CHAPTER XIX.

Soon after this, I took a journey, in company with several ladies and gentlemen from San Francisco, to a mining locality, called Park’s Bar, situated about twenty miles from Marysville. After leaving the plain, our route lay through a thick growth of what is there termed chaparell. It resembles, at a distance, the hawthorn. So dense is this growth of bushes, it affords grand lurking-places for the assassin. Many a poor miner, as he has trudged along, with his blankets upon his back, perhaps well laden with the shining dust, has at this place been pounced upon, and relieved of his burden, and perhaps his life, by some one of the many desperadoes who infest the country.

A gentleman of the company related an incident which occurred, as a friend of his was once travelling this particular locality. He was driving a mule-team very leisurely along, in close communion with his thoughts, when, all at once, he was startled from his reverie by the sudden halting of his mules. Upon looking up, there, close in advance of the mules, were two huge grisly bears, amusing themselves with their cubs. His heart was in his mouth in an instant. How could he compete with two such formidable antagonists, should they simultaneously attack him? His mules betrayed the terror they were suffering by one long, continuous bray, in which they were speedily joined by their no less frightened driver. This horrid din, suddenly bursting upon this bruin coterie, had the desired effect. They instantly disappeared in the surrounding chaparell; while the teamster pursued his way with all possible dispatch, congratulating himself upon having escaped, at least, a very _feeling_ embrace. While speaking of this graminivorous animal, allow me to add, that I was acquainted with a family who had in their possession a cub, so tame that he used to play about the floor with the children as harmlessly as a pet-kitten. He was prized so highly, they had declined several tempting offers to part with him. Some hunters had shot his mother, and were dragging her off, when this little cub ran after them, sprang upon its dead mother, and evinced the strongest symptoms of affection. Thus it was easily captured.

About mid-day, we arrived at our destination--quite a little town, picturesquely situated upon the banks of the Yuba. Those little mountain towns are, to me, invested with a charm, a novelty, that is perfectly bewitching. After refreshing ourselves at a hotel in the vicinity, we repaired to the mining ground, as we laughingly remarked, to prospect. Some of the miners were so very gallant as to offer us the use of their pans, at the same time assuring us that they would allow us all the gold dust we were lucky enough to pan out. It was considered rich diggins at this spot; therefore, the vision of a heap of gold dust incited us at once to doff our lace sleeves and fancy fixings, and enter zealously upon this to us novel method of obtaining that coveted metal. Oh, it was back-aching work, I assure you!

Since that one half hour’s work in the mines, how much sympathy I have felt for the gold-digger! The thought at once obtruded itself, that if some of the wives of these poor miners whom I had known could but realize one half of the toil and hardships their husbands endure in the acquisition of wealth, or of even a competency, by the use of the pan and shovel, they would not be half so lavish in their expenditures. It was excessively warm; there was not a breath of air stirring; the sun was shining down with more than tropical fervor, while its rays were reflected in ten thousand directions from the sides of the hills, until the atmosphere glowed and glimmered like the air in a furnace.

Although the earth was yielding at the rate of ten cents to the panful, we very soon came to the conclusion, that we had rather suffer the privations incident to poverty than toil longer in that burning heat; so, wiping the perspiration from our vermilion countenances, we repaired to the hotel; from whence, after a short rest, I sallied forth to visit several female acquaintances of mine who resided at the Bar. They were ladies who, upon their first arrival in the country, had boarded with us awhile, until their husbands could provide a suitable abode for them in the mines.

I found one of them, a Mrs. Q----, suffering excessively from a terrible fright she had received the night previous. The facts were these: They kept a boarding-house, where they accommodated about forty persons. In the night, they were both awakened by a noise in their room. Before they could move, and even before her husband could grasp a revolver which lay loaded under his pillow, the figure of a man, masked, and holding a sharp, glittering knife in his hand, was standing over them. The knife was held within an inch of her throat, while the threat was uttered, that if her husband moved so much as an inch, his wife’s life would pay the penalty. Such a threat was, of course, effective. There they lay, while three other burglars entered the room, and commenced pilfering. A trunk was opened, from whence they abstracted one thousand dollars in gold dust. Next followed her jewelry, and her gold watch, a parting present from her mother. Her husband’s watch, and several other articles of value, was seized upon; with all of which they decamped. The sentinel still stood over the wife, while she had fainted from fright. After waiting until his co-workers in villany were fairly off, he told him, if he raised the alarm until the lapse of so many minutes after his departure, that a ball, from an unseen and unerring hand, would be the forfeiture. He then vamosed. The alarm, however, was instantly given; every inmate in the house were aroused; but no trace of the robbers was ever discovered. It was weeks, and even months, before Mrs. Q---- recovered from the shock she that night received.

I felt in hopes the party would conclude to remain over night at the bar; but, as there was a bright moon, they decided upon a moonlight drive to Marysville. I must confess myself so much of a coward that I liked not to travel through those gloomy-looking cañons and ravines at night, even were the way illumined by brilliant Luna’s beams. I fancied the shadows of the trees assumed the form of the lurking assassin, ready for a spring. We met with no adventure on the way home, and our ears were assailed with no more horrible sounds than the bark of the cayotes that prowled along on our track. These animals partake of the nature of the wolf, and are very cowardly. They are a great pest in California. The burial-ground, situated about a mile from Marysville, was often frequented by these animals; bodies were often found exhumed and partially devoured by them.

During my residence in California, situated as I was most of the time in a hotel, I had ample opportunity to study human nature in all its varied phases. Scenes of misery, too, I witnessed, enough to fill a volume, were they all recorded. Scenes of gayety and splendor also diversified the way. I attended one wedding in Marysville, the cost of which was currently estimated at two thousand dollars. The bride was a fair widow of thirty, (and wealthy withal,) whose husband had deceased five months previously.

People in our staid, matter-of-fact, puritanical towns, can have but a faint conception of the ever-varying, ever-changing scenes, pertaining to a life in California, where fortunes are made and lost in a day; friends die, and are forgotten soon, in the constant whirl of excitement which surrounds one. People who, when I first arrived in California, were considered immensely rich in this world’s goods, long before I left were reduced to penury. The motto there is, “Nothing risked, nothing gained.” They will perhaps invest all they possess in some great speculation, (always bound to succeed,) and lose the whole. Then, again, vice versa.

What shocked me more than all else in California was, to see the poor, sick, and often penniless people, brought to the hotels (there were no hospitals in Marysville at that time) to die; and then, when the soul had taken its flight to the spirit-land, to see the hearse drive to the door, take the body, which had been deposited in a rough box without the usual apparelling for the grave, and start off to the place of interment alone! Not one solitary mourner to follow the remains, or drop the tear of affection at the grave of one who, perhaps, in some far-distant home, had many “loving friends, and true,” who were anxiously waiting and watching for his return.

One day there were two brothers, brought by their father to the Tremont Hotel. They were sick with a fever. After a week of intense suffering, they died, and the lone father followed them to their last resting-place. A few days subsequent to this event, he was attacked with the same fever which had proved fatal to his sons. He soon felt convinced that he, too, must die. When the proprietor of the house asked him if he had friends in the Atlantic states, to whom he wished word to be conveyed, “No,” said he; “I am the last of my race. I have no friend living to mourn for me.” He even declined naming the place of his birth. In a few days after that, he lay beside his boys.

At another time, the mangled form of a young and intelligent-looking man was brought to a hotel. He had been crushed in a horrible manner by the falling of a large rock where he was at work. His head and chest alone remained uninjured. A younger brother accompanied him to the hotel, and remained as his nurse. Every night he used to slip quietly from his suffering brother’s room, and repair to the gambling-houses, and there stake and lose large sums, which had been obtained at the price of his brother’s life. The poor sick man, unable to raise a finger, his back turned towards the door, and therefore not knowing his brother was absent, would call repeatedly the brother’s name, begging him for a glass of water. After a while, all would be still. No one suspected he was dying there alone nights.

One night, I heard the call so long continued, and so plaintively uttered, I could endure it no longer. I rose, dressed myself, and repaired to the sufferer’s room. I found him all alone. “I wish, madam,” he said, “you would waken Jack. He sleeps so soundly, I never can arouse him in the night. I call until I am fearful of awakening the occupants of the surrounding rooms, and then I desist. But now I think I am dying.” I told him his brother’s bed was vacant. He seemed very much distressed at his brother’s absence. Search was immediately instituted. He was found at a gambling-table, betting. He was summoned to the bedside of his brother. After a while, the sick man revived. He lingered through the next day. At night, his physician enjoined his brother to remain constantly with him, as it was not probable he would survive until morning. The passion for gambling had gained such an ascendency over the young brother’s better feelings, that, some time during the silent watches of the night, he had deserted his dying brother! In the morning, the poor sufferer was found a corpse. He had died alone! What struggles, what agonizing thoughts, were his, what words passed his dying lips, none save his Maker knew.

The brother had passed the night in one of the many dens of infamy that abounded, and which shed, and still do, a withering blight over the fair and sunny valleys of the richest country the sun ever shone upon. See, in this case, what a pernicious influence those gilded saloons of vice have upon the unstable mind of youth. Here were two brothers, who had been reared by fond parents in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Through their childhood they had loved one another; and together they had repaired to a distant land to seek their fortunes. The younger, whose mind was more vacillating, had by degrees yielded to the song of that siren, Vice, until she had lured him to her haunts, causing him to forget home, friends, and even a dying brother, to follow in the train of the tempter.

My prayers are, and ever have been, with the vigilance committees of California. May the blessing of God attend them, and prosper all their undertakings and endeavors to uproot and exterminate those hot-beds of vice, those quick-sands in the ocean of life, upon which the bark of many a promising youth, of many a young husband, and of many a middle-aged father, has been irrecoverably wrecked.

Go into the villages and towns throughout the Atlantic States, and in how many will you not find one, at least, who has been a heart-sufferer from the effects of those dens of sin and iniquity, which, until the organization of the vigilance committee, threw open their gilded doors, even in the glare of noon-day, to allure the weak-minded and unsuspecting! And even the strong-minded have sometimes fallen a prey to their seductive wiles. How many homes have been rendered desolate, how many families disunited and severed, how many hearts as well as fortunes broken, by the prevalence of that one great sin, gambling! and it has been an almost universal vice in California.

How many enterprising and ambitious men have I known who emigrated with their happy wives to California, their hearts buoyant with bright anticipations of the future! Success for awhile crowned all their undertakings; but, alas! those gorgeously furnished drinking-saloons which meet the eye at every turn proved too enticing for frail human nature to resist. The first temptation yielded to, and how easily the downward course is pursued, which terminates in total depravity!

The young wife, neglected by her husband, her brilliant hopes crushed,--unless she be possessed of a strong mind, and has friends there to guide and guard her,--rather than return alone to the home of her childhood, gradually loses her self-respect, and finally swells the list of those we blush to name.

Those upon whom the sun of prosperity has ever shone, know not how bitterly painful is the first clouding over of youth’s sweet visions--the first crushing blight of confidence and love--the first consciousness that life is not so fair and bright, nor friends so kind and true, as we have pictured them. Not from observation wholly do I asseverate these statements--by sad experience have these sentiments become deeply imbedded in my heart. I have known, and felt, and suffered _all_, in my short life. But, when the wife’s cup of misery is full to overflowing, and she returns to the home of her youth, expecting to receive the sympathy she so justly deserves, and which is so readily proffered by those encircling her own hearth-stone, how poignant to her sensitive and lacerated feelings are the baneful, whispered slanders which are borne to her ears! and emanating, too, from the lips of those she once considered friends, and who, had adversity not overtaken her, would still have been fawning sycophants for favor.

Oh, ye slanderers! pause in your career; for it is one of the most heinous sins that the instigator of all evil ever conceived, and from which every pure heart will turn with loathing and disgust. If the professed slanderer ever has any moments of serious reflection, how severe must be the accusations of that faithful monitor within; for to how many, in the course of their life-time, have they cast their poisoned arrows, dipped in the foul extract of their own hearts, which, while it _kills_ not those to whom it is aimed, rankles deeply in a sensitive heart, causing tears of agony to flow! Then there are always plenty of the lovers of gossip abroad to catch and retail slander; plenty ready to believe an evil report, without taking the trouble to investigate. Thus many an innocent heart has palpitated keenly, upon receiving manifest slights from a source whence they had a right to expect nought but kindness.