THE OLD BOYS.

 

            Old California days are always coming back upon me in thought, and perhaps it will not be unwelcome if I devote a chapter to the old boys. California was not settled like any other state. As late as 1848 the United States was a poor country in wealth. It was rated a little higher than Turkey, not much above Spain in its material wealth.

            At that time the Sacramento, the American, the Feather, the Yuba, the Stanislaus, the Merced, the San Joaquin and the other rivers were flowing on and on, serene and unvexed, to the sea. Their banks had never been disturbed by the prospector's tread.

            But the hour came at length when the nation was to advance to a higher plane, about to take up a new station among the earth's nations ; and treasures were needed for that forward march ; so they were released.

            In those first days California w r as fairyland. It was beautiful beyond description. Nature seemed to have gathered there all her glories. The mountains were a rugged back- ground for pictures such as angels might have painted with the brushes of the Infinite, with dyes from the very fountains of light.

            The valleys were carpeted with flowers, the mountains looked up to from the valleys were azure until where the higher range asserted itself- -there their brows were white as a planet's light.

            The air was soft and sweet, and came to the faces of men like a caress. The sunlight was the crowning glory.

            Sun-kissed seas smote all the long coast ; the mountain tops were crowned with such forests as the newcomers had never beheld, never dreamed of before, while over real golden sands the rivers followed their channels to the sea.

            Such was the land that greeted the newcomers, and in such a land nothing seemed impossible save man's capacity to grasp the opportunities before and around him, to dare to reach

118 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

for and seize the triumphs which Hope painted on the retinas of brave eyes.

            The people who were gathered there were the pick of the world. Young men were in the majority, every state was represented and the outside world supplied its quota. There were some bad men, of course. I have seen a coyote among the orange groves of Riverside.

            What a broadening of horizons came then, and to hearts what a melting away of prejudices was experienced; how the innate divinity in royal souls shone out.

            Besides the young there were older ones, those who had fled from the narrowness and poverty that had bound their lives from the cradle up. Some had fled from unhappy homes where, illy-mated at first, the cramped environment had added heart-breaking cares to original disappointments. Others had left happy homes, except that mouths became many and rewards few, so they had been forced to follow a vision of enough wealth to buy for the loved ones surcease from trouble.

            Society lacked the only natural leaven the restraints, the grace, the benign influence of pure women, the music and the benediction of children's voices and presence.

            The effect was quickly seen. When a ship loses its rudder it falls off into the trough of the sea, and with every oncoming wave its decks are swept. Many a naturally brave soul became reckless ; the vices caught them. Thousands of lives went prematurely out because there was no wife or mother or sister or sweetheart to steady them with a reproachful look, or cheer them when the world's buffetings made them despair.

            But there was an empire to redeem from savagery, there were infinite mountains to explore, broad valleys to people and cultivate, states to be rounded into form, and behind every other incentive there was a promise of gold.

            The coming to the new land had chastened the people. Whether by way of the plains, by sail ship around the continent, or by the charnal ships that came and went to and from the Isthmus, it mattered not. There was suffering enough to make men thoughtful and considerate, to engender gratitude for a land which offered so much and was so beautiful. There

THE OLD BOYS. 119

were no written laws that men regarded and it was then that the fashion of the west and southwest was established. Men held each other personally responsible for shortcomings, and the result was not so bad. There is a class of men needing control that is better controlled in that way than in any other. As the hosts increased the old enlightened instinct asserted itself. There were offenses that individuals without authority could not follow to conviction and punishment. The need of laying the foundation of society where order could be maintainecl and laws enforced was soon apparent and generally accepted. Of course, the country was supposed to be under military rule, into which some civil forms had been injected, but in the mining camps something more was needed.

            With Anglo-Saxon directness the work was inaugurated. Fortunately there was no lack of material to set up a government to start it in motion. No community ever had a larger portion of educated, trained men. Thus, men went to work. They explored the hills, they turned the rivers from their natural channels, they made new applications of the engineer's science. In part, they adjusted themselves to their surroundings in part compelled their surroundings to minister to them. The implements that men work with they remodeled to save weight where weight was not needed, to make their own strength avail more when using those implements. A change came also in their characters. The absence of pure women gave them a higher appreciation of what a pure woman is : the absence of children impressed upon them the knowledge that a world without children would not be worth living in. The hardships of their lives made them generous and forbearing toward the weak and unfortunate. The habit of accepting as a matter of course everything which Fate had in store for them, developed in them a self-reliance which was superb, an unpretentious courage which was sublime. At the same time they acquired a habit of careless levity which would have made a stranger think they had never felt a care or heartache in their lives.

            When in jovial mood they were a race of rare jokers and sometimes there was a sting in their words. They had not

120 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

much reverence for the forms which in polite society are enforced. A stovepipe hat .would have been in great danger in an old-time mining camp ; but their cabins were never locked and strangers passing were expected to go in and help themselves to anything they needed in the way of food. But the thief who would take money or gold dust or anything else of value was dealt with in a way so decided, expeditious and thorough that more than one man was kept honest through the certain knowledge of what would follow if an offense were committed. In those days a horse was worth vastly more than a man. That is, if two men quarreled and one was killed, the offense was generally condoned ; but woe to a horse thief if ever caught. Of course, in such communities a cry of distress was a signal for universal and unstinted charity, and it was extended in such a way as to make the recipient feel that he had conferred a favor by accepting it.

            What a place those camps were for puncturing frauds ! A pretentious man quickly grew weary of himself. The quack doctor or lawyer was quickly discovered and banished by ridicule ; but if a sincere and earnest man entered a camp, explained that he was a minister of the gospel and desired a place in which to deliver a brief sermon, if necessary the games were all summarily stopped in the biggest gambling hall in the town, the preacher was given a billiard table for a pulpit, attentively listened to, when he had finished was handsomely rewarded and told when he came that way again to drop in and make himself at home. When he was gone there was a general discussion as to whether the lead that the preacher was following would ever end in the finding of pay dirt, some holding, in the idiom of the camp, that the gold was too light to save, or that the diggings were too pockety, or that there was too much dirt to move to reach pay rock, or that it was the "Blue Lead'' he was on without any certainty of ever getting into the pay channel. But it was generally believed that a preacher seemed to be mining on the square and confidently expected to finally "strike it big."

            Those camps were veritable bonanzas for theatrical companies unless too bad that visited them. A pretty girl in

THE OLD BOYS. 121

the tinsel of the stage, dancing a lively hornpipe or Spanish waltz was sure to hear falling around her as she danced halves and dollars until the stage was covered with coin. She brought back to the men vividly the memory of the girls they had left in the states and they were anxious to pay her for the service.

            But there were great souls in those camps. Many later proved it, many more kept still and those who see their graves in the valleys or on the mountains will never know their sterling worth, what they were to the world, how splendid were their services, how steady and true their patriotism.

            All those years men east and west saw what was being done in California, but only the more sagacious ones realized the full scope of the work and progress the eventual results that would follow. It became a habit of the steamers every fortnight to carry east two millions to three millions of dollars. The first effect was the increased credit that was ready to be extended to our country; railroad building took on a new impetus and the men of Europe were willing to buy American railroad bonds. In those days it was a habit every year to bring in from across the plains large numbers of eastern horses. They were very lean of flesh upon their arrival and were turned out upon the rich pastures. When, the next year, they were caught, it was found that five-year-old horses had grown half a hand in height over what they were when they left the east. In like manner men grew, not in stature, but in mind. They were broader,- steadier-brained than when they left home. The change was such as comes to volunteers when, under the friction of a great war, they are hardened and refined into veterans.

            It is the rule in the eastern states to give those pioneers credit for what they did, but it is often said, "It is most strange that no really very great men were with those Argonauts." People that talk that way do not know. Mount Shasta is a very much more imposing mountain than Mt. Whitney, though Whitney is the higher mountain of the two. The reason is that Shasta is a butte that is, it springs up into the heavens from the valley and is not dwarfed by any surrounding mountains, while all around Mt. Whitney are peaks almost as high

122 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

as its own. There was a general higher proportion of great brains and great hearts in California than were ever seen in any state before. It will do no harm to name a few as they come to memory.

            There was General E. D. Baker, who went east as a senator on the eve of the coming of the great war, and a little later died under a battle cloud.

            There was David C. Broderick, who made himself a name in California which is reverenced there still, and who, in the same cause, though under a different name, died for his country.

            He who later was General Tecumseh Sherman was running a little bank, and he who later was Admiral Farragut commanded at Mare island.

            At that time, too, John W. Mackay was mining on Yuba river. The world knows what he was pretty well, but I remember when a strike was threatened in Virginia City, he said to me:

            "The little additional money that these miners want is nothing. (They were getting $4.00 a day.) What I hate is the spirit of it all. I rolled rocks in the Yuba river month after month, even though I did not earn four bits a day, but then I did not strike. I lived on the four bits (fifty cents) until I could make more, then I enlarged my menu, and the one thought that possessed me in all those years was, sometime, somewhere, if I had but courage enough and strength enough, I could win out. I never thought of asking help of any man, I never growled at conditions; the good God had given me a good constitution and a pair of strong arms, and I always said to myself that that was capital enough to begin with in this world."

            Buying gold dust in those days was D. O. Mills. When later a fortune came to him, he went to New York, and the shrewdest financiers there realized that there was a man among them equal to their best.

            There was Collis P. Huntington, who had a little store in Sacramento. When later a fortune came to him and he went to New York and started into a regular Roman wrestling

THE OLD BOYS.       123

match with the financiers there, they found he was about the hardest man to throw down they had ever met.

            There was J. P. Jones. All those years he was up in the hills of Trinity county. Those who knew him knew he was brighter than anybody, jollier than anybody, deeper than anybody else in their county, and when later he went to Nevada and was sent from there to the senate of the United States, in his careless way and dress the other senators looked upon him as a western product which would add picturesqueness if not much wisdom to the senate. But finally a great national question came up and then this miner who had become senator, arose to speak upon it. He had proceeded but a little way until the sharp men around him began to question him, expecting, of course, to discomfit him. He answered all their questions on the moment and answered them in such a way that they knew instinctively that what they had thought was a common stone was in fact a pure diamond, and ever after they were careful how they questioned him.

            There was Chief Justice Hugh Murray, who went upon the bench when but a little over thirty years of age and died when he was only thirty-four years of age, but who wrote decisions which lawyers now appeal to and admit their strength and directness.

            There was Stephen J. Field, who, after a while, was made a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who held the place for more than thirty years and whose decisions are models for lawyers in every state in the Union.

            There were wild miners who sent communications to the city papers and when they were read, the public knew that somewhere in the hills a new bird was singing with voice sweeter than the lark, but more shrill than the eagle's scream.

            Bret Harte found fame first in California. He caught it from the atmosphere down there. He never could have written "Truthful James" had he remained in the east. That came from the impelling forces around him.

            There were such clergymen as Dr. Scott and Reverend Stebbins ; such lawyers as John B. Felton and Hall McAlister ; such scholars as Leconte. There were men of affairs there

124 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

who, looking at the boundless possibilities before them, said to themselves, "We are sufficient for them. We will grasp them and take them in." There was little Wm. Sharon, delicate of health, who made no noise in California, but who later stood at the helm when the Comstock's future was hanging in the balance and saved it, and when later there came the crash of the Bank of California and the eastern financiers said, "That is the end. Another western bubble has burst," he closed his thin lips and in three months had the bank again established, all the debts paid, all the dishonor which had been threatening turned aside, and gave to the men of the east an object lesson, where a bank failed and where no other bank in all this nation had ever reopened when loaded with such responsibilities ; gave them an object lesson in a rejuvenated bank, stronger and more commanding than ever.

            There was no end of them. There was no work too big for them to undertake and carry out. And there were others who did not care for all the gold in California, who sat on their perches like mocking birds and mocked every singer in the forest, and then, as if out of self-respect, struck out and sang a song of their own, sweeter than the mourning dove's call to her sweetheart.

            If the present generation is not altogether remarkable, it is not any lack in the race, but it is because those Argonauts, when they saw a child, were sure to spoil it. If it did not have a silver spoon in its mouth, they put one in, and they let that first generation grow up under the sunbeams, living idle lives, like the birds that sang around them, like the flowers that bloomed around them, and it will take perhaps a generation or two more before a race appears that will understand from the first that nothing is really good unless it is earned, and that it is man's duty from the first, with his own hands, and eyes, and brain, if he wants something worth keeping, to earn it.

            As I began, so I close. California then was the glory of the earth. It is a glory still, and the first race that gave the nation the gold through which it might become great, which planted the first fields, which framed the first institutions, was the stateliest race that had ever peopled a new state.