MOSES KIRKPATRICK.

 

            BORN in Kentucky in 1829, educated in an Indiana college, and then a three-years course in the Louisville, Kentucky, law school, he went to St. Louis a partner with the great Blair family of lawyers. He practiced there until the "call of the wild" from California drew him west.

            My recollection is that he was, so to speak, an aristocratic emigrant. Others drove oxen attached to red wagons. He engineered a mule team and his wagon was blue with red fretwork on the box borders. That "fretwork" is more appropriate than ordinary mortals can understand, for there was a good deal of fretting in those emigrant trains. There was a great deal of labor attached to it, and then there were other features to try the nerves of men and women. The awful stillness of the desert is something which, after a few days, gives the one who has borne it a sense of relief to hear some over- worn teamster consign his team to perdition in a language which is an improvement over that which "our army in Flanders" used.

            Then after the silence of the day, the voices of the night come, for wolves "bay the moon" as well as clogs, and the owl's hoot, coming to the ears of a half asleep man, fills his brain with visions of a mighty bird of prey that is swooping down to carry off his team, his wagon and himself.

            I recall that once I stopped at old man Phillips' Peoria hotel, fourteen miles from Marysville.

            The old man drank a little in the forenoon, ate his dinner at 12 m., then slept for an hour, and then drank a little more to be ready for supper. I was young in those days, and while waiting for dinner the old man was looking me over. In the language of that day, he was "sizing me up."

            Finally he said : "Young: man, how long have you been in this country?' I told him.

            "Cross the plains?" was his next question. I said, "No ; I came by steamer via Panama.'

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            "Well, you don't know anything," was his response, and continuing- he said : "I lived with my wife twenty-five years and thought I had got acquainted with her, but we had not been out a week from home on the way here until I found I had never had an introduction to her. I had fixed up a fine wagon, had it covered with all care, then had a fly put over the cover to chase the heat away.

            "I drove the oxen, my wife sat under the double cover, for all the time I was getting the outfit ready, my thought was, "I must make the old lady as comfortable as possible.'

            "But the fourth day out I halted the team at sundown and began to make camp.

            "Then my wife put her head out from beneath the wagon cover and said: 'Are you going to camp here?'

            "I told her that I thought I would, whereupon she remarked in a high soprano voice that 'It is the meanest place I've seen today. Why didn't you camp over there?'

            "Things grew complicated more and more for a week until one day I said to her : 'Mrs. Phillips, you are my wife and it's all right, but if you were not my wife, I would -- I stopped right there and went after the oxen just to work off my steam, and I had 'em on a gallop in a minute."

            Reaching California, Kirkpatrick opened a law office in Camptonville or Downieville. There were some great lawyers there -- Thornton, Stewart, Rising, Meredith, Taylor, Dunn, Hawley -- a splendid array of wonderful young lawyers, but from the first Kirkpatrick was up in the front rank and soon made a state reputation. He served one term in the legislature, and was on the direct road to political preferment.

            He went with the others to the Comstock, and the law firm of Stewart, Kirkpatrick and Rising was soon leading.

            As explained elsewhere, the Comstock at first was found pitching to the west. The great lode is high on the mountain side at the base of Mount Davidson. All the way down the hill to the east for a third of a mile the hillside was covered with strata quartz, and all these were located, some of them three deep.

            The lode pitched to the west, and as great an authority

306 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

as Professor Silliman said the heart of the lode would be found under Mount Davidson.

            But both Professor Stewart and Professor Clayton disagreed with that theory, declaring that there must be a fault somewhere, that the natural pitch was to the east. When a depth of about 200 feet was reached the ledge gave out. Sinking a few feet and then drifting east a few feet, it was found again, pitching to the east.

            Then the question at once arose : Who owned the ground the surface of which had been located? It was finally decided that the men or company who owned the apex of a lode owned it in all its depth, no matter where it led. But it required years of litigation to establish that rule, and some of the cases involved millions, such fees were paid as were never heard of before, which brought such an array of legal talent to the Comstock as was never previously seen in so small a place. Among their names Kirkpatrick's was in the front rank. At one time he left Nevada for a couple of years, but the spell of the place drew him back.

            The crash of the Sierra Nevada mine broke half the coast, and Kirkpatrick was one of the victims. He removed to Salt Lake City, then was engaged by the late Marcus Daly to go to Butte, Montana, to look after the great Anaconda legal business. He went to Ohio to try one mining case, and his handling of it evoked the surprise and admiration of the foremost lawyers of that state.

            Three or four years later he visited Salt Lake City on business, was seized with illness about 5  p. m., and died at 10 a. m. next day.

            He was one of the great lawyers of the coast, one of the foremost men. In his home he was the most devoted husband and farther; we doubt whether he ever uttered a cross word there.

            The grief over his death still lasts, though it is more than twenty years since he passed away. He helped lay the foundations of three states ; for forty years he was a power on the west coast, and he went to his grave covered with honors, and without one reproach following him.