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Show As I Remember Them The Old Time Miners I l By C. C Goodwin M i I tyrB ALL have, I hope, high and sinceie rever- r YY ence for the Pioneers; for those men and women who began their western march i almost thiee hundred years ago; first in grotesque little ships across the Atlantic, and made their first stopping places on the eastern shore of the ocean; . then a little later began to push their way against the wilderness and the savages; as one generation sank Into the earth another taking up the slow - march and pursued its way, until the deep woods gave place for smiling homes all the long way to and beyond the Mississippi. Looking back we mark a few of their achievements, achieve-ments, the unremitting labor of their lives; the courage that never faltered; the poverty that bound them around in merciless coils; the self-sacrifices self-sacrifices which they accepted as a imatter of course; the tenacity with which they never failed to assert that their free citizenship should never be trenched upon; the carrying with them the little lit-tle red school house; the high manhood, the divine r womanhood which upheld them as they pushed their way, all these and other characteristics shine out as we look back over the trails they blazed and irTk the temples they upreared, and to the tyes of the minds of all Americans, they make a picture of enchantment, not one tint of I which fades as the years advance and receed. I But there came a time when the order of a hundred and fifty years was changed. Though for more than two hundred years the lace had been toiling; though their heroic work had tiansfoimed a mighty section of the now world; though an empire of measureless natural wealth had been explored, the country was poor in that thing called money, the one thing that electri- , fles Enterprise and provides a just reward for toil. Then there came first a whisper that on the ' other shore of the continent gold had been dis- ' covered. This was swifty confirmed by succeed- j ins news, and then the exodus began. Within a few months there were tossed upon that western shore two hundred and fifty thousand Y men. They were nearly all young men, and every I state of the then union was represented. The journey had steadied and broadened them. Whether by the long journey across the continent, whether by lonely ships around Cape Horn, or I through the scramble and the rush by the pestl- t lential Isthmus, they all had taken on new ideas by the experience they had been through. As a rule they were all more or less home boys and the best of them had a full quota of provincialism. But this last melted away faster than it had ever before in any country. The secret was that the mothexs they kissed when they left home were American mothers, and the differences there are among American mothers are the differences of environment, and it did not require long for their sons to recognize that fact. Many of the new comers stopped on the seashore sea-shore or in adjacent valleys, but I am not dealing 1 with those today. It is the company which never rested by the sea nor in the soft valleys, but hurried hur-ried to the .hills. J'"or them nothing would do but the native gold. The art of extracting it was simple, and, quickly learned. And when at night the day's proceeds were panned and cleaned and weighed, then the miner held it before his eyes and invented the phrase: "That's the stuf." And who were these miners? luey were as a rule just American boys and young unon. Thev 1 had come from every field, fiom every school; they ' were, as it were, the nation looked at through the j big ends of the opera glass. All recognized that they wore living in a land that had no government, but they got together in the different camps and resolved that while there was no law, there should be order and that every man should be secure in what was rightly his. Petty criminals fought shy of those camps. Sometimes there were disputes over business affairs. af-fairs. When they could not be settled privately a court was quickly convened; a juror was never questioned about any bias or prejudice that he thought he entertained or whether he had formed or expressed any opinion. He was simply asked if he would hear the case and decide according to the law and evidence. If he promised that, It was enough. Some of those tiials were most picturesque. Will Campbell was mining in a ravine a mile or two outside of Downieville. One morning three or four 'miners came to him where he was at work, and one said: "Mister, did you back in the states study law?" Will replied that he did. Then it was explained to him that a big Pennsylvania Duchman was trying try-ing to claim the ground that one of the boys owned, that a trial had been set for that afternoon after-noon and they wanted Campbell to go to camp and try the case for them. Campbell replied, "All right, if one of you chaps will work my ground while I am gone, I will go." This was agreed to and Campbell went to the camp, tried and won the case. He told me about it later, after he had , become an eminent lawyer and judge. He said: "I was nineteen years old. I had just graduated; all the practice that I had ever had any experience in was in the moot courts in the law school. I did not know a vast amount of law, but I had brought all my gall with me to California, and I suppose my argument that day was one calculated to scare away a mountain lion, if he was an old and wary one and wished to avoid trouble. "I have never since experienced the self-satisfaction that was mine as I emerged from that room and walked out on the cleared space in front of the building. Many people congratulated me and I swallowed it all as though it was my due At last the big Dutchman came along and saidt 'Mister Campbell, dot vas one great speech vot you made today.' 'Ah,' I replied, 'do you really thing so Uncle Billie?' " 'Yaw I dinks so,' he said. 'It just lacked but von ding to make it one very great speech.' " 'You really think so, Uncle Billie,' I responded; respond-ed; ' and pray what did it lack?' 'It lacked sense,' was the curt answer." The boys heard it, took it up and it cost me all the dust I had mined for a week pievious, to get out of camp. I have heard of it fiom time to time ever since. But it did. me lots of good. I have never since talked as learnedly learn-edly as I did on that day. You see the ordinary intellect can only stand about so much." In that same Downieville about 1853 the boys determined to have a Fourth of July celebration. They had all the necessary concomitants. They had a live American eagle in captivity, also a grizzly qub had been caught, had grown to two-thirds two-thirds of his full size and was the pet of the camp. These helped to swell the procession, which contained a Goddess of Liberty in the person of a young lady that had "come the plains across" the previous year; there was a car of state for the chaplain, the reader, the orator and poet of tho day; plenty of flags, and the whole was led by a brass band that had boon practicing for perhaps three months. The procession over, the crowd gathered in the primitive theatre; the prayer had jH been spoken, the Declaration read, Bob Taylor had H beautifully rendered an original poem and John H McConnell was just being introduced, when a six H months old baby who was in its mother's arms and H close to tho orchestra chairs, began to howl. The H much-embarrassed mother tried in vain to hush H its cries, when at last the band struck up a lively H air to drown its cries. H Then the event of the day came off. A huge miner as big as was the late Senator Stewart of Nevada, and with huge red beard that covered his H breast, sprang upon a seat and with a voice like a H caliope shouted: "Stop that G d band and H give that baby a chance!" That finished the business. All over the house were men shouting like mad, the tears running down their cheeks tho while, for they had seen no children for months and they had upon them H that heart-hunger which men in civilization can H never comprehend. H And because of the absence of women and H children, the wild beast in many a soul in the hills H came forth. There was no restraint upon them H and even a quartz mill runs away sometimes when H the governor on the engine ceases to act. H Many drank, many gambled, many were killed H in quarrels; manv became boisterous and reckless, H and lives were hrown away, which, under the &B restraint of good women's eyes, might have made H , great names, lit Is said that the great Blucher of H Prussia, riding over a dead-coveied battlefield, said H to an aide who was half overcome by the horror M and pity of it: "Control yourself General! When M the winds and the 'deep-sea waves engage in bat- H tie, the shore next morning is piled deep with sea H weed and other debris of the storm. It is nature's H way; these, too, are but debris of the storm of yes- H terday." H The giaves on the tops and flanks of the Sierra J are still tho marks on the shore where that debris M was thrown. M In another way chaiacter was formed there. M The resourcefulness which out of the rude sur- M roundings developed into high manhood and superb H citizenship; which with the means at hand ac- M complished mighty results; the resolution which H hid suffering in men's own hearts, as did the H Spartan boy the fox until the boy's vitals were torn M out, and no one know that he was suffering until H his death made it plain; the transition which slow- M ly strangled the brightest hopes ever nursed by H mortals until they all went out; the self-sacrifices M which were made, those making them wearing all H the time the smile of contentment and peace, and H giving up what was sweeter than life itself as the H tiled child drops its toys; acts of generosity and M charity to make the angel of mercy weep for joy, H these and kindred features made up the unseen H tragedy that was enacted there, unseen but leav- H ing its shadow on those helghtB. M What was visible was the joy and enthusiasm H that reigned. What songs were sung, what stories H were told, how vastly the vocabulary of the Ian- H guage was enlarged, to produce words to fit all HI occasions tho echoes or the ghosts of them roll H like phantom drums through those hills still. H Let no one think those camps were not schools H of patriotism. All the papers from the lower cities H were read and rp-read; the magazines from the H oast wore devoured, the new literature of Call- H fornia that rang out in the words of Bret Harte, jH of "Caxton"; of La Conte; of Barstow; of Bartlett; H of Stout; of Coolbrith; of O'Connell; of Marshall, H and the others, were household words in the H camps. Ana thq Jettqrs by the semi monthly stea- JH H liters why talk about patriotism, when a letter H comes to a young man from his mother, or from M the daughter of some other mother five thousand H miles away, iie not only loves his country but loves the stokers that fed the coal to the furnaces H in the ship that brought the letter. H And from among those men there grew up a Hj race of scientists that had few instructors save H as they set the hieroglyphics which nature had H embossed upon the rocks and trees and hills, to H words, and in their souls made histories of them, H and through those histories caught the secret of M the labors that had been going on there through M the ages; the work of the earthquake, the glacier, H the winds, the heat, the cold, the sunbeams all H the agents which the Infinite employs in rounding M a world into form. M And another character of men was developed H there; strong men of affairs, captains of industry, H who when they left the hills and entered into H competition with ordinary men were found to be H masters to take charge of any work that was H presented, for to wrestle with the forces of nure H and overcome the bastions and battlempnt" -v v 1 the mountains have upreared in their own detqn M makes men stronger. m They were, even as was Jacob by his all-night H wrestle with the Lord, strengthened by the labor, 1 and because of it, like Jacob, they took on new M titles among men. H If I have made the foregoing plain, it will be 1 seen that while there were miners before those H first California miners, and while there have H been miners since in many ways their superiors m as miners, there never was before, never has been H since, just such a band as were they. H They had no homes with tender home influ- H ences to hold them in check; but they grow tend- M erer and 'more considerate of others because of H the absence of those influences; they had no chil- H drcn of their own but that made them fathers by H adoption of all the World's children; many of them H were wild and reckless, for there -were at first no H restraints upon them, no church spires to turn B their gaze upward; they turned to trees which H were higher than church spires, and to the sky H under whose dim sheen they slept, and were per- fl haps nearer God because of their environments H and the sentinel stars that kept solemn watch B above them. B With a steadfast courage they worked out their M lives; most of them, personally, are forgotten, but m because they lived and toiled and kept watch that m society should be kept secure against wrong and m the flag above them be kept stainless, the man- 1 hood of the whole coast was exalted and the influ- H ence they exerted has been an ennobling one to B the whole coast ever since. |
