfold
+      power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal. But the parents
+      would none of it. What they wanted in the family was a Duke; and a Duke
+      they were determined to have; though they confessed that next to the Duke
+      the lawyer had their preference. Necessarily the blonde now went into a
+      decline. The parents were alarmed. They pleaded with her to marry the
+      Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on. Then they laid a plan.
+      They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the end of that time she
+      still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she might marry the lawyer
+      with their full consent. The result was as they had foreseen: gladness
+      came again, and the flush of returning health. Then the parents took the
+      next step in their scheme. They had the family physician recommend a long
+      sea voyage and much land travel for the thorough restoration of the blonde’s
+      strength; and they invited the Duke to be of the party. They judged that
+      the Duke’s constant presence and the lawyer’s protracted
+      absence would do the rest—for they did not invite the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they set sail in a steamer for America—and the third day out,
+      when their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their
+      first meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke and
+      party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and
+      the vessel neared America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link365"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="365.jpg (74K)" src="images/365.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire; she
+      burned to the water’s edge; of all her crew and passengers, only
+      thirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all
+      night long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhuman
+      exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth
+      two hundred yards and bringing one each time—(the girl first). The
+      Duke had saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the
+      scene and sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation was
+      attended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his duty like
+      a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and some
+      others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell
+      overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and
+      helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its mother’s
+      screams. Then he ran back—a few seconds too late—the blonde’s
+      boat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to the other
+      ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of each other—drove
+      them whither it would.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="366.jpg (83K)" src="images/366.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde’s ship was
+      seven hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred
+      south of that port. The blonde’s captain was bound on a whaling
+      cruise in the North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make
+      a port without orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer’s captain
+      was to cruise in the North Pacific, and <i>he</i> could not go back or
+      make a port without orders. All the lawyer’s money and baggage were
+      in the blonde’s boat and went to the blonde’s ship—so
+      his captain made him work his passage as a common sailor. When both ships
+      had been cruising nearly a year, the one was off the coast of Greenland
+      and the other in Behring’s Strait. The blonde had long ago been
+      well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer had been washed overboard and lost
+      just before the whale ships reached the raft, and now, under the pleadings
+      of her parents and the Duke she was at last beginning to nerve herself for
+      the doom of the covenant, and prepare for the hated marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she would not yield a day before the date set. The weeks dragged on,
+      the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding—a
+      wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all would
+      be over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where was her
+      true love—and why, why did he not come and save her? At that moment
+      he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring’s Strait,
+      five thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty
+      thousand by the way of the Horn—that was the reason. He struck, but
+      not with perfect aim—his foot slipped and he fell in the whale’s
+      mouth and went down his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came
+      to himself and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in
+      the whale’s roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were
+      hoisting blubber up a ship’s side. He recognized the vessel, flew
+      aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stop the proceedings—I’m here! Come to my arms, my own!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link367"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="367.jpg (88K)" src="images/367.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the
+      author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the
+      possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from
+      Behring’s Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in
+      five days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade’s “Love
+      Me Little Love Me Long,” and considered that that established the
+      fact that the thing could be done; and he instanced Jonah’s
+      adventure as proof that a man could live in a whale’s belly, and
+      added that if a preacher could stand it three days a lawyer could surely
+      stand it five!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the
+      stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his
+      head. But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time
+      for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out
+      without any novel in it. It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid journal,
+      and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence; at any
+      rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the Weekly
+      Occidental died as peacefully as an infant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a
+      telling new title, and Mr. F. said that The <i>Phenix</i> would be just
+      the name for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its
+      dead ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some low-
+      priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the <i>Lazarus</i>;
+      and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural matters but
+      thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant that begged
+      in the rich man’s gateway were one and the same person, the name
+      became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good and
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a
+      literary paper—prouder than I have ever been of anything since,
+      perhaps. I had written some rhymes for it—poetry I considered it—and
+      it was a great grief to me that the production was on the “first
+      side” of the issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the
+      light. But time brings its revenges—I can put it in here; it will
+      answer in place of a tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental.
+      The idea (not the chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably
+      suggested by the old song called “The Raging Canal,” but I
+      cannot remember now. I do remember, though, that at that time I thought my
+      doggerel was one of the ablest poems of the age:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE AGED PILOT MAN.
+    </h3>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        On the Erie Canal, it was,<br> All on a summer’s day,<br> I
+        sailed forth with my parents<br> Far away to Albany.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        From out the clouds at noon that day<br> There came a dreadful storm,<br>
+        That piled the billows high about,<br> And filled us with alarm.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        A man came rushing from a house,<br> Saying, ‘Snub up your boat I
+        pray,<br> [The customary canal technicality for “tie up.”]<br>
+        Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,<br> Snub up while yet you may.’
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Our captain cast one glance astern,<br> Then forward glancèd he,<br>
+        And said, “My wife and little ones<br> I never more shall see.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Said Dollinger the pilot man,<br> In noble words, but few,—<br>
+        “Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,<br> And he will fetch you
+        through.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link370"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="370.jpg (53K)" src="images/370.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        The boat drove on, the frightened mules<br> Tore through the rain and
+        wind,<br> And bravely still, in danger’s post,<br> The whip-boy
+        strode behind.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Come ’board, come ’board,” the captain cried,<br>
+        “Nor tempt so wild a storm;”<br> But still the raging mules
+        advanced,<br> And still the boy strode on.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Then said the captain to us all,<br> “Alas, ’tis plain to
+        me,<br> The greater danger is not there,<br> But here upon the sea.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “So let us strive, while life remains,<br> To save all souls on
+        board,<br> And then if die at last we must,<br> Let .  .  .
+         .  I cannot speak the word!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Said Dollinger the pilot man,<br> Tow’ring above the crew,<br>
+        “Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,<br> And he will fetch you
+        through.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link371"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="371.jpg (102K)" src="images/371.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Low bridge!  low bridge!” all heads went down,<br>
+        The laboring bark sped on;<br> A mill we passed, we passed church,<br>
+        Hamlets, and fields of corn;<br> And all the world came out to see,<br>
+        And chased along the shore<br> Crying, “Alas, alas, the sheeted
+        rain,<br> The wind, the tempest’s roar!<br> Alas, the gallant
+        ship and crew,<br> Can nothing help them more?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        And from our deck sad eyes looked out<br> Across the stormy scene:<br>
+        The tossing wake of billows aft,<br> The bending forests green,<br>
+        The chickens sheltered under carts<br> In lee of barn the cows,<br>
+        The skurrying swine with straw in mouth,<br> The wild spray from our
+        bows!
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “She balances!<br> She wavers!<br> Now let her go about!<br> If
+        she misses stays and broaches to,<br> We’re all”—then with a
+        shout,<br> “Huray!  huray!<br> Avast!  belay!<br>
+        Take in more sail!<br> Lord, what a gale!<br> Ho, boy, haul taut on
+        the hind mule’s tail!”<br>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link372"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="372.jpg (105K)" src="images/372.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Ho!  lighten ship!  ho!  man the pump!<br> Ho,
+        hostler, heave the lead!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “A quarter-three!—’tis shoaling fast!<br> Three feet
+        large!—t-h-r-e-e feet!—<br> Three feet scant!” I cried in
+        fright<br> “Oh, is there no retreat?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Said Dollinger, the pilot man,<br> As on the vessel flew,<br> “Fear
+        not, but trust in Dollinger,<br> And he will fetch you through.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        A panic struck the bravest hearts,<br> The boldest cheek turned pale;<br>
+        For plain to all, this shoaling said<br> A leak had burst the ditch’s
+        bed!<br> And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,<br> Our ship swept
+        on, with shoaling lead,<br> Before the fearful gale!
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Sever the tow-line!  Cripple the mules!”<br> Too
+        late!  There comes a shock!<br> Another length, and the fated
+        craft<br> Would have swum in the saving lock!
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew<br> And took one last
+        embrace,<br> While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes<br> Ran down
+        each hopeless face;<br> And some did think of their little ones<br>
+        Whom they never more might see,<br> And others of waiting wives at
+        home,<br> And mothers that grieved would be.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        But of all the children of misery there<br> On that poor sinking frame,<br>
+        But one spake words of hope and faith,<br> And I worshipped as they
+        came:<br> Said Dollinger the pilot man,—<br> (O brave heart, strong
+        and true!)—<br> “Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,<br> For he
+        will fetch you through.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Lo!  scarce the words have passed his lips<br> The dauntless
+        prophet say’th,<br> When every soul about him seeth<br> A wonder
+        crown his faith!
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “And count ye all, both great and small,<br> As numbered with the
+        dead:<br> For mariner for forty year,<br> On Erie, boy and man,<br> I
+        never yet saw such a storm,<br> Or one’t with it began!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        So overboard a keg of nails<br> And anvils three we threw,<br>
+        Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,<br> Two hundred pounds of glue,<br>
+        Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,<br> A box of books, a cow,<br> A
+        violin, Lord Byron’s works,<br> A rip-saw and a sow.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link374"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="374.jpg (67K)" src="images/374.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        A curve!  a curve!  the dangers grow!<br> “Labbord!—stabbord!—s-t-e-a-d-y!—so!—<br>
+        Hard-a-port, Dol!—hellum-a-lee!<br> Haw the head mule!—the aft one
+        gee!<br> Luff!—bring her to the wind!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        For straight a farmer brought a plank,—<br> (Mysteriously inspired)—<br>
+        And laying it unto the ship,<br> In silent awe retired.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Then every sufferer stood amazed<br> That pilot man before;<br> A
+        moment stood.  Then wondering turned,<br> And speechless walked
+        ashore.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link375"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="375.jpg (82K)" src="images/375.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch52"></a>
+      CHAPTER LII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about
+      the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he
+      chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination of
+      the “flush times.” Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to
+      that degree that the place looked like a very hive—that is when one’s
+      vision could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was
+      generally blowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you
+      drove ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a
+      sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a
+      uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust
+      in it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by the
+      assayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet
+      some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would
+      get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business
+      going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from
+      California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons
+      drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, and
+      it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals
+      stretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long route was
+      traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing
+      serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that hundred
+      and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for all express
+      matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads. One Virginia firm
+      received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid $10,000 a month
+      freightage. In the winter the freights were much higher. All the bullion
+      was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was usually about
+      twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500 to $3,000
+      according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the freight on
+      it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per cent. of its
+      intrinsic value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link377"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="377.jpg (16K)" src="images/377.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25
+      each. Small shippers paid two per cent. There were three stages a day,
+      each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a ton
+      of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot and
+      take it off. However, these were extraordinary events. [Mr. Valentine,
+      Wells Fargo’s agent, has handled all the bullion shipped through the
+      Virginia office for many a month. To his memory—which is excellent—we
+      are indebted for the following exhibit of the company’s business in
+      the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From January 1st to
+      April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through that office,
+      during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000; next quarter,
+      $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter ending on the 30th
+      of last June, about $1,600,000. Thus in a year and a half, the Virginia
+      office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion. During the year 1862 they
+      shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments have more than
+      doubled in the last six months. This gives us room to promise for the
+      Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863 (though perhaps,
+      judging by the steady increase in the business, we are under estimating,
+      somewhat). This gives us $6,000,000 for the year. Gold Hill and Silver
+      City together can beat us—we will give them $10,000,000. To Dayton,
+      Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will allow an aggregate of
+      $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps, and may possibly be a
+      little under it. To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000. To Reese River and
+      Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not be before the year
+      is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion this year will be
+      about $30,000,000. Placing the number of mills in the Territory at one
+      hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing $300,000 in bullion
+      during the twelve months. Allowing them to run three hundred days in the
+      year (which none of them more than do), this makes their work average
+      $1,000 a day. Say the mills average twenty tons of rock a day and this
+      rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have the actual work of our one
+      hundred mills figured down “to a spot”—$1,000 a day
+      each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.—<i>Enterprise</i>. [A
+      considerable over estimate—M. T.]]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two tons of silver bullion would be in the neighborhood of forty bars, and
+      the freight on it over $1,000. Each coach always carried a deal of
+      ordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twenty passengers
+      at from $25 to $30 a head. With six stages going all the time, Wells,
+      Fargo and Co.’s Virginia City business was important and lucrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of
+      miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode—a vein of ore from fifty
+      to <i>eighty</i> feet thick between its solid walls of rock—a vein
+      as wide as some of New York’s streets. I will remind the reader that
+      in Pennsylvania a coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it was
+      another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great
+      population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels
+      and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of lights,
+      and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers that held
+      the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as large as a
+      man’s body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no eye
+      could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like peering up
+      through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal skeleton. Imagine
+      such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and higher than any
+      church spire in America. Imagine this stately lattice-work stretching down
+      Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall street, and a Fourth of July
+      procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on top of it and flaunting their
+      flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity steeple. One can imagine that,
+      but he cannot well imagine what that forest of timbers cost, from the time
+      they were felled in the pineries beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around
+      Mount Davidson at atrocious rates of freightage, then squared, let down
+      into the deep maw of the mine and built up there. Twenty ample fortunes
+      would not timber one of the greatest of those silver mines. The Spanish
+      proverb says it requires a gold mine to “run” a silver one,
+      and it is true. A beggar with a silver mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if
+      he cannot sell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link379"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="379.jpg (47K)" src="images/379.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould and Curry is only
+      one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the Gould and
+      Curry’s streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in
+      extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as a
+      whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a
+      population of five or six thousand. In this present day some of those
+      populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under Virginia
+      and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what the superintendent
+      above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as we strike a
+      fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a thousand feet deep.
+      In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link380"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="380.jpg (161K)" src="images/380.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel
+      about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan
+      of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is like
+      tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach the
+      bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where
+      throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full
+      of great lumps of stone—silver ore; you select choice specimens from
+      the mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you
+      reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet
+      below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from “gallery”
+      to “gallery,” up endless ladders that stand straight up and
+      down; when your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in
+      a cramped “incline” like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged
+      up to daylight feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no
+      end to it. Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the
+      ascending cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long
+      rows of bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are
+      rows of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down
+      the long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver
+      mills with their rich freight. It is all “done,” now, and
+      there you are. You need never go down again, for you have seen it all. If
+      you have forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making
+      the silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda
+      chapters if so disposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is
+      worth one’s while to take the risk of descending into them and
+      observing the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling
+      mountain. I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from
+      it I will take an extract:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.—We journeyed down into the Ophir mine,
+        yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep incline,
+        because it still has a propensity to cave in places. Therefore we
+        traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill above the Ophir
+        office, and then by means of a series of long ladders, climbed away down
+        from the first to the fourth gallery. Traversing a drift, we came to the
+        Spanish line, passed five sets of timbers still uninjured, and found the
+        earthquake. Here was as complete a chaos as ever was seen—vast
+        masses of earth and splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly
+        together, with scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep
+        through. Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one
+        timber which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down
+        out of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the
+        tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the Ophir
+        known as the “north mines.” Returning to the surface, we
+        entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of getting
+        into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this tunnel, we
+        traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft from whence we
+        proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From a side-drift we
+        crawled through a small hole and got into the midst of the earthquake
+        again—earth and broken timbers mingled together without regard to
+        grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second, third and fourth
+        galleries had caved in and gone to destruction—the two latter at
+        seven o’clock on the previous evening.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery, two
+        big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth
+        gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come.
+        These beams are solid—eighteen inches square; first, a great beam
+        is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on it,
+        supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above square, like
+        the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight was sufficient to
+        mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly into the solid wood of
+        the horizontal ones three inches, compressing and bending the upright
+        beam till it curved like a bow. Before the Spanish caved in, some of
+        their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were compressed in this way until
+        they were only five inches thick! Imagine the power it must take to
+        squeeze a solid log together in that way. Here, also, was a range of
+        timbers, for a distance of twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the
+        perpendicular by the weight resting upon them from the caved galleries
+        above. You could hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not
+        pleasant to know that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking
+        down upon you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the Ophir
+        incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten inches of water
+        there, and had to come back. In repairing the damage done to the
+        incline, the pump had to be stopped for two hours, and in the meantime
+        the water gained about a foot. However, the pump was at work again, and
+        the flood-water was decreasing. We climbed up to the fifth gallery again
+        and sought a deep shaft, whereby we might descend to another part of the
+        sixth, out of reach of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the
+        men had gone to dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So,
+        having seen the earthquake, we climbed out at the <i>Union</i> incline
+        and tunnel, and adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and
+        perspiration, to lunch at the Ophir office.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have] produced
+      $25,000,000 in bullion—almost, if not quite, a round million to each
+      thousand inhabitants, which is very well, considering that she was without
+      agriculture and manufactures. Silver mining was her sole productive
+      industry.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        [Since the above was in type, I learn from an official source that the
+        above figure is too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed
+        $20,000,000.] However, the day for large figures is approaching; the
+        Sutro Tunnel is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a
+        depth of two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and
+        comparatively inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and
+        hoisting and hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work
+        will absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but
+        it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as soon
+        as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be some eight
+        miles long, and will develop astonishing riches. Cars will carry the ore
+        through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and thus do away with the
+        present costly system of double handling and transportation by mule
+        teams. The water from the tunnel will furnish the motive power for the
+        mills. Mr. Sutro, the originator of this prodigious enterprise, is one
+        of the few men in the world who is gifted with the pluck and
+        perseverance necessary to follow up and hound such an undertaking to its
+        completion. He has converted several obstinate Congresses to a deserved
+        friendliness toward his important work, and has gone up and down and to
+        and fro in Europe until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it
+        there.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch53"></a>
+      CHAPTER LIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to get
+      one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather’s
+      old ram—but they always added that I must not mention the matter
+      unless Jim was drunk at the time—just comfortably and sociably
+      drunk. They kept this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the
+      story. I got to haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always
+      found fault with his condition; he was often moderately but never
+      satisfactorily drunk. I never watched a man’s condition with such
+      absorbing interest, such anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man
+      uncompromisingly drunk before. At last, one evening I hurried to his
+      cabin, for I learned that this time his situation was such that even the
+      most fastidious could find no fault with it—he was tranquilly,
+      serenely, symmetrically drunk—not a hiccup to mar his voice, not a
+      cloud upon his brain thick enough to obscure his memory. As I entered, he
+      was sitting upon an empty powder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the
+      other raised to command silence. His face was round, red, and very
+      serious; his throat was bare and his hair tumbled; in general appearance
+      and costume he was a stalwart miner of the period. On the pine table stood
+      a candle, and its dim light revealed “the boys” sitting here
+      and there on bunks, candle-boxes, powder-kegs, etc. They said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Sh—! Don’t speak—he’s going to commence.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link384"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="384.jpg (53K)" src="images/384.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ‘I don’t reckon them times will ever come again. There never
+      was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from
+      Illinois—got him of a man by the name of Yates—Bill Yates—maybe
+      you might have heard of him; his father was a deacon—Baptist—and
+      he was a rustler, too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start
+      of old Thankful Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams
+      with my grandfather when he moved west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ‘Seth Green was prob’ly the pick of the flock; he married a
+      Wilkerson—Sarah Wilkerson—good cretur, she was—one of
+      the likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said
+      that knowed her. She could heft a bar’l of flour as easy as I can
+      flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don’t mention it! Independent? Humph!
+      When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let him know that for
+      all his tin he couldn’t trot in harness alongside of <i>her</i>. You
+      see, Sile Hawkins was—no, it warn’t Sile Hawkins, after all—it
+      was a galoot by the name of Filkins—I disremember his first name;
+      but he <i>was</i> a stump—come into pra’r meeting drunk, one
+      night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; and old
+      deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit on old
+      Miss Jefferson’s head, poor old filly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link385"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="385.jpg (52K)" src="images/385.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a good soul—had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss
+      Wagner, that hadn’t any, to receive company in; it warn’t big
+      enough, and when Miss Wagner warn’t noticing, it would get twisted
+      around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one side, and every
+      which way, while t’ other one was looking as straight ahead as a
+      spy-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Grown people didn’t mind it, but it most always made the
+      children cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton,
+      but it wouldn’t work, somehow—the cotton would get loose and
+      stick out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn’t stand
+      it no way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link386"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="386.jpg (26K)" src="images/386.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the
+      company empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz <i>she</i> never could
+      tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody
+      would have to hunch her and say, “Your game eye has fetched loose.
+      Miss Wagner dear”—and then all of them would have to sit and
+      wait till she jammed it in again—wrong side before, as a general
+      thing, and green as a bird’s egg, being a bashful cretur and easy
+      sot back before company. But being wrong side before warn’t much
+      difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-blue and the glass one was
+      yaller on the front side, so whichever way she turned it it didn’t
+      match nohow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ‘Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she
+      had a quilting, or Dorcas S’iety at her house she gen’ally
+      borrowed Miss Higgins’s wooden leg to stump around on; it was
+      considerable shorter than her other pin, but much <i>she</i> minded that.
+      She said she couldn’t abide crutches when she had company, becuz
+      they were so slow; said when she had company and things had to be done,
+      she wanted to get up and hump herself. She was as bald as a jug, and so
+      she used to borrow Miss Jacops’s wig—Miss Jacops was the
+      coffin-peddler’s wife—a ratty old buzzard, he was, that used
+      to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for ’em; and
+      there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that he
+      judged would fit the can’idate; and if it was a slow customer and
+      kind of uncertain, he’d fetch his rations and a blanket along and
+      sleep in the coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty
+      weather, for about three weeks, once, before old Robbins’s place,
+      waiting for him; and after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not
+      on speaking terms with the old man, on account of his disapp’inting
+      him. He got one of his feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins
+      took a favorable turn and got well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link387"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="387.jpg (61K)" src="images/387.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up with him, and
+      varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but old Robbins was
+      too many for him; he had him in, and ’peared to be powerful weak; he
+      bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay it back and
+      twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn’t like the coffin after he’d
+      tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he bursted off the lid
+      and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let up on the
+      performances, becuz he could <i>not</i> stand such a coffin as that. You
+      see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he took
+      the chances on another, cal’lating that if he made the trip it was
+      money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn’t lose a cent.
+      And by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up
+      the coffin in his back parlor and said he ’lowed to take his time,
+      now. It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old
+      thing acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon—went to Wellsville—Wellsville
+      was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family. Old Maryland
+      stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed licker, and cuss
+      better than most any man I ever see. His second wife was the widder
+      Billings—she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon Dunlap’s
+      first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and died in
+      grace—et up by the savages. They et <i>him</i>, too, poor feller—biled
+      him. It warn’t the custom, so they say, but they explained to
+      friends of his’n that went down there to bring away his things, that
+      they’d tried missionaries every other way and never could get any
+      good out of ’em—and so it annoyed all his relations to find
+      out that that man’s life was fooled away just out of a dern’d
+      experiment, so to speak. But mind you, there ain’t anything ever
+      reely lost; everything that people can’t understand and don’t
+      see the reason of does good if you only hold on and give it a fair shake;
+      Prov’dence don’t fire no blank ca’tridges, boys. That
+      there missionary’s substance, unbeknowns to himself, actu’ly
+      converted every last one of them heathens that took a chance at the
+      barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don’t tell <i>me</i>
+      it was an accident that he was biled. There ain’t no such a thing as
+      an accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link388"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="388.jpg (43K)" src="images/388.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ‘When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or
+      drunk, or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of
+      the third story and broke the old man’s back in two places. People
+      said it was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn’t
+      know what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn’t
+      been there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me
+      believe anything different from that. Uncle Lem’s dog was there. Why
+      didn’t the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him
+      a coming and stood from under. That’s the reason the dog warn’t
+      appinted. A dog can’t be depended on to carry out a special
+      providence. Mark my words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don’t
+      happen, boys. Uncle Lem’s dog—I wish you could a seen that
+      dog. He was a reglar shepherd—or ruther he was part bull and part
+      shepherd—splendid animal; belonged to parson Hagar before Uncle Lem
+      got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the Western Reserve Hagars; prime
+      family; his mother was a Watson; one of his sisters married a Wheeler;
+      they settled in Morgan county, and he got nipped by the machinery in a
+      carpet factory and went through in less than a quarter of a minute; his
+      widder bought the piece of carpet that had his remains wove in, and people
+      come a hundred mile to ’tend the funeral. There was fourteen yards
+      in the piece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ‘She wouldn’t let them roll him up, but planted him just so—full
+      length. The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and
+      they had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn’t
+      bury him—they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a
+      monument. And they nailed a sign on it and put—put on—put on
+      it—“sacred to—the m-e-m-o-r-y—of fourteen
+      y-a-r-d-s—of three-ply—car—pet—containing all
+      that was—m-o-r-t-a-l—of—of—W-i-l-l-i-a-m—W-h-e—“’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link389"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="389.jpg (111K)" src="images/389.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier—his head
+      nodded, once, twice, three times—dropped peacefully upon his breast,
+      and he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys’
+      cheeks—they were suffocating with suppressed laughter—and had
+      been from the start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was
+      “sold.” I learned then that Jim Blaine’s peculiarity was
+      that whenever he reached a certain stage of intoxication, no human power
+      could keep him from setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a
+      wonderful adventure which he had once had with his grandfather’s old
+      ram—and the mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as
+      any man had ever heard him get, concerning it. He always maundered off,
+      interminably, from one thing to another, till his whisky got the best of
+      him and he fell asleep. What the thing was that happened to him and his
+      grandfather’s old ram is a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has
+      ever yet found out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link390"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="390.jpg (64K)" src="images/390.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch54"></a>
+      CHAPTER LIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia—it is the
+      case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless
+      race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than
+      dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom
+      think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are
+      quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as
+      industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy
+      one does not exist. So long as a Chinaman has strength to use his hands he
+      needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of want of work,
+      but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages to find
+      something to do. He is a great convenience to everybody—even to the
+      worst class of white men, for he bears the most of their sins, suffering
+      fines for their petty thefts, imprisonment for their robberies, and death
+      for their murders. Any white man can swear a Chinaman’s life away in
+      the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man. Ours is the
+      “land of the free”—nobody denies that—nobody
+      challenges it. [Maybe it is because we won’t let other people
+      testify.] As I write, news comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco,
+      some boys have stoned an inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although
+      a large crowd witnessed the shameful deed, no one interfered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen on
+      the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. They were
+      penned into a “Chinese quarter”—a thing which they do
+      not particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together. Their
+      buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly
+      together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through.
+      Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chief
+      employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send a
+      bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere ceremony, for it
+      does not enlighten the customer much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link392"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="392.jpg (12K)" src="images/392.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their price for washing was $2.50 per dozen—rather cheaper than
+      white people could afford to wash for at that time. A very common sign on
+      the Chinese houses was: “See Yup, Washer and Ironer”; “Hong
+      Wo, Washer”; “Sam Sing &amp; Ah Hop, Washing.” The house
+      servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly Chinamen.
+      There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. Chinamen make
+      good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn and
+      tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a thing twice, as a
+      general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were to see his master
+      break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a fire with it, that
+      Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture for fuel forever
+      afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link393"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="393.jpg (42K)" src="images/393.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility—pity but
+      all our petted <i>voters</i> could. In California they rent little patches
+      of ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of
+      vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to a
+      Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or
+      another. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white
+      people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by
+      melting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure. In California
+      he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men have abandoned as
+      exhausted and worthless—and then the officers come down on him once
+      a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the legislature has given the
+      broad, general name of “foreign” mining tax, but it is usually
+      inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle has in some cases
+      been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the course of the same
+      month—but the public treasury was not additionally enriched by it,
+      probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence—they worship their
+      departed ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man’s front yard,
+      back yard, or any other part of his premises, is made his family burying
+      ground, in order that he may visit the graves at any and all times.
+      Therefore that huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and
+      wringled from its centre to its circumference with graves—and
+      inasmuch as every foot of ground must be made to do its utmost, in China,
+      lest the swarming population suffer for food, the very graves are
+      cultivated and yield a harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to
+      the dead. Since the departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a
+      Chinaman cannot bear that any indignity be offered the places where they
+      sleep. Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China’s bitter opposition
+      to railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without
+      disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body
+      lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after
+      death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him.
+      Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have
+      his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a
+      foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that
+      his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells
+      a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is
+      specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in
+      case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or
+      another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies
+      keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies
+      home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of
+      these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand
+      members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it has
+      a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal state in
+      seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a numerous
+      priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with the dead and
+      the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship that sails
+      from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese corpses—or
+      did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious refinement of
+      Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat underhanded way of
+      deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, whether it passed or
+      not. It is my impression that it passed. There was another bill—it
+      became a law—compelling every incoming Chinaman to be vaccinated on
+      the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor would defile
+      himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. As few importers
+      of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the law-makers
+      thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese immigration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like—or, indeed, what the
+      Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like—may be
+      gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting
+      for that paper:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        CHINATOWN.—Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip
+        through our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built
+        their portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither
+        carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a general
+        thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o’clock at
+        night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little
+        cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning
+        Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly,
+        guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed
+        vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium,
+        motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess of
+        satisfaction—or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately
+        after having passed the pipe to his neighbor—for opium-smoking is
+        a comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits on
+        the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker’s mouth;
+        he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire, and
+        plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with
+        putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke—and
+        the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the
+        stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue. John likes it,
+        though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen whiffs, and then rolls
+        over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we could not imagine by
+        looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his visions he travels far
+        away from the gross world and his regular washing, and feast on
+        succulent rats and birds’-nests in Paradise.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang
+        street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest
+        way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies,
+        with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs,
+        and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of
+        porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds’-nests; also, small, neat
+        sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had
+        chosen to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a
+        mouse, and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand
+        articles of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the
+        uses of, and beyond our ability to describe.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were
+        split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that
+        shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which
+        kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery
+        scheme—in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in
+        various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a
+        lottery, and the balance of the tribe “buck” at it. “Tom,”
+        who speaks faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the
+        <i>Territorial Enterprise</i>, when the establishment kept bachelor’s
+        hall two years ago, said that “Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one
+        dollar hap, ketch um two tree hundred, sometime no ketch um anything;
+        lottery like one man fight um seventy—may-be he whip, may-be he
+        get whip heself, welly good.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link396"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="396.jpg (69K)" src="images/396.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are,
+        as a general thing, that “he get whip heself.” We could not
+        see that these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that
+        the figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to
+        succeed in telling “t’other from which;” the manner of
+        drawing is similar to ours.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of
+        white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like
+        Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone
+        unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the
+        inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented
+        the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with
+        peacocks’ feathers.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our
+        comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their
+        want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our
+        hosts and “dickered” for a pagan God or two. Finally, we
+        were impressed with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up
+        his accounts on a machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its
+        bars; the different rows represented units, tens, hundreds and
+        thousands. He fingered them with incredible rapidity—in fact, he
+        pushed them from place to place as fast as a musical professor’s
+        fingers travel over the keys of a piano.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well
+      treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian
+      <i>gentleman or lady</i> ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any
+      circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East.
+      Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children; they,
+      and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise,
+      for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well
+      as elsewhere in America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link397"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="397.jpg (76K)" src="images/397.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch55"></a>
+      CHAPTER LV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to get tired of staying in one place so long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report
+      the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and
+      pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins and
+      potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements of
+      the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair
+      to show off forty dollars’ worth of those pumpkins in—however,
+      the territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the “asylum”).
+      I wanted to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted—I
+      did not know <i>what</i> I wanted. I had the “spring fever”
+      and wanted a change, principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had
+      framed a State Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I
+      believed that these gentlemen would “treat” the moneyless and
+      the irresponsible among the population into adopting the constitution and
+      thus well-nigh killing the country (it could not well carry such a load as
+      a State government, since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax,
+      for undeveloped mines could not, and there were not fifty developed ones
+      in the land, there was but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if
+      nobody was ever going to think of the simple salvation of inflicting a
+      money penalty on murder). I believed that a State government would destroy
+      the “flush times,” and I wanted to get away. I believed that
+      the mining stocks I had on hand would soon be worth $100,000, and thought
+      if they reached that before the Constitution was adopted, I would sell out
+      and make myself secure from the crash the change of government was going
+      to bring. I considered $100,000 sufficient to go home with decently,
+      though it was but a small amount compared to what I had been expecting to
+      return with. I felt rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort
+      myself with the reflection that with such a sum I could not fall into
+      want. About this time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since
+      boyhood, came tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of
+      Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land,
+      hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a
+      brimless hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he
+      could have “taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself,”
+      as he pleasantly remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link399"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="399.jpg (43K)" src="images/399.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars—twenty-six to take him to San
+      Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe,
+      for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted, in
+      my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker (on
+      twenty days’ time, without the formality of a note), and gave it
+      him, rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie
+      laid up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay
+      back that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the
+      Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And so
+      would the banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman
+      went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed
+      me. The first day, I wrote my “leader” in the forenoon. The
+      second day, I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third
+      day I put it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out
+      of the “American Cyclopedia,” that steadfast friend of the
+      editor, all over this land. The fourth day I “fooled around”
+      till midnight, and then fell back on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I
+      cudgeled my brain till midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I
+      penned some bitter personalities on six different people. The sixth day I
+      labored in anguish till far into the night and brought forth—nothing.
+      The paper went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned.
+      On the eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands—my
+      personalities had borne fruit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is
+      easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy
+      to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a
+      correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write
+      editorials. <i>Subjects</i> are the trouble—the dreary lack of them,
+      I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag—think, and worry and
+      suffer—all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns
+      <i>must</i> be filled. Only give the editor a <i>subject</i>, and his work
+      is done—it is no trouble to write it up; but fancy how you would
+      feel if you had to pump your brains dry every day in the week, fifty-two
+      weeks in the year. It makes one low spirited simply to think of it. The
+      matter that each editor of a daily paper in America writes in the course
+      of a year would fill from four to eight bulky volumes like this book!
+      Fancy what a library an editor’s work would make, after twenty or
+      thirty years’ service. Yet people often marvel that Dickens, Scott,
+      Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to produce so many books. If these
+      authors had wrought as voluminously as newspaper editors do, the result
+      would be something to marvel at, indeed. How editors can continue this
+      tremendous labor, this exhausting consumption of brain fibre (for their
+      work is creative, and not a mere mechanical laying-up of facts, like
+      reporting), day after day and year after year, is incomprehensible.
+      Preachers take two months’ holiday in midsummer, for they find that
+      to produce two sermons a week is wearing, in the long run. In truth it
+      must be so, and is so; and therefore, how an editor can take from ten to
+      twenty texts and build upon them from ten to twenty painstaking editorials
+      a week and keep it up all the year round, is farther beyond comprehension
+      than ever. Ever since I survived my week as editor, I have found at least
+      one pleasure in any newspaper that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the
+      long columns of editorial, and wondering to myself how in the mischief he
+      did it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Goodman’s return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to
+      become a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the
+      ranks after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go
+      abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my associate
+      in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two citizens had
+      been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and aid in selling
+      a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured in a new mining
+      district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to pay his expenses and
+      give him one third of the proceeds of the sale. He had refused to go. It
+      was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused him for keeping so quiet about
+      it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said it had not occurred to him that
+      I would like to go, and so he had recommended them to apply to Marshall,
+      the reporter of the other paper. I asked Dan if it was a good, honest
+      mine, and no swindle. He said the men had shown him nine tons of the rock,
+      which they had got out to take to New York, and he could cheerfully say
+      that he had seen but little rock in Nevada that was richer; and moreover,
+      he said that they had secured a tract of valuable timber and a mill-site,
+      near the mine. My first idea was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind,
+      notwithstanding I was so angry, for I thought maybe the chance was not yet
+      lost. Dan said it was by no means lost; that the men were absent at the
+      mine again, and would not be in Virginia to leave for the East for some
+      ten days; that they had requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and
+      he had promised that he would either secure Marshall or somebody else for
+      them by the time they got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till
+      they returned, and then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody had
+      yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white for
+      the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan would
+      bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or difficulty. I
+      could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in the air. It was
+      the “blind lead” come again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending
+      departures of old citizens,—for if you have only half a dozen
+      friends out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you
+      seem to go away neglected and unregretted—and Dan promised to keep
+      strict watch for the men that had the mine to sell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred just
+      as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger got out
+      of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver bricks was
+      thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward express
+      employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled and let it
+      fall on the bummer’s foot. He instantly dropped on the ground and
+      began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowd
+      gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed
+      louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and between
+      the gasps ejaculated “Brandy! for Heaven’s sake, brandy!”
+      They poured half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and
+      comforted him. Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which
+      was done. The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense,
+      but he declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take
+      along with him, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would
+      be grateful and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we
+      drove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not
+      refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with a
+      crushed foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link403"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="403.jpg (72K)" src="images/403.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well,” said he, “I hadn’t had a drink for twelve
+      hours, and hadn’t a cent to my name. I was most perishing—and
+      so, when that duffer dropped that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my
+      chance. Got a cork leg, you know!” and he pulled up his pantaloons
+      and proved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over his
+      timely ingenuity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once heard a
+      gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian bar-
+      room. He entitled it “Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink.” It was
+      nothing but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and
+      worthy of Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer
+      and other matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for
+      anything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a
+      half dollar; calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes change
+      and lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest man fumbles
+      at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds it; he
+      contemplates it, and tries again; same result; observes that people are
+      interested in what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter again—blushes—puts
+      his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure of his aim—pushes
+      the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link404"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="404.jpg (120K)" src="images/404.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “(’<i>ic</i>)Gimme a cigar!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man. He
+      said he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered the
+      wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the stoop; and it was—an iron
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog; ventured to
+      say “Be (hic) begone!” No effect. Then he approached warily,
+      and adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, but
+      failed; still approached, saying, “Poor dog!—doggy, doggy,
+      doggy!—poor doggy-dog!” Got up on the stoop, still petting
+      with fond names; till master of the advantages; then exclaimed, “Leave,
+      you thief!”—planted a vindictive kick in his ribs, and went
+      head-over-heels overboard, of course. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and
+      then a remark in a reflective voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? (’ic!) Rocks, p’raps.
+      Such animals is dangerous.—’ At’s what I say—they’re
+      dangerous. If a man—(’ic!)—if a man wants to feed a dog
+      on rocks, let him <i>feed</i> him on rocks; ’at’s all right;
+      but let him keep him at <i>home</i>—not have him layin’ round
+      promiscuous, where (’ic!) where people’s liable to stumble
+      over him when they ain’t noticin’!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it was
+      thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady’s
+      handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet
+      above Virginia’s roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a
+      permanent farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous
+      enjoyment of life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an
+      incident which the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it
+      happened must vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one
+      summer afternoon we had a rain shower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing, for
+      it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada, and
+      even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any merchant to
+      keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief wonder. It only
+      lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still talking about it
+      all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness as of midnight.
+      All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, over-looking the city, put
+      on such a funereal gloom that only the nearness and solidity of the
+      mountain made its outlines even faintly distinguishable from the dead
+      blackness of the heavens they rested against. This unaccustomed sight
+      turned all eyes toward the mountain; and as they looked, a little tongue
+      of rich golden flame was seen waving and quivering in the heart of the
+      midnight, away up on the extreme summit! In a few minutes the streets were
+      packed with people, gazing with hardly an uttered word, at the one
+      brilliant mote in the brooding world of darkness. It flicked like a
+      candle-flame, and looked no larger; but with such a background it was
+      wonderfully bright, small as it was. It was the flag!—though no one
+      suspected it at first, it seemed so like a supernatural visitor of some
+      kind—a mysterious messenger of good tidings, some were fain to
+      believe. It was the nation’s emblem transfigured by the departing
+      rays of a sun that was entirely palled from view; and on no other object
+      did the glory fall, in all the broad panorama of mountain ranges and
+      deserts. Not even upon the staff of the flag—for that, a needle in
+      the distance at any time, was now untouched by the light and
+      undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the weird visitor winked
+      and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the thousands of uplifted eyes
+      watched it with fascinated interest. How the people were wrought up! The
+      superstition grew apace that this was a mystic courier come with great
+      news from the war—the poetry of the idea excusing and commending it—and
+      on it spread, from heart to heart, from lip to lip and from street to
+      street, till there was a general impulse to have out the military and
+      welcome the bright waif with a salvo of artillery!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link406"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="406.jpg (72K)" src="images/406.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to
+      official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a silence
+      that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the speculating
+      multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen that day in the
+      east—Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at Gettysburg!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment of
+      eastern news till a day after its publication in the California papers,
+      the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and
+      re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of
+      powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every
+      man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk,—as was
+      the custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this
+      distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity
+      without regret. What a time we might have had!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link407"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="407.jpg (12K)" src="images/407.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch56"></a>
+      CHAPTER LVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the clouds,
+      and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remark here, in
+      passing, that all scenery in California requires <i>distance</i> to give
+      it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimity and
+      their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view—but one
+      must have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings; a
+      Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sad
+      poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous
+      family—redwood, pine, spruce, fir—and so, at a near view there
+      is a wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched
+      downward and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to
+      “Sh!—don’t say a word!—you might disturb somebody!”
+      Close at hand, too, there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch
+      and turpentine; there is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and
+      complaining foliage; one walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow
+      bark and dead spines of the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit
+      bereft of a footfall; he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns
+      for substantial, shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon,
+      and finds none, for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt,
+      enemies to pensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in
+      California, is what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated
+      at a distance, because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up
+      vindictively straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart,
+      with uncomely spots of barren sand between.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from “the
+      States” go into ecstasies over the loveliness of “ever-blooming
+      California.” And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But
+      perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with the
+      memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer greens
+      of Californian “verdure,” stand astonished, and filled with
+      worshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the
+      brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form
+      and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of
+      Paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and
+      sombre California, when that man has seen New England’s
+      meadow-expanses and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in
+      summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her
+      forests, comes very near being funny—would be, in fact, but that it
+      is so pathetic. No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful.
+      The tropics are not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They
+      seem beautiful at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. <i>Change</i>
+      is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that
+      has four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony.
+      Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of
+      its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating graces—and
+      just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change
+      comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. And I think that
+      to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the
+      loveliest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link409"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="409.jpg (49K)" src="images/409.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and
+      handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the
+      architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of
+      decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward
+      the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindly climate
+      is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personally experienced, for a
+      lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by, and then when the
+      longed for rain does come it <i>stays</i>. Even the playful earthquake is
+      better contemplated at a dis—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However there are varying opinions about that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The
+      thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly
+      changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and
+      Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing.
+      You wear black broadcloth—if you have it—in August and
+      January, just the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month
+      than the other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as
+      pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is
+      doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a
+      good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if
+      you choose—three or four miles away—it does not blow there. It
+      has only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only
+      remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them
+      to wondering what the feathery stuff was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link410"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="410.jpg (53K)" src="images/410.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and
+      cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other four months
+      come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Because you will
+      require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days in hardly
+      varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attend church, or the
+      theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it is likely to
+      rain or not—you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, it <i>will</i>
+      rain—and if it is Summer, it <i>won’t</i> rain, and you cannot
+      help it. You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it
+      never lightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every
+      night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your
+      heart the thunder <i>would</i> leap and crash and roar along those drowsy
+      skies once, and make everything alive—you will wish the prisoned
+      lightnings <i>would</i> cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it
+      with a blinding glare for <i>one</i> little instant. You would give <i>anything</i>
+      to hear the old familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike
+      somebody. And along in the Summer, when you have suffered about four
+      months of lustrous, pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your
+      knees and plead for rain—hail—snow—thunder and lightning—anything
+      to break the monotony—you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do
+      any better. And the chances are that you’ll get it, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills.
+      They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in
+      “the States” rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots
+      and green-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year
+      round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss roses—I
+      do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that while New
+      Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are
+      burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only keep their hands
+      off and let them grow. And I have heard that they have also that rarest
+      and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful Espiritu Santo, as the
+      Spaniards call it—or flower of the Holy Spirit—though I
+      thought it grew only in Central America—down on the Isthmus. In its
+      cup is the daintiest little facsimile of a dove, as pure as snow. The
+      Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it. The blossom has been
+      conveyed to the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has been taken
+      thither also, but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived, has
+      failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and but
+      this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel a
+      hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of
+      Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San Francisco—but
+      they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and unvaryingly, but about one
+      hundred and forty-three months out of twelve years, perhaps. Flowers bloom
+      there, always, the reader can easily believe—people suffer and
+      sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and wear out their stanchest
+      energies fanning themselves. It gets hot there, but if you go down to Fort
+      Yuma you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on
+      earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred and twenty in the shade there
+      all the time—except when it varies and goes higher. It is a U.S.
+      military post, and its occupants get so used to the terrific heat that
+      they suffer without it. There is a tradition (attributed to John Phenix
+      [It has been purloined by fifty different scribblers who were too poor to
+      invent a fancy but not ashamed to steal one.—M. T.]) that a very,
+      very wicked soldier died there, once, and of course, went straight to the
+      hottest corner of perdition,—and the next day he <i>telegraphed back
+      for his blankets.</i> There is no doubt about the truth of this statement—there
+      can be no doubt about it. I have seen the place where that soldier used to
+      board. In Sacramento it is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses,
+      and eat strawberries and ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant
+      and perspire, at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and then take
+      the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming
+      over frozen Donner Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow
+      banks fifteen feet deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that
+      lift their frosty crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link413"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="413.jpg (94K)" src="images/413.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a transition for you! Where will you find another like it in the
+      Western hemisphere? And some of us have swept around snow-walled curves of
+      the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above the sea,
+      and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of the
+      Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, its
+      silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted
+      atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance—a
+      dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and
+      striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow,
+      and savage crags and precipices.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch57"></a>
+      CHAPTER LVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the
+      most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see,
+      in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured
+      by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see
+      such disfigurements far and wide over California—and in some such
+      places, where only meadows and forests are visible—not a living
+      creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a
+      sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness—you will
+      find it hard to believe that there stood at one time a
+      fiercely-flourishing little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls,
+      with its newspaper, fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank,
+      hotels, noisy Fourth of July processions and speeches, gambling hells
+      crammed with tobacco smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all
+      nations and colors, with tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the
+      revenues of a German principality—streets crowded and rife with
+      business—town lots worth four hundred dollars a front foot—labor,
+      laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing—a
+      bloody inquest and a man for breakfast every morning—<i>everything</i>
+      that delights and adorns existence—all the appointments and
+      appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and promising young city,—and
+      <i>now</i> nothing is left of it all but a lifeless, homeless solitude.
+      The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the <i>name</i> of the
+      place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, have towns so
+      absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of
+      California.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was a <i>curious</i>
+      population. It was the <i>only</i> population of the kind that the world
+      has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the world will
+      ever see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage of two hundred
+      thousand <i>young</i> men—not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved
+      weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of push
+      and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to make up
+      a peerless and magnificent manhood—the very pick and choice of the
+      world’s glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping
+      veterans,—none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed
+      young giants—the strangest population, the finest population, the
+      most gallant host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an
+      unpeopled land. And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth—or
+      prematurely aged and decrepit—or shot or stabbed in street affrays—or
+      dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts—all gone, or nearly all—victims
+      devoted upon the altar of the golden calf—the noblest holocaust that
+      ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to think
+      upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a splendid population—for all the slow, sleepy,
+      sluggish-brained sloths staid at home—you never find that sort of
+      people among pioneers—you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of
+      material. It was that population that gave to California a name for
+      getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a
+      magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences,
+      which she bears unto this day—and when she projects a new surprise,
+      the grave world smiles as usual, and says “Well, that is California
+      all over.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky,
+      fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner raked
+      from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with
+      the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn’t a cent the
+      next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own bacon and
+      beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts—blue
+      woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any
+      annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt
+      or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people hated
+      aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward what
+      they called a “biled shirt.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! <i>Men</i>—only
+      swarming hosts of stalwart <i>men</i>—nothing juvenile, nothing
+      feminine, visible anywhere!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that rare
+      and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a certain
+      camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was come!
+      They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the
+      camping-ground—sign of emigrants from over the great plains.
+      Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide
+      dress was discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was
+      visible. The miners said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fetch her out!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: “It is my wife, gentlemen—she is sick—we have
+      been robbed of money, provisions, everything, by the Indians—we want
+      to rest.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Fetch her out! We’ve got to see her!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “FETCH HER OUT!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link416"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="416.jpg (87K)" src="images/416.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He “fetched her out,” and they swung their hats and sent up
+      three rousing cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at
+      her, and touched her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men
+      who listened to a <i>memory</i> rather than a present reality—and
+      then they collected twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the
+      man, and swung their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home
+      satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked
+      with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco
+      was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only
+      two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing
+      from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the
+      party with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner,
+      bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons—just
+      down from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently&amp;mdashbarred the
+      way, stopped the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with
+      gratification and astonishment. Then he said, reverently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link417"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="417.jpg (58K)" src="images/417.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, if it ain’t a child!” And then he snatched a
+      little leather sack out of his pocket and said to the servant:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “There’s a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I’ll
+      give it to you to let me kiss the child!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That anecdote is <i>true</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to that
+      anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of kissing
+      the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years have far
+      more than doubled the price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the
+      Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single
+      file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in
+      the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation—a genuine,
+      live Woman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my
+      eye to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing
+      flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I
+      voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.—M.T.] years old, and hadn’t
+      a tooth in her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link418"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="418.jpg (28K)" src="images/418.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch58"></a>
+      CHAPTER LVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of
+      existence—a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be
+      responsible to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love
+      with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush
+      and alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at
+      the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places,
+      infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which
+      oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the
+      vulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worse
+      than the most of my countrymen in that. I had longed to be a butterfly,
+      and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening
+      dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polked and
+      schottisched with a step peculiar to myself—and the kangaroo. In a
+      word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars
+      (prospectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that silver-
+      mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spent money with a
+      free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an interested eye and
+      looked to see what might happen in Nevada.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link420"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="420.jpg (49K)" src="images/420.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something very important happened. The property holders of Nevada voted
+      against the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to lose were
+      in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. But after all
+      it did not immediately look like a disaster, though unquestionably it was
+      one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then concluded not to sell.
+      Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad; bankers, merchants, lawyers,
+      doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very washerwomen and servant girls,
+      were putting up their earnings on silver stocks, and every sun that rose
+      in the morning went down on paupers enriched and rich men beggared. What a
+      gambling carnival it was! Gould and Curry soared to six thousand three
+      hundred dollars a foot! And then—all of a sudden, out went the
+      bottom and everything and everybody went to ruin and destruction! The
+      wreck was complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was an early
+      beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth the paper they
+      were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerful idiot that had
+      been squandering money like water, and thought myself beyond the reach of
+      misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when I gathered together
+      my various debts and paid them. I removed from the hotel to a very private
+      boarding house. I took a reporter’s berth and went to work. I was
+      not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building confidently on the sale
+      of the silver mine in the east. But I could not hear from Dan. My letters
+      miscarried or were not answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. The
+      next day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my desk
+      which had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed “Marshall”—the
+      Virginia reporter—and contained a request that I should call at the
+      hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for
+      the east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a big
+      mining speculation! I was hardly ever so sick in my life. I abused myself
+      for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I ought to
+      have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from the
+      office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there. And
+      thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and arrived
+      just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream and under way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link421"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="421.jpg (20K)" src="images/421.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation would
+      amount to nothing—poor comfort at best—and then went back to
+      my slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and
+      forget all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was long
+      called the “great” earthquake, and is doubtless so
+      distinguished till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October
+      day. I was coming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere
+      in sight in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy
+      behind me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise,
+      all was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a
+      frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that
+      here was an item!—no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could
+      turn and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground
+      seemed to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and
+      down, and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing
+      together. I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. I knew what
+      it was, now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my
+      watch and noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer
+      shock came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my
+      footing, I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall four-story brick
+      building in Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling
+      across the street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here
+      came the buggy—overboard went the man, and in less time than I can
+      tell it the vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred
+      yards of street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link422"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="422.jpg (87K)" src="images/422.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds
+      and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horses
+      were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends,
+      and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side of
+      the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an impaled
+      madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was
+      vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could execute a
+      wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people stretching
+      in endless procession down every street my position commanded. Never was
+      solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link423a"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="423a.jpg (38K)" src="images/423a.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the wonders wrought by “the great earthquake,” these were
+      all that came under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and
+      wide over the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The destruction of property was trifling—the injury to it was wide-
+      spread and somewhat serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link423b"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="423b.jpg (37K)" src="images/423b.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The “curiosities” of the earthquake were simply endless.
+      Gentlemen and ladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had
+      dissipated till a late hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into
+      the public streets in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at
+      all. One woman who had been washing a naked child, ran down the street
+      holding it by the ankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent
+      citizens who were supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of
+      saloons in their shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Dozens
+      of men with necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered
+      to the eyes or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a
+      hairy stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a
+      short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had
+      not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothing
+      on but one brief undergarment—met a chambermaid, and exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, what <i>shall</i> I do! Where shall I go!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She responded with naive serenity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link424"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="424.jpg (63K)" src="images/424.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain foreign consul’s lady was the acknowledged leader of
+      fashion, and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the
+      ladies in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands’ purses and
+      arrayed themselves similarly. One man who had suffered considerably and
+      growled accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and
+      the next instant the consul’s wife, just out of the bath, fled by
+      with no other apology for clothing than—a bath-towel! The sufferer
+      rose superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Now that is something <i>like</i>! Get out your towel my dear!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link425"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="425 (40K)" src="images/425.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would
+      have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups of
+      eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long zig-
+      zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet of the
+      tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned
+      around in such a way as to completely stop the draft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of
+      one street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up
+      the meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rocking and
+      quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut twice,
+      like a mouth, and then drop the end of a brick on the floor like a tooth.
+      She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose and went
+      out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs was astonished to see a
+      bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to strike her with its
+      club. They both reached the bottom of the flight at the same time,—the
+      woman insensible from the fright. Her child, born some little time
+      afterward, was club-footed. However—on second thought,—if the
+      reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at his own risk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the
+      churches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the
+      services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “However, we will omit the benediction!”—and the next
+      instant there was a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the first shock, an Oakland minister said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this”—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And added, after the third:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But outside is good enough!” He then skipped out at the back
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link426"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="426.jpg (40K)" src="images/426.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the
+      earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a
+      girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended
+      pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the
+      earthquake’s humor, they were whirled completely around with their
+      faces to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to
+      the course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed
+      out of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were
+      made so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that
+      they were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days
+      afterward.—Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The queer earthquake—episodes that formed the staple of San
+      Francisco gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than
+      this, and so I will diverge from the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
+      Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.—G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H.
+        Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores from
+        mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese River
+        range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet and called
+        the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of $3,000,000. The stamps
+        on the deed, which is now on its way to Humboldt County, from New York,
+        for record, amounted to $3,000, which is said to be the largest amount
+        of stamps ever placed on one document. A working capital of $1,000,000
+        has been paid into the treasury, and machinery has already been
+        purchased for a large quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as
+        possible. The stock in this company is all full paid and entirely
+        unassessable. The ores of the mines in this district somewhat resemble
+        those of the Sheba mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the
+        mines, with his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land
+        and timber they desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores
+        from there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in
+        silver and gold—silver predominating. There is an abundance of
+        wood and water in the District. We are glad to know that New York
+        capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this
+        region. Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the mines
+        of the District are very valuable—anything but wild-cat.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a million!
+      It was the “blind lead” over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these
+      things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true
+      to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and
+      yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall,
+      months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to
+      have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then
+      received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of
+      uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However,
+      when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and
+      incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so lost
+      heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and foolish
+      regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a
+      reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors took me
+      aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave
+      me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a
+      dismissal.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch59"></a>
+      CHAPTER LIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
+      established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
+      high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
+      three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
+      employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still
+      languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
+      pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
+      luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of the
+      novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a peaceful
+      death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these things but
+      for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that
+      characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble into
+      such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
+      that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay my
+      board. I became a very adept at “slinking.” I slunk from back
+      street to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked
+      familiar, I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for
+      every mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after
+      wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I
+      slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the
+      worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money—a silver
+      ten cent piece—and I held to it and would not spend it on any
+      account, lest the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely
+      penniless, might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes
+      I had on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with
+      handling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link429"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="429.jpg (36K)" src="images/429.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of
+      “slinking.” It was the entertaining of a collector (and being
+      entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker’s bill
+      for forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the “Prodigal.”
+      This man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes
+      oftener. He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get
+      nothing. He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five
+      per cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud
+      in it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his
+      might for any sum—any little trifle—even a dollar—even
+      half a dollar, on account. Then his duty was accomplished and his
+      conscience free. He immediately dropped the subject there always; got out
+      a couple of cigars and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we
+      would have a long, luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he
+      would furnish me a world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample
+      store in his memory. By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake
+      hands and say briskly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, business is business—can’t stay with you always!”—and
+      was off in a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come, and
+      would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his visit,
+      when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at last nor
+      any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly
+      lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
+      He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken,
+      that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with him
+      and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward each
+      other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
+      oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not speak
+      or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of both of
+      us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would idle along
+      contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home lights and
+      fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much enjoying our
+      dumb companionship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were
+      identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and
+      this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing his
+      berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a boarding
+      house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street; from thence
+      to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence to lodgings in
+      goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then; for a while, he
+      had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of grain on the
+      piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as chance threw
+      it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight, now, for a
+      reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and cannot well
+      avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This mendicant Blucher—I call him that for convenience—was a
+      splendid creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well
+      read and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master
+      of satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my
+      eyes and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a
+      crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most
+      pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been without
+      a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, among
+      friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to him. But
+      at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was sufficient; <i>he
+      had not tasted food for forty-eight hours</i>, and he could not endure the
+      misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back street,
+      glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he could
+      trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread doubled
+      his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine what one
+      might do if one only had it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot—looked
+      again—did not, and could not, believe his eyes—turned away, to
+      try them, then looked again. It was a verity—no vain,
+      hunger-inspired delusion—it was a silver dime!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link431"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="431.jpg (31K)" src="images/431.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He snatched it—gloated over it; doubted it—bit it—found
+      it genuine—choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then
+      he looked around—saw that nobody was looking at him—threw the
+      dime down where it was before—walked away a few steps, and
+      approached again, pretending he did not know it was there, so that he
+      could re-enjoy the luxury of finding it. He walked around it, viewing it
+      from different points; then sauntered about with his hands in his pockets,
+      looking up at the signs and now and then glancing at it and feeling the
+      old thrill again. Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his
+      pocket. He idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and
+      corners to take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his
+      lodgings—an empty queens-ware hogshead,—and employed himself
+      till night trying to make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard
+      to do. To get the most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner’s
+      Restaurant he could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten
+      cents; or a fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave “no bread
+      with one fish-ball” there. At French Pete’s he could get a
+      veal cutlet, plain, and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup
+      of coffee—a pint at least—and a slice of bread; but the slice
+      was not thick enough by the eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were
+      still more criminal than that in the cutting of it. At seven o’clock
+      his hunger was wolfish; and still his mind was not made up. He turned out
+      and went up Merchant street, still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick,
+      as is the way of starving men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link432"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="432.jpg (38K)" src="images/432.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed before the lights of Martin’s restaurant, the most
+      aristocratic in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often
+      dined, in better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out
+      of the range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show
+      window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and
+      some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in
+      there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry
+      interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was
+      conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched
+      his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition—a
+      very allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
+      with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded
+      piteously. This phantom said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come with me—please.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He locked his arm in Blucher’s and walked up the street to where the
+      passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put
+      out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Friend—stranger—look at me! Life is easy to you—you
+      go about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day—you have been
+      in there, and eaten your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and
+      hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself
+      it is a good world—but you’ve never <i>suffered</i>! You don’t
+      know what trouble is—you don’t know what misery is—nor
+      hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a poor friendless, homeless dog!
+      As God is my judge, I have not tasted food for eight and forty hours!—look
+      in my eyes and see if I lie! Give me the least trifle in the world to keep
+      me from starving—anything—twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger—do
+      it, <i>please</i>. It will be nothing to you, but life to me. Do it, and I
+      will go down on my knees and lick the dust before you! I will kiss your
+      footprints—I will worship the very ground you walk on! Only
+      twenty-five cents! I am famishing—perishing—starving by
+      inches! For God’s sake don’t desert me!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link433"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="433.jpg (71K)" src="images/433.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blucher was bewildered—and touched, too—stirred to the depths.
+      He reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Come with me.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the outcast’s arm, walked him down to Martin’s
+      restaurant, seated him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before
+      him, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “All right, Mr. Blucher,” said Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the
+      man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents a
+      plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two dollars
+      apiece; and when six dollars and a half’s worth of destruction had
+      been accomplished, and the stranger’s hunger appeased, Blucher went
+      down to French Pete’s, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread,
+      and three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from
+      the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch60"></a>
+      CHAPTER LX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the
+      decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him. We
+      lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five
+      other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a
+      flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this
+      grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years
+      before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming
+      hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into
+      decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared—streets, dwellings,
+      shops, everything—and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green
+      and smooth and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The
+      mere handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up
+      spread, grow and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and
+      die, and pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their
+      zest of life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and
+      ceased to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes
+      toward their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the
+      world and been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and
+      railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the
+      events that stirred the globe’s great populations, dead to the
+      common interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their
+      kind. It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and
+      melancholy exile that fancy can imagine.—One of my associates in
+      this locality, for two or three months, was a man who had had a university
+      education; but now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a
+      bearded, rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings
+      and soliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin
+      and Greek sentences—dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the
+      thoughts of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a
+      failure; a tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the
+      future; a man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link436"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="436.jpg (34K)" src="images/436.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining which
+      is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called “pocket mining”
+      and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little corner.
+      The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in
+      ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are very
+      wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one you reap
+      a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty pocket
+      miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one of them
+      personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the
+      hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make
+      a snuff-box—his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time—and
+      then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of
+      his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two
+      hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a
+      dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night was
+      gone. And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual, and
+      shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting pockets
+      again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all the different
+      kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of victims to
+      the lunatic asylum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spadeful of earth from
+      the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it
+      gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment.
+      Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the heaviest,
+      it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will find half a dozen
+      yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You are delighted. You move off
+      to one side and wash another pan. If you find gold again, you move to one
+      side further, and wash a third pan. If you find <i>no</i> gold this time,
+      you are delighted again, because you know you are on the right scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up the hill—for
+      just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich deposit lies
+      hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been washed down the
+      hill, spreading farther and farther apart as they wandered. And so you
+      proceed up the hill, washing the earth and narrowing your lines every time
+      the absence of gold in the pan shows that you are outside the spread of
+      the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the hill your lines have converged
+      to a point—a single foot from that point you cannot find any gold.
+      Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the
+      dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may
+      die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you
+      sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you
+      strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with
+      soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is
+      all—$500. Sometimes the nest contains $10,000, and it takes you
+      three or four days to get it all out. The pocket-miners tell of one nest
+      that yielded $60,000 and two men exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold
+      the ground for $10,000 to a party who never got $300 out of it afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link437"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="437.jpg (37K)" src="images/437.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around the
+      bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners
+      long for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash
+      them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets
+      were found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5,000 in it
+      and the other $8,000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn’t
+      had a cent for about a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in
+      the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of the
+      distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest on a
+      great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen years
+      they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and by two
+      vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to amuse
+      themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a sledge-hammer.
+      They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with gold. That
+      boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravating circumstance was
+      that these “Greasers” knew that there must be more gold where
+      that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and found
+      what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced. It took
+      three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two American
+      miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they take turn
+      about in getting up early in the morning to curse those Mexicans—and
+      when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native American is
+      gifted above the sons of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because it
+      is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged
+      that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches
+      to novelty.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch61"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of my comrades there—another of those victims of eighteen years
+      of unrequited toil and blighted hopes—was one of the gentlest
+      spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and
+      simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.—He was
+      forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated,
+      slouchily dressed and clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any
+      gold his shovel ever brought to light—than any, indeed, that ever
+      was mined or minted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to
+      mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women
+      and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they
+      must love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity of that
+      cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart that there was
+      something human about it—may be even supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard him talking about this animal once. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link440"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="440.jpg (18K)" src="images/440.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz,
+      which you’d a took an interest in I reckon—most any body
+      would. I had him here eight year—and he was the remarkablest cat <i>I</i>
+      ever see. He was a large gray one of the Tom specie, an’ he had more
+      hard, natchral sense than any man in this camp—’n’ a <i>power</i>
+      of dignity—he wouldn’t let the Gov’ner of Californy be
+      familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his life—’peared
+      to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more
+      about mining, that cat did, than any man <i>I</i> ever, ever see. You
+      couldn’t tell <i>him</i> noth’n ’bout placer diggin’s—’n’
+      as for pocket mining, why he was just born for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He would dig out after me an’ Jim when we went over the hills
+      prospect’n’, and he would trot along behind us for as much as
+      five mile, if we went so fur. An’ he had the best judgment about
+      mining ground—why you never see anything like it. When we went to
+      work, he’d scatter a glance around, ’n’ if he didn’t
+      think much of the indications, he would give a look as much as to say,
+      ‘Well, I’ll have to get you to excuse <i>me</i>,’
+      ’n’ without another word he’d hyste his nose into the
+      air ’n’ shove for home. But if the ground suited him, he would
+      lay low ’n’ keep dark till the first pan was washed, ’n’
+      then he would sidle up ’n’ take a look, an’ if there was
+      about six or seven grains of gold <i>he</i> was satisfied—he didn’t
+      want no better prospect ’n’ that—’n’ then he
+      would lay down on our coats and snore like a steamboat till we’d
+      struck the pocket, an’ then get up ’n’ superintend. He
+      was nearly lightnin’ on superintending.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, bye an’ bye, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Every
+      body was into it—every body was pick’n’ ’n’
+      blast’n’ instead of shovelin’ dirt on the hill side—every
+      body was put’n’ down a shaft instead of scrapin’ the
+      surface. Noth’n’ would do Jim, but <i>we</i> must tackle the
+      ledges, too, ’n’ so we did. We commenced put’n’
+      down a shaft, ’n’ Tom Quartz he begin to wonder what in the
+      Dickens it was all about. He hadn’t ever seen any mining like that
+      before, ’n’ he was all upset, as you may say—he couldn’t
+      come to a right understanding of it no way—it was too many for <i>him</i>.
+      He was down on it, too, you bet you—he was down on it powerful—’n’
+      always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness out. But that
+      cat, you know, was <i>always</i> agin new fangled arrangements—somehow
+      he never could abide’em. <i>You</i> know how it is with old habits.
+      But by an’ by Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little,
+      though he never <i>could</i> altogether understand that eternal sinkin’
+      of a shaft an’ never pannin’ out any thing. At last he got to
+      comin’ down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out. An’
+      when he’d git the blues, ’n’ feel kind o’scruffy,
+      ’n’ aggravated ’n’ disgusted—knowin’
+      as he did, that the bills was runnin’ up all the time an’ we
+      warn’t makin’ a cent—he would curl up on a gunny sack in
+      the corner an’ go to sleep. Well, one day when the shaft was down
+      about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we had to put in a blast—the
+      first blast’n’ we’d ever done since Tom Quartz was born.
+      An’ then we lit the fuse ’n’ clumb out ’n’
+      got off ’bout fifty yards—’n’ forgot ’n’
+      left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link441"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="441.jpg (89K)" src="images/441.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In ’bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the
+      hole, ’n’ then everything let go with an awful crash, ’n’
+      about four million ton of rocks ’n’ dirt ’n’ smoke
+      ’n; splinters shot up ’bout a mile an’ a half into the
+      air, an’ by George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom
+      Quartz a goin’ end over end, an’ a snortin’ an’ a
+      sneez’n’, an’ a clawin’ an’ a reachin’
+      for things like all possessed. But it warn’t no use, you know, it
+      warn’t no use. An’ that was the last we see of <i>him</i> for
+      about two minutes ’n’ a half, an’ then all of a sudden
+      it begin to rain rocks and rubbage, an’ directly he come down
+      ker-whop about ten foot off f’m where we stood Well, I reckon he was
+      p’raps the orneriest lookin’ beast you ever see. One ear was
+      sot back on his neck, ’n’ his tail was stove up, ’n’
+      his eye-winkers was swinged off, ’n’ he was all blacked up
+      with powder an’ smoke, an’ all sloppy with mud ’n’
+      slush f’m one end to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well sir, it warn’t no use to try to apologize—we
+      couldn’t say a word. He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself,
+      ’n’ then he looked at us—an’ it was just exactly
+      the same as if he had said—’Gents, may be <i>you</i> think it’s
+      smart to take advantage of a cat that ’ain’t had no experience
+      of quartz minin’, but <i>I</i> think <i>different</i>’—an’
+      then he turned on his heel ’n’ marched off home without ever
+      saying another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link442"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="442.jpg (16K)" src="images/442.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “That was jest his style. An’ may be you won’t believe
+      it, but after that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as
+      what he was. An’ by an’ bye when he <i>did</i> get to goin’
+      down in the shaft agin, you’d ’a been astonished at his
+      sagacity. The minute we’d tetch off a blast ’n’ the fuse’d
+      begin to sizzle, he’d give a look as much as to say: ’Well, I’ll
+      have to git you to excuse <i>me</i>,’ an’ it was surpris’n’
+      the way he’d shin out of that hole ’n’ go f’r a
+      tree. Sagacity? It ain’t no name for it. ’Twas <i>inspiration</i>!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, “Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining <i>was</i>
+      remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn’t you ever cure
+      him of it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Cure him!</i> No! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was <i>always</i>
+      sot—and you might a blowed him up as much as three million times
+      ’n’ you’d never a broken him of his cussed prejudice
+      agin quartz mining.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affection and the pride that lit up Baker’s face when he
+      delivered this tribute to the firmness of his humble friend of other days,
+      will always be a vivid memory with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of two months we had never “struck” a pocket. We
+      had panned up and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field;
+      we could have put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no
+      way to get it to market. We got many good “prospects,” but
+      when the gold gave out in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we
+      found only emptiness—the pocket that should have been there was as
+      barren as our own.—At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and
+      struck out over the hills to try new localities. We prospected around
+      Angel’s Camp, in Calaveras county, during three weeks, but had no
+      success. Then we wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the
+      trees at night, for the weather was mild, but still we remained as
+      centless as the last rose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in
+      pathetic harmony with the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves.
+      In accordance with the custom of the country, our door had always stood
+      open and our board welcome to tramping miners—they drifted along
+      nearly every day, dumped their paust shovels by the threshold and took
+      “pot luck” with us—and now on our own tramp we never
+      found cold hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the
+      reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo
+      Semite—but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute
+      him? I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and
+      take his blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities,
+        purely, and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In “placer
+        diggings” the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in
+        “pocket” diggings it is concentrated in one little spot; in
+        “quartz” the gold is in a solid, continuous vein of rock,
+        enclosed between distinct walls of some other kind of stone—and
+        this is the most laborious and expensive of all the different kinds of
+        mining. “Prospecting” is hunting for a “placer”;
+        “indications” are signs of its presence; “panning out”
+        refers to the washing process by which the grains of gold are separated
+        from the dirt; a “prospect” is what one finds in the first
+        panful of dirt—and its value determines whether it is a good or a
+        bad prospect, and whether it is worth while to tarry there or seek
+        further.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch62"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a three months’ absence, I found myself in San Francisco
+      again, without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had
+      become too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were
+      no vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco
+      correspondent of the <i>Enterprise</i>, and at the end of five months I
+      was out of debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my
+      correspondence being a daily one, without rest or respite, I got
+      unspeakably tired of it. I wanted another change. The vagabond instinct
+      was strong upon me. Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful
+      one. It was to go down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for
+      the Sacramento <i>Union</i>, an excellent journal and liberal with
+      employees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sailed in the propeller <i>Ajax</i>, in the middle of winter. The
+      almanac called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a
+      compromise between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became
+      summer altogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them a cheerful
+      soul by the name of Williams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains
+      going down to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the
+      smoking room day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky
+      without being in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I
+      think I ever saw. And then there was “the old Admiral—”
+      a retired whaleman. He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and
+      lightning and thunder, and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But
+      nevertheless he was tender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening,
+      devastating typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed
+      refuge in the centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could
+      know the “Admiral” without liking him; and in a sudden and
+      dire emergency I think no friend of his would know which to choose—to
+      be cursed by him or prayed for by a less efficient person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link445"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="445.jpg (65K)" src="images/445.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Title of “Admiral” was more strictly “official”
+      than any ever worn by a naval officer before or since, perhaps—for
+      it was the voluntary offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the
+      <i>people</i> themselves without any intermediate red tape—the
+      people of the Sandwich Islands. It was a title that came to him freighted
+      with affection, and honor, and appreciation of his unpretending merit. And
+      in testimony of the genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that
+      an exclusive flag should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his
+      coming and wave him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever
+      his ship was signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out
+      to sea, that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament
+      house and the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. When I knew
+      him on board the <i>Ajax</i>, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed
+      the salt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and out
+      of the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen more
+      had been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island passenger packet
+      and had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knew
+      him for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as children
+      regard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when the roaring
+      Admiral was around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a
+      competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would
+      “never go within <i>smelling</i> distance of the salt water again as
+      long as he lived.” And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to
+      say, <i>he</i> considered he had kept it, and it would have been more than
+      dangerous to suggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven
+      long sea voyages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired
+      since he “retired,” was only keeping the general spirit of it
+      and not the strict letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and all
+      cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight
+      in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the
+      part of the weaker side.—And this was the reason why he was always
+      sure to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to
+      oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he
+      would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was why
+      harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary
+      under his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the most
+      frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the
+      Flag; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweep of
+      the Northern armies, he ran up the Confederate colors and from that time
+      till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising animosity than any
+      individual I have ever met, of either sex; and he was never tired of
+      storming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be wary
+      and drink with moderation. And yet if any creature had been guileless
+      enough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of “straight”
+      whiskey during our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexible
+      abstemiousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun him
+      to the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath. Mind, I
+      am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it did
+      not, in even the slightest degree. He was a capacious container, but he
+      did not hold enough for that. He took a level tumblerful of whisky every
+      morning before he put his clothes on—“to sweeten his
+      bilgewater,” he said.—He took another after he got the most of
+      his clothes on, “to settle his mind and give him his bearings.”
+      He then shaved, and put on a clean shirt; after which he recited the Lord’s
+      Prayer in a fervent, thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and
+      suspended all conversation in the main cabin. Then, at this stage, being
+      invariably “by the head,” or “by the stern,” or
+      “listed to port or starboard,” he took one more to “put
+      him on an even keel so that he would mind his hellum and not miss stays
+      and go about, every time he came up in the wind.”—And now, his
+      state-room door swung open and the sun of his benignant face beamed redly
+      out upon men and women and children, and he roared his “Shipmets a’hoy!”
+      in a way that was calculated to wake the dead and precipitate the final
+      resurrection; and forth he strode, a picture to look at and a presence to
+      enforce attention. Stalwart and portly; not a gray hair; broadbrimmed
+      slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery of blue navy flannel—roomy and
+      ample; a stately expanse of shirt-front and a liberal amount of black silk
+      neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot; large chain and imposing seals
+      impending from his fob; awe-inspiring feet, and “a hand like the
+      hand of Providence,” as his whaling brethren expressed it;
+      wrist-bands and sleeves pushed back half way to the elbow, out of respect
+      for the warm weather, and exposing hairy arms, gaudy with red and blue
+      anchors, ships, and goddesses of liberty tattooed in India ink. But these
+      details were only secondary matters—his face was the lodestone that
+      chained the eye. It was a sultry disk, glowing determinedly out through a
+      weather beaten mask of mahogany, and studded with warts, seamed with
+      scars, “blazed” all over with unfailing fresh slips of the
+      razor; and with cheery eyes, under shaggy brows, contemplating the world
+      from over the back of a gnarled crag of a nose that loomed vast and lonely
+      out of the undulating immensity that spread away from its foundations. At
+      his heels frisked the darling of his bachelor estate, his terrier “Fan,”
+      a creature no larger than a squirrel. The main part of his daily life was
+      occupied in looking after “Fan,” in a motherly way, and
+      doctoring her for a hundred ailments which existed only in his
+      imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link448"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="448.jpg (48K)" src="images/448.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral seldom read newspapers; and when he did he never believed
+      anything they said. He read nothing, and believed in nothing, but “The
+      Old Guard,” a secession periodical published in New York. He carried
+      a dozen copies of it with him, always, and referred to them for all
+      required information. If it was not there, he supplied it himself, out of
+      a bountiful fancy, inventing history, names, dates, and every thing else
+      necessary to make his point good in an argument. Consequently he was a
+      formidable antagonist in a dispute. Whenever he swung clear of the record
+      and began to create history, the enemy was helpless and had to surrender.
+      Indeed, the enemy could not keep from betraying some little spark of
+      indignation at his manufactured history—and when it came to
+      indignation, that was the Admiral’s very “best hold.” He
+      was always ready for a political argument, and if nobody started one he
+      would do it himself. With his third retort his temper would begin to rise,
+      and within five minutes he would be blowing a gale, and within fifteen his
+      smoking-room audience would be utterly stormed away and the old man left
+      solitary and alone, banging the table with his fist, kicking the chairs,
+      and roaring a hurricane of profanity. It got so, after a while, that
+      whenever the Admiral approached, with politics in his eye, the passengers
+      would drop out with quiet accord, afraid to meet him; and he would camp on
+      a deserted field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link449"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="449.jpg (34K)" src="images/449.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he found his match at last, and before a full company. At one time or
+      another, everybody had entered the lists against him and been routed,
+      except the quiet passenger Williams. He had never been able to get an
+      expression of opinion out of him on politics. But now, just as the Admiral
+      drew near the door and the company were about to slip out, Williams said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Admiral, are you <i>certain</i> about that circumstance concerning
+      the clergymen you mentioned the other day?”—referring to a
+      piece of the Admiral’s manufactured history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one was amazed at the man’s rashness. The idea of deliberately
+      inviting annihilation was a thing incomprehensible. The retreat came to a
+      halt; then everybody sat down again wondering, to await the upshot of it.
+      The Admiral himself was as surprised as any one. He paused in the door,
+      with his red handkerchief half raised to his sweating face, and
+      contemplated the daring reptile in the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Certain</i> of it? Am I <i>certain</i> of it? Do you think I’ve
+      been lying about it? What do you take me for? Anybody that don’t
+      know that circumstance, don’t know anything; a child ought to know
+      it. Read up your history! Read it up— — — —, and
+      don’t come asking a man if he’s <i>certain</i> about a bit of
+      ABC stuff that the very southern niggers know all about.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Admiral’s fires began to wax hot, the atmosphere thickened,
+      the coming earthquake rumbled, he began to thunder and lighten. Within
+      three minutes his volcano was in full irruption and he was discharging
+      flames and ashes of indignation, belching black volumes of foul history
+      aloft, and vomiting red-hot torrents of profanity from his crater.
+      Meantime Williams sat silent, and apparently deeply and earnestly
+      interested in what the old man was saying. By and by, when the lull came,
+      he said in the most deferential way, and with the gratified air of a man
+      who has had a mystery cleared up which had been puzzling him
+      uncomfortably:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Now</i> I understand it. I always thought I knew that piece of
+      history well enough, but was still afraid to trust it, because there was
+      not that convincing particularity about it that one likes to have in
+      history; but when you mentioned every name, the other day, and every date,
+      and every little circumstance, in their just order and sequence, I said to
+      myself, <i>this</i> sounds something like—<i>this</i> is history—<i>this</i>
+      is putting it in a shape that gives a man confidence; and I said to myself
+      afterward, I will just ask the Admiral if he is perfectly certain about
+      the details, and if he is I will come out and thank him for clearing this
+      matter up for me. And that is what I want to do now—for until you
+      set that matter right it was nothing but just a confusion in my mind,
+      without head or tail to it.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody ever saw the Admiral look so mollified before, and so pleased.
+      Nobody had ever received his bogus history as gospel before; its
+      genuineness had always been called in question either by words or looks;
+      but here was a man that not only swallowed it all down, but was grateful
+      for the dose. He was taken a back; he hardly knew what to say; even his
+      profanity failed him. Now, Williams continued, modestly and earnestly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But Admiral, in saying that this was the first stone thrown, and
+      that this precipitated the war, you have overlooked a circumstance which
+      you are perfectly familiar with, but which has escaped your memory. Now I
+      grant you that what you have stated is correct in every detail—to
+      wit: that on the 16th of October, 1860, two Massachusetts clergymen, named
+      Waite and Granger, went in disguise to the house of John Moody, in
+      Rockport, at dead of night, and dragged forth two southern women and their
+      two little children, and after tarring and feathering them conveyed them
+      to Boston and burned them alive in the State House square; and I also
+      grant your proposition that this deed is what led to the secession of
+      South Carolina on the 20th of December following. Very well.” [Here
+      the company were pleasantly surprised to hear Williams proceed to come
+      back at the Admiral with his own invincible weapon—clean, pure, <i>manufactured
+      history</i>, without a word of truth in it.] “Very well, I say. But
+      Admiral, why overlook the Willis and Morgan case in South Carolina? You
+      are too well informed a man not to know all about that circumstance. Your
+      arguments and your conversations have shown you to be intimately
+      conversant with every detail of this national quarrel. You develop matters
+      of history every day that show plainly that you are no smatterer in it,
+      content to nibble about the surface, but a man who has searched the depths
+      and possessed yourself of everything that has a bearing upon the great
+      question. Therefore, let me just recall to your mind that Willis and
+      Morgan case—though I see by your face that the whole thing is
+      already passing through your memory at this moment. On the 12th of August,
+      1860, <i>two months</i> before the Waite and Granger affair, two South
+      Carolina clergymen, named John H. Morgan and Winthrop L. Willis, one a
+      Methodist and the other an Old School Baptist, disguised themselves, and
+      went at midnight to the house of a planter named Thompson—Archibald
+      F. Thompson, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson,—and took thence,
+      at midnight, his widowed aunt, (a Northern woman,) and her adopted child,
+      an orphan named Mortimer Highie, afflicted with epilepsy and suffering at
+      the time from white swelling on one of his legs, and compelled to walk on
+      crutches in consequence; and the two ministers, in spite of the pleadings
+      of the victims, dragged them to the bush, tarred and feathered them, and
+      afterward burned them at the stake in the city of Charleston. You remember
+      perfectly well what a stir it made; you remember perfectly well that even
+      the Charleston <i>Courier</i> stigmatized the act as being unpleasant, of
+      questionable propriety, and scarcely justifiable, and likewise that it
+      would not be matter of surprise if retaliation ensued. And you remember
+      also, that this thing was the <i>cause</i> of the Massachusetts outrage.
+      Who, indeed, were the two Massachusetts ministers? and who were the two
+      Southern women they burned? I do not need to remind <i>you</i>, Admiral,
+      with your intimate knowledge of history, that Waite was the nephew of the
+      woman burned in Charleston; that Granger was her cousin in the second
+      degree, and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife of John H.
+      Morgan, and the still loved but divorced wife of Winthrop L. Willis. Now,
+      Admiral, it is only fair that you should acknowledge that the first
+      provocation came from the Southern preachers and that the Northern ones
+      were justified in retaliating. In your arguments you never yet have shown
+      the least disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywise unfair,
+      when authoritative history condemned your position, and therefore I have
+      no hesitation in asking you to take the original blame from the
+      Massachusetts ministers, in this matter, and transfer it to the South
+      Carolina clergymen where it justly belongs.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link453"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="453.jpg (44K)" src="images/453.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken creature who swallowed his
+      fraudulent history as if it were the bread of life; basked in his furious
+      blasphemy as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm, even-handed
+      justice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him with invented history
+      so sugarcoated with flattery and deference that there was no rejecting it,
+      was “too many” for him. He stammered some awkward, profane
+      sentences about the— — — —Willis and Morgan
+      business having escaped his memory, but that he “remembered it now,”
+      and then, under pretence of giving Fan some medicine for an imaginary
+      cough, drew out of the battle and went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers
+      and laughter went up, and Williams, the ship’s benefactor was a
+      hero. The news went about the vessel, champagne was ordered, and
+      enthusiastic reception instituted in the smoking room, and everybody
+      flocked thither to shake hands with the conqueror. The wheelman said
+      afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind the pilot house and “ripped
+      and cursed all to himself” till he loosened the smokestack guys and
+      becalmed the mainsail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral’s power was broken. After that, if he began argument,
+      somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and begin
+      to quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in his dulcet,
+      insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof, to the
+      old man’s own excellent memory and to copies of “The Old Guard”
+      known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completely
+      and leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to so
+      dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when he
+      saw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, and
+      from that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch63"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the
+      lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two
+      thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we
+      approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the
+      ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the
+      details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of
+      beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the
+      natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve
+      and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets
+      from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them
+      straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link455"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="455.jpg (98K)" src="images/455.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step
+      revealed a new contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to.
+      In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of San Francisco, I saw
+      dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored pebble-and-shell-
+      conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a
+      great number of neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place
+      of front yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw
+      these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green grass, and
+      shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the sun could scarcely
+      penetrate; in place of the customary geranium, calla lily, etc.,
+      languishing in dust and general debility, I saw luxurious banks and
+      thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and glowing with the
+      richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of San Francisco’s
+      pleasure grove, the “Willows,” I saw huge-bodied,
+      wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance—trees
+      that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone
+      without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling around
+      in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of distortion
+      through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their transparent
+      prison houses, I saw cats—Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats,
+      bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed
+      cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
+      spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups
+      of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of
+      cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
+      lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of people, some white, in
+      white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth shoes, made snowy with
+      chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority of the people were
+      almost as dark as negroes—women with comely features, fine black
+      eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a single bright
+      red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel,
+      long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled with wreaths of
+      natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in various
+      costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered stove-pipe hat tilted on
+      the nose, and a very scant breech-clout;—certain smoke-dried
+      children were clothed in nothing but sunshine—a very neat fitting
+      and picturesque apparel indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link456"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="456.jpg (25K)" src="images/456.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners, I
+      saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on the
+      ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever or
+      whoever happened along; instead of wretched cobble-stone pavements, I
+      walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the sea
+      by the absurd but persevering insect of that name, with a light layer of
+      lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomless
+      perdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater that stands
+      dead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped and crowded
+      street-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as the wind, on
+      fleet horses and astride, with gaudy riding-sashes, streaming like banners
+      behind them; instead of the combined stenches of Chinadom and Brannan
+      street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine,
+      oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry and bustle and
+      noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a Summer calm as
+      tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the Golden City’s
+      skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one side a frame-work
+      of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in refreshing green,
+      and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys—and in front the grand
+      sweep of the ocean: a brilliant, transparent green near the shore, bound
+      and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing against the reef,
+      and further out the dead blue water of the deep sea, flecked with “white
+      caps,” and in the far horizon a single, lonely sail—a mere
+      accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm and a solitude that were
+      without sound or limit. When the sun sunk down—the one intruder from
+      other realms and persistent in suggestions of them—it was tranced
+      luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world but
+      these enchanted islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link457"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="457.jpg (43K)" src="images/457.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream—till you got a bite. A
+      scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill
+      the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or
+      brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future. Then
+      came an adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the
+      day’s journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with
+      the other—a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an
+      enemy approaching,—a hairy tarantula on stilts—why not set the
+      spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a
+      luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a
+      promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot
+      enough to burn a hole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a
+      resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait,
+      and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in
+      under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on
+      the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the tropics in
+      occasional wakeful intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges, pine-
+      apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas, melons, and
+      a rare and curious luxury called the chirimoya, which is deliciousness
+      itself. Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarinds were made to eat,
+      but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me
+      that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they
+      resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance
+      through a quill for twenty-four hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them
+      a “wire edge” that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said
+      “no, it will come off when the enamel does”—which was
+      comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat
+      tamarinds—but they only eat them once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link458"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="458.jpg (145K)" src="images/458.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch64"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night—especially
+      about sitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen or
+      twenty miles on horse-back since 5 P.M. and to tell the honest truth, I
+      have a delicacy about sitting down at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An excursion to Diamond Head and the King’s Coacoanut Grove was
+      planned to-day—time, 4:30 P.M.—the party to consist of half a
+      dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour
+      except myself. I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and
+      another whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its
+      examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing.
+      Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o’clock, and
+      that woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was
+      along with his “turn out,” as he calls a top-buggy that
+      Captain Cook brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain
+      Cook came. Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the
+      speed of his horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that
+      we were only sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel—a
+      distance which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it took some
+      fearful driving. The Captain’s whip came down fast, and the blows
+      started so much dust out of the horse’s hide that during the last
+      half of the journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a
+      pocket compass in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six years
+      experience, who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessed as
+      if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said,
+      “Port your helm—port,” from time to time, and “Hold
+      her a little free—steady—so—so,” and “Luff—hard
+      down to starboard!” and never once lost his presence of mind or
+      betrayed the least anxiety by voice or manner. When we came to anchor at
+      last, and Captain Phillips looked at his watch and said, “Sixteen
+      minutes—I told you it was in her! that’s over three miles an
+      hour!” I could see he felt entitled to a compliment, and so I said I
+      had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlord of the American said the party had been gone nearly an hour,
+      but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could overtake
+      them. I said, never mind—I preferred a safe horse to a fast one—I
+      would like to have an excessively gentle horse—a horse with no
+      spirit whatever—a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five
+      minutes I was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no
+      time to label him “This is a horse,” and so if the public took
+      him for a sheep I cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main
+      thing. I could see that he had as many fine points as any man’s
+      horse, and so I hung my hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed
+      the perspiration from my face and started. I named him after this island,
+      “Oahu” (pronounced O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he
+      started in; I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case
+      with him. He resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and
+      abuse. He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on the other
+      side of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six
+      hundred yards he crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen
+      gates, and in the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and
+      threatening to cave the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping
+      with perspiration. He abandoned the gate business after that and went
+      along peaceably enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter
+      circumstance, and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I said to my
+      self, this creature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or
+      other—no horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one
+      is doing just for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the
+      more uneasy I became, until the suspense became almost unbearable and I
+      dismounted to see if there was anything wild in his eye—for I had
+      heard that the eye of this noblest of our domestic animals is very
+      expressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link461"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="461.jpg (86K)" src="images/461.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when I
+      found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into a faster
+      walk, and then the villainy of his nature came out again. He tried to
+      climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I saw that I must apply
+      force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first as last. I
+      plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he saw it, he
+      surrendered. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, which had three
+      short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me alternately of the
+      clattering shake of the great earthquake, and the sweeping plunging of the
+      <i>Ajax</i> in a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce a
+      left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle. There
+      is no seat to speak of about it—one might as well sit in a
+      shovel—and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance. If
+      I were to write down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it
+      would make a large book, even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot
+      so far through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet;
+      sometimes both feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and
+      sometimes my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling
+      about my shins. Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced
+      upon the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of my
+      nervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in a
+      moment. But the subject is too exasperating to write about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees,
+      with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet
+      and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of cocoa-
+      nuts—not more picturesque than a forest of collossal ragged
+      parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might be
+      poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by
+      lightning. I think that describes it better than a picture—and yet,
+      without any question, there is something fascinating about a cocoa-nut
+      tree—and graceful, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link462"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="462.jpg (29K)" src="images/462.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native grass, nestled
+      sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass cabins are of a grayish
+      color, are shaped much like our own cottages, only with higher and steeper
+      roofs usually, and are made of some kind of weed strongly bound together
+      in bundles. The roofs are very thick, and so are the walls; the latter
+      have square holes in them for windows. At a little distance these cabins
+      have a furry appearance, as if they might be made of bear skins. They are
+      very cool and pleasant inside. The King’s flag was flying from the
+      roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty was probably within. He owns
+      the whole concern thereabouts, and passes his time there frequently, on
+      sultry days “laying off.” The spot is called “The King’s
+      Grove.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near by is an interesting ruin—the meagre remains of an ancient
+      heathen temple—a place where human sacrifices were offered up in
+      those old bygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding
+      momentarily to sin when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm
+      reflection had shown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and
+      offered up his grandmother as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days
+      when the luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and
+      achieving periodical happiness as long as his relations held out; long,
+      long before the missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make
+      them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful
+      a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and
+      showed the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what
+      unnecessarily liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him
+      how, in his ignorance he had gone and fooled away all his kinfolks to no
+      purpose; showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty
+      cents to buy food for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime
+      and lolling in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the bounty
+      that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the
+      multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and
+      never knew there was a hell!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was simply a
+      roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and seventy wide—nothing
+      but naked walls, very thick, but not much higher than a man’s head.
+      They will last for ages no doubt, if left unmolested. Its three altars and
+      other sacred appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years ago. It is
+      said that in the old times thousands of human beings were slaughtered
+      here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If these mute stones
+      could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they could
+      describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed forms
+      straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up by the
+      sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly trees; of the dark pyramid
+      of Diamond Head standing sentinel over the uncanny scene, and the peaceful
+      moon looking down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great—who was a
+      sort of a Napoleon in military genius and uniform success—invaded
+      this island of Oahu three quarters of a century ago, and exterminated the
+      army sent to oppose him, and took full and final possession of the
+      country, he searched out the dead body of the King of Oahu, and those of
+      the principal chiefs, and impaled their heads on the walls of this temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in its prime.
+      The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a rod of iron; made
+      them gather all the provisions the masters needed; build all the houses
+      and temples; stand all the expenses, of whatever kind; take kicks and
+      cuffs for thanks; drag out lives well flavored with misery, and then
+      suffer death for trifling offences or yield up their lives on the
+      sacrificial altars to purchase favors from the gods for their hard rulers.
+      The missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up the tyrannous
+      authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and the right to enjoy
+      whatever their hands and brains produce with equal laws for all, and
+      punishment for all alike who transgress them. The contrast is so strong—the
+      benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is so prominent, so
+      palpable and so unquestionable, that the frankest compliment I can pay
+      them, and the best, is simply to point to the condition of the Sandwich
+      Islanders of Captain Cook’s time, and their condition to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their work speaks for itself.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch65"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which
+      commanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain and
+      valley and ocean with a mellow radiance, and out of the shadows of the
+      foliage the distant lights of Honolulu glinted like an encampment of
+      fireflies. The air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. The halt was
+      brief.—Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped on, and I
+      clung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we came to a place where
+      no grass grew—a wide expanse of deep sand. They said it was an old
+      battle ground. All around everywhere, not three feet apart, the bleached
+      bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We picked up a lot of them
+      for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones and leg bones—of
+      great chiefs, may be, who had fought savagely in that fearful battle in
+      the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now stood—and
+      wore the choicest of them out on Oahu afterward, trying to make him go.
+      All sorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a citizen said,
+      irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of “skull-hunters”
+      there lately—a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing whatever is known about this place—its story is a secret
+      that will never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of being
+      possessed of its history. They say these bones were here when they were
+      children. They were here when their grandfathers were children—but
+      how they came here, they can only conjecture. Many people believe this
+      spot to be an ancient battle-ground, and it is usual to call it so; and
+      they believe that these skeletons have lain for ages just where their
+      proprietors fell in the great fight. Other people believe that Kamehameha
+      I. fought his first battle here. On this point, I have heard a story,
+      which may have been taken from one of the numerous books which have been
+      written concerning these islands—I do not know where the narrator
+      got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely a
+      subordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought a
+      large army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marched against
+      him, and so confident were they of success that they readily acceded to a
+      demand of their priests that they should draw a line where these bones now
+      lie, and take an oath that, if forced to retreat at all, they would never
+      retreat beyond this boundary. The priests told them that death and
+      everlasting punishment would overtake any who violated the oath, and the
+      march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step by step; the priests
+      fought in the front rank and exhorted them both by voice and inspiriting
+      example to remember their oath—to die, if need be, but never cross
+      the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained, but at last the
+      chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear, and the unlucky omen
+      fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his back; with a triumphant
+      shout the invaders pressed forward—the line was crossed—the
+      offended gods deserted the despairing army, and, accepting the doom their
+      perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled over the plain where
+      Honolulu stands now—up the beautiful Nuuanu Valley—paused a
+      moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either hand and the
+      frightful precipice of the Pari in front, and then were driven over—a
+      sheer plunge of six hundred feet!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves’ excellent history says
+      the Oahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted them,
+      routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over the precipice.
+      He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over the
+      beautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to my
+      thoughts. I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon!
+      How strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the
+      clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the
+      long, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain! How
+      soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border the
+      dream-haunted Mauoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy clouds towers
+      above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seem flocking in
+      ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again—how the wails
+      of the dying well up from the—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the horse called Oahu sat down in the sand. Sat down to
+      listen, I suppose. Never mind what he heard, I stopped apostrophising and
+      convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt of Court on the part
+      of a horse. I broke the back-bone of a Chief over his rump and set out to
+      join the cavalcade again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link467"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="467.jpg (33K)" src="images/467.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o’clock at
+      night, myself in the lead—for when my horse finally came to
+      understand that he was homeward bound and hadn’t far to go, he
+      turned his attention strictly to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is no
+      regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the Kingdom
+      of Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy residents (who
+      all have good horses), you must hire animals of the wretchedest
+      description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.) Any horse you hire, even
+      though it be from a white man, is not often of much account, because it
+      will be brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily been
+      leading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him
+      (inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every day
+      themselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing by
+      proxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. The
+      result is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, or
+      look well or feel well, and so strangers go about the Islands mounted as I
+      was to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you,
+      because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewd
+      unprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunk unlocked
+      as long as you please, and he will not meddle with your property; he has
+      no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery on a large scale;
+      but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business, he will take a
+      genuine delight in doing it. This trait is characteristic of horse
+      jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will overcharge you if he can; he
+      will hire you a fine-looking horse at night (anybody’s—may be
+      the King’s, if the royal steed be in convenient view), and bring you
+      the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it is the same
+      animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it was not himself
+      who made the bargain with you, but his brother, “who went out in the
+      country this morning.” They have always got a “brother”
+      to shift the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows
+      one day:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on
+      your cheek.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply was not bad: “Oh, yes—yes—my brother all same—we
+      twins!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link469"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="469.jpg (81K)" src="images/469.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka warranting
+      him to be in excellent condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to
+      put these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly willing
+      to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on the animal, but
+      Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith noticed that the
+      Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the original blanket on
+      the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets, and so, to cut the
+      bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse went lame a mile from
+      town, and afterward got to cutting up some extraordinary capers. Smith got
+      down and took off the saddle, but the blanket stuck fast to the horse—glued
+      to a procession of raw places. The Kanaka’s mysterious conduct stood
+      explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link470"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="470.jpg (33K)" src="images/470.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day or
+      two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He
+      discovered to-day that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He
+      meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion that
+      he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the attempt
+      his attention was called to something else by his victimizer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed
+      that when a certain Mr. L., a visiting stranger, was here, he bought a
+      pair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They were in
+      a little stable with a partition through the middle of it—one horse
+      in each apartment. Mr. L. examined one of them critically through a window
+      (the Kanaka’s “brother” having gone to the country with
+      the key), and then went around the house and examined the other through a
+      window on the other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever
+      seen, and paid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed
+      to join his brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L.
+      There was only one “match” horse, and he had examined his
+      starboard side through one window and his port side through another! I
+      decline to believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something
+      as a fanciful illustration of a fixed fact—namely, that the Kanaka
+      horse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good
+      enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I
+      estimate “Oahu” to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of
+      thirty-five cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day
+      before yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again
+      to-day for two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome
+      and lively little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best
+      common horse on the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday,
+      with Mexican saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars—a horse which is
+      well and widely known, and greatly respected for his speed, good
+      disposition and everlasting bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San
+      Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as much
+      hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and is
+      not very good; it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of a
+      large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six foot
+      pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streets
+      between the upright bales in search of customers. These hay bales, thus
+      carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital ‘H.’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link471"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="471.jpg (59K)" src="images/471.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse
+      about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week’s hay for
+      another song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass
+      in your neighbor’s broad front yard without a song at all—you
+      do it at midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have
+      been at no expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle
+      they will cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a
+      horse, saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the
+      owner will take care of them at his own expense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is time to close this day’s record—bed time. As I prepare
+      for sleep, a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this
+      ocean rock is toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home
+      air. But the words seem somewhat out of joint:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Translated, that means “When we were marching through Georgia.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link472"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="472.jpg (28K)" src="images/472.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch66"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu under its
+      most favorable auspices—that is, in the full glory of Saturday
+      afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls by
+      twos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoons
+      and companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets astride
+      of fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits streaming
+      like banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy riders, in their
+      natural home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful spectacle. The riding
+      habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern table cloth
+      brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparently passed
+      between the limbs and each end thrown backward over the same, and floating
+      and flapping behind on both sides beyond the horse’s tail like a
+      couple of fancy flags; then, slipping the stirrup-irons between her toes,
+      the girl throws her chest forward, sits up like a Major General and goes
+      sweeping by like the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link474"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="474.jpg (88K)" src="images/474.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls put on all the finery they can on Saturday afternoon—fine
+      black silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put your eyes out; others
+      as white as snow; still others that discount the rainbow; and they wear
+      their hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats with fresh flowers, and
+      encircle their dusky throats with home-made necklaces of the brilliant
+      vermillion-tinted blossom of the <i>ohia</i>; and they fill the markets
+      and the adjacent street with their bright presences, and smell like a rag
+      factory on fire with their offensive cocoanut oil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the South
+      Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like the customary
+      mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine. Some are tattooed a
+      dead blue color down to the upper lip—masked, as it were—leaving
+      the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained from thence down;
+      some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on both sides of the
+      face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two inches wide, down the
+      center—a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with the entire
+      face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved only by one
+      or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across the face from
+      ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from under shadowing
+      hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants, squatting
+      in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and surrounded by
+      purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their hams, and who
+      knows but they may be the old original “ham sandwiches?” The
+      thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour paste,
+      and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and capable of
+      holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chief article of
+      food among the natives, and is prepared from the <i>taro</i> plant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link475"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="475.jpg (33K)" src="images/475.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>taro</i> root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent
+      sweet potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When
+      boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas
+      bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix
+      water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment,
+      and then it is poi—and an unseductive mixture it is, almost
+      tasteless before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But
+      nothing is more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid
+      humors, a fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of
+      the Kanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as
+      there is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into the mess
+      and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out, thickly
+      coated, just as if it were poulticed; the head is thrown back, the finger
+      inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and swallowed—the
+      eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of ecstasy. Many a
+      different finger goes into the same bowl and many a different kind of dirt
+      and shade and quality of flavor is added to the virtues of its contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the <i>awa</i>
+      root. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of the
+      people in former times by certain imported diseases would have been far
+      greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a fancy.
+      All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his vitality
+      almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of diseases it
+      will restore health after all medicines have failed; but all are not
+      willing to allow to the <i>awa</i> the virtues claimed for it. The natives
+      manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in its effects
+      when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with dry, white scales,
+      inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude. Although the man
+      before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a Government license of
+      eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusive right to sell <i>awa</i>
+      root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every twelve-month; while
+      saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of
+      retailing whiskey, etc., only make a bare living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish, and
+      <i>eats the article raw and alive</i>! Let us change the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the native
+      population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the surrounding
+      country journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to stay indoors,
+      for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and cavalieresses
+      that it was next to impossible to thread one’s way through the
+      cavalcades without getting crippled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious <i>hula hula</i>—a
+      dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion of
+      limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of movement
+      and accuracy of “time.” It was performed by a circle of girls
+      with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite variety
+      of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their
+      “time,” and in such perfect concert did they move that when
+      they were placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads
+      waved, swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted
+      and undulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual; and
+      it was difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some
+      exquisite piece of mechanism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late years, however, Saturday has lost most of its quondam gala
+      features. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much with
+      labor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a law here,
+      and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, they gradually
+      broke it up. The demoralizing <i>hula hula</i> was forbidden to be
+      performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of few
+      spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities and
+      the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-days
+      able to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection of the
+      art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionaries have christianized and educated all the natives. They all
+      belong to the Church, and there is not one of them, above the age of eight
+      years, but can read and write with facility in the native tongue. It is
+      the most universally educated race of people outside of China. They have
+      any quantity of books, printed in the Kanaka language, and all the natives
+      are fond of reading. They are inveterate church-goers—nothing can
+      keep them away. All this ameliorating cultivation has at last built up in
+      the native women a profound respect for chastity—in other people.
+      Perhaps that is enough to say on that head. The national sin will die out
+      when the race does, but perhaps not earlier.—But doubtless this
+      purifying is not far off, when we reflect that contact with civilization
+      and the whites has reduced the native population from four hundred
+      thousand (Captain Cook’s estimate,) to <i>fifty-five thousand</i> in
+      something over eighty years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Society is a queer medley in this notable missionary, whaling and
+      governmental centre. If you get into conversation with a stranger and
+      experience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are
+      treading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out
+      boldly and address him as “Captain.” Watch him narrowly, and
+      if you see by his countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him
+      where he preaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or
+      captain of a whaler. I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two
+      captains and ninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form
+      one-half of the population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas
+      and mercantile foreigners and their families, and the final fourth is made
+      up of high officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about
+      cats enough for three apiece all around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
+      doubt?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, I don’t. I’m not a preacher.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season.
+      How much oil”—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oil? What do you take me for? I’m not a whaler.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Major General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of the
+      Interior, likely? Secretary of war? First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?
+      Commissioner of the Royal”—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Stuff! I’m no official. I’m not connected in any way
+      with the Government.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief
+      are you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did
+      you come from?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I’m only a private personage—an unassuming stranger—lately
+      arrived from America.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No? Not a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty’s
+      Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too blissful
+      to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest countenance—those
+      oblique, ingenuous eyes—that massive head, incapable of—of—anything;
+      your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these tears. For sixteen
+      weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, and”—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link478"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="478.jpg (67K)" src="images/478.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied
+      this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I shed
+      a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what small
+      change he had and “shoved”.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link479"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="479.jpg (31K)" src="images/479.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch67"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I still quote from my journal:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and
+      some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and
+      Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of
+      the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain) and Prince
+      William at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M.
+      Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely
+      rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Under
+      other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing
+      genealogies, but here the opposite is the case—the female line takes
+      precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I recommend
+      it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know who a man’s
+      mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice President (the latter a white
+      man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it. The President is the King’s
+      father. He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired,
+      tawny old gentleman of eighty years of age or thereabouts. He was simply
+      but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest, and white
+      pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon them. He bears himself with
+      a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence. He was a young
+      man and a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha
+      I., more than half a century ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some
+      such thought as this: “This man, naked as the day he was born, and
+      war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a horde of savages
+      against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half ago, and
+      reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshipped wooden images on his
+      devout knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples
+      as sacrifices to wooden idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot
+      had ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man’s
+      God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the
+      day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man
+      to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the
+      King—and now look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and
+      handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some
+      degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man
+      practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well
+      versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical
+      information. Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations
+      of a legislative body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified,
+      statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place
+      as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his life
+      time. How the experiences of this old man’s eventful life shame the
+      cheap inventions of romance!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their
+      barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred to
+      one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get hold
+      of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it and
+      <i>pray you to death</i>. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely
+      because he <i>imagines</i> that some enemy is putting him through a course
+      of damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd
+      enough at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit
+      efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link482"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="482.jpg (33K)" src="images/482.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was
+      customary, but a <i>plurality of husbands</i> likewise. Some native women
+      of noble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did not
+      reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each
+      in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When the
+      sign was taken down, it meant “NEXT.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days woman was rigidly taught to “know her place.”
+      Her place was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the
+      food, and content herself with what was left after her lord had finished
+      his dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty
+      of death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred,
+      under the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and
+      other choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine
+      herself pretty strictly to “poi” and hard work. These poor
+      ignorant heathen seem to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of
+      woman eating fruit in the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take
+      any more chances. But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory
+      arrangement of things. They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children alive
+      when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries interfered
+      in this matter too, and stopped it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this day the natives are able to <i>lie down and die whenever they want
+      to</i>, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka
+      takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to
+      hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral. If
+      a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only necessary to
+      promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be on hand to the
+      minute—at least his remains will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the
+      Great Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption of
+      the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of
+      latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common report
+      that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian gentleman as he
+      undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers for help when
+      disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of his christianized
+      natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of ancient superstition
+      by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion forbidden by his
+      abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture him. He grew moody
+      and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused food, and finally said
+      he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned against the Great Shark
+      God and could never know peace any more. He was proof against persuasion
+      and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two took to his bed and died,
+      although he showed no symptom of disease. His young daughter followed his
+      lead and suffered a like fate within the week. Superstition is ingrained
+      in the native blood and bone and it is only natural that it should crop
+      out in time of distress. Wherever one goes in the Islands, he will find
+      small piles of stones by the wayside, covered with leafy offerings, placed
+      there by the natives to appease evil spirits or honor local deities
+      belonging to the mythology of former days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes
+      upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea without
+      any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the matter of
+      hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up their
+      residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families frequent
+      friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a
+      hard matter to convince them that this was rather indelicate. Finally the
+      missionaries provided them with long, loose calico robes, and that ended
+      the difficulty—for the women would troop through the town, stark
+      naked, with their robes folded under their arms, march to the missionary
+      houses and then proceed to dress!—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link484"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="484.jpg (63K)" src="images/484.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was
+      shortly apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries
+      imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing
+      apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to
+      come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the
+      national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who
+      were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could
+      hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of
+      the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with
+      a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a “stovepipe”
+      hat and a pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in
+      a man’s shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a
+      flourish, with simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her
+      waist and the rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock’s
+      tail off duty; a stately “buck” Kanaka would stalk in with a
+      woman’s bonnet on, wrong side before—only this, and nothing
+      more; after him would stride his fellow, with the legs of a pair of
+      pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of his person untrammeled; in
+      his rear would come another gentleman simply gotten up in a fiery neck-tie
+      and a striped vest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link485"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="485.jpg (90K)" src="images/485.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious of
+      any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other with happy
+      admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls were taking note
+      of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had always lived in a
+      land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was the evidence
+      of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which the congregation presented
+      was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that the missionaries found it
+      difficult to keep to the text and go on with the services; and by and by
+      when the simple children of the sun began a general swapping of garments
+      in open meeting and produced some irresistibly grotesque effects in the
+      course of re-dressing, there was nothing for it but to cut the thing short
+      with the benediction and dismiss the fantastic assemblage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our country, children play “keep house;” and in the same
+      high-sounding but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little
+      material of slender territory and meagre population, play “empire.”
+      There is his royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective’s
+      income of thirty or thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the “royal
+      civil list” and the “royal domain.” He lives in a
+      two-story frame “palace.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link486"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="486.jpg (35K)" src="images/486.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there is the “royal family”—the customary hive of
+      royal brothers, sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual
+      to monarchy,—all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all
+      bearing such titles as his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess
+      So-and-so. Few of them can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride
+      in carriages, however; they sport the economical Kanaka horse or “hoof
+      it” with the plebeians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there is his Excellency the “royal Chamberlain”—a
+      sinecure, for his majesty dresses himself with his own hands, except when
+      he is ruralizing at Waikiki and then he requires no dressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household
+      Troops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usually
+      placed under a corporal in other lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting—high
+      dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber—an
+      office as easy as it is magnificent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American
+      from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of
+      “shyster” calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of
+      the sceptre above him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of
+      his birth or glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him—salary,
+      $4,000 a year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles
+      a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual “budget”
+      with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of “finance,” suggests
+      imposing schemes for paying off the “national debt” (of
+      $150,000,) and does it all for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the
+      royal armies—they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed
+      Kanakas, mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into
+      trouble with a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an
+      American whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:
+      “Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry.” To say that he was
+      proud of this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War
+      has also in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith
+      royal salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy—a nabob who rules
+      the “royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary
+      of the “Established Church”—for when the American
+      Presbyterian missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a
+      compact condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected
+      the grand dignity of an “Established (Episcopal) Church” over
+      it, and imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge.
+      The chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed,
+      to this day, profanity not being admissible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after
+      them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for
+      computation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
+      Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her
+      British Majesty’s Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United
+      States; and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations,
+      all with sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical
+      state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link488"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="488.jpg (94K)" src="images/488.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house “kingdom” whose
+      population falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates
+      that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a
+      Western Congressman does in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined “court
+      costume” of so “stunning” a nature that it would make
+      the clown in a circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each
+      Hawaiian official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced
+      uniform peculiar to his office—no two of them are alike, and it is
+      hard to tell which one is the “loudest.” The King had a
+      “drawing-room” at stated intervals, like other monarchs, and
+      when these varied uniforms congregate there—weak-eyed people have to
+      contemplate the spectacle through smoked glass. Is there not a gratifying
+      contrast between this latter-day exhibition and the one the ancestors of
+      some of these magnates afforded the missionaries the Sunday after the
+      old-time distribution of clothing? Behold what religion and civilization
+      have wrought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link489"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="489.jpg (40K)" src="images/489.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch68"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King’s
+      sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal
+      custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace <i>thirty days</i>,
+      watched day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a
+      great multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace
+      grounds well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with
+      their howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at
+      other times) forbidden “hula-hula” by half-clad maidens to the
+      music of songs of questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased.
+      The printed programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time;
+      and after what I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter
+      of “playing empire,” I am persuaded that a perusal of it may
+      interest the reader:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering the
+      sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder where the
+      material for that portion of the procession devoted to “Hawaiian
+      Population Generally” is going to be procured:
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="490.jpg (34K)" src="images/490.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="491.jpg (105K)" src="images/491.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Undertaker. Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Maemae
+      School. Honolulu Fire Department. Mechanics’ Benefit Union.
+      Attending Physicians. Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands,
+      Konohikis of the Private Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private
+      Lands of Her late Royal Highness. Governor of Oahu and Staff. Hulumanu
+      (Military Company). Household Troops. The Prince of Hawaii’s Own
+      (Military Company). The King’s household servants. Servants of Her
+      late Royal Highness. Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic
+      Church. His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea,
+      Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands. The Clergy of the Hawaiian
+      Reformed Catholic Church. His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu.
+      Her Majesty Queen Emma’s Carriage. His Majesty’s Staff.
+      Carriage of Her late Royal Highness. Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen
+      Dowager. The King’s Chancellor. Cabinet Ministers. His Excellency
+      the Minister Resident of the United States. H. B. M’s Commissioner.
+      H. B. M’s Acting Commissioner. Judges of Supreme Court. Privy
+      Councillors. Members of Legislative Assembly. Consular Corps. Circuit
+      Judges. Clerks of Government Departments. Members of the Bar. Collector
+      General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs. Marshal and
+      Sheriffs of the different Islands. King’s Yeomanry. Foreign
+      Residents. Ahahui Kaahumanu. Hawaiian Population Generally. Hawaiian
+      Cavalry. Police Force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the royal
+      mausoleum:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed
+        handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which the
+        long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was borne through
+        the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and his chiefs, the
+        great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls, Embassadors and
+        distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van Valkenburgh). Several
+        of the kahilis were then fastened to a frame-work in front of the tomb,
+        there to remain until they decay and fall to pieces, or, forestalling
+        this, until another scion of royalty dies. At this point of the
+        proceedings the multitude set up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope
+        never to hear again.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a id="link492"></a> <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+        <img alt="492.jpg (90K)" src="images/492.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+      </div>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry—the wailing being
+        previously silenced to permit of the guns being heard. His Highness
+        Prince William, in a showy military uniform (the “true prince,”
+        this—scion of the house over-thrown by the present dynasty—he
+        was formerly betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry
+        her), stood guard and paced back and forth within the door. The
+        privileged few who followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained
+        sometime, but the King soon came out and stood in the door and near one
+        side of it. A stranger could have guessed his rank (although he was so
+        simply and unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him
+        by all persons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his
+        quiet orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by
+        observing how careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were
+        to avoid “crowding” him (although there was room enough in
+        the doorway for a wagon to pass, for that matter); how respectfully they
+        edged out sideways, scraping their backs against the wall and always
+        presenting a front view of their persons to his Majesty, and never
+        putting their hats on until they were well out of the royal presence.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        He was dressed entirely in black—dress-coat and silk hat—and
+        looked rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him.
+        On his breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the
+        lapel of his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally
+        gave an order to the men who were erecting the kahilis [Ranks of
+        long-handled mops made of gaudy feathers—sacred to royalty. They
+        are stuck in the ground around the tomb and left there.] before the
+        tomb. He had the good taste to make one of them substitute black crape
+        for the ordinary hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the
+        frame-work with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the
+        populace shortly began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there
+        was but one man who attracted more attention than himself, and that was
+        Harris (the Yankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape
+        enough around his hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as
+        usual he neglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and
+        exciting the admiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of
+        this modern Richelieu!
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess
+      Victoria with those of her noted ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror, who
+      died fifty years ago—in 1819, the year before the first missionaries
+      came.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he
+        had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not to
+        have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced his
+        religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared with the
+        most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not only great,
+        but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and elevates the
+        national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of their old warrior
+        King; they love his name; his deeds form their historical age; and an
+        enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even by foreigners who knew his
+        worth, that constitutes the firmest pillar of the throne of his dynasty.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of
+        three hundred dogs attended his obsequies—no mean holocaust when
+        their national value and the estimation in which they were held are
+        considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, were
+        so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place
+        is now lost. There was a proverb current among the common people that
+        the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they made fish-hooks and
+        arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhorrence
+        of his memory in bitter execrations.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native
+      historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it
+      which does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country.
+      In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met with.
+      I will quote it entire:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable
+        to cure him, they said: ‘Be of good courage and build a house for
+        the god’ (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.’
+        The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of
+        worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the evening.
+        They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his life, that
+        human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon which the greater
+        part of the people absconded through fear of death, and concealed
+        themselves in hiding places till the <i>tabu</i> [Tabu (pronounced
+        tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or sacred. The <i>tabu</i>
+        was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and the person or thing
+        placed under <i>tabu</i> was for the time being sacred to the purpose
+        for which it was set apart. In the above case the victims selected under
+        the <i>tabu</i> would be sacred to the sacrifice] in which destruction
+        impended, was past. It is doubtful whether Kamehameha approved of the
+        plan of the chiefs and priests to sacrifice men, as he was known to say,
+        ‘The men are sacred for the King;’ meaning that they were
+        for the service of his successor. This information was derived from
+        Liholiho, his son.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had
+        not strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season,
+        consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said to
+        his son, Liholiho, ‘Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I am
+        not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.’ When his
+        devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a certain
+        religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god, suggested to the
+        King that through its influence his sickness might be removed. The name
+        of this god was Pua; its body was made of a bird, now eaten by the
+        Hawaiians, and called in their language alae. Kamehameha was willing
+        that a trial should be made, and two houses were constructed to
+        facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in them he became so very
+        weak as not to receive food. After lying there three days, his wives,
+        children and chiefs, perceiving that he was very low, returned him to
+        his own house. In the evening he was carried to the eating house, where
+        he took a little food in his mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup
+        of water. The chiefs requested him to give them his counsel; but he made
+        no reply, and was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near
+        midnight—ten o’clock, perhaps—he was carried again to
+        the place to eat; but, as before, he merely tasted of what was presented
+        to him. Then Kaikioewa addressed him thus: ‘Here we all are, your
+        younger brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us
+        your dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.’ Then
+        Kamehameha inquired, ‘What do you say?’ Kaikioewa repeated,
+        ‘Your counsels for us.’
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “He then said, ‘Move on in my good way and—.’ He
+        could proceed no further. The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed
+        him. Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after
+        which he was taken back to the house. About twelve he was carried once
+        more to the house for eating, into which his head entered, while his
+        body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining. It should be
+        remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from one house to
+        another resulted from the <i>tabu</i> system, then in force. There were
+        at that time six houses (huts) connected with an establishment—one
+        was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an eating house for the
+        women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to manufacture kapa (native
+        cloth) and one where, at certain intervals, the women might dwell in
+        seclusion.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this
+        was at two o’clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived
+        his name. As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house to
+        order those in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus directed
+        to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love to the King,
+        by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained. The children also were
+        sent away. Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and the chiefs had a
+        consultation. One of them spoke thus: ‘This is my thought—we
+        will eat him raw. [This sounds suspicious, in view of the fact that all
+        Sandwich Island historians, white and black, protest that cannibalism
+        never existed in the islands. However, since they only proposed to
+        “eat him raw” we “won’t count that”. But
+        it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked him.—M.
+        T.] Kaahumanu (one of the dead King’s widows) replied, ‘Perhaps
+        his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with his
+        successor. Our part in him—his breath—has departed; his
+        remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.’
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated
+        house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the new
+        King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog was
+        baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a god, the
+        King at the same time repeating the customary prayers.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said:
+        ‘I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting
+        persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain one
+        man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but after it
+        leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until we carry the
+        corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is deposited in the
+        grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning there will be a <i>tabu</i>,
+        and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die.’
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, ‘Where
+        shall be the residence of King Liholiho?’ They replied, ‘Where,
+        indeed? You, of all men, ought to know.’ Then the priest observed,
+        ‘There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.’
+        The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. The
+        priest added, ‘These are proper places for the King’s
+        residence; but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.’
+        This was agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to
+        the place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and
+        they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the tomb, a
+        distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain man who was
+        ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the chiefs who were
+        carrying the King’s body; he desired to die with him on account of
+        his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in making numerous
+        attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had it in his heart to
+        die with him, but was prevented by Hookio.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “The morning following Kamehameha’s death, Liholiho and his
+        train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest,
+        to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief
+        died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another
+        part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in
+        a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement terminated. If the
+        deceased were not a chief, the house only was defiled which became pure
+        again on the burial of the body. Such were the laws on this subject.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala,
+        the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chief’s
+        death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct
+        was such as to forbid description; The priests, also, put into action
+        the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death
+        might die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha’s departure was
+        the effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by
+        their fire-places stick with a strip of kapa flying at the top, the
+        chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun’s brother, came in a state of
+        intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the sorcerers, from which it
+        was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends had been instrumental in the
+        King’s death. On this account they were subjected to abuse.”
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen,
+      Kaahumanu, who was “subjected to abuse” during the frightful
+      orgies that followed the King’s death, in accordance with ancient
+      custom, afterward became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful
+      friend of the missionaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives—hence
+      the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for a
+      certain number of days after the death of a royal personage; and then a
+      saturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, but
+      not in the full horror of the reality. The people shaved their heads,
+      knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised,
+      mutilated or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other’s
+      huts, maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the
+      moment, and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbridled
+      licentiousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link497"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="497.jpg (96K)" src="images/497.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation slowly emerged
+      bewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare. They
+      were not the salt of the earth, those “gentle children of the sun.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which cannot be
+      comforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die, a
+      couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening wailing
+      night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt this arrangement
+      has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointed time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken way when its
+      occupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome. A
+      very little of it would go a great way with most of us.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch69"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great
+      volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island
+      above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain
+      Saturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide as
+      one. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of the
+      inter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but little
+      smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a man-of-
+      war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under a strong
+      breeze. When the Captain and my comrade (a Mr. Billings), myself and four
+      other persons were all assembled on the little after portion of the deck
+      which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full—there was not
+      room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twice as
+      large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customary
+      dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuries
+      and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the natives all
+      lay down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked,
+      conversed, and spit on each other, and were truly sociable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and as
+      dark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side—I mean two bunks. A
+      small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner, stood
+      against the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest whale oil
+      lantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostly shapes.
+      The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat in it,
+      perhaps, but not a long cat. The hold forward of the bulkhead had but
+      little freight in it, and from morning till night a portly old rooster,
+      with a voice like Baalam’s ass, and the same disposition to use it,
+      strutted up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. He usually
+      took dinner at six o’clock, and then, after an hour devoted to
+      meditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed a good part of the night. He
+      got hoarser and hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal
+      consideration to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors in
+      defiance of threatened diphtheria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link499"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="499.jpg (19K)" src="images/499.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source of
+      genuine aggravation and annoyance. It was worse than useless to shout at
+      him or apply offensive epithets to him—he only took these things for
+      applause, and strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, during
+      the day, I threw potatoes at him through an aperture in the bulkhead, but
+      he only dodged and went on crowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp
+      swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of
+      bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly.
+      However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently
+      something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time,
+      and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed one
+      on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillow
+      showed me repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it—cockroaches
+      as large as peach leaves—fellows with long, quivering antennae and
+      fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms,
+      and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that
+      these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors’ toe
+      nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay
+      down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a
+      procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments
+      the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were
+      throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and
+      taking a bite every time they struck. I was beginning to feel really
+      annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island
+      schooner life. There is no such thing as keeping a vessel in elegant
+      condition, when she carries molasses and Kanakas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was compensation for my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so
+      beautiful a scene as met my eye—to step suddenly out of the
+      sepulchral gloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon—in
+      the centre, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver—to see
+      the broad sails straining in the gale, the ship heeled over on her side,
+      the angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of
+      spray dashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks; to brace
+      myself and hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with hat
+      jammed down and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that
+      exhilaration that thrills in one’s hair and quivers down his back
+      bone when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel
+      cleaving through the waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no
+      dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly
+      defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of
+      poi; every puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every
+      object; however minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline;
+      and the shadow of the broad mainsail lay black as a pall upon the deck,
+      leaving Billings’s white upturned face glorified and his body in a
+      total eclipse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link501"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="501.jpg (93K)" src="images/501.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its high
+      mountains were in view—Mauna Loa and Hualaiai. The latter is an
+      imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high is seldom mentioned
+      or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousand feet high. The rays
+      of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit like a claw, looked
+      refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we were in. One could
+      stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and furs to keep warm), and
+      while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle to quench his thirst he could
+      look down the long sweep of its sides and see spots where plants are
+      growing that grow only where the bitter cold of Winter prevails; lower
+      down he could see sections devoted to production that thrive in the
+      temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of the mountain he could see the
+      home of the tufted cocoa-palms and other species of vegetation that grow
+      only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal Summer. He could see all the
+      climes of the world at a single glance of the eye, and that glance would
+      only pass over a distance of four or five miles as the bird flies!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link502"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="502.jpg (162K)" src="images/502.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing to ride
+      horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and
+      rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is well
+      worth taking. The trail passes along on high ground—say a thousand
+      feet above sea level—and usually about a mile distant from the
+      ocean, which is always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself
+      buried in the forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a
+      dense growth of trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun
+      and sea and everything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with
+      invisible singing birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was
+      pleasant to ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the
+      ever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many
+      tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping
+      gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at
+      intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths of
+      this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the inspiration
+      of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage. We rode through one
+      orange grove that had ten thousand trees in it! They were all laden with
+      fruit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor. This
+      fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands. It
+      takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter. It needs frost,
+      they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have a good
+      opportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it. The
+      trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had been planted
+      and replanted <i>sixteen times</i>, and to this treatment the proprietor
+      of the orchard attributed his success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed several sugar plantations—new ones and not very extensive.
+      The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [NOTE.—The first crop
+      is called “plant cane;” subsequent crops which spring from the
+      original roots, without replanting, are called “rattoons.”]
+      Almost everywhere on the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve
+      months, both rattoons and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as
+      soon as it tassels, no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it
+      until about four months afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre
+      of ground is <i>two tons</i> of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate
+      yield for these islands, but would be astounding for Louisiana and most
+      other sugar growing countries. The plantations in Kona being on pretty
+      high ground—up among the light and frequent rains—no
+      irrigation whatever is required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link503"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="503.jpg (55K)" src="images/503.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch70"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and
+      refresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen
+      present; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent look
+      in his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed again into
+      the meditations which our coming had interrupted. The planters whispered
+      us not to mind him—crazy. They said he was in the Islands for his
+      health; was a preacher; his home, Michigan. They said that if he woke up
+      presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he had some
+      time held with Mr. Greeley about a trifle of some kind, we must humor him
+      and listen with interest; and we must humor his fancy that this
+      correspondence was the talk of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link505"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="505.jpg (46K)" src="images/505.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had
+      nothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with
+      perplexing thought and anxiety of mind. He sat a long time, looking at the
+      floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his head
+      acquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest. He was lost in his thought,
+      or in his memories. We continued our talk with the planters, branching
+      from subject to subject. But at last the word “circumstance,”
+      casually dropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention
+      and brought an eager look into his countenance. He faced about in his
+      chair and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Circumstance? What circumstance? Ah, I know—I know too well.
+      So you have heard of it too.” [With a sigh.] “Well, no matter—all
+      the world has heard of it. All the world. The whole world. It is a large
+      world, too, for a thing to travel so far in—now isn’t it? Yes,
+      yes—the Greeley correspondence with Erickson has created the saddest
+      and bitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean—and still they
+      keep it up! It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice! I was
+      so sorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful war
+      over there in Italy. It was little comfort to me, after so much bloodshed,
+      to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquished with Greeley.—It
+      is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley is responsible for the
+      battle of Sadowa, and not me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it—she
+      said that as much as she was opposed to Greeley and the spirit he showed
+      in the correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen for
+      hundreds of dollars. I can show you her letter, if you would like to see
+      it. But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappy
+      correspondence, you cannot know the <i>straight</i> of it till you hear it
+      from my lips. It has always been garbled in the journals, and even in
+      history. Yes, even in history—think of it! Let me—<i>please</i>
+      let me, give you the matter, exactly as it occurred. I truly will not
+      abuse your confidence.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he leaned forward, all interest, all earnestness, and told his story—and
+      told it appealingly, too, and yet in the simplest and most unpretentious
+      way; indeed, in such a way as to suggest to one, all the time, that this
+      was a faithful, honorable witness, giving evidence in the sacred interest
+      of justice, and under oath. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Mrs. Beazeley—Mrs. Jackson Beazeley, widow, of the village of
+      Campbellton, Kansas,—wrote me about a matter which was near her
+      heart—a matter which many might think trivial, but to her it was a
+      thing of deep concern. I was living in Michigan, then—serving in the
+      ministry. She was, and is, an estimable woman—a woman to whom
+      poverty and hardship have proven incentives to industry, in place of
+      discouragements. Her only treasure was her son William, a youth just
+      verging upon manhood; religious, amiable, and sincerely attached to
+      agriculture. He was the widow’s comfort and her pride. And so, moved
+      by her love for him, she wrote me about a matter, as I have said before,
+      which lay near her heart—because it lay near her boy’s. She
+      desired me to confer with Mr. Greeley about turnips. Turnips were the
+      dream of her child’s young ambition. While other youths were
+      frittering away in frivolous amusements the precious years of budding
+      vigor which God had given them for useful preparation, this boy was
+      patiently enriching his mind with information concerning turnips. The
+      sentiment which he felt toward the turnip was akin to adoration. He could
+      not think of the turnip without emotion; he could not speak of it calmly;
+      he could not contemplate it without exaltation. He could not eat it
+      without shedding tears. All the poetry in his sensitive nature was in
+      sympathy with the gracious vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he
+      sought his patch, and when the curtaining night drove him from it he shut
+      himself up with his books and garnered statistics till sleep overcame him.
+      On rainy days he sat and talked hours together with his mother about
+      turnips. When company came, he made it his loving duty to put aside
+      everything else and converse with them all the day long of his great joy
+      in the turnip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link507"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="507.jpg (67K)" src="images/507.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “And yet, was this joy rounded and complete? Was there no secret
+      alloy of unhappiness in it? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at
+      his heart; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor—viz:
+      he could not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by; the bloom
+      forsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye; sighings and abstraction
+      usurped the place of smiles and cheerful converse. But a watchful eye
+      noted these things and in time a motherly sympathy unsealed the secret.
+      Hence the letter to me. She pleaded for attention—she said her boy
+      was dying by inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I was a stranger to Mr. Greeley, but what of that? The matter was
+      urgent. I wrote and begged him to solve the difficult problem if possible
+      and save the student’s life. My interest grew, until it partook of
+      the anxiety of the mother. I waited in much suspense.—At last the
+      answer came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link509"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="509.jpg (127K)" src="images/509.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I found that I could not read it readily, the handwriting being
+      unfamiliar and my emotions somewhat wrought up. It seemed to refer in part
+      to the boy’s case, but chiefly to other and irrelevant matters—such
+      as paving-stones, electricity, oysters, and something which I took to be
+      ‘absolution’ or ‘agrarianism,’ I could not be
+      certain which; still, these appeared to be simply casual mentions, nothing
+      more; friendly in spirit, without doubt, but lacking the connection or
+      coherence necessary to make them useful.—I judged that my
+      understanding was affected by my feelings, and so laid the letter away
+      till morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “In the morning I read it again, but with difficulty and uncertainty
+      still, for I had lost some little rest and my mental vision seemed
+      clouded. The note was more connected, now, but did not meet the emergency
+      it was expected to meet. It was too discursive. It appeared to read as
+      follows, though I was not certain of some of the words:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Polygamy dissembles majesty; extracts redeem polarity; causes
+        hitherto exist. Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and condemn.
+        Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall allay? We fear
+        not. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.’
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “But there did not seem to be a word about turnips. There seemed to
+      be no suggestion as to how they might be made to grow like vines. There
+      was not even a reference to the Beazeleys. I slept upon the matter; I ate
+      no supper, neither any breakfast next morning. So I resumed my work with a
+      brain refreshed, and was very hopeful. <i>Now</i> the letter took a
+      different aspect—all save the signature, which latter I judged to be
+      only a harmless affectation of Hebrew. The epistle was necessarily from
+      Mr. Greeley, for it bore the printed heading of The <i>Tribune</i>, and I
+      had written to no one else there. The letter, I say, had taken a different
+      aspect, but still its language was eccentric and avoided the issue. It now
+      appeared to say:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Bolivia extemporizes mackerel; borax esteems polygamy; sausages
+        wither in the east. Creation perdu, is done; for woes inherent one can
+        damn. Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall allay. My
+        beer’s out. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.’
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “I was evidently overworked. My comprehension was impaired.
+      Therefore I gave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task
+      greatly refreshed. The letter now took this form:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Poultices do sometimes choke swine; tulips reduce posterity;
+        causes leather to resist. Our notions empower wisdom, her let’s
+        afford while we can. Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we’ll
+        wean him from his filly. We feel hot. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.’
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “I was still not satisfied. These generalities did not meet the
+      question. They were crisp, and vigorous, and delivered with a confidence
+      that almost compelled conviction; but at such a time as this, with a human
+      life at stake, they seemed inappropriate, worldly, and in bad taste. At
+      any other time I would have been not only glad, but proud, to receive from
+      a man like Mr. Greeley a letter of this kind, and would have studied it
+      earnestly and tried to improve myself all I could; but now, with that poor
+      boy in his far home languishing for relief, I had no heart for learning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Three days passed by, and I read the note again. Again its tenor
+      had changed. It now appeared to say:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “Potations do sometimes wake wines; turnips restrain passion;
+        causes necessary to state. Infest the poor widow; her lord’s
+        effects will be void. But dirt, bathing, etc., etc., followed unfairly,
+        will worm him from his folly—so swear not. Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.’
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “This was more like it. But I was unable to proceed. I was too much
+      worn. The word ‘turnips’ brought temporary joy and
+      encouragement, but my strength was so much impaired, and the delay might
+      be so perilous for the boy, that I relinquished the idea of pursuing the
+      translation further, and resolved to do what I ought to have done at
+      first. I sat down and wrote Mr. Greeley as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        “DEAR SIR: I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note. It
+        cannot be possible, Sir, that ‘turnips restrain passion’—at
+        least the study or contemplation of turnips cannot—for it is this
+        very employment that has scorched our poor friend’s mind and
+        sapped his bodily strength.—But if they do restrain it, will you
+        bear with us a little further and explain how they should be prepared? I
+        observe that you say ‘causes necessary to state,’ but you
+        have omitted to state them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested
+        motives in this matter—to call it by no harsher term. But I assure
+        you, dear sir, that if I seem to be ‘infesting the widow,’
+        it is all seeming, and void of reality. It is from no seeking of mine
+        that I am in this position. She asked me, herself, to write you. I never
+        have infested her—indeed I scarcely know her. I do not infest
+        anybody. I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right as I
+        can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out insinuations. As for
+        ‘her lord and his effects,’ they are of no interest to me. I
+        trust I have effects enough of my own—shall endeavor to get along
+        with them, at any rate, and not go mousing around to get hold of
+        somebody’s that are ‘void.’ But do you not see?—this
+        woman is a widow—she has no ‘lord.’ He is dead—or
+        pretended to be, when they buried him. Therefore, no amount of ‘dirt,
+        bathing,’ etc., etc., howsoever ‘unfairly followed’
+        will be likely to ‘worm him from his folly’—if being
+        dead and a ghost is ‘folly.’ Your closing remark is as
+        unkind as it was uncalled for; and if report says true you might have
+        applied it to yourself, sir, with more point and less impropriety. Very
+        Truly Yours, SIMON ERICKSON.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did what would have saved a
+      world of trouble, and much mental and bodily suffering and
+      misunderstanding, if he had done it sooner. To wit, he sent an
+      intelligible rescript or translation of his original note, made in a plain
+      hand by his clerk. Then the mystery cleared, and I saw that his heart had
+      been right, all the time. I will recite the note in its clarified form:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        [Translation.] ‘Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips remain
+        passive: cause unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad’s
+        efforts will be vain. But diet, bathing, etc. etc., followed uniformly,
+        will wean him from his folly—so fear not. Yours, HORACE GREELEY.’
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      “But alas, it was too late, gentlemen—too late. The criminal
+      delay had done its work—young Beazely was no more. His spirit had
+      taken its flight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed away, all
+      desires gratified, all ambitions realized. Poor lad, they laid him to his
+      rest with a turnip in each hand.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and
+      abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did not
+      say what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I forgot to ask.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch71"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At four o’clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of
+      dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant land
+      journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fire after
+      another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the island
+      structure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves; it
+      would be of no use to dig wells in such a place; they would not hold water—you
+      would not find any for them to hold, for that matter. Consequently, the
+      planters depend upon cisterns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none now
+      living who witnessed it. In one place it enclosed and burned down a grove
+      of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunks stood are
+      still visible; their sides retain the impression of the bark; the trees
+      fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged, left in it the
+      perfect counterpart of every knot and branch and leaf, and even nut, for
+      curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze upon and wonder at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts at
+      that time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava as
+      the Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it is so,
+      because such things are so interesting; but so it is. They probably went
+      away. They went away early, perhaps. However, they had their merits; the
+      Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas showed the sounder
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to
+      every school-boy in the wide world—<i>Kealakekua</i> Bay—the
+      place where Captain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the
+      natives, nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was flaming upon it,
+      a Summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent
+      rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these and
+      for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. Why did
+      not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow
+      Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you at every turn; they
+      are common in all the islands; they are visible every day, and frequently
+      at night also—not the silvery bow we see once in an age in the
+      States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful colors,
+      like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few nights ago.
+      What the sailors call “raindogs”—little patches of
+      rainbow—are often seen drifting about the heavens in these
+      latitudes, like stained cathedral windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Kealakekua</i> Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a
+      snail-shell, winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile
+      wide from shore to shore. It is bounded on one side—where the murder
+      was done—by a little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove
+      and some ruined houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the
+      upper end and three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the
+      mountain and bounds the inner extremity of it. From this wall the place
+      takes its name, <i>Kealakekua</i>, which in the native tongue signifies
+      “The Pathway of the Gods.” They say, (and still believe, in
+      spite of their liberal education in Christianity), that the great god <i>Lono</i>,
+      who used to live upon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when
+      urgent business connected with heavenly affairs called him down to the
+      seashore in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, clean
+      stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the
+      bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the
+      flat rock pressed by Captain Cook’s feet when the blow was dealt
+      which took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man
+      struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages—the
+      men in the ship crowding to the vessel’s side and gazing in anxious
+      dismay toward the shore—the—but I discovered that I could not
+      do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link514"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="514.jpg (93K)" src="images/514.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the distant
+      Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to the
+      cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, and
+      wish the ship would make the land—for we had not eaten much for ten
+      hours and were viciously hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook’s
+      assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide.
+      Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed
+      by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all manner of
+      food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment.
+      Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished and lamented god
+      <i>Lono</i>, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of the
+      limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance at this
+      spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen thousand
+      maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly origin with
+      a groan. It was his death-warrant. Instantly a shout went up: “He
+      groans!—he is not a god!” So they closed in upon him and
+      dispatched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of it
+      which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a native
+      hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook it for
+      the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very old man, and
+      died in Honolulu a few years ago. Some of Cook’s bones were
+      recovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. They
+      treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men inflicted
+      bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed at least
+      three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the shore we found “Cook’s Monument”—only a
+      cocoanut stump, four feet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt.
+      It had lava boulders piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in
+      its place, and it was entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with
+      rough, discolored sheets of copper, such as ships’ bottoms are
+      coppered with. Each sheet had a rude inscription scratched upon it—with
+      a nail, apparently—and in every case the execution was wretched.
+      Most of these merely recorded the visits of British naval commanders to
+      the spot, but one of them bore this legend:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Near this spot fell CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, The Distinguished
+      Circumnavigator, who Discovered these Islands A. D. 1778.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Cook’s murder, his second in command, on board the ship,
+      opened fire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon
+      balls cut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump
+      standing. It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy
+      twilight. But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up on the
+      mountain side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen,
+      built of lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook’s flesh was
+      stripped from his bones and burned; but this is not properly a monument
+      since it was erected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to
+      the circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him. A
+      thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, and
+      formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable
+      occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have long
+      ago so defaced it as to render it illegible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked
+      herself into the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, and in
+      a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone. The moon was beaming
+      tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon the deck
+      sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that are only
+      vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch72"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the
+      last god <i>Lono</i>. The high chief cook of this temple—the priest
+      who presided over it and roasted the human sacrifices—was uncle to
+      Obookia, and at one time that youth was an apprentice-priest under him.
+      Obookia was a young native of fine mind, who, together with three other
+      native boys, was taken to New England by the captain of a whaleship during
+      the reign of Kamehameha I, and they were the means of attracting the
+      attention of the religious world to their country. This resulted in the
+      sending of missionaries there. And this Obookia was the very same
+      sensitive savage who sat down on the church steps and wept because his
+      people did not have the Bible. That incident has been very elaborately
+      painted in many a charming Sunday School book—aye, and told so
+      plaintively and so tenderly that I have cried over it in Sunday School
+      myself, on general principles, although at a time when I did not know much
+      and could not understand why the people of the Sandwich Islands needed to
+      worry so much about it as long as they did not know there was a Bible at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have returned to his native
+      land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other native youths
+      made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third, William
+      Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the gold excitement
+      broke out in California he journeyed thither and went to mining, although
+      he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, but the failure of Page,
+      Bacon &amp; Co. relieved him of six thousand dollars, and then, to all
+      intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt in his old age and he resumed
+      service in the pulpit again. He died in Honolulu in 1864.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to the
+      mountain top, was sacred to the god <i>Lono</i> in olden times—so
+      sacred that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it was
+      judicious for him to make his will, because his time had come. He might go
+      around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled with
+      pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of logs of
+      wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain—and with fine
+      sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side that if
+      you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be likely to
+      get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen before you would have
+      to hoist your umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link518"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="518.jpg (54K)" src="images/518.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single
+      night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands of
+      dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a
+      noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up
+      the mountain side at dead of night—flitting hither and thither and
+      bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers—appearing
+      and disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and faded away
+      again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread structure
+      in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link519"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="519.jpg (43K)" src="images/519.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea,
+      and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen. I
+      begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfied that
+      they were running some risk. But they were not afraid, and presently went
+      on with their sport. They were finished swimmers and divers, and enjoyed
+      themselves to the last degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They swam races, splashed and ducked and tumbled each other about, and
+      filled the air with their laughter. It is said that the first thing an
+      Islander learns is how to swim; learning to walk being a matter of smaller
+      consequence, comes afterward. One hears tales of native men and women
+      swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea—more miles, indeed,
+      than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diver who
+      went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil! I think
+      he swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me. However I will
+      not urge this point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spoken, several times, of the god <i>Lono</i>—I may as well
+      furnish two or three sentences concerning him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented staff
+      twelve feet long. Tradition says he was a favorite god on the Island of
+      Hawaii—a great king who had been deified for meritorious services—just
+      our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we would
+      have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angry moment
+      he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Aiii. Remorse of conscience
+      drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singular spectacle of a god
+      traveling “on the shoulder;” for in his gnawing grief he
+      wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling with all whom he
+      met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as it must
+      necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent a frail
+      human opponent “to grass” he never came back any more.
+      Therefore, he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they
+      should be held in his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands on a
+      three-cornered raft, stating that he would return some day—and that
+      was the last of <i>Lono</i>. He was never seen any more; his raft got
+      swamped, perhaps. But the people always expected his return, and thus they
+      were easily led to accept Captain Cook as the restored god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the old natives believed Cook was <i>Lono</i> to the day of their
+      death; but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if
+      he was a god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only a mile or so from <i>Kealakekua</i> Bay is a spot of historic
+      interest—the place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of
+      course we visited it, and came away as wise as most people do who go and
+      gaze upon such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the
+      idolatrous customs which had obtained in the island, as far back as
+      tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I., was dead,
+      and his son, Liholiho, the new King was a free liver, a roystering,
+      dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient <i>tabu</i>. His
+      assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and
+      high-spirited, and hated the <i>tabu</i> because it restricted the
+      privileges of her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of
+      brutes. So the case stood. Liholiho had half a mind to put his foot down,
+      Kaahumanu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whiskey did
+      the rest. It was probably the rest. It was probably the first time whiskey
+      ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholiho came up to
+      Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast; the determined
+      Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, and then, while
+      all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moved deliberately forward
+      and sat down with the women!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled!
+      Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still he
+      lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld! Then
+      conviction came like a revelation—the superstitions of a hundred
+      generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went
+      up, “the <i>tabu</i> is broken! the <i>tabu</i> is broken!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link521"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="521.jpg (100K)" src="images/521.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whiskey preach the first sermon
+      and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over
+      the waves of the Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>tabu</i> broken and destruction failing to follow the awful
+      sacrilege, the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always
+      characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak
+      and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that
+      Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killed
+      him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well as a
+      man if it suited his convenience to do it; and satisfied that the idols
+      were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulled
+      them down—hacked them to pieces—applied the torch—annihilated
+      them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had held the
+      fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they had been
+      great—they had stood above the chiefs—and now they were
+      vagabonds. They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into
+      joining their standard, and Bekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty,
+      was easily persuaded to become their leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent
+      against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua.
+      The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near
+      being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to
+      listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth
+      under Major General Kalaimoku and the two host met at Kuamoo. The battle
+      was long and fierce—men and women fighting side by side, as was the
+      custom—and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every
+      direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the <i>tabu</i> were dead in
+      the land!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new
+      dispensation. “There is no power in the gods,” said they;
+      “they are a vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army
+      without idols was strong and victorious!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nation was without a religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by
+      providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was planted
+      as in a virgin soil.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="523.jpg (57K)" src="images/523.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch73"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at
+      Honaunau in his canoe—price two dollars—reasonable enough, for
+      a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think
+      of anything to liken it to but a boy’s sled runner hollowed out, and
+      that does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet
+      long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet
+      deep, and so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get
+      him out again. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an
+      outrigger and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger is
+      formed of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one
+      side, and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an
+      extremely light wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus
+      saves you from an upset on that side, while the outrigger’s weight
+      is not so easily lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to
+      be greatly feared. Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this
+      knifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more
+      comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also.
+      I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who
+      occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling. With the first
+      stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.
+      There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the reef,
+      it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large bunches of
+      branching coral—the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost that,
+      though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep. But we had
+      the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the crag-bound
+      shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed
+      with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the
+      dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the
+      restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our eyes
+      shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests
+      stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in
+      the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at
+      anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of a
+      school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of arching
+      over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and keeping it
+      up—always circling over, in that way, like so many well-submerged
+      wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and then we were thrown
+      upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes to discover that the
+      sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather was of a melting
+      temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link525"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="525.jpg (87K)" src="images/525.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes
+      and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of
+      surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to
+      sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a
+      particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would
+      fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here
+      he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a
+      lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I
+      tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the
+      board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the
+      connection myself.—The board struck the shore in three quarters of a
+      second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time,
+      with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the
+      art of surf-bathing thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link526"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="526.jpg (33K)" src="images/526.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level
+      point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a tall
+      cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of Refuge—a
+      vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the base, and
+      fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feet one way and
+      a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this inclosure, in early
+      times, has been three rude temples; each two hundred and ten feet long by
+      one hundred wide, and thirteen high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the
+      relatives were privileged to take the murderer’s life; and then a
+      chase for life and liberty began—the outlawed criminal flying
+      through pathless forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed
+      upon the protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of blood
+      following hotly after him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and the
+      panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the
+      contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted
+      refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing
+      shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated
+      pursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying criminal
+      fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one more brave
+      stride, one more brief second of time would have brought his feet upon the
+      sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did these isolated
+      pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge—this ancient Oriental
+      custom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link527"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="527.jpg (73K)" src="images/527.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This old sanctuary was sacred to all—even to rebels in arms and
+      invading armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest
+      and absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go
+      forth without fear and without danger—he was <i>tabu</i>, and to
+      harm him was death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled
+      to this place to claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone,
+      some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve in
+      diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanut
+      piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here criminals
+      were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and the bones
+      secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had been guilty
+      of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that is
+      offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here—the
+      mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with science
+      and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for hoisting
+      heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have never even
+      shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of the lava
+      blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and built into
+      this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious size and
+      would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front and
+      are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all manner of
+      shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest exactness.
+      The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is accurately
+      preserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of
+      resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and how
+      was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled. Outside
+      of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven feet four
+      inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would weigh a few
+      thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over this district
+      many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day to use as a
+      lounge! This circumstance is established by the most reliable traditions.
+      He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and keep an eye on his
+      subjects at work for him and see that there was no “soldiering”
+      done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a
+      man of that sort of build that incites to attention to business on the
+      part of an employee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full
+      length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored
+      he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable tradition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link529"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="529.jpg (86K)" src="images/529.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven feet
+      long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or a foot
+      and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little stony
+      pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the mountain,
+      merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped it up as we
+      find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it would take a
+      score of horses to budge it from its position. They say that fifty or
+      sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to this rock for
+      safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her fierce husband, and
+      hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But these Kanakas will lie,
+      and this statement is one of their ablest efforts—for Kaahumanu was
+      six feet high—she was bulky—she was built like an ox—and
+      she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than she could
+      have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could she gain by
+      it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by a savage husband
+      could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet it could
+      never make her feel so flat as an hour’s repose under that rock
+      would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road
+      paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable
+      degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan, Kamehameha
+      I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long before his
+      time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out of the
+      traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an untaught and
+      degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The stones are worn and
+      smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road has the exact
+      appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of Rome which one
+      sees in pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the base
+      of the foothills—a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten
+      volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side
+      here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff some
+      fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in the
+      winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and
+      rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so natural
+      that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream trickled
+      over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty feet high,
+      which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted vines and
+      roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff
+      pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed a
+      long distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature’s mining
+      abilities. Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their
+      roofs are gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed
+      through one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill
+      and opens out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in
+      the waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there are
+      occasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof is
+      lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed icicles
+      an inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as closely
+      together as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will stand up
+      straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free of
+      charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link531"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="531.jpg (55K)" src="images/531.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch74"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau,
+      where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we
+      bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces,
+      toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a two
+      days’ journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Toward
+      sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand
+      feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy
+      wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax
+      of its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence of
+      the volcano—signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged
+      jets of sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in
+      the bowels of the mountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly the crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but it was
+      a mere toy, a child’s volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this.
+      Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high; its crater
+      an inverted cone only three hundred feet deep, and not more than a
+      thousand feet in diameter, if as much as that; its fires meagre, modest,
+      and docile.—But here was a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar, nine
+      hundred feet deep in some places, thirteen hundred in others, level-
+      floored, and <i>ten miles in circumference</i>! Here was a yawning pit
+      upon whose floor the armies of Russia could camp, and have room to spare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end from where we
+      stood, was a small look-out house—say three miles away. It assisted
+      us, by comparison, to comprehend and appreciate the great depth of the
+      basin—it looked like a tiny martin-box clinging at the eaves of a
+      cathedral. After some little time spent in resting and looking and
+      ciphering, we hurried on to the hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to the lookout-
+      house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughly dark and
+      then started to the crater. The first glance in that direction revealed a
+      scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater and it was
+      splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below. The illumination
+      was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps; and if you ever, on a dark
+      night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty or forty blocks of
+      distant buildings all on fire at once, reflected strongly against
+      over-hanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what this looked like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link533"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="533.jpg (37K)" src="images/533.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the air
+      immediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of its vast
+      folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to a pale
+      rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffled torch and
+      stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. I thought it just
+      possible that its like had not been seen since the children of Israel
+      wandered on their long march through the desert so many centuries ago over
+      a path illuminated by the mysterious “pillar of fire.” And I
+      was sure that I now had a vivid conception of what the majestic “pillar
+      of fire” was like, which almost amounted to a revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the little thatched lookout house, we rested our elbows on the
+      railing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down over the
+      sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was a startling
+      improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see the effect on the
+      balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set of men I almost
+      ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed like red-hot iron,
+      every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shaded rearward into dingy,
+      shapeless obscurity! The place below looked like the infernal regions and
+      these men like half-cooled devils just come up on a furlough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The “cellar” was
+      tolerably well lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a
+      mile on either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated;
+      beyond these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a
+      deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote
+      corners of the crater seem countless leagues removed—made them seem
+      like the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the
+      imagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of a
+      continent away—and that hidden under the intervening darkness were
+      hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert—and
+      even then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on!—to the
+      fires and far beyond! You could not compass it—it was the idea of
+      eternity made tangible—and the longest end of it made visible to the
+      naked eye!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link535"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="535.jpg (125K)" src="images/535.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as
+      ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was
+      ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of
+      liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad
+      map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight
+      sky. Imagine it—imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled
+      net-work of angry fire!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diameter, broken in
+      the dark crust, and in them the melted lava—the color a dazzling
+      white just tinged with yellow—was boiling and surging furiously; and
+      from these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions,
+      like the spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for a
+      while and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long
+      succession of sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the
+      fiercest jagged lightning. These streams met other streams, and they
+      mingled with and crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable
+      direction, like skate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes
+      streams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance
+      without dividing—and through the opera-glasses we could see that
+      they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white
+      at their source, but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained
+      with alternate lines of black and gold. Every now and then masses of the
+      dark crust broke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts
+      down a river. Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the
+      superincumbent crust broke through—split a dazzling streak, from
+      five hundred to a thousand feet long, like a sudden flash of lightning,
+      and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up
+      edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward
+      and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the
+      “thaw” maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled
+      and became black and level again. During a “thaw,” every
+      dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was
+      superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming
+      yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence toward their
+      points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale carmine, and
+      finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment and then dimmed and
+      turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingle together in a tangle
+      of fantastic circles, and then they looked something like the confusion of
+      ropes one sees on a ship’s deck when she has just taken in sail and
+      dropped anchor—provided one can imagine those ropes on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very
+      beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged sprays
+      of stringy red fire—of about the consistency of mush, for instance—from
+      ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower of brilliant white
+      sparks—a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of blood and
+      snow-flakes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined and
+      wreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more than a
+      mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was not strictly
+      “square”), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that
+      we reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen such a
+      splendid display—since any visitor had seen anything more than the
+      now snubbed and insignificant “North” and “South”
+      lakes in action. We had been reading old files of Hawaiian newspapers and
+      the “Record Book” at the Volcano House, and were posted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in the
+      outer edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a web-work of lava
+      streams. In its individual capacity it looked very little more respectable
+      than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundred feet long and
+      two or three hundred wide, but then, under the present circumstances, it
+      necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besides it was so distant
+      from us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great,
+      heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct sounds—a
+      rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if you stand on
+      the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine that you
+      are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and that you
+      hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing from her
+      escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft her wheels. The
+      smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We left the lookout house at ten o’clock in a half cooked condition,
+      because of the heat from Pele’s furnaces, and wrapping up in
+      blankets, for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch75"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for
+      we desired to traverse its floor and see the “North Lake” (of
+      fire) which lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a
+      dozen of us set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a
+      crazy, thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall,
+      and reached the bottom in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floor
+      looked black and cold; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet, to
+      the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed the
+      underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was
+      threatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of the
+      situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, and then
+      every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said he had been
+      in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he could find his way
+      through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundred yards would
+      carry us over the hottest part of the floor and leave us our shoe-soles.
+      His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern and instructed the guides
+      to hang the other to the roof of the look-out house to serve as a beacon
+      for us in case we got lost, and then the party started back up the
+      precipice and Marlette and I made our run. We skipped over the hot floor
+      and over the red crevices with brisk dispatch and reached the cold lava
+      safe but with pretty warm feet. Then we took things leisurely and
+      comfortably, jumping tolerably wide and probably bottomless chasms, and
+      threading our way through picturesque lava upheavals with considerable
+      confidence. When we got fairly away from the cauldrons of boiling fire, we
+      seemed to be in a gloomy desert, and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded
+      by dim walls that seemed to tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects
+      were the glinting stars high overhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by Marlette shouted “Stop!” I never stopped quicker in
+      my life. I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He
+      said we must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were
+      surrounded with beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break
+      and plunge down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for
+      me, and was about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement by
+      accidentally crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link539"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="539.jpg (43K)" src="images/539.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there was
+      only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not find it.
+      The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was an
+      ingenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him that
+      we were out of the path, but his <i>feet</i>. He had noticed a crisp
+      grinding of fine lava-needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded
+      him that in the path these were all worn away. So he put the lantern
+      behind him, and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was
+      good sagacity. The first time his foot touched a surface that did not
+      grind under it he announced that the trail was found again; and after that
+      we kept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always warned us
+      in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long tramp, but an exciting one. We reached the North Lake
+      between ten and eleven o’clock, and sat down on a huge overhanging
+      lava-shelf, tired but satisfied. The spectacle presented was worth coming
+      double the distance to see. Under us, and stretching away before us, was a
+      heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent. The glare from
+      it was so blinding that it was some time before we could bear to look upon
+      it steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was not
+      quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake
+      were nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet
+      high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and
+      gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden—a ceaseless
+      bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable
+      splendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening
+      gossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curving
+      ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they
+      appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link540"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="540.jpg (78K)" src="images/540.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then the surging bosom of the lake under our noses would calm down
+      ominously and seem to be gathering strength for an enterprise; and then
+      all of a sudden a red dome of lava of the bulk of an ordinary dwelling
+      would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burst asunder, and
+      out of its heart would flit a pale-green film of vapor, and float upward
+      and vanish in the darkness—a released soul soaring homeward from
+      captivity with the damned, no doubt. The crashing plunge of the ruined
+      dome into the lake again would send a world of seething billows lashing
+      against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch. By and by, a
+      loosened mass of the hanging shelf we sat on tumbled into the lake,
+      jarring the surroundings like an earthquake and delivering a suggestion
+      that may have been intended for a hint, and may not. We did not wait to
+      see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got lost again on our way back, and were more than an hour hunting for
+      the path. We were where we could see the beacon lantern at the look-out
+      house at the time, but thought it was a star and paid no attention to it.
+      We reached the hotel at two o’clock in the morning pretty well
+      fagged out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kilauea never overflows its vast crater, but bursts a passage for its lava
+      through the mountain side when relief is necessary, and then the
+      destruction is fearful. About 1840 it rent its overburdened stomach and
+      sent a broad river of fire careering down to the sea, which swept away
+      forests, huts, plantations and every thing else that lay in its path. The
+      stream was <i>five miles broad</i>, in places, and <i>two hundred feet
+      deep</i>, and the distance it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and
+      bore away acre-patches of land on its bosom like rafts—rocks, trees
+      and all intact. At night the red glare was visible a hundred miles at sea;
+      and at a distance of forty miles fine print could be read at midnight. The
+      atmosphere was poisoned with sulphurous vapors and choked with falling
+      ashes, pumice stones and cinders; countless columns of smoke rose up and
+      blended together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and glowed with
+      a ruddy flush reflected from the fires below; here and there jets of lava
+      sprung hundreds of feet into the air and burst into rocket-sprays that
+      returned to earth in a crimson rain; and all the while the laboring
+      mountain shook with Nature’s great palsy and voiced its distress in
+      moanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link542"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="542.jpg (103K)" src="images/542.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore, where the lava
+      entered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss of human life, and a
+      prodigious tidal wave swept inland, carrying every thing before it and
+      drowning a number of natives. The devastation consummated along the route
+      traversed by the river of lava was complete and incalculable. Only a
+      Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to make the
+      story of the irruption immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link543"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="543.jpg (113K)" src="images/543.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch76"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked road making
+      the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very much. We
+      were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka horses would not
+      go by a house or a hut without stopping—whip and spur could not
+      alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it economized
+      time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery was explained:
+      the natives are such thorough-going gossips that they never pass a house
+      without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses learn to
+      regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty of man,
+      and his salvation not to be compassed without it. However, at a former
+      crisis of my life I had once taken an aristocratic young lady out driving,
+      behind a horse that had just retired from a long and honorable career as
+      the moving impulse of a milk wagon, and so this present experience awoke a
+      reminiscent sadness in me in place of the exasperation more natural to the
+      occasion. I remembered how helpless I was that day, and how humiliated;
+      how ashamed I was of having intimated to the girl that I had always owned
+      the horse and was accustomed to grandeur; how hard I tried to appear easy,
+      and even vivacious, under suffering that was consuming my vitals; how
+      placidly and maliciously the girl smiled, and kept on smiling, while my
+      hot blushes baked themselves into a permanent blood-pudding in my face;
+      how the horse ambled from one side of the street to the other and waited
+      complacently before every third house two minutes and a quarter while I
+      belabored his back and reviled him in my heart; how I tried to keep him
+      from turning corners and failed; how I moved heaven and earth to get him
+      out of town, and did not succeed; how he traversed the entire settlement
+      and delivered imaginary milk at a hundred and sixty-two different
+      domiciles, and how he finally brought up at a dairy depot and refused to
+      budge further, thus rounding and completing the revealment of what the
+      plebeian service of his life had been; how, in eloquent silence, I walked
+      the girl home, and how, when I took leave of her, her parting remark
+      scorched my soul and appeared to blister me all over: she said that my
+      horse was a fine, capable animal, and I must have taken great comfort in
+      him in my time—but that if I would take along some milk-tickets next
+      time, and appear to deliver them at the various halting places, it might
+      expedite his movements a little. There was a coolness between us after
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link545"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="545.jpg (90K)" src="images/545.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataract
+      of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high;
+      but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmetic rather
+      than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by a poem of
+      Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque rocks,
+      glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, and
+      falling water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent is the
+      charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such an
+      experience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (N.Y.), on the Erie railway,
+      is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if the callous
+      tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for the honors
+      simply on scenic grace and beauty—the grand, the august and the
+      sublime being barred the contest—it could challenge the old world
+      and the new to produce its peer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one locality, on our journey, we saw some horses that had been born and
+      reared on top of the mountains, above the range of running water, and
+      consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had been
+      always accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden or
+      shower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see them sniff
+      suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses and try to
+      take a <i>bite</i> out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Finding it
+      liquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, snorting
+      and showing other evidences of fright. When they became convinced at last
+      that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrust in their noses up to
+      their eyes, brought out a mouthful of water, and proceeded to <i>chew</i>
+      it complacently. We saw a man coax, kick and spur one of them five or ten
+      minutes before he could make it cross a running stream. It spread its
+      nostrils, distended its eyes and trembled all over, just as horses
+      customarily do in the presence of a serpent—and for aught I know it
+      thought the crawling stream <i>was</i> a serpent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course of time our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usually
+      pronounced To-a-<i>hi</i>—and before we find fault with this
+      elaborate orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious
+      result, let us lop off the <i>ugh</i> from our word “though”).
+      I made this horseback trip on a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau
+      (Kah-oo), added four to get him shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then
+      sold him for fifteen dollars. I mark the circumstance with a white stone
+      (in the absence of chalk—for I never saw a white stone that a body
+      could mark anything with, though out of respect for the ancients I have
+      tried it often enough); for up to that day and date it was the first
+      strictly commercial transaction I had ever entered into, and come out
+      winner. We returned to Honolulu, and from thence sailed to the island of
+      Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly. I still remember,
+      with a sense of indolent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge
+      there, called the Iao Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling
+      stream in the bottom of the gorge—a shady route, for it was well
+      roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees. Through openings in the
+      foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes
+      and new charms with every step of our progress. Perpendicular walls from
+      one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously
+      plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving
+      ferns. Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining
+      fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the
+      turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming
+      green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like
+      islands drifting in a fog; sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till
+      half the cañon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only
+      airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it—then swept
+      aloft and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then, as our
+      position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of
+      castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung
+      with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again
+      and hid themselves once more in the foliage. Presently a verdure-clad
+      needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner,
+      and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley. It seemed to me that
+      if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made—therefore,
+      why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link547"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="547.jpg (192K)" src="images/547.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala—which
+      means, translated, “the house of the sun.” We climbed a
+      thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then
+      camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and
+      anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by
+      turns, all night. With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things
+      that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature
+      work her silent wonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its
+      tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad
+      valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar
+      plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees
+      diminished to mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely
+      grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking <i>up</i>
+      at these things—not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a
+      symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting
+      sea lifted away into the sky above us! It was curious; and not only
+      curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing,
+      to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look <i>up</i>
+      at our scenery. However, we had to be content with it and make the best of
+      it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the
+      clouds. Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this
+      singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had
+      looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spoken of the outside view—but we had an inside one, too.
+      That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled
+      rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go
+      careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet
+      at a jump; kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our
+      view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and
+      only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a
+      halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet
+      down from where they started! It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves
+      out at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link549"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="549.jpg (138K)" src="images/549.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit about a
+      thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is
+      somewhat deeper, and <i>ten miles</i> in circumference. But what are
+      either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala? I will not
+      offer any figures of my own, but give official ones—those of
+      Commander Wilkes, U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is <i>twenty-seven
+      miles in circumference</i>! If it had a level bottom it would make a fine
+      site for a city like London. It must have afforded a spectacle worth
+      contemplating in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their
+      anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and
+      the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing
+      squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly
+      together, a thousand feet under us, and <i>totally shut out land and ocean</i>—not
+      a vestige of <i>anything</i> was left in view but just a little of the rim
+      of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a
+      ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted
+      through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered
+      and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the brim with a
+      fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the
+      horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break—not
+      level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases between, and with here
+      and there stately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft
+      out of the common plain—some near at hand, some in the middle
+      distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes.
+      There was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech. I
+      felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in
+      mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection
+      appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the
+      sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of ruddy
+      light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling
+      the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and
+      cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of
+      rich coloring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of
+      it will remain with me always.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch77"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXVII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Maui. He became a
+      sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was in
+      a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the
+      opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for
+      some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were saying as if he
+      fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I thought it
+      very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the course of conversation, I
+      made a statement bearing upon the subject under discussion—and I
+      made it with due modesty, for there was nothing extraordinary about it,
+      and it was only put forth in illustration of a point at issue. I had
+      barely finished when this person spoke out with rapid utterance and
+      feverish anxiety:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought
+      to have seen <i>my</i> chimney—you ought to have seen <i>my</i>
+      chimney, sir! Smoke! I wish I may hang if—Mr. Jones, <i>you</i>
+      remember that chimney—<i>you</i> must remember that chimney! No, no—I
+      recollect, now, you warn’t living on this side of the island then.
+      But I am telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw
+      another breath if that chimney didn’t smoke so that the smoke
+      actually got <i>caked</i> in it and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe!
+      You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff’s got a hunk of it
+      which I dug out before his eyes, and so it’s perfectly easy for you
+      to go and examine for yourselves.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to
+      lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two,
+      and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and detected
+      this same man boring through and through me with his intense eye, and
+      noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to speak. The
+      moment I paused, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Beg</i> your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be
+      considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir,
+      contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it
+      instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that—for I will not speak so
+      discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a
+      gentleman—but I am <i>obliged</i> to say that you could not, and you
+      <i>would</i> not ever again refer to this tree as a <i>large</i> one, if
+      you could behold, as I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of
+      Ounaska, sea of Kamtchatka—a tree, sir, not one inch less than four
+      hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter!—and I wish I may die in
+      a minute if it isn’t so! Oh, you needn’t look so questioning,
+      gentlemen; here’s old Cap Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I’m
+      talking about or not. I showed him the tree.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Captain Saltmarsh</i>.—“Come, now, cat your anchor, lad—you’re
+      heaving too taut. You <i>promised</i> to show me that stunner, and I
+      walked more than eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle <i>I</i>
+      ever see, a hunting for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn’t
+      as big around as a beer cask, and <i>you</i> know that your own self,
+      Markiss.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link553"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="553.jpg (48K)" src="images/553.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Hear the man talk! Of <i>course</i> the tree was reduced that way,
+      but didn’t I <i>explain</i> it? Answer me, didn’t I? Didn’t
+      I say I wished you could have seen it when <i>I</i> first saw it? When you
+      got up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you eleven
+      miles to look at a sapling, didn’t I <i>explain</i> to you that all
+      the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding off of it for more than
+      twenty-seven years? And did you s’pose the tree could last for-<i>ever</i>,
+      con-<i>found</i> it? I don’t see why you want to keep back things
+      that way, and try to injure a person that’s never done <i>you</i>
+      any harm.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow this man’s presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad
+      when a native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the most
+      companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands,
+      desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found
+      trespassing on his grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I
+      was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances,
+      and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a familiar voice chimed
+      instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “But, my dear sir, there was <i>nothing</i> remarkable about that
+      horse, or the circumstance either—nothing in the world! I mean no
+      sort of offence when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything
+      whatever about speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my
+      mare Margaretta; <i>there</i> was a beast!—<i>there</i> was
+      lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name for it—she flew! How she
+      could whirl a buggy along! I started her out once, sir—Colonel
+      Bilgewater, <i>you</i> recollect that animal perfectly well—I
+      started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of the awfullest
+      storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of eighteen miles!
+      It did, by the everlasting hills! And I’m telling you nothing but
+      the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single <i>drop</i> of rain
+      fell on me—not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dog was
+      a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link554"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="554.jpg (76K)" src="images/554.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this
+      person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one
+      evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had a
+      sociable time. About ten o’clock I chanced to be talking about a
+      merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark
+      slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his
+      workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the
+      opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot—and for a moment
+      I trembled on the imminent verge of profanity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade <i>that</i>
+      as a surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant
+      of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as
+      unborn <i>twins</i>! You don’t know <i>anything</i> about it! It is
+      pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making
+      such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your
+      ignorance is perfectly humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please;
+      look me in the eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest
+      parents in the State of Mississippi—boyhood friend of mine—bosom
+      comrade in later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us
+      now. John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in
+      California to do some blasting for them—the “Incorporated
+      Company of Mean Men,” the boys used to call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an
+      awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an
+      iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark
+      and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a
+      skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air
+      higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a boy—and
+      he kept going on up higher and higher, till he didn’t look any
+      bigger than a doll—and he kept on going up higher and higher, till
+      he didn’t look any bigger than a little small bee—and then he
+      went out of sight! Presently he came in sight again, looking like a little
+      small bee—and he came along down further and further, till he looked
+      as big as a doll again—and down further and further, till he was as
+      big as a boy again—and further and further, till he was a full-sized
+      man once more; and then him and his crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit
+      right exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming down, and
+      r-ramming down, and r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had
+      happened! Now do you know, that poor cuss warn’t gone only sixteen
+      minutes, and yet that Incorporated Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE
+      LOST TIME!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link555"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="555.jpg (42K)" src="images/555.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on my
+      diary I entered “another night spoiled” by this offensive
+      loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company.
+      And the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the
+      Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar
+      .................................
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which
+      time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly
+      and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man
+      Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the
+      doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his
+      breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
+      suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, for
+      that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in
+      the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death “by the hands
+      of some person or persons unknown!” They explained that the
+      perfectly undeviating consistency of Markiss’s character for thirty
+      years towered aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that
+      whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and
+      unquestioning acceptance as a <i>lie</i>. And they furthermore stated
+      their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial
+      evidence of his own word that he <i>was</i> dead—and beseeched the
+      coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so
+      in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days,
+      and then even the loyal jury gave him up. But they sat on him again, and
+      changed their verdict to “suicide induced by mental aberration”—because,
+      said they, with penetration, “he said he was dead, and he <i>was</i>
+      dead; and would he have told the truth if he had been in his right mind?
+      No, sir.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link557"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="557.jpg (26K)" src="images/557.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch78"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After half a year’s luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took
+      shipping in a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco—a
+      voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident: unless lying two
+      long weeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land,
+      may rank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day
+      they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the
+      least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack
+      of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be still
+      lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship had not
+      moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutely
+      breathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. For a
+      whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship that had
+      drifted to our vicinity, that we carried on conversations with her
+      passengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimately
+      acquainted with people we had never heard of before, and have never heard
+      of since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonely voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link559"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="559.jpg (91K)" src="images/559.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed they were at last
+      for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the gentlemen gave a
+      good part of their time every day, during the calm, to trying to sit on an
+      empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), and thread a needle without
+      touching their heels to the deck, or falling over; and the ladies sat in
+      the shade of the mainsail, and watched the enterprise with absorbing
+      interest. We were at sea five Sundays; and yet, but for the almanac, we
+      never would have known but that all the other days were Sundays too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without employment.
+      I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a public
+      lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever of hopeful
+      anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shook their
+      heads. They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make a
+      humiliating failure of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in the
+      delivery, anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slapped me
+      on the back and told me to “go ahead.” He said, “Take
+      the largest house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket.” The
+      audacity of the proposition was charming; it seemed fraught with practical
+      worldly wisdom, however. The proprietor of the several theatres endorsed
+      the advice, and said I might have his handsome new opera-house at half
+      price—fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it—on credit,
+      for sufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars’
+      worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and
+      frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep—who
+      could, under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness
+      in the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang
+      when I wrote it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Doors open at 7½. The trouble will begin at 8.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed it
+      frequently. I have even seen it appended to a newspaper advertisement
+      reminding school pupils in vacation what time next term would begin. As
+      those three days of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy. I
+      had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I feared they
+      might not come. My lecture, which had seemed “humorous” to me,
+      at first, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun
+      seemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stage
+      and turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken, at last, that
+      I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature, and
+      stormy-voiced, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “This thing is going to be a failure; the jokes in it are so dim
+      that nobody will ever see them; I would like to have you sit in the
+      parquette, and help me through.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said they would. Then I went to the wife of a popular citizen, and
+      said that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness, I would be
+      glad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-hand stage-
+      box, where the whole house could see them. I explained that I should need
+      help, and would turn toward her and smile, as a signal, when I had been
+      delivered of an obscure joke—“and then,” I added,
+      “don’t wait to investigate, but <i>respond</i>!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. He had
+      been drinking, and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “My name’s Sawyer. You don’t know me, but that don’t
+      matter. I haven’t got a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to
+      laugh, you’d give me a ticket. Come, now, what do you say?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger?—that is, is it
+      critical, or can you get it off <i>easy</i>?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My drawling infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed a specimen
+      or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and I gave him
+      a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in the centre,
+      and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him minute
+      instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went away, and
+      left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days—I only
+      suffered. I had advertised that on this third day the box-office would be
+      opened for the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theater at four
+      in the afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller was
+      gone, the box-office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or my heart
+      would have got out. “No sales,” I said to myself; “I
+      might have known it.” I thought of suicide, pretended illness,
+      flight. I thought of these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and
+      scared. But of course I had to drive them away, and prepare to meet my
+      fate. I could not wait for half-past seven—I wanted to face the
+      horror, and end it—the feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no
+      doubt. I went down back streets at six o’clock, and entered the
+      theatre by the back door. I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of
+      canvas scenery, and stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent,
+      and its emptiness depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again,
+      and for an hour and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly
+      unconscious of everything else. Then I heard a murmur; it rose higher and
+      higher, and ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise,
+      it was so close to me, and so loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and then another; presently came a third, and before I
+      well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at a
+      sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking in
+      every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The house
+      was full, aisles and all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link561"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="561.jpg (45K)" src="images/561.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before I
+      could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and the
+      friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my fright melted
+      away, and I began to talk. Within three or four minutes I was comfortable,
+      and even content. My three chief allies, with three auxiliaries, were on
+      hand, in the parquette, all sitting together, all armed with bludgeons,
+      and all ready to make an onslaught upon the feeblest joke that might show
+      its head. And whenever a joke did fall, their bludgeons came down and
+      their faces seemed to split from ear to ear;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link562"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="562.jpg (153K)" src="images/562.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sawyer, whose hearty countenance was seen looming redly in the centre of
+      the second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely.
+      Inferior jokes never fared so royally before. Presently I delivered a bit
+      of serious matter with impressive unction (it was my pet), and the
+      audience listened with an absorbed hush that gratified me more than any
+      applause; and as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened to turn
+      and catch Mrs.—’s intent and waiting eye; my conversation with
+      her flashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took it
+      for the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched off the
+      whole audience; and the explosion that followed was the triumph of the
+      evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself; and as
+      for the bludgeons, they performed like pile-drivers. But my poor little
+      morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as an intentional
+      joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wisely let it go at
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had a
+      abundance of money. All’s well that ends well.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkch79"></a>
+      CHAPTER LXXIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field
+      all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in the
+      Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an old
+      personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we
+      roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it.
+      Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed
+      within two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn,
+      by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented
+      revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a
+      general dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their
+      watches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew up the
+      express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the robbers was
+      a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner and his
+      intrepidity was in everybody’s mouth when we arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate “divide”
+      and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped to
+      talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The “divide”
+      was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty
+      midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped out
+      on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our backs,
+      and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. A sharp wind swept the place,
+      too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “I tell you I don’t like this place at night,” said Mike
+      the agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, don’t speak so loud,” I said. “You needn’t
+      remind anybody that we are here.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia—a
+      man, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him
+      pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he
+      had a mask on and was holding something in my face—I heard a
+      click-click and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel
+      aside with my hand and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Don’t!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ejaculated sharply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Your watch! Your money!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You can have them with pleasure—but take the pistol away from
+      my face, please. It makes me shiver.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No remarks! Hand out your money!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Certainly—I—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Put up your <i>hands</i>! Don’t you go for a weapon! Put
+      ’em up! Higher!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I held them above my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Are</i> you going to hand out your money or <i>not</i>?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly! I—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Put up your hands! Do you want your head blown off? Higher!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I put them above my head again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Are you going to hand out your money or not? Ah-ah—again? Put up
+      your hands! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well, friend, I’m trying my best to please you. You tell me
+      to give up my money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my
+      hands. If you would only—. Oh, now—don’t! All six of you
+      at me! That other man will get away while.—Now please take some of
+      those revolvers out of my face—<i>do</i>, if you <i>please</i>!
+      Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes up into my throat! If you
+      have a mother—any of you—or if any of you have ever <i>had</i>
+      a mother—or a—grandmother—or a—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Cheese it! <i>Will</i> you give up your money, or have we got to—.
+      There—there—none of that! Put up your <i>hands</i>!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen—I know you are gentlemen by your—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Silence! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times
+      and places more fitting. <i>This</i> is a serious business.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in
+      my time were comedies compared to it. Now <i>I</i> think—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Curse your palaver! Your money!—your money!—your money!
+      Hold!—put up your hands!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, listen to reason. You <i>see</i> how I am situated—now
+      <i>don’t</i> put those pistols so close—I smell the powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “You see how I am situated. If I had four hands—so that I
+      could hold up two and—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Throttle him! Gag him! Kill him!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, <i>don’t</i>! Nobody’s watching the other
+      fellow. Why don’t some of you—. Ouch! Take it away, please!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Gentlemen, you see that I’ve got to hold up my hands; and so
+      I can’t take out my money—but if you’ll be so kind as to
+      take it out for me, I will do as much for you some—”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Search him Beauregard—and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick,
+      if he wags it again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and
+      fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured me
+      to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel
+      brother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they had
+      received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had
+      been taken from me,—watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of
+      small value,—I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands
+      into my empty pockets and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and
+      stir up some latent courage—but instantly all pistols were at my
+      head, and the order came again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Be still! Put up your hands! And keep them up!”.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link567"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="567.jpg (72K)" src="images/567.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands
+      above his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide
+      behind that other one; Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that
+      sage-bush there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they
+      take down their hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them
+      have it!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the
+      other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. Now this whole thing was a
+      practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours in disguise,
+      and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during the whole
+      operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, but I
+      suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine. When we
+      had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a couple of
+      idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches, Mike’s
+      interest in the joke began to wane. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “The time’s up, now, aint it?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these
+      bloody savages?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Mike said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “<i>Now</i> the time’s up, anyway. I’m freezing.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket.
+      Maybe the time <i>is</i> up, but how do <i>we</i> know?—got no watch
+      to tell by. I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here
+      fifteen minutes or die. Don’t you move.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract.
+      When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold and
+      fatigue, and when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in that the time
+      might not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not
+      sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked my
+      stiffened body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon
+      themselves; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two full hours
+      before I came, and there was very little fun in that; they were so chilled
+      that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover, I never
+      had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it was so
+      perfectly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did not really
+      frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble they had
+      taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go off accidentally.
+      Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no blood would be
+      intentionally spilled. They were not smart; they ought to have sent only
+      <i>one</i> highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they desired
+      to see the author of this volume climb a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the
+      joke at last; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen; for the
+      chilly exposure on the “divide” while I was in a perspiration
+      gave me a cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept
+      my hands idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor’s
+      bills. Since then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose
+      my temper when one is played upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link569"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="569.jpg (39K)" src="images/569.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan
+      and thence westward around the world; but a desire to see home again
+      changed my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye to the
+      friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent, and
+      came by the way of the Isthmus to New York—a trip that was not much
+      of a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage
+      and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a dreary
+      place after my long absence; for half the children I had known were now
+      wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I had been
+      acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and happy—some
+      of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and the rest had
+      been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went away and joined
+      the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried my tears to foreign
+      lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a “pleasure trip”
+      to the silver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy
+      only three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MORAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to
+      it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account,
+      stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are
+      “no account,” go away from home, and then you will <i>have</i>
+      to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your
+      friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them—if the people you go
+      among suffer by the operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link570"></a> <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img alt="570.jpg (75K)" src="images/570.jpg" style="width:100%;"><br>
+    </div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a id="linkAPPENDIX"></a>
+      APPENDIX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APPENDIX. A.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of
+      stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the
+      end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the
+      country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated all
+      “Gentiles” indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph
+      Smith, the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was
+      driven from State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the
+      miraculous stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted
+      his “church” in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The
+      neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the
+      faith and worked hard. He arrested desertion. He did more—he added
+      converts in the midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with
+      the brethren. He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He
+      shortly fought his way to a higher post and a more powerful—President
+      of the Twelve. The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio,
+      and they settled in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians
+      drove them out and they retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered
+      there, and built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural
+      grace and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where a brick
+      court-house with a tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with
+      reverential awe. But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their
+      neighbors. All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing
+      polygamy and repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; the
+      people of the neighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that
+      polygamy was practised by the Mormons, and not only polygamy but a little
+      of everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England,
+      where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him
+      several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the
+      brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invaded by
+      the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon
+      named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government,
+      in Smith’s place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But
+      a greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour
+      and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled
+      Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. He
+      launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and he pronounced
+      Rigdon’s “prophecies” emanations from the devil, and
+      ended by “handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan
+      for a thousand years”—probably the longest term ever inflicted
+      in Illinois. The people recognized their master. They straightway elected
+      Brigham Young President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered
+      in their devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast—a
+      quality which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed. He
+      recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than <i>be</i>
+      moved. By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects,
+      turned their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the
+      wilderness, and on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful
+      procession across the frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the
+      glare from their burning temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands
+      had fired! They camped, several days afterward, on the western verge of
+      Iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did
+      their work, and many succumbed and died—martyrs, fair and true,
+      whatever else they might have been. Two years the remnant remained there,
+      while Brigham and a small party crossed the country and founded Great Salt
+      Lake City, purposely choosing a land <i>which was outside the ownership
+      and jurisdiction of the hated American nation</i>. Note that. This was in
+      1847. Brigham moved his people there and got them settled just in time to
+      see disaster fall again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham’s
+      refuge to the enemy—the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized
+      a “free and independent” government and erected the “State
+      of Deseret,” with Brigham Young as its head. But the very next year
+      Congress deliberately snubbed it and created the “Territory of Utah”
+      out of the same accumulation of mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general
+      desolation,—but made Brigham Governor of it. Then for years the
+      enormous migration across the plains to California poured through the land
+      of the Mormons and yet the church remained staunch and true to its lord
+      and master. Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor
+      persecution could drive the Mormons from their faith or their allegiance;
+      and even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and
+      strength of many nations was not able to entice them! That was the final
+      test. An experiment that could survive that was an experiment with some
+      substance to it somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last
+      things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in
+      the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet Smith,
+      and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, emoluments
+      and authorities, upon “President Brigham Young!” The people
+      accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham’s
+      power was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he
+      openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a
+      “revelation” which he pretended had been received nine years
+      before by Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing
+      polygamy to the day of his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning and
+      steady progress of his official grandeur. He had served successively as a
+      disciple in the ranks; home missionary; foreign missionary; editor and
+      publisher; Apostle; President of the Board of Apostles; President of all
+      Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical; successor to the great Joseph by the
+      will of heaven; “prophet,” “seer,” “revelator.”
+      There was but one dignity higher which he <i>could</i> aspire to, and he
+      reached out modestly and took that—he proclaimed himself a God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he
+      will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and
+      princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their
+      families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of
+      their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to
+      accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in
+      the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children
+      for him <i>after he is dead</i>, and they are duly credited to his account
+      and his heavenly status advanced accordingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been
+      ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with the
+      world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of these
+      Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children likely
+      to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let it be
+      remembered that <i>for forty years</i> these creatures have been driven,
+      driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed,
+      despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither they journeyed
+      gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes with their
+      lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their dead—and
+      all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in the way
+      which <i>they</i> believed with all their hearts and souls to be the true
+      one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be hard
+      to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our people and
+      our government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That hatred has “fed fat its ancient grudge” ever since Mormon
+      Utah developed into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich and
+      strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was
+      for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by appointing
+      territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon localities,
+      but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his dominions difficult.
+      Three thousand United States troops had to go across the plains and put
+      these gentlemen in office. And after they were in office they were as
+      helpless as so many stone images. They made laws which nobody minded and
+      which could not be executed. The federal judges opened court in a land
+      filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday spectacles for insolent
+      crowds to gape at—for there was nothing to try, nothing to do
+      nothing on the dockets! And if a Gentile brought a suit, the Mormon jury
+      would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict, and when the
+      judgment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for it and no officer
+      could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo of officials after
+      another to Utah, but the result was always the same—they sat in a
+      blight for awhile they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day by day,
+      they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its reward in
+      darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of a more and
+      more dismal nature—and at last they either succumbed and became
+      despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and discomforted
+      beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave officer kept on
+      courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant Buchanan or Pierce
+      would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney
+      came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near
+      being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge!—two men who never had
+      any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which
+      they were enabled to gather from the dictionary. Simply (if for nothing
+      else) for the variety they would have made in a rather monotonous history
+      of Federal servility and helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to
+      hold office together in Utah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial record.
+      The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless failure,
+      and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was an absolute
+      monarch—a monarch who defied our President—a monarch who
+      laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital—a monarch
+      who received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the
+      United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went
+      forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      B. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long—and which they
+      consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves—they
+      have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost
+      forgotten “Mountain Meadows massacre” was their work. It was
+      very famous in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A
+      few items will refresh the reader’s memory. A great emigrant train
+      from Missouri and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few
+      disaffected Mormons joined it for the sake of the strong protection it
+      afforded for their escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot
+      retaliation by the Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and
+      forty-five or one hundred and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part
+      from Arkansas, where a noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and
+      in part from Missouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter
+      persecutor of the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here
+      were substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers.
+      And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and
+      other property—and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their
+      coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the “spoil”
+      of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly “delivered it into their
+      hand?”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite’s entertaining book,
+      “The Mormon Prophet,” it transpired that—
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “A ‘revelation’ from Brigham Young, as Great Grand
+      Archee or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and
+      J. D. Lee (adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the
+      forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read
+      the revelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of
+      the Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale;
+      and if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians
+      as their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be
+      neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in
+      sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the
+      mandate of Almighty God.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The command of the “revelation” was faithfully obeyed. A large
+      party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train
+      of emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and
+      made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of
+      their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five
+      days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort
+      of scurvy apologies for “Indians” which the southern part of
+      Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They
+      retired to the upper end of the “Meadows,” resumed civilized
+      apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in
+      wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the
+      emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed
+      them with cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no
+      doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to
+      the flag of truce!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leaders of the timely white “deliverers” were President
+      Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who
+      served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to
+      Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these
+      leaders next proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and
+      represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and
+      settle the matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they,
+      having (apparently) visited the Indians, gave the <i>ultimatum</i> of the
+      savages; which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp,
+      leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the
+      Mormon bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back
+      to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous
+      of saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and
+      subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were
+      marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the
+      Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about a
+      mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost all
+      shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who fled to
+      the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were
+      overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three
+      hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid of the
+      Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the
+      emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of
+      them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857,
+      was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known
+      in our history.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was <i>one
+      hundred and twenty</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceeded
+      to make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must
+      have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and
+      his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding
+      them by turns, and by turns “breathing threatenings and slaughter!”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An editorial in the <i>Territorial Enterprise</i> of that day says of him
+      and of the occasion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a
+      Jackson; but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges,
+      while threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on
+      the U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were
+      discharged with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a
+      committing magistrate, <i>he commenced his task alone</i>. He examined
+      witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in
+      the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before,
+      since Mormondom was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops
+      were decamping to save their necks; and developments of the most starling
+      character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in
+      the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past
+      eight years.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his
+      work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this
+      massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred
+      gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use
+      them. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious
+      pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands of
+      justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his protest
+      against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh’s
+      proceedings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with
+      the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony—and
+      the summary is concise, accurate and reliable:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the
+      guilt of Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here
+      collated and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to
+      fasten conviction upon them by ‘confirmations strong as proofs of
+      Holy Writ:’
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as
+      shown by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S. Marshall
+      Rodgers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his
+      Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any
+      allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the
+      occurrence
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the
+      Mormon Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a
+      judicial investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “4. The failure of the <i>Deseret News</i>, the Church organ, and
+      the only paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre
+      until several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were
+      engaged in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in
+      possession of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day
+      after the massacre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of
+      the massacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and
+      Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was,
+      in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all these
+      were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      “8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent
+      in the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to
+      California and to inquire into Indian depredations.”
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      C. CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill,
+      Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired
+      gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was an
+      oyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o’lantern, confined to
+      a swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or a
+      summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand.
+      Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the
+      world listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look;
+      and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I met
+      Conrad, he was “Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office”—and
+      he was not only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a
+      street preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention,
+      whereby he expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here
+      latterly he has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might be
+      expected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagant
+      grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter
+      sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all alone;
+      but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block and
+      employs a thousand men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people
+      mercilessly in his little “People’s <i>Tribune</i>,” and
+      got himself into trouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the “Territorial
+      Enterprise,” in a communication over his own signature, and I
+      propose to reproduce it here, in all its native simplicity and more than
+      human candor. Long as it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the
+      richest specimen of journalistic literature the history of America can
+      furnish, perhaps:]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the <i>Territorial Enterprise</i>, Jan. 20, 1870.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <h4>
+        SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED.
+      </h4>
+      <p>
+        TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentally
+        exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me to
+        protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that
+        any attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative
+        action, aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey
+        County, must entail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its
+        costs, (c) personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then
+        (d) assassination, and after all nothing would be effected.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING. In large part at least your prophecies have
+        been fulfilled, for (a) assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold
+        Hill Assay Office (of which I am superintendent), in consequence of my
+        publications, has been taken elsewhere, so the President of one of the
+        companies assures me. With no reason assigned, other work has been taken
+        away. With but one or two important exceptions, our assay business now
+        consists simply of the gleanings of the vicinity. (b) Though my own
+        personal donations to the People’s Tribune Association have
+        already exceeded $1,500, outside of our own numbers we have received (in
+        money) less than $300 as contributions and subscriptions for the
+        journal. (c) On Thursday last, on the main street in Gold Hill, near
+        noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned, by a powerful blow I was
+        felled to the ground, and while down I was kicked by a man who it would
+        seem had been led to believe that I had spoken derogatorily of him. By
+        whom he was so induced to believe I am as yet unable to say. On Saturday
+        last I was again assailed and beaten by a man who first informed me why
+        he did so, and who persisted in making his assault even after the
+        erroneous impression under which he also was at first laboring had been
+        clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This same man, after failing through
+        intimidation to elicit from me the names of our editorial contributors,
+        against giving which he knew me to be pledged, beat himself weary upon
+        me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and then pantingly threatened me
+        with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever again I should introduce his
+        name into print, and who but a few minutes before his attack upon me
+        assured me that the only reason I was “permitted” to reach
+        home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which time the PEOPLE’S
+        TRIBUNE was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted, and be it
+        remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked by a man
+        who seemed to be prepared for flight. [He sees doom impending:]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN? How long before the whole of your prophecy
+        will be fulfilled I cannot say, but under the shadow of so much
+        fulfillment in so short a time, and with such threats from a man who is
+        one of the most prominent exponents of the San Francisco mining-ring
+        staring me and this whole community defiantly in the face and pointing
+        to a completion of your augury, do you blame me for feeling that this
+        communication is the last I shall ever write for the Press, especially
+        when a sense alike of personal self-respect, of duty to this
+        money-oppressed and fear-ridden community, and of American fealty to the
+        spirit of true Liberty all command me, and each more loudly than love of
+        life itself, to declare the name of that prominent man to be JOHN B.
+        WINTERS, President of the Yellow Jacket Company, a political aspirant
+        and a military General? The name of his partially duped accomplice and
+        abettor in this last marvelous assault, is no other than PHILIP LYNCH,
+        Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, on
+        Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford
+        your readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a serious
+        mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not self-
+        wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the time
+        and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far from
+        sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before
+        exposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter
+        as to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me.
+        That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to
+        be also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with
+        many would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in
+        publishing the article, or else that my “non-combatant”
+        principles are but a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral
+        cowardice. I therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful
+        picture of this whole affair, but shall forbear all comments, presuming
+        that the editors of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely
+        and fittingly upon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then
+        be dead or living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend,
+        the publication of the PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE. [The “non-combatant”
+        sticks to principle, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently
+        different stripe:]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        THE TRAP SET. On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to
+        the Gold Hill Assay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow
+        Jacket office. Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view
+        of his own recent discourtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as
+        a stockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me more
+        like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another
+        for a favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the
+        betterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt
+        strongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight in
+        courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised
+        and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was
+        somewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousness
+        of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it
+        needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would
+        not dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me might
+        secure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbor to
+        accompany me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED. Although I was not then aware of this fact, it
+        would seem that previous to my request this same neighbor had heard Dr.
+        Zabriskie state publicly in a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he
+        had decided either to kill or to horsewhip me, but had not finally
+        decided on which. My neighbor, therefore, felt unwilling to go down with
+        me until he had first called on Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him
+        a visit. From that interview he assured me that he gathered the
+        impression that he did not believe I would have any difficulty with Mr.
+        Winters, and that he (Winters) would call on me at four o’clock in
+        my own office.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        MY OWN PRECAUTIONS. As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon,
+        and as I desired to converse with him about the previous assault, I
+        invited him to my office, and he came. Although a half hour had passed
+        beyond four o’clock, Mr. Winters had not called, and we both of us
+        began preparing to go home. Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the
+        Gold Hill News, came in and said, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing
+        good news:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        I replied, “Indeed! Why he sent me word that he would call on me
+        here this afternoon at four o’clock!”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “O, well, it don’t do to be too ceremonious just now, he’s
+        in my office, and that will do as well—come on in, Winters wants
+        to consult with you alone. He’s got something to say to you.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that
+        in an editor’s house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would
+        be within hail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered
+        my dim apprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep
+        near enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do
+        so while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my
+        voice or thought I had need of protection.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from the
+        street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings
+        arose. Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have
+        invited Sheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said:
+        “This way, Wiegand—it’s best to be private,” or
+        some such remark.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        [I do not desire to strain the reader’s fancy, hurtfully, and yet
+        it would be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle,
+        or the duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee—M.
+        T.:]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do
+        or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come
+        to feel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a
+        necessary Vigilance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake.
+        Following was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be
+        caught should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to
+        come will prove.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Traps commonly are not set for benevolence. [His body-guard is shut
+        out:]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        THE TRAP INSIDE. I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to
+        the left opened into a small room. From that room another door opened
+        into yet another room, and once entered I found myself inveigled into
+        what many will ever henceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold
+        Hill den, admirably adapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder,
+        raw or disguised, for from it, with both or even one door closed, when
+        too late, I saw that I could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from
+        it, BY VIOLENCE AND BY FORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable
+        exit, when I thought I saw the studious object of this “consultation”
+        was no other than to compass my killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch
+        as a witness, as soon as by insult a proverbially excitable man should
+        be exasperated to the point of assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch,
+        by his conscience and by his well known tenderness of heart toward the
+        rich and potent would be compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B.
+        Winters kill Conrad Wiegand in “self-defence.” But I am
+        going too fast.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        OUR HOST. Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a
+        little short of an hour), but three times he left the room. His
+        testimony, therefore, would be available only as to the bulk of what
+        transpired. On entering this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near
+        one corner of the room. Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B.
+        Winters sat (at first) near the door, and began his remarks essentially
+        as follows:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and
+        white, of those damnably false charges which you have preferred against
+        me in that— —infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must
+        declare yourself their author, that you published them knowing them to
+        be false, and that your motives were malicious.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an
+        enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or
+        coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your
+        request.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I
+        am here for a very different purpose.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong
+        excitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call
+        in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me
+        outside the door.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “No, you won’t, sir. You may just as well understand it at
+        once as not. Here you are my man, and I’ll tell you why! Months
+        ago you put your property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to
+        escape losing it on prosecution for libel.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into
+        personal property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly
+        to escape ruin through possible libel suits.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the
+        law, may God help your soul if you DON’T make precisely such a
+        retraction as I have demanded. I’ve got you now, and by—before
+        you can get out of this room you’ve got to both write and sign
+        precisely the retraction I have demanded, and before you go, anyhow—you
+        — low-lived — lying —, I’ll teach you what
+        personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by—, Sheriff
+        Cummings and all the friends you’ve got in the world besides, can’t
+        save you, you—, etc.! <i>No</i>, sir. I’m alone now, and I’m
+        prepared to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by
+        you as I have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those
+        charges, not only here where I am known and universally respected, but
+        where I am not personally known and may be injured.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied
+        threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified
+        me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest
+        possible pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other
+        than one of seeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a
+        raging fire, so I replied:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Well, if I’ve got to sign—,” and then I paused
+        some time. Resuming, I said, “But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly
+        excited. Besides, I see you are laboring under a total misapprehension.
+        It is your duty not to inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to
+        show you, if you will only point out the article that you allude to,
+        that you regard as ‘charges’ what no calm and logical mind
+        has any right to regard as such. Show me the charges, and I will try, at
+        all events; and if it becomes plain that no charges have been preferred,
+        then plainly there can be nothing to retract, and no one could rightly
+        urge you to demand a retraction. You should beware of making so serious
+        a mistake, for however honest a man may be, every one is liable to
+        misapprehend. Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain
+        article which you have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed
+        “What’s the Matter with Yellow Jacket?” saying “That’s
+        what I refer to.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper
+        and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped,
+        cooling. I then resumed saying, “As I supposed. I do not admit
+        having written that article, nor have you any right to assume so
+        important a point, and then base important action upon your assumption.
+        You might deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the
+        People, I notified the world that no information as to the authorship of
+        any article would be given without the consent of the writer. I
+        therefore cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you
+        exact it.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “I must decline to say.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Then, by—, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you
+        accordingly.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I
+        notice is, that you regard them as ‘charges’ at all, when
+        their context, both at their beginning and end, show they are not. These
+        words introduce them: ‘Such an investigation [just before
+        indicated], we think MIGHT result in showing some of the following
+        points.’ Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding
+        paragraph shows that the suggested investigation ‘might EXONERATE
+        those who are generally believed guilty.’ You see, therefore, the
+        context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this you seem to
+        have overlooked.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in
+        such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider
+        candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that
+        they were charges, and “By—,” he would make me take
+        them back as charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to
+        whom I then appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor,
+        calling his attention especially to the introductory paragraph just
+        before quoted. He replied, “if they are not charges, they
+        certainly are insinuations,” whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his
+        demands for retraction precisely such as he had before named, except
+        that he would allow me to state who did write the article if I did not
+        myself, and this time shaking his fist in my face with more cursings and
+        epithets.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to
+        rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did
+        every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent
+        danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than
+        that after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to
+        himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that by
+        plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters’
+        hands, and that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being
+        afoot, which he possessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that
+        Philip Lynch (and for what reason I wondered) would do absolutely
+        nothing to protect me in his own house. I realized then the situation
+        thoroughly. I had found it equally vain to protest or argue, and I would
+        make no unmanly appeal for pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had
+        been by the plainest possible implication threatened. I was a weak man.
+        I was unarmed. I was helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably
+        armed. Lynch was the only “witness.” The statements
+        demanded, if given and not explained, would utterly sink me in my own
+        self-respect, in my family’s eyes, and in the eyes of the
+        community. On the other hand, should I give the author’s name how
+        could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I should no
+        longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life
+        than the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dear
+        and each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerely
+        trust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with
+        families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death
+        while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz.: What
+        should I do—I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, “alone.”
+        [The reader is requested not to skip the following.—M. T.:]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        STRATEGY AND MESMERISM. To gain time for further reflection, and hoping
+        that by a seeming acquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at
+        least till I could give an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary
+        inadvertence of Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I
+        resolved to write a certain kind of retraction, but previously had
+        inwardly decided:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        First.—That I would studiously avoid every action which might be
+        construed into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man,
+        no matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed
+        to me that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet
+        must be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some
+        object. “Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any
+        bird.” Therefore, as before without thought, I thereafter by
+        intent kept my hands away from my pockets, and generally in sight and
+        spread upon my knees.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Second.—I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which
+        could possibly be construed into aggression.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Third.—I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and
+        suppress indignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that,
+        by force of imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to
+        resolve myself into an unnatural mental state and see all things through
+        the eyes of an assumed character.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Fourth.—I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously
+        to himself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of
+        people, and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over
+        the lower animals.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever being
+        obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having
+        but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force
+        unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of
+        will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may
+        help you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of
+        power coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was
+        correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he
+        would not even have struck me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That
+        time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first
+        wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me,
+        my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact
+        it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters’ mind. When it
+        was finished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first
+        draft it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any
+        material change.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        COPY. To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News: I learn that Gen.
+        John B. Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the
+        PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE of January to contain distinct charges of mine
+        against him personally, and that as such he desires me to retract them
+        unqualifiedly.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr.
+        Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong
+        feelings in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those
+        “charges” (if such they are) to be true, and I hope that a
+        critical examination would altogether disprove them. CONRAD WIEGAND.
+        Gold Hill, January 15, 1870.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr.
+        Winters said:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “That’s not satisfactory, and it won’t do;” and
+        then addressing himself to Mr. Lynch, he further said: “How does
+        it strike you?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Well, I confess I don’t see that it retracts anything.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Nor do I,” said Winters; “in fact, I regard it as
+        adding insult to injury. Mr. Wiegand you’ve got to do better than
+        that. You are not the man who can pull wool over my eyes.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “That, sir, is the only retraction I can write.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “No it isn’t, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do
+        it at your peril, for I’ll thrash you to within an inch of your
+        life, and, by—, sir, I don’t pledge myself to spare you even
+        that inch either. I want you to understand I have asked you for a very
+        different paper, and that paper you’ve got to sign.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you,
+        but, at the same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any
+        other paper than that which I have written. If you are resolved to
+        compel me to sign something, Philip Lynch’s hand must write at
+        your dictation, and if, when written, I can sign it I will do so, but
+        such a document as you say you must have from me, I never can sign. I
+        mean what I say.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Well, sir, what’s to be done must be done quickly, for I’ve
+        been here long enough already. I’ll put the thing in another shape
+        (and then pointing to the paper); don’t you know those charges to
+        be false?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “I do not.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Do you know them to be true?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Of my own personal knowledge I do not.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Why then did you print them?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Because rightly considered in their connection they are not
+        charges, but pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries
+        of a correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Don’t you know that I know they are false?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an
+        investigation.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything
+        you may choose to write and print?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Come, now, we’ve talked about the matter long enough. I
+        want your final answer—did you write that article or not?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Did you not see it before it was printed?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Most certainly, sir.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its
+        appearance. Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its
+        publication I assume full, sole and personal responsibility.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “And do you then retract it or not?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have
+        demanded must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly
+        implies, then I ask a few minutes for prayer.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Prayer!—you, this is not your hour for prayer—your
+        time to pray was when you were writing those—lying charges. Will
+        you sign or not?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “You already have my answer.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “What! do you still refuse?”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “I do, sir.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Take that, then,” and to my amazement and inexpressible
+        relief he drew only a rawhide instead of what I expected—a
+        bludgeon or pistol. With it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear
+        downwards, as if to tear it off, and afterwards on the side of the head.
+        As he moved away to get a better chance for a more effective shot, for
+        the first time I gained a chance under peril to rise, and I did so
+        pitying him from the very bottom of my soul, to think that one so
+        naturally capable of true dignity, power and nobility could, by the
+        temptations of this State, and by unfortunate associations and
+        aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such brutality anything
+        which he could call satisfaction—but the great hope for us all is
+        in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will yet be able
+        to comprehend my feelings.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely
+        weary, exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose
+        of non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to
+        defend my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain
+        arising from the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course
+        transient, and my clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it
+        now hides all remaining traces.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon and
+        shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of
+        more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce
+        his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he
+        would cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send
+        me home to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning
+        to all low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure
+        their good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his
+        implement would not be a whip but a knife.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he
+        left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming: “The man
+        is mad—he is utterly mad—this step is his ruin—it is a
+        mistake—it would be ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage
+        I have here received, to expose him, at least until he has had an
+        opportunity to reflect upon the matter. I shall be in no haste.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        “Winters is very mad just now,” replied Mr. Lynch, “but
+        when he is himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he
+        told me the reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the
+        humiliation of a beating in the sight of others.”
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of
+        having been privy in advance to Mr. Winters’ intentions whatever
+        they may have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon
+        me, but I leave to others to determine how much censure an editor
+        deserves for inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to
+        a pen of his own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple
+        printing of what is verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and
+        women too, upon the street.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly
+        true respecting this most remarkable assault: First—The aim may
+        have been simply to extort from me such admissions as in the hands of
+        money and influence would have sent me to the Penitentiary for libel.
+        This, however, seems unlikely, because any statements elicited by fear
+        or force could not be evidence in law or could be so explained as to
+        have no force. The statements wanted so badly must have been desired for
+        some other purpose. Second—The other theory has so dark and
+        wilfully murderous a look that I shrink from writing it, yet as in all
+        probability my death at the earliest practicable moment has already been
+        decreed, I feel I should do all I can before my hour arrives, at least
+        to show others how to break up that aristocratic rule and combination
+        which has robbed all Nevada of true freedom, if not of manhood itself.
+        Although I do not prefer this hypothesis as a “charge,” I
+        feel that as an American citizen I still have a right both to think and
+        to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon and Winters, and as much
+        so respecting the theory of a brutal assault (especially when I have
+        been its subject) as respecting any other apparent enormity. I give the
+        matter simply as a suggestion which may explain to the proper
+        authorities and to the people whom they should represent, a well
+        ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious fact. The scheme of
+        the assault may have been:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        First—To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness
+        after making actual though not legal threats against my life.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Second—To imply that I could save my life only by writing or
+        signing certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained
+        would eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my
+        family to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage
+        of the rich.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Third—To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby
+        preventing me from making any subsequent explanation such as could
+        remove the infamy.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Fourth—Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed
+        by John B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would
+        bring him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B.
+        Winters’ mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to
+        sign, when that refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only
+        spared my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe
+        that at first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive;
+        and why I was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other
+        invisible influence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this
+        matter, the more probable as true does this horrible interpretation
+        become.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters
+        and to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both
+        verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to
+        appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to
+        this community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great
+        Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has
+        pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of
+        some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the
+        erroneous telegrams?]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the
+        publication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with
+        his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to
+        resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it.
+        Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and William
+        Sharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ring
+        feel that he above all other men in this State and California is the
+        most fitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I
+        am able to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained
+        to grace his present post.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important
+        villainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it if
+        they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), to
+        communicate with the PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE; for until I am murdered, so
+        long as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my
+        efforts at least to revive the liberties of the State, to curb
+        oppression, and to benefit man’s world and God’s earth.
+        <br><br>CONRAD WIEGAND.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br><br>
+      </p>
+      <blockquote>
+        <p>
+          [It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good
+          sense of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to
+          teach them that the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted
+          child was a thing that ought to have been done in the street, where
+          the poor thing could have a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a
+          citizen, or attacks his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to
+          be thrashed for it, even if he is a “non-combatant”
+          weakling; but a generous adversary would at least allow such a lamb
+          the use of his legs at such a time.—M. T.]
+        </p>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 3177 ***</div>
+  </body>
+</html>
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:20:44 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:20:44 -0700
commit	48d6706e04c4a1a70ce704216123d2c16dd2ea40 (patch)
tree	47e22019443fc3f85c6512f3f6a0ce93c91e6a42 /3177-h