OCR Text |
Show As I Remember Them The Old Boys Bv C. C. Goodwin j CALIFORNIANS celebrated the admission of their state into the Union the other day, and ever since, the old days have been com lng back upon me in thought, and perhaps it will not bu 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 ma-terial wealth. At that time the Sacramento, the American the Feather, the Yuba the Stanislaus, the Merced, the San Joaquin and the other rivers were flowins on and on, serene and unvexed to the sea. Their banks had never been disturbed by the prospector's prospec-tor'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 was fairyland. It was beautiful beyond description. Nature seemed to have gathered there all her glories The mountains were a rugged background 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 It self 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 follovjd their channels to the sea. Such was the land that greeted the newcomers, newcom-ers, and in such a land nothing seemed impossible impos-sible save man's capacity to grasp the oppor tunities before and around him, to dare to reach 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, ma-jority, every state was represented and the outside out-side 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 roynl souls shone out. Besides Jthe 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 disappoint, ments. Others had left happy homes, except that months became many and rewards few, so they had been forced to seek after a vision of enough wealth to buy for the loved ones surcease from trouble. Society lacked the only natural leaven tho restraints, the grace, the benign Influence of pure women, and the music and the benediction of children's chil-dren's voices and presence. The effects were quickly seen. When a ship loses its rudder, it falls off into the trough of the sea and with every on-coming wave its decks are awash. 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 R them with a reproachful look, or cheer them when f the world's buffetings made them despair. J But there was an empire to redeem from savagery, there were infinite mountains to ex- ? plore, broad valleys to people and cultivate, states I to be rounded into form, and behind every other '! incentive there was a promise of gold. j The coming to the new land had chastened the " people. Whether by way of the plains, by s.a 1 ship around the continent, or by the charnal ship3 that came and went to and from the Isthmus, " it mattered not. There was suffering enough to make men thoughtful and considerate, to en- gender gratitude for a land which offered so " much and was so beautiful. There were no writ- ten 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 i in any other. As the ui increased the old enlightened instinct asse 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 maintained and laws enforced was soon apparent appar-ent and generally accepted. Of course, the country coun-try was supposed to be under military rule, into which some civil forms had been injected, but in the mining camps something more was needed. WHth Anglo Saxon directness the work was inaugurated. Fortunately there was no lack of i material to set up a government to start it in motion. No community ever had a larger por-portion por-portion of educated, trained men. Thus, men went to work. They explored the hills, th?y 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 sur-roundings 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. char-acters. 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 ferobearing toward the weak and unfortunate. The habit of accepting accept-ing as a matter of course everything which Fate had in store for them, developed in them a self-reliance self-reliance which was superb, an unpretentious courage cour-age which was sublime. At the same time they j acquired a habit of careless levity which would j 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 m rare jokers and sometimes there was a sting Q in their words. They had not 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 g in and help themselves to anything any-thing 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 cer-tain knowledge of what would follow if an of- fenBe were committed. In those days a horse, i was worth vastly more than a man. That is, if two men quarrelled and one was killed, the offense of-fense was generally condoned; but woe to a horse thief if ever caught. Of course, in such commun-f commun-f ities a cry of distress was a signal for univer- 1 sal and unstinted charity, and it was extended in such a way as to make the recipient feel that t 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 t- if a sincere and earnest man entered a camp, ex- j plained that he was a minister of the gospel and desired a place in which to deliver a brief ser- ftjt mon, if necessary the games were all summar- r ily stopped in the biggest gambling hall in the I . town, the preacher was given a billiard table 1 for a pulpit, attentively listened to, and when he had finished was handsomely rewarded and told when he came that way again to drop In and make himself at home. When ho was gone there was a general discussion as to whether the lead that the preacher was following would ever lead to 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 ledge 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 vis-ited them. A pretty girl in the tinsel of the stae, dancing to the music of a jig or Spanish waltz was sure to hear falling around her as sho danced halves and dollars until the stage was covered cov-ered 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 splen-did 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 mo-e sagacious ones realized the full scope of the work and progress the eventual results that would follow. fol-low. It became a habit of the steamers every fortnight to carry east two millions to three millions mil-lions of dollars. The first effect was the increased credit that was ready to be extended to our coun- try; 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 to annually bring in from across the plains large (J numbers of eastern horse's. They were very lean I of flesh upon their arrival and were turned out T upon the rich pastures. When the next year they wore caught, it was found that five-year-old l horses had grown half a hand in height over I what they were when they left the east. In like l manner men grew, not in stature, but in brain 1 They were broader, steadier-brained than when I they left homo. The change was such ns Gome's I to volunteers when, under the friction of a great I war, they are hardened and refined into vetor- an3. 1 It is the rule in the eastern states to give I those pioneers credit for what they did, but it is I often said, "It is very strange that no really very I great men were with those Argonauts." People ,1 that talk that way do not know. Mount Shasta I is a very much more imposing mountain than I Mt. Whitney, though Whitney is the higher moun- I i ;; MBHHHHHKHHIfllHHHHHHHHH tain 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 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. He had in Calif drnia a reputation as a marvelous orator, but when he reached the senate there were envious souls there who, look ing him over, said they had read some of h!s speeches, that they were fine but evidently prepared pre-pared with great care. But as the war grew imminent, im-minent, he went out and recruited a regiment. One day he had been training that regiment and came into the capitol a little before the senate met, in his soldier uniform, and being weary, he went to a cloak room, stretched himself upon a sofa and sank at once into a profound sleep. These same envious souls, thinking they mould make a test, went to him, woke him up and told him that Mr. Breckenridge was. mading a terrible arraignment of the North in a speech, and asked him if he would reply. He said he would. Rising, Ris-ing, he went into the senate chamber and heard the last twenty minutes of the speech of Mr. Breckenridge, in which he stated tersely his reas ons why he resigned his place to link his fortunes with the Confederacy. Baker was at once recognized rec-ognized and spoke for an hour, and those who heard that speech feel the thrill of it yet. I remember re-member but one sentence of It. It was: "The honorable gentleman asks where soldiers sol-diers will come from to defend the Union. I tell him that the spirit of freedom need but stamp her foot when soldiers by the millions will spring from the ground to make her throne secure." As he fitted the gesture to the words, the hilt of his sword, clanking on the tiled floor of the capitol, mingled with the sound of his voice, gave that senate such a thrill as it had not had before since the voices of some of the giants of earlier days had grown still. A few weeks after that, sent with his regiment regi-ment to a spot where the enemy was five to one against him, and promised reinforcements which never came, he stood when the battle came on, his hand to his breast as was his wont, and under un-der a volley received five wounds, either one of which would have been fatal, and died with the old exalted look on his face. 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 Parragut commanded at Mare island. At that time, too, John W. Mackay was mining min-ing on Yuba river. The world knows what ho was pretty well, but I remember when a strike was threatened in Virginia City, he said to me: "The littlo additional money that these miners min-ers 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 mako more, then I enlarged my menu, and the one thought that possessed me in all those years was, sometime, some-time, somewhere, if I had but courago 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. 0. Mills. When later a fortune came to him, he went to New York, and the shrewdest financiers there H realized that there .was a man among them equal to their best. H There was Collis P. Huntington, who had a M little store in Sacramento. When later a for- tune came to him and he went to New York and ( started into a regular Roman wrestling match with the financiers there, they found he was about ,M the hardest man to throw down they had ever , met. There was J. P. Jones. All those years he was M up in the hills of Trinity county. Those who knew him knew he was brighter than anybody, M jollier than anybody, deeper than anybody else in fl their county, and when later he went to Nevada M and was sent from there to the senate of the M United States, in his careless way and dress the M other senators looked upon him as a western !W product which would add picturesqueness if not M much wisdom to the senate. But finally a great iJ national question came up and then this minor , who had become senator, arose to speak upon M it. He had proceeded but a little way until the 'H sharp men around him began to question him, 'H expecting, of course, to discomfit him. He an- H swered all their questions on the moment and H answered them in such a way that they knew In- stinctively that what they had thought was a H common stone was in fact a pure diamond, and M ever after they were careful how they questioned H him. There was Chief Justice Hugh Murray, who H went upon the bench when but a little over H thirty years of age and died when he was only H thirty-four years of age, but who wrote decis- H ions which lawyers now appeal to and admit H their strength and directness. H There was Stephen J. Field, who after a while H was made a justice of the Supreme court of tho H United States, who held the place for more than H thirty years and whose decisions are models for H lawyers in every state in the Union, H There were wild miners who sent communica- H tions to the city papers and when they were H read, the public knew that somewhere in the H hills a new bird was singing with voice sweeter H than the lark, but more shrill than the eagle's H scream. H Bret Harte found fame first in California. He H caught it from the atmosphere down there. He H never could have written "Truthful James" had H he remained in the east. That came from the H impelling forces around him. H There were such clergymen as Dr. Scott and H Reverend Stebbins; such lawyers as John B. Fel- H ton and Davis S. Terry; such scholars as Le- H conte. There "were men of affairs there who, H looking at the boundless possibilities before them, H said to themselves, "We are sufficient for them. H We will grasp them and take them in." There H was little Wm. Sharon, delicate of health, who H made no noise in California, but who later stood H at the helm when the Comstock's future was H hanging in the balance and saved it, and when H luter there came tho crash of the Bank of Call- (H fornia and tho eastern financiers said, "That is H the end. Another western bubble has burs," H he closed his thin lips and in three months had H the bank again established, all tho debts paid, H all the dishonor which had been threatening H turned aside, and gave to the men of tho east an H object lesson where a bank failed and where H no other bank in all this nation had ever r- fl opened when loaded with such responsibilities, H gave them an object lesson in a rejuvenated bank, H stronger and more commanding than over. H There was Jim Keene, who grew up in a lit- H tie mountain town in California; who made some H money after a while, then went to New York, fl downed the bravest plungers there, then, follow- H ing a natural bent, got some race horses, beat H everything in America and then went to England fl 1 M with them aud beat everything there. M There was no end of them. There was no M work too big for them to undertake and carry M out. And there were others who did not care M for all the gold in California, who sat on their M perches like mocking birds and mocked every B singer in the forest, and then, as if out of self- M respect, struck out and sang a song of their own. B sweeter than the mourning dove's call to her H sweetheart. H If the present generation is not altogether re B markable, it is not any lack in the race, but it .s H because those Argonauts when they saw a child M were sure to spoil it. If it did not have a silver H spoon in its mouth, they put one in, and hey let H that first generation grow up under the sun-H sun-H beams, living idle lives like the birds that sang H around them, like the flowers that bloomed H around them, and it will take perhaps a general gener-al ation or two more before a race appears that will M understand from the first that nothing is really H good unless it is earned, and that it is man's H duty from the first, with his own hands and H eyes and brain, if he wants something worth H keeping, to earn it. H As I began, so I dole. California then wan H the glory of the earth. It is a glory still and H the first race that gave the nation the gold H through which it might become great, which H planted the first fields, which framed the first H institutions, were the stateliest race that had ever H peopled a new state. |