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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Roughing It, by Mark Twain
+#39 in our series by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
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+Title: Roughing It
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3177]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 31, 2001]
+[Most recently updated: November 29, 2001]
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+Edition: 11
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Roughing It, by Mark Twain
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+
+
+ROUGHING IT
+
+by Mark Twain
+
+1880
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+                           CALVIN H. HIGBIE,
+                             Of California,
+        an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend.
+                         THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
+                             By the Author,
+                     In Memory of the Curious Time
+                              When We Two
+                    WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS.
+
+
+
+
+                              ROUGHING IT
+
+                                   BY
+                              MARK TWAIN.
+                          (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.)
+
+
+
+                               PREFATORY.
+
+This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious 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.
+
+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.
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+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
+
+CHAPTER II.
+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
+
+CHAPTER III.
+"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
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER V.
+New Acquaintances--The Cayote--A Dog's Experiences--A Disgusted Dog--The
+Relatives of the Cayote--Meals Taken Away from Home
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+The Pony Express--Fifty Miles Without Stopping--"Here he Comes"--Alkali
+Water--Riding an Avalanche--Indian Massacre
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+Among the Indians--An Unfair Advantage--Laying on our Arms--A Midnight
+Murder--Wrath of Outlaws--A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen
+
+CHAPTER X.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+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?
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+Mormon Contractors--How Mr. Street Astonished Them--The Case Before
+Brigham Young, and How he Disposed of it--Polygamy Viewed from a New
+Position
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+The Mormon Bible--Proofs of its Divinity--Plagiarism of its Authors--
+Story of Nephi--Wonderful Battle--Kilkenny Cats Outdone
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+Three Sides to all Questions--Everything "A Quarter"--Shriveled Up--
+Emigrants and White Shirts at a Discount--"Forty-Niners"--Above Par--Real
+Happiness
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+Alkali Desert--Romance of Crossing Dispelled--Alkali Dust--Effect on the
+Mules--Universal Thanksgiving
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+The Silver Fever--State of the Market--Silver Bricks--Tales Told--Off for
+the Humboldt Mines
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+Our manner of going--Incidents of the Trip--A Warm but Too Familiar a
+Bedfellow--Mr. Ballou Objects--Sunshine amid Clouds--Safely Arrived
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+Arrive at the Mountains--Building Our Cabin--My First Prospecting Tour--
+My First Gold Mine--Pockets Filled With Treasures--Filtering the News to
+My Companions--The Bubble Pricked--All Not Gold That Glitters
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+Disinterested Friends--How "Feet" Were Sold--We Quit Tunnelling--A Trip
+to Esmeralda--My Companions--An Indian Prophesy--A Flood--Our Quarters
+During It
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+The Guests at "Honey Lake Smith's"--"Bully Old Arkansas"--"Our Landlord"-
+-Determined to Fight--The Landlord's Wife--The Bully Conquered by Her--
+Another Start--Crossing the Carson--A Narrow Escape--Following Our Own
+Track--A New Guide--Lost in the Snow
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+Return of Consciousness--Ridiculous Developments--A Station House--Bitter
+Feelings--Fruits of Repentance--Resurrected Vices
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+About Carson--General Buncombe--Hyde vs. Morgan--How Hyde Lost His Ranch-
+-The Great Landslide Case--The Trial--General Buncombe in Court--A
+Wonderful Decision--A Serious Afterthought
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+A Quartz Mill--Amalgamation--"Screening Tailings"--First Quartz Mill in
+Nevada--Fire Assay--A Smart Assayer--I stake for an advance
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+The Whiteman Cement Mine--Story of its Discovery--A Secret Expedition--A
+Nocturnal Adventure--A Distressing Position--A Failure and a Week's
+Holiday
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+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"
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+The "Wide West" Mine--It is "Interviewed" by Higbie--A Blind Lead--Worth
+a Million--We are Rich At Last--Plans for the Future
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+What to do Next?--Obstacles I Had Met With--"Jack of All Trades"--Mining
+Again--Target Shooting--I Turn City Editor--I Succeed Finely
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+My Friend Boggs--The School Report--Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt--Virginia
+City
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+Flush Times--Plenty of Stock--Editorial Puffing--Stocks Given Me--Salting
+Mines--A Tragedian In a New Role
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada--The Prominent Men of the County--
+The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen--Trial by Jury--Specimen Jurors--A
+Private Grave Yard--The Desperadoes--Who They Killed--Waking up the Weary
+Passenger--Satisfaction Without Fighting
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+Fatal Shooting Affray--Robbery and Desperate Affray--A Specimen City
+Official--A Marked Man--A Street Fight--Punishment of Crime
+
+CHAPTER L.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+Freights to California--Silver Bricks--Under Ground Mines--Timber
+Supports--A Visit to the Mines--The Caved Mines--Total of Shipments in
+1863
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+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?
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+Chinese in Virginia City--Washing Bills--Habit of Imitation--Chinese
+Immigration--A Visit to Chinatown--Messrs. Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &c.
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+Tired of Virginia City--An Old Schoolmate--A Two Years' Loan--Acting as
+an Editor--Almost Receive an Offer--An Accident--Three Drunken Anecdotes
+--Last Look at Mt. Davidson--A Beautiful Incident
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+Off for San Francisco--Western and Eastern Landscapes--The Hottest place
+on Earth--Summer and Winter
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+An Old Friend--An Educated Miner--Pocket Mining--Freaks of Fortune
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+Dick Baker and his Cat--Tom Quartz's Peculiarities--On an Excursion--
+Appearance On His Return--A Prejudiced Cat--Empty Pockets and a Roving
+Life
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+Arrival at the Islands--Honolulu--What I Saw There--Dress and Habits of
+the Inhabitants--The Animal Kingdom--Fruits and Delightful Effects
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+An Excursion--Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out--A Horseback Ride--A
+Vicious Animal--Nature and Art--Interesting Ruins--All Praise to the
+Missionaries
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+A Royal Funeral--Order of Procession--Pomp and Ceremony--A Striking
+Contrast--A Sick Monarch--Human Sacrifices at His Death--Burial Orgies
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+"Once more upon the Waters."--A Noisy Passenger--Several Silent Ones--A
+Moonlight Scene--Fruits and Plantations
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+Kealakekua Bay--Death of Captain Cook--His Monument--Its Construction--On
+Board the Schooner
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+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
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+Native Canoes--Surf Bathing--A Sanctuary--How Built--The Queen's Rock--
+Curiosities--Petrified Lava
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+Visit to the Volcano--The Crater--Pillar of Fire--Magnificent Spectacle--
+A Lake of Fire
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+The North Lake--Fountains of Fire--Streams of Burning Lava--Tidal Waves
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+A Reminiscence--Another Horse Story--My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse-
+-A Picnicing Excursion--Dead Volcano of Holeakala--Comparison with
+Vesuvius--An Inside View
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII.
+A Curious Character--A Series of Stories--Sad Fate of a Liar--Evidence of
+Insanity
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII.
+Return to San Francisco--Ship Amusements--Preparing for Lecturing--
+Valuable Assistance Secured--My First Attempt--The Audience Carried--
+"All's Well that Ends Well."
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX.
+Highwaymen--A Predicament--A Huge Joke--Farewell to California--At Home
+Again--Great Changes.  Moral.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+A.--Brief Sketch of Mormon History
+B.--The Mountain Meadows Massacre
+C.--Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+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.  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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+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.
+
+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 &
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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." 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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam."
+
+"You bet!"
+
+"What did I understand you to say, madam?"
+
+"You BET!"
+
+Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:
+
+"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb.  I did,
+b'gosh.  Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters 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?"
+
+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!
+
+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:
+
+"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 has to be,
+if she wants to be anything, but when people comes along which is my
+equals, I reckon I'm a pretty sociable heifer after all."
+
+We resolved not to "lay by at Cottonwood."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along 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:
+
+"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!"
+
+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."
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can
+remember.  How did it happen?"
+
+"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail--
+that's how it happened," said he.  "And right here is the very 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 will seize the
+irons in time when the coach jolts.  These men were hard worked, and it
+was not possible for them to stay awake all the time.
+
+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.
+
+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 but a
+jackass.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.  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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+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 did 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.
+
+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?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 and 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.
+
+The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful conductor of
+the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but
+the driver 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.
+
+The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-colored
+bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks,
+and Americans shorten it to 'dobies).  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.
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 found it--there
+is no gainsaying that.
+
+Then he poured for us a beverage which he called "Slum gullion," 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.
+
+He had no sugar and no milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredients
+with.
+
+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:
+
+"All!  Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel
+enough there for six."
+
+"But I don't like mackerel."
+
+"Oh--then help yourself to the mustard."
+
+In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but
+there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor
+out of it.
+
+Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.
+
+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:
+
+"Coffee!  Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d---d!"
+
+We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers 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:
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+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 St. Joe--THREE HUNDRED MILES!
+
+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:
+
+     "ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
+
+     "At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and
+     started westward on our long jaunt.  A couple of hours out, dinner
+     was announced--an "event" to those of us who had yet to experience
+     what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping
+     into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves
+     in the dining-car.  It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on
+     Sunday.  And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as
+     many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire
+     the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results
+     achieved.  Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with
+     services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless
+     white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could
+     have had no occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it
+     would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in
+     addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we
+     not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this--
+     bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious
+     mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce
+     piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling
+     air of the prairies?
+
+     "You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and
+     as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we
+     sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the
+     fastest living we had ever experienced.  (We beat that, however, two
+     days afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven
+     minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not
+     a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as
+     it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns--"Praise God
+     from whom," etc.; "Shining Shore," "Coronation," etc.--the voices of
+     the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the
+     evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus
+     eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and
+     the Wild.  Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the
+     sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight
+     o'clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte,
+     three hundred miles from Omaha--fifteen hours and forty minutes
+     out."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil.  But morning came,
+by and by.  It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast 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!
+
+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 cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther
+deserts.  And if it was, 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 always
+hungry.
+
+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 homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.
+When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, 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.
+
+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 then 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!
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Next in real and official rank and importance, after the conductor, came
+my delight, the driver--next in real but not in apparent 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 must 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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+      No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday--a man of prodigious
+      energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the
+      continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind--two
+      thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch!  But
+      this fragment of history is not about Ben Holliday, but about a
+      young New York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small
+      party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to
+      California in Mr. Holliday's overland coaches three years before,
+      and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of
+      Mr. H.) Aged nineteen.  Jack was a good boy--a good-hearted and
+      always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New
+      York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful
+      things, his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected--to
+      such a degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new
+      to him, and all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his
+      virgin ear.
+
+      Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of
+      Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast
+      concerning them.  He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired
+      of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them.  He never
+      passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem, without
+      illuminating it with an oration.  One day, when camped near the
+      ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with something like this:
+
+      "Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds
+      the Jordan valley?  The mountains of Moab, Jack!  Think of it, my
+      boy--the actual mountains of Moab--renowned in Scripture history!
+      We are actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags
+      and peaks--and for all we know" [dropping his voice impressively],
+      "our eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WHERE
+      LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES!  Think of it, Jack!"
+
+      "Moses who?"  (falling inflection).
+
+      "Moses who!  Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you ought to
+      be ashamed of such criminal ignorance.  Why, Moses, the great guide,
+      soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel!  Jack, from this spot
+      where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred
+      miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought
+      the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for
+      forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing
+      rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within
+      sight of this very spot; and where we now stand they entered the
+      Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing!  It was a wonderful,
+      wonderful thing to do, Jack!  Think of it!"
+
+      "Forty years?  Only three hundred miles?  Humph!  Ben Holliday would
+      have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!"
+
+The boy meant no harm.  He did not know that he had said anything 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.
+
+At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of the South
+Platte," alias "Julesburg," alias "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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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.
+
+"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 something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to
+him to get up and hunt for it.
+
+"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 had 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----"
+
+"Your saddle?  Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"
+
+"Take it up in the tree with me?  Why, how you talk.  Of course I didn't.
+No man could do that.  It fell in the tree when it came down."
+
+"Oh--exactly."
+
+"Certainly.  I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to 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 one 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----"
+
+"What, the bull?"
+
+"Of course--who else?"
+
+"But a bull can't climb a tree."
+
+"He can't, can't he?  Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a
+bull try?"
+
+"No!  I never dreamt of such a thing."
+
+"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?"
+
+"Well, all right--go on.  What did you do?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"
+
+"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't."
+
+"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't.  But if there were
+some proofs----"
+
+"Proofs!  Did I bring back my lariat?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did I bring back my horse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you ever see the bull again?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, then, what more do you want?  I never saw anybody as particular as
+you are about a little thing like that."
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+A quick glance from Bascom--a glance that I understood--then:
+
+"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing.  Man, it is
+impossible."
+
+"I knew you would say it.  I'll fetch the cat."
+
+He went in the house.  Bascom said:
+
+"There--what did I tell you?  Now, that is the way to handle Eckert.  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.
+
+"Cat eat a cocoanut--the innocent fool!"
+
+Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
+
+Bascom smiled.  Said he:
+
+"I'll hold the cat--you bring a cocoanut."
+
+Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces.  Bascom smuggled a
+wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss.  She snatched it,
+swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
+
+We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart.  At least I was silent,
+though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal,
+notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough.  When I branched off
+homeward, Bascom said:
+
+"Keep the horse till morning.  And--you need not speak of this--
+foolishness to the boys."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks 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 five dollars a letter.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"HERE HE COMES!"
+
+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!
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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 we 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!
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+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.
+
+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 statement were not generally believed.
+
+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 such a long, wild,
+agonizing shriek!  Then we heard--ten steps from the stage--
+
+"Help!  help!  help!" [It was our driver's voice.]
+
+"Kill him!  Kill him like a dog!"
+
+"I'm being murdered!  Will no man lend me a pistol?"
+
+"Look out! head him off! head him off!"
+
+[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet,
+as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object;
+several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly,
+"Don't, gentlemen, please don't--I'm a dead man!" Then a fainter groan,
+and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left the
+grisly mystery behind us.]
+
+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."
+
+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!"
+
+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 were
+Indians.
+
+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 about.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+"I tell you it's as much as Slade himself want to do!"
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+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:
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 plucky, and Jules got several bad pistol
+wounds in return.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.--["The Vigilantes
+of Montana," by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]--I take this paragraph:
+
+      "While on the road, Slade held absolute sway.  He would ride down to
+      a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and
+      maltreat the occupants most cruelly.  The unfortunates had no means
+      of redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could."
+
+On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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, had taken the
+lives of twenty-six human beings, or all men lied about him!  I suppose I
+was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange lands and
+wonderful people.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again.
+News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana
+(whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him.  I find 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, he was feared a great deal more than the
+almighty."  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:
+
+      After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the
+      Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended.  They had
+      freed the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and
+      they determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority
+      they would establish a People's Court where all offenders should be
+      tried by judge and jury.  This was the nearest approach to social
+      order that the circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal
+      authority was wanting, yet the people were firmly determined to
+      maintain its efficiency, and to enforce its decrees.  It may here be
+      mentioned that the overt act which was the last round on the fatal
+      ladder leading to the scaffold on which Slade perished, was the
+      tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of this court, followed
+      by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by authority of a presented
+      Derringer, and with his own hands.
+
+      J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he
+      openly boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew.  He was
+      never accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery,
+      committed in this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his
+      charge, in any place); but that he had killed several men in other
+      localities was notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was
+      a most powerful argument in determining his fate, when he was
+      finally arrested for the offence above mentioned.  On returning from
+      Milk River he became more and more addicted to drinking, until at
+      last it was a common feat for him and his friends to "take the
+      town."  He and a couple of his dependents might often be seen on one
+      horse, galloping through the streets, shouting and yelling, firing
+      revolvers, etc.  On many occasions he would ride his horse into
+      stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors and use most
+      insulting language to parties present.  Just previous to the day of
+      his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his followers;
+      but such was his influence over them that the man wept bitterly at
+      the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power.  It had
+      become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers
+      and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being
+      fearful of some outrage at his hands.  For his wanton destruction of
+      goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he
+      had money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small
+      satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal
+      enemies.
+
+      From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew
+      would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct.  There was
+      not a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public
+      did not expect to hear of some bloody outrage.  The dread of his
+      very name, and the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who
+      followed him alone prevented a resistance which must certainly have
+      ended in the instant murder or mutilation of the opposing party.
+
+      Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose
+      organization we have described, and had treated it with respect by
+      paying one or two fines and promising to pay the rest when he had
+      money; but in the transaction that occurred at this crisis, he
+      forgot even this caution, and goaded by passion and the hatred of
+      restraint, he sprang into the embrace of death.
+
+      Slade had been drunk and "cutting up" all night.  He and his
+      companions had made the town a perfect hell.  In the morning, J. M.
+      Fox, the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and
+      commenced reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of
+      arraignment.  He became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the
+      writ, he tore it up, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it.
+
+      The clicking of the locks of his companions' revolvers was instantly
+      heard, and a crisis was expected.  The sheriff did not attempt his
+      retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he
+      succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the
+      conqueror and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers.  This was a
+      declaration of war, and was so accepted.  The Vigilance Committee
+      now felt that the question of social order and the preponderance of
+      the law-abiding citizens had then and there to be decided.  They
+      knew the character of Slade, and they were well aware that they must
+      submit to his rule without murmur, or else that he must be dealt
+      with in such fashion as would prevent his being able to wreak his
+      vengeance on the committee, who could never have hoped to live in
+      the Territory secure from outrage or death, and who could never
+      leave it without encountering his friend, whom his victory would
+      have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that would have rendered
+      them reckless of consequences.  The day previous he had ridden into
+      Dorris's store, and on being requested to leave, he drew his
+      revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him.
+      Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of
+      wine, he tried to make the animal drink it.  This was not considered
+      an uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and
+      commenced firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede.
+
+      A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the
+      quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is
+      saying: "Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will
+      be ---- to pay."  Slade started and took a long look, with his dark
+      and piercing eyes, at the gentleman.  "What do you mean?"  said he.
+      "You have no right to ask me what I mean," was the quiet reply, "get
+      your horse at once, and remember what I tell you."  After a short
+      pause he promised to do so, and actually got into the saddle; but,
+      being still intoxicated, he began calling aloud to one after another
+      of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten the warning he
+      had received and became again uproarious, shouting the name of a
+      well-known courtezan in company with those of two men whom he
+      considered heads of the committee, as a sort of challenge; perhaps,
+      however, as a simple act of bravado.  It seems probable that the
+      intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten
+      entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way of showing
+      his remembrance of it.  He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of
+      the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his
+      head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own
+      safety.  As the judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no
+      resistance to his captor, no further outrage followed on this score.
+      Previous to this, on account of the critical state of affairs, the
+      committee had met, and at last resolved to arrest him.  His
+      execution had not been agreed upon, and, at that time, would have
+      been negatived, most assuredly.  A messenger rode down to Nevada to
+      inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was desirable to
+      show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject, all along
+      the gulch.
+
+      The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and
+      forming in solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the
+      teeth, they marched up to Virginia.  The leader of the body well
+      knew the temper of his men on the subject.  He spurred on ahead of
+      them, and hastily calling a meeting of the executive, he told them
+      plainly that the miners meant "business," and that, if they came up,
+      they would not stand in the street to be shot down by Slade's
+      friends; but that they would take him and hang him.  The meeting was
+      small, as the Virginia men were loath to act at all.  This momentous
+      announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town was made to a cluster
+      of men, who were deliberation behind a wagon, at the rear of a store
+      on Main street.
+
+      The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities.  All
+      the duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task
+      before them; but they had to decide, and that quickly.  It was
+      finally agreed that if the whole body of the miners were of the
+      opinion that he should be hanged, that the committee left it in
+      their hands to deal with him.  Off, at hot speed, rode the leader of
+      the Nevada men to join his command.
+
+      Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him
+      instantly.  He went into P. S. Pfouts' store, where Davis was, and
+      apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back.
+
+      The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched
+      up at quick time.  Halting in front of the store, the executive
+      officer of the committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was
+      at once informed of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he
+      had any business to settle.  Several parties spoke to him on the
+      subject; but to all such inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being
+      entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful
+      position.  He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his
+      dear wife.  The unfortunate lady referred to, between whom and Slade
+      there existed a warm affection, was at this time living at their
+      ranch on the Madison.  She was possessed of considerable personal
+      attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful carriage, pleasing
+      manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman.
+
+      A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her
+      husband's arrest.  In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all
+      the energy that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament
+      and a strong physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve
+      miles of rough and rocky ground that intervened between her and the
+      object of her passionate devotion.
+
+      Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations
+      for the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch.  Beneath
+      the site of Pfouts and Russell's stone building there was a corral,
+      the gate-posts of which were strong and high.  Across the top was
+      laid a beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box
+      served for the platform.  To this place Slade was marched,
+      surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous
+      force that has ever appeared in Montana Territory.
+
+      The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
+      lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the
+      fatal beam.  He repeatedly exclaimed, "My God! my God! must I die?
+      Oh, my dear wife!"
+
+      On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of
+      Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee,
+      but who were personally attached to the condemned.  On hearing of
+      his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his
+      handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child.  Slade still
+      begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny
+      his request; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow
+      the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties
+      would have certainly incited, forbade the granting of his request.
+      Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one
+      of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people; but in
+      such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate
+      vicinity.  One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of
+      entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could
+      not be hanged until he himself was killed.  A hundred guns were
+      instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being
+      brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a
+      promise of future peaceable demeanor.
+
+      Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of
+      the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made.
+      All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.
+
+      Everything being ready, the command was given, "Men, do your duty,"
+      and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died
+      almost instantaneously.
+
+      The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a
+      darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and
+      bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to
+      find that all was over, and that she was a widow.  Her grief and
+      heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her
+      attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed
+      before she could regain the command of her excited feelings.
+
+There is something about the desperado-nature that is 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
+moral 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+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 eight days and three hours--seven hundred and ninety-
+eight miles!  They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless and
+ragged, and they did look so tired!
+
+After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid,
+sparkling stream--an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that 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 four minutes.
+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.
+
+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--we were in the heart of the Rocky
+Mountains, now.  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 dry
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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 if 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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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 closet.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired
+men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for
+many tedious hours--we started down them, now.  And we went spinning away
+at a round rate too.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Don't come here!"
+
+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?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a
+Mormon "Destroying Angel."
+
+"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 any
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+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.
+
+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 him" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that
+something he had eaten had not agreed with him.
+
+But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking.  It was
+the exclusively Mormon refresher, "valley tan."
+
+Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky,
+or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only 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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Ah--your child, I presume?  Boy, or girl?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+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:
+
+"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 but business--and so you can imagine
+how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country
+where written contracts were worthless!--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 law 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:
+
+"'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.'
+
+"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.'
+
+"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:
+
+"'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own
+free will and accord?'
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you!  Go!'
+
+"And they did go, too!  They are strung across the deserts now, working
+like bees.  And I never hear a word out of them.
+
+"There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here,
+shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican
+form of government--but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute
+monarchy and Brigham Young is king!"
+
+Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story.  I knew him well
+during several years afterward in San Francisco.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+      [For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow
+      massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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 she, 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.
+
+"That is a specimen," said Mr. Young.  "You see how it is.  You see what
+a life I lead.  A man can't 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, apparently that was its whole 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 numbers, 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 assail!) there
+was never anything on this earth like it!  I knew who gave the whistle to
+the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me.  They
+believed 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!  You 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.
+
+"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.  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 your 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.  But it was a failure, sir.  I could not 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 don't 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."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The title-page reads as follows:
+
+      THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON
+      PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI.
+
+      Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi,
+      and also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a
+      remnant of the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written
+      by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of
+      revelation.  Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that
+      they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of
+      God unto the interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni,
+      and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of
+      Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God.  An
+      abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which is a record of
+      the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord
+      confounded the language of the people when they were building a
+      tower to get to Heaven.
+
+"Hid up" is good.  And so is "wherefore"--though why "wherefore"?  Any
+other word would have answered as well--though--in truth it would not
+have sounded so Scriptural.
+
+Next comes:
+
+      THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES.
+      Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto
+      whom this work shall come, that we, through the grace of God the
+      Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which
+      contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and
+      also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of
+      Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we
+      also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of
+      God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a
+      surety that the work is true.  And we also testify that we have seen
+      the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown
+      unto us by the power of God, and not of man.  And we declare with
+      words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and
+      he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the
+      plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the
+      grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld
+      and bear record that these things are true; and it is marvellous in
+      our eyes; nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that we
+      should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the
+      commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things.  And we know
+      that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the
+      blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of
+      Christ, and shall dwell with Him eternally in the heavens.  And the
+      honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which
+      is one God.  Amen.
+                          OLIVER COWDERY,
+                          DAVID WHITMER,
+                          MARTIN HARRIS.
+
+Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can 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.
+
+Next is this:
+
+      AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES.
+      Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto
+      whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of
+      this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken,
+      which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the
+      said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also
+      saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of
+      ancient work, and of curious workmanship.  And this we bear record
+      with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for
+      we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith
+      has got the plates of which we have spoken.  And we give our names
+      unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen;
+      and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
+                          CHRISTIAN WHITMER,
+                          JACOB WHITMER,
+                          PETER WHITMER, JR.,
+                          JOHN WHITMER,
+                          HIRAM PAGE,
+                          JOSEPH SMITH, SR.,
+                          HYRUM SMITH,
+                          SAMUEL H.  SMITH.
+
+And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be 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.
+
+The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen "books"--being the books of Jacob,
+Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two
+"books" of Mormon, and three of Nephi.
+
+In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, 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 in a single day, 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."
+
+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:
+
+      And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I
+      could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord,
+      did cease to work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should
+      steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a
+      great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters
+      for the space of three days; and they began to be frightened
+      exceedingly, lest they should be drowned in the sea; nevertheless
+      they did not loose me.  And on the fourth day, which we had been
+      driven back, the tempest began to be exceeding sore.  And it came to
+      pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea.
+
+Then they untied him.
+
+      And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the
+      compass, and it did work whither I desired it.  And it came to pass
+      that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did
+      cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm.
+
+Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had the
+advantage of Noah.
+
+Their voyage was toward a "promised land"--the only name they give it.
+They reached it in safety.
+
+Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added 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:
+
+      For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in
+      iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to
+      excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things
+      which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.  Behold,
+      David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing
+      was abominable before me, saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the
+      Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by
+      the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous
+      branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.  Wherefore, I the Lord
+      God, will no suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
+
+However, the project failed--or at least the modern Mormon end of it--for
+Brigham "suffers" it.  This verse is from the same chapter:
+
+      Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their
+      filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are
+      more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment
+      of the Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should
+      have, save it were one wife; and concubines they should have none.
+
+The following verse (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to
+contain information not familiar to everybody:
+
+      And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven,
+      the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his
+      children, and did return to his own home.
+
+      And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was
+      gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised
+      from the dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name
+      was Jonas, and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen,
+      and Kumenenhi, and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah,
+      and Isaiah; now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had
+      chosen.
+
+In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and
+picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied on 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:
+
+      And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise.
+      And they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye
+      because of your faith.  And now behold, My joy is full.  And when He
+      had said these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it,
+      and He took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and
+      prayed unto the Father for them.  And when He had done this He wept
+      again, and He spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold
+      your little ones.  And as they looked to behold, they cast their
+      eyes toward heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw
+      angels descending out of heaven as it were, in the midst of fire;
+      and they came down and encircled those little ones about, and they
+      were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto
+      them, and the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they
+      know that their record is true, for they all of them did see and
+      hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two
+      thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women,
+      and children.
+
+And what else would they be likely to consist of?
+
+The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of if "history," much 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.  These 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 four years 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:
+
+      7.  And it came to pass that they did gather together all the
+      people, upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save
+      it was Ether.  And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the
+      doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for
+      Coriantumr, were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and
+      the people who were for Shiz, were gathered together to the army of
+      Shiz; wherefore they were for the space of four years gathering
+      together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face
+      of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it
+      was possible that they could receive.  And it came to pass that when
+      they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he
+      would, with their wives and their children; both men, women, and
+      children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and
+      breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner
+      of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and
+      they fought all that day, and conquered not.  And it came to pass
+      that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps;
+      and after they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling
+      and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so
+      great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did
+      rend the air exceedingly.  And it came to pass that on the morrow
+      they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day;
+      nevertheless they conquered not, and when the night came again, they
+      did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their
+      mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people.
+
+      8.  And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto
+      Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he
+      would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people.  But
+      behold, the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and
+      Satan had full power over the hearts of the people, for they were
+      given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of
+      their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again
+      to battle.  And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and
+      when the night came they slept upon their swords; and on the morrow
+      they fought even until the night came; and when the night came they
+      were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and
+      they slept again upon their swords; and on the morrow they fought
+      again; and when the night came they had all fallen by the sword save
+      it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty and
+      nine of the people of Shiz.  And it came to pass that they slept
+      upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again,
+      and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their
+      shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and
+      two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of
+      Coriantumr.
+
+      9.  And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for
+      death on the morrow.  And they were large and mighty men, as to the
+      strength of men.  And it came to pass that they fought for the space
+      of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood.  And it
+      came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient
+      strength, that they could walk, they were about to flee for their
+      lives, but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his
+      wrath that he would slay Coriantumr, or he would perish by the
+      sword: wherefore he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did
+      overtake them; and they fought again with the sword.  And it came to
+      pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were
+      Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood.
+      And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword,
+      that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.  And it came
+      to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz
+      raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for
+      breath, he died.  And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the
+      earth, and became as if he had no life.  And the Lord spake unto
+      Ether, and said unto him, go forth.  And he went forth, and beheld
+      that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished
+      his record; and the hundredth part I have not written.
+
+It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary former
+chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming
+interesting.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+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 were 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 say 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!
+
+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 was good for an "Injun."
+
+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.
+
+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 he 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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+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 "alkali" 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 in the midst 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.
+
+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 had 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
+daylight.  This was fine--novel--romantic--dramatically adventurous--
+this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for!  We would write
+home all about it.
+
+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.
+
+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 any 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.
+
+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 kept 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!
+
+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 thirsty they were,
+would be to "gild refined gold or paint the lily."
+
+Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit--but 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 would 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+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.
+
+The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same
+gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever animal--Adam the
+Darwinians trace them to.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+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.
+
+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).
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+This reminds me of a circumstance.  Just after we left Julesburg, on the
+Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:
+
+"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!"
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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:
+
+"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----"
+
+I said, impressively:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.  [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!]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+envelope 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+It was something to see that much.  I could have seen more, if I could
+have kept the dust out of my eyes.
+
+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.
+
+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 originates.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.e., red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks.
+
+Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas by
+pasting pictures from Harper's Weekly 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.]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+"What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?"
+
+"Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!"
+
+He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and 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.
+
+"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:
+
+"To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!--and then bridge it and go on!"
+
+This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased 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!
+
+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:
+
+"Turn out, boys--the tarantulas is loose!"
+
+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:
+
+"Su--su--something's crawling up the back of my neck!"
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.  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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+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 canons 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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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 eighty 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 merely
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 canons 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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+I resolved to have a horse to ride.  I had never seen such wild, free,
+magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-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 riata swinging above the head, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+'tapidaros', 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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+"Has he any other--er--advantages?"  I inquired, suppressing what
+eagerness I could.
+
+He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one
+side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:
+
+"He can out-buck anything in America!"
+
+"Going, going, going--at twent--ty--four dollars and a half, gen--"
+
+"Twenty-seven!" I shouted, in a frenzy.
+
+"And sold!" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plug
+to me.
+
+I could scarcely contain my exultation.  I paid the money, and put the
+animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.
+
+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:
+
+"Oh, don't he buck, though!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+One elderly-looking comforter said:
+
+"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 me.
+I'm Curry.  Old Curry.  Old Abe Curry.  And moreover, he is a simon-pure,
+out-and-out, genuine d--d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that,
+too.  Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there's chances
+to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that
+bloody old foreign relic."
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 he 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.
+
+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 he 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 give 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 gold, 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: peopled 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--Old Curry--Old Abe 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.:
+
+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.
+
+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 gold.  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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+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 four
+thousand dollars a foot!  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.
+
+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.
+
+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 Daily Territorial Enterprise:
+
+      But what about our mines?  I shall be candid with you.  I shall
+      express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination.
+      Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's footstool.
+      Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores.  Humboldt is
+      the true Golconda.
+
+      The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four
+      thousand dollars to the ton.  A week or two ago an assay of just
+      such surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to
+      the ton.  Our mountains are full of rambling prospectors.  Each day
+      and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of
+      the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county.  The metal
+      is not silver alone.  There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore.
+      A late discovery plainly evinces cinnabar.  The coarser metals are
+      in gross abundance.  Lately evidences of bituminous coal have been
+      detected.  My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous
+      formation.  I told Col.  Whitman, in times past, that the
+      neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous
+      manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no
+      confidence in his lauded coal mines.  I repeated the same doctrine
+      to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt.  I talked with my
+      friend Captain Burch on the subject.  My pyrhanism vanished upon his
+      statement that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified
+      trees of the length of two hundred feet.  Then is the fact
+      established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this
+      remote section.  I am firm in the coal faith.
+
+      Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county.  They are
+      immense--incalculable.
+
+Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to 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:
+
+      I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this
+      region--it is incredible.  The intestines of our mountains are
+      gorged with precious ore to plethora.  I have said that nature
+      has so shaped our mountains as to furnish most excellent
+      facilities for the working of our mines.  I have also told you
+      that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill
+      sites in the world.  But what is the mining history of Humboldt?
+      The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco
+      capitalists.  It would seem that the ore is combined with metals
+      that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain
+      machinery.  The proprietors have combined the capital and labor
+      hinted at in my exordium.  They are toiling and probing.  Their
+      tunnel has reached the length of one hundred feet.  From primal
+      assays alone, coupled with the development of the mine and public
+      confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared
+      itself to eight hundred dollars market value.  I do not know that
+      one ton of the ore has been converted into current metal.  I do
+      know that there are many lodes in this section that surpass the
+      Sheba in primal assay value.  Listen a moment to the calculations
+      of the Sheba operators.  They purpose transporting the ore
+      concentrated to Europe.  The conveyance from Star City (its
+      locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton;
+      from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from
+      thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton.  Their
+      idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their
+      cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the
+      expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net
+      them twelve hundred dollars.  The estimate may be extravagant.
+      Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending
+      any previous developments of our racy Territory.
+
+      A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield
+      five hundred dollars to the ton.  Such fecundity throws the Gould
+      & Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the
+      darkest shadow.  I have given you the estimate of the value of a
+      single developed mine.  Its richness is indexed by its market
+      valuation.  The people of Humboldt county are feet crazy.  As I
+      write, our towns are near deserted.  They look as languid as a
+      consumptive girl.  What has become of our sinewy and athletic
+      fellow-citizens?  They are coursing through ravines and over
+      mountain tops.  Their tracks are visible in every direction.
+      Occasionally a horseman will dash among us.  His steed betrays
+      hard usage.  He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily
+      exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay
+      office and from thence to the District Recorder's.  In the
+      morning, having renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again
+      on his wild and unbeaten route.  Why, the fellow numbers already
+      his feet by the thousands.  He is the horse-leech.  He has the
+      craving stomach of the shark or anaconda.  He would conquer
+      metallic worlds.
+
+This was enough.  The instant we had finished reading the above article,
+four of us decided to go to Humboldt.  We commenced getting ready 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+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 drive 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 horses 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 young 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 for their own sakes,
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 him."
+
+But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then,
+with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we
+entered into our rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Where have you all been?"
+
+"Prospecting."
+
+"What did you find?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing?  What do you think of the country?"
+
+"Can't tell, yet," said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner, and had
+likewise had considerable experience among the silver mines.
+
+"Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion?"
+
+"Yes, a sort of a one.  It's fair enough here, may be, but overrated.
+Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though.
+
+"That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it; and besides, the 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."
+
+"So you think the prospect is pretty poor?"
+
+"No name for it!"
+
+"Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?"
+
+"Oh, not yet--of course not.  We'll try it a riffle, first."
+
+"Suppose, now--this is merely a supposition, you know--suppose you could
+find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a ton--
+would that satisfy you?"
+
+"Try us once!" from the whole party.
+
+"Or suppose--merely a supposition, of course--suppose you were to find a
+ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton--would that satisfy
+you?"
+
+"Here--what do you mean?  What are you coming at?  Is there some mystery
+behind all this?"
+
+"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!"
+
+"I should say he was as crazy as a loon!" said old Ballou, but wild with
+excitement, nevertheless.
+
+"Gentlemen," said I, "I don't say anything--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 that, for instance, and tell me what you think of it!" and I
+tossed my treasure before them.
+
+There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together over
+it under the candle-light.  Then old Ballou said:
+
+"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!"
+
+So vanished my dream.  So melted my wealth away.  So toppled my airy
+castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn.
+
+Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not gold."
+
+Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my
+treasures of knowledge, that nothing 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+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.
+Contained 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:
+
+"We've got it!"
+
+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.
+
+      "NOTICE."
+
+      "We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each
+      (and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode,
+      extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips,
+      spurs, and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty
+      feet of ground on either side for working the same."
+
+We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made.
+But when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt 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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+We dropped the "Monarch" for the time being.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand
+"feet" in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which 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:
+
+"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 me--look at the assay!"
+
+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.
+
+
+I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out the richest 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!
+
+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!
+
+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 work into their
+calculations--or outlay of money either; except the work and expenditures
+of other people.
+
+We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again.  Why?  Because we judged
+that we had learned the real secret of success in silver mining--which
+was, not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our brows and the
+labor of our hands, but to sell the ledges to the dull slaves of toil and
+let them do the mining!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 waist-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.
+
+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.
+
+There were two men----however, this chapter is long enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.
+One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only 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:
+
+"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--"
+
+Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped.  Arkansas
+rose unsteadily and confronted him.  Said he:
+
+"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania?  Answer me that.  Wha--what
+do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"
+
+"I was only goin' to say--"
+
+"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 want to know.  I want to
+know wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're
+makin' yourself so d---d free.  Answer me that!"
+
+"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--"
+
+"Who's a henderin' you?  Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't 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 won't stand it.  If fight's what
+you want, out with it!  I'm your man!  Out with it!"
+
+Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:
+
+"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas.  You don't give a man 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."
+
+"Well then why d'n't you say it?  What did you come swellin' around that
+way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"
+
+"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--"
+
+"I'm a liar am I!  Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--"
+
+"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish 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 all 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--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas.  Gimme your
+hand agin.  Look at him, boys--just take a look at him.  Thar stands the
+whitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me,
+that's all.  Gimme that old flipper agin!"
+
+They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part 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:
+
+"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?"
+
+"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old
+when he died."
+
+"Was that all that you said?"
+
+"Yes, that was all."
+
+"Didn't say nothing but that?"
+
+"No--nothing."
+
+Then an uncomfortable silence.
+
+Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on 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:
+
+"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?"
+
+"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing.  My
+father and my mother--"
+
+"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man!  Don't do it.  If nothing'll do you but a
+disturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't 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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"So that's 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!"
+
+"Please be reasonable, Arkansas.  Now you know that I ain't the man to--"
+
+"Are you a threatenin' me?  Are you?  By George, the man don't live 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'll learn you to
+bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to
+befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"
+
+"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot!  If there's got to be bloodshed--"
+
+"Do you hear that, gentlemen?  Do you hear him talk about bloodshed?  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!"
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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 number 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:
+
+"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!"
+
+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!"
+
+We certainly had been following our own tracks.  Ollendorff and his
+"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
+
+After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
+with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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 any 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+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 he 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.
+
+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 could 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 other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters
+making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+now 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+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."
+
+Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness:
+
+"Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?"
+
+It was Ballou--at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture,
+with Ballou's voice.
+
+I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were
+the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still
+saddled and bridled horses!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+Absurdity could go no farther.  We shook hands and agreed to say no more
+about "reform" and "examples to the rising generation."
+
+The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert.
+If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 vs. 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 his 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.
+
+"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 stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him
+a-coming!  Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic--by George,
+when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like 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 didn't stay and hold possession!  Laws
+bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in
+three jumps exactly.
+
+"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 now, and I'm a-going to law.  You hear me!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Order in the Court!"
+
+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:
+
+"Way for the United States Attorney!"
+
+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.]
+
+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:
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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--
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+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.
+
+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 shaft 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.
+
+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:
+
+"So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred
+and fifty feet to strike this ledge?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and
+arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?"
+
+"Why no--how is that?"
+
+"Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side;
+and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your
+tunnel on trestle-work!"
+
+The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.
+
+We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, 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 working 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.
+
+At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be
+borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the
+popular assayer left town "between two days."
+
+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?
+
+I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about
+all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon,
+a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds 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
+an 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 riata 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 riata 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.
+
+A miner came out and said:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+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:
+
+"Sh!  Listen."
+
+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:
+
+"I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything.  It seemed to be
+about there--"
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+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, sail-less 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.]
+
+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
+under 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 sun 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 one dollar a pound; 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:
+
+"It is not Wide West rock!"
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"I knew it!  We are rich!  IT'S A BLIND LEAD!"
+
+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:
+
+"Say it again!"
+
+"It's blind lead!"
+
+"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."
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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 is 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?"
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"When are you going home--to the States?"
+
+"To-morrow!"--with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position.
+"Well--no--but next month, at furthest."
+
+"We'll go in the same steamer."
+
+"Agreed."
+
+A pause.
+
+"Steamer of the 10th?"
+
+"Yes.  No, the 1st."
+
+"All right."
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Where are you going to live?"  said Higbie.
+
+"San Francisco."
+
+"That's me!"
+
+Pause.
+
+"Too high--too much climbing"--from Higbie.
+
+"What is?"
+
+"I was thinking of Russian Hill--building a house up there."
+
+"Too much climbing?  Shan't you keep a carriage?"
+
+"Of course.  I forgot that."
+
+Pause.
+
+"Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?"
+
+"I was thinking about that.  Three-story and an attic."
+
+"But what kind?"
+
+"Well, I don't hardly know.  Brick, I suppose."
+
+"Brick--bosh."
+
+"Why?  What is your idea?"
+
+"Brown stone front--French plate glass--billiard-room off 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!"
+
+"By George!"
+
+A long pause.
+
+"Cal., when are you going to Europe?"
+
+"Well--I hadn't thought of that.  When are you?"
+
+"In the Spring."
+
+"Going to be gone all summer?"
+
+"All summer!  I shall remain there three years."
+
+"No--but are you in earnest?"
+
+"Indeed I am."
+
+"I will go along too."
+
+"Why of course you will."
+
+"What part of Europe shall you go to?"
+
+"All parts.  France, England, Germany--Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria,
+Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt--all over--everywhere."
+
+"I'm agreed."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Won't it be a swell trip!"
+
+"We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one,
+anyway."
+
+Another long pause.
+
+"Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to
+stop our--"
+
+"Hang the butcher!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+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.]
+
+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.
+
+Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile
+jaunt without baggage.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Higbie, what--what is it?"
+
+"We're ruined--we didn't do the work--THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED!"
+
+It was enough.  I sat down sick, grieved--broken-hearted, indeed.  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 didn't I do this, and why didn't
+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.
+
+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:
+
+      "Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire.  W.
+      has passed through and given me notice.  I am to join him at
+      Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night.  He says
+      he will find it this time, sure.  CAL."
+
+"W."  meant Whiteman, of course.  That thrice accursed "cement!"
+
+That was the way of it.  An old miner, like Higbie, could no 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.
+
+[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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+What to do next?
+
+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.  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 Union, 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."
+
+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--
+
+What to do next?
+
+I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more.
+We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 be proud of,
+since it is so common--but then it was all I had to be 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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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 is so-and-so.'  Otherwise, people
+will not put confidence in your news.  Unassailable certainly is the
+thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation."
+
+It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find 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:
+
+"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.
+
+"It isn't sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business
+like."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+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.
+
+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 Union.  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 Enterprise.
+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.
+
+"After the school report."
+
+"I'll go along with you."
+
+"No, sir.  I'll excuse you."
+
+"Just as you say."
+
+A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and
+Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.  He gazed fondly after the boy
+and saw him start up the Enterprise stairs.  I said:
+
+"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,
+I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let me
+have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin to
+suppose they will.  Good night."
+
+"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."
+
+"Now you talk like a rational being.  Come along."
+
+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
+Union 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.
+
+Of course there was no school report in the Union, 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.
+
+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:
+
+"Are you all set?"
+
+"All set--hoist away."
+
+"Are you comfortable?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Could you wait a little?"
+
+"Oh certainly--no particular hurry."
+
+"Well--good by."
+
+"Why?  Where are you going?"
+
+"After the school report!"
+
+And he did.  I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen 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 Union had.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+My salary was increased to forty dollars a week.  But I seldom drew it.
+I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-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 &
+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.
+
+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, any 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.
+
+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.
+
+There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable.
+We received presents of "feet" every day.  If we needed a hundred 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.
+
+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
+custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends
+without the asking.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+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 Territorial Enterprise, 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."
+
+The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at
+a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars.  Gould &
+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 & 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.
+
+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 now--
+they swore they would not wait.  The chairman pleaded and argued, but,
+deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and 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.
+
+To use its own phraseology, it came there "flush" and went away "busted."
+
+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:
+
+"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund."
+
+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:
+
+"Nowhere--sell it again."
+
+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.
+
+The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:
+
+"Fetch along your flour sack!"
+
+Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass 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:
+
+"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars,
+coin!"
+
+A tempest of applause followed.  A telegram carried the news to Virginia,
+and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Here, that won't do!  He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did."
+
+The purser said, "Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board.
+We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday."
+
+"Well, sir," said Smith, "that's just where I've got you, for I 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."
+
+The Gould & 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Am tired waiting.  Shall sell the team and go home."
+
+It was the signal agreed upon.  The word "waiting" left out, would have
+signified that the suit had gone the other way.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche.
+But Col. Jack said:
+
+"No, sir!  None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me.  I'm here to have 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."
+
+So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in.  Said Col. Jack:
+
+"Ain't it gay, though?  Oh, no, I reckon not!  Cushions, and windows, and
+pictures, till you can't rest.  What would the boys say if they could see
+us cutting a swell like this in New York?  By George, I wish they could
+see us."
+
+Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver:
+
+"Say, Johnny, this suits me!--suits yours truly, you bet, you!  I want
+this shebang all day.  I'm on it, old man!  Let 'em out!  Make 'em go!
+We'll make it all right with you, sonny!"
+
+The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for his
+fare--it was before the gongs came into common use.  Col. Jack took the
+hand, and shook it cordially.  He said:
+
+"You twig me, old pard!  All right between gents.  Smell of that, and see
+how you like it!"
+
+And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand.  After a
+moment the driver said he could not make change.
+
+"Bother the change!  Ride it out.  Put it in your pocket."
+
+Then to Col.  Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh:
+
+"Ain't it style, though?  Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day for
+a week."
+
+The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in.  Col. Jack stared a moment,
+then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow:
+
+"Don't say a word," he whispered.  "Let her ride, if she wants to.
+Gracious, there's room enough."
+
+The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col.
+Jack.
+
+"What's this for?"  said he.
+
+"Give it to the driver, please."
+
+"Take back your money, madam.  We can't allow it.  You're welcome to ride
+here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't
+let you pay a cent."
+
+The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered.  An old lady with a basket
+climbed in, and proffered her fare.
+
+"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."
+
+Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of
+children, entered.
+
+"Come right along, friends," said Col.  Jack; "don't mind us.  This is a
+free blow-out."  Then he whispered to Col.  Jim,
+
+"New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon--it ain't no name for
+it!"
+
+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.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty of room," said Col.  Jack.  "Walk right in, and make
+yourselves at home.  A blow-out ain't worth anything as a blow-out,
+unless a body has company."  Then in a whisper to Col.  Jim: "But ain't
+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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+A Chinaman crowded his way in.
+
+"I weaken!" said Col. Jack.  "Hold on, driver!  Keep your seats, ladies,
+and gents.  Just make yourselves free--everything's paid for.  Driver,
+rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go--friends 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!"
+
+The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said:
+
+"Jimmy, it's the sociablest place 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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
+good-heartedness 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.
+
+He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voice
+and said in lugubrious tones:
+
+"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"
+
+"Am I the--pardon me, I believe I do not understand?"
+
+With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:
+
+"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe 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."
+
+"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door."
+
+"The which?"
+
+"The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary
+adjoins these premises."
+
+Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:
+
+"You ruther hold over me, pard.  I reckon I can't call that hand.  Ante
+and pass the buck."
+
+"How? I beg pardon.  What did I understand you to say?"
+
+"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me.  Or maybe we've both got 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."
+
+"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?"
+
+Another pause, and more reflection.  Then, said Scotty:
+
+"I'll have to pass, I judge."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You've raised me out, pard."
+
+"I still fail to catch your meaning."
+
+"Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me--that's the idea.  I
+can't neither-trump nor follow suit."
+
+The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed.  Scotty leaned his head
+on his hand and gave himself up to thought.
+
+Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident.
+
+"I've got it now, so's you can savvy," he said.  "What we want is a
+gospel-sharp.  See?"
+
+"A what?"
+
+"Gospel-sharp.  Parson."
+
+"Oh!  Why did you not say so before?  I am a clergyman--a parson."
+
+"Now you talk!  You see my blind and straddle it like a man.  Put 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.
+
+"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--"
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Up the flume--throwed up the sponge, you understand."
+
+"Thrown up the sponge?"
+
+"Yes--kicked the bucket--"
+
+"Ah--has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no
+traveler returns."
+
+"Return!  I reckon not.  Why pard, he's dead!"
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+"Oh, you do?  Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some
+more.  Yes, you see he's dead again--"
+
+"Again?  Why, has he ever been dead before?"
+
+"Dead before?  No!  Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat?
+But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd 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 me.  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."
+
+"Scooped him?"
+
+"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!"
+
+"On it?  On what?"
+
+"On the shoot.  On the shoulder.  On the fight, you understand.
+He didn't give a continental for any body.  Beg your pardon, friend, 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--"
+
+"Preach the funeral discourse?  Assist at the obsequies?"
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+More reflection.
+
+"I reckon you've stumped me again, pard.  Could you say it over once
+more, and say it slow?"
+
+"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?"
+
+"All down but nine--set 'em up on the other alley, pard."
+
+"What did I understand you to say?"
+
+"Why, you're most too many for me, you know.  When you get in with 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."
+
+"How?  Begin again?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Very well.  Was he a good man, and--"
+
+"There--I see that; don't put up another chip till I look at my hand.
+A good man, says you?  Pard, it ain't no name for it.  He was the 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."
+
+"Never shook his mother?"
+
+"That's it--any of the boys will tell you so."
+
+"Well, but why should he shake her?"
+
+"That's what I say--but some people does."
+
+"Not people of any repute?"
+
+"Well, some that averages pretty so-so."
+
+"In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own
+mother, ought to--"
+
+"Cheese it, pard; you've banked your ball clean outside the string.
+What I was a drivin' at, was, that he never throwed off on his mother--
+don't you see?  No indeedy.  He give her a house to live in, and 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.
+
+"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.]
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"AMEN.  No Irish need apply."
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Have you heard of this homicide?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We do not want you."
+
+A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant 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.
+
+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.
+
+The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty.  What else could one
+expect?
+
+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 was 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 equal chance 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."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"How're ye, Billy, old fel?  Glad to see you.  What'll you take--the old
+thing?"
+
+The "old thing" meant his customary drink, of course.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a
+photograph that can need no embellishment:
+
+      FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY.--An affray occurred, last evening, in a
+      billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams
+      and Wm. Brown, which resulted in the immediate death of the latter.
+      There had been some difficulty between the parties for several
+      months.
+
+      An inquest was immediately held, and the following testimony
+      adduced:
+
+      Officer GEO. BIRDSALL, sworn, says:--I was told Wm. Brown was drunk
+      and was looking for Jack Williams; so soon as I heard that I started
+      for the parties to prevent a collision; went into the billiard
+      saloon; saw Billy Brown running around, saying if anybody had
+      anything against him to show cause; he was talking in a boisterous
+      manner, and officer Perry took him to the other end of the room to
+      talk to him; Brown came back to me; remarked to me that he thought
+      he was as good as anybody, and knew how to take care of himself; he
+      passed by me and went to the bar; don't know whether he drank or
+      not; Williams was at the end of the billiard-table, next to the
+      stairway; Brown, after going to the bar, came back and said he was
+      as good as any man in the world; he had then walked out to the end
+      of the first billiard-table from the bar; I moved closer to them,
+      supposing there would be a fight; as Brown drew his pistol I caught
+      hold of it; he had fired one shot at Williams; don't know the effect
+      of it; caught hold of him with one hand, and took hold of the pistol
+      and turned it up; think he fired once after I caught hold of the
+      pistol; I wrenched the pistol from him; walked to the end of the
+      billiard-table and told a party that I had Brown's pistol, and to
+      stop shooting; I think four shots were fired in all; after walking
+      out, Mr. Foster remarked that Brown was shot dead.
+
+Oh, there was no excitement about it--he merely "remarked" the small
+circumstance!
+
+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:
+
+      ROBBERY AND DESPERATE AFFRAY.--On Tuesday night, a German named
+      Charles Hurtzal, engineer in a mill at Silver City, came to this
+      place, and visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B street.  The music,
+      dancing and Teutonic maidens awakened memories of Faderland until
+      our German friend was carried away with rapture.  He evidently had
+      money, and was spending if freely.  Late in the evening Jack
+      Williams and Andy Blessington invited him down stairs to take a cup
+      of coffee.  Williams proposed a game of cards and went up stairs to
+      procure a deck, but not finding any returned.  On the stairway he
+      met the German, and drawing his pistol knocked him down and rifled
+      his pockets of some seventy dollars.  Hurtzal dared give no alarm,
+      as he was told, with a pistol at his head, if he made any noise or
+      exposed them, they would blow his brains out.  So effectually was he
+      frightened that he made no complaint, until his friends forced him.
+      Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had disappeared.
+
+This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 nothing--especially the accommodating
+complaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace.  The italics in the
+following narrative are mine:
+
+      MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING.--The devil seems to have again broken
+      loose in our town.  Pistols and guns explode and knives gleam in our
+      streets as in early times.  When there has been a long season of
+      quiet, people are slow to wet their hands in blood; but once blood
+      is spilled, cutting and shooting come easy.  Night before last Jack
+      Williams was assassinated, and yesterday forenoon we had more bloody
+      work, growing out of the killing of Williams, and on the same street
+      in which he met his death.  It appears that Tom Reeder, a friend of
+      Williams, and George Gumbert were talking, at the meat market of the
+      latter, about the killing of Williams the previous night, when
+      Reeder said it was a most cowardly act to shoot a man in such a way,
+      giving him "no show."  Gumbert said that Williams had "as good a
+      show as he gave Billy Brown," meaning the man killed by Williams
+      last March.  Reeder said it was a d---d lie, that Williams had no
+      show at all.  At this, Gumbert drew a knife and stabbed Reeder,
+      cutting him in two places in the back.  One stroke of the knife cut
+      into the sleeve of Reeder's coat and passed downward in a slanting
+      direction through his clothing, and entered his body at the small of
+      the back; another blow struck more squarely, and made a much more
+      dangerous wound.  Gumbert gave himself up to the officers of
+      justice, and was shortly after discharged by Justice Atwill, on his
+      own recognizance, to appear for trial at six o'clock in the evening.
+      In the meantime Reeder had been taken into the office of Dr. Owens,
+      where his wounds were properly dressed.  One of his wounds was
+      considered quite dangerous, and it was thought by many that it would
+      prove fatal.  But being considerably under the influence of liquor,
+      Reeder did not feel his wounds as he otherwise would, and he got up
+      and went into the street.  He went to the meat market and renewed
+      his quarrel with Gumbert, threatening his life.  Friends tried to
+      interfere to put a stop to the quarrel and get the parties away from
+      each other.  In the Fashion Saloon Reeder made threats against the
+      life of Gumbert, saying he would kill him, and it is said that he
+      requested the officers not to arrest Gumbert, as he intended to kill
+      him.  After these threats Gumbert went off and procured a double-
+      barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot or revolver balls, and went
+      after Reeder.  Two or three persons were assisting him along the
+      street, trying to get him home, and had him just in front of the
+      store of Klopstock & Harris, when Gumbert came across toward him
+      from the opposite side of the street with his gun.  He came up
+      within about ten or fifteen feet of Reeder, and called out to those
+      with him to "look out! get out of the way!" and they had only time
+      to heed the warning, when he fired.  Reeder was at the time
+      attempting to screen himself behind a large cask, which stood
+      against the awning post of Klopstock & Harris's store, but some of
+      the balls took effect in the lower part of his breast, and he reeled
+      around forward and fell in front of the cask.  Gumbert then raised
+      his gun and fired the second barrel, which missed Reeder and entered
+      the ground.  At the time that this occurred, there were a great many
+      persons on the street in the vicinity, and a number of them called
+      out to Gumbert, when they saw him raise his gun, to "hold on," and
+      "don't shoot!"  The cutting took place about ten o'clock and the
+      shooting about twelve.  After the shooting the street was instantly
+      crowded with the inhabitants of that part of the town, some
+      appearing much excited and laughing--declaring that it looked like
+      the "good old times of '60."  Marshal Perry and officer Birdsall
+      were near when the shooting occurred, and Gumbert was immediately
+      arrested and his gun taken from him, when he was marched off to
+      jail.  Many persons who were attracted to the spot where this bloody
+      work had just taken place, looked bewildered and seemed to be asking
+      themselves what was to happen next, appearing in doubt as to whether
+      the killing mania had reached its climax, or whether we were to turn
+      in and have a grand killing spell, shooting whoever might have given
+      us offence.  It was whispered around that it was not all over yet--
+      five or six more were to be killed before night.  Reeder was taken
+      to the Virginia City Hotel, and doctors called in to examine his
+      wounds.  They found that two or three balls had entered his right
+      side; one of them appeared to have passed through the substance of
+      the lungs, while another passed into the liver.  Two balls were also
+      found to have struck one of his legs.  As some of the balls struck
+      the cask, the wounds in Reeder's leg were probably from these,
+      glancing downwards, though they might have been caused by the second
+      shot fired.  After being shot, Reeder said when he got on his feet--
+      smiling as he spoke--"It will take better shooting than that to kill
+      me."  The doctors consider it almost impossible for him to recover,
+      but as he has an excellent constitution he may survive,
+      notwithstanding the number and dangerous character of the wounds he
+      has received.  The town appears to be perfectly quiet at present, as
+      though the late stormy times had cleared our moral atmosphere; but
+      who can tell in what quarter clouds are lowering or plots ripening?
+
+Reeder--or at least what was left of him--survived his wounds two days!
+Nothing was ever done with Gumbert.
+
+Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties.  I do not know what 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"I'm Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands."
+
+"What do you want aboard this ship?"
+
+"I've heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better man than
+'tother--I'll know which, before I go ashore."
+
+"You've come to the right shop--I'm your man.  I'll learn you to come
+aboard this ship without an invite."
+
+He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded his face to a
+pulp, and then threw him overboard.
+
+Noakes was not convinced.  He returned the next night, got the pulp
+renewed, and went overboard head first, as before.
+
+He was satisfied.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Do you see that ship there at the dock?"
+
+"Ay-ay, sir."
+
+"It's the Venus."
+
+"Ay-ay, sir."
+
+"You--you know me."
+
+"Ay-ay, sir."
+
+"Very well, then.  Take the lantern.  Carry it just under your chin.
+I'll walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your shoulder, p'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 me."
+
+"Ay-ay, sir."
+
+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:
+
+"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
+me.  Bill Noakes, fall in ahead, and march.  All set.  Quartermaster,
+lock the door."
+
+Noakes spent the night on board Blakely's ship, a prisoner under 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!
+
+"What!  The man has not been tried."
+
+"Of course he hasn't.  But didn't he kill the nigger?"
+
+"Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him without a
+trial?"
+
+"Trial!  What do I want to try him for, if he killed the nigger?"
+
+"Oh, Capt.  Ned, this will never do.  Think how it will sound."
+
+"Sound be hanged!  Didn't he kill the nigger?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly, Capt.  Ned,--nobody denies that,--but--"
+
+"Then I'm going to hang him, that's all.  Everybody I've talked to 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 tried
+for it.  I don't understand such bloody foolishness as that.  Tried!
+Mind you, I don't object to trying him, if it's got to be done to 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--"
+
+"Why, what do you mean?  Are you going to hang him any how--and try him
+afterward?"
+
+"Didn't I say I was going to hang him?  I never saw such people as you.
+What's the difference?  You ask a favor, and then you ain't satisfied
+when you get it.  Before or after's all one--you 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."
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+"Probably only a little while."
+
+"And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you are done?"
+
+"If he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without unnecessary delay."
+
+"If he's proven guilty.  Great Neptune, ain't he guilty?  This beats my
+time.  Why you all know he's guilty."
+
+But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothing
+underhanded.  Then he said:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself--he don't get out of my hands.
+Besides, I've got to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway."
+
+The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and 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.
+
+He strode over and said to them confidentially:
+
+"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."
+
+The caution was not without fruit.  The jury was a unit--the verdict.
+"Guilty."
+
+Capt.  Ned sprung to his feet and said:
+
+"Come along--you're my meat now, my lad, anyway.  Gentlemen you've 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."
+
+The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the
+hanging, and--
+
+Capt.  Ned's patience was at an end.  His wrath was boundless.  The
+subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+No reply.  A long pause.
+
+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:
+
+"Did you kill the nigger?"
+
+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:
+
+"There.  Four chapters.  There's few that would have took the pains with
+you that I have."
+
+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:
+
+"Well, p'raps I ought to burnt him, maybe.  But I was trying to do for
+the best."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times."  The
+saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the
+gambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of high
+prosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter.  Is it not
+so?  A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that trade
+is brisk and money plenty.  Still, there is one other sign; it comes
+last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flush
+times" are at the flood.  This is the birth of the "literary" paper.
+The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature," made its appearance in
+Virginia.  All the literary people were engaged to write for it.  Mr. F.
+was to edit it.  He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen, and a man who
+could say happy things in a crisp, neat way.  Once, while editor of the
+Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made
+upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance,
+seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF
+OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"--and left it to the reader's
+memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more
+different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the
+rest of the Scripture--" in that it passeth understanding."  He once said
+of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistence
+except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stopped
+over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in their
+Church service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us this
+day our daily stranger!"
+
+We expected great things of the Occidental.  Of course it could not get
+along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into
+the work the full strength of the company.  Mrs. F. was an able romancist
+of the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whose
+heroes are all dainty and all perfect.  She wrote the opening chapter,
+and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but pearls
+and poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity.  She also
+introduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with the
+blonde.  Mr. F. followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set about
+getting the Duke's estates into trouble, and a sparkling young lady of
+high society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the appetite
+of the blonde.  Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies,
+followed Mr. F., the third  week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucian
+who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave at
+dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroines
+in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careers
+and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel.  He also
+introduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on a
+salary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoned
+dagger.  He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placed
+him in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission to
+carry billet-doux to the Duke.
+
+About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with a
+literary turn of mind--rather seedy he was, but very quiet and
+unassuming; almost diffident, indeed.  He was so gentle, and his manners
+were so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that he
+made friends of all who came in contact with him.  He applied for
+literary work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy and
+practiced pen, and so Mr. F. engaged him at once to help write the novel.
+His chapter was to follow Mr. D.'s, and mine was to come next.  Now what
+does this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to his
+quarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, and
+that chaos in a condition of extravagant activity.  The result may be
+guessed.  He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of
+heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he
+decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky
+inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then
+launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the
+society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the
+blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the
+desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and the
+Roscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands;
+made the lawyer's upbraiding conscience drive him to drink, thence to
+delirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman's neck; let his
+widow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and consumption; caused the
+blonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on the bank with the
+customary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and hoping he would be
+happy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual strawberry mark on
+left arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother and destroyed his
+long-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary suicide of the Duke
+and the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice; opened the earth
+and let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the accustomed smoke
+and thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the promise that in
+the next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he would take up the
+surviving character of the novel and tell what became of the devil!
+It read with singular smoothness, and with a "dead" earnestness that was
+funny enough to suffocate a body.  But there was war when it came in.
+The other novelists were furious.  The mild stranger, not yet more than
+half sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of vituperation, meek and
+bewildered, looking from one to another of his assailants, and wondering
+what he could have done to invoke such a storm.  When a lull came at
+last, he said his say gently and appealingly--said he did not rightly
+remember what he had written, but was sure he had tried to do the best he
+could, and knew his object had been to make the novel not only pleasant
+and plausible but instructive and----
+
+The bombardment began again.  The novelists assailed his ill-chosen
+adjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule.
+And so the siege went on.  Every time the stranger tried to appease the
+enemy he only made matters worse.  Finally he offered to rewrite the
+chapter.  This arrested hostilities.  The indignation gradually quieted
+down, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got him
+to his own citadel.
+
+But on the way thither the evil angel tempted him and he got drunk again.
+And again his imagination went mad.  He led the heroes and heroines a
+wilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincing
+air of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work.  He got
+the characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them through
+the most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk!
+But the chapter cannot be described.  It was symmetrically crazy; it was
+artistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully as
+curious as the text.  I remember one of the "situations," and will offer
+it as an example of the whole.  He altered the character of the brilliant
+lawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him fame and
+riches, and set his age at thirty-three years.  Then he made the blonde
+discover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramatic
+miscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, he
+secretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady.  Stung to
+the quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them with
+tenfold power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal.  But
+the parents would none of it.  What they wanted in the family was a Duke;
+and a Duke they were determined to have; though they confessed that next
+to the Duke the lawyer had their preference.  Necessarily the blonde now
+went into a decline.  The parents were alarmed.  They pleaded with her to
+marry the Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on.  Then they
+laid a plan.  They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the end
+of that time she still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she might
+marry the lawyer with their full consent.  The result was as they had
+foreseen: gladness came again, and the flush of returning health.  Then
+the parents took the next step in their scheme.  They had the family
+physician recommend a long sea voyage and much land travel for the
+thorough restoration of the blonde's strength; and they invited the Duke
+to be of the party.  They judged that the Duke's constant presence and
+the lawyer's protracted absence would do the rest--for they did not
+invite the lawyer.
+
+So they set sail in a steamer for America--and the third day out, when
+their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their first
+meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer!  The Duke and
+party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and
+the vessel neared America.
+
+But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire;
+she burned to the water's edge; of all her crew and passengers, only
+thirty were saved.  They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all
+night long.  Among them were our friends.  The lawyer, by superhuman
+exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth
+two hundred yards and bringing one each time--(the girl first).  The Duke
+had saved himself.  In the morning two whale ships arrived on the scene
+and sent their boats.  The weather was stormy and the embarkation was
+attended with much confusion and excitement.  The lawyer did his duty
+like a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and
+some others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell
+overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and
+helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its
+mother's screams.  Then he ran back--a few seconds too late--the blonde's
+boat was under way.  So he had to take the other boat, and go to the
+other ship.  The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of
+each other--drove them whither it would.
+
+When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde's ship was seven
+hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south of
+that port.  The blonde's captain was bound on a whaling cruise in the
+North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a port
+without orders; such being nautical law.  The lawyer's captain was to
+cruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a port
+without orders.  All the lawyer's money and baggage were in the blonde's
+boat and went to the blonde's ship--so his captain made him work his
+passage as a common sailor.  When both ships had been cruising nearly a
+year, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring's
+Strait.  The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer
+had been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reached
+the raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke she
+was at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, and
+prepare for the hated marriage.
+
+But she would not yield a day before the date set.  The weeks dragged on,
+the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding--a
+wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses.  Five days more and all would
+be over.  So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear.  Oh where was
+her true love--and why, why did he not come and save her?  At that moment
+he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring's Strait, five
+thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousand
+by the way of the Horn--that was the reason.  He struck, but not with
+perfect aim--his foot slipped and he fell in the whale's mouth and went
+down his throat.  He was insensible five days.  Then he came to himself
+and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in the
+whale's roof.  He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were
+hoisting blubber up a ship's side.  He recognized the vessel, flew
+aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed:
+
+"Stop the proceedings--I'm here!  Come to my arms, my own!"
+
+There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the
+author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the
+possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from
+Behring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in five
+days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little Love
+Me Long," and considered that that established the fact that the thing
+could be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a man
+could live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could stand
+it three days a lawyer could surely stand it five!
+
+There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the
+stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his
+head.  But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time
+for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out
+without any novel in it.  It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid
+journal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence;
+at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the
+Weekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant.
+
+An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a
+telling new title, and Mr. F. said that The Phenix would be just the name
+for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its dead
+ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some low-
+priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the
+Lazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural
+matters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant
+that begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, the
+name became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good
+and all.
+
+I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a
+literary paper--prouder than I have ever been of anything since, perhaps.
+I had written some rhymes for it--poetry I considered it--and it was a
+great grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of the
+issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light.  But time
+brings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of a
+tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental.  The idea (not the
+chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by the
+old song called "The Raging Canal," but I cannot remember now.  I do
+remember, though, that at that time I thought my doggerel was one of the
+ablest poems of the age:
+
+
+THE AGED PILOT MAN.
+
+On the Erie Canal, it was,
+All on a summer's day,
+I sailed forth with my parents
+Far away to Albany.
+
+From out the clouds at noon that day
+There came a dreadful storm,
+That piled the billows high about,
+And filled us with alarm.
+
+A man came rushing from a house,
+Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray,
+[The customary canal technicality for "tie up."]
+Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,
+Snub up while yet you may."
+
+Our captain cast one glance astern,
+Then forward glanced he,
+And said, "My wife and little ones
+I never more shall see."
+
+Said Dollinger the pilot man,
+In noble words, but few,--
+"Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,
+And he will fetch you through."
+
+The boat drove on, the frightened mules
+Tore through the rain and wind,
+And bravely still, in danger's post,
+The whip-boy strode behind.
+
+"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried,
+"Nor tempt so wild a storm;"
+But still the raging mules advanced,
+And still the boy strode on.
+
+Then said the captain to us all,
+"Alas, 'tis plain to me,
+The greater danger is not there,
+But here upon the sea.
+
+"So let us strive, while life remains,
+To save all souls on board,
+And then if die at last we must,
+Let .  .  .  .  I cannot speak the word!"
+
+Said Dollinger the pilot man,
+Tow'ring above the crew,
+"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
+And he will fetch you through."
+
+"Low bridge!  low bridge!" all heads went down,
+The laboring bark sped on;
+A mill we passed, we passed church,
+Hamlets, and fields of corn;
+And all the world came out to see,
+And chased along the shore
+Crying, "Alas, alas, the sheeted rain,
+The wind, the tempest's roar!
+Alas, the gallant ship and crew,
+Can nothing help them more?"
+
+And from our deck sad eyes looked out
+Across the stormy scene:
+The tossing wake of billows aft,
+The bending forests green,
+The chickens sheltered under carts
+In lee of barn the cows,
+The skurrying swine with straw in mouth,
+The wild spray from our bows!
+
+"She balances!
+She wavers!
+Now let her go about!
+If she misses stays and broaches to,
+We're all"--then with a shout,]
+"Huray!  huray!
+Avast!  belay!
+Take in more sail!
+Lord, what a gale!
+Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!"
+"Ho!  lighten ship!  ho!  man the pump!
+Ho, hostler, heave the lead!"
+
+"A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast!
+Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet!--
+Three feet scant!" I cried in fright
+"Oh, is there no retreat?"
+
+Said Dollinger, the pilot man,
+As on the vessel flew,
+"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
+And he will fetch you through."
+
+A panic struck the bravest hearts,
+The boldest cheek turned pale;
+For plain to all, this shoaling said
+A leak had burst the ditch's bed!
+And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,
+Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead,
+Before the fearful gale!
+
+"Sever the tow-line!  Cripple the mules!"
+Too late!  There comes a shock!
+Another length, and the fated craft
+Would have swum in the saving lock!
+
+Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew
+And took one last embrace,
+While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes
+Ran down each hopeless face;
+And some did think of their little ones
+Whom they never more might see,
+And others of waiting wives at home,
+And mothers that grieved would be.
+
+But of all the children of misery there
+On that poor sinking frame,
+But one spake words of hope and faith,
+And I worshipped as they came:
+Said Dollinger the pilot man,--
+(O brave heart, strong and true!)--
+"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
+For he will fetch you through."
+
+Lo!  scarce the words have passed his lips
+The dauntless prophet say'th,
+When every soul about him seeth
+A wonder crown his faith!
+
+And count ye all, both great and small,
+As numbered with the dead:
+For mariner for forty year,
+On Erie, boy and man,
+I never yet saw such a storm,
+Or one't with it began!"
+
+So overboard a keg of nails
+And anvils three we threw,
+Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,
+Two hundred pounds of glue,
+Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
+A box of books, a cow,
+A violin, Lord Byron's works,
+A rip-saw and a sow.
+
+A curve!  a curve!  the dangers grow!
+"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!--
+Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee!
+Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee!
+Luff!--bring her to the wind!"
+
+For straight a farmer brought a plank,--
+(Mysteriously inspired)--
+And laying it unto the ship,
+In silent awe retired.
+
+Then every sufferer stood amazed
+That pilot man before;
+A moment stood.  Then wondering turned,
+And speechless walked ashore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about
+the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he
+chooses.  The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination
+of the "flush times."  Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to that
+degree that the place looked like a very hive--that is when one's vision
+could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generally
+blowing in summer.  I will say, concerning this dust, that if you drove
+ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a
+sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a
+uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust
+in it, thrown there by the wheels.  The delicate scales used by the
+assayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet
+some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would
+get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales.
+
+Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business
+going on, too.  All freights were brought over the mountains from
+California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons
+drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession,
+and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals
+stretched unbroken from Virginia to California.  Its long route was
+traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing
+serpent of dust it lifted up.  By these wagons, freights over that
+hundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for
+all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads.
+One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid
+$10,000 a month freightage.  In the winter the freights were much higher.
+All the bullion was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was
+usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500
+to $3,000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the
+freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per
+cent. of its intrinsic value.
+
+So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25
+each.  Small shippers paid two per cent.  There were three stages a day,
+each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a
+ton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot
+and take it off.  However, these were extraordinary events.
+[Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo's agent, has handled all the bullion shipped
+through the Virginia office for many a month.  To his memory--which is
+excellent--we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company's
+business in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From
+January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through
+that office, during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000;
+next quarter, $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter
+ending on the 30th of last June, about $1,600,000.  Thus in a year and a
+half, the Virginia office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion.  During the
+year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments
+have more than doubled in the last six months.  This gives us room to
+promise for the Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863
+(though perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, we are
+under estimating, somewhat).  This gives us $6,000,000 for the year.
+Gold Hill and Silver City together can beat us--we will give them
+$10,000,000.  To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will
+allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps,
+and may possibly be a little under it.  To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000.
+To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not
+be before the year is out.  So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion
+this year will be about $30,000,000.  Placing the number of mills in the
+Territory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing
+$300,000 in bullion during the twelve months.  Allowing them to run three
+hundred days in the year (which none of them more than do), this makes
+their work average $1,000 a day.  Say the mills average twenty tons of
+rock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have the
+actual work of our one hundred mills figured down "to a spot"--$1,000 a
+day each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.--Enterprise.
+[A considerable over estimate--M.  T.]]
+
+Two tons of silver bullion would be in the neighborhood of forty bars,
+and the freight on it over $1,000.  Each coach always carried a deal of
+ordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twenty
+passengers at from $25 to $30 a head.  With six stages going all the
+time, Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Virginia City business was important and
+lucrative.
+
+All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of
+miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode--a vein of ore from fifty to
+eighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock--a vein as wide as some
+of New York's streets.  I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania a
+coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample.
+
+Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground.  Under it
+was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great
+population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels
+and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of
+lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers
+that held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart.  These timbers were as
+large as a man's body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no
+eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom.  It was like
+peering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal
+skeleton.  Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and
+higher than any church spire in America.  Imagine this stately lattice-
+work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall street, and
+a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on top of it
+and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity steeple.
+One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that forest of
+timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries beyond
+Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious rates of
+freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine and
+built up there.  Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the
+greatest of those silver mines.  The Spanish proverb says it requires a
+gold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true.  A beggar with a silver
+mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell.
+
+I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city.  The Gould and Curry is
+only one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the
+Gould and Curry's streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in
+extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners.  Taken as a
+whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a
+population of five or six thousand.  In this present day some of those
+populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under
+Virginia and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what the
+superintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as
+we strike a fire alarm.  Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a
+thousand feet deep.  In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest.
+
+If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel
+about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan
+of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform.  It is like
+tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first.  When you reach the
+bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where
+throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full
+of great lumps of stone--silver ore; you select choice specimens from the
+mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you
+reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet
+below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery"
+to "gallery," up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when
+your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a cramped
+"incline" like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged up to daylight
+feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it.
+Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending
+cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows of
+bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rows
+of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down the
+long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver
+mills with their rich freight.  It is all "done," now, and there you are.
+You need never go down again, for you have seen it all.  If you have
+forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making the
+silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chapters
+if so disposed.
+
+Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is
+worth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observing
+the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain.
+I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I
+will take an extract:
+
+      AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.--We journeyed down into the Ophir mine,
+      yesterday, to see the earthquake.  We could not go down the deep
+      incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places.
+      Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill
+      above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long
+      ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery.
+      Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of
+      timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake.  Here was as
+      complete a chaos as ever was seen--vast masses of earth and
+      splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with
+      scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through.
+      Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber
+      which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out
+      of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the
+      tremendous mass was still going on.  We were in that portion of the
+      Ophir known as the "north mines."  Returning to the surface, we
+      entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of
+      getting into the main Ophir.  Descending a long incline in this
+      tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft
+      from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir.  From
+      a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst
+      of the earthquake again--earth and broken timbers mingled together
+      without regard to grace or symmetry.  A large portion of the second,
+      third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction--the
+      two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening.
+
+      At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery,
+      two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth
+      gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come.
+      These beams are solid--eighteen inches square; first, a great beam
+      is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on
+      it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above
+      square, like the framework of a window.  The superincumbent weight
+      was sufficient to mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly
+      into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing
+      and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow.  Before the
+      Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were
+      compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick!
+      Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in
+      that way.  Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of
+      twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the
+      weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above.  You could
+      hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know
+      that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon
+      you.  The men down in the mine do not mind it, however.
+
+      Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the
+      Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten
+      inches of water there, and had to come back.  In repairing the
+      damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two
+      hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot.  However,
+      the pump was at work again, and the flood-water was decreasing.
+      We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft,
+      whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach
+      of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to
+      dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass.  So, having seen
+      the earthquake, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnel, and
+      adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to
+      lunch at the Ophir office.
+
+      During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have]
+      produced $25,000,000 in bullion--almost, if not quite, a round
+      million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well,
+      considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures.
+      Silver mining was her sole productive industry. [Since the above was
+      in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is
+      too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000.]
+      However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel
+      is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of
+      two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively
+      inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and
+      hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome.  This vast work will
+      absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but
+      it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as
+      soon as it strikes the first end of the vein.  The tunnel will be
+      some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing riches.  Cars
+      will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and
+      thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and
+      transportation by mule teams.  The water from the tunnel will
+      furnish the motive power for the mills.  Mr. Sutro, the originator
+      of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world
+      who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up
+      and hound such an undertaking to its completion.  He has converted
+      several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his
+      important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe
+      until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to
+get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather's old
+ram--but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jim
+was drunk at the time--just comfortably and sociably drunk.  They kept
+this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story.  I got to
+haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with
+his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk.
+I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, such
+anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk
+before.  At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that
+this time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could find
+no fault with it--he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk--not a
+hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to
+obscure his memory.  As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty powder-
+keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command
+silence.  His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare
+and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart
+miner of the period.  On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light
+revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes,
+powder-kegs, etc.  They said:
+
+"Sh--!  Don't speak--he's going to commence."
+
+
+                THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
+
+I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
+
+'I don't reckon them times will ever come again.  There never was a more
+bullier old ram than what he was.  Grandfather fetched him from Illinois
+--got him of a man by the name of Yates--Bill Yates--maybe you might have
+heard of him; his father was a deacon--Baptist--and he was a rustler,
+too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful
+Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my
+grandfather when he moved west.
+
+'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson--
+Sarah Wilkerson--good cretur, she was--one of the likeliest heifers that
+was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her.  She
+could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack.  And spin?
+Don't mention it!  Independent?  Humph!  When Sile Hawkins come a
+browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't
+trot in harness alongside of her.  You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, it
+warn't Sile Hawkins, after all--it was a galoot by the name of Filkins--
+I disremember his first name; but he was a stump--come into pra'r meeting
+drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary;
+and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit
+on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly.  She was a good soul--had a
+glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to
+receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't
+noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe,
+or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking
+as straight ahead as a spy-glass.
+
+'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it
+was so sort of scary.  She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it
+wouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and look
+so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way.  She was
+always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company
+empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it
+hopped out, being blind on that side, you see.  So somebody would have to
+hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose.  Miss Wagner dear"--
+and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in
+again--wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg,
+being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company.  But being wrong
+side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-
+blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way she
+turned it it didn't match nohow.
+
+'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was.  When she had a
+quilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed Miss
+Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than
+her other pin, but much she minded that.  She said she couldn't abide
+crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had
+company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself.
+She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops's wig--
+Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife--a ratty old buzzard, he was,
+that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for 'em;
+and there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that
+he judged would fit the can'idate; and if it was a slow customer and kind
+of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in the
+coffin nights.  He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for
+about three weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and
+after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms
+with the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him.  He got one of his
+feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn
+and got well.  The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up
+with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but
+old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to be
+powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay
+it back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin
+after he'd tried it.  And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he
+bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let
+up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that.
+You see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he
+took the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made the trip it was
+money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent.  And
+by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up
+the coffin in his back parlor and said he 'lowed to take his time, now.
+It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing
+acted.  He moved back to Indiany pretty soon--went to Wellsville--
+Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from.  Mighty fine family.
+Old Maryland stock.  Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed
+licker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see.  His second wife
+was the widder Billings--she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon
+Dunlap's first wife.  Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and
+died in grace--et up by the savages.  They et him, too, poor feller--
+biled him.  It warn't the custom, so they say, but they explained to
+friends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, that
+they'd tried missionaries every other way and never could get any good
+out of 'em--and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that
+man's life was fooled away just out of a dern'd experiment, so to speak.
+But mind you, there ain't anything ever reely lost; everything that
+people can't understand and don't see the reason of does good if you only
+hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blank
+ca'tridges, boys.  That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to
+himself, actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a
+chance at the barbacue.  Nothing ever fetched them but that.  Don't tell
+me it was an accident that he was biled.  There ain't no such a thing as
+an accident.
+
+'When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk,
+or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the
+third story and broke the old man's back in two places.  People said it
+was an accident.  Much accident there was about that.  He didn't know
+what he was there for, but he was there for a good object.  If he hadn't
+been there the Irishman would have been killed.  Nobody can ever make me
+believe anything different from that.  Uncle Lem's dog was there.  Why
+didn't the Irishman fall on the dog?  Becuz the dog would a seen him a
+coming and stood from under.  That's the reason the dog warn't appinted.
+A dog can't be depended on to carry out a special providence.  Mark my
+words it was a put-up thing.  Accidents don't happen, boys.  Uncle Lem's
+dog--I wish you could a seen that dog.  He was a reglar shepherd--or
+ruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged to
+parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him.  Parson Hagar belonged to the
+Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his
+sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got
+nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than
+a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his
+remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral.
+There was fourteen yards in the piece.
+
+'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so--full length.
+The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they
+had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window.  They didn't
+bury him--they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument.
+And they nailed a sign on it and put--put on--put on it --sacred to--the
+m-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containing
+all that was--m-o-r-t-a-l--of--of--W-i-l-l-i-a-m--W-h-e--"'
+
+Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier--his head
+nodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, and
+he fell tranquilly asleep.  The tears were running down the boys' cheeks
+--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from the
+start, though I had never noticed it.  I perceived that I was "sold."
+I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached
+a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from
+setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure
+which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention of
+the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him
+get, concerning it.  He always maundered off, interminably, from one
+thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep.
+What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is
+a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia--it is the
+case with every town and city on the Pacific coast.  They are a harmless
+race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than
+dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom
+think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries.  They are
+quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as
+industrious as the day is long.  A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a
+lazy one does not exist.  So long as a Chinaman has strength to use his
+hands he needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of want
+of work, but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages to
+find something to do.  He is a great convenience to everybody--even to
+the worst class of white men, for he bears the most of their sins,
+suffering fines for their petty thefts, imprisonment for their robberies,
+and death for their murders.  Any white man can swear a Chinaman's life
+away in the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man.
+Ours is the "land of the free"--nobody denies that--nobody challenges it.
+[Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.] As I write, news
+comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an
+inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed
+the shameful deed, no one interfered.
+
+There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen
+on the Pacific coast.  There were about a thousand in Virginia.  They
+were penned into a "Chinese quarter"--a thing which they do not
+particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together.  Their
+buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly
+together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through.
+Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town.  The chief
+employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing.  They always send a
+bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes.  It is mere ceremony, for
+it does not enlighten the customer much.  Their price for washing was
+$2.50 per dozen--rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash
+for at that time.  A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: "See
+Yup, Washer and Ironer"; "Hong Wo, Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing."
+The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly
+Chinamen.  There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed.
+Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick
+to learn and tirelessly industrious.  They do not need to be taught a
+thing twice, as a general thing.  They are imitative.  If a Chinaman were
+to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a
+fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture
+for fuel forever afterward.
+
+All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility--pity but all
+our petted voters could.  In California they rent little patches of
+ground and do a deal of gardening.  They will raise surprising crops of
+vegetables on a sand pile.  They waste nothing.  What is rubbish to a
+Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or
+another.  He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white
+people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by
+melting.  He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure.
+In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men
+have abandoned as exhausted and worthless--and then the officers come
+down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the
+legislature has given the broad, general name of "foreign" mining tax,
+but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen.  This swindle
+has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the
+course of the same month--but the public treasury was no additionally
+enriched by it, probably.
+
+Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence--they worship their departed
+ancestors, in fact.  Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, or
+any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in
+order that he may visit the graves at any and all times.  Therefore that
+huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from its
+centre to its circumference with graves--and inasmuch as every foot of
+ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarming
+population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a
+harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead.  Since the
+departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear
+that any indignity be offered the places where they sleep.
+Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition to
+railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without
+disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends.
+
+A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body
+lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after
+death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him.
+Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have
+his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a
+foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that
+his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells
+a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is
+specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in
+case of death.  On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or
+another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies
+keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies
+home when they die.  The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of
+these.  The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand
+members on the coast.  Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it
+has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal
+state in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a
+numerous priesthood.  In it I was shown a register of its members, with
+the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked.  Every ship
+that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese
+corpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious
+refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat
+underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration.  The bill was offered,
+whether it passed or not.  It is my impression that it passed.  There was
+another bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to be
+vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor
+would defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it.
+As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the
+law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese
+immigration.
+
+What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the
+Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be
+gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting
+for that paper:
+
+      CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through
+      our Chinese quarter the other night.  The Chinese have built their
+      portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither
+      carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a
+      general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles.  At ten o'clock
+      at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory.  In every little
+      cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning
+      Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly,
+      guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed
+      vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium,
+      motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess
+      of satisfaction--or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately
+      after having passed the pipe to his neighbor--for opium-smoking is a
+      comfortless operation, and requires constant attention.  A lamp sits
+      on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's
+      mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on
+      fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a
+      hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds
+      to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of
+      the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue.
+      John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen
+      whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we
+      could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature.  Possibly in his
+      visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular
+      washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise.
+
+Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No.  13 Wang
+street.  He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest
+way.  He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies,
+with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs,
+and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of
+porcelain.  He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neat
+sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen
+to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse,
+and therefore refrained.  Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles
+of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, and
+beyond our ability to describe.
+
+His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were
+split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that
+shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which
+kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage.
+
+We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery
+scheme--in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in
+various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a
+lottery, and the balance of the tribe "buck" at it.  "Tom," who speaks
+faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial
+Enterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago,
+said that "Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two tree
+hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight um
+seventy--may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself, welly good."
+
+However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are,
+as a general thing, that "he get whip heself."  We could not see that
+these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the
+figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed
+in telling "t'other from which;" the manner of drawing is similar to
+ours.
+
+Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street.  He sold us fans of
+white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like
+Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone
+unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the
+inner coat of a sea-shell.  As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented
+the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with
+peacocks' feathers.
+
+We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our
+comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their
+want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our
+hosts and "dickered" for a pagan God or two.  Finally, we were impressed
+with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on a
+machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different
+rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands.  He fingered them
+with incredible rapidity--in fact, he pushed them from place to place as
+fast as a musical professor's fingers travel over the keys of a piano.
+
+They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well
+treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast.  No Californian
+gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any
+circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East.
+Only the scum of the population do it--they and their children; they,
+and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise,
+for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as
+well as elsewhere in America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+I began to get tired of staying in one place so long.
+
+There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report
+the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and
+pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins and
+potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements of
+the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair
+to show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in--however, the
+territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum").  I wanted
+to see San Francisco.  I wanted to go somewhere.  I wanted--I did not
+know what I wanted.  I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change,
+principally, no doubt.  Besides, a convention had framed a State
+Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed that
+these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among
+the population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killing
+the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government,
+since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines
+could not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there was
+but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to
+think of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder).
+I believed that a State government would destroy the "flush times," and I
+wanted to get away.  I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand
+would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before the
+Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself secure from
+the crash the change of government was going to bring.  I considered
+$100,000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a small
+amount compared to what I had been expecting to return with.  I felt
+rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with the
+reflection that with such a sum I could not fall into want.  About this
+time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came
+tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty.
+The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry,
+bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless
+hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have
+"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly
+remarked.
+
+He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars--twenty-six to take him to San
+Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe,
+for he needed it.  I found I had but little more than the amount wanted,
+in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker
+(on twenty days' time, without the formality of a note), and gave it him,
+rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie laid
+up.  If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay back
+that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the
+Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured.  And so
+would the banker.
+
+I wanted a change.  I wanted variety of some kind.  It came.  Mr. Goodman
+went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor.  It destroyed
+me.  The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the forenoon.  The second day,
+I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon.  The third day I put
+it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the
+"American Cyclopedia," that steadfast friend of the editor, all over this
+land.  The fourth day I "fooled around" till midnight, and then fell back
+on the Cyclopedia again.  The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till
+midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter
+personalities on six different people.  The sixth day I labored in
+anguish till far into the night and brought forth--nothing.  The paper
+went to press without an editorial.  The seventh day I resigned.  On the
+eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands--my
+personalities had borne fruit.
+
+Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor.  It is
+easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy
+to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a
+correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write
+editorials.  Subjects are the trouble--the dreary lack of them, I mean.
+Every day, it is drag, drag, drag--think, and worry and suffer--all the
+world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.
+Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done--it is no trouble to
+write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains
+dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year.  It makes one low
+spirited simply to think of it.  The matter that each editor of a daily
+paper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to
+eight bulky volumes like this book!  Fancy what a library an editor's
+work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service.  Yet people often
+marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to
+produce so many books.  If these authors had wrought as voluminously as
+newspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed.
+How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhausting
+consumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a mere
+mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and year
+after year, is incomprehensible.  Preachers take two months' holiday in
+midsummer, for they find that to produce two sermons a week is wearing,
+in the long run.  In truth it must be so, and is so; and therefore, how
+an editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from ten
+to twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the year
+round, is farther beyond comprehension than ever.  Ever since I survived
+my week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper
+that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial,
+and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it!
+
+Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become
+a reporter again.  I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranks
+after being General of the army.  So I thought I would depart and go
+abroad into the world somewhere.  Just at this juncture, Dan, my
+associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two
+citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and
+aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured
+in a new mining district in our neighborhood.  He said they offered to
+pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale.
+He had refused to go.  It was the very opportunity I wanted.  I abused
+him for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner.  He said
+it had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had
+recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper.
+I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle.  He said the
+men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take
+to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rock
+in Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had secured a
+tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine.  My first idea
+was to kill Dan.  But I changed my mind, notwithstanding I was so angry,
+for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost.  Dan said it was by no
+means lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and would not be
+in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that they had
+requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he
+would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they
+got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, and
+then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them.
+
+It was splendid.  I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody
+had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white
+for the sickle.  I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan
+would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or
+difficulty.  I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in
+the air.  It was the "blind lead" come again.
+
+Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending
+departures of old citizens,--for if you have only half a dozen friends
+out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to
+go away neglected and unregretted--and Dan promised to keep strict watch
+for the men that had the mine to sell.
+
+The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred
+just as we were about to start.  A very seedy looking vagabond passenger
+got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver
+bricks was thrown in.  He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward
+express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled
+and let it fall on the bummer's foot.  He instantly dropped on the ground
+and began to howl in the most heart-breaking way.  A sympathizing crowd
+gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed
+louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and between
+the gasps ejaculated "Brandy!  for Heaven's sake, brandy!"  They poured
+half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and comforted him.
+Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which was done.
+The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he
+declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along with
+him, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be
+grateful and content.  He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we
+drove off.  He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not
+refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with a
+crushed foot.
+
+"Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't a
+cent to my name.  I was most perishing--and so, when that duffer dropped
+that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance.  Got a cork leg, you
+know!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and proved it.
+
+He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over his
+timely ingenuity.
+
+One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another.  I once heard a
+gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian bar-
+room.  He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink."  It was nothing but
+a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthy of
+Toodles himself.  The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer and other
+matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for anything and
+everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a half dollar;
+calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes change and lays the
+quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest man fumbles at it with
+nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds it; he contemplates
+it, and tries again; same result; observes that people are interested in
+what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter again--blushes--puts his
+forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure of his aim--pushes the
+coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh:
+
+"Gimme a cigar!"
+
+Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man.  He
+said he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered the
+wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the stoop; and it was--an iron one.
+
+He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog; ventured
+to say "Be (hic) begone!"  No effect.  Then he approached warily, and
+adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, but
+failed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!--doggy, doggy, doggy!--poor
+doggy-dog!"  Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names; till
+master of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"--planted a
+vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, of
+course.  A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a
+reflective voice:
+
+"Awful solid dog.  What could he ben eating?  ('ic!) Rocks, p'raps.
+Such animals is dangerous.--'  At's what I say--they're dangerous.  If a
+man--('ic!)--if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him feed him on
+rocks; 'at's all right; but let him keep him at home--not have him layin'
+round promiscuous, where ('ic!) where people's liable to stumble over him
+when they ain't noticin'!"
+
+It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it
+was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady's
+handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet
+above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent
+farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of
+life I had ever experienced.  And this reminds me of an incident which
+the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must
+vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies.  Late one summer
+afternoon we had a rain shower.
+
+That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing,
+for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada,
+and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any
+merchant to keep umbrellas for sale.  But the rain was not the chief
+wonder.  It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still
+talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness
+as of midnight.  All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, over-
+looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the nearness and
+solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly distinguishable
+from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested against.  This
+unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain; and as they
+looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving and
+quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme summit!
+In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with hardly
+an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world of
+darkness.  It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; but with
+such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was.  It was the
+flag!--though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like a
+supernatural visitor of some kind--a mysterious messenger of good
+tidings, some were fain to believe.  It was the nation's emblem
+transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from
+view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad
+panorama of mountain ranges and deserts.  Not even upon the staff of the
+flag--for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched
+by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom.  For a whole hour the
+weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the
+thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest.  How the
+people were wrought up!  The superstition grew apace that this was a
+mystic courier come with great news from the war--the poetry of the idea
+excusing and commending it--and on it spread, from heart to heart, from
+lip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to
+have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of
+artillery!
+
+And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to
+official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a
+silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the
+speculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen
+that day in the east--Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at
+Gettysburg!
+
+But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment
+of eastern news till a day after its publication in the California
+papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and
+re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of
+powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every
+man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk,--as was the
+custom of the country on all occasions of public moment.  Even at this
+distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity
+without regret.  What a time we might have had!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the
+clouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California.  And I will remark
+here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance to
+give it its highest charm.  The mountains are imposing in their sublimity
+and their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view--but one
+must have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings;
+a Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sad
+poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous
+family--redwood, pine, spruce, fir--and so, at a near view there is a
+wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down ward
+and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to "Sh!--
+don't say a word!--you might disturb somebody!"  Close at hand, too,
+there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there
+is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; one
+walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of
+the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall;
+he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns for substantial,
+shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none,
+for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to
+pensive musing and clean apparel.  Often a grassy plain in California, is
+what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance,
+because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictively
+straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, with
+uncomely spots of barren sand between.
+
+One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from "the
+States" go into ecstasies over the loveliness of "ever-blooming
+California."  And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies.  But
+perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with
+the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer
+greens of Californian "verdure," stand astonished, and filled with
+worshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the
+brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form
+and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of
+Paradise itself.  The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and
+sombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expanses
+and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire,
+or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes
+very near being funny--would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic.
+No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful.  The tropics are
+not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them.  They seem beautiful
+at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by.  Change is the
+handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.  The land that has
+four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony.
+Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of
+its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating
+graces--and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a
+radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
+And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its
+turn, seems the loveliest.
+
+San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and
+handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the
+architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of
+decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward
+the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently.  Even the kindly
+climate is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personally
+experienced, for a lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by,
+and then when the longed for rain does come it stays.  Even the playful
+earthquake is better contemplated at a dis--
+
+However there are varying opinions about that.
+
+The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable.  The
+thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round.  It hardly
+changes at all.  You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and
+Winter, and never use a mosquito bar.  Nobody ever wears Summer clothing.
+You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just
+the same.  It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the
+other.  You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans.  It is as
+pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is
+doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world.  The wind blows there a
+good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if
+you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there.  It has
+only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only
+remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them
+to wondering what the feathery stuff was.
+
+During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and
+cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls.  But when the other four
+months come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella.  Because
+you will require it.  Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days
+in hardly varying succession.  When you want to go visiting, or attend
+church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it
+is likely to rain or not--you look at the almanac.  If it is Winter, it
+will rain--and if it is Summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it.
+You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it never
+lightens.  And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every
+night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your
+heart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skies
+once, and make everything alive--you will wish the prisoned lightnings
+would cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blinding
+glare for one little instant.  You would give anything to hear the old
+familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody.  And along
+in the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous,
+pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for
+rain--hail--snow--thunder and lightning--anything to break the monotony--
+you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better.  And the
+chances are that you'll get it, too.
+
+San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills.
+They yield a generous vegetation.  All the rare flowers which people in
+"the States" rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and green-
+houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year round.
+Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss roses--I do
+not know the names of a tenth part of them.  I only know that while New
+Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are
+burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only keep their hands
+off and let them grow.  And I have heard that they have also that rarest
+and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful Espiritu Santo, as the
+Spaniards call it--or flower of the Holy Spirit--though I thought it grew
+only in Central America--down on the Isthmus.  In its cup is the
+daintiest little facsimile of a dove, as pure as snow.  The Spaniards
+have a superstitious reverence for it.  The blossom has been conveyed to
+the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has been taken thither also,
+but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived, has failed.
+
+I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and
+but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco.  Now if we travel
+a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of
+Sacramento.  One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San
+Francisco--but they can be found in Sacramento.  Not always and
+unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve
+years, perhaps.  Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easily
+believe--people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and
+wear out their stanchest energies fanning themselves.  It gets hot there,
+but if you go down to Fort Yuma you will find it hotter.  Fort Yuma is
+probably the hottest place on earth.  The thermometer stays at one
+hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time--except when it varies
+and goes higher.  It is a U.S. military post, and its occupants get so
+used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it.  There is a
+tradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fifty
+different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed
+to steal one.--M.  T.]) that a very, very wicked soldier died there,
+once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition,--
+and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets.  There is no doubt
+about the truth of this statement--there can be no doubt about it.  I
+have seen the place where that soldier used to board.  In Sacramento it
+is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries
+and ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at
+eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon
+put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner
+Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feet
+deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frosty
+crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea.
+
+There is a transition for you!  Where will you find another like it in
+the Western hemisphere?  And some of us have swept around snow-walled
+curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above
+the sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of
+the Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage,
+its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted
+atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance--a
+dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and
+striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow,
+and savage crags and precipices.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the
+most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see,
+in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured
+by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago.  You may see
+such disfigurements far and wide over California--and in some such
+places, where only meadows and forests are visible--not a living
+creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a
+sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness--you will find
+it hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing
+little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper,
+fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth
+of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobacco
+smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with
+tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German
+principality--streets crowded and rife with business--town lots worth
+four hundred dollars a front foot--labor, laughter, music, dancing,
+swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing--a bloody inquest and a man for
+breakfast every morning--everything that delights and adorns existence--
+all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and
+promising young city,--and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless,
+homeless solitude.  The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the
+name of the place is forgotten.  In no other land, in modern times, have
+towns so absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of
+California.
+
+It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days.  It was a
+curious population.  It was the only population of the kind that the
+world has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the
+world will ever see its like again.  For observe, it was an assemblage of
+two hundred thousand young men--not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved
+weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of
+push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to
+make up a peerless and magnificent manhood--the very pick and choice of
+the world's glorious ones.  No women, no children, no gray and stooping
+veterans,--none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed young
+giants--the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant
+host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.
+And where are they now?  Scattered to the ends of the earth--or
+prematurely aged and decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--or
+dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all--
+victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf--the noblest holocaust
+that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward.  It is pitiful to
+think upon.
+
+It was a splendid population--for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained
+sloths staid at home--you never find that sort of people among pioneers--
+you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material.  It was that
+population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding
+enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring
+and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this
+day--and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as
+usual, and says "Well, that is California all over."
+
+But they were rough in those times!  They fairly reveled in gold, whisky,
+fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy.  The honest miner
+raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and
+what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a
+cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck.  They cooked their own
+bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts--
+blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any
+annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt
+or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.  For those people
+hated aristocrats.  They had a particular and malignant animosity toward
+what they called a "biled shirt."
+
+It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society!  Men--only swarming
+hosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visible
+anywhere!
+
+In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that
+rare and blessed spectacle, a woman!  Old inhabitants tell how, in a
+certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was
+come!  They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the
+camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains.  Everybody
+went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was
+discovered fluttering in the wind!  The male emigrant was visible.  The
+miners said:
+
+"Fetch her out!"
+
+He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed of
+money, provisions, everything, by the Indians--we want to rest."
+
+"Fetch her out!  We've got to see her!"
+
+"But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she--"
+
+"FETCH HER OUT!"
+
+He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing
+cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched
+her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to
+a memory rather than a present reality--and then they collected twenty-
+five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung their hats
+again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied.
+
+
+Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked
+with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco
+was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only
+two or three years old at the time.  Her father said that, after landing
+from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the
+party with the little girl in her arms.  And presently a huge miner,
+bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just down
+from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stopped
+the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification
+and astonishment.  Then he said, reverently:
+
+"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sack
+out of his pocket and said to the servant:
+
+"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to
+you to let me kiss the child!"
+
+That anecdote is true.
+
+But see how things change.  Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to
+that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of
+kissing the same child, I would have been refused.  Seventeen added years
+have far more than doubled the price.
+
+And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the
+Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single
+file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in
+the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation--a genuine, live
+Woman!  And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye
+to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing flap-
+jacks in a frying-pan with the other.
+
+And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I
+voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.--M.T.] years old, and hadn't a
+tooth in her head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of
+existence--a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible
+to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness.  I fell in love with the
+most cordial and sociable city in the Union.  After the sage-brush and
+alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me.  I lived at
+the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places,
+infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which
+oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the
+vulgar honesty to confess it.  However, I suppose I was not greatly worse
+than the most of my countrymen in that.  I had longed to be a butterfly,
+and I was one at last.  I attended private parties in sumptuous evening
+dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkad and
+schottisched with a step peculiar to myself--and the kangaroo.  In a
+word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars
+(prospectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that silver-
+mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East.  I spent money with
+a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an interested eye
+and looked to see what might happen in Nevada.
+
+Something very important happened.  The property holders of Nevada voted
+against the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to lose
+were in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads.  But
+after all it did not immediately look like a disaster, though
+unquestionably it was one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then
+concluded not to sell.  Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad;
+bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very
+washerwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silver
+stocks, and every sun that rose in the morning went down on paupers
+enriched and rich men beggared.  What a gambling carnival it was!  Gould
+and Curry soared to six thousand three hundred dollars a foot!  And then
+--all of a sudden, out went the bottom and everything and everybody went
+to ruin and destruction!  The wreck was complete.
+
+The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it.  I was an
+early beggar and a thorough one.  My hoarded stocks were not worth the
+paper they were printed on.  I threw them all away.  I, the cheerful
+idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myself
+beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when
+I gathered together my various debts and paid them.  I removed from the
+hotel to a very private boarding house.  I took a reporter's berth and
+went to work.  I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building
+confidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east.  But I could not
+hear from Dan.  My letters miscarried or were not answered.
+
+One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office.  The
+next day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my desk
+which had been there twenty-four hours.  It was signed "Marshall"--the
+Virginia reporter--and contained a request that I should call at the
+hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for
+the east in the morning.  A postscript added that their errand was a big
+mining speculation!  I was hardly ever so sick in my life.  I abused
+myself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I
+ought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from
+the office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there.
+And thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and
+arrived just in time to be too late.  The ship was in the stream and
+under way.
+
+I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation would
+amount to nothing--poor comfort at best--and then went back to my
+slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forget
+all about it.
+
+A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake.  It was one which was
+long called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished
+till this day.  It was just after noon, on a bright October day.  I was
+coming down Third street.  The only objects in motion anywhere in sight
+in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind
+me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street.  Otherwise, all
+was solitude and a Sabbath stillness.  As I turned the corner, around a
+frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that
+here was an item!--no doubt a fight in that house.  Before I could turn
+and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground seemed
+to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down,
+and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together.
+I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow.  I knew what it was,
+now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my watch
+and noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer shock
+came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing,
+I saw a sight!  The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in
+Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the
+street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke!  And here came the
+buggy--overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the
+vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of
+street.
+
+One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds
+and rags down the thoroughfare.  The street car had stopped, the horses
+were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends,
+and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side
+of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an
+impaled madman.  Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could
+reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could
+execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people
+stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded.
+Never was solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.
+
+Of the wonders wrought by "the great earthquake," these were all that
+came under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and wide
+over the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days.
+
+The destruction of property was trifling--the injury to it was wide-
+spread and somewhat serious.
+
+The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply endless.  Gentlemen and
+ladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till a
+late hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into the public streets
+in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all.  One woman
+who had been washing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by the
+ankles as if it were a dressed turkey.  Prominent citizens who were
+supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons in their
+shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands.  Dozens of men with
+necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyes
+or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairy
+stubble.  Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a
+short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had
+not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up.
+
+A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothing
+on but one brief undergarment--met a chambermaid, and exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, what shall I do!  Where shall I go!"
+
+She responded with naive serenity:
+
+"If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store!"
+
+A certain foreign consul's lady was the acknowledged leader of fashion,
+and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the ladies
+in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayed
+themselves similarly.  One man who had suffered considerably and growled
+accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and the
+next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with no
+other apology for clothing than--a bath-towel!  The sufferer rose
+superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife:
+
+"Now that is something like!  Get out your towel my dear!"
+
+The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would
+have covered several acres of ground.  For some days afterward, groups of
+eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long zig-
+zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground.  Four feet of the
+tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned
+around in such a way as to completely stop the draft.
+
+A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of
+one street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up
+the meeting earth like a slender grave.  A lady sitting in her rocking
+and quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut
+twice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like a
+tooth.  She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose
+and went out of there.  One lady who was coming down stairs was
+astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to
+strike her with its club.  They both reached the bottom of the flight at
+the same time,--the woman insensible from the fright.  Her child, born
+some little time afterward, was club-footed.  However--on second
+thought,--if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at
+his own risk.
+
+The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the
+churches.  The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the
+services.  He glanced up, hesitated, and said:
+
+"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there was
+a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood.
+
+After the first shock, an Oakland minister said:
+
+"Keep your seats!  There is no better place to die than this"--
+
+And added, after the third:
+
+"But outside is good enough!"  He then skipped out at the back door.
+
+Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the
+earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before.  There was hardly a
+girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind.  Suspended
+pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the
+earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces
+to the wall!  There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the
+course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out
+of various tanks and buckets settled that.  Thousands of people were made
+so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they
+were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days
+afterward.--Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.
+
+The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco
+gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so
+I will diverge from the subject.
+
+By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
+Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow:
+
+      NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.--G.  M.  Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H.
+      Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores
+      from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese
+      River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet
+      and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of
+      $3,000,000.  The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to
+      Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000,
+      which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one
+      document.  A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the
+      treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large
+      quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible.  The stock in
+      this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable.  The ores
+      of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba
+      mine in Humboldt.  Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with
+      his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber
+      they desired before making public their whereabouts.  Ores from
+      there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in
+      silver and gold--silver predominating.  There is an abundance of
+      wood and water in the District.  We are glad to know that New York
+      capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this
+      region.  Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the
+      mines of the District are very valuable--anything but wild-cat.
+
+Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a
+million!  It was the "blind lead" over again.
+
+Let us not dwell on this miserable matter.  If I were inventing these
+things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true
+to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and
+yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly.  I saw Marshall,
+months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to
+have captured an entire million.  In fact I gathered that he had not then
+received $50,000.  Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of
+uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties.  However,
+when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and
+incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so
+lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and
+foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless,
+as a reporter for a brisk newspaper.  And at last one of the proprietors
+took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect,
+and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the
+disgrace of a dismissal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
+established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
+high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
+three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
+employed to contribute an article a week at $12.  But the journal still
+languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
+pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
+luxury without much caring about the cost of it.  When he grew tired of
+the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a
+peaceful death, and I was out of work again.  I would not mention these
+things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs
+that characterize life on the Pacific coast.  A man could hardly stumble
+into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
+
+For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
+that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay
+my board.  I became a very adept at "slinking."  I slunk from back street
+to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar,
+I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every
+mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after
+wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I
+slunk to my bed.  I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the
+worms.  During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver ten
+cent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest
+the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless,
+might suggest suicide.  I had pawned every thing but the clothes I had
+on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling.
+
+However, I am forgetting.  I did have one other occupation beside that of
+"slinking."  It was the entertaining of a collector (and being
+entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for
+forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal."  This
+man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes oftener.
+He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing.
+He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per
+cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in
+it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might
+for any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, on
+account.  Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free.  He
+immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigars
+and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long,
+luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a
+world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory.
+By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly:
+
+"Well, business is business--can't stay with you always!"--and was off in
+a second.
+
+The idea of pining for a dun!  And yet I used to long for him to come,
+and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his
+visit, when I was expecting him.  But he never collected that bill, at
+last nor any part of it.  I lived to pay it to the banker myself.
+
+Misery loves company.  Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly
+lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
+He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken,
+that I yearned toward him as a brother.  I wanted to claim kinship with
+him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together.  The drawing toward
+each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
+oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not
+speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of
+both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would
+idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home
+lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much
+enjoying our dumb companionship.
+
+Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that.  For our woes were
+identical, almost.  He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and
+this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it.  After losing
+his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a
+boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street;
+from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence
+to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves.  Then;
+for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of
+grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as
+chance threw it in his way.  He had ceased to show his face in daylight,
+now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and
+cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
+
+This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendid
+creature.  He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read
+and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of
+satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes
+and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a
+crown.
+
+He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most
+pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies.  He had been
+without a penny for two months.  He had shirked about obscure streets,
+among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to
+him.  But at last he was driven abroad in daylight.  The cause was
+sufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could
+not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding.  He came along a back
+street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he
+could trade his life away for a morsel to eat.  The sight of the bread
+doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine
+what one might do if one only had it.
+
+Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--looked
+again--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to try
+them, then looked again.  It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspired
+delusion--it was a silver dime!
+
+He snatched it--gloated over it; doubted it--bit it--found it genuine--
+choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah.  Then he looked
+around--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where it
+was before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he
+did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury of
+finding it.  He walked around it, viewing it from different points; then
+sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs
+and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again.
+Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket.  He
+idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to
+take it out and look at it.  By and by he went home to his lodgings--an
+empty queens-ware hogshead,--and employed himself till night trying to
+make up his mind what to buy with it.  But it was hard to do.  To get the
+most for it was the idea.  He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he
+could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a fish-
+ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one fish-ball"
+there.  At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain, and some
+radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee--a pint at least--
+and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the eighth of
+an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that in the
+cutting of it.  At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still his
+mind was not made up.  He turned out and went up Merchant street, still
+ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men.
+
+He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic
+in the city, and stopped.  It was a place where he had often dined, in
+better days, and Martin knew him well.  Standing aside, just out of the
+range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show
+window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and
+some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in
+there and take whatever he wanted.  He chewed his stick with a hungry
+interest as he warmed to his subject.  Just at this juncture he was
+conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched
+his arm.  He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very
+allegory of Hunger!  It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
+with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded
+piteously.  This phantom said:
+
+"Come with me--please."
+
+He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the
+passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put
+out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
+
+"Friend--stranger--look at me!  Life is easy to you--you go about, placid
+and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten
+your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and
+thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world--
+but you've never suffered!  You don't know what trouble is--you don't
+know what misery is--nor hunger!  Look at me!  Stranger have pity on a
+poor friendless, homeless dog!  As God is my judge, I have not tasted
+food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie!  Give
+me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything--
+twenty-five cents!  Do it, stranger--do it, please.  It will be nothing
+to you, but life to me.  Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick
+the dust before you!  I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the
+very ground you walk on!  Only twenty-five cents!  I am famishing--
+perishing--starving by inches!  For God's sake don't desert me!"
+
+Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths.  He
+reflected.  Thought again.  Then an idea struck him, and he said:
+
+"Come with me."
+
+He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated
+him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said:
+
+"Order what you want, friend.  Charge it to me, Mr. Martin."
+
+"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin.
+
+Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the
+man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents
+a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two
+dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destruction
+had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went
+down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and
+three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
+
+Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from
+the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the
+decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him.
+We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five
+other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest.  Yet a
+flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this
+grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years
+before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming
+hive, the centre of the city.  When the mines gave out the town fell into
+decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared--streets, dwellings, shops,
+everything--and left no sign.  The grassy slopes were as green and smooth
+and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed.  The mere
+handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up spread,
+grow and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and die, and
+pass away like a dream.  With it their hopes had died, and their zest of
+life.  They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceased
+to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward
+their early homes.  They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world and
+been forgotten of the world.  They were far from telegraphs and
+railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the
+events that stirred the globe's great populations, dead to the common
+interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind.
+It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy
+exile that fancy can imagine.--One of my associates in this locality, for
+two or three months, was a man who had had a university education; but
+now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded, rough-
+clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings and
+soliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin and
+Greek sentences--dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughts
+of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure; a
+tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; a
+man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end.
+
+In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining
+which is seldom or never mentioned in print.  It is called "pocket
+mining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little
+corner.  The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as
+in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are
+very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one
+you reap a rich and sudden harvest.  There are not now more than twenty
+pocket miners in that entire little region.  I think I know every one of
+them personally.  I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the
+hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make
+a snuff-box--his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time--and
+then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of
+his shovel.  I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two
+hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a
+dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night
+was gone.  And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual,
+and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting
+pockets again happy and content.  This is the most fascinating of all the
+different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of
+victims to the lunatic asylum.
+
+Pocket hunting is an ingenious process.  You take a spadeful of earth
+from the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it
+gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment.
+Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the
+heaviest, it has sought the bottom.  Among the sediment you will find
+half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads.  You are
+delighted.  You move off to one side and wash another pan.  If you find
+gold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan.  If you
+find no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you are
+on the right scent.
+
+You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up the
+hill--for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich
+deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been
+washed down the hill, spreading farther and farther apart as they
+wandered.  And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and
+narrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows that
+you are outside the spread of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the
+hill your lines have converged to a point--a single foot from that point
+you cannot find any gold.  Your breath comes short and quick, you are
+feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you
+pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down,
+they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic
+interest--and all at once you strike it!  Up comes a spadeful of earth
+and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of
+gold.  Sometimes that one spadeful is all--$500.  Sometimes the nest
+contains $10,000, and it takes you three or four days to get it all out.
+The pocket-miners tell of one nest that yielded $60,000 and two men
+exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10,000 to a
+party who never got $300 out of it afterward.
+
+The hogs are good pocket hunters.  All the summer they root around the
+bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners
+long for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash
+them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket.  Two pockets
+were found in this way by the same man in one day.  One had $5,000 in it
+and the other $8,000.  That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had a
+cent for about a year.
+
+In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in
+the afternoon and return every night with household supplies.  Part of
+the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest
+on a great boulder that lay beside the path.  In the course of thirteen
+years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it.  By and
+by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat.  They began to
+amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a sledge-
+hammer.  They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with gold.
+That boulder paid them $800 afterward.  But the aggravating circumstance
+was that these "Greasers" knew that there must be more gold where that
+boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and found what
+was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced.  It took
+three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000.  The two American
+miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they take turn
+about in getting up early in the morning to curse those Mexicans--and
+when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native American is
+gifted above the sons of men.
+
+I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because it
+is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged
+that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches
+to novelty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+I heard him talking about this animal once.  He said:
+
+"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 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 power 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 ever, ever see.
+You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for pocket
+mining, why he was just born for it.
+
+"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 me,'
+'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 he 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.
+
+"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 we 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
+him.  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 always agin new fangled arrangements--somehow he
+never could abide'em.  You know how it is with old habits.  But by an' by
+Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never
+could 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.
+
+"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 him 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.
+
+"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 you
+think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experience
+of quartz minin', but I think different'--an' then he turned on his heel
+'n' marched off home without ever saying another word.
+
+"That was jest his style.  An' may be you won't believe it, but after
+that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as what he was.
+An' by an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd '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 me,' 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 inspiration!"
+
+I said, "Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining was
+remarkable, considering how he came by it.  Couldn't you ever cure him of
+it?"
+
+"Cure him!  No!  When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was always 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again,
+without a cent.  When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had 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 Enterprise, 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
+Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employees.
+
+We sailed in the propeller Ajax, 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.
+
+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 people 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.
+
+Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life.  When I knew
+him on board the Ajax, 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.
+
+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 smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he
+lived."  And he had conscientiously kept it.  That is to say, he
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Admiral, are you certain about that circumstance concerning the
+clergymen you mentioned the other day?"--referring to a piece of the
+Admiral's manufactured history.
+
+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.
+
+"Certain of it?  Am I certain 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 certain about a bit
+of ABC stuff that the very southern niggers know all about."
+
+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:
+
+"Now 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,
+this sounds something like--this is history--this 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."
+
+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:
+
+"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,
+manufactured history, without a word of truth in it.]  "Very well, I say.
+But Admiral, why overlook the Willis and Morgan case in South Carolina?
+You are too well informed a man not to know all about that circumstance.
+Your arguments and your conversations have shown you to be 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, two months 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 Courier 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 cause 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 you, 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:
+
+I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night--especially 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 Ajax in a storm.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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!
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Their work speaks for itself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 traits 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:
+
+"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on your
+cheek."
+
+The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!"
+
+A friend of mine, J.  Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka
+warranting him to be in excellent condition.
+
+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.
+
+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 today 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.'
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+
+"Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo."
+
+Translated, that means "When we were marching through Georgia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu 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 for ward, sits up like a Major General and goes
+sweeping by like the wind.
+
+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 ohia; 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 taro plant.
+
+The taro 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 it 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.
+
+Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awa
+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 awa 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 awa 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.
+
+We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish,
+and eats the article raw and alive!  Let us change the subject.
+
+In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed.  All the 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.
+
+At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula--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.
+
+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 hula hula 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.
+
+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 fifty-five thousand
+in something over eighty years!
+
+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.
+
+A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said:
+
+"Good morning, your reverence.  Preach in the stone church yonder, no
+doubt?"
+
+"No, I don't.  I'm not a preacher."
+
+"Really, I beg your pardon, Captain.  I trust you had a good season.  How
+much oil"--
+
+"Oil?  What do you take me for?  I'm not a whaler."
+
+"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.
+
+"Major General in the household troops, no doubt?  Minister of the
+Interior, likely?  Secretary of war?  First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?
+Commissioner of the Royal"--
+
+"Stuff!  I'm no official.  I'm not connected in any way with the
+Government."
+
+"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?"
+
+"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived
+from America."
+
+"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"--
+
+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".
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+I still quote from my journal:
+
+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!"
+
+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 pray you to death.  Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely
+because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of
+damaging prayer.  This praying an individual to death seems absurb 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.
+
+In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was
+customary, but a plurality of husbands 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want
+to, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!--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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting--high
+dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.
+
+Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber--an
+office as easy as it is magnificent.
+
+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 worshiper 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the
+"royal fleet," (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)
+
+And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief 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.
+
+Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose population
+falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+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 thirty days, 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:
+
+      After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering
+      the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder
+      where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to
+      "Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured:
+
+Undertaker.
+Royal School.  Kawaiahao School.  Roman Catholic School.  Maemae School.
+Honolulu Fire Department.
+Mechanics' Benefit Union.
+Attending Physicians.
+Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private
+Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private Lands of Her late 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.
+
+I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the
+royal mausoleum:
+
+      As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed
+      handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which
+      the long column of mourners passed to the tomb.  The coffin was
+      borne through the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and
+      his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls,
+      Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van
+      Valkenburgh).  Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a frame-
+      work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay and fall
+      to pieces, or, forestalling this, until another scion of royalty
+      dies.  At this point of the proceedings the multitude set up such a
+      heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again.
+
+The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry--the wailing 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+      "On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he
+      had lived, in the faith of his country.  It was his misfortune not
+      to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced
+      his religious aspirations.  Judged by his advantages and compared
+      with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not
+      only great, but good.  To this day his memory warms the heart and
+      elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians.  They are proud of
+      their old warrior King; they love his name; his deeds form their
+      historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even
+      by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes the firmest
+      pillar of the throne of his dynasty.
+
+      "In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of
+      three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when
+      their national value and the estimation in which they were held are
+      considered.  The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while,
+      were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final
+      resting place is now lost.  There was a proverb current among the
+      common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they
+      made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they
+      vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations."
+
+The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the 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:
+
+      "When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable
+      to cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for
+      the god' (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.'
+      The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of
+      worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the
+      evening.  They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his
+      life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon
+      which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of
+      death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu
+      (pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or
+      sacred.  The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and
+      the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred
+      to the purpose for which it was set apart.  In the above case the
+      victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice]
+      in which destruction impended, was past.  It is doubtful whether
+      Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to
+      sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred for the
+      King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor.
+      This information was derived from Liholiho, his son.
+
+      "After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not
+      strength to turn himself in his bed.  When another season,
+      consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said
+      to his son, Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I
+      am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.'  When his
+      devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a
+      certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god,
+      suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might
+      be removed.  The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a
+      bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae.
+      Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses
+      were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in
+      them he became so very weak as not to receive food.  After lying
+      there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he
+      was very low, returned him to his own house.  In the evening he was
+      carried to the eating house,  where he took a little food in his
+      mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup of water.  The chiefs
+      requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply, and
+      was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near midnight--ten
+      o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as
+      before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him.  Then
+      Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger
+      brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your
+      dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehameha
+      inquired, 'What do you say?' Kaikioewa repeated, 'Your counsels for
+      us.'
+
+      "He then said, 'Move on in my good way and--.' He could proceed no
+      further.  The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed him.
+      Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after
+      which he was taken back to the house.  About twelve he was carried
+      once more to the house for eating, into which his head entered,
+      while his body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining.  It
+      should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from
+      one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then in force.
+      There were at that time six houses (huts) connected with an
+      establishment--one was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an
+      eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to
+      manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals,
+      the women might dwell in seclusion.
+
+      "The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this
+      was at two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his
+      name.  As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house
+      to order those in it to go out.  There were two aged persons thus
+      directed to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love
+      to the King, by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained.  The
+      children also were sent away.  Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and
+      the chiefs had a consultation.  One of them spoke thus: 'This is my
+      thought--we will eat him raw. [This sounds suspicious, in view of
+      the fact that all Sandwich Island historians, white and black,
+      protest that cannibalism never existed in the islands.  However,
+      since they only proposed to "eat him raw" we "won't count that".
+      But it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked
+      him.--M.  T.]  Kaahumanu (one of the dead King's widows) replied,
+      'Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with
+      his successor.  Our part in him--his breath--has departed; his
+      remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.'
+
+      "After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated
+      house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the
+      new King.  The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog
+      was baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a
+      god, the King at the same time repeating the customary prayers.
+
+      "Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said:
+      'I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting
+      persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body.  If you obtain
+      one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but
+      after it leaves this house four will be required.  If delayed until
+      we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is
+      deposited in the grave there must be fifteen.  To-morrow morning
+      there will be a tabu, and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that
+      time, forty men must die.'
+
+      "Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, 'Where
+      shall be the residence of King Liholiho?'  They replied, 'Where,
+      indeed?  You, of all men, ought to know.'  Then the priest observed,
+      'There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.'
+      The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited.
+      The priest added, 'These are proper places for the King's residence;
+      but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.'  This was
+      agreed to.  It was now break of day.  As he was being carried to the
+      place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and
+      they wailed.  When the corpse was removed from the house to the
+      tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain
+      man who was ardently attached to the deceased.  He leaped upon the
+      chiefs who were carrying the King's body; he desired to die with him
+      on account of his love.  The chiefs drove him away.  He persisted in
+      making numerous attempts, which were unavailing.  Kalaimoka also had
+      it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio.
+
+      "The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train
+      departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to
+      avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead.  At this time if a
+      chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence
+      in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and
+      the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of
+      defilement terminated.  If the deceased were not a chief, the house
+      only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body.
+      Such were the laws on this subject.
+
+      "On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala,
+      the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a
+      chief's death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts.
+      Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also,
+      put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had
+      prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that
+      Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age.
+      When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places sticks with a strip
+      of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun's brother,
+      came in a state of intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the
+      sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends
+      had been instrumental in the King's death.  On this account they
+      were subjected to abuse."
+
+You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is.  This great Queen,
+Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" during the frightful orgies 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.
+
+Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives--
+hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs.
+
+Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for 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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+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!
+
+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 tree in it!
+They were all laden with fruit.
+
+At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor.
+This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands.
+It takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter.  It 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 sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietor
+of the orchard attributed his-success.
+
+We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive.
+The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons.  [NOTE.--The first crop 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 two tons
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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.
+
+"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 straight 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--please let me, give
+you the matter, exactly as it occurred.  I truly will not abuse your
+confidence."
+
+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:
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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:
+
+      "Polygamy dissembles majesty; extracts redeem polarity; causes
+      hitherto exist.  Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and
+      condemn.  Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall
+      allay?  We fear not.  Yrxwly,
+                               HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
+
+"But there did not seem to be a word about turnips.  There seemed to 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.  Now 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 Tribune, 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:
+
+      "Bolivia extemporizes mackerel; borax esteems polygamy; sausages
+      wither in the east.  Creation perdu, is done; for woes inherent one
+      can damn.  Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall
+      allay.  My beer's out.  Yrxwly,
+                                         HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
+
+"I was evidently overworked.  My comprehension was impaired.  Therefore I
+gave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task greatly
+refreshed.  The letter now took this form:
+
+      "Poultices do sometimes choke swine; tulips reduce posterity; causes
+      leather to resist.  Our notions empower wisdom, her let's afford
+      while we can.  Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we'll wean
+      him from his filly.  We feel hot.
+                                    Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
+
+"I was still not satisfied.  These generalities did not meet 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.
+
+"Three days passed by, and I read the note again.  Again its tenor had
+changed.  It now appeared to say:
+
+      "Potations do sometimes wake wines; turnips restrain passion; causes
+      necessary to state.  Infest the poor widow; her lord's effects will
+      be void.  But dirt, bathing, etc., etc., followed unfairly, will
+      worm him from his folly--so swear not.
+                                              Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
+
+"This was more like it.  But I was unable to proceed.  I was too 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:
+
+      "DEAR SIR: I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note.  It
+      cannot be possible, Sir, that 'turnips restrain passion'--at least
+      the study or contemplation of turnips cannot--for it is this very
+      employment that has scorched our poor friend's mind and sapped his
+      bodily strength.--But if they do restrain it, will you bear with us
+      a little further and explain how they should be prepared?  I observe
+      that you say 'causes necessary to state,' but you have omitted to
+      state them.
+
+      "Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested
+      motives in this matter--to call it by no harsher term.  But I assure
+      you, dear sir, that if I seem to be 'infesting the widow,' it is all
+      seeming, and void of reality.  It is from no seeking of mine that I
+      am in this position.  She asked me, herself, to write you.  I never
+      have infested her--indeed I scarcely know her.  I do not infest
+      anybody.  I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right
+      as I can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out
+      insinuations.  As for 'her lord and his effects,' they are of no
+      interest to me.  I trust I have effects enough of my own--shall
+      endeavor to get along with them, at any rate, and not go mousing
+      around to get hold of somebody's that are 'void.'  But do you not
+      see?--this woman is a widow--she has no 'lord.'  He is dead--or
+      pretended to be, when they buried him.  Therefore, no amount of
+      'dirt, bathing,' etc., etc., howsoever 'unfairly followed' will be
+      likely to 'worm him from his folly'--if being dead and a ghost is
+      'folly.'  Your closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled for;
+      and if report says true you might have applied it to yourself, sir,
+      with more point and less impropriety.
+                               Very Truly Yours, SIMON ERICKSON.
+
+"In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did what would have saved 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:
+
+      [Translation.]
+      'Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips remain passive: cause
+      unnecessary to state.  Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will
+      be vain.  But diet, bathing, etc.  etc., followed uniformly, will
+      wean him from his folly--so fear not.
+                                         Yours, HORACE GREELEY.'
+
+"But alas, it was too late, gentlemen--too late.  The criminal delay 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."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to
+every school-boy in the wide world--Kealakekua 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.
+
+Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail-shell,
+winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide 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, Kealakekua, 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 Lono, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 Lono, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+     "Near this spot fell
+      CAPTAIN JAMES COOK,
+      The Distinguished Circumnavigator,
+      Who Discovered these Islands
+      A. D.  1778."
+
+After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the
+last god Lono.  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.
+
+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 & 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.
+
+Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to
+the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+I have spoken, several times, of the god Lono--I may as well furnish two
+or three sentences concerning him.
+
+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 Lono.
+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.
+
+Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death;
+but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if he
+was a god.
+
+Only a mile or so from Kealakekua 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.
+
+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 tabu.  His
+assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and
+high-spirited, and hated the tabu 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,
+Kaahumahu 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!
+
+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 tabu is broken!  the tabu is broken!"
+
+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.
+
+The tabu 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!
+
+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.
+
+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 a 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 tabu were dead in the
+land!
+
+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!"
+
+The nation was without a religion.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at
+Honaunan in his canoe--price two dollars--reasonable enough, for a sea
+voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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?
+
+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 tabu, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau,
+where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel.  Next day 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.
+
+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 ten miles in circumference!  Here was a yawning pit upon
+whose floor the armies of Russia could camp, and have room to spare.
+
+Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end from where 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition,
+because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrapping up in blankets,
+for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+
+The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 feet.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 five miles broad, in places, and two hundred feet deep,
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+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.
+
+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 failing 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.
+
+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 bite 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 chew 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 was a serpent.
+
+In due course of time our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usually
+pronounced To-a-hi--and before we find fault with this elaborate
+orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result, let
+us lop off the ugh 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 canon 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?
+
+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 up 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 up 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 ten miles 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 twenty-seven miles in
+circumference!  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.
+
+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 totally shut out land and ocean--
+not a vestige of anything 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.
+
+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.
+
+It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory
+of it will remain with me always.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII.
+
+I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani.  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:
+
+"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to
+have seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir!  Smoke!
+I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you 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 caked 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."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Beg 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 obliged to say that you could not, and you would not
+ever again refer to this tree as a large 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."
+
+Captain Saltmarsh--"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad--you're heaving too
+taut.  You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more than
+eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle I ever see, a hunting
+for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big around as a beer
+cask, and you know that your own self, Markiss."
+
+"Hear the man talk!  Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't
+I explain it?  Answer me, didn't I?  Didn't I say I wished you could have
+seen it when 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 explain 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-ever, con-found it?  I don't see why you
+want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's
+never done you any harm."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"But, my dear sir, there was nothing 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;
+there was a beast!--there 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, you 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 drop 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!"
+
+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:
+
+"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that 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 twins!  You don't know anything 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.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar.
+
+The line of points represents an interval of years.  At the end of 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 lie.  And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead,
+and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he
+was 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 was dead; and would he have told the truth if he
+had been in his right mind?  No, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII.
+
+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.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+           "Doors open at 7 1/2.  The trouble will begin at 8."
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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 respond!"
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+"Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger?--that is, is it critical, or can
+you get it off easy?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+The tummult 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.
+
+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.
+
+All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had a
+abundance of money.  All's well that ends well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I tell you I don't like this place at night," said Mike the agent.
+
+"Well, don't speak so loud," I said.  "You needn't remind anybody that we
+are here."
+
+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:
+
+"Don't!"
+
+He ejaculated sharply:
+
+"Your watch!  Your money!"
+
+I said:
+
+"You can have them with pleasure--but take the pistol away from my face,
+please.  It makes me shiver."
+
+"No remarks!  Hand out your money!"
+
+"Certainly--I--"
+
+"Put up your hands!  Don't you go for a weapon!  Put 'em up!  Higher!"
+
+I held them above my head.
+
+A pause.  Then:
+
+"Are you going to hand out your money or not?"
+
+I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:
+
+Certainly!  I--"
+
+"Put up your hands!  Do you want your head blown off?  Higher!"
+
+I put them above my head again.
+
+Another pause.
+
+Are you going to hand out your money or not?  Ah-ah--again?  Put up your
+hands!  By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!"
+
+"Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you.  You tell me to give 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--do, if you please!  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 had a mother--or a--grandmother--or a--"
+
+"Cheese it!  Will you give up your money, or have we got to--.  There--
+there--none of that!  Put up your hands!"
+
+"Gentlemen--I know you are gentlemen by your--"
+
+"Silence!  If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and
+places more fitting.  This is a serious business."
+
+"You prick the marrow of my opinion.  The funerals I have attended in my
+time were comedies compared to it.  Now I think--"
+
+"Curse your palaver!  Your money!--your money!--your money!  Hold!--put
+up your hands!"
+
+"Gentlemen, listen to reason.  You see how I am situated--now don't put
+those pistols so close--I smell the powder.
+
+"You see how I am situated.  If I had four hands--so that I could hold up
+two and--"
+
+"Throttle him!  Gag him!  Kill him!"
+
+"Gentlemen, don't!  Nobody's watching the other fellow.  Why don't some
+of you--.  Ouch!  Take it away, please!
+
+"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--"
+
+"Search him Beauregard--and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wags
+it again.  Help Beauregard, Stonewall."
+
+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:
+
+They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands
+above his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said:
+
+"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!"
+
+Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the
+other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia.
+
+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:
+
+"The time's up, now, aint it?"
+
+"No, you keep still.  Do you want to take any chances with these bloody
+savages?"
+
+Presently Mike said:
+
+"Now the time's up, anyway.  I'm freezing."
+
+"Well freeze.  Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket.
+Maybe the time is up, but how do we know?--got no watch to tell by.
+I mean to give them good measure.  I calculate to stand here fifteen
+minutes or die.  Don't you move."
+
+So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract.
+When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold 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.
+
+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 one highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they
+desired to see the author of this volume climb a tree.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+MORAL.
+
+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 have 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.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX. A.
+
+BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY.
+
+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 be 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 which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the
+hated American nation.  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.
+
+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.
+
+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 could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and
+took that--he proclaimed himself a God!
+
+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 after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and
+his heavenly status advanced accordingly.
+
+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 for forty years these creatures have been driven,
+driven, driven, relentlessly!  and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed,
+despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither 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 they 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+B.
+THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.
+
+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?"
+
+Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The Mormon
+Prophet," it transpired that--
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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:
+
+"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 ultimatum 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."
+
+The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one
+hundred and twenty.
+
+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!"
+
+An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of
+the occasion:
+
+"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson;
+but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while
+threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the
+U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.
+
+"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, he commenced his task alone.  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."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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:'
+
+"1.  The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown
+by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S.  Marshall Rodgers.
+
+"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
+
+"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.
+
+"4.  The failure of the Deseret News, 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.
+
+"5.  The testimony of the children saved from the massacre.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+C.
+CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED
+
+If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill,
+Nevada.  If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself 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.
+
+[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people
+mercilessly in his little "People's Tribune," 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:]
+
+From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870.
+
+SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED.
+
+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.
+
+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:]
+
+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.
+
+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:]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you."
+
+I replied, "Indeed!  Why he sent me word that he would call on me here
+this afternoon at four o'clock!"
+
+"O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office,
+and that will do as well--come on in, Winters wants to consult with you
+alone.  He's got something to say to you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+[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.:]
+
+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.
+
+Traps commonly are not set for benevolence.
+[His body-guard is shut out:]
+
+THE TRAP INSIDE.
+I followed Lynch down stairs.  At their foot a door to the left 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.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"Nor did I come here to insult you.  I have already told you that I am
+here for a very different purpose."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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.!  No, 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."
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed
+"What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket?" saying "That's what I refer to."
+
+To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the 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."
+
+"If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?"
+
+"I must decline to say."
+
+"Then, by--, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly."
+
+"Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.:]
+
+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
+
+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.
+
+Second.--I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could
+possibly be construed into aggression.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr.
+Winters said:
+
+"That's not satisfactory, and it won't do;" and then addressing himself
+to Mr. Lynch, he further said: "How does it strike you?"
+
+"Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything."
+
+"Nor do I," said Winters; "in fact, I regard it as adding insult to
+injury.  Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that.  You are not the
+man who can pull wool over my eyes."
+
+"That, sir, is the only retraction I can write."
+
+"No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at 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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Do you know them to be true?"
+
+"Of my own personal knowledge I do not."
+
+"Why then did you print them?"
+
+"Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but
+pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a
+correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable."
+
+"Don't you know that I know they are false?"
+
+"If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an
+investigation."
+
+"And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you may
+choose to write and print?"
+
+To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said:
+
+"Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough.  I want your final
+answer--did you write that article or not?"
+
+"I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it."
+
+"Did you not see it before it was printed?"
+
+"Most certainly, sir."
+
+"And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?"
+
+"Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance.
+Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I
+assume full, sole and personal responsibility."
+
+"And do you then retract it or not?"
+
+"Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded
+must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies,
+then I ask a few minutes for prayer."
+
+"Prayer!---you, this is not your hour for prayer--your time to pray was
+when you were writing those--lying charges.  Will you sign or not?"
+
+"You already have my answer."
+
+"What!  do you still refuse?"
+
+"I do, sir."
+
+"Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+First--To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after
+making actual though not legal threats against my life.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+                              CONRAD WIEGAND.
+
+
+[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.]
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Roughing It
+by Mark Twain
+