JOHN ATCHISON.

 

            THE chief fault with John Atchison was that he had too much courage and energy. These traits are seldom charged against a man as faults, but in the case of John Atchison they were; for his daring and his faith in himself that he could by his native force drive anything through to success, caused him to make many failures. They swayed his judgment and often caused him to attempt the impossible.

            In 1849 he loaded his household goods and gods on a wagon, somewhere in Illinois, if I remember correctly, and with oxen for a propelling power, started across the plains. Several other families fitted out the same way were in the company. They drove through to Salt Lake valley, and stopped for several weeks to rest their livestock, and, so far as possible, to exchange poor cattle for fresh ones.

            Then they started west again, taking the northern route, and struck the Sierras in the vicinity of Honey Lake. It was then November and every dictate of prudence would have counseled them to camp there for the winter.

            But when told that it was but a little more than one hundred miles to the Sacramento valley, and as no winter snows had fallen, Atchison, who was the master spirit of the party, determined to push through.

            A man who had been stationed there to meet and direct emigrants advised them to take the Lassen Pass, since called the Fremont Pass, and they started. When over the summit and really not more than twenty miles from where storms change from snow to rain, they encountered a real Sierra snowstorm. The snow fell five feet in a night and the temperature fell to zero.

            Nearly all the cattle perished that night. There was nothing in their stomachs. When they could not longer stand they sank into the snow and the cold brought them speedy deaths. Mrs. Atchison saved her cow by taking her into a corner of her own tent.

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            There were women in every wagon and a good many children in the company. The memory of that night was a horror to them all the rest of their days.

            When the morning dawned they threw away everything they had except what of clothing they could wear and such food as they could carry and pack on the few cattle left, and started on foot for the west. Fortunately the mountains on that side were precipitous and with every mile traveled they descended two or three hundred feet in altitude, and before night they had passed through the snow belt. Had they "tried the pass" one day sooner they would have escaped the snow ; had they delayed one day longer the chances would have been a hundred to one that the snow would have been their final winding sheet.

            Arrived at the Sacramento River, they could travel no further, yet it was imperative that they should move on.

            Packed on one of the oxen was a bale of small rope and some axes, augurs and other carpenter's tools. Under Atchison's direction the men felled some small trees on the river bank, cut and trimmed them, hewed off the rounded sides, put them together, lashed them with this coil of rope and pegged them with slats. They caulked them with rags of their clothing and pitch from the trees and on this frail scow loaded the women and children, and "cast off." Frail as it was, it floated the company down to where they got help.

            I have stated the above to give an idea of the invincible soul of John Atchison.

            He lived nearly thirty years after that, but there was never a new mining camp found that he did not go with the first crowd to it ; never an enterprise suggested that seemed too hazardous for him ; never a chance proposed that he would not take.

            He followed the trail in the early fifties to Garden Valley below Camptonville, located the valley, built a house there ; and that was his home, while he followed placer mining for several years.

            He went with almost the first company to the Comstock ; "made a stake" there, and then explored Nevada, Idaho, and

278 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

Utah, locating or bonding and selling mines until seized with an illness brought on by exposure, he died in Salt Lake City in the late seventies.

            It may be said that he never rested from the time he helped construct that unique raft on the bank of the Sacramento river until he died. His name was a household word over all northern California, and everywhere he was held as a man at once indomitable and irrepressible.

            When appealed to for advice on matters in which he had no personal interest, his mind was always strong and clear, and the counsel he gave was always shrewd and wise.

            But when intent upon some scheme of his own, he often failed in judgment; that is, he permitted his sanguine belief in himself to override it.

            Had he been born a thousand miles further west, he probably would have been a trapper and hunter ; had he been born a thousand miles further east, he might have been one of those mighty men of affairs -- a Vanderbilt or a Tom Scott, for he had the ability and his resourcefulness was inexhaustible.

            He was one of that class of men that no matter what his surroundings may be, he always gravitates to the top and is hailed as a leader.

            He might have been a John the Baptist except that he never would have acknowledged that a greater than he was coming behind.

            He was most sincere, and his highest dream was to make an independence for those he loved.

            The trouble was that he was not only ready to attempt anything that looked good to him, but he would pledge all he had that it would make good. And all the time he was carrying a host of decrepit friends and relatives.

            Thus he wore himself out and died before his time, without achieving anything that will last in the memories of men, when in truth thousands of men with not half his equipment, not half his courage, and not a tithe of his energy, have gone into the records as great men.

            On his monument should be embossed : "He died of too much energy and courage."