# California Inter Pocula/Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII.
DRINKING.
Over wide streams and mountains great we went And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy-tent, Onward the tiger and the leopard pants
With Asian elephants: We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing
A-conquering! Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide W^e dance before him through kingdoms wide Come hither, lady fair, and joined
To our wild minstrelsy.
— Keats' Endymion.
A NOT unfitting opening for some reflections on life would be a dissertation on death. Were there no death the term life would have no sio-nificance. Did we not love life we should not fear death. However full of hateful conditions earthly existence may be, all things having life, man, animals, plants, cling to it; the uncertainties of death are more dreaded than the certain ills of life. Then, too, life is existence, being; a dead thing is nothing, having no existence, no being.
Yet further, life feeds on death; life lives on death ; by the destruction of life alone is life sustained; were there no death, under the present economy of things, there could be no life, no continuing state of existence. Death is the grand and universal interatatice of life; the infant's first breath is the breath of the dying. The whole scheme of animated nature throughout the planet, concocted and put in running order by a so-called beneficent creator, involves the consum ​ma ( 658 )
tion of a hundred deaths to maintain one hfe. How many hves of birds and beasts and fishes are taken to sustain the hfe of one human beino- from the cradle to the grave ? How many fishes does a whale consume during its lifetime; how many small fishes will one large fish eat; how many smaller fishes will a small fish eat; how many lives does it take to sustain the life of the tiniest insect the eye can distinguish ? Is then death so terrible, being so beneficial, so universal? For all that lives is dying; all that to-day is living, to-morrow is dead; all that is living is dying, ergo, living is not living but dying, and there is no such thing as life, all nature being either dead or dying.
The dead willow is the symbol of decay and death in Japan; in California if such a symbol was required we would tctke a dram-shop. In ancient times it was the arrow of Apollo that brought sudden death; in California when a man drops dead upon the street, or otherwise' is taken off suddenly, we call it heart disease, apoplexy, the result of high living, usually, though not always, meaning—rum. And men are called fools for drinking themselves to death, when we have just seen death is essential to life, is inevitable to all, does not make a pin's difference whether it comes to-day or to-morrow—particularly to-morrow.
Whether we like the idea of death or dislike it, it is not wise greatly to trouble ourselves about it, as we cannot long delay it by any such means. As in the question of life or no life beyond the grave, as it never has been determined, as no one that we know of has ever come back from beyond the grave to tell us, we might as well cease thinking about it, and wait for more light—this beino; what we must do whether we will or not. Those who through some seventh sense, that not every one possesses, have been told to their satisfaction, and can themselves tell to the satisfaction of a hundred houses full, what life and death are, and what the state of affairs beyond, should rest contented; even if, after expecting a future existence, ​they wake up in the next world and find it not so, that is if they find anything,
Man is the only beast that drinks to make himself drunk. In this he is more beastly than any other beast, and yet he has the impudence to employ a term beneath any which may be applied to himself in order to emphasize a vice too low for any created thing but himself to indulge in. I hold it great injustice to beasts for man to call his own base indulgences beastly. Beasts are less beastly than men. It would be nearer right for beasts to charge the more excessively disgusting of their practices humanly, for beasts are not denaturalized by their passions like men. And along with drunkenness, and the necessity of establishing laws under which to live, place the faculties of speech and abstraction, the one used to no small extent in lying and swearing, and the other in cheating and overreaching, and we have before us all the tangible differences between human and animal societies.
The word whisky is from the Gaelic ooshk’-a-pai, which signifies "water of health." Usquebaugh, Irish, uisge’-a-bagh, also the French eau de vie may be rendered "water of life." The whisky taken to the mines, however much water there may have been in it, was neither "of health" nor "of life." The truth is, if anything could breed distemper, disease, and death it was this same strychnine whisky. In regard to water, too often it was like Father Tom's punch brewed in the parlor of the Vatican—conspicuous for its absence. "Put in the sperits first," said he to the pope, "and then put in the sugar; and remember, every dhrop ov wather you put in after that spoils the punch."
Satan once presented himself before Noah, if we may credit the Talmud, to drink wine with him. The devil in this instance must have been teaching morality, for to show the patriarch the several effects of wine in various quantities, he slew a lamb, a lion, a ​
pig, and an ape, the first being emblematic of man before drink, the second of the effect of wine in moderation, the third the condition of a sot, and the fourtli the senseless chatterings of the imbecile drunk.
In Greek carousals one of the first things to be considered was whether it should be optional or compulsory as to the quantity each should drink.
Intemperance is treated as a vice in one of its phases only. The drunkard, so runs the tone of society, is an immoral beast, whom to scorn and shun is Christian and praiseworthy. Yet wine in moderation is a blessing, and not a curse. So arsenic and strychnine have their uses, otherwise it was a mistake of the creator to have made them.
Like everything else, drinking took on its own form in California. From a drinking-shop arose, outside Sebastopol, the fortified town and famous tower of Malakoff, which in the Crimean war was the cause of so much annoyance to the allied army, from a drinking-shop arose in San Francisco a race of bonanza kings.
Men steeped their souls in drink. Anything was made a pretext—the arrival of news, the 4th of July, the Sunday festivities, the death of a comrade, a hanging scrape, or simply being seized with thirst, and the whole camp would be taken suddenly drunk. There were always those about bar-rooms putting away for years apparently upon the same cigar, and who were never entirely sober, and who hobnobbed, chinked glasses, and drank tete-a-tete with all who would pay the score. Then there were thousands utterly alone in this wilderness of civilized wild men, bowed down to the earth by their misfortunes, to whom forgetfulness obliterating woes was better than memory to keep alive the good, and this forgetfulness many would have at any cost. They would drink themselves into a state of most unbeastly intoxication; they then would go to and drink themselves sober. Then there was the coming out of it, the hardest of ​
all, the blues, the shakes, the shame of it all; but out of it they must come or die, and that no one feels more keenly than the drunken man himself
Rum they found not less potent in its cure of disappointment, melancholy, and heart-aches than the nepenthes of Helen, that draught divine which lifted the soul above all ills. Their breath was almost as foul as that of Macamut the Sultan of Cambaya who, if we may believe Purchas, lived on poison, and became so saturated with it that his touch or breath caused instant death.
Sometimes half the members of a mining camp would fall into the habit of periodical sprees which would last usually from two to three days. A stranger once arriving at Rich Bar on Feather river about three o'clock in the morning, dismounted from his mule before a hotel grocery, being led thither by the glimmering of a light. A sound of revelry was heard within, but as all the other houses of the place was wrapped in darkness the stranger made bold to enter and inquire concerning accommodations for himself and beast. After arranging his affairs for the night, or rather for the rest of the morning, he remarked casually to the keeper:
" It strikes me your customers are rather late to-night."
" Oh! no, stranger," replied the landlord, " the boys of Rich Bar generally run for forty-eight hours. It's a little late this morning perhaps for night before last, but for last night, why bless you, it's only just in the shank of the evening;;! "
Time was when in our now staid and solemn-visaged communities everybody drank, everybody sometimes drank too much. They were measured by the number of bottles they could carry, and the always-sober man was a rarity. If appetite flagged thirst was excited by condiments. Drink was dealt out in horns and pointedbottom cups that would not stand so that the drinker must finish the draft before laying down the cup. ​
The weak, the weary, the beaten in Hfe's battle, to say nothing of the lazy and profligate of all ages and climes, seem to crave stimulation or stupefaction. Wine, spirits, beer, and tobacco in Europe and America, hasheesh in Egypt, and opium in China are the chief indulgences, but there are multitudes of minor drinks such as Indian hemp and Aztec pulque of no less deadly intoxicating virtues. All these prevail to a friohtful extent and constitute the national vice. Hasheesh first elates and then depresses, and continued indulgence results in idiocy or death.
Speaking to Boswell of one who urged his quests to drink immoderately at table Johnson said " Sir, there is no more reason for your drinking with him, than his being sober with you."
Little Pope drank his bottle of burgundy every day at dinner, thus warming his diminutive dried-up body into that comfort which made itself known by entertaining gaiety. Sir Joshua Reynolds drank freely, and greatly enjoyed it, but he seldom indulged to excess.
Doctor Johnson observed that "our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine." "I remember," said he, "when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly. When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste. Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing, blowingsmoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man has something by which he calms himself; beating with his feet, or so."
Thus it was that all along the foothills, and indeed, all over California, coequal with Plutus reigned the god Dionysius, sometimes one and sometimes the other ​
having for the moment the supremacy. All nature here was filled to overflowing with that intoxicating power which carries men onward in their wild career to happy success or soul-crushing destruction. Here so often they might with the Cyclops sing,
" Ha! ha! I am full of wine, Heavy with the joy divine."
Thousands every day were as drunk as birds of paradise— so drunk that ants mioht eat their leos ofl".
There have never been lacking those who in a breath would solve all social riddles, and eradicate all social evils. There are temperance fanatics as well as religious and political fanatics, and anti-slavery, antitobacco, and anti-tea-and-coffee fanatics. It is not by grinding still deeper in the mire the unfortunate and vicious that gambling and prostitution are eradicated. "The California wines are a disappointment and a failure," says Dr Holland rejoicingly. " They are not popular wines, and we congratulate the country that they never can be." This is not only untrue, but it is both a wicked and a silly sentiment.
Lecky perceives a remedy in the use of tea, coffee, and chocolate, which checks *'the boisterous revels that had once been universal, and raising woman to a new position in the domestic circle, they have contributed very largely to refine manners, to introduce a new order of tastes, and to soften and improve the character of men."
The Norsemen taught the English to dismiss their ladies from their drinking-parties; the Vikings followed the same custom.
The custom of pledging in wine arose during the tenth century, when it was considered a necessity for a person, while drinking, to have some one to watch, lest he should be killed by some enemy or stranger during the act.
In drinking to their lady-loves, the Romans used to take a glass for every letter of the name; spelling with beer-glasses, Hudibras called the custom.
​Of a truth, they played well the Greek in their cups. E pithi e apithl! Quaff, or be off! Cut in, or cut out! Or in the language of our time, to promote hilarity it was the rale that every man should tell a story, sing a song, or treat the crowd.
The drinking customs of California were peculiar, as I have said, but not all the drinking and drunkenness of this world has been confined to California. "I was afraid he might have urged drinking," says Boswell of Johnson, "as I believe he used formerly to do, but he drank port and water out of a large glass himself, and let us do as we pleased. . . . After supper Dr Johnson told us that Isaac Hawkins Browne drank freely for thirty years, and that he wrote his poem, De Animi Immortalitate, in some of the last of these years. I listened to this with the eagerness of one who, conscious of being himself fond of wine, is glad to hear that a man of so much genius and good thinking as Browne had the same propensity." Again: "I reminded him how heartily he and I used to drink wine together when we were first acquainted, and how I used to have a headache after sitting up with him. He did not like to have this recalled, or perhaps thinking that I boasted improperly."
Johnson expressed great contempt for claret, saying, "a man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk. Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavor of brandy is most grateful to the palate, and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinkins; can do for him." At another time he said, " Drinking may be practised with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk; a sober man who happens occasionally to get drunk readily enough goes into a new company, which a man who has been drinking should never do. Such a man will undertake anj^thing. He is without skill in inebriation. I used to slink home when I had ​
drunk too mucli. A man accustomed to self-examination will be conscious when he is drunk, though an habitual drunkard will not be conscious of it. I knew a physician who for twenty years was not sober."
In the cities and towns there was a noticeable absence of homes. Stores, saloons, restaurants, boardino'-houses, and hotels made a metropolis, and to this day the habits of herding then contracted hang upon the people. In 1849 almost every house and tent, public and private, received lodgers for pay. A regular lodging-house consisted of one room, with shelf-like bunks ranged round the sides, each of which held a straw mattress reeking with filth and vermin, and a pair of musty blankets. Cots occupied the centre of the room, and sleeping-places were chalked out on the floor, where, after the beds were filled, others might stretch themselves in their own blankets at a dollar a night. Merchants slept in their offices, with their employes scattered about the premises on counters, benches, tables, trunks, boxes, or bunks. Cooking was also done in many places of business. Then eating-houses arose of every grade, from the Chinese chow-chow to the Montgomery street saloon where, in 1854, a hundred attaches waited on three thousand hungry applicants daily.
The so-called hotels which sprang up in the mining camps were usually built of rough boards, being of one story, with a common sleeping-room, or of two stories with separate apartments above. The front door opened into the bar-room, which was also office and billiard and gambling saloon. There execrable wine and spirits were sold at twenty-five or fifty cents a glass to the filthiest scum of human kind that ever congregated to eat, drink, smoke, chew, spit, gamble, shoot, stab, and blaspheme. Adjoining was the diningroom, where, on a long clothless table, flanked by wooden benches, beefsteak, beans, boiled potatoes, dried-apple sauce, dusky bread, pickles, and molasses, ​are served to miners, teamsters, traders, gamblers, and politicians, who sit down together, the washed and the unwashed, without regard to quality or caste. On the same bench may be seated a clergyman, a Sydney convict, an Oxford graduate, a New York blackleg, and the professional drunkard of the town.
Sometimes for bunks canvas was stretched over wooden frames; a hay pillow and a pair of blankets comprised the bed. Fifty or a hundred of these berths were sometimes constructed in one room; each was numbered, and on signifying his wish to retire, the traveller, on payment of a dollar to the hotel-keeper, might hunt out his place, and without undressing, deposit his bag of gold-dust and revolver under his pillow, and go to sleep—if the fleas would let him. Outside the door stands a barrel of water, and on as many kegs three or four tin basins with a chunk of washing-soap convenient, where morning ablutions may be made. Against the house hangs a piece of looking-glass, and a well-worn brush and comb are conveniently fastened to a chain or strmg. After a wash and a gin cocktail, the boarder is ready for his breakfast, which is despatched with marvellous rapidity. At meal times, if business is brisk, the bell or gong does not fail to create a stampede toward the dining-room door; a rush is made for seats, and the disappointed retire and wait for the next sitting. In the evening all congregate in the bar-room, light their pipes, lift up their obscene voices in boisterous jokes, and strut about ready to give "particular hell" to any who dare question the rights of liberty -loving American citizens to do as they please.
Stores also had their bars, where, beside the sale of calico, canvas, clothing, hardware, canned fruits and meats, sugar, flour, bacon, and tobacco, the dice were thrown, quarters flipped, or a game of cards played for the drinks. For this purpose a table and chairs were provided, where cans might be opened and oysters eaten. ​
The restaurant is a prominent feature in the feeding economy of the country. The best are kept by foreigners, Germans, French, ItaHans; American restaurants are invariably second, third, or fourth rate. The typical American can keep a hotel such as no foreigner may hope to equal, but when it comes to restaurant-feeding, the tables are turned. The cause may be traced to the facts that the American hotel is an American institution, while the restaurant is as fully European.
In 1854 a Parisian rotisserie was set up on Kearny street, where fish, flesh, and fowl for the million might be roasted. In the fire-place, beneath a chimney six feet wide, and resting on an iron grating, was a long fire of wood, parallel to which, and about eight inches from it in front, were three iron rods, with numerous prongs upon which to hang meat to be roasted, and wheels rigged to turn it so as to cook it equally on every side. Meat and game to be roasted might be purchased there or elsewhere, or it might be bought there ready cooked, but it had to be taken away as soon as ready, for eating on the premises was not permitted. Half a dollar w^as charged for roasting a duck or chicken, and no frying, boiling, or broiling was done—nothing but roasting, and that for a specific consideration. Thus was the division of labor in this cosmopolitan city applied to the laudable art of cookery.
Bar-room boarders formed a class peculiar to the countr}^. They might be seen lounging about the court-house, the hotels, and the saloons without occupation or visible means of support. They were fat, sleek, well-dressed, with independent mien, with gold and silver jingling in their pockets, and contentment smiling in their faces. They were never known to work; how then did they live ? I see one with a gold-headed cane in well- fitting beaver coat and pants, with a glossy silk hat, pluming his well kept mustache and whiskers in front of a first-class boot-black establishment where an extra polish had just been given to ​
his red-topped boots. A heavy -cased watch—was it gold?—which he drew from his pocket told him it was ten o'clock; a brother bmnmer came samiteriiig along the street, sidled up to him with scarcely a j^erceptable sign of recognition, and began a conversation remarkable for its fewness of words. As among beasts and lovers in the simple presence of each other there was a mute understanding untranslatable into the t^ulgar tongue. Presently they turned and walked away, under the guidance of their particular providence.
The system of free lunches has not been wholly free from abuses. While it was a point of honor in patrons neither to eat nor drink too much, often there were those so carried away by the effect of the savory viands on their unruly appetites, that the proprietors lost money by their patronage. In November 1854 a movement was made by some fifty or si/ty fashionable saloon-keepers in San Francisco to al olish this original, yet honored institution; but so firm was the hold upon the popular stomach, that it was found to be impracticable. It was estimated that at least five thousand persons were directly interested in the movement, and dependent on the result for their daily refreshments. The committee reported in favor of abolishing the free lunch system, but the proprietors failed to adopt it, and the custom was indefinitely continued.
The hotel system of 1849 reached a state of perfection under the auspices of a certain shrewd genius of Sacramento. In those days whisky as a means of warmth was more plentiful and profitable to innkeepers than blankets. One landlord had in his barroom seven bunks, one over another, made of flour and coffee sacks stretched between two horizontal poles fastened to posts, forming an uncomfortable hollow just wide enough for a medium-sized man to drop into. For these seven bunks there were but one pair of blankets, and how to satisfy seven customers, and get pay for seven beds with but one pair of ​blankets was the question. But the genius of the landlord was equal to the emergency. The nights were wet and cold, and naturally enough as the boys came in from their supper they sat down to play for the whisky before going to bed. The liquor was strong, the drafts upon it copious, and in due time one after another beginning: to feel its comforting and somnolent effects would ask for a bed. The affable and ready landlord promised to accommodate them all if they would be quiet and take their turns. Conducting the first applicant to the bunk-side of the room which was shielded from view by barrels and boxes, he assisted him into the topmost berth and covered him nicely with the blankets. Then waiting until the man was fast asleep he removed from him the blankets, and spreading them in another berth called for the next, and so on until all were put to bed and asleep. Then taking the blankets from the bed of the last customer, the landlord rolled himself comfortably in them, threw himself upon the floor, and slept soundly until morning.
The first man awakes shivering with cold; the effects of the fiery fluid have passed away, and the blankets are gone. "Who has stolen my blankets," he growls. This wakens the next who also finds himself uncovered, and the next, until all are up and on the floor cursing in unison the thief. Soon the landlord makes one of the party, and mourns the loss of his blankets. "Well! I must get out of this," says the first. " Landlord, how much is to pay ? " "Two dollars." "Two dollars!" isn't that rather tall for sleeping on two poles ? " " It is only a dollar a pole," replied the landlord, "and I think it very cheap; besides I have lost seven pairs of blankets which you ought to pay for, so you should be satisfied." Fearing if they further demurred they would have the blankets to pay for, each paid his two dollars and withdrew, while the landlord made up his beds for the next night.
​Wine, women, and the gods comprehended all that was divine among the ancients. After the discovery of America, however, the settlers becoming godless, and yet not willing to be behind their primogenitors in point of felicities, substituted tobacco, and never before did wine, women, and tobacco, severally and unitedly, lend their charms to solace and derange humanity as in the case of mammon-martyrs of California. The last was considered a necessity, and the first soon became the cordial of success, the consoler of the unfortunate, and the medium of courteous exchanges.
Some of man's distinguishing; characteristics, showing his great superiority and true nobility of soul, before intimated, lies in the creation of appetites for the pleasure their gratification gives; appetites which may be renewed, not satisfied by the indulgence, but which grow from what they fed on. He alone eats without hunger, drinks without thirst, smokes, blasphemes, seeking for body and mind new sensations. The custom of drinking healths and rememberance dates back to periods of the remotest antiquity. In the earliest ages as at the present time it was a religious as well as a social ceremonial. As Anacreon sings: "Does not the earth drink the waves, the tree the earth, the sea the air, the sun the sea, and the moon the sun? Then why should I not drink?" The Hebrews had their drink offering's, the Greeks and the Romans poured out their libations to the gods, and Christians to this day observe the command, drink ye all of it. From these beginnings drinking to majesty naturally followed; the health and victories of Augustus were drank in Rome; and feasts were celebrated in which drunkenness was the chief feature. The Greek proverb adopted by the Romans does not, however, say, I drink in order that your health may be improved or preserved, but I invite you to drink by drinking myself. It was the fame of the mistress rather than her health that was to be ​
promoted by the ceremony. A piece of toasted bread was thrown into a tankard of ale, and toastdrinking followed. The custom grew in favor; men and women were glad of any excuse for indulging the growing appetite, so that finally health-drinking fell into general observance. Healths were drank to form or cement friendships, to bind a bargain, to the honor of those who came and went, to the memory of the departed— though health-drinking to the dead was, indeed, carrying the custom to an absurdity. Under its auspices war w^as declared, and peace ratified, sworn enemies became friends, and friends enemies. Sentiment being thus mingled with drink, the reverence and love expressed were in proportion to the quantity of liquor quafled; this as well as the supposed mark of manliness in being able to stand up under large potations made excessive drinking fashionable. He whose physical strength should longest endure while the mental and moral faculties were undergoing debasement was the best fellow ; but this sad merit is now restricted in its recognition to brainless boys and silly men, -^sop, the slave, waiting at table, marked the effects of excessive wine-drinking in three stages ; first voluptuousness, second, drunkenness, and third, fury.
That liquor-drinking should have been carried to excess in California is not to be wondered at. The temptations were strong. Some who blame as senseless folly this species of suicide may or may not have done better under similar conditions; with different mental, moral, and physical organization and training ■—accidents reflecting no special credit on the possessor— similar to those of the gambler, the thief, the drunkard, the murderer, under like circumstances to theirs, the immaculate man of self-complacency would certainly have been one or all of these. Men cannot long endure a heavy strain upon their faculties without letting down. This letting down may be accomplished by some in one way and by others in another ​
way. Piety will do it in frequent instances; sabbath, Sunday-school, church, prayer, and bible reading. But all men have not piety, never were trained to it, do not know what it is. Intellectual culture, the mastery of mind over base passion, which leads to reading, thinking, writing, will sometimes accomplish the purpose, but still fewer have these resources within them. To produce self-forgetfulness, the miners resorted to out-door amusements, and generally with good effect; horse-racing, foot-racing, ball-playing, and indoor novel-reading, card-playing, checkers, and chess were common. Lonely and desolate in their self-imposed ostracism, they were neither cynical nor unsocial. They felt the necessity for periods of selfforgetfulness, and did what they could to make themselves boys again. But this was not always sufficient, and with an antidote to every ill always ready at hand, with characteristic directness they too often applied it. During the hours of occupation some sort of stimulant seemed necessary to keep up the steam, and when work was over, the stop must not be too sudden. So, if hot, they drank to get cool, if cold to get warm, if wet to get dry, if dry—and some were always dry—to keep out the wet. When they wanted to get up an appetite for breakfast, they took a drink, and then another to aid digestion. Any shadow of an excuse, any cause except the true cause—which simply was to solace or excite the brain—was readily seized and offered. Thousands thus drank to themselves damnation, thousands are to-day drinking it; noble natures which nothing else could overcome, vanquished at last by the arch-fiend. Often the heart was already broken before the demon was let in.
In the early days of California, however, drunkenness was not the vice so much as drinking. Tippling was common from the becjinningr • the excitements and atmosphere of the country were congenial to it. There were at first no more confirmed drunkards here than elsewhere, nor, indeed, so many, for these were n^t.. ​
the kind that came to Callfornia. For the enormous quantities of hquor consumed, the number of drunken men was few. It was later that multitudes were overcome of this evil. Then no one ret^arded drink in the light of an enemy to steal away his brains, but rather as a friend that promoted good fellowship, that cheated of their tediousness the slowly-passing dismal hours, that banished sorrow, that lifted care with instantaneous mao;ic hand from off the brain, and g:ave it sweet oblivion, that inspired bold thoughts, that enlarged the soul, that etherealized the tamest joys, and threw a halo over coarse surroundings. Hard work and hard drinking with many went hand in hand; but such men drunkenness seldom overtook, or if it did, it was occasional rather than common.
It has been said that there is something in the climate of California which superinduces delirium tremens with less provocation than elsewhere. I do not know what it is, unless it be the same that superinduces business and social delirium, auri sacra fames. These were the days of delirium, and he who was not delirious might thank his numbness and stupidity for it. California life was but a succession of alternate periods of delirium and apathy.
Drinking-saloons were a prominent feature in all the mining camps. Sometimes of logs, sometimes of white cloth nailed over a frame, but usually of boards, lined on the inside with cloth or paper, or both, not more than one or two stories in height, but spreading over considerable ground, they were conspicuous in appearance, and generally occupied a central position. Before the door, or if the weather was cold, inside around the stove, w^ere seats which any one, whether patrons or not, might occupy. On one side of the room was the bar, over which liquor was sold, and in various parts of it were green baize-covered card tables and chairs, where "poker," " seven-up," and " euchre" were played, both for money and for drinks. One or more large long tables, surrounded by benches ​
and chairs, stood near the centre of the room, where professional gamblers presided, and sometimes two or three billiard tables were placed in the end farthest from the bar. Private rooms for gambling purposes opened from the main saloon, where two or three days were often spent by one party w^ithout intermission. At the back door, huge piles of bottles, casks, cans, and cigar and tobacco boxes conveyed some faint idea of the extent of the business within.
In the larger saloons tobacco and cigars were sold from a stand fitted up in one corner, and an elaborate luncheon was set out on a table once or twice a day, of which he who bought a drink might partake without extra charge. This " free lunch," as it was called, consisted at first of only crackers and cheese, but competition gradually enlarged the ideas of saloon proprietors until finally it grew into a sumptuous repast of soups, fish, roast meats, and side dishes. At these places one could obtain, in addition to a drink which cost perhaps twenty-five cents, a dinner which elsewhere would cost twice or thrice that sum.
As a matter of course there were all grades and descriptions of saloons, from the lowest " bit " house, where "rot-gut" whisky, "strychnine" brandy, and divers other poisonous compounds with slang names were sold, to the most gorgeous drinking palaces, with large mirrors and magnificent oil paintings, and whose fittings and furnishings alone cost sometimes ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars. In 1853 there were in San Francisco 537 places where liquor was sold, 46 of which were public gambling houses, 743 bartenders officiating. No wonder that hard times set in. A thousand leeches, poison-mongers, in half a thousand houses, in a comparatively small society, as San Francisco was then, this alone was enough to bring the curse of God upon the place, not to mention prostitution, political bribery, mercantile dishonesty, and twenty other forms of demoralization.
The saloon-keeper was one of the dignitaries of the ​town; he interfered to prevent bloodshed, was the umpire in disputes occurring within his precincts, and after the battle attended the wounded, cared for the dying, and buried the dead. In the more lawless districts, a barricade of bags of sand or other bullet-proof barrier was constructed inside the bar under the counter, so that when shooting became lively the bartender had only to drop behind his fortification and be comparatively safe, while those in the middle of the room must drop flat on the floor, or shield their hearts with table, chair, or bench.
Comedy, however, was the rule, and tragedy the exception, and the saloon was the scene of many practical jokes. Catch-bets for drinks, and tricks to bring the uninitiated into ridicule and make them "treat," commanded the resources of the inventive brain. A common "sell" was for some one, usually a judge or other respectable and dignified personage, to invite the crowd to participate, with the welcome words, "Come, boys, let's all take a drink!" Soon the bar is surrounded by a score of ready fellows, each watching in happy mood the concocting of his favorite draught. Touching their glasses all, and bowing acknowledgments to their inviter, twenty arms are uplifted, twenty heads thrown back, twenty watering mouths are opened, and down twenty itching throats twenty nectareous potations erode their way, and as the glasses touch the counter again, the inviter sotto voce observes, "And now, boys, let us all pay for it!"
Innumerable were the toasts given; besides the world-wide and stereotyped "I drink your health," "I pledge you," "here is to you," "my regards," "my respects, gentlemen," were local and individual toasts, as well as those improvised for occasions. Usually they were short and caustic. "Here's luck," "here's fun," "here's at you," "here we go," "here's all the hair off your head," " I am looking towards you," "until to-morrow," "here's another nail in ​
your coffin," "here's hoping these few Hnes will find you enjoying the same blessing."
The apt and chameleon-like bar-keeper, who could adapt himself to the color and moods of every customer, though not a proprietor, was a person of no mean consequence. Studying his business as a profession he rose in it, ennobling himself while he ennobled his occupation, as he acquired skill. With practice his clumsy fingers became pliable, and bottles and glasses flew from shelf, hand, and counter in orderly confusion.
Decanters tipped their several ingredients into the forming compound with magic nicety, and cascades of brilliant liquids poured from glass to glass held at arm's length with the precision of a rock-bound cataract. Nor was the profession restricted in its advancement to mere mechanical skill. Ingenuity was displayed in concocting new nectar, and soon a long list of delicious beverages became as household words. There was the champagne cocktail, the mint julep, brandy smash, hot whisky punch, sulky sangaree, tom and jerry, and a host of others, but the usual mode of taking drink was, as most other things were taken in California—straig^ht.
Sundays, evenings, and at all times saloons were the general rendezvous for the entire population. There loafers congregated and business men met: there all flocked to learn the news, to talk over the prospects of the times, to beguile tedious hours, and once there smoking, drinking, gambling, stag-dances, blasphemous yells, and shooting followed. Brilliantly lighted at night, with a roaring fire in cold weather, and chair and benches on which to sit and smoke, and tables at which to drink and play, in those days of loneliness and discomfort they were the most attractive places in the town. Nor was it considered improper or disreputable for a respectable man to be seen there as I have before remarked, even although, as was oftentimes the case, the scene was graced by ​
the presence of the painted Jezebels, and the walls adorned with pictures of female figures with opulent undraped charms, and bands dispensed loud music to devil-inspired dancers, and the smoky air was thick with oaths and imprecations. " There is nowhere else to go," the solitary and forlorn would say, and when compelled to choose between their miserable homes and these flaunting halls of hell, the average conscience became quite pliable and accommodating.
In such society and with such surroundings it was almost impossible for one to live and never drink ; and he who in righteous wrath repudiates the idea as absurd knows nothing about it. Man must associate with his fellows; he cannot long remain alone. Neither can he live long individual and peculiar in his habits unless he be possessed of a hermit's nature — and I know of no hermit who ever came to California. Hence it is, sooner or later, he is bound to fall into the ways of those about him. An invitation to drink, in those days, was almost equivalent to a command, and to decline was frequently to give offense. He who refused was deemed either prudish or churlish, neither of which qualities his companions were disposed long to tolerate. The honest miner, the unshaven, woollen-shirted, drinking, swearing man was the social ideal, it was dangerous for a man to pretend to be better than his fellows. Often men have been mobbed in the mines for wearing a stovepipe hat, or black coat, or for shaving his chin, or for doing in any way as others did not do. Then if you accept an invitation to drink w^ith others } ou must sometimes return the compliment; failing to do so is worse than not to drink at all.
The English custom which, within the bounds of respectability, limited drinking to dinner and evening did not here obtain. Having just dined was oftener an excuse for declining than a pretext for accepting. Dinner did not divide the day as in older and more staid communities; there was as much to be done ​
after dinner as before, and people came hither to work rather than to enjoy themselves. Every moment not devoted to the accomplishment of the purpose that tore them from home and friends seemed wasted.
To drink alone was to demean one's self; it smacked too much of drinking for the love of it, which even in their wild times, and notwithstanding all men did it, was held disgraceful. Such a one was either an * onery cuss' or a * whiskey-bloat,' or both; and so with the high-minded and open-handed, the barkeeper must drink if there was no one else available.
Not unfrequently in the remoter and more isolated camps, from snow or flood, supplies would become low and prices advance enormously. In such cases a scarcity of food was more philosophically endured than the total absence of liquor and tobacco. After such a season of abstinence, the first train arriving would be surrounded by a crowd of thirsty souls with bottles, cups, coffee-pots, and saucepans, all eager for a supply of the precious liquid. Ten dollars was once offered for the privilege of using a straw at the buno; of a keo; of New England rum. Excess followed as a matter of course, and soon every phase of inebriety was manifest, from prattling jocundity to roaring intoxication. Patriotism would break forth in song and dance; whith thick tongues and husky throats the sons of Erin would sound the glories of the Emerald Isle, the Germans of their fatherland, the Frenchmen of sweet France; Yankees apostrophized their growing country. Englishmen challenged all the world to mortal combat, Spaniards, mounted on mule or mustang, dug their long rowels into the animal's bleeding sides, and rushed hither and thither making the hills ring with their delirious shouts. Old quarrels were revived, and the flash of steel and discharge of revolvers, as much to the danger of bystanders as to the combatants themselves, lent their peculiar charm to the occasion.
Many drank spasmodically ; hard workers attending ​
closely to business for days and weeks without touching a drop of liquor, then took to drink for a day or a week, and after their debauch returned to their work with new vigor. Business is one thing and pleasure another, they say—one should be wholly disthict from the other. In Europe all drink and without ceasing, but usually in moderation, and mixed with their work which is light; in California the two were somewhat separated, and the work was harder.
Gulliver assured his horse friends, the Houyhnhnms^ "that wine was not imported among us from foreign countries to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which made us merry, by putting us out of our senses, diverted all melancholy thoughts, begot wild extravagant imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes and banished our fears, suspended every office of reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound sleep, although it must be confessed that we always awoke sick or dispirited, and that the use of this liquor filled us with diseases which made our lives uncomfortable and short " This was at a time when Swift's contemporary, Sir Richard Steel, says of England that "the common amusement of our young gentlemen, especially of such as are at a distance from those of the first breeding, is drinking." And furthermore 'that "it is very common that evils arise from a debauch which are fatal, and always such as are disao-reeable."
There are many like the learned Samuel Johnson and Hazlitt, who can abstain wholly, but who cannot practise abstinence. There are men, who from their very nature, can do nothing in moderation. Men of genius, particularly, being of necessity unevenly balanced in mind, tend to every species of excess. Broad laxity follows severe effort, and free indulgence temporary abstinence. For many years Johnson drank no wine; but toward his latter days he took it up ​
again, and greedily swallowed large goblets of drink, mostly in private. Often he advdsed Boswell to abandon the bottle, but Bozzy loved his potations, and preferred his sottish enjoyments to any other.
Johnson. *'I did not leave off wine because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University college has witnessed this."
Boswell. "Why, then sir, did you leave it off?"
Johnson. " Why, sir, because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself I shall not begin to drink wine again till I grow old and Avant it."
Boswell. " I think, sir, you once said to me that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life."
Johnson. "It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational."
A Bosw^ell will tell you that benevolence lies at the root of drunkenness. A friend asks you to drink with him, your entertainer begs you to take wine with him, and rather than offend, or seem discourteous, or send a chill round the table, you throw aside your scruples, drink once, then again and again, and soon linow next to nothing;.
The practice of urging persons to drink cannot be too plainly condemned. To some, drink is distasteful, to others hurtful, to others maddening, to not a few—death. It may be pleasure for him who can with ease command his appetite, for him to whom excess in drink has no temptations, by appealing to friendship, good-fellowship, and in the name of hospitality to wrap around those he pretends to love a sheet of flaming^ fire which shall consume them.
Said Sir Joshua Reynolds, *' At first the taste of "V^ine was disagreeable to me, but I brought myself to drink it that I might be like other people. The pleasure of drinking wine is so connected with pleasing ​
your company, that altogether there is something of social goodness in it."
Though wine may make us better pleased with ourselves, it does not always make others better pleased with us. Such is not always the effect, I say, but sometimes it is. Many become more agreeable in society as they forget themselves, so that they do not go too far and forget others. Although drink furnishes one with neither wit nor learning, it often breaks down the barriers and liberates such abilities as before were confined. It ammates what before was dormant. It thaws congealed ideas, and unlocks the tongue. The effect of this may be pleasing or otherwise.
After all it is a skulking for brilliant effect which manliness despises. Better a mind so cultivated and manners so assured that a man can be as much himself while in his senses, as when beside himself
When alone, as well as when in company, laboring under a humiliating^ sense of awkwardness or inferiority, many drink to get rid of themselves. They would send their thoughts far away from themselves, from the proximate objects and events that annoy them to more pleasing scenes and subjects. Thus wine gives pleasure by taking from us pain. And in every pleasure we have the right to indulge unless it brings evil upon ourselves or others. Then the right is no longer ours. A good which is counterbalanced by an evil is not good but evil, as it tends to evil, and is but the pleasurable beginning of an evil which has a painful ending^.
There is little difference between drunkenness and insanity, and you may as well look for fixed resolve and determinate principle in an idiot as in the habitual drunkard. Having passed certain stages, he is absolutely powerless to reform; and when jeers and insults are heaped upon one of these unfortunates, one hardly knows which to pity most, the sot or the inhuman rabble; when one sees the so-called respectable ​
of untried virtue, scoff at the fallen of any quality, one hardly knows which to pity most, the vanquished fighter of life's battle, or the pharisee, proud in ill being so unlike these publicans.
How the big, blustering coward is sometimes deceived by the slender form, and modest demeanor, and thin, pale face which often cover firmness and true courage! Yet the closer observer sees in the eye, and mouth,* and features, lineaments as plainly indicative of character as lines chiseled by the sculpter's graver.
Once there was a half-drunken Irishman at Foster's bar who attempted to force a small, sickl}?" -looking youth to drink. Seizing the boy by the arm, he dragged him to the counter where a glass stood ready.
"Drink that or I'll murder you," said the Irishman.
"I will not," calmly replied the boy, not a trace of color appearing in his face.
"Then, damn you, you shall clear out!" exclaimed the infuriated Irishman, and taking the boy by the collar of his shirt he kicked him into the street. The youth caught the awning-post with his left arm and continued to swing round it, boy-like. His right hand he put behind him.
"You dare not follow me out," said he, in the same low, passionless voice which had characterized his whole conversation. Instantly the Irishman made a spring at him. The boy swung himself once or twice round the post to gather force; then as he came round he sprang upon his burly foe and drove a long, sharp, double-edged knife into his breast killing him instantly. The boy was tried and acquitted.
Rum has ruined its thousands, is still ruining them. War with all its horrors, pestilence, and famine are harmless as compared with the deadly work of the demon drink. A five years' war four times every century, each as disastrous to life as was that for the Union, would not kill as many men as excessive drinking now is killing every day. Dead they are, thougfh ​their vile breath has not yet left the body, and though their staggerings betoken corporeal animation. "I have bought my ticket through," said a poor heart-broken wretch as he stood upon the wharf in conversation with a friend while waiting the departure of the steamer. He was a young man, not yet thirty, tall, well built, and intellectual, but his dress betokened poverty. Broken sentences came through quivering lips; despair was pictured in his iace, and in his eyes stood moisture wrung by misfortune from the heart. *' I have bought my ticket through," he said, "but I shall not go home. Seven years I have spent in California, and all that time I have drunk to excess. What is home to me now—home without hope ? Doubtless I shall join Walker, in Nicaragua; I care not what becomes of me! " So have sunk from sight a hundred thousand and more of the immigration of the first decade. ​
CHAPTER XXIII.
GAMBLING.
Credo. I believe in dice;
Without a penny for the price, Full often have they got me meat, Good wine to drink and friends to treat; And sometimes, too, when luck went worse. They've stripped me clean of robe and purse.
— Bufefeuf.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err; earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sutlicing nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law—she only knows
How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.
— Shelley.
Johnson. Depend upon it, sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming ? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange i-out made about deep play, whereas you have many more people ruined by adventurous trade, and yet we do not hear such an outcry against it.
llirale. There may be few absolutely ruined by deep play, but very many are much hurt in their circumstances by it.
Johnson. Yes, sir, and so are very many by other kinds of expense.
Johnson. It is not roguery to play with a man who is ignorant of the game while you are master of it, and so win his money, for he thinks he can play better than you, as you think you can play better than he, and the superior skill carries it.
Ersldne. He is a fool, but you are not a rogue.
Johnson. That's much about the truth, sir. It must be considered that a man who only does what every one of the society to which he belongs would do, is not a dishonest man.
Boswell. So, then, sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins, perhaps, forty thousand pounds in a winter ?
Johnson. Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man, but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.
— BoswelVs Johnson.
A PRIMARY principle of ethics is that every individual may freely act his pleasure as long as he does not interfere with the rights of otJi^rs. He may claim for himself every gratification whic ​h does not
limit others in their gratifications. He may come and go, he may buy and sell, he may marry, preach, or develop a mine, and in all this legitimately better his condition, provided he does not make worse the condition of those, or any of them, with whom he comes in contact.
The true theory of business is that traffic which does not result in reciprocal advantages to buyer and seller is illegitimate, or at least abnormal. Let it be reofistered in men's minds that he who accumulates wealth to the loss of another is a bad man following a bad business. He is a swindler, and should be punished as one.
In this way men may build railroads; but they must not employ the power thus acquired in impositions upon the people, subsidizing competition to keep up iniquitous prices, buying legislators, and corrupting morals and society, building up or ruining this man or that town or industry, and exercising a hateful tyranny over a long-suffering and pusillanimous people. Men may buy and sell wheat, but they may not so ' corner ' it as by their trickery to make consumers pay twice or thrice its value. Men may in good faith develop mines; but the manipulation of mining stocks as practised by brokers and bonanza chiefs is worse than ordinary gambling and stealing — being more on a par with three-card monte, and like cheatino" and confidence games.
We all know the evils of gambling; how it dissatisfies society in its daily occupations, absorbs thought, dissipates energy, and renders men unfit for that steady application and reasonable economy which alone make a community prosperous. It destroys the finer qualities both of mind and feeling; it makes men moody and nervous, makes them live a life of extremes, now exhilarated by success, now despondent through failure. What folly! Some play for money, but with the percentage against them they should know that in the end they are sure to lose. Some ​
pkiy for pleasure; but if they ponder for a moment tJiey must know that Uke drink it is but a pleasure that is sure to end in pain.
Epicurus denounced all pleasures productive of pain. No one has the moral right to obtain money or pleasure in any manner detrimental to public well-being. "This kind of action," s,ays Herbert Spencer, "is therefore essentially anti-social, sears the sympathies, cultivates a hard egotism, and so produces a general deterioration of character and conduct." All moral occupations imply the rendering of an equivalent for money received.
Is not society here, as in other cases, such as polygamy, prostitution, monopoly, and mongolianism, inclined to carry the sentiment against the professional gambling game to an extreme ? Why go so far out of our way to play the prude or hypocrite? Unquestionably there are honest gamblers and dishonest gamblers. There are professional gamblers who will wax cards or use an imperfect pack, or cheat in a variety of ways, just as a shop-keeper will sell you an inferior article, overcharge, or otherwise take undue advantage ; there are gamblers and shop-keepers who will not do these things. It is safe to assert that as a rule there is proportionately no more cheating and overreaching in the clubrooms of our cities than in the stock boards of our cities, or in very many of the avenues of commerce. It is safe to assert that there is more iniquity committed, more political, commercial, and social demoralization perpetrated by the monopolists of the United States in one day than is achieved by all the gamblers, prostitutes, and polygamists in a twelve-month.
Since very early times gambling has been held infamous by most civilized nations. Aristotle declared a gamester to be no better than a thief. Stringent laws against games of hazard, except during the Saturnalia, were passed by the Roman senate; nevertheless the people played. Jews, Mahometans, and ​
Christians all set their faces against games of chance. The Talmud censures them. No Hindoo gambler was allowed to testify in courts. The duke of Clarence in 1469 prohibited gambling hi his household except at the " xii dayes in Christmasse."
Silly Charles VI. of France played with painted cards; some say they were first made for his use in 1392, though of this there is no proof; since which time the mischief has often been played with them, though this was not the fault of the cards.
During the reign of Henry VII. card-playing was very generally in vogue ; so much so that it was prohibited by law. Apprentices the edict especially regarded, forbidding them to play with cards except during the Christmas holidays, and in their master's houses.
Pecullar as was the character of some of the waofers in California, there were none here so indecent or irreverent as were exposed by the law courts of England fifty years ago—instance the case of Joanna Southcote, an unmarried woman, upon whose delivery of a male child, a new Messiah, within certain days was bet £200 to £100; a wager that Napoleon would be removed from St Helena within a certain time, a wager upon the sex of a femininelooking man, upon a decree of a court, upon the death of one's father, and the like.
The merchant does not grow rich, as moralists sometimes aver, by the debauched lives of the young, nor the husbandman by the scarcity and consequent dearness of his grain, nor the architect by the decay of buildings. It is true that doctors live by the diseases of mankind, and priests by the principle of evil, and lawyers by disputes. Good springs from evil, and life from death. As Montague says, " Ce que considerant, il m'est venu en fantasie, comme nature ne se desment point en cela de sa general polici, car les physiciens tiennent que la naissance, nourissement, et augmentation de chacque chose est I'alteration et corruption d'une aultre." ​
Some teach us how to be learned, others how to be rich, and others, again, how to be lucky. Gamblers have their doctrine of chances and runs of luck. Thus, if a particular number or card wins twice or thrice in succession, the chances are in favor of its winning once or twice more.
Chance is a superstition; there is no such thing as accident, no deviation from the inexorable laws of nature, any more than there is a veritable war-god, weather-god, or Great Cloud Manipulator.
The laws of fortune are not unjust nor partial because they tend to unequal favors. We may not blaspheme fortune for sending the ball into the wrong pocket, when with our own hand we forced it there ; or for giving us inferior cards, when with our own fingers we shuffled and dealt them. Like all the laws of nature and of man, the laws which govern chance are reasonable and just. There is no guardian angel or spiteful demon lurking near the cards or dice to turn them in our favor. We turn them with our fingers. The operation is purely a mechanical one. Put the dice into the cup always exactly in the same manner, and shake them always the same, and the same side is always sure to be uppermost. It is not true that the dice of the gods are always loaded. Men may load their dice to suit themselves, and blind chance be frustrated if they have the ability. That is to say, dice will fall as they are thrown and there is no chance about it.
Gambling is reprobate not chiefly because it tends to the ruin of him who indulges in it, his family and friends; not chiefly because of its evil associations and alienation from healthy pursuits, but because it produces profit and pleasure to one at the cost of loss and pain to another. It must be admitted that while many came to California to seek their fortunes, some came to seek for other people's fortunes.
We are apt to regard gambling, drunkenness, licentiousness, indulgence in the use of tobacco and the ​like, as unnatural or artificial tastes and passions. But is this the fact ? Gambling has been practised by all people in all ages. In the infancy of the race, and in rude societies, it assumes the form of games, physical and animal contests; in more advanced communities, stocks and securities become the favorite gamble, and indeed, the spirit of gambling underlies all commerce and industrial activities. And so with regard to the other vices named, there appears to be in man natural appetites craving indulgence. Intoxicating drink is common to all time and places and to avoid excess in this or other things is simply perfection. Why did all the world take so quickly and so naturally to the use of tobacco when it was discovered, if the craving for it did not spring from a natural appetite ?
So with a hundred other great and small tyrannies and swindles, such as those so frequently perpetrated by gas and water companies, by boards and officeholders, by men in any and every position where they happen to hold some power over their fellows. So long asthese gross iniquities are permitted ; so long as the grinding monopolist and the unprincipled stock-jobber are permitted to ply their nefarious trade, why be so hard on the honest gambler who stoops to no such vile advantage? He, alone, who makes it a profession is disgraced. He, alone, is infamous. An honest man he may be, courteous, chivalrous, unselfish, yet the filthiest blackguard that ' bucks' against his bank may hold him in social contempt.
The prudish English put the finest point on this absurdity. It is all right to play whist and like games, all betting "just to make it interesting, you know," all of necessity pretending that they care nothing for the money ; but change the game, and bet a little more freely, and the clergymen and women particularly are horrified. The game of poker is becoming reputable in America among free-and-easy and not over-refined people, provided the stakes are ​
not too liio;li. But what are hio^h stakes ? In a company of spinsters, in the drawing-room of a secondclass Connecticut boarding-house, five cents 'antemight be deemed extravagant, while in the south, during the glorious days of slavery, a negro ante and twenty on the call was deemed moderate playing. All the?e distinctions are without a difference; and men and women miserably fail in thus trying to befool themselves into making certain phases of gambling respectable while holding other phases of it, equally honest and fair, as illegal and disreputable. On a par with the rest are the English ethics which makes it right to swindle your tailor, but very wrong not to pay a gambling debt. Debts of honor, these last are called.
Of course there are always a thousand excuses ready for whatever folly or iniquity society chooses to indulge in. Gambling in stocks encourages mining ; gambling at the races promotes horse-breeding; gambling in churches helps to buy an organ or pay a debt. But have we no excuses for our honest bankino; g^ames ? Listen to Lecky, the foremost of English moralists: " Even the gambling table fosters among its more skillful votaries a kind of moral nerve, a capacity for bearing losses with calmness, and controlling the force of desires, which is scarcely exhibited in equal perfection in any other sphere." Likewise the immaculate Boswell, whose name, however, is scarcely worthy of mention in connection with the other: "There is a composure and gravity in draughts which insensibly tranquillizes the mind, and accordingly the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself never smoked, he had a high opinion. Besides, there is in draughts some exercise of the faculties."
Dishonest gamblers sometimes mark their cards with puncture's so minute as to be imperceptible to the ordinary touch, and to detect them themselves they are obliged to apply acid to the fingers to increase ​
their sensitiveness. Such disreputable practices should be discountenanced by all good gamblers, the same as putting sand in sugar, discriminating in freights, and salting a mine.
The evils of stock gambling, ruining thousands upon thousand of families in the city and throughout the land, as compared with those of professional gambling, are infinitely against the former. Nowhere as in this mad desire to be suddenly and immensely rich were the souls of men so staked. It was worse than Mephistopheles betting with the Lord that the integrity of Faust should fail him, or Satan laying a like wager in regard to Job.
Notwithstanding that mining since the world began has been a hundred times proven the most ruinous of speculations, to this day wherever is a discovery of the precious metals, thither may be seen a rush from every quarter.
"A man who subjects things to chance rather than to the operation of definite and calculable laws, gambles," says Beecher.
Here in California the advice of Plautus, " Habeas ut nactus: nota mala res optima' st," " keep what you've got; the evil that we know is best," was sadly out of place. To be "stuck in stocks," made sweating sore by them, screwed tighter in them than the village villain's feet in that old-time punishing-machine, was at one time common to all.
In stock speculation there" is wanting that same element of utility which we find lacking in faro and monte, and by which alone society is benefited in the interchange of values among its members. In ordinary transactions, he who makes money is not benefited as much as he suffers who loses it, and in gambling the difference is largely increased.
What is it that causes the price of stocks to change ? What is it that causes any fluctuations in values when there has been no corresponding development in the mines or change in the money market? ​
Opinion; simply opinion. In all their politics, religion, and social ethics, men are essentially imitative in their beliefs. Now money being as sensitive as any species of morality is very quick to embrace popular belief without stopping to consider whether it be sound or not. Indeed, that it is the popular belief is sufficient; for this alone will send securities up or pull them down. And the worst feature about all this is that the people do not buy and sell stocks on the intrinsic value of the mine; they care nothing about such value, do not take it into consideration scarcely, but gamble to-day on what will be the price of shares to-morrow.
The rise and fall in stocks may sometimes indicate the demand and supply, which again are governed by the disposition of men to purchase more than intrinsic value or change of condition justify. If many persons at the same time seek to buy large quantities of a stock it is sure to advance; if they all at one time wish to sell it is sure to go down. And yet the mine may be twice as valuable when it depreciates as when it appreciates.
Hard times, commercial collapses, monetary crises are offcener the result of apprehension than of a real cause. When every one says times are good and acts accordingly, investing, improving, circulating his money, that alone will make business and prosperity. But as a rule it is safe to say of stock-boards, buildings, and the mass of wealth heaped up by bonanza men and stock-jobbers, that they all are but the crystallizations of crime. To their dearest friends who inquired of them as to their fortune, they were false oracles, ready to sacrifice heaven, if they ever had any chance there, in order to fill their pockets. They would cheat, mother, brother, and I have even known of a man giving his wife money with which to gamble in stocks, simply for the pleasure of beating her out of it. Meanwhile, into all sorts of ​
extravagance their victims plunged," as if their money was immortal.
In the early clays of California gambling was but a more direct expression of the spirit of speedy accumulation manifest in common and in so-called legitimate speculation. Mining, merchandising, real estate operations in those days of uncertainty were all species of gambling. The coming hither in the first instance was but a staking of time, energy, and health against the hidden treasures of the Sierra.
The origin of this vice must be sought in the unsounded depths of turbid human nature ; its practice dates back to the remotest past. Thousands of years before the coming of Europeans to these shores gaming was the chief delight of the inhabitants. The gentle savage would stake on some aboriginal game of chance or skill his shell-money, his peltries, his hunting and household implements, his wives, with an outward indifference as to the results that in 1849 would have made him the envy of the subtlest and skilfullest faro dealer of the day. Losing all else he would throw himself, his liberty into the pot, and losing this he would march off, the naked slave of the winner, with a stoicism most pleasing to behold. The European with all his superior mechanism of mind, his culture and philosophy, has never been able to outdo the childlike and passionate wild man in those qualities of skill and self-command essential to success in this fascinating calling.
From what Horace tells us it appears that the vice was not prohibited by the Romans on account of its demoralizing tendency, but because it diverted the youths from manly sports and made them effeminate. And so in later times, and among other peoples, it was not so much the rioting^ and drunkenness and murders it led to, as the blow it aimed at the moral ideal of the nation, that made it offensive. In early times the ethical ideal was patriotism; and as gaming ​
interfered with military art it was put down. In California the central idea embodying the right in social ethics is what comes under the name of leoitimate money-making. Here the great good is not patriotism, art, or literature, but the accumulation of wealth; not, however, by such processes as shall injure or make your neighbor poorer, but by originating, creating, or producing, making additions to the general fund, but which you may hold as your oAvn. Here, gambling interfered with that labor which was to eviscerate the Sierra drainage, and develop the resources of the lowlands, as in Rome it interfered with the making of good soldiers; and so, later, California passed laws that drove it under cover, but its spirit still stalks abroad, and enters into almost every avocation. One sees it in the speculations of laboring men, in the ventures of merchants outside of their regular business, in the gift enterprise shops, in the church-fair raffle and grab-bag. As I have before stated, buying shares in the stock market in the hope of a rise not based on development is as pure gambling as putting money on a monte card, and its evil effects are seen by the hundreds of working men practically ruined thereby. Of the two evils, the open and public gaming-table and stock-gambling, I hold the latter to be more deleterious to society, for it is but the old wicked principle galvanized, and made respectable by law. A lottery, legalized by the legislature for the benefit of the Mercantile library of San Francisco, caused for a short time an almost entire suspension of business for a hundred miles around
During the pastoral days of California, men were free, and might gamble if they chose. It came rather hard on them, therefore, when the straightlaced Yankee alcalde of Monterey placed a veto on the pastime. Says the reverend jurist on the subject/ writing the 18th of October, 1846: "I issued, a few days since, an ordinance against gambling—a vice ​which shows itself here more on the sabbath than any other day of the week. The effect of it has been to drive the gamblers from the town into the bushes. I have been informed this evening, that in a ravine, at a short distance, some thirty individuals have been engaged through the day in this desperate play. They selected a spot deeply embowered in shade, and escaped the eye of my constables."
On the 12th of May following, the order was thus enforced : "A nest of gamblers arrived in town yesterday, and last evening opened a monte game at the hotel honored with the name of the Astor House. I took a file of soldiers, and under cover of night reached the hotel unsuspected, where I stationed them at the two doors which afforded the only egress from the building. In a moment I was on the stairs which led to the apartment where the gamesters were congregated. I heard a whistle and then footsteps flying into every part of the edifice. On entering the great chamber, not a being was visible save one Sonoranian reclining against a large table, and composedly smoking his cigarito. I passed the compliments of the evening with him, and desired the honor of an introduction to his companions. At the moment a feigned snore broke on my ear from a bed in the corner of the apartment—* Ha! Dutre, is that you? Come, tumble up, and aid me in stirring out the rest,' He pointed under the bed, where I discovered, just within the drop of the vallance a multitude of feet and legs radiating as from a common center. 'Hallo there, friends—turn out," and out came some half-dozen or more, covered with dust and feathers, and odorous as the nameless furniture left behind. Their plight and discovery threw them into a laugh at each other. From this apartment, accompanied by my secretary, I proceeded to others, where I found the slopers stowed away in every imaginable position—some in the beds, some under them, several in closets, two in a hogshead, and one up a chimney. ​
Mr R. from Missouri—known here under the soubriquet of the ' prairie-wolf—I found, between two bedticks, with his coat and boots on, and half smothered with the feathers. He was the ringleader, and raises a monte table wherever he goes as regularly as a whale comes to the surface to blow. All shouted as he tumbled out from his ticks. Among the rest I found the alcalde of San Francisco, a gentleman of education and refinement, who never plays himself, but who, on this occasion, had come to witness the excitement. I gathered them all, some fifty in number, into the large saloon, and told them the only speech I had to make was in the shape of a fine of twenty dollars each. The more astute began to demur on the plea of not guilty, as no cards and no money had been discovered; and as for the beds, a man had as good a right to sleep under one as in it. I told them that it was a matter of taste, misfortune often made strange bedfellows, and the only way to get out of the scrape was to pay up. J)v S. was the first to plank down. 'Come, my good fellows,' said the doctor, 'pay up, and no grumbling, this money goes to build a schoolhouse, where I hope our children will be taught better principles than they gather from the example of their fathers.' The 'prairie-wolf,planked down next, and in ten minutes the whole Chillanos, Sonoranians, Oregonians, Californians, Englices, Americanos, delivered in their fines. These, with the hundred dollar fine of the keeper of the hotel, filled quite a bag. With this I bade them goodnight, and took my departure."
The town council of San Francisco, on the 11th day of January, 1848, passed stringent resolutions against gambling which had then been on the increase for four years past. So startling were the proportions it had assumed, and so enraptured were the people by the fascinating vice that it seriously interfered with business; but a great reform was considered out of place in a small town, and therefore at the next ​meeting of the council the law was repealed, leaving everythmg lovely in this respect for the great Inferno now so near at hand.
Some were of the opinion that gambling should not be interfered with by law any more than interest on money or the sale of intoxicating liquors. To extinguish this vice, said they, was impossible; the passion appears to be deep-seated in man's nature, alike in high and low, civilized and savage. The principle is one with that of speculation, and tinges even commercial ventures. As is often claimed for religion, there never has been known a nation without its gambling games of some sort. So, continued these reasoners, it is better to license the vice, give the state the revenue, and not make it a crime, than to drive it into dark corners and guarded club-rooms, for it is not that which is done in public that does the most harm. Men will not voluntarily exhibit their w^orst side to the world. He who ruins himself and family at the gaming-table does it generally in private. Then, too, the opportunities for practising the arts and devices of the trade are much greater than at a table in a public room, surrounded by scores of eyes as keen and as watchful as those of the dealer.
Gambling in San Francisco was tolerated for the revenue that was derived from it, long after public opinion was against it.
In due time the saloons, those impious, blazing landmarks, had to give way before a revised public sentiment. The old El Dorado, corner of Dupont and Washington streets, was one of the last to succumb. In full blast from 1850 till 1856, there were nightly collected the largjest crowds of the worst of all classes, all who had a few dollars to gamble—that is, until public gaming was prohibited—or an hour's time to while away, gazing at the people coming and going, at the nude pictures on the walls, and the movements of the barkeepers, and listening to the chink of coin, and the really fine music of the band. About the time ​this, one of the last rehcs of gambling saloons, fell forever out of sight, a new iron fence enclosed the plaza, fresh grass covered its hitherto unsightly face, and the citizens of San Francisco looked hopefully forward to the good time which had been so long in coming.
The gambler is almost always well dressed. No class in California are so scrupulously neat in all their belongings. Nor is he always an idler, knave, or fool. He knows that his profession is not ranked among the most honorable, but he does not intend always to follow it. He would make a fortune and then retire. He is not without generous impulses, but they spring, like the sympathy of a spoiled child or the passion of a femme perdu, from apparently trifling causes rather than from principle.
The Alia of the 27th of May, 1850, announces the completion of the Empire gambling saloon and the main floor of the Parker House as one would speak of the opening of the Suez canal or the bridging of Niagara. "The room is about 140 feet in length," says the editor, *'by 50 in width, with a lofty ceiling, and is decorated in the most magnificent manner. It is painted in fresco by Messrs Fairchild and Duchean, and is certainly a most creditable evidence of their artistic skill and taste. We do not know of any public room in any portion of the United States of so great an extent, or possessing such elegant decorations and embellishments. Our New Orleans and New York friends would scarcely believe that they could be so far excelled in California. The Parker House, the lower floor, was also opened. The room is of about the same size, and handsomely fitted up, although not with quite so much elegance as the Empire. As yet but one story is completed, but it is contemplated to carry out the entire building on the same extensive and elegant plan. The rapidity with which these places of public resort have been completed speaks much for the enterprise of the proprietors." ​
A writer in the Marysville Herald thus discourses on banking games. "A banking game," he says, "is any kind of game played with cards, dice, or other device, in which one or more persons risk their money in opposition to the multitude. The banker may be denominated, in the parlance of the day, the inside bettor, and the populace the outside bettors. A man, for instance, who deals monte, places before him on the table a thousand dollars, more or less, in money. He shuffles and deals the cards, lays two of them out before the multitude, and asks them to stake their money on a guess of which card will win. In this case the dealer of the cards would be the banker, or the inside bettor, whilst those who wagered their money on a guess would be the outside bettors. So in any other game of chance, where there is an inside bettor and an outside bettor, the inside bettor is always looked upon as the banker. He pays out to all who win from him, and takes in all that the outsiders lose. The games that come immediately under the head of banking games, and of which there is no dispute, are faro, Mexican monte, French monte, rouge et noir, twenty-one, and most other games played with cards; also roulette, the tiger, elephant, and other wheel games of similar character, sweat cloths, and all other games played with dice, and many other kinds of games not necessary to enumerate.
" Lansquenet and rondo differ from other banking games in this particular: The banker in the games of monte or faro deals himself, and permits all who wish it to bet against him; whilst in lansquenet and rondo the bank is generally made by an outsider, and consists of a certain specified sum, which may be tapped by one or more persons, as circumstances will admit of. It is not necessary that the banker in lansquenet or rondo should deal himself; any person may do it for him, but the man who throws up his dollar to be tapped is as much a banker as he would be if sitting behind a table with a bank of a thousand dollars deal ​ing monte. Lansquenet is dealt with cards, generally out of a faro box, or sardine box, as it is called. Rondo is played upon a billiard table with eight small balls, each ball about the size of a quail's egg, or somewhat larger, and depends upon the skill of the banker, or his substitute, in rolling an even number of balls into a pocket. If an odd number enters the pocket, it is called culo, and the banker loses; if an even number of balls be pocketed, it is called rondo, and the banker wins. On each winning the stake is doubled. As, for instance, if the banker commences with a half dollar and makes a rondo, he has a dollar m bank; on a second winning he would have two dollars in bank, and so on, doubling the stake at each winning, unless he sees proper to draw out a portion of his capital, which he can do whenever he pleases. After each second winning the table or gamekeeper draws out one half of the original amount invested, as a percentage. This is the game of rondo.
" Webster defines a bank to be a collection or stock of money deposited by a number of persons for a particular use, that is, an aggregate of particulars, or a fund that is a joint fund; the place where a collection of money is deposited, etc. Justice Jenks, in commenting upon this definition of a bank, says: ' It is not necessary that the conductor or manager of the game should own part of the money. It is sufficient that a fund is raised, and by any device whatever, that fund, or any part of it, changes hands by chance or by skill in playing. The learned justice further remarks, that in playing rondo two funds are raised, one against the other, and these funds are as much ​
banks as though owned by the person who keeps the table.' The justice, in concluding his opinion, says, 'the coincidence existing between the game of lansquenet, expressly classed by the statute in the list of banking games, and the game in question, rondo, compels me to decide by the rule of construction which the statute gives—rondo is a banking game." Now we agree perfectly with Justice Jenks. If lansquenet is a banking game, so is rondo. They are precisely similar, although one is played with cards and the other with balls. The banks in both are made by outsiders. The table-keepers in both games have no interest except in the percentage, and in playing either game, it is not necessary that the person who makes the banks should participate in either drawing the cards from the box or rolling the balls into a pocket. It was cleffrly the manifest intention of our lawmakers to put an end to all kinds of gamblino- in our state: and althouo-h the word rondo does not appear among the proscribed games in the law of last winter, we are clearly of the opinion that it is proscribed by that law."
From the time of the gold discovery, which made all around of the roseate hue, there was an openness in all kinds of wickedness, a dash and abandon quite refreshing. Perhaps they play as heavily at the London gaming houses, and at the German springs, but the charm and freshness of unhackneyed nature is not there. In London, or even at the German springs, one would not often see a Sydney convict, a clergyman not three months from his preaching, a Harvard graduate, a Pennsylvania farmer, and a New York newsboy all betting at the same table at the same time.
In California gambling there is little attempt at that quasi-respectability, or, more plainly speaking, humbug, with which the lovers of a money hazard would fain gloss over their whist, chess, or horse ​racing. It is the money men gamble for here, and they have no hesitation in saying so; hence, in a promiscuous assembly, each is attracted to such game as he fancies himself an adept in. The billiard-player gambles at pool, the card-sharper at poker, euchre, or old sledge, the lover of horses at racing, while the unskilled or indifferent lay down their gold at roulette, faro, or monte, notwithstanding in banking games the table has twenty or thirty per cent the adv^antage. The open-handed well-to-do Californian who flings his dollars around for the mere pleasure of seeing others scramble for them would call staking a few hundreds fun rather than gambhng; but the individual earnest and constant at the tables, whatever the game or the amount staked, you may be sure is after ' blood,' as he himself would tell you.
There is the legitimate gambler, one who keeps a table and pays his dues to society in shape of license, rent, and bar bills, like an honest citizen. Then there is the professional gambler, who, like the itinerant preacher, may have an occupation without fixed abode. He may deal, or 'cap,' or bet on the outside; he may grace this or that house or town as circumstances offer. He is not the legitimate, legalized, solid man of the fraternity, but he is none the less a professional gambler. Next comes the gentleman gambler, who cultivates the hazard of dice or cards as a recreation, openly and unblushingly. He may deal occasionally as an amateur, not as a legitimate or professional; but usually he exhausts the time in midnight poker or faro. Tinctured with politics, and he is welcomed at political clubs; if pleasing in manner and free with his money, women of a certain quality cultivate him. If a business man, it is necessary for him to be guarded and sly in his gambling operations; and if a churchgoer or salaried clerk, the vice proclaimed is absolute ruin.
In the professional gambler there is or should be much that is repugnant to the right-minded and hon ​est workingman. Although the latter, in every blow he strikes, not knowing the outcome of it whether it shall prosper or not, makes a direct appeal to the goddess Fortune ; but having honestly struck the blow, he feels he has a right in thus making the appeal. But the shaved and white-shirted faro-dealer is not Fortuna, but rather a money-demon, a soul-subduer, an emissary of Satan, a commercial traveller in the interests of hell. May he then be honest ? Why yes, if he does not cheat. Is not Satan honest ? And are not his agents to be trusted as fully as those of his enemies, nine-tenths of whom, by their own showing, each measuring another, are not what they seem.
There is no excuse for crime or wrong doing; but I have yet to find the man, or class of men or women without much that is good as well as much that is evil in them. The murderer and the harlot did not become such because they were utterly depraved, but because they were overtaken by some evil more the fault of their environment than of their origfinal nature. The honest and the chaste may thank for their untempted virtue conditions void of the allurements which otherwise mig^ht have made them the thino; they so contemptuously scorn. Thousands who walk the street with head erect, honored and respected, would long since have met the felon's fate, had their courage been equal to their desires.
During the flush times games were employed to suit all tastes. There were the purely games of chance, as faro, monte, dice; games partly of chance and partly of skill, as whist, euchre, poker, backgammon; games of skill, as chess, checkers, billiards. Games which require much thought or skill are never resorted to for popular heavy gambling. They are too slow and there is too much labor connected with tiiem. Something more quick and soul-stirring is what is wanted. Next to the pleasure of winning is the pleasure of losing : stagnation is unendurable.
The term gambler, in California, refers only to the ​professional, not being used in the abstract sense of one who gambles. The grocer deals out sugar and the gambler cards; he who buys a pound of sugar does not thereby become a grocer; neither is he who bets upon the cards, in California, called a gambler, that term being applied to a class sui generis. Whereever found, in the city or in the mines, one can almost always pick them out in a crowd. They are the best dressed men one meets; their pale, careworn, imperturbable faces wear an absent but by no means greedy air, and as they stand listlessly on the corner, cr slowly and carelessly walk the street, by no mctins indifferent to a pretty female ankle, their calmly observant eyes, which are somewhat sunken in their sockets, seem to possess the faculty of looking through people while not looking at them, which habit was contracted at the o-amino' table.
The character of the typical gambler of the flush times is one of the queerest mixtures in hum^an nature. His temperament is mercurial but non-volatilized; like quicksilver in cinnabar, its subtle vivacity is crystalized or massed in sulphur. Supreme self-command is his cardinal quality; yet, except when immersed in the intricacies of a game, his actions appear to be governed only by impulse and fancy. On the other hand his swiftest vengeance and cruellest butchery seem rather the result of policy than passion. His crimes are his profession's rather than his own. Confident with women, he is audacious with men. Prompt in action, expert, he is as ready to attack a dozen as one. He is never known to steal except at cards; and if caught cheating he either fights or blandly smiles his sin away, suffers the stakes to be raked down without a murmur, treats good-humoredly, and resumes the game unruffled. United with the coolest cunning is the coolest courage. He is as ready with his pistol as with his toothpick, but he never uses it unless he is right; then, he will kill a man as mercilessly as he would brush a fly ​from his immaculate linen. Yet in his lonely disposition he is not quarrelsome, and never murders except professionally. He is a man to be feared, and in early times he was highly respected. He is all nerve, electrical in his organization, and depends wholly upon his own resources for justice and protection. He knows not fear; life to him is but a shuffle and a deal, in which the chances have already been calculated, and death at most is but the losing of the game—all matters of indifferent moment. In his disposition he is magnanimous; in his bearing noble; in his actions chivalrous. He will not do a mean thing; he discharges his pecuniary obligations with scrupulous exactitude, thus putting to shame the socalled English gentleman, and never disputes a bill. Desperate in an emergency, he is the foremost to brave peril; the most unselfish in suffering, and endures misfortune with heroic fortitude. He will ^<yht for a friend as quickly as for himself, and share his last ounce with an unfortunate comrade. He will take every dollar from his victim should chance so order it, but he will as often give him back a portion should he stand in need of it. He has even been known to hand back money won from a simple-minded youth, with the advice not to indulge in play until he understands it better. Should a secret committee of some mining camp, seized with a spasm of moral reform, order him to leave the town, he receives the sentence with calm equinimity; should death be his portion he meets it with barbaric stoicism.
His pockets are always open, but his philanthropy knows no formula; he will contribute to establish a -church or a brothel, to support a Sunday-school or a swindle. He has his code of honor; but such things as orthodox conscience or conventional morality—he knows not and cares not what they are. In matters of justice he will act the unpopular part of advocate for a penniless horse thief, or falsely swear an alibi to save a friend. Over and over are told of them tales ​of the highest heroism; how one and another stood by some contemptible, ill-deserving, chance companion, knowing all the time that death was the penalty of chivalric devotion. Chance is his god, of whom he is a most faithful minister. Luck is his religion, and in it he is a firm believer and devotee. There is but one thing certain about it however, and that is, sooner or later it will change. To know w^hen this point is reached is the sum of all knowledge. In the practise of his profession, so long as his luck holds out good he never tires, and takes no rest. He accustoms himself to do without sleep, and if necessary can go for several days and nights without rest. He is a temperate man, being far too shrewd to benumb his faculties when he requires of them the keenest perception. Every now and then, while dealing his game, he orders drinks and cigars for his patrons, but sips sparingly from his own glass, as one puts on coal merely to prevent the fire from going out. He deals his game with the most perfect sang froid, and when undergoing the heaviest losses there is no trembling of fingers or change of expression in the colorless face, no twitching of muscles nor compression of lips; eye and manner maintain their cold indifi*erence, and if compelled at last to announce his bankruptcy he does it with a smile such as never once before throughout the game hghted his impassive features. His views as to the common conduct of life are philosophic ; in manner he is undemonstrative, and in speech reticent. In the practise of his profession he is bold in his operations, and fearless of consequences. His listless lounging and grave selfcomplacency contrast strongly with the fier}^ ebullitions of his surroundings. The restless emotion of the merchant and miner he regards with tranquil indifference. He interferes little in the affairs of others, is not specially skilled in matters of business, but he weighs and measures the character of those who play with him with the utmost nicety. ​
He knows perfectly well whether one who draws a pistol or a knife means to use it; and on the instant takes measures acccordingly. His brightly polished weapons are always at his elbow ready for immediate use, but he never touches them unless he deems it necessary, and then only to use them. He is studiously neat in his habits, and tends to foppishness in his costume. In the city his coat is of the latest cut, diamonds adorn his shirt, his high silk hat is black and glossy, and with a fancy-headed cane in a gloved hand he taps his closely-fitting well-polished boots. In the mines he sometimes affects the miner's dress, but his woollen shirt is gaily embroidered, and his slouched hat clean and graceful. A chain of gold specimens linked together is attached to a massive hunting watch, and massive rings of virgin gold and quartz encircle his soft white fingers. His sleek and well oiled hair is neatly brushed, his face closely shaven, leaving perhaps a mustache, but never whiskers long enough for exasperated losers to seize hold of A fine cloth cloak is sometimes thrown loosely over the shoulder, and round the waist a bright scarlet silk sash supports his murderous weapons. When in funds he travels on a fat, sleek mule, with yellow buckskin guantlets, broad-brimmed hat, and large silver spurs; if overtaken by adversity he walks.
The professional gambler seeks the best mines and the largest crowds. When gold begins to fail he migrates with the miners, following the diggers as the sea gull follows the pelican. Should the occupants of one camp become impecunious or disgusted and decline further play, he quietly packs up his tools, mounts his mule, and is off for another. Thus he may have to go for many days before he gets a game. In mountain towns his quarters may be a log cabin, with open broad fireplace, larger than the other cabins, but always occupying a central position. In tenting times his encampment was conspicuous for its ​ample accommodations, the whiteness of its canvas, and its gay trimmings.
It was in the larger cities, however, such as San Francisco, Sacramento, and Marysville, that this passion with the most unbriddled license was displayed. In 1850 on two sides of the plaza were brick buildings devoted almost exclusively to gambling. There were the El Dorado, the Bella Union, the Rendezvous, the Empire, the Parker House, and the Verandah. Here large halls were fitted up, some of them by companies formed in France, with oriental splendor. In one the ceiling, rich in fresco and gilt, was supported by glass pillars, pendant from which were great glass chandeliers. Around the walls were fine large paintings of nude female figures, and mirrors extending from floor to ceiling. Entering at night from the unlighted dismal street into an immense room lighted with dazzling brilliance, and loud with the minoied sound of musical histruments, the clink of coin and glasses, and the hum of human voices, was like passing from the dark depths to celestial briorhtness.
There were long rows of leather-covered mahogany tables on which were temptingly spread out heaps of glittering gold and silver coin, nuggets, slugs, bars, and bags of dust, and where the votaries of chance might choose from every game known to the civilized gambling world.
With difficulty one elbowed one's way through the promiscuous crowd that here nightly congregated. There were men in black clothes, immaculate linen, and shining silk hats, merchants, lawyers, and doctors; miners in woollen shirts, greasy Sandwich Islanders, Chilians, and Mexicans; Irish laborers, Negroes, and Chinamen, some crowded round the tables intently watching the games, others lounging about, smoking, chewing, spitting, drinking, swearing, now and then dropping a dollar, or a five, or ten, or twenty. ​
or fifty-dollar piece, with real or well-feigned indifference as to the result. Now and then the games were momentarily interrupted by the crack of a pistol, and the louno-ers became a little demoralized as the ball whistled past their ears and lodged in the wall. If a man was killed or wounded he was taken out, but the nature of the affray was left to be learned from the morning papers, and in a few moments all was as before. Some of the saloons were open day and night, and paid enormous rents; six thousand dollars a month was paid for the El Dorado. There were also many private clubs or suits of rooms, where the players were more select and play ran higher. Nothing but gold coin was used in these places, and the stakes ran into the hundreds and thousands. A bet of any sum less than five dollars was regarded as contemptible. These rooms were often graced or disgraced by the presence of beautiful women, and sumptuous suppers were served, with the best of wines, all free to the patronizing visitors.
Like those of the pretty-waiter saloons and dance cellars of later times, the band may be an orchestra of regular musicians, a company of negro minstrels, a quartette of Mexican guitars, a piano, or if the room and counters be celestial, a Chinese scrape, squeak, and slam-bang.
Gambling from 1849 to 1852 was followed in San Francisco as a regular business, and there was no disgrace attached to the profession. Among the dealers of gambling games at that time were some of the most influential and talented citizens. But they were a transient race ; they have gone forever. As a more refined civilization crept in and overwhelmed the low, the loose, and the vicious, gambling sank into disrepute. Law drove it behind locked doors and into windowless rooms. Then the gay gamblers of the olden time left the profession to a different class, and sought out new fields of distinction, perhaps in politics, law, or speculation. ​
The position of monte-dealer is a most trying one. Surrounded by the clamor of the crowd ; his eyes, while apparently intent on his cards, closely scrutinizing the faces and fingers of the bettors before him; his mind meanwhile occupied by the progress of the game, which involves intricate and continuous calculation; then, should he wish to indulge in- feats of skill or cheating, he must perform them at the peril of his life, under scores of eyes riveted with vigilant scrutiny upon his fingers, and be ready at any moment to resent, if deemed best, with knife or pistol, the merest suspicion of dishonesty, should any one of the players imprudently intimate it. Faro was considered the more dignified and respectable of all the games, and was played mostly by Englishmen and Americans, while monte was a favorite with the French and Spanish. Besides these were roulette, rouge-et-noir, rondo, vingt-un, chuck-a-luck, with dice, and many other games.
The usual stake was from a dollar to five dollars, though it was not uncommon in the flush times to see hundreds or even thousands ventured on the turning of a card. A bet of $20,000 was once made at a faro game and won by the customer. The dealer counted out the money with as much nonchalance as if it had been twenty dollars he had lost instead of twenty thousand. There is something fascinating in standing by and watching the game, as the painted cards turn up their leering faces and read the players the melodrame of their folly. It seems like sporting with destiny, and telling out the tale of life by worshipful spots and figures.
It is a fine thing to get a peck or a bushel of gold just by betting for it, and the tremulous rapture of mingled hope and fear is almost compensation enough even if one loses. And after all "buckingr" at a faro bank was no more uncertain and much less troublesome than stakino; time and sinews agjainst the Sierra's secret pockets and auriferous banks. There are men, ​
among whom may be classed Sonorians and Chilians, who mine only that they may gamble, whom neither hmiger nor thirst nor any other known incentive could stir up to labor. No matter how purely the game is one of chance, the player arrogates to himself some certain skill. Luck, like the stellar system, has its law which patient study is sure to develop. Then every one has his own individual luck, which like a personal deity, should be conciliated; so that, very naturally and very properly, the player, if he won, could thank himself for it, whereas, if he lost, his luck was at fault.
The gambler, when play grew slack, would stroll away, sometimes leaving his table unguarded in the midst of a heterogeneous crew of cut-throats, temptingly loaded with the stuff all men covet, apparently repfarding: it as safe as if locked in the vaults of the bank of England. Few possessed the temerity to rob a gambler, and least of all in a place where summary justice would be quickly meted out by the bystanders.
In certain localities, various games were paraded in the street, or from low shops opening on the sidewalk. One would deal three-card monte on the head of a barrel; another would tempt the gaping crowd with thimblerig played with a golden pea upon his leg; well-dressed young men and boys, as well as villainous-looking cut-throats would follow soft-looking strangers about the streets offering to bet $100 or $200 on some trick which offered to the outsider an apparently sure thing. On Long Wharf, where at that time were most of the arrivals and departures to and from San Francisco, this base traffic was plied most persistently. At almost every hour of the day or night the cries of the French monte-dealer might be heard: " The ace of spades ! the ace ! the ace ! A hundred dollars to any one who will tell the ace of spades! " But these were the bohemians of the fraternity, of very different metal from the regular artist.
Gathered round the table are men of all nations, ​playing or watching with morbid curiosity the ventures of others. There you may always find the Mexican, the most constant and the most intrepid of players, with his broad sombrero drawn well over his eyes, and in his bright-colored serape, symbol of pride and poverty, are placed his well-worn weapons. You may be sure if he is not playing he has no money.
Monte is the favorite game of the Mexican, as he considers the chances nearer equal and the opportunities for foul play smaller. Between the experienced Mexican gambler and the innocent, audacious Yankee there is a marked contrast. The former gambles with the coolness of a fatalist; what must be, will be, it cannot be changed. The latter, with tongue and feature, displays anger or joy at every venture; he will succumb before no destiny; are not Americans makers of destiny?
Innumerable are the stories told of worshippers at the shrine of the fickle goddess, beside the many untold tales.
A young man from the mines conceived it his mission to break a gambler's bank in Sacramento. Fifteen hundred dollars, his all, were speedily lost, when, turning to the gambler, he exclaimed, "You have all my money; give me an ounce to get back to the mines with." Without a word the gambler pitched him a doubloon, and the young man returned to his digging.
Another arrived in town with $19,000, on his way home. Depositing $16,000 with a friend, with the remainder he entered a brilliant saloon, seated himself at a monte table, and began betting Soon the $3,000 were added to the bank. The infatuated man then took the remainder of his money, and notwithstanding the remonstrances of his friend, staked and lost it all.
A husband and father having secured sufficient to make his family comfortable, determined to go home to stay. The night before he was to have started, ​
being overcome of liquor taken amidst numerous farewells, he staked and lost all his money at the monte table. Overwhelmed by the thought of what he had done, in his drunken frenzy he seized his lost gold and broke away with it, when the dealer drew a pistol and shot him dead. He had written home that he should arrive by the next steamer!
A miner entered a Sacramento gambling house with $5,000, and sat down to play. In less than an hour he won $100,000. Continuing with the determination to break the bank, his winnings were reduced to $50,000, when thinking better of the undertaking, he pocketed the mone}? and withdrew.
A graduate of Harvard law school came to California in 1850. He was betrothed to a charming girl, whom he loved devotedly, being willing to endure the pangs of separation and the hardships of unaccustomed toil to secure enough to support her. He worked faithfully on Feather river for ten months, during which time he lived temperately, and neither drank ncr gambled to any extent. Having secured some $12,000, he concluded to return home, so packing up his effects he went down to the bay, put up at a hotel in San Francisco, and there waited the departure of the steamer. In strolling through the gambling houses of the town, listening to the "Home, Sweet Home," or other music of the band that stirred his heart and carried him back to other scenes, as everybody did in those days he now and then dropped a coin on the table, more for pastime than any desire of gain. One night he allowed himself to be carried away by the fascinations of the game, until almost before he was aware of what he was about, more than half his money was gone. Then in a moment of passion the infatuated man took the remainder, and raising his hand and bringing it down upon a card with a heavy blow, cried out, " Home or the mines! " Slowly the dealer drew the cards that told the rash man's destiny, and breathlessly he waited who thus invoked ​
his fate. Another mstant, his muscles relaxed, and he sank back into his seat with the hoarse whisper, ^' The mines, by Godl"
One day a monte-dealer appeared upon a bar which was yielding good returns and making rich its diggers. It was a virgin field; no one of his profession had ever before outspread his enchantments in that locality. The camp was stagnating for an excitement; its occupants were ready to seize upon any pretext for relaxation from their long and profitable labor. They had no more disposition to bet than they had to fight Indians or hang a horse-thief, but they were eager for any excuse which should enable them to rest their limbs, distract their minds, and increase their potations. The "sport" took up his quarters at the best saloon, and drawing forth several bags of heavy dust, round and fat, and gold doubloons and silver Spanish dollars, temptingly heaped them upon his table. After inviting all hands to drink, he seated himself behind his bank, placed his weapons conveniently, then carefully unrolling a chamois-skin package, he produced several packs of thin tough well-kept monte-cards, which he deposited, not without an eye to effect, beside the gold. Taking up one pack after another, he carefully examines each, observes closely the backs and edges, counts them over several times to see that none are missing^, for if short or over a sino;le card his opponent might claim the whole of any intake whether he won it or not. Selecting a pack which best suits his fancy, he dexterously shuffles them long and thoroughly, passes them to be cut, then holding them scientifically half crushed in his soft white hand, with the faces downward, he draws from underneath the bottom two cards, and throws them face uppermost on the table, crying, 'All ready! Comedown; make 3'our game, gentlemen; seven of spades in the door ; the game is made; all down. No more!" Meanwhile the miners who had taken their seats at the ends and opposite sides of the table from the dealer put down ​
their bets, some on one card and some on the other. Then turning up the cards, the dealer begins to draw from the top, and the game goes on.
At first the gambler lost heavily; yet quietly, with unimpassioned face he continued, and the miners were elated. The saloon-keeper drove a thriving trade, and all warmed up to the business. Others came, in twos and threes, until not a man was left at the diggings. Work being thus suspended, the camp yielded to the seductive influence of play. At length luck left the miners. The gambler won. Gradually the pile on the table enlarged until after three days of roaring jollification the miners were bankrupt. The gambler and saloon-keeper had all the money. Instead of returning, with their returning senses, to their work, two thirds of the luckless and chagrined individuals left the camp within a week.
There was a beautiful little French woman who kept a roulette table at the north end of Montgomery street. There were many such in San Francisco. The room was elegantly furnished like a boudoir. The syren sat behind the table, elegantly arrayed in black silk, her face fronting the open door, whirling her wheel most bewitchingly Before her lay a pile of silver dollars and gold ounces. A tall bony New Englander, brought up on mush, catechism, and Poor Richard's almanac, passing by stopped to survey the scene. He caught the infection. Throwing looks of languishing love into her melting eyes, gazing upon her luscious lips and voluptuous form, he entered and seated himself before her. First he lay down gold pieces, then silver, all the time almost invariably losing. Then he brought out a watch, then another watch, and another. He had had a lucky game of poker the night before which accounted for the watches. The charmer swept them all to her side of the table. Finally he drew a ring from his finger.
"Combien?" asked the woman. ​
"Three ounces," answered the New Englander despairingly,
"Oh I no, no, no," laughed the gamestress, "une montre, pas plus."
The ring brought back one of the watches, but the next whirl swept them both away and the man retired to meditate and begin the world anew.
It was a common practise for miners to lay an unopened bag of dust upon a card, call the amount of his venture, and if he won receive the same from the dealer without opening his bag at alL At Stockton in 1850, a 'sucker,' as one of his nativity was called, entered a gambling saloon and cast his eye over the several monte tables. It was an eye which with its surroundings resembled a dead coal dropped into a can of lard. In long bristles the hair hung from a flat rakish head resting on shoulders fit for a Rhodian Colossus, and surmounting a puncheon-shaped body stuck upon keg-like legs. Stepping up to a table which seemed to strike his fancy he leaned over and peered into the face of the dealer.
"D' ye 'low a man to bet his pile on one kyerd?" he innocently asked.
"Yes, you may bet your pile," answered the dealer.
After a long search within the folds of his sliirt he drew forth a bag containing his treasures and slapping it onthe 'caballo' exclaimed: " I go two ounces on that boss." The first time he lost; the next he won. Half an hour of fluctuations saw the Illinoisan loser to about the extent, as the dealer thought, of what the contents of the bag would cover. Hence the game was arrested and the process of settlement begun. While the dealer was adjusting the scales, the little thick man stood immovable as a pillar, a roseate hue meanwhile mounting his flabby face; but when the bag was open and bits of lead instead of gold greeted with dull unwelcome stare the gamblers's gaze, the tub-like man began to revolve, and gathering momentum as he approached the door, disappeared amidst ​
the uproar of laughter, flying tumolers, and broken curses which followed.
One night, a Mexican with his face half concealed in an old serape, entered the El Dorado, and edging his way through the crowd stepped before a monte table. After following the game for a short time, he drew forth an old linen bag of coin, supposed of course to be silver dollars, and placing it upon a card leaned over the table, and—apparently forsaken by his usual stoicism—watched the dealer's fingers with breathless anxiety. The Mexican won; the dealer with quiet indifference pulled the bag over to him, untied the string, and emptied out the contents. His face turned white as a sheet, even his customary coolness deserted him; for out of the bag had rolled, not silver dollars as every one supposed, but golden doubloons, more than enough to break the bank. The gambler, however, borrowed sufficient from his neighbors and paid the Mexican who withdrew as quietly as he had entered.
One day a Mexican rode up to a gambling saloon at the Mission Dolores. Dismounting, he tied his horse, entered, and began betting. Soon his money, pistols, and all his belongings were gone. Finally his horse was staked and lost; but this was more than he could endure, and he determined to save it. As he rose from the table he managed to upset it, and while all were engaged in picking up the scattered money, he slipped out, mounted, and galloped away.
There was in San Francisco, about 1855, a speculator whose business consisted in organizing lotteries on a scale hitherto unknown. He went to Europe for the purpose of collecting an interminable assortment of objects of all kinds suited to the American taste, and during several months had a great exposition in one of the principal towns of the Union, used all kinds of wise stratagems to announce it, and ended by realizing a profit of $50,000 or $60,000. The collection which he exhibited at San Francisco was a ​
gallery of pictures, which were much admired by amateurs. They were miserable copies of Reubens, Titian, etc.; but the lucky ones who drew them in the lottery had perfect faith in their originality, which was guaranteed in the catalogue.
While threshing near Marysville, a man with inveterate gambling proclivities had both of his legs torn off by the machine. As soon as he had sufficiently recovered, he started on a tour through the mountains for the purpose of raising by subscription money enough to buy him two cork legs; but no sooner did he get together $100 or so than he gambled it away at the first gaming-table he could find. Then he would start out again, trailing the ground on crutches and leg-stumps, begging more money only to bet and lose it again, until his untoward ways became generally known, when he was arrested and incarcerated in an asylum.
The following tribute to the game of poker was early paid by an able writer. " We do not know in what happy clime the great game of poker was first introduced; the name of the man out of whose fathomless intellect it soared into the world of created things and began to fascinate the hearts of the people is shrouded in oblivion; but we do know that California is the land where the game has been most favorably received and hidustriously cultivated as a science. In the early days the passion for taking chances, which the stirring incidents of mining life naturally engen dered, and the want of more refined and ennobling means of amusement caused it to be taken at once into favor by the Californians; and in later years it has lost nothing of its singular popularity—rising with the march of civilization, from the cabin to the palace, and exchanging the piebean bean, as a marker, for the gay and ornamental ivory chip. Every Californian, almost, understands the nature of the game, and can play with more or less art, according to the measure ​
of his intellect, and the opportunities he has had for becoming proficient." The future historian, whose name will naturally be written on the highest peak of the sun-crowned Sierras of fame, on whom shall fall the godlike task of tracing the rise and progress of draw poker in this state, will find the pathway that leads him back in his researches to the barbaric splendor of 1849, strewn with rich incidents and racy anecdotes of notable "hands" that have been held, heroic "calls" that have been made, and gigantic "blinds" that have been promptly seen."
In September 1858 a little game of "draw" was played on the classic banks of Georgiana slough, in Sacramento county, which is worthy of notice, for the reason that it proves the plastic character of the game, and the illimitable resources that it affords the skillful and experienced gambler. One evening a young man, named Stone, who had been de^ oting his attention to the cultivation of sweet potatoes on the slough, and had just disposed of his crop, was seduced into a triangular game of poker with two professional players, Budd Davis and Garland Adams, who, of course, had entered into a conspiracy to pluck the young and in experienced potato-merchant. Retiring to a little cabin in the suburbs of Georgiana, the trio sat down at a rude pine table, one corner of which was garnished by a descendant of the house of Bourbon, of the capacity of a quart, more or less, and by the dim and flickering light of a tallow candle, began to court the favor of fortune. Stone was rather a flinty subject to handle for the reason that he would not drink, and was so excessively cautious that he would not bet unless he held an almost invincible hand. For a time the gamblers were undecided, and played along in meditative silence, winning but little more than the mere ante-money from Stone, who paid no attention to the presence of the royal visitor, and could not be coaxed with ordinary full hands and fours to loosen his grip on the potato-money, Budd Davis finally ​
took a long pull at the bottle and was equal to the emergency. He dealt the cards. There was some betting before the draw, and soon things began to get lively. Before the draw, Stone held a pair of kings; he drew to his kings, and colored to the very roots of his hair as he picked up the cards he had drawn, and found two additional kinci's and an ace—making;; his hand absolutely invincible. His agitation was plainly visible, his hand trembling pitifully as he saw Adams* bet of $20, and raised him $180 back. Good heavens! can ifc be possible that Budd Davis is going to play against that invincible hand? Yes, he slowly counts out the twenties until he has seen the $200 and goes $260 better. Adams steps out for the appearance of the thing, and an ominous silence reigns round the board. Stone has $420 in his pocket, but a suspicion that something is wrong begins to dawn upon his mind and the flush fades from his face. He sees no way of escape, however, and stands the raise. The hands are shown down and Budd defeats his four kings and an ace with four aces! Of course, in gambling parlance, he had lifted a cold hand on the young man, that is, one already prepared from another deck of cards and secreted somewhere about his person. He was arrested at the instance of Stone, and tried before a justice of the peace, but was discharged without punishment. After that, we presume, Stone devoted his attention to raising potatoes instead of raising bets and going it blind.
I do not know of any other time or place where could be found a servant of the living God going to an emissary of Satan for aid to build a temple to the former, for the express purpose of utterly confounding and placing under foot the latter. It was not a very praiseworthy act for the preacher to go to the gambler on such a mission, and of the two the man of sin shows to the better advantage. The omnipotent ​
creator of the universe begging of the devil a few dollars to help build a church!
It was in Sacramento in the winter of '49-50, and the man was a well-known baptist clergyman. Passing a gambling shop and hearing the chink of the much desired metal, he entered, approached a table, and made known his want to a man with an open pleasing face, who was busy bucking at the tiger.
'Church, oh yes! People want churches as well as gambling houses. How much do you want ? "
"Whatever you choose to give," blandly replied the preacher.
"Well, you see the twenty on that card. If it wins it's forty, and it's yours."
It won and the preacher took the forty dollars from the courts of Belial to give it to his God.
"Hold on," exclaimed the gambler, " I have a ten on that other card. You may have that," It won; and the preacher desired to be off. "Stop a minute," cried the man of sin. "Put your sixty dollars on that card, and you'll have a hundred and twenty sure, and if you'll stand by me we'll win enough to build the whole damned concern."
"Who do you belong to?" asked a passenger of a colored boy on the Sacramento boat bomid down in 1850.
"Don't know, sir," was the reply.
"Why don't you know ?"
"Well, when I come aboard, I b'long to mass Sam White, but he went me on two little par, and de clerk ob dis boat he win me. Den Kernel Smiff he beat de clerk on a bluff, and he had me last; so I can't tell who I b'longs to till the game closes."
Many a man has fancied in vain that he has or can devise a system by which he can surely win in the long run, "One of the marvels of San Francisco," says an Enolish adventurer, " is its instant transformation ​
at a certain "honr each evening from a place of business into a city of hells. The closing of the offices and stores is the signal for the opening of a host of gambling saloons. They are all on the ground floor, well lit, opening on the streets, and so numerous as to excite wonder at night as to where the stores can be, and by day where the saloons are. These are the usual evening resort of all classes. And there are few who do not occasionally attempt to win some of the piles of gold and silver that glitter on the tables. 1 found myself strongly attracted by the thought that it might be possible to cut my labor short by a few fortunate ventures; but I had not done much in one direction or the other when I found myself playing at a table where one of my fellow-passengers was dealing. As I had barely observed the man on board, I was rather surprised by his whispering to me in an interval of the game:
"'Keep your money in your pocket, meet me outside at noon to-morrow, and I can do you a good turn. " * You come to California to make money I presume? " was the greeting when we met next day.
" ' Then take my advice,' said he, * and don't play. << ' Why,' I asked laughingly, * is it so difficult to win ? " 'Difficult!' said he, 'it's impossible. '"But when the chances are so nearly even, surely the interval between the minimum and maximum stake is great enough to allow almost a certainty of winning,' I said.
" ' Not a bit of it,' was the answer. ' No matter how you arrange 3'our stakes, in the long run it is just the same as if they were all of one size; you'll win as many as you lose, and have the percentage of the bank against you. " ' Then all those symptoms and calculations which I see people following are a delusion ? '* ' ​Entirely so. They are merely playing against a certain event, which is bound in the long run to happen just once in the time it takes for them to win as much as they lose when the event happens; so that they can make nothing by it. " 'But surely some events are far rarer than others, and may be considered impossible,' I observed.
winning, and many a good man becomes a scoundrel through it. " Two or three further conversations with my professional friend, and a careful analysis of the chances in fio-ures, convinced me that he is ritjjht as to the impossibility of winning by systematic play. Any system may win for a time, but all must lose eventually. In a game of pure chance, luck is everything; and in the long run that must equalize itself. In the meantime the bank is gaining a certain steady profit, and the maximum stake is placed so low as to prevent any extraordinary event from inflicting a serious loss upon it. I have discovered that I am no gambler, since I do not care to play unless I think I have a certainty of winning. I can quite understand any one being interested in constructing various systems to play by until the discovery comes that none are infallible. I have made several, and examined many more, each of which at first seemed as if they must win forever; but, fortunately, instead of testing them by actual experience, I showed them to my professional friend, who soon demonstrated their weak points. He says that when I thoroughly understand the chances, I shall leave off fitrurinor. He savs the very fact of a chance being even makes it impossible to beat it, otherwise it wouldn't be even. It is a great pity. It would be such an easy way of making a fortune if one could sit down for a few hours a day, and, without risk or labor, make a certain sum. I don't see why there should be such a prejudice against gambling in itself. Every undertaking in life is a venture more or less doubtful. All these merchants here are liable to fail. Every profession, marriage itself, is a lottery, in which the future happiness of a life depends on an experiment that cannot be undone.
" This Californian expedition of mine is nothing less. Perhaps the necessity of labor and judgment are redeeming points in all but mere chance speculations. Probably the real evil of gambling consists in its ​
looking only to the end or reward, and affording no employment for the higher faculties in the pursuit.
" It is impossible to fancy any artist attaining a high degree of inspiration who thinks solely of the money he is to get for his work. I see how it is with me. In this, as in all my other engrossments, I have been seeking for the absolute. It seems to me a species of atheism to say that there is no infallible system, even for playing monte. The remark that 'in the long run nothing is impossible, because the events do not depend on each other,' seems capable of being applied to a very different line of thought. If in tiie long run of events all things can happen, there can be no demonstration of a special providence, neither can a man who believes in the absence of a controlling will or character have any reason for objecting to any system of religion on the score of its improbability. However great niay be the chances against an event, those chances are only against its occurring at any given moment. If the opportunity be repeated exactly as often as there are chances against the event, it is an even chance that it occurs once in that number of times. If oftener, the chances are actually in favor of its happening. It is an even chance every time whether red or black wins; yet I am told that one has been known to win thirty times together. The odds against such a series are over a thousand millions to one; but in that number of attempts it becomes an even chance that it occurs. And, inasmuch as the past and future are entirely independent of each other, the most improbable event may show itself directly the game begins, and may be repeated many times in rapid succession. Moreover, an event is brought no nearer to happening after the game has gone on for an indefinite time without its comino:. It does not become more likely after, or less likely before, many hands have been dealt. Under the government of chance, therefore, the most violently improbable event not only may, but must, sooner or later occur." ​
So argued this Englishman.
On Rich bar of Feather river, a wild rocky region, were gathered in 1852 a community consisting for the most part of experienced miners, old Californians they might almost call themselves, having been in the country during those days of rapid development, many of them for the full period of three years. The houses were mostly of cloth in the spring, but before winter lo? cabins were scattered alonsf the stream, with great gashes cut by the miners in the bank hill-sides at short intervals all the way down to Indian bar.
Among the rest was a young man of fine physique, tall and strong, well built, broad shouldered, muscular and sinewy, with an open, frank, intelligent face, which commanded at once friendship and respect. Duke John was the nickname the miners gave him, so noble was he in mind, and heart, and bearing, and this was all the name he was ever known by there.
He was steady in all his habits; he did not drink, or smoke or gamble; he took care of himself, ate and slept regularly, and rested on Sundays. His mind, which evidently had been cultivated, seemed dwelling on some object or purpose which buoyed up the whole man, for in his daily work, to which he had now become quite accustomed, he was as happy as he was prosperous.
He had some money when he came to the bar; and as he confined himself to coyoting in the banks rather than fluming the river bed, he added to his wealth, until there was of it some $20,000, with which before the snows set in he intended to leave the mountains and return home.
There were gamblers here of course. By this time every prosperous mining camp had its professional gamblers, as surely as its butcher, doctor, or rum-seller. The very fact of the presence of the fraternity, in fat, sleek proportions, was the best proof ​
of the prosperity of the miners. There was one gambler in particular, Hudson his name was, a modest and refined fellow, thoroughly honest and sober—even though his hair was of the dissemblino; color, red—who attended to his business as faithfully and methodically as did the merchant, the miner, or the baker, dealing usually till twelve o'clock at night on Indian bar, and then walking up to his boardinghouse on Rich bar to sleep. Hudson every day passed by Duke's claim ; and though each had a good word for the other, and there existed the best of feeling between them, Duke never thought any more of patronizing Hudson's game than of hiring the doctor to amputate a perfectly sound leg. He did not want the gambler's money; he was very sure he did not want the gambler to get his money; he had other thoughts and occupations for both his mind and money than gambling. It had been so with him ever since he was in the country, now three years; he lived a perfect life, amidst many wild and abnormal doinofs, and all without knowinof it.
"One Saturday night, after a hard week's work, during which he had been much alone, feeling that he would like to meet and talk with the boys, he went down to Indian bar, and entered the large canvas house which stood in the middle of the town and served as drinking, gambling, and general congregation shop. With its strong subdued light radiating far into the darkness, while yet upon the high divide, separating the two bars, the wayfarer looked down upon it as on a great glow-worm; or if fancy struck another strain, then as the canopied entrance to the Anacheron pit.
It was early yet, and gambling had not fairly set in. To drinking saloons and gaming tables Duke John was as indifferent as to the pack-saddles and molasses kegs of the merchandise store when he had no need for either. He would not drink at a bar any more than at a brook when he was not thirsty. His ​
blood was warm enough, and ran its happy course through healthful veins; why should he want to quicken it with poisonous draughts? He knew something of cards, of course; he had seen the manipulation of them with » checks and coin and gold-dust so often and continuously of late that he knew the various games as well as any one. Indeed, he did not refuse to play upon occasion, or if he felt like it; he was no prude or fanatic, nor was he at all afraid of himself; he was his own master, but he was no gambler—that everybody knew—and he really never felt any desire to play.
There was a poker game in the room, which had just started. ' Two of the persons sitting at it Duke knew; the other two seemed to be late arrivals—one of them was clearly not a miner, or woi king-man, but from his dress and manner would be called a sport. The other stranger was of that nondescript cast which would not surprise a bystander to see it assume any shape at any moment. Duke seated himself on a bench by the players with his back against the wall, and listlessly watched the game while discussing the news of the day.
Presently his friend was unexpectedly called away, and as he rose to go he said: "Here, Duke, play my hand ; I'll be back directly," Duke assented, and for half an hour or so did little more than chip in and keep his place in the game.
His friend not returning, Duke gradually paid a Httle more attention to the game, and became really quite aroused when he found himself with a ver}' good hand at a moment when the two strangers entered upon some high betting.
" Fifty, is it?" said the sharper, for so we must denominate the sporting man. *' I will see it, and go a hundred better." It was now Duke's turn, who went in and raised the stake a hundred. The other, stranger passed himself out. " Five hundred better," exclaimed the sharper. " Take it," said Duke, who, sitting be ​hind three jacks, was satisfied that he had the better hand, but did not Hke to risk so largely his friend's money, though by this time he hardly knew whether he was playing on his own account or for the other. " Cheap enough," sneered the sharper, as he spread out on the board his hand, which could boast nothing higher than two fours.
Duke detested bluffing:. His nature was too sino-le and straightforward to enjoy indulging in such trickery himself, and he did not like any better to have it played upon him. The sharper was quick enough to discover this; he discovered also that Duke was not greatly interested in the game, being apparently unconcerned whether he won or lost, and certainly having no intention of high play. And a sardonic satisfaction warmed the scoundrel's heart as he saw that at last he had been able to put his finger upon this immaculate young man's weakness, upon the soft spot in the character of one whom long before he had become satisfied was of a superior order.
For an hour or more the game went on, and Duke's friend did not return. Meanwhile the betting became heavier, several pots rising up into the thousands, and Duke was largely loser. Of course, now he was playing for himself; he would not for a moment expect his friend to suffer for his folly. But he himself could not afford to lose so much money, representing as it did weeks and months of toil and self-denial He would play for even, and then quit, he said to himself; and here should end his first and last attempt at real gambling. For he felt in his sinking heart, in his boiling blood, in his face flushed half in shame and half in anger—in anger at his own folly and at the leering, sneering sharper that this man was playing him like an angler a fish which could not escape the toils.
On went the game, the unfortunate Duke becoming more and more involved. He had not with him so much to lose, but he had already through the keeper ​
of the saloon made his credit good at the game, for all knew well that he would never be led to venture what he could not pay.
" Five thousand more! " Hissed forth by the sharper came these words, while his snake-like eyes were riveted on his victim. There was already fifteen thousand at stake on the board. Duke held a very good hand, three kings and two sevens; but the game had drifted into such wild and reckless bluffing, that the best hand was by no means always allowed to take the money. Even now the sharper might have nothing higher than a ten spot, or he might have four aces; there was no way to tell. Duke's hand was good, very good, considering everything. The chances were at least ten to one the sharper could not beat it. That pot would make him whole, and he would then be free from the infernal toils in which he so unexpectedly found himself On the other hand it was ruin, absolute and eternal ruin, he felt and knew it to be, if he lost. But his hand; at least ten to one in his favor.
Pale was the face, the heart irregular and jerking, and hollow and sepulchral the voice as the words came forth "I call!"
The sharper could measure accurately enough the Duke's hand; he knew as well as if he had seen it that it was not so very strong, for had it been the young man would have manifested more confidence. Nor was it by any means a poor hand, else he would not have called him. He was sure enough of his victim, as with a Satanic smile he slowly laid down on the table one, two, three, four queens.
Without speaking a word Duke laid his cards upon the pack, rose from his seat, and beckoning the saloon man to follow, walked out into the darkness, walked on through the darkness until he came to his cabin, when, scraping the dirt from under one corner, brought forth four bags, each containing $5,000 in gold dust. "This will make it good," he said, as he ​
handed it to the saloon man, who thereupon marched back through the darkness.
The ruined young man hkewise stepped forth into the night. The cabin was too close for him; he could not breathe within those so lately happy walls. **It is like a dream; a horrid, horrid dream. So sudden, so accidental! Yet it is no dream, would to God it were ! Fool, fool, fool 1 No, not fool; fate! A pistol ball crashing through my brain as I entered that room would have been no less looked for, could have held me scarcely less responsible. Why fate, or providence, or almighty God could be so cruel as to tear from me my hard earnings, my consecrated gold, and give it to that thief, I cannot understand. Punishment ? I deserve no punishment. Punishment for what? I am an honest man, aye an honest man, and thou God knoweth it; that thing is a thief, and thou God knoweth it. This is omnipotent justice; hell is full of such justice. My gold, aye, my consecrated gold, consecrated to her. Ah, Christ! to her, my love! my love ! "
Long he sat upon a stone, his head buried between his hands; then slowly arose, walked into the cabin, took from his breast a well-worn picture, and holding it close under the dim light of the candle, drank from its lineaments the last draught of a thirsty soul. " Farewell, sweet angel; thine have I ever been; thine now no longer ! " Tearing up the pasteboard he scattered the frag;ments about his cabin floor, blew out the light, stepped forth, fastening the door after him, and took the trail up the river to the high divide, then zig-zag up the mountain. The moon w^as now abroad, throwing its pale, impotent light as far as it could into the black canon, at the bottom of which shone a thread of silver foam.
" Suicide ? Bah! I am no sick simpleton. I am a man. I am not afraid to live. I can suffer. Powers of heaven or hell, I defy you! As you have done to me, so would not I to you. Take from ​
A RUINED LIFE. 733
the honest man and give to the thief 1 Take gold consecrated to the highest and purest affections, and cast it before swine! Omnipotent justice ? Bah ! again, I say. There is none such; no omnipotence and no justice."
Up, up, through the pale moonlight, zigzag to the mountain- top, then over the eternal snows, and down toward the great river flowing oceanward, life, loA'-e, justice, heaven—words, mere words, windy words, words, words I ​
CHAPTER XXIV.
DUELLING.
Fahtaff. Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour pricks me off when I come on ? How then ? Can honour set to a leg ? No. Or an arm ? No. Or take away the grief of a wound ? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word, honour? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning ! Who hath it? He that died o'Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it; therefore I'll none of it; honour ia a mere 'scutcheon and so ends my catechism.
The time is past when to an average intellect the necessity exists of denouncing duelling, and we have now only to regard with astonishment the bondage of our aiicestors to this folly. In the evolution of progress, fashion, that is to say actively expressed opinion or belief, is constantly undergoing change ; indeed, change of belief, and corresponding action, is progress. And as some of the beliefs of past ages are to us absurdities so gross that we can only wonder how some minds could for a moment have entertained them, so will certain of our creeds and conduct appear to generations following:.
Take for example woman; along the highways of history how variable her condition 1 Alternately slave and saint, now she is the drudge and chattel of man and now his companion and idol. To us the strangest of all strange passions that ever blotted the human heart, seems that from which sprung the cruel treatment of women which formed a prominent feature in ancient and half-civilized warfare. What to us could possibly seem more unnatural than the picture of an enraged soldier in whom blind fury had so ​swal (734)
lowed all other passions that he should delight to drag by the hair about the streets of a conquered city its fair daughters in torn robes and with bleedina; limbs ?
Then there is the institution of slavery, which within these few centuries had half the world for its supporters, that most anomalous of social anomalies, which under the laws of man enable man to hold man as merchandise, to own him, order him, bind him, beat him, kill him—no one to-day openly upholds human slavery as in the abstract right but would blush for his opinion did he but know the depth of his own ignorance and error.
The origin of the duello may be sought in that savage sentiment of justice which made every individual the indicator of his riofhts and the aveng^er of his wrongs. Before the coalescence of wandering tribes, and in the absence of a central power embodyino; the delecrated rio;ht of individuals, that which is now the ultima ratio regum, was then the right of every member of the patriarchal association.
Thence the sentiment assumed the form of superstition. The earlier methods of determining^ ouilt were no less imperfect than those at present m force. Sufferers saw that governors and judges appointed to arbitrate between accuser and accused were not infallible; consequently appeal to a higher power direct, in the form of combat, became a custom. When the intellect was so far emancipated as to perceive that the almighty did not interpose the finger of justice in these trials of brute force, the practice had already so fastened itself upon society as a fashion, that for centuries neither right nor reason was able wholly to eradicate it.
It was during the age of chivalry when tilts and tournaments encouraged a display of personal prowess, and fostered the worship of courage and punctilio, that the duel assumed its most magnificent proportions. In legal proceedings it sometimes took' the place of an oath. Public opinion kept the practice in ​
vogue long after its folly was seen and admitted, even by those who felt obliged to recognize the code. Duelling was attacked by reason, sarcasm, and eloquence, long with little apparent avail. The best cure was to withhold all sympathy both from the murderer and the murdered. The death of Hamilton at the hand of Burr excited national sympathy; yet why, with his more than ordinary insight into the absurdities of the practice, and his more than ordinary abhorrence of it, he should be entitled to extraordinary pity in the display of his weakness I cannot understand.
Why is it that when of all animals, civilized man alone finds a code of laws necessary to his social existence, that in his fighting attributes the nearer he approaches to bull-dog pluck and game-cock endurance, the nearer he imitates the prizefighter and the savage in his kilhng qualities, the more manly a man is he ? In fighting, points of emulation and honor are taken from beasts, but in the necessities of government and law even beasts and savages may well hold us in contempt.
When Khio; John of Eng^land, for the health of his soul, as he affirms, though in truth for the safety of his head, reluctantly granted his mailed barons the magna charta, the keystone of English liberty, as Hallam calls it, was laid. When Martin Luther raised his protest against the iniquities and errors of the church by nailing his theses to the door of the Schlosskirke at Wllrtenberg, the bull of excommunication that followed enfranchised half Christendom. When Thomas Jefferson's declaration of independence was passed by the congress assembled at Philadelphia, the latest and fairest type of liberty appeared, stainless, save one foul blot, and that by the emancipation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln was washed away. We who inherit the fruits of these several displays of progressional phenomena, and which embody all the benefits of civil and religious liberty ; we whose government is the mildest under which civilized man has ​
A VILE PRACTICE. 737
yet lived, being imposed unconditionally by ourselves ; we whose beliefs are unshackled, and whose intellects are wanton as the air—were it an attribute of humanity to be absolutely free, surely we might boast our freedom.
But absolute freedom is not an attribute of humanit}", or if it be, the germ of such freedom does not appear. Since the days of feudal serfdom, of trial by combat, of inquisition and impositions, some progress has been made, but progress only of certain kinds and in certain directions. Palpable bondage we object to, and thanks to our forefathers are fairly enough rid of, but bondage impalpable, as far exceeding the other as the infinite exceeds the finite, yet remains. Fetters which we cannot feel we wear as gracefully as ever.
And no fetters imposed by the tyranny of fashion on stupid, ignorant man have been more galling to the wearers, have been worn with less comfort, bringing upon those under bondage to it that very contempt to avoid which they subjected themselves to it, rendering them by means of their unhappy adornment all the more ridiculous in the eyes of all sensible men — none more absurd and wicked than the duello.
Nor may we yet boast our freedom from it. Though by every rightminded member of society a duellist — atid no less those who aid and abet him—is regarded a murderer, the slave of a savage superstition civilized by senseless fashion, and is denounced as a thing vile and contaminating, yet the wars which myriads of men indulge in as the ultimate appeal in the settlement of their differences is but another phase of the same superstition.
What can there be more hateful and unholy, what can there be less in accord with their profession, and the spirit of the divine Christ which they aim to inculcate, than for ministers of the gospel, ranged on either side of a bloody arbitration, to mount their pulpits and solemnly invoke the god of battles to give them victory for the justness of their cause and the ​
glory of his name? "Very wonderful!" as Dr Johnson would say. *' Would that it were impossible."
This is exactly what individual combatants did a few centuries ago, and which we now so righteously condemn. The only vital difference between war and the duello is that one is a national and the other an individual affair; and we are not yet sufficiently advanced in reason to realize that what is wrong in a unit of the nation is wrong in the nation. True, when the units of society delegate their rights to a general government acting for the common good, it is tbeir duty to leave them there, and not to interfere with the functions of government by breaking its laws in the effort to right their own wrongs. Society alone possesses the right to chastise. But should the government become impotent or corrupt, and fail to deal justly with the individuals composing it, then the individuals may withdraw the rights delegated, and act for themselves if they have the power. Either duelling is right or war is wrong.
In Christian countries the actions of men are measured by two tests, the approbation of the creator, and the happiness of the creature, though as the subject is more closely inspected, one test appears to be equivalent to the other. How much needless dispute there has been about reason and revelation, their contradictions and absurdities. Between the two there is no discord, else reason is unreason and revelation a lie. The law of nature and of morality and the law of God are one; not that God and nature are thereby made one, but nature's law and nature's morals are God's law and morals.
Some call this appeal to battle God's plan, and so, indeed, it is ; else in place of this now apparently only way, he would appoint some other. Probably religious wars have exceeded all others in extent and intensity among civilized nations. Now, why should God wish a hundred thousand of his creatures in God's name to slay another hundred thousand who assembla ​
to the slaughter for the love of God ? Is truth found and opinion reconciled thereby ? Is man in his ultimate endeavor only physical ? The killing alters no facts in the case. Must reason, then, go for naught ? Can no way but brute force be found to settle ultimate differences'? Then give the brutish in our nature the glory, and talk no more of the majesty of mind.
All admit that war is an evil—a necessary evil, some say, though necessary evil implies good, for the presence of the evil is better for us than the absence of it; hence, war is not an evil but a benefit. In other words, there is no such thing as necessary evil. "War is an evil; who is to blame for it? Not you or I, for we would put an end to ifc if we could; not the nation, which is but an aggregation of you's and I's; not the rulers of mankind, who can do nothing of lasting moment without the acquiescence of the ruled. We simply know that it is ; not why nor whence.
Virtue they call it, on both sides the same; they are noble men and true, they who fight for the ideal, whatever it may be, religion, country, freedom. Virtue then wars on virtue; this is the truth of it, for virtue is never wholly on one side, and he is virtuous who fights for what he believes right, whether he be rioht or not. Virtue then slays virtue, as vice kills vice. War and religion; strange companionship. One kills to cure, and the other cures to kill. Kill and call it honor; serve God and butcher his people!
Why should hate be glorified and deadly strife; that thing we so despise in brutes, prize-fighters, bull-fighters, duellists, and all that ilk, why in nations should we so exalt it? Both to the memory of the slain in battle, and to those who kill them, poets raise their most exalted strains, and God's ministers bless them from sacred desks. Hirelings or haters it is all the same, if they fight brutally well let them be exalted. Let truth and humanity be taught, instead of fanaticism and brute force, and war, like any other ​
savagism, will become a disgrace, and the soldier will carry on his brow the curse of Cain,
Single combats for the deciding of special differences come down to us from ancient dates. Many are found in the Illiad of Homer, and the Hebrew scriptures, the Mahometan, Greek, and Roman records contain the accounts of some. But it was during the Dark Age that trial by combat assumed its deepest color of superstition. Attended with religious ceremonies the wager of battle was then a direct appeal to the decision of the almighty, and success was proof of right. The ordeal was recognized, and in criminal cases which seemed to be soluble in no other way, sanctioned by law.
Upon the establishment of the dogma of Francis I. that "the lie was never to be put up with without satisfaction, but by a baseborn fellow," lies were classified and thirty -two distinct methods of satisfaction pronounced. From France duelling then spread rapidly all over Europe. During the reign of Louis XIII. duelists would join the left hands and stab each other with the right; they would enter a dark or lighted room and there remain until only one could leave. Females have fought their duels in France. Finally edicts were issued for its suppression, but the custom had become so rooted to the sentiment of honor that pardons were almost as frequent as the offence.
To obviate the necessity of personal encounter, tribunals of honor for the reconciliation of disputes in the army were established in Prussia; if the court failed in its purpose the duel took place, and after the offence imprisonment. The students of the German universities mdulged freely in this pastime, wearing armor and fighting with swords; but the boys seldom hurt each other. In England duels became more common as society became more refined and orderly; disputes were settled by the individuals themselves rather than by more general engagements. ​
England's greatest statesmen were not so great as to ignore the custom. The Irish were famous for their duehstic procHvities. The Scotch were more wary. Two Plymouth serving-men inaugurated the system in America in 1621, and subsequently Boston has often indulged in this method of arbitration. The leaders of the revolution, and of subsequent political parties were not above this superstition.
In the hostile encounters of the California miners there was that same directness which characterized all their proceedings. Simple-minded and singlehearted they did not understand why, if they wished to kill a man, they should at the same time set themselves up to be killed by him. That might be the code; but it was a very foolish code. In any event it was murder; but it made a vast difference which did the killing. They could not understand how a debt should be cancelled by increasing it, how a wrong should be avenged by covering it with a greater wrong, or how the honor of the outraged husband or father should be healed by permitting the infamous tempter of female chastity to shoot him. To call it cowardly to take at disadvantage an antagonist was of no avail, for they would tell you that duellists, whipped to position by public opinion, are of all men the greatest cowards. Therefore, with blazing brain and blood red hot they did not wait for the tardy "lie direct; the "reply churlish " being enough for them.
By those who deal in human blood, who make the but<?hering of their fellows a profession which they follow for gain or glory, as well as those who adopt it as a fashion, the terms courage and cowardice are grossly misapplied. In civilized warfare courage is a sort of military idolatry, fostered for the greater efficiency of the organization. It is composed of the very qualities which it affects to despise, emniation, imitation, and fear. The soldier dare not brave an order with an opinion, dare not appear to be afraid, ​
dare not listen to conscience, to humanity, to right or reason. Soul and sense alike are sunk in a slough of brute persistence. Disciplhie demands it, we are told; and the more fully this dehumanizing process has been carried out, the more effective the army. The brutalization of the man is the first step; then infuse a fiendish spirit, and place all under the restrictions of necessary forms, and you have an organization fit for scientific slaughter. And the more to blind our eyes to the hideous creation, we make it the nation's moral ideal. Courage becomes synonomous with virtue; whatever interferes with the growth and exercise of courage is deemed vicious. With the ancient Romans the culture of the fine arts was regarded a vice.
The sentiment as found in the duel is much more frivolous. The bravery of the duellist is bravado; his heroism is based on pusillanimous timidity. No man whose hate is so deep-seated and vindictive as to be satiated only by another's blood, will place his own life within the range of equal probabilities of sacrifice unless driven to it by that power most appalling to its votaries, public opinion. Cowardice underlies the couraoje of the duellist. He fio;hts because he dare not refuse. Religion, right, reason, are swallowed in the abject terror inspired by the frown of his associates. Half crazed, it may be, in the performance of his unwelcome obligation, he stands before his adversary the captive slave of cowardice, whose uncontrollable thoughts seem to whirl him along in frenzied dance like an Orestes or a Hamlet.
To all such scarecrows as society courage, the cutthroats of the Californian Inferno were profoundly indifferent. Did one wish to kill another, one sought the other and slew on sight. Or, if fired by ambition, the informal duellist might give notice that he was then upon the war path, and should shoot a certain man if not first shot by him. But it was only where murder was raised to a fine art, as among journahsts, ​politicians, and those whose bread depended upon pubhc opinion, that persons were found so lost to moral courage and manliness as to decline to fight where they had no desire to slay.
Glacus, the Spartan, consulted the oracle at Delphi concerning the restoration of certain money in his possession to the rightful owner. "May I not" he asked, "purge myself by oath after the Greek fashion and so keep the money?'" Thus from his courage, as Glacus from his honesty, the duellist in vain beseeches his gods to deliver him.
Socrates, if he wished to punish an enemy, would let him escape punishment. "If he has stolen a sum of money" he says, "let him keep it, and spend it on him and his, regardless of religion and justice; and if he has done things worthy of death, let him not die, but rather be immortal in his wickedness." So would not the miners of California,
Of all men in the community during that epoch of our history when insult could be washed out but by blood alone, those who mouthed it most loudly, and with sanctimonious visage sighed over the desecration of our holy law, were the first to break it when what they called their honor was at stake.
The duelling grounds in early times were at the Mission. There was no need of secrecy in those days, for sheriffs and judges never attended except as spectators. Some of the most noted duellists of the day sat upon the supreme bench and talked soberly about the unsound principles of the anarchic and revolutionary vigilance movement, and how by it all rights of persons and security of property founded on constitutional compact and legal form would be destroyed.
How vain and absurd! Honest, order-loving men may not strike one blow at a public scourge, one blow for the commonwealth, for themselves, their friends, yet their judges and those who denounce them shall forsooth be praised for jumping from the bench and breaking the law for the simple gratification of a hot ​
passion. What was the duello, which code most of these men recognized, but an appeal to private combat for offences alleged to have been committed against the arbitrary rules of society, agahist courtesy or etiquette, so-called laws of honor, which courts of law did not recognize ?
Journalists and politicians were those who most delighted in this sort of argument. Their honor seemingly required more care than that of others, and it was necessary to keep it well patched, and not expose it too recklessly. But among the sporting fraternity the code found some adherents, and now and then a butcher and a baker attempted to balance their books in that way, so that altogether there was at one time a new duel for every issue of the Sunday's paper.
" Je veux bien etre tue; mais mouille, non." " I am willing to be killed, but I am not willing to be wet," cried Sainte-Beuve as lie stood in the rain before Dubois, and regardless of the expostulations of the seconds, fired four shots from under an umbrella.
Among the encounters of the early Spanish American adventurers were those of Velasco and Ponce de Leon, who during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella chose a narrow bridge near Madrid, where they were to fight without armor, in doublet and hose, with spears; of Ojeda and Nicuesa, who at Santo Domingo talked of settling their differences by combat, until the latter stipulated that each should put up $25,000 to fight for; of Nunez, the young page of Cortes, who at Mexico in 1521 begged permission to accept the challenge of a Mexican of great prowess, who, armed with sword and buckler, defied the Spaniards to single combat. After a desperate struggle the page slew his antagonist, and bore to Cortes the spoils of victory. But the most notable affair of those in which America was interested, was the challenge and almost immediate death of Diego Alvarado, who offered to fight with Hernando Pizarro in Spain in 1539, Pizarro ​
had unjustly condemned and executed Almagro, Alvarado's friend. Five days after sending the cliallenge Alvarado died, and dark suspicion fell on Pizarro, whose misdeeds in Peru were well known, and who was subsequently confined for twenty years. Cortes himself had frequent affairs of honor before coming to America.
Pillet, of the Pacific Fur Company, in May 1813 at the Spokane house in Washington, fought a duel with Montour of the Northwest Company with pocket pistols at six paces. Both were hit; one in the coat collar and the other in the trowsers' leg. Two men, one from each of the respective companies, acted as seconds. The wounds were all duly healed by the tailor.
Unhappy the day that brings accursed culture to a simple home. Civilization teaches savagism how to cheat at gambling, how to give and accept a challenge, but when it comes to actual fighting then each prefers its own way. In August 1814 a chief at Fort Spokane was accused by a gigantic Scotch trapper, McDonald, of having played unfairly while gambling, and was told that he must come out and fight, for he had been insulted and either he or the Scotchman must die, for the world was not large enough to hold a Scotchman and a Spokane who had gambled and quarrelled. When the chief was informed of the orthodox way affairs of that kind were conducted, he greatly wondered that men could be so foolish as openly to stand before each other's fire, and insisted that they should retire to the woods where each might choose a tree to stand behind, and dodge for the first fire. Failing to agree, friends interposed and the belligerents were pacified.
In 1845 a man was brought before a judge in Oregon for challenging another to fight a duel, and in accordance with a law just passed, he was fined $500 and disfranchised for life. In truth there seemed to be more challenging than fighting, a genuine chal ​lenge being almost equivalent in importance to a duel in many places.
In 1 8 1 6 Jose de la Guerra y Noriega and one Aspiroz were dining at Governor Sola's house when they quarreled, and the former challenged the latter. The governor and two padres wrote to Aspiroz begging him to withdraw the challenge. There the matter rested, but the feud was not wholly healed until five years later.
It was common aniong the Hispano-Californians to resort to the duello as a cure for jealousy, and for quarrels over cards or elsewhere. They usually fought with knives or old swords, and they cut one another at a terrible rate until fatigued, when they would rest, or until one cried enough, when the other would dictate terms. Witnesses were not allowed. Common places of meeting were the Huerta Vieja, the Huerta del Rey, and Canada de la Segunda.
In a Canada near Santa Barbara, in 1825, Cabo Canuto Borondo and Meliton Soto, paisanos, fought a duel. Soto was the challenger, and there were no witnesses to the affair. Civil proceedings were instituted, and the matter was likewise referred to the ecclesiastical court. Father Duran as vicario foraneo made the following report. The church, he says, can not look with indifference on the almost certain and eternal damnation of those who die in a duel, and has accordingly imposed the most terrible punishment to prevent such wickedness, namely, "excommunion mayor late sententia ipso facto incurrenda." The bull "detestibilum" of Pope Benedict XIV. denied burial in consecrated ground for those who died in consequence of this offence, an offence springing from a most pernicious custom, introduced by the devil to capture men's souls. The plea of ignorance would not answer for an excuse; only absolution ad causelam would make right the hereafter.
In the mission archives of San Diego I find that in ​
1836, for sending a challenge to fight a duel, Thomas Russell was fined ten dollars and confiscation of his pistol, or ten days in the guard house. In 1841 Uribe was fined five dollars for offerino; to fio;ht a duel with a bone; and Ybarra was fined a dollar and a half for accepting the challenge. This last mentioned amount was more than Terry paid for killhig Broderick.
In 1843 the noted Indian chief, Goscolo, was the terror of the San Jose jurisdiction, which for years he had kept in a state of constant alarm. He was tall in person, of a deep bronze color, and with a look of caution in his eyes; very ferocious, and in a hand-tohand fijj^ht as valiant as he was savage. Ever an enemy of the white man, during his long career of depredation and murder he never pardoned him who fell into his hands. Francisco Palomares, a noted Indian fighter and by his own showing, although de razon no less of a savage than Goscolo, thus describes the latter's death.
Having committed some peculiarly atrocious murders near San Jose, Goscolo was pursued by Corporal Pena, and the escolta of that mission, consisting of some five or six men, accompanied by 100 of the mission Indians de guerra. Peha came upon Goscolo's band unawares, and arranged his vastly superior force in a circle, which gradually contracted round Goscolo and his followers, who, to a man, died fighting within it.
One of Pena's auxiliaries, a personal enemy of G6scolo, asked leave of his commander to challenge him to single combat. This permission was given, Pena ordering the battle to be temporarily suspended. Thereupon the mission Indian in his own tongue challenged Goscolo, who accepted, and moved to an unobstructed spot near by, whither the challenger followed him. The high contending parties were each armed with ^ bow and arrows. Within view of the opposing forces they began to shoot at one another. At each shot both advanced a little, or manoeuvred ​
for better position. This continued for nearly an hour before either was wounded. Finally, after they had advanced to within a few yards of each other, the mission Indian contrived to drive an arrow through his adversary's heart.
Goscolo's death was the signal for the resumption of the suspended battle, and his disheartened followers soon succumbed. Peha caused G6scolo's head to be brought to him, and with his own hands affixing it to his lance, carried it to the mission of San Jose, where he ordered it nailed to a tree in front of the church door, and there it remained for two or three months. After Goscolo's death there was a notable diminution of Indian depredations in the San Jose jurisdiction.
Fremont and Mason, while at Angeles in 1847, indulged in the pastime of making faces and calling each other bad names. Fremont did not like Mason over him as master, and Mason did not admire Fremont's behavior as subordinate. Fremont thought Mason's plan was to provoke a challenge, and then to kill him with a shotgun, in the use of which Mason was very expert, while Fremont was not. Fremont then studied patience, but that was worse than the shot-gun; his distempered thoughts at length broke into violent words, and almost before he knew it, trial by shotgun was upon him. Then swiftly passed death-missives to and fro, and a fearful preparation for combat, when General Kearny placed his veto upon the sanguinary frolic, and the soil of California was spared the threatened draught of bad blood.
Joshua W. Collett, captain in the United States army, was slain in a duel in Mexico in 1848. In December of this year Salvador Nieto was condemned to six months' public labor by a jury of six of his countrymen for challenging Nicolas Silvas to combat and firing a pistol at him. Silvas was subjected to three months' labor for accepting the challenge.
At Eureka in 1850 the somewhat stale play of a ​
A SHAM DUEL. 749
sham duel came oflP, the only feature about it making it worthy of mention being the narrow escape from death of the victim. The fact is, those womanless towns would do anything for fun. Two friends, Raymond and Tucker, quarreled; the former challenged, and the latter accepted. Both were brave and noble young men, but Tucker was the best shot. He did not wish to kill his friend, however easily he might do so; indeed, he would not hurt a hair of his head. Shotguns were the weapons, but instead of balls, which had been agreed upon, the guns were loaded with blank cartridges. This was known to Tucker, but not to Raymond or his second. To the five hundred open-mouthed and panting spectators the trick was likewise unknown and unsuspected. At the first fire Tucker fell, and the red gore spilled from his breast. The crowd was stricken with horror. The prostrate man was carefully taken up, and borne to the house of a friend. Raymond fled, and escaped the fury of the people, for Tucker was a favorite. The man who acted as Raymond's second, however, was less fortunate, and before he was fairly away, amidst angry cries of " Seize him!" "Hang him !" a rush was made, and it was only by declaring to them the joke that his life was saved. Raymond lived three weeks in the belief that he had killed his friend.
Following is a copy of a California challenge:
San Francisco, August 3, '54. Mr W. R. Graham.
Sir—Your denial this morning of the arrangement made between us, and your insulting conduct in that connection, leaves me no resource but to demand the redress that a gentleman has a right to expect.
This will be handed you by my friend. Judge McGowan, who has full authority to act for me.
Respectfully,
M. E. Flannagan.
Some time in January 1851, Mr Walker, one of the editors of the San Francisco Herald e ​xpressed fears
that the public administrator and probate judge had pickled rather than preserved a certain estate. The administrator took exceptions to such personalities and threatened to cowhide the editor. W. H. Graham, a friend of the probate judge, then wrote an insulting letter to the editor which provoked a challenge. They fought with pistols and Walker was wounded. Captain Folsom assisted in loading the pistols, which the seconds seemed unacquainted with, and witnessed the fight. Graham was arrested and held to bail in the sum of $5,000.
The same year W. H. Graham and H. Lemon exchanged several shots with revolvers, one of which wounded the lattejr in the shoulder.
A difficulty arose between Hopkins, deputy collector and Taylor, inspector at San Francisco in 1851. They agreed to meet at Benicia, but Taylor was arrested and placed under bonds to keep the peace.
E. Stanley and S. W. Inge, representatives in congress at Washington in 1851, one from North Carolina and the other from Alabama, after a foolish and empty jangle of words upon the floor of the house, withdrew with pistols in order to kill each other. After the exchange of one shot, fearing if continued some one might be hurt, an aperture of escape was found, and the farce ended. These men both figured subsequently in California.
S. Wethered and one Schaffer exchanged shots with guns in 1851 and were stopped by the authorities.
If Christians fight, may not heathen ? Meek in manner and peaceful in action as the Chinese ordinarily are, they are yet, on occasions, capable of the most cold-blooded savagery, and will slash each other to pieces with diabolical zest. Their ideas of the code are particularly murderous. A dispute occurring among a number of them on the Mokelumne river in the spring of 1851, relative to certain money matters, the interested parties locked themselves in a r^ark room, and proceeded to arbitrate the matter sumnia ​rlly with knives and iron bars, resulting in the slaying and maiming of most of them. How they distinguished friend from foe is a mystery; but to do so was part of the performance. Bloodless barbarians as they are, these people are not wanting in that reckless disregard for life which more civilized nations soberly term heroism.
During the first week in September 1851 George McDougal and E. C. Kemble, editor of the Alta California, met twice, Kemble being the challenger. The law, jealous perhaps of the ancient form of trial by combat, interfered at both meetings, and meanwhile the blood of the belligerents cooled.
Out among the bushes in the suburbs of San Francisco, on the 10th of September, 1851, Joseph L. Folsom, graduate of West Point, captain in the United States army, chief of the quartermaster's department on the northwestern coast, first American collector in California, and operator in Leidesdorff estate and Yerba Buena sand hills, met A. C. Russell, both bent upon offering on the altar of their vengeance the life of the other, that honor—without which Mexican wars and advance in San Francisco real estate brought no solace—now smeared and sulky, might be appeased. It was just becoming dark on the evening of that day, when these men met to kill each other. The rabbits and quails paused before retiring, to witness the singular spectacle. None of them had ever before seen a duel fought, as the custom did not obtain among any species of beast known to them. After two shots each, the fiery combatants embraced and went home. The rabbits and quails were disgusted.
A conundrum was the cause of it; it takes but little stirrinof to set effervescino; bad blood mixed with bad whiskey. Wine they called it this time; wme, conviviality, and conundrums. In October 1851 at Nevada, George M. Dibble, a whilom midshipman, ​
told E. B, Lundy, a Canadian, that he was a liar. Now it is a small matter, comparatively, to be a liar, but a great one to be told of it. Lundy replied with opprobrious epithets, when Dibble challenged him. The fight came off on the Yuba, about eighteen miles from Nevada; pistols, fifteen paces. Dibble's plan was to draw Lundy's fire and then deliberately to kill him. At the signal Lundy fired, and with an oath Dibble exclaimed, "You have fired too soon!" Dibble's second asked him, "Are you satisfied?" Whereupon Dibble opened his coat and exposed the places where the ball had passed through his body. He was thoroughly satisfied. Pushing aside those who offered to support him he walked about 150 yards and fell, dying in about twenty minutes. If all trials by combat might end as justly as this, one could almost sanction this species of arbitration. The man killed gave the insult and gave the challenge ; it was simply right that he should die. Lundy was arrested and the seconds gave themselves up voluntarily.
John Morrison killed William Leggett at the third fire in 1852. This was a year prolific in pistoling. A. C. Peachy, legislator, and James Blair, goverment officer, figure in the duelling annals of 1852. About the first of March of this same year, a war of words occurred at Sacramento between ex-governor William Smith and David C. Broderick, which, however, was amicably settled. The governor's son, J. Caleb Smith, was not satisfied, and came out in a card in the Democratic State Journal of March 10th, publishing Broderick as a liar, scoundrel, and blackguard. Both were in San Francisco at the time, and it was expected that soon there would be a first-class street fight. Nearly a week passed without a collision, and the crowds began to grow tired of congregating on the corners to witness the show. At length the gladiators appeared near the comer of Front and Sacramento streets. Five hundred people were soon on hand to be again disappointed. During this time ​
mutual friends were negotiating; Smith withdrew the offensive card, and challenged his antagonist. They met on the 1 7th across the bay, a mile from shore, on a flat piece of ground, four seconds and two surgeons, with a county judge and sheriff being in the distance. Weapons, Colts' navy revolvers. Smith won the choice of ground, distance ten paces. Twelve shots were fired in all. Smith's third shot hit Broderick's ■ watch, passing through it and slightly wounding him. At the second fire Broderick's pistol failed to revolve, and from that time his whole front was exposed to Smith's fire, as he was compelled to use both hands. Both were cool. Smith was satisfied. No arrests were made, as in the case of McDougal a short time before.
On board the boat from San Francisco to Sacramento, in May, a dispute arose between W. H. Carter and H. A. DeCourcy, editor of the Calaveras Chronicle, in which Carter slapped DeCourcy 's face. DeCourcy then challenged Carter, and on reachhig Sacramento they crossed the river and fought with pistols twenty paces. DeCourcy was struck at the first fire and the battle ended.
The 16th of June a duel was fought by two Frenchmen at Sonora, California, in which one of them was killed. A mining claim was the matter in dispute.
Near the racecourse at San Francisco, the 8th of July, Wethered and Winter fought with Colt's revolvers at ten paces. After the first shot Winter's pistol revolved with difficulty, and at the fourth shot he received a ball in the side which struck his ribs and gliding round made a flesh wound which terminated the aftair.
At a banquet tendered to Colonel Magruder of San Diego by the Angeles citizens, in 1852, the question of great men came up, and a doctor made mellow with wine declared that his father was the greatest American. Magruder called the doctor a damned fool. A challenged followed: derringers across a ​table at a restaurant; to be fired after "ready! fire! one, two, three!" At the word "ready" the doctor fired and missed, whereupon the Colonel marched round the table upon his terrified opponent. After a vain attempt to escape by the door which had been barred by the spectators, the doctor crept under tie table and, embracing the legs of Magruder, cried: "Colonel Magruder, for the love of God, spare me for my family's sake." the colonel gave him a kick and left.
John Nugent, editor of the San Francisco Herald, and John Cotter, alderman from the fourth ward, fought with pistols at ten paces the 15th of July, 1852, at Contra Costa. The hour fixed for the meeting was twelve o'clock. The principals crossed to Contra Costa the night previous. About half past eleven the steamboat arrived with the surgeons, seconds, and a crowd of friends and newsmongers. It was very much like going to a horserace. The moment the boat landed a rush was made for conveyance to the ground about two miles distant. Soon upon the road thither was a line of horses and vehicles of every description. Cotter was on the ground and ready at five minutes before twelve, but Nugent by some misunderstanding did not make his appearance until half-past two. Immediately on Nugent's arrival the pistols were loaded, the distance measured, and the combatants placed in position. At the word the first shot was fired simultaneously and without effect. Nugent's pistol snapped and bending to cock it Cotter's ball struck his left thigh, producing a compound fracture. Had he not moved the ball would not have touched him. Nugent fell and was carried off by the surgeons. The ball was extracted, and, with honor repaired, the wound was not slow to heal.
It seemed incumbent on Nugent to shoot aldermen, or rather to be shot by them, for again the following year we find him fighting Alderman Hayes with rifles ​
at twenty paces. As before, a large number of spectators were present, and at the second fire Nugent fell severely wounded.
Terms of duel between Hayes and Nugent.
San Francisco, June 8, 1853. Mr H. Bowen.
Dr Sir—The terms that I propose with reference to the contemplated meeting between Mr Hayes and Mr John Nuo;-ent are as follows:
Place in rear of Mr Green's residence.
Time eight o'clock a. m., June 9th.
Distance 13 paces.
Weapons to be used by both parties, competent army Colt revolvers.
Challenge of John Nugent by W. H. Jones.
San Francisco, Aug. 11, 1852 Mr Jno. Nugent.
Sir—The insult offered me requires satisfaction. My friend Mr Lewis Tral is authorized by me to make the arrangements.
Your Ob't S't,
Wm H. Jones.
Edward Gilbert, member of the convention for forming the state constitution, one of the first Californian representatives to congress, and senior editor of the Aha California newspaper, at the time only thirty -three years of age, was killed by J. W. Denver, state senator from Klamath and Trinity counties, the 2d of August, 1852, at Oak Grove near Sacramento. The men had never seen each other until they met upon the fatal field. A bill for the relief of overland immigrants had been passed by the last leofislature, which Gilbert believed to be ineffectual and wrong, and done solely in the interests of politicians. Denver was prominent in the affair, being a personal friend of Bigler, and connected with the relief trahi. With a great show of charity, which Gilbert ridiculed, Bigler had escorted the supply train out of Sacramento. In reply to Gilbert's arti ​cles, Denver published a card couched in uncourteous language. Gilbert replied and Denver retorted; Gilbert challenged and Denver accepted. Thej^ fought at sunrise with Wesson's rifles, at forty paces. The first fire was without effect. At the second fire Gilbert fell, the ball entering just above the left hip. His second immediately rushed up, when Gilbert turned his face toward him with a smile, and died without a groan.
On the 11th of December, 1852, a few days after he ceased to be governor, John McDougal met A. C. Kussell, one of the editors of the San Francisco Picayune, in an affair of honor. The cause was an offensive article in the Picayune, of which Russell was the author. They met on the San Jose road in Santa Clara county, ten paces, pistols. Russell received a bullet in the breast at the first fire, inflicting a slight wound, which ended the fight.
In sanguinary unrest, with grey eyes murderously set, W. M. Gwin and J. W. McCorkle, professional politicians, met in 1853 near the Santa Clara line, to blot out in blood some horse-race talk. After one grand shot with rifles at thirty paces, both seemed thoroughly satisfied. If the thing was continued, it might cease to be amusing; rifles were rifles, and thirty steps were not far. So the two braves smiled, and the deputation of punctilious spitfires smiled, and swore it was ail a mistake, that nobody meant anything, and that everybody else was only too glad that everybody else was glad. And so wise men and knaves all went home together. In truth, it is a wonderful phenomenon, this mixture of folly, gunpowder, and fear.
Oliver T. Baird, in 1853, at the second fire shot C. J. Wright in the neck.
The 3d of November, 1853, C. Krug, editor of the San Francisco Freie Presse, independent German paper, and Dr Loehr, editor of the Califomia Democrat, the ​
German state administration organ, settled certain editorial ditierences just back of San Antonio in Alameda county. Colts' navy revolvers, at six paces. At the third fire Loehr's thumb was carried away by the bullet of his antagonist. The trouble arose from some objectionable personalities in the Democrat.
May, senator from Trinity county, shot Edward Rowe, express agent, in the neck at twenty paces on the 5th of November, 1853, at Weaverville.
Peter Smith, son of Pinckney Smith of Mississippi, officer under Jefferson Davis in the war with Mexico, and subsequently connected with the Lopez expedition against Cuba, fought with William H. Scott at the San Francisco racecourse the 3d of August, with pistols at eight paces. Smith was only twenty-four years of age. He w^as killed at the second fire.
CJiarles Somers and Thomas D. P. Lewis fought with derringers at ten paces at San Francisco the 11th of February, 1853. Somers received a shot in the left arm.
Alfred Crane, physician from Louisiana, in 1853 challenged Edward Toby, clerk of San Francisco assistant aldermen. They fought with navy pistols at fifteen paces. At the second fire Crane was shot through the abdomen, and died next morning after a night of agony.
Rust, editor of the Express, and Stidger, editor of the Herald, dropped their pens one day and seized their pistols. The latter was slightly wounded corporeally, but honor was healed.
During the year 1854, there appeared to be a mania for duels. Editors fought. Lawyers, judges, shoulder-strikers, doctors, loafers fought. The legislature of this year was called the fightmg legislature, and if a week or two passed without the notice of a hostile meeting in the public journals, men looked at each other as if something were wrong.
J. P. Rutland, clerk in the state treasurer's office, ​taking offence at some remark of P. W. Thomas of Auburn, sent him a challenge by James P. Dickson, hospital physician at San Francisco. Thomas refusing to fight with Putland, on the ground that he was no gentleman, was then challenged by Dickson, and on the next day, March 10th, the parties met at Oak Grove. Thomas' second was Hamilton Bowie, and the second of Dickson was the Honorable Judge Edward McGowan. Weapons, duelling pistols, distance, thirteen paces. Dickson, who had the choice of ground and the word, received Thomas' first fire just under the arm, and the ball passed through his body. Thomas fired first, otherwise it was thought that he, too, must have been hit, as Dickson's ball struck the ground directly at his feet. Dickson died next day, his death causing great excitement, as he was a young man of promise. Rutland felt grieved that Dickson. should have died in his place, and threatened to shoot Thomas on sight unless he fought him, too.
The 10th of April a duel came off at the Pioneer racecourse between H. Chaviteaux and M. Richards. The second of the former was Comte de Raoussel-Boulbon; for the latter E. Cavallier officiated. French duelling-pistols were the weapons, and the distance of twenty-five paces made matters quite safe. Three shots were exchanged, when the fiery French gentlemen came to their senses. No harm was done.
Agreement upon details in a proposed duel:
The weapons to be duelling pistols, distance 10 paces. Place of meeting, back of the racecourse near the mission. To fire between the word fire and three. To toss for choice of weapons. Then for the pistols. Then for the word. Then for choice of position on ground. Any infringement of rules by either of the principals "will be mett by certain death"
Lewis Teal, Edw'd McGowan.
The 10th of May an affair of honor came off near the presidio between James Hawkins, of Tuolumne, ​
and Christopher Dowdigan of San Francisco. The second of the former was Phihp T. Herbert, subsequently member of congress from California, and of the latter William Mulligan, shoulder-striker and politician. Weapons, rifles; distance, forty yards. Result, Dowdigan shot in the left arm.
On the night of May I7th, N. Hubert, ex-member of the assembly, and George T. Hunt, a San Francisco attorney, had a personal difficulty in the Metropolitan theatre. It was all about a chair. Hunt's feet were resting on it, and Hubert wished to occupy it. Words passed, and then blows. Next day the case came before the recorder. Both were fined fifty dollars, though Hunt was declared the chief offender. The following Saturday Hunt challenged Hubert to meet him at the Pioneer racecourse, and next morning at half-past five they were on the ground. Hunt's seconds were Knox and Fox, while Hubert was attended by Charles S. Fairfax, ex-speaker of the assembly. Weapons, duelling pistols; distance, ten paces. At the third shot Hunt fell, with the bullet in his abdomen, and immediately calling Hubert to him forgave everything. He died that evening. Hubert was greatly affected as he left the grounds. An editorial appeared in the Alta of May 2 2d, called out by the killing of Hunt by Hubert. The same day Hubert was arrested. The next day two men, Thomas L. Benson, native of London, and Richard Menzies, having a difficulty over some business matter, met in the outskirts with seconds and a surgeon. Weapons, Colt's revolvers, distance, fifteen paces. The combatants would have compromised through the interference of friends, but Benson's second objected, and hurried him on to the ground. The first round Benson's pistol hung fire. The second time he received his antagonist's ball in the breast, and died next day.
The coroner's jury recommended the grand jury to punish the offenders.
David E. Hacker and J. S. London fought in Cal ​ifornia in 1854. Politics was the trouble; London was killed. T. W. Park and M. C. Brazer, both members of the fighting legislature, escaped an encounter unharmed. Washington wounded Washburn badly; both were editors; there were good writers and good fighters in California about this time.
This time a woman was at the bottom of it, and the combatants were Frenchmen, Ellseler and Dubert by name. The compact was that they should fight with broadswords until one or both were dead or disabled. Both were skilled in the use of the weapon; and as desirable, French-speaking women were not plentiful in California in those da}s, the battle promised blood. Eight minutes of scientific gyrations resulted in a severe cut in Ellseler's sword-arm. It was now proposed to terminate the afikir; but how should they divide the woman between them ? Fight it out when the wound was healed ? No; women were too uncertain. So at it they went again, hotter than ever, and in twenty minutes more Ellseler's sword was sheathed in Dubert's body. This was the 6th of June ; Dubert died next morning.
The 2 2d of September Rasey Biven of Stockton, and H. P. Dorsey of Los Angeles, met near Oakland. The seconds of Dorsey were Governor jMcDougal and Mr Watson. Sur12feon, C. M. Hitchcock. Seconds of Biven, Senator Crabb and Mr Bandolph. Surgeon, Briarly. Weapons, duelling pistols. Distance, ten paces. Word was given by Biven's friends. At the first fire Dorsey was wounded in the abdomen and Biven in the wrist.
The duellistic event of this year, 1854, was the planting in the heart of Devereaux J. Woodlief, a ball by Achilles Kewen, on a wheel and fire, with rifles at forty paces. It was a splendid shot, one of which Achilles might well be proud. It is something to tell one's children; right through the heart and at forty paces, wheel and fire. My dear children, I hope you will all learn to shoot—to wheel and shoot right ​
through the heart. A misunderstanding concerning a poHtical matter was the cause of the trouble.
Early in 1856, a committee of the legislature investigated the management of the State Insane Asylum under Dr E,. K. Reid, whose place had been made vacant by Governor Johnson, in order that it might be filled by Dr Samuel Langdon, a gentleman from North Carolina. Dr Washington M. Ryer, a native of New York, and an experienced and skilful surgeon and physician, testified regarding the comparative care of the insane patients under Dr Reid and his successor, Dr Langdon. His testimony was decidedly favorable to the tormer,and anything but complimentary to the latter. This was an indignity upon Langdon, so his southern friends were pleased to construe it, and a plan w^as devised to get rid of Dr Ryer. One night, about three weeks after the investigation, Ryer was struck from behind, on the arm, by a pistol. He turned about, and saw Dr Langdon and Dr Hunter, each with a pistol in hand ; he was himself unarmed. " Which of you gentlemen desires to insult me ? " he asked. Hunter replied, " Dr Langdon." Ryer calmly said: "Dr Langdon, to-morrow I will hunt you." But Lanojdon's business took him out of town for several days, and Ryer was not able to find him. Samuel A. Booker, Esq., a Virginia gentleman, advised Ryer not to follow Langdon up; that he would be taken at a disadvantage, and allow^ed no show for his life, and counselled him to settle the matter by the code. A challenge was duly sent and accepted. The weapons selected by the challenged party, who was familiar with all the devices of the art duello, were a brace of pistols owned by Dr Aylett.* When asked by Colonel O'Neill, Langdon's principal second, to choose one of them, Mr Booker, Ryer's principal second, chose one and discreetly kept it until the meeting
occurred. It was a most treacherous weapon, without some famiHarity with which Ryer might well have sacrificed himself. The hair-trigger of this pistol had been made so sensitive that the mere motion to elevate the muzzle would discharge it in the hand of one not knowing the weapon. February 24, 1857, the fight having been twice before hindered, the parties confronted each other on Rough and Ready island, four miles from Stockton. The choice of position fell to Langdon's lot, and he stood with his back to the west. Ryer, opposite, received the rays of the settingsun full in his face. To the proposition whether an apology, if offered, would be acceptable, Ryer firmly said " No. No apology could atone for a blow." Neither was hurt by the first fire. Overtures for a reconciliation were again declined, and the second fire took place; no blood. At the third shot, Langdon fell, severely wounded below the ligament of the knee-cap. Colonel O'Neill, his second, then came forward and asked if the challenging party was satisfied. "Yes," said Ryer, "he has fallen." The wounded man escaped with his life, but was a cripple until he died in 1880. Dr Ryer had the largest practice in California; he had served as a regular surgeon in the United States army through the Mexican war. His friends claim, and not without reason, that there was absolutely no alternative for him but to fight, and that his living, his life, perhaps, depended upon his takina; advantag^e of the code itself.
Ferguson, state senator from Sacramento, told a story in which a young woman acquaintance of G. P. Johnson's figured, in a way which Jolmson did not like ; so he called Ferguson over to Angel Island, on the 21st of August, 1858, and killed him. So horrible was the offence of taking in vain the name of a young woman happening to know G P. Johnson, that death alone was sufficient atonement; hence the terms of the murderous compact were pistols, ten paces, and advance. The fourth shot brought the ​
combatants within six steps of each other; at which distance one would think a school boy in an ague fit, who had never seen a pistol, could kill the dastardly villain who made faces at his sister. George Pen Johnson could hit Ferguson at that distance at all events; he could shatter at six paces the thigh bone of him who in a dramshop dared speak in other than courtly phrases of a damsel fortunate enough to be under the chivalrous protection of a Johnson ; could with a bullet at six steps inflict a torturous wound upon this flippant-tongued honorable, which should cause him twenty-four days of acutest suffering and finally death under amputation. Ferguson could well enough be spared, and if he had taken Johnson with him California would not Lave been the loser. Among those who call themselves gentlemen, who pretend to that honesty and culture which give manners to society, such scenes are by no means attractive—less so, indeed, than those of the mad miners encamped along the gold belt, who shot and slashed each other in their bacchanals and cared neither for God nor man. Law now steps in to give the final touch to this ghastly farce. Surrendering to the authorities of Marin county, Johnson was tried, and acquitted, on the ground that Ferguson did not die from the effects of the shot, but because he would not submit to earlier amputation! Most worshipped law; incorruptible, direct, void of hypocrisy and guile, let all good villains bow at the mention of thy name !
The most notable of Californian duels was that fought by David S. Terry, associate justice of the supreme court; and David C. Broderick, United States senator from California. Both of these men were actively opposed to the vigilance committee; both made politics a profession, both were high in official position, derived their influence and support immediately from the government, and held themselves up as lights of the law shining upon the obscured intellects of mechanical and mercantile plodders. Now, ​at this time in California the law against duelling: was plain enough, and stringent enough, but chivalrous lawmakers paid no further attention to it than to employ it as a scapegoat in their unlawful murders. Duellists were disqualified by law from holding office; the majority of duellists were office-holders; officeholders fought duels and yet retained office. Whence it appears, following their example, that the highest crime recognized by law may be perpetrated with impunity by the highest officers of the law, wdiile the most righteous acts of citizens, if done outside of the prescribed forms of law, cannot be too severely denounced and punished. No duellist has ever suffered the punishment prescribed by law in California.
Midsummer 1859 saw Terry a defeated candidate before the democratic convention for renomination to the supreme bench. Broderick was a rough man, and a violent politician of New York hybrid republican proclivities, madly determined his head should be higher set, either in the affairs of state or else upon a stake; and it was to him and his party that Terry owed his defeat. In a speech at Sacramento, delivered before the convention held in Benton's church the 24th of June, while professing resignation yet smarting under defeat, Terry said, "Who have we opposed to us? A party based on no principle, except the abusing of one section of the country and the aggrandizement of another; a party which has no existence in fifteen states of the confederacy, a party whose principles never can prevail among free men who love justice and are willing to do justice. What other? A miserable remnant of a faction sailing under false colors, trying to obtain votes under false pretences. They have no distinction they are entitled to; they are followers of one man, the personal chattels of a single individual, whom they are ashamed of. They belong heart and soul, body and breeches, to David C. Broderick. They are yet ashamed to acknowledge their master, and are calling themselves, ​
forsooth, Douglas democrats, when it is known, well known to them and to us, that the gallant senator from Illinois, whose voice has always been heard in the advocacy of democratic principles, who now is not disunited from the democratic party, has no affiliation with them, no feeling in common with them. Perhaps I am mistaken in their right to claim Douglas as their leader. Perhaps they do sail under the flag of DouQjlas, but it is the banner of the black Douo;las, whose name is Frederick, not Stephen."
These and other remarks of like nature were printed in the Sacramento papers, and copied generally throughout the state, Broderick read them next morning while at breakfast at the International Hotel, and very naturally broke out in a fit of violent personalities against Terry. It happened that D. W. Perley, friend and former law partner of Terry, was seated at the table near Broderick, and heard what he said. Perley claimed that Broderick's remarks were directed to him; at all events he replied to them, and Broderick retorted. Women being present at the table, Perley withdrew, and soon after sent Broderick a challenge.
Under date of June 29th, Broderick wrote in reply to Perley that the publicity of the affair, if for no other cause, prohibited a hostile meeting. Other reasons, however, did exist which placed it beyond the power of Broderick to give the satisfaction demanded. Within the past few days Perley had made oath that he was a subject of Great Britain, and at the time of the alleged insult and in the presence of gentlemen the writer had said that he could not accept a challenge from one who had no political rights to be affected by Indulgence in the practise of the code. " For many years," continued Broderick, "and up to the time of my elevation to the position I now occupy, it was well known that I would not have avoided any issue of the character proposed. If compelled to accept a challenge, it could only be ​
from a gentleman holding a position equally elevatea and responsible, and there are no circumstances which could induce me even to do thus during the pendency of the present canvass. When I authorized the announcement that I would address the people of California during the campaign, it was suggested that efforts would be made to force me into difficulties, and I determined to take no notice of attacks from any source during the canvass. If I were to accept your challenge, there are probably many other gentlemen who would seek similar opportunities for hostile meetings, for the purpose of accomplishing a political object, or to obtain public notoriety. I cannot afford at the present time to descend to a violation of the constitution and the state laws to subserve either their or your purposes."
Perley then in a card to the public pronounced Broderick's letter a tissue of evasive falsehoods, mean, quibbling, dastardly, and that the writer was no less void of courage than of principle, and that thenceforth he had no right to the name of gentleman.
Two months elapsed, when, election being over, and the term of the supreme judge near completion, Terry descended from his bench and demanded by letter of Broderick an apology for the abusive words spoken by him in the presence of Perley at the breakfast table of the International hotel. Broderick asked particular mention of the language used. Terry gave it as follows: "1 have heretofore considered and spoken of Judge Terry as the only honest man on the supreme court bench; but I now take it all back." Or if those were not the exact words, said Terry, then any words reflecting on his character as a gentleman and a magistrate.
To this Broderick replied that his words were occasioned • by offensive allusions to him made by Terry at the Sacramento convention, and that as nearly as he recollected the language used at the International hotel was as follows: "During Judge ​
Terry's Incarceration by the vigilance committee, I paid $200 a week to support a newspaper in his defence. I have also stated, heretofore, that I considered him the only honest man on the supreme bench, but I take it all back." At a time when vituperation was the language current in political circles Broderick was somewhat surpised that words so mild should be selected as the pretext for a meeting and he could add in his letter to Judge Terry : " You are the best judge as to whether the language affords good grounds of offence." To this letter Broderick received a reply from Terry demanding the usual satisfaction.
Long before this the issue of the correspondence had been determined, so that preliminaries were brief Broderick held that before he could retract the words spoken by him at the International, Terry must retract the offensive language used by him at Sacramento, and nothing was further from Terry's purpose. The fermentations of political hate had reached the murderous stage, and one or the other of the leaders must die. Evil doers are punished," says Protagoras not in retaliation for past wrong, but to prevent future wrong; " so these politicians looked before rather than behind them.
Just over the San Francisco boundary, in San Mateo county, on the morning of the 11th of September, the combatants met; but before their bloody work began, Burke, chief of the San Francisco police, appeared upon the ground armed with a warrant of arrest from each county. Arrived at the police court the charge was dismissed; and the two men were given their liberty on the ground that there had been no violation of the law.
Two days later, at a quarter to seven o'clock, on the morning of the 13th of September, at Davisrancho, about two miles south of the east end of Lake Merced, being another point in San Mateo county some twelve miles distant from San Francisco, they ​met again and with more fatal result. The morning was fair, and the sun dropped gently its refreshing warmth as if in one last attempt to soften the steeled hearts of these murderous men. Some sixty persons were present, and among them no interfering police. Coolness and indifference, either felt or assumed, was manifested by both principals, who stood apart conversing cheerfully with their attendants while preparations were in progress. The choice of weapons was won by Terry, and the choice of position and word by Broderick. Eight-inch Belgium pistols, both set with hair trigger, were the weapons used, and the distance was ten paces. Lagrode, who loaded the pistols, testified before the coroner that Broderick's was more delicate on the trigger than the one used by Terry. The word was to be the usual "Fire; one, two, three!"
The combatants were placed in position. Broderick seemed careless and awkward. "Terry was as cold as a marble statue," says the French journal Le Pliare, "not a muscle of his body moved; his eyes were fixed on Broderick, and in his attitude was recognized the practised duellist. He maintained his position as erect as an I, the arms straight along the body, the feet close together, and reducing his height as much as possible." According to the Alta's report, a second then stepped forward and called the word "Are you ready, gentlemen? " Fixing his eye keenly on his antagonist Terry promptly replied "I am ready." Broderick, grasping his weapon more firmly, likewise answered "ready;" meanwhile partly turning from his vertical position, exposing a fuller form as a mark for his adversary. Broderick's hat was drawn partly over his eyes and he seemed to be scanning a line on the ground between him and his antagonist. Terry, on the contrary, stood perfectly motionless, and eyed his enemy calmly. Then at the word " Fire; one, two!" Broderick partly raised his arm when his pistol discharged prematurely, and the ball entered the ground ​a few feet in advance of where Terry stood. Not more than two seconds after Terry, who had raised his weapon, deliberately covering with it the breast of his opponent, fired. The ball penetrated Broderick's right breast, causing him to fall before his seconds could reach him. "The shot is not mortal," exclaimed Terry. "I have struck two inches to the right." When he saw his proud enemy stretched upon the ground, he slowly retired with his friends. How these murderers can live, basking in the wrath of heaven, as Juvenal would say, is a mystery to those who feel within them conscience and humanity.
For four days Broderick lingered, suffering, when not delirious, the greatest agony. "They have killed me because T was opposed to the extension of slavery, and a corrupt administration," he exclaimed in one of his conscious moments. On the morning of the 17th of September he died. The city was profoundly moved. Two thousand citizens, beside the Pioneers who buried it, followed the body to Lone Mountain cemetery, where a granite monument now marks its resting-place. Broderick seemed to find politics profitable, as he left an estate of some $400,000. He left a will at Washington, which was vigorously contested at San Francisco, one of his seconds playing a conspicuous part in it, but was finally admitted to probate.
Writing the day of Broderick's death, the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin says: "Whoever reads the correspondence between Messrs Broderick and Terry that preceded the late fatal duel, must be struck with the trifling nature of the original quarrel between the parties, and the absence of everything like an imperative cause for a hostile meeting. Judge Terry, in the heat of an extemporaneous speech, used language of a general nature calculated undoubtedly to excite anger in the breast of Mr Broderick. Yet that language, when analyzed, did not reflect upon Broderick's personal character or honor. It was injurious to his political interests, being calculated to estrange his ​
political adherents. Broderick, in reading Terry's speech, in a momentary fit of anger, as appears most abundantly from the facts, declares that he had formerly believed that Terry was an honest judge, but that he took back his former opinion. This remark being reported to the judge, the latter is induced to wait two months, until the election campaign was over, when he writes to the senator, and asks him to retract his intimation upon his lionesty.
" Taking the matter at this point, we say that the quarrel was not of such a deadly character as to make it absolutely necessary that a meeting should take place. Say that the seconds and advisers of both parties had been peaceably disposed, had been governed by a strong desire to prevent the shedding of blood, and we hold that it would have been easy to have prevented a duel. Mr Broderick distinctly stated that his remarks at the International hotel were called out by Judge Terry's speech in Mr Benton's church. Now, what prevented Judge Terry from saying that in that speech he did not intend to say anything personally dishonoring or offensive to the senator? After reading that speech, we think that such a disclaimer, while it would in all probability have led to an amicable settlement, would have been in consonance with the truth. Mr Broderick, after such a disclaimer, if proper counsels had prevailed, could with honor have withdrawn his passionate remarks made at the International; and what has terminated in a sad calamity might then have ended in an exchange of courtesies. But even if Terry had been obstinate, and refused to modify his first obnoxious language, since that of itself was properly no cause of mortal quarrel, it would have been more magnanimous and honorable in Broderick to soften the bad spirit of his own remarks so as to have taken away even the pretext of a duel. Where there is a will there is a way. The honor of Mr Broderick, we think, could have been preserved in the eyes of all ​
* CENSURE OF SECONDS. 771
honorable men if only his friends had taken the kindest and best course for their principal.
" But unfortunately, opposite counsels on all sides prevailed. Both principals seemed to have been surrounded by a set of bloody-minded hotspurs, who were disposed to urge on the meeting to a fatal issue rather than allow on either side the minutest waiving of punctilio. Though Terry's original speech was given doubtless with no thought of provoking Broderick to a duel, and Broderick's rejoinder was made in hot blood at the instant of receiving a strong provocation, neither was allowed to state the truth, to brins; about a reconciliation, but were hurried to the field, with deadly weapons in their hands, to shed blood without justification or reasonable cause. We hold that the seconds of these duellists are strongly to blame. They should have prevented a meeting on such trifling grounds. Failing to do so, they must be considered as accessories before the fact to a cruel homicide, and the law should vigorously be enforced by the proper authorities to bring them to justice.
Benham, a lawyer in this city. All these men deserve the penitentiary equally with Judge Terry."
And now, after this cold-blooded exhibition of inhumanity and wanton insult of the law, comes the prostitution of the law, for the shielding of its august offender. Throughout life Terry's actions, if they speak at all, imply simply this : laws are made for the masses, who must be taught to respect them, to regard it as impious to break, or even so much as violently to touch them. We who make and construe the law, while outwardly showing it the greatest deference for ourselves and our ermine's sake, may indulge in a little license; at all events we will so indulge and break it when we please. Knowing thoroughly its temper, pliability and capability, should we find ourselves at any time unfortunately without the pale of it, we will bend it to our purpose. Teach the people to bow before law as before any superstition, and we, the ministers of the law, may gratify our lawless passions as we please.
Seeing the destruction he had wrought upon his adversary, Terry retired to his farm twenty -five miles from Stockton. Before the duel he had given his resignation of office to a friend to be handed to the governor in case the affair came off. On the 17th of September Terry was arrested by policemen Lees and Ellis, on a warrant sworn out by P. W. Shephard, and issued by M. P. Blake, county judge. He was brought before the court and released on giving $10,000 bail. F. Truett, his defender before the vigilance committee, was one of his bondsmen. The case was several times postponed and shifted from one court to another, until after nine months of dexterous manipulation it was sent by Hager of the district court to Marin county. "Few of our readers will be surprised at this result," says the Bulleting the 11th of June 1860. " To use a vulgar phrase, it was one of those things which had been cut and dried, and most people hereabouts were expecting it. The history of this prose ​cution is not calculated, however, to give people abroad a very high opinion of the impartiality of criminal proceedings in California. By a general law, Terry's case should have been tried by our court of sessions; but Terry did not like our court of sessions; and so, not being able to dispute the authority of that court to try him, he asks the legislature to pass a law taking all such cases out of courts of sessions. This the legislature did; in order to prevent a man charged with a crime from being tried before a court he does not like, courts of sessions all over the state are declared incompetent to try duellists. That was the first step. The case then came before Judge Hager of a district court. There Terry made a new demand: he asked now to select his own place of being tried, and his own judge. All this has been granted. The case is sent to Marin ; and J. H. Hardy, it is plain to see, will be the judge. How the trial will terminate is not hard to divine. A Marin jury acquitted the duellist, Johnson, who also killed his man; and it would be strange if they do less for Terry."
Plate sin with gold
And the strong lance of justice hnrtless breaks ;
Clothe it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.
Hardy, a personal friend of Terry's, and a most chivalrous and fire-eating judge of the law-and-order stamp, came down from Mokelumne Hill for the express purpose of presiding temporarily at the seventh district court held at Marin county, in order to free his friend. What had these men to fear from the law when they could so play upon it that it would sing any tune that best pleased them ? And now hear the conclusion of the whole matter. The day is fixed for trial, the hour has arrived; the witnesses from San Francisco who should have been present are becalmed upon the bay ; the court waits, and drinks, and smokes, and swears a little; then the prosecuting attorney moves a nolle 'prosequi, and the trial of the Honorable David S. Terry, late judge of the supreme court of California, ​
for the killing of the Honorable David C. Broderick, late United States senator from California, ends before it begins.
A record of Hardy's acts while on the bench, and at other times, would tend in no wise to raise the character of these proceedings in the eyes of good men. I give but one incident among many: While judge of the sixteenth judicial district in March 1861, he was indicted by the grand jury of San Francisco for murder, as being accessory before the fact to the killing of Samuel T. Newell. It was said that Horace Smith, brother-in-law of Hardy, visited the city the New Year's day previous, for the purpose of killing Newell. This adds but another case of ruffian justice to the long list which disgraces the record of the adherents of law-and-order.
Were I permitted but one word, one argument in favor of vigilance, I would point to such men as these. Behold them on the bench, behold them as politicians, as lawyers, as members of the commonwealth; behold their blood-stained hands, their ever-ready and bloody weapons, behold them in public and in private, at home and abroad, insulting the law and constitution, which so used to impress their sense of duty in vigilance times! behold them anyhow or anywhere, and they bespeak in stronger words than mine the necessity of vigilance committees in all places where such characters abound. As I love such men, so hate I law, justice, and morality.
Among the merry men of Shasta in 1859 a sham duel was arranged between Grove K. Godfrey, superintendent of common schools, and William B. Stoddart, trustee, the latter alone of the two principals being privy to it. The meeting was to take place at French gulch, the weapons, derringers, and the distance ten paces. The pistols were loaded with bullets of cork covered with tin foil, in the presence of the assemblage which consisted of about sixty per ​sons, including most of the notables of the district. The challenger, Stoddard, failed to appear and his second, Levi, took his place. It was arranged that Levi should fall, but Godfrey's pistol failing to discharge, the joke soon leaked out, and so enraged was the dupe, that Levi narrowly escaped with his life.
It was " conducted upon the most humane and honorable terms known to the code," they said, when on the 16th of September 1859, William J. Gate wood shot P. Goodwin in the abdomen with a rifle at forty yards, so that he died in excruciating agony within three hours. The killing was done in a very gentlemanly manner. Gatewood was a lawyer, and Goodwin a doctor.
" Doctor I am very sorry that this affair has terminated so; very sorry indeed," said Gatewood.
"I am glad to know that. you acted like a gentleman," replied Goodwin.
It was beautifully done; and so sentimental like I One would think the lawyer would almost rather have been shot himself, and that the doctor found it sweet to die at the hand of so gentlemanly a slayer. The people of San Andreas where the two men lived were likewise sorry; they were both good fellows and had their friends. They did not approve of an incensate fashion based upon feudalistic superstition and brute force, but, said they, "when the supreme judge of the state lays aside the ermine to fight a duel; when a United States' senator does not think it so terrible to face the shot of an experienced marksman at ten paces, as to look public opinion in the eye and incur its scorn b}' refusing to accept a challenge; when society and the people lavish their favors and caresses upon those who have fought duels, and honor the successful slayer—we see no recognized crime or violence to the commonwealth in the act." Goodwin spoke sharp words to Gatewood; Gatewood struck Goodwin; Goodwin challenged and Gatewood killed. Glory to Gatewood 1 Poor Goodwin ! Gatewood is ​
sorry to kill him, but he should not have spoken hastily.
There were principals, seconds, surgeons, friends, and gapers to the measure of five carriages, which conveyed them before six o'clock in the morning from San Andreas to a flat near Torman's. Here the high slaughterers descended from their vehicles and took their positions. At the word both sprang their rifle locks, but Goodwin's gun hung fire and Gatewood's ball sped upon its death mission. Evidently Gatewood contemplated blood in some quarter, for he brought to the field a vehicle suitable for the easy carriage of a dying man, and this he magnanimously left to the one he had made to feel the need of it.
Duels this year were quite the thing, particularly among jurists. Only three days after the affair at San Andreas the town of Sonora sent forth its shrill crow over a first-class fight. Sylvester Knight and J. E. Easterbrook were the combatants; Knight fell at the first fire.
Daniel Showalter, of Mariposa, thirty -two years of age, speaker j9ro tempore of the assembly, and Charles W. Piercy, aged twenty-four, member from San Bernardino, two light-headed boys lately from declaiming school, fought eight miles from San Rafael, at four o'clock, May 25th, 1861, with rifles at forty paces. Upon our legislative floor hourly in accordance with their well-paid duty stood these two wise and most honorable young gentlemen making laws for suffering humanity, when one day upon a certain question Showalter asks leave to explain his vote. Piercy objects. Showalter has nothing but contempt for any gentleman who objects. Piercy challenges and Showalter kills him at the second fire. Had the affair happened thirty years later, possibly Showalter's shot might have dissipated more common-sense.
" The logic of the Enterprise editor is like the love of God." These mysterious words appeared in the editorial of a certain issue of the Virginia Union dur ​ing the autumn of 1863, of which Thomas Fitch was editor; and he of whom they were written was I. T. Goodman, editor of the Territorial Enterprise. Goodman's aticle which called out the mystic rejoinder was more slashing than sound; and when the writer first read the criticism he thought that Fitch, with a forgiving spirit, intended it as a compliment. The love of God was surely good, and so must be likewise his logic.
But the reporters, literary bummers, and wise men of Virginia city began to question among themselves what deep or dire significance lay wrapped in the words. Whose were they and what was their connection? Mark Twain thoug-ht the words were from Byron. Dan de Quille was sure he had seen them in Baxter's Saints Rest. The astute Goodman himself claimed them for Shakespeare. But finally a thinhaired rosy-visaged occupant of the bench beside the entrance to the Fashion saloon, who had once been whipped for running awa}^ from Sunday school, suggested the bible. After due search a copy of the book was found, and the passage brought to light, with its continuation—"in that it surpasseth human understanding." The astute Goodman's eyes were opened, and he immediately set about to mend his logic by sending Fitch a challenge to mortal combat.
The editors of Virsjinia were at that time, as a rule, pugilistic in their proclivities; what they lacked in logic they made up for in pistolings; hence most of them were already under bonds to keep the peace, and new indulgence must be sought beyond the limits of the territory. So the valley called Dry. over the Californian boundary, was chosen for the further interpretation of this scripture passage. Sophistical as Goodman was with the pen, he was no less illogical with the pistol. Ferrend, his second, recommended a few lessons, and two days before the appointed time the two went over into the valley to practise. A pine burr placed midway between Goodman and a ​
large tree served as a target. The instructions were " Fire low and raise your pistol in a line with the burr." The instructor gave the word, and the pupil fired. Both burr and tree remained untouched. Before the two days had expired, however, much ammunition had been spent, and many burrs shattered. The morning of the meeting broke cold and crisp. A large fire had been built of dry pine limbs, at which the injured Goodman was warming himself There he stood awaiting his enemy, half in hope and half in fear, as Hector waited the appearance of Achilles before the walls of Troy. ■ Presently Fitch, attended by his friends, drew near. The combatants were soon placed in position and the word given to fire. Simultaneously the shots rang through the valley, the astute Goodman stood erect, but Fitch dropped his pistol, grasped his knee, and turning half round fell to the ground. Then all went back to their respective avocations, happy in the consciousness of a duty well performed, of a great principle vindicated, and of an intricate question solved. Meanwhile the astute Goodman thought to mend his logic, while Fitch thought only of his knee.
Billy Mulligan and Tom Coleman having quarreled, proceeded according to the custom of such gentlemen to settle the difficulty by an informal shooting. Meeting one day in April 1864 at Austin, Nevada, Coleman drew; but Mulligan from long association with the law and order party, with governors, congressmen, legislators, and judges for his friends, was becoming somewhat fastidious in his tastes, and proposed the matter should be conducted on the latest and most approved method. Coleman agreed. Next day they met and fought with revolvers at ten paces. After exchanging six shots, in which Coleman was twice wounded, once in the finger and once in the leg, the distinguished gentlemen retired from the field.
At Lagfuna Honda near San Francisco in June 1865, ​
a mock duel came off between a tailor and a barber, the latter only being cognizant of the joke. The details are too childish for record.
At Music hall in Virginia, Nevada, on the 9 th of March, 1865, a difficulty arose between Boss Fouke and Charles Safford, well known in the sporting circles of that vicinity. Fouke drew a wea,pon. Safford said he was not armed; and besides, that was no way for gentlemen to fight. If Fouke would name a time and place, Safford would meet and remain with him as long as he should desire his company. Fouke acquiesced; and the next morning an agreement was drawn up in writing, and signed by both, to meet that day at five o'clock at Long valley, and with navy six-shooters, at ten paces, to fire at the word, and then to advance at pleasure, and to continue firing until all the chambers should be discharged if one of them was not disabled in the meantime. Accordingly they met, about 150 persons being present. Each had two seconds; Finnegan and Louis La Page acting for Safford, and Dr Colombo and Jack McNabb for Fouke. The combatants were stationed, the weapons placed in their hands, and the word given. Fouke was struck at the first fire; but swerving to the right with his head bent downward he continued to shoot. Safford advanced two paces in a direct line keeping up the fire. Every shot on both sides was expended but there was no hit after the first fire, which sent a ball through the fleshy part of Fouke's breast making a bloody but not dangerous wound. The men became reconciled, then each desired that the other might live, and shaking hands they returned to their homes.
Two friends, a book-keeper and a lawyer, living in Virginia, Nevada, in 1865, fell in love with the same female and quarrelled. The woman favored the book-keeper. At a party the two men came to blows and pistol shots. Next day the lawyer challenged the book-keeper to fight, but the latter declined. Toward evening the two men met on the street. The ​
lawyer drawing at once a whip and a revolver struck the book-keeper and exclaimed, " You won't light, eh? Then take that! and that! " accompanying the first exclamation with a blow of the whip on the head, and the next with a pistol-shot which took effect in the side. The book-keeper staggered back for a moment, then drawing a pistol both fired simultaneously, the ball from the book-keeper's pistol entering the lawyer's brain. The book-keeper married the girl. This is a very common-place story; but its frame-work will answer for a hundred others.
Charles Anderson and a Mr Lewis, in January 1866, at Sinker creek, ten miles below the Ainsworth mill, in Owyhee county, Idaho, quarrelled about some hay, and fought with knives. Both were killed; one died immediately, and the other shortly afterward.
The Territorial Enterprise of the 31st of March, 1857, thus takes off a fight which occurred at Dayton between B. F. Leetingham and A. L. Buck, the combat being the ultimate appeal in the settlement of a dispute concerning a piece of sluicing-ground.
" The dispute between the parties was about a piece of sluicing ground, but no matter about that. The fight began about six o'clock in the morning, when Leetingham came into the ring smiling, and knocked a chip off Buck's shoulder. Buck in return gave Leeting^ham a look which cut him to the soul. First blood for Buck! The bottle-holders advanced, and sponged their mouths and nostrils. Time being called, the principals resumed their places. Till half-past eight o'clock the parties stood face to face, neither moving a muscle. Then it was thought by some of Buck's backers that Leetingham was observed to wink, and they called upon the referees to decide the dispute. On looking for the referees they were noAvhere to be seen. A committee started toward the town to find them, as some one said they had gone off in that direction nearly an hour before to get, as was supposed, a supply of blue-ruin whisky. About half ​
way between the ring and the town they were found, sitting flat on the ground with a gallon measure of whisky between them, and each a clay pipe in his mouth. One was backing Buck and the other Leetingham. Both were naked as the day they were born, having bet all their valuables, then their hats, and one article of clothing after another, piling them up in a heap, till nothing was left but their pipes, which they were in the act of betting when found. As they were too drunk to stand, they were not disturbed. Meantime the fight was growing more furious. It had been asserted that Buck winked at about the same time that Leetingham had done so, and the seconds were about to call it a draw and advance and sponge them off when Buck made a mouth at Leetingham. Leetingham could no longer be restrained, and established rules had no meaning for him. He advanced a step toward Buck, and thrust his tongue out at him. The fight was now a regular rough and tumble. Leetingham continued to advance upon Buck, punishing him severely in the manner we have stated, till both were far out of the ring, the crowd following and cheering for Leetingham. This continued to be the position of this brilliant and stubbornly contested affair till half-past nine o'clock, two to one being offered on Leetingham, with no takers. Leetingham now made an attempt to take a chew of tobacco, but in doing so made a bad mistake, as the moment his tongue was in his mouth. Buck seeing his chance, at once thrust forth his own, and having thus turned the tables on his antagonist, caused him to retreat. In going backward, Leetingham fell into a shaft some 280 feet in depth. A windlass was procured, and he was hoisted out. On reaching the surface he was still unconquered. Placing his thumb upon his nose, he made a charge upon Buck, twirling his fingers savagely. At noon, the fight being still in this position, the spectators all went to town to dinner. Returning about one o'clock, they searched ​
till about four in the evening for the combatants, bets being high all this thne on Leetingham, when they were at last found on a rocky point projecting over the surging waters of the Carson. Leetingham was crouched upon the farthest projecting point of a crag, begging pitifully for quarter, while Buck was seated complacently before him, triumphantly pulling down the lower lid of his left eye with his unsparing right forefinger." This very funny and instructive story was doubtless by Goodman.
Ferrend—major, they used to call him, in recherche affairs every second must have a title if he has nothing else—Ferrend had many calls of this kind during the early days of Nevada. He was easily found, smelling blood from afar, and was always ready to assist at a funeral of this sort. One day in Wood and Wilson's saloon. Jack Hunter knocked Bill Pitcher down. Pitcher arose, found Ferrend, and challenged Hunter. The latter assented, and named dragoon sixshooters, next morning at sunrise, at the ravine below the Gould and Curry mill, all of which was satisfactory. But when Hunter specified that all the chambers of the revolvers should be loaded, and that after the word was given firing should continue, if possible, until the six shots were discharged. Ferrend regarded it murderous, which strikes one unlearned in the technicalities of refined murder as the irony of duelling ; since why should they fight, if not to kill, and after one was killed, what did it matter how many extra bullet-holes were made in his carcass ? Nevertheless, it was voted barbarous; killing should be done genteelly, and with decorum. Placed in position, the word was given, and simultaneously the two weapons rang one report. "I think I can stand another shot," said Hunter, but before the seconds could reload he fainted, having been shot through the hips. Three days afterward he died.
A duel was fought by two distinguished French gentlemen in the vicinity of Lone Mountain cemetery ​
in April 1869 with swords. Amidst circlings, and divers jumping-jack manoeuvrs, they pricked each other until the blood began to flow, when they concluded they did not like it, and went home.
A duel was fought with Kentucky rifles, thirty paces, wheel and fire, at Los Angeles the 25th of March, 1870. The high contending principals were John B. Wilson, son of a senator, and Charles E. Beane, journalistic scribe ; cause, wine and politics, a common but unhealthy mixture. Taking with them a surgeon, which signified blood, the belligerents gat themselves beyond the city limits, and prepared each for the other's death. Wilson was the challenger. At the signal Wilson turned quickly and pulled, but the gun refused to fire, and Beane magnanimously withheld his shot. Re-loading Wilson's piece the order was again given and both fired. Beane was unharmed but Wilson dropped his gun, his honor satisfied. A flesh wound was found in the left arm. Then followed a scene of sweet reconciliation, and the heroes departed to their homes.
Confinement does not always wring all passion from the man, and the inmates of prisons deem their right to cut and kill each other in a gentlemanly way as good as that of prize-fighters, judges, and legislators. Peter Hanley and John O'Brien lived at San Quentin, lived there upon compulsion. One day, it was the 4th of June, 1877, as for their sins they were carrying the hod, they indulged in an argument upon the moral character of a Barbary coast bar-keeper. Waxing warm in their dispute, and unable to injure each other with words, they agreed to settle the discussion with knives, which they forthwith secured for that purpose from one of the shops. Betiring to a secluded spot behind one of the new buildings, they engaged in some really cutting arguments, until the alarm was given and they were separated. O'Brien was badly Injured. Hanley was gashed somewhat about the face, but not so badly as to be unable to endure ​
twenty-five lashes, which were administered upon the bare back. It is a pity that judges, senators, editors, and others of that stripe, could not have had some of the same medicine administered to them.
Two old and respected inhabitants of Mariposa county, old enough to know better, and respected enough to do better, met informally and fought with shotguns in September 1877. David Evans livingsix miles from Hornitos was one, and Moses V. Northrup the other. Seven or eight years before Evans' barn was burned, and he said that Northrup did it; said so gently at first and then more positively, and kept saying so for seven years, until the latter became tired of hearing it. So one day he called upon his enemy with a shotgun and told Evans to bring out his and meet him on equal terms. Evans soon appeared with his gun and asked, "Are you ready?" " Ready," said Northrup, and the two men fired almost simultaneously. Evans was killed, while Northrup remained unharmed. Thus the God of battles adjudged Northrup innocent of having fired Evans' barn. A plain, practical, common-sense solution of a question which never otherwise might have been solved. ​
CHAPTER XXV.
TALES OF THE TIMES.
How indestructively the Good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of Evil.
— Sartor ResaHus.
Of tales of the times I have enough at hand to fill volumes. I can only give brief specimens. Nowhere in the world's business did fortune ever turn her wheel more tauntingly; dealing right and left sudden and unfamiliar changes, her ways being outside of ordinary experiences, so that the shrewdest heads were little better than those supporting ass-ears for interpreting the future. A hundred instances might be cited; in fact every man of those days was the hero of an unwritten romance. Bootblack and banker alike might give each his remarkable history, only the former would perhaps far exceed the latter in incident and vivid interest. What a thousand and one tales they would have made, could some seer have read and repeated them, the life's doings and changes of all those varied characters in the gulches and in the towns; clerks, cooks, merchants, mechanics, gamblers, preachers, doctors, and the rest 1
With the great emigration to Oregon in 1846 came Simeon Pettigrove, distantly related, I cannot now exactly say how, to that Pettigrove who once owned the ground that Portland stands on, and who should have been one of the richest and most influential men of that rich and hospitable city, instead of cii inking glasses during his latter days with Van Bokkelen and. Swan in the hotel at Port Townsend. ​
Of the same wagon-train with young Pettigrove in crossing the continent was Mary Wilder, a brawny maid of eighteen, who walked beside her father's oxen with a long whip, having a sharp gad at the thick end to prod them on through the powdered alkaline plains, and all the long way of that wearisome journey, taking entire charge of the team while her father helped a neighbor with his live stock. Pleasing was she to look upon, although her face was saffroned by the sun and dust, and her clothes begreased and tattered, and her feet broad and bare, for her head and hair were beautiful, and when in the vein the light and warmth of her countenance might kindle the campfire. Heart and legs were stout, and her hands well formed—for yoking cattle; and woe betide the bullock that pulled too much to right or left, or pressed its neck too lightly against the yoke. All the Wilders' wealth was in that wagon, where sat the mother 'midst the younger children—all their wealth except the daughter Mary, a precious property, who must make a good match, and help to raise the family respectability.
Along by the willows, through the sagebrush, over the sandy desert, and over the rugged mountains, Simeon walked with her, talking with her much, and loving: her more. He asked the father niiirht he marry her. No. She had nothing; she must marry somethino-, and Simeon had no more than s^ie.
He went his way, and came again, and went and came as did the winter and the summer " How much must he have who marries Mary ? " *At the least, a thousand dollars." Simeon was in despair. As wages then were in Oregon, he could not lay by that amount in five years. The mines of California now began to be talked about, and an expedition was organized to go and dig for gold. Here was his opportunity, and Pettygrove was among the first to join. And as he wound by the base of Shasta butte down into the valley he took a solemn oath never to return without the money which should buy Mary. ​
On Feather river he began to dig. How his heart beat, how his soul gloated over the first half ounce secured; how beautiful it was to gaze at, how sweet, how lovely, how pure! But not more pure or lovely or sweet or beautiful than Mary, who was awaiting him away back in Oregon. As his pile increased, his darling yellow pile which was to secure the loved object, he could not contain himself for joy. His comrades soon learned his heart's ambition, and once the ice was broken he was forever talking of it. Soon it was the standing joke of the camp. " Pet, how's your gal?" the boys used to ask when they wished to know of the day's success. " It's all right, boys. I'll get her, sure," was the customary reply. When fifty ounces were safely bagged—" She's mine, boys, she's mine," he used to say, or rather, sing; for his heart was singing, and the voice would echo it whether he would or no.
A hundred ounces, "Well, boys, I've got what I came for; I reckon I better go back and marry Mary now." Rather tamely this was said as compared with the late wild overflow of feeling. The fact is, his claim was paying well, and fascinated with gold-gathering, Simeon did not much like to leave it. Easily persuaded was he to remain and work a little longer.
After this the yield began rapidly to increase, until Simeon had secured five thousand dollars. With store clothes he put on a thoughtful and subdued demeanor, hired men to take his place in the ditch, and was soon worth ten thousand dollars, then twenty thousand. Little was said these days regarding Mary Finally he was asked, "Pet, how about that Oregon gal ? " Simeon hung his head a little as he said, " Well, the fact is, boys, her folks are mighty common, and couldn't give her much of a bringing up, and while she's good enough for a thousand dollars, I think I can afford a better one now."
One may be moderately shrewd with comparative ​
safety, but to exhibit talents for circumvention and overreaching of too pronounced a character is dangerous.
Early in the fifties there arrived at Hough and Ready one day a double-edged native of Cape Cod. The next morning he spent in watching and quizzing the miners who were at work. While thus engaged, he encountered the owner of a claim who had sunk a shaft between two very rich claims, and was now within a few inches of an expected strike. The owner of the shaft having business elsewhere wished to sell, and thought perhaps a better price might be obtained before uncovering the precious deposit than afterward. In any event he was willing to gamble on it a little.
Dinner time came round, and the diggers on the way to their cabins stopped to talk about it, and at length quite a crowd collected about the place. One offered $100 for the claim, another $200, another $250, but the owner peremptorily declined them all. Finally the man from Cape Cod opened his mouth, and in a shrill voice pitched at F sharp spoke.
"Look a-here, stranger," said he, "you don't know me, and I don't know you, but if you believe what you say I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."
" How is that ? " said the shaft-owner, while all eyes were directed toward the sharpened visage of the newly arrived.
" Well, I'll work your hole for you on these conditions. If more than $200 are taken out, you shall have the whole of it; if less than $200 it shall all belong to me."
The owner pondered a moment. "Surely," he thought, "there is more than $200 there. This fellow fresh from Cape Cod is a fool. Well, it will do him no harm to purchase of me a little experience at the ​
A YANKEE TRICK. 789
price of three or four weeks' labor." Turning to the Yankee he said: '* Let a friend of mine work with you, you giving him eight dollars a day should you take out less than $200, and put it all in writing and I'll do it."
The purchaser immediately went to work, and by noon next day had taken out $180. Then he paused; he considered; he looked at his little pile, then quietly laying down his pick he w^ent to the owner of the claim.
" I guess I'll stop now," he remarked meekly.
'Stop," said the other, "why you've only just begun! "
"I know," replied the Yankee, "but I think I had better knock off now, so there is your claim whenever you want it. I have paid your friend eight dollars for one day's work, for I always do as I agree and pay my debts, I don't ask any odds of anybody. My father is a deacon, and we all keep Saturday night. I was brought up never to tell a lie, nor to let any one get the start of me swapping jack-knives; stranger, there's your claim."
In vain the shaft-owner insisted that the Yankee should work out the claim thoroughly, and finally brought suit to compel hhn to do so. The terms of the contract were plain, and it was decided that the Yankee had the right to stop working whenever he pleased. It was a very fair return for the first day's work, but the deacon's son was obliged to continue his perigrinations, as the diggers of Rough and Ready felt hardly at home in company with a genius so superior to themselves.
A reckless youth of twenty-two, named Prudon, whose home was in Louisiana, being put financially upon short allowance by his father for havmg lost money betting on Clay's election—a game the boy ​
did not understana, as the father said—set out for CaHfornia overland and after trying his fortune unsuccessfully at Placerville, then Hangtown, he continued his journey and arrived at Sacramento in the midst of the cholera season of the autumn of 1850. The streets, swarming with teams loaded and loading, presented to one just from the lonely dusty plain a stirring scene, and the hotels, taverns, and gambling saloons were so much to his liking that he concluded to settle there.
He had been educated by his father for the presidency of the United States, and as he had understood that it was necessary to undergo certain routine before seating himself in the White House, he determined now to adopt the profession of politics, whereupon he ratified his determination by taking a drink. Selling the poor mule that had carried him from the Mississippi river, the proceeds of which constituted his entire capital, he chose a hotel on a par with his pretensions, and after a substantial luncheon he bethought him of letters from home, and started for the postoffice.
The steamer had lately arrived, and at the window was a line of one hundred and fifty or two hundred men, at the foot of which he was obliged to take his place and wait his turn. It was a tedious process, standing and stepping at long intervals, as one after another was served. The sun poured down hot, and the young scapegrace, feverish and thirsty from his fatiguing journey, hailed a passing watermelon cart, and bought and ate, and bought another and another. Thus in due time he reached the window but found no letters.
To console himself for the loss of so much time and the attending disappointment, he treated himself to a glass of brandy and water, and as it pleased him he took another. This caused him to feel so well that he concluded to take several more so that he might feel better; in fact he would feel his best.
Brandy in doses sufficiently strong and frequent, ​taken directly after watermelon, when the system is somewhat reduced by travel, and the still, incandescent air is epidemic with disease, often makes one feel like retiring; so our young Louisianian sought his bed, and soon was sleeping heavily. Strange to say, about three o'clock he awoke with violent pains and called for a physician. The doctor came and dosed him. He was comfortless; no more brandy and watermelon now. He kept up, though he knew the cholera had clutched him. It seemed to him the streets were full of hearses, and once he caught a driver closely eyeing him as if casting in his mind about how long it would be before his services would be required.
Day after day he grew weaker, and finally was confined to his room. The landlord gave him up, and disliking him to die in his house lest it should frighten away his guests, he recommended him to the hospital. A long, low, adobe building at the fort, a little distance out, was used for that purpose. Our young friend was not much pleased at the thought, but he was now so weak that he could not offer much opposition. The hospital wagon was ordered round, and the sick man was carried out on a mattress. Another invalid was called for and taken in, who was yet more ill; at all events he groaned fearfully all the way out.
The ride and the fresh air seemed to revive Prudon, and when he reached the hospital he was able to stand alone, and while they were carrying in his fellow-passenger, he seated himself in a chair that stood under the verandah which ran round the building. Just then a small, pleasant-looking man in a green cap and tassel made his appearance at the door.
"I say, stranger," ventured Prudon, "can I have a glass of water?"
"Why, are you a patient?" asked the little man.
"I should say I was," replied Prudon, "I came here in that wagon."
Much to the joy of Prudon, who was very thirsty, the little man disappeared within the door with alac ​rity. He soon returned, but instead of water he held a book in his hand, and approaching the invalid he opened it and drew from his pocket a pencil.
"What is your name?"
"Prudon."
"Give it to me in full if you please; and have you any friends here, and where is your home?"
"Answer me one question first," replied the patient, now growing weak and irritable, "why are you so particular about all that?" So that, in case you die, you know, I may be able to write home for you."
Prudon began to feel that he was indeed booked for the next world, and looked at the small door cut through the thick adobe as the opening to his grave. He now asked to be taken in, for he was getting weak again, and was almost choked with thirst. The little man called two attendants, who took him up, and entering the door laid him on a bed. The room was about seventy feet in length by thirty in width, and contained nearly one hundred invalids in every stage of the disease. They were stretched on cots ranged in rows across the room. Some were groaning and some were cursing, but most of them lay quite still. They were cared for as well as might be at such a time and in such a place, but it was pitiful to see them lying there alone, and dying alone, and at such a fearful rate. For every morning when the attendant went round he was sure to find three or four of them cold and stiff, having died without a word, and apparently without a struggle. Of such the attendants merely straightened the limbs and covered the head with the blanket; then taking up the cot, they carried it out at the back door, put the bodies in a rough board coffin, and stacked them up to be carted away. Truly, never went men so far to find a death so sad.
Our Louisiana friend did not like this night dying, and so he took care to waken early in the morning, that he might not be carried out and boxed up asleep. ​
I
A COXA' ERTED SINNER. 793
A go(7d doctor helped him through, however, and in time he was convalescent. Then with returning appetite, how he thought of home, and longed for somethino; from his mother's table!
Discharged at last, he walked, or rather, crawled, one morning into the city, ragged, dirty, and without a dollar in money. After walking about some time, weak and fainting, he seated himself upon a step. Matters were getting serious with him. He was not yet fit for work, although he was well enough to leave the hospital; but to earn or make or get his dinner and a place to sleep, he had not the remotest idea how or where. Fortune now smiled on him in a way he least expected. Seated thus, he saw crossing the street one he should know. Could it be possible, Caleb Anderson, his old friend and college mate? *'Cabe!" he shouted. The man turned and looked at him, looked earnestly. He saw it all. Dress, feature, attitude—what volumes were written there to the friend who could read them! Approaching his old comrade, he lifted him up, and drawing his arm within his own he led him away, speaking scarcely a word. The meeting of friends, often under circumstances the most peculiar, each of whom had come to California unknown to the other, if told upon the pages of fiction would be pronounced improbable. Prudon's troubles were over, and he was soon in a position to help others, as he had been helped.
A godless gold-digger strolled into a new methodist church at Forest City one Sunday, and after gazing listlessly about for some time, his attention was at length arrested by the story which the minister told of a miner who had miraculously escaped death on fallino; into a shaft while in a state of intoxication. So impressed was this man by a sense of the danger he had escaped that he immediately sought religion and found it.
"After sitting one hour on the repentant's seat ​said the preacher, "God forgave him his sins, and thenceforth he was a new man."
Now it happened that the listener himself had likewise one night not long since become beastly drunk, stumbled into an old uncovered shaft on his way home, and escaped unharmed. The force of example fell upon him. He became uneasy, twisted himself in his seat, and finally rising up called out to the speaker, "Is that a fact?" "It is certainly true," replied the preacher. Turning to the one seated nearest him, he exclaimed, "My case exactly; I fell into a hole, came out all right; religion must be a good thing; by God I'll try it on too!" Therewith he marched forward and took his seat under the more immediate droppings of the sanctuary.
Among the miners at Carson creek, near the Stanislaus river, was an old man who had been there some months—it was generally believed that he had been successful—no one knew what he did with his gold, for he was a man of economical habits, and free from the vice of gambling. People believed that he buried his gold. One day the old man threw the whole camp into excitement by frantically rushing about and declaring that he had been robbed of his gold. He was rather liked and most of the miners sympathized with him, and offered to assist him in finding the gold, and in catching and punishing the robber.
After numerous inquiries of the old man, it was ascertained that he had been in the habit of burying his treasures in different places; and that the amount of which he had been robbed was concealed in a leathern bag at the foot of a certain tree—which particular bag was filled with lump gold, specimens, etc. He took several persons to the spot and showed them the hole cornered by a flat stone.
Upon examining the place carefully, a large gopher's hole was discovered in the side of the cavity in ​
which the bag had been deposited. One of the party suggested to search the gopher's hole. A shovel was brought and the side drift carefully followed. After tracing it about ten or twelve feet, there was found a little ante-room or chamber of about six inches deep, made in the side of the main road or hole, with a neatly paved floor of lumps of gold, and in the rear of this extravagantly furnished apartment was found a portion of the old man's leathern bag.
The den of the robbers had evidently been found, but only a small portion of the gold—where was the rest ? Following the trail of the robber a little farther, they came upon a succession of apartments or niches, and found each one as regularly and beautifully paved with gold as if done by the hand of man, while in each was found a small portion of the leathen bag, as if used as a lounge or mattress. Not a single particle of gold was found along the line of the main road ; all had been carefully carried into and deposited in the side rooms. The whole amount was weighed, and found to be exactly equal to the gold the old man had buried in the bag. The gopher succeeded in escaping unharmed. Such is the gopher story of the Stanislaus.
We' have another gopher story. "Last Monday our usually quiet burgh was awakened by the intelligence that new diggings had been discovered within a few hundred yards of the town, paying twelve dollars to the pan. Hundreds immediately flocked with picks and spades to the place, and in a short time had staked off" the whole hillside. They worked very diligently until evening, when the discoverers,let some of their friends into the secret. They had buried bags of gold dust there last spring, and in digging for it found that the gophers had eaten the buckskin bags, obliging them to wash the surrounding earth. Ten minutes after this announcement there was not a miner or tool to be seen about the new diggings." ​
Italian straw hats were in favor at one time to the disgust of a Panama hat dealer who vainlv souo-ht to get rid of his high-priced wares. One day he bethought himself to buy five dozen hats from the Italian rival, and donate them to the chain-gang working in the street. When the straw-hat wearers saw these men decked therein, they at once discarded theirs and patronized the dealer.
Swan tells the following story of a tall Irishman named Frank, whom he knew at the mines in '48. Frank found a great deal of gold, but threw it away on drink. He used to go on a spree for two or three days at a time. One day he was drinking at a liquor tent, and had his buckskin bag open in his hand. A looker-on told him to be more careful or he would lose his gold; whereupon he seized the bag by the bottom and scattered it all around on the ground outside the tent, saying he could get plenty more. He had three pounds in the bag at the time, and it was nearly all lost. Some time after that Frank made $7,000 at the Middle fork, which lasted him just six weeks.
In the summer of 1850 five dollars was not an unusual price to be paid for a watermelon in the mines. Joshua Griffith, an old pioneer, planted six acres in the spring of 1851 on the Merced, and confidently expected to realize a handsome sum from them when ripe. Sometime previous to this he had purchased a thousand straw hats which he still had on hand, their sale being dull and when the young watermelon plants came up, to protect them from the frosts, he determined to utilize the hats, and at night each vine \vould be carefully covered; and in the morning when the sun would commence to pour his warm beams on the earth the vines would be uncovered. Everything was auspicious, until one morning Griffith went as usual to uncover the vmes, when not a hat, vine, nor any of the soil that had been turned up by the ​
plough, was to be seen. All had been swept away by the river which had risen during the night, while poor Griffith, in a dream, was selling luscious watermelons at three dollars apiece.
California has always offered peculiar attractions to clergymen. The opportunities for doing good were great during the flush times, and many availed themselves of them. As a rule the most talented preachers at the east were glad to come to California upon a good call with a fair salary. Their congregations here were so fresh, so full of the fire and enthusiasm of 3"oung manhood, so keenly appreciative, that it was a pleasure to labor among them.
Ministers were obliged to work harder here than in more settled communities, but few cared for that. Everybody worked harder. There was much to do, and the emissaries of Satan were no less active than were the servants of God. They had their old sermons to fall back upon, which was a great help, particularly to those somewhat advanced in years. Very old clergymen California did not care for.
It only shows with what thin pabulum those who sit in pews are satisfied when they expect a man of ordinary ability to write two sermons a week, to make frequent parochial visits, indulge in society gossip, attend marriages and nativities, and offer the consolations of religion to the dying.
This is right enough when one has the fathomless well of genius, like Beecher, to draw from, but it will not do for those who are obliged to elaborate their slow stale thoughts, as most men are, in the closet. One sermon fit to preach before a really intelligent audience requires the diligent thought and study of an ordinary intellect for at least a fortnight.
It were infinitely better for the average clergyman to read printed sermons than to preach the trash he does. How few discourses have any thing new or really instructive in them I The same ideas, hashed ​
im> TALES OF THE TIMES.
from time immemorial in the same words, become uninteresting after a while to the really hungry. The mind alive to the swift whirl of progress wants something besides ancient and oft-repeated stories and traditions. The moment one begins to think, seats in churches grow hard.
We have had many good men in California as spiritual teachers, many saintly men, many true patriots, many of marked talents. No man exercised greater or more beneficial influence during: a crisis which was to determine the destinies of the state than Thomas Star King, who spared neither voice nor pen to save the republic from dissension. In Doctor Scott the Californians of early days saw her Saint Paul, and the divine Saint John was not more heavenly-minded than Doctor Wadsworth, overflowing as he was with pure though peculiar genius.
But among the many good men of the ministerial class, as among others, there were some bad men. Of these, few knew of their badness themselves when they left their homes. Throughout their lives sermon had followed Sunday school, and college, catechism, and they really regarded themselves as saintly. No one was more surprised than they, after they had been in the mines a short time to catch themselves drinking at a bar, betting at monte, or frequenting a house of ill-fame.
Of all plants, probably a youthful clergyman in a stormy climate is the most tender. Educated into the belief that belief is everything, while actually not knowing what belief is; taught to think himself by reason of his profession alone whiter than others in his purity, stronger in his strength, when bereft of these stays he often falls deeper than any.
It was so in flush California. Hundreds of those who came hither fell, fell very low, lower than some who professed less. Many took on the livery of Satan before they touched the shore—in New York, on the steamer, or at the Isthmus; so that when they ​
arrived in California they never made it known that they had ever been clergymen. Some entered a course of systematic swindling which lasted for years, during the whole of which they never ceased to parade their cloth. They were ministers of the Lord, incapable of iniquity, and so their blackest sins they covered with robes of white.
Finding preaching in the interior unpopular and unprofitable, some became miners; but as a rule they did not take kindly to work. Their theology had instructed them that although the Lord might pay his servants poorly, yet he did usually pay them something; and that lucre alone was in their estimation sanctified which came without labor. They were the Lord's, as indeed was the country, the gold, the corn, and the wine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. Their instructors had told them that three years' reading theology had made them different from other men; that God loved them better for it, and would do more for them than for those who had been all this time digging potatoes, or doing something useful. It is the most pernicious and ruinous doctrine in the world.
Yes, they were different from other men, different by reason alone of their holy teachings, their holy professions and protestations; so different, that the business man would immediately suspect one who should utter the name of Christ in connection with a moneyed transaction.
Some, on reaching California, sunk their reverend titles and turned gamblers. Here they saw at once that the parade of their profession would not pay, that piety and prayers in a game of poker would be suspicious of aces and kings tucked away in sleeves or other saintly receptacles. So scores went down into the depths, and never after saw the light; often changing their names so that their friends should never aiJ:ain hear of them.
But by far the greater number refused to throw away the holy appellations which had cost their pa ​rents and themselves so much to acquire. The masses in California, except in money matters, were soft in heart and conscience toward old family-altar and Sunday-school memories, and the colors of the childish superstitions concerning clergymen had not yet been wholly eradicated by the toils and tumults of California. Quack medicine was a little more efficacious coming from holy hands. It was not quite so unpalatable being cheated by a soft, smooth-tongued, glowing gospeler, as by a Jim Stuart or a John Jenkins. This the pious pilgrims soon ascertained; and so many turned clerical tramps, going from place to place, preaching cheap nonsense here and there to stupid prayer-lovers, picking up such nuggets and knowledge as they could lay their hands on, paying for their breakfast with a hymn of praise, and on the whole satisfied with their three years' reading of stale theology and the Lord's care of them therefor.
A favorite plan was to turn insurance agent, or take a sewing-machine or patent medicine, and beg people for Christ's sake to buy of them, and for the love of Christ many would so buy. So easily are men duped on the side of their prejudices. In this way, during a long business career, from the most hallowed opinions of the cloth which had been instilled in their minds since infancy, good, honest-minded men came to regard them as they were. But it was slowly, and at the cost of numerous losses, that the eyes were opened. Then people saw the country full of canting, hypocritical humbug, which, in the name of religion, preyed upon the poor and credulous. As insurance agents they became very expert, quickly learning whenever they encountered a man how much of salvation or damnation to mix with their wares, or whether to dish up for their customer piety or profanity.
Twenty broad examples might be cited of their rascality, which happened under the direct observation of the community, but one will here suffice, as it is not a very delightful theme. ​
An insurance office on California street in San Francisco, was for many years under the efficient and zealous management of Mr C. T. Smith. His opinion of the honesty of clerical insurance agents was bad enough, but they were among his most successful men, and he was obliged to employ them, and, as far as he could do so with safety, to accommodate them.
One Saturday afternoon, the banks being closed, Smith brought to the cashier of his company a clergyman, one of his best agents, long and favorably known to him, with a request for the loan of $160 for half an hour.
The cashier had filled his place for many years, and ever proved the faithful guardian and vigilant Cerberus of the company's strong-box. Moreover, he was gentlemanly and accommodating. There was no one on California street who would go farther to do a favor than he, but a battalion could not force him to break a rule of the company, or take any liberty with the funds entrusted to him.
In this instance he hesitated. There stood an agent of the company, a good man, a clergyman, whose request was urged by the manager of the department with which he transacted his business. The head of the establishment was not present at the time, and thus the whole of the responsibility was thrown on the cashier. He did not like either to refuse or to acquiesce.
"Accommodate him if you can," said Smith.
"One hundred and sixty dollars," muttered the cashier, as his hand slowly sought the knob of the safe, "and for only half an hour; Saturday afternoon, has money in the bank, can't get it—hum, ahem 1 "
" I will certainly return it you w^ithin the half hour," said the clergyman in sepulchral tones, smiling blandly.
"It seems to me a little strange," replied the cashier, "that having been in town all day, and knowing that you would require this money this afternoon when the ​banks were closed, you did not draw it before. Besides, what can you want with the money for only half an hour ? "
"Sir, do you know who I am?" demanded the minister.
"Yes, I know very well who you are," replied the cashier, " and all I can say is that I have no authority to loan you this money."
"Let him have it and charge it to me," exclaimed Smith, somewhat impatiently, thinking the cashier too particular.
The cashier gave the minister the money and made a ticket of it to Smith. The borrower hurried away. When he had gone the cashier turned to Smith, who had not yet left the place.
"Mark my word," said he, "that money goes upon the tiger."
"But he is a clergyman, and one of our best agents," returned Smith.
"I don't care," said Tom, "clergyman or no clergyman, while we are talking your money is on the gambler's green cloth, and not a stiver of it will you ever see again. Mind you, for only half an hour. Besides being a rascal the man is a fool. Anybody but a preacher would have made a better story than that."
Smith grew uneasy. He was of a nervous sanguine temperament, not easily excited in his suspicions, being the soul of integrity himself; but once aroused nothing stayed him. There appeared to him now much truth in what the cashier said; indeed there was no other way of accounting for the reverend borrower's behavior. Smith fidgeted, walked from the desk a short distance and hastily returned, swore a few gentle oaths, and finally seized his hat and started off at a brisk pace turning up Kearny street.
Almost to the plaza he walked, then back to California street, where turning he repeated his steps first taken. He had not proceeded far on this second tack ​ck
when he saw his friend coming toward him with bended head and a slouched hat drawn well oves his eyes. His whole appearance betokened the ruined gamester, and that such he was there could be no longer any doubt.
Smith went for the man of God.
"Where is my money ?" he demanded, waking the clergyman to a realizing sense of things by a tremendous slap upon the back.
" I left it with a friend."
" Where is my money ? " roared Smith, seizing the reverend collar and shaking the rising lie from the reverend lips.
"Lost every dollar of it," was the reply.
" Take me to the place ? "
"I cannot."
"You will; quickly, now, if- you would avoid a scene."
Slowly the good man turned and walked about a block, ascended a flight of stairs, passed through an ante-room into a large saloon where stood several tables, and thence into a back parlor. Smith following closely at his heels. In this room behind a table was a large and highly ornamental safe well filled with money. On one side stood a secretary writing, and on the other a big burly short-haired Irish shoulderstriker. Smith saw no danger, but only the safe, and one whom he took for the proprietor, who was in the act of opening the door of his treasure-house, when the former, now pale with passion, walked up to him and exclaimed:
"I want my money."
"What name?" asked the man, as calmly and as politely as if in answer to the most common and reasonable of requests.
" insurance company," was the reply.
The gambler looked at Smith and then at the parson. He took it all in at a glance. With his hand still upon the knob, in the attitude the intruders first ​
SM TALES OF THE TIMES.
found him, lie meditated an instant, but only an instant, when he opened the door of the safe and counted out the money. The gambler saw that he was caught, that Smith could and would make him much more trouble than the money would do him good, and that this was by far his best way out of it. Smith took the money and departed, the good man meekly following.
Even in the interior, Califomians concluded in 1850 that there were sufficient conveniences to render life comfortable, while in San Francisco the man with money might indulge in luxuries to any extent, and even board at a hotel having a notice posted "Potatoes at every meal." True, there were some, who, like the Englishman, seemed to expect as much of a place which had called itself a city but for twelve months as of a metropolis twelve hundred years old. This John Bull, with more belly than brains, and characteristically prolific in left-handed compliments to those who showed him attention, was invited by a friend to a public dinner, which, considering the newness of things, and the fact that the market was necessarily supplied entirely from abroad, was really elegant. The Entrlishman feasted himself to his heart's content, and rose from the table with happiness shining from every corner of his face. His entertainer, naturally proud of the capabilities of so new a country, slapped him on the shoulder and exclaimed, " Well, sir, was not that a good dinner? " " Yery good, very good," replied the Englishman but then its nothmg to what I have eaten in London! "
One Sunday immediately after the receipt of the news of Louis Napoleon's doings in the Crimea, a clergyman of Nevada took occasion to refer in tlattering terms to the Bonaparte family in general. A volatile Frenchman happened to form one of the congregation. Scarcely had the preacher reached the culmi ​nating point of his encomiums, when up jumped the Gaul, and thrusting his hand deep in his pocket drew forth a ten-dollar piece, and marching up to the pulpit deposited it upon the desk in front of the speaker.
One morning after breakfast a woman sat quietly looking over the paper, when glancing her eye down the list of passengers to sail by the Tennessee, April 1, 1851, she started as if stung. There, about the middle of a list of two or three hundred, she saw the name of her husband. It is true his trunk was packed, but, as he had informed her, for a short trip into the country. Her first impulse was to create a disturbance; but bein2 a sensible woman, on reflection she concladed such a husband was not worth having, and he might go. As he was then absent from the house making preparations for his long voyage, she unlocked his trunk and examined the contents. Sure enough there was the evidence, in the shape of all his movable property, of his intention to abandon her; and among the rest $8,000 in coin. 'At all events," she said to herself, ' he shall leave me some means of support." So she took from the amount $3,000, a moderate division on her part, locked the trunk and bade her husband farewell, giving no signs of her knowledge of his intentions. Thus both played their little first of April trick, and the wife was not the loser.
The grizzly bear is the king of Californian beasts, rivalling in courage and strength the royal lion himself They are bold and cunning and in early days were very plentiful. Then the old hunters of Missouri and Kentucky, who had been tempted by the promise of lucre from the traffic of their love, often turned for a few hours from their digging to chase or be chased by the grizzly. Early one morning in 1849 a Missourian, called by his comrades Graygritz, took up his rifle and started out for a buck. He had not ​
proceeded far before lie came upon a herd feeding, which, scenting him before he could get a shot, made off up the hill and along the comb of the ridge. Graygritz followed at the top of his speed. Approaching a little thicket, the hunter noticed that the deer suddenly shied and took a wide circuit round the covered spot. Graygritz paid little attention to it, however, and cut across, passing by the very verge of the thicket. Suddenly a tremendous crash was heard, and out rushed an enormous grizzly with open mouth and angry eye. There was not a moment to lose, the beast was upon him. Instinctively the hunter raised his gun, fired, and missed. There was no time to turn ; the hot breath of the infuriated animal the hunter could feel upon his cheek. Swinging the barrel over his head he struck desperately at his assailant, thus clubbingr off the terrible foe, until in makinyr a blow the weapon flew from the hunter's hand, leaving him without the slightest means of defence. There was nothing now but to run for it. Darting down the hill, running obliquely so as to take the bear at the greatest disadvantage, the fearful race began. Down the steep hillside rattled the loose stones, and every leap of the bear made the chaparral crash. Again and again the bear was almost upon him, striking at him its ponderous paws with such force as to bring it to its knees. Thus they rushed along until they reached the foot of the hill, when the fugitive became conscious that his strength was gone. He saw before him a horrible death; there was no escape, great drops of agony fell from his forehead; his limbs tottered; in sheer desperation he turned upon his foe, and boldly facing it, uttered an unearthly yell. The beast stopped amazed, drew back, then turned and fled.
A Mexican and an Irish woman once went to a clergyman to be married. The bride could not speak the Mexican's language, and the groom could speak no Irish. The clergyman, who was a good ​
linguist, tried first to tie the knot in English, but the Mexican laughed so immoderately and so persistently when called upon to repeat the ominous words, that the man of matrimony became angry, closed his book, and left the pair only half united. Bridget rushed after him and begged him, with tears in her eyes to finish the business, assuring him her loved one meant no disrespect. Keturning he administered the oath of allegiance to the Irish in English, and to the Mexican in Spanish, and the united pair went their happy way.
Here are two sketches ; one the forty-niner and the other the fifty-sixer:
"Buried among the recollections of by-gones are the good old times when eight feet square was a claim, and a crowbar, sheath-knife, and pan constituted a full set of mining tools. When working with a rocker was considered rushing business, and holding two claims a monopoly ; when potatoes were an expensive luxury, and flap-jacks passed current for bread; when men disdained to speak of dollars and cents, but reckoned their small change in pounds and ounces; when the abodes of honest miners were not dignified by the modern terms of houses, towns, and cities, but were known as cabins, camps, and ranches; when Judge Lynch disposed of all desperate cases in a summary manner, through the simple medium of a jury of miners; and such things as petty swindling, pett^'thieving, and pettyfoggers were unknown; when the only sickness in vogue was a headache after a big spree, and the only medicine, the hair of that same dog. Alas! the country is getting civilized, alarmingij; civilized!
"Such are the reflections of an old forty-niner, who, having outlived his time, now smokes the pipe of peace and poverty—an honorary member of the Can'tget-awav club. He has flourished in the season of big strikes, and can, if he chooses, give you a leaf ​
from his experience concerning rich pockets, and turn his own inside out without spilhng anything. Like Wilkiiis Micawber, he has great hopes of something turning up; so he prospects, contenting himself when unsuccessful, as he generally is, with simply cursing his luck, but will see you where the climate is anything but cool before he will work for wages. Thinks honest industry is a mighty fine thing to talk about, but big luck is a fortune, and is the peculiar gift of the Muggins family. Believes that old clothes are an honor to the wearer, but has a lurking suspicion that men with white shirts, tall hats, and black coats are preachers, office-seekers, or monte-sharps. Is fond of white folks and whisky, but hates greasers and Chinamen; is a firm advocate of lynch law, and thinks the California legislature a humbug, not excepting the doings of our last body of lawgivers. He has many other peculiar notions, which he pretends are founded on experience, but being the opinion of an old fogy, are of course behind the times, and extremely liable to be erroneous. Gold mining is his favorite theme. If you wish to draw him out on that particular subject, just say to him that he has been in the country long enou2:h to have a waojon-load of dust. He will i>;ive you a knowing wink and a sagacious shrug, seeming to say, I could a tale unfold, and then proceed to unfold a remarkably long one."
Next we have the later comer.
" That's him, with the stovepipe hat, black pants, satin vest, white shirt, and cravat with two round turns and a square knot! See, he carries a carpetbag, and bless me ! if he hasn't got a full-grown umbrella, too! No old inhabitant would ever mistake him for a forty-niner. We know their sort by their backs. Does not his countenance beam with the light of great expectations? Isn't he, even now, cogitating upon some safe plan of investing his dust?—discussing in his own mind whether he had better trust it to the tender mercies of a banking-house, or bury it in some ​
secure comer? That emphatic gesture with the umbrella! Ah! he has concluded to bury it—banks are mighty uncertain—even banks of earth, but he don't realize that yet. Don't make his acquaintance till he gets naturalized, and has the wire edge taken off, unless you wish to be most essentially bored. He is a harp of a thousand strings, and will vex your ear with a multitude of tiresome yarns about his personal adventures on the route, hard fare on the steamers, indignation meeting of the steerage passengers, what they resolved to do, what they dichi't do, what the captain swore he would do, what the mate said, how an old woman and five children were dreadful sick all the way from New York to Aspinwall, terrible time on the Isthmus, Panama fever, lost his trunk and paid a big nigger five dollars reward for finding it, has no doubt but it was the same identical nigger who stole it. Arrival in San Francisco, feller tried to rope him into a game of chuck-a-luck, too smart to be caught, surprised at finding that five-franc pieces pass for a dollar ; how like thunder they charge for meals on the road from Stockton, and so forth.
" After he has emptied his budget of wonders, he opens his volume of catechisms, and will ask 3^ou more foolish questions than it is pleasant to listen to, or profitable to answer—among which you are sure to hear the following: How long does it take a man to make his pile, s'posin' he's industrious ? How far is it to the northern mines ? Where is the best place for mining in California ? How long does the rainy season last ? Is it necessary for a man to have an oil-cloth suit? How much will the dirt average from the top down, in Mary Posey county ?—and last, unkindest cut of all—wiien will that water company have their ditch completed ? My rule is to stave off his questions, as well as possible, till he comes down to that, which I answer by saying 'next J^ear,' at the same time."
In early times Heinrich Herz came to San Fran ​cisco. It was then the place ahke for prince, pianist, and porter. The forests of masts sporting the flags of all nations astonished him; likewise the bustle of business and the confusion of tongues that greeted his ears on landino;, but his enthusiasm cooled somewhat when on seeking lodgings he was shown a cloth-lined closet of a bedroom at six dollars a day.
"Never mind," thought he, "is it not something to be the pioneer pianist in these parts ? " A knock interrupted his meditations.
" Do not enter," cried Herz. Nevertheless, the door opened, and a slight young man with a fair complexion, long hair, earnest manner, and German accent stood at the entrance.
" Is this the celebrated Heinrich Herz," asked the visitor.
"I am he," replied the pianist, "and if you will come in, you must first permit me to go out, as the room will not hold two."
" I come, sir, on purpose to take you from it; to beg of you to accept a room in my house." " Ah ! you are a hotel keeper." " No, sir, I am a pianist."
" Pianist," cried Herz, thunderstruck at finding a brother artist before him in the mingled mudflats and sandhills of that town of tents and board shanties planted on a tongue of land at the very outer verge of the earth's confines. " How long have you been here ? "
" A year. When I arrived there were but fourteen huts; but I found an Italian who had a piano occupying one of them and giving lessons and concerts. One of his pupils, taking exceptions to his method of training, murdered him, and I inherited his piano and his patrons. I have bought me a house and shall be the happiest of men if Herr Heinrich Herz will accept my hospitality." The invitation was accepted as cordially as it was given. The home was perched on stilts under the brow of a steep hill, and the great ​
musician, after spending one night in the front room which overlooked the decHvity, called to his host:
"You will think me very whimsical, no doubt, but could you without inconvenience give me a room on the other side of the house. I fancied I heard during the night a settling of sleepers and rattling of rocks. All imagination, doubtless; but if you can, please humor me."
"Do as you like," said the young householder, "but rest assured this is one of the safest houses in the city."
Scarcely had they transported the professor's effects to another room than that side of the house fell with a crash. Herz escaped by a miracle ; the young man was in despair. "I would not mind, it he exclaimed; " but my piano is gone. It was a poor one .it is true, cracked, and of only five octaves; but it answered my purpose; it was my fortune, and now there it lies smashed, and buried in the rubbish."
"Never mind," said Herz, "I have two, and you shall have one of those ; so cheer up, and repair your house, while I go and bring them up."
Passing a restaurant he met a man whom he had known in Paris, talking with two others, not extravagantly dressed, but gentlemanly hi their appearance. Accosting him, he casually spoke of his errand, and inquired whom he could get to move his pianos.
"I will do it," said his friend, "and these gentlemen will help me."
"But you are not serious?" said Herz.
" Never more so. Everybody works in California." The pianos were well and promptly moved.
" How much is it ? " asked Herz of his friend.
"Three hundred dollars," was the reply.
"Three—what?" exclaimed the musician.
"I assure you it is the price," said his friend, in which assertion he was backed by his host, so that, turning it off with a laugh, Herz paid it, and instantly sat down to reckon how many tickets to his concert, ​
at three dollars each, he would have to sell to pay expenses.
The following is but one of innumerable like matrimonial adventures: A young man of twenty -five arrived in California from one of the southern states in 1849, and settled in Marysville. By the exercise of industry and economy, in 1855 he found himself in possession of money and property to the amount of sixty or eighty thousand dollars. But the poor fellow was wifeless, and hence lonely and dissatisfied. His money did not bring him happiness; his life was passing away, and he making no mark. His existence was incomplete, hollow, comfortless. He must have a wife, and as women in his vicinity were few and scarcely to his liking, he set out for the bay city with matrimonial intent. There he found one whom he concluded to try at a venture, but she would none of him. And so it was with all; those who would marry him, he would not marry; those whom he would marry would not marry him. Giving it up he returned home, a disappointed man.
One day, not long after his return, he happened to meet a friend, a young married woman, at a moment when he was in a confiding^ humor. He told her the tale of his sore heart, of his attempt and failure, and her sympathies were immediately enlisted. Where is the woman whose blood does not warm in such a cause? The young man was worthy and wealthy. During the conversation his fair friend happened to think of a sister she had left in New Jersey, two years younger, and the counterpart of herself; perhaps she might be induced to come to California and fill the void in this man's affections. She hinted as much to her companion, who eagerly made a direct offer. He agreed to pay all the young woman's expenses out, and to marry her on her arrival. On behalf of her sister, his friend accepted the proposal, forwarded the young man's money to his intended bride, who on receipt ​of it came immediately to California and was married. This true tale, with variations, might apply to thousands of marriages during the fast flush times.
In the town of Marysville, in 1853, there lived a man of virtues invisible, but of faults palpable and too apparent. His reputation for honesty, like his form, was lean and anovular. He would steal so skillfullv, holding in his hands the spoils and peering meanwhile at his victim through the meshes of the law with such consummate cunning that one could do no less than beat him now and then. But such chastisements seemed rather to refresh him than otherwise. He felt all the while that he deserved so much worse at the hands of his fellows than they could give him, that even in his punishments he enjoyed the inestimable privilege of cheating them.
Fortune smiled on skill and industry, and under real estate manipulations, shaving short paper by turning it down one half, and loaning money on good security at ten per cent a month, and managing so as to get all his interest, a portion of his principal, and then cheating the lender out of the collateral pledged, his capital grew rapidly.
But happily for humanity the inevitable laws of traffic preclude the possibility of the eternal success of villainy ; otherwise our Napoleon of finance would, ere this, have been the happy owner of all Marysville. Up to this time he had reigned rascal supreme, but now waves of trouble rolled over him, and a horrible incubus settled upon his affairs in the form of two lately-arrived lawyers, keen wiry fellows, hungrier and sharper than himself
These two briefless sharks rented an office of our financier^ the rent after the first quarter to be paid quarterly in advance. Promptly at the expiration of the first three months the cadaverous visage of the landlord, lengthened by the thought of the half year s rent now due, appeared in the lawyer's office, appeared ​
there day after day, and appeared manifestly dissatisfied. Finally his patience deserted him, and he indulged in the injudicious remark that in his opinion his tenants were a pair of swindling vagabonds, and that they should be incontinently ejected.
Following this remark the landlord stepped out, stopped hastily out of the door, followed by two or three sticks of stove-wood stolen from his own wood pile. Consolation came to him in the form of one of the lawyers, who apologized for the indignity and denounced the conduct of the other, a wicked disgraceful man, thenceforward no longer his associate. Dissolution of partnership was the least reparation he could make the landlord; moreover, he professed to be an honest man; he would pay the rent himself, though parting with his shirt should be the consequence.
But would not the landlord sue and eject the impudent vagabond. It was a simple case, and lawless lawyers should be taught behavior as well as cutthroats. Yes, it was his duty as a wealthy, highminded citizen, who had the interests of our great American institutions at heart, to do it. The landlord did not like the law, but anger, interest, and pride all urged him on. Suit was brought; the landlord's attorney argued the case for several days; he had plenty of time, he wished to brush up his legal lore, astonish the natives, and earn the respectable sum which reputation and the honor of his profession compelled him to charge his client. The justice decided against the landlord, that being the only way to secure his fee—two ounces. The much-abused tenant then sued the landlord for defamation of character, and summoned his associate as witness.
The unhappy landlord now saw clearly that he had fallen among thieves. Having so long and so sweetly enjoyed cheating, he now might take the pleasure of being cheated. He saw that graceful discretion was better than blustering valor; so he told his tenants that they were welcome to their ​
room as long as they would favor it with their presence, if so be they would kindly withdraw their suit for damages. The injured but forgiving pair acquiesced. One thing only now remained. A little bill of $500 for professional services on the part of the landlord's attorney., Groaning in spirit the landlord paid it, and the lawyers divided it between them. They also kept the defamation action in terrorem, whereat the landlord ever after was very meek.
During the season of 1848-9 some men wintered in the region of Calaveras and Mokelumne, and before spring gold was more plent}^ than creature comforts. Hence it was that the first spring traders reaped rich harvests.
In February 1849, a man named Ricord, with a body guard of three, to each of whom he paid $400 for two weeks' services for man and horse, started from Staples, then McKenzie's rancho, on the Mokelumne river, for the spot later known as Robinson's ferry on the Stanislaus. Ricord drove nine pack animals loaded with 200 pounds each of assorted goods, composed largely of liquors. The rains had so softened the ground as to greatly impede their progress, but the sales which they made—clay pipes two dohars each; blankets forty dollars a pair; liquor twenty dollars a bottle, one ounce the tin cup full or two dollars a drink: boots forty dollars a pair, and beads, powder, and medicines, weight for weight in gold — this description of barter reconciled the trader to the rain and mud.
Passing Angel's and Carson's, even at that early day regarded as worked out, though later considered good diggings still, thoy finally reached their point of destination at the foot of Murphy's gulch, on the Stanislaus. No more riotous, roaring camp ever frightened the coyotes of the Sierra drainage. There concrreo-ated the discgfers from every quarter, and held high carnival as long as their money lasted. Was it ​
jiot strange that these men should leave pleasant homes, travel three, six, ten thousand miles, and subject themselves to the discomforts of a houseless Californian winter, for gold, only to pour it into the pocket of the first whisky-seller that came to their campl
Ricord drove into camp about sunset. For six long weeks the place had been absolutely dry—of whisky. No sooner was it noised abroad that asupply of the bliss-producing poison was at hand, than eager applicants with outstretched hands holding cups, bottles, kettles, bowls, dishes, anything that would hold water, approached from every direction, craving each a portion as eagerly as if a draught of it conferred upon them immortality.
Whereunto shall we liken the tapping of those whiskey kegs in that uproarious camp of the gold-diggers? It was like the opening of Pandora's box which should let fly all the evils incident to man ; or like the mud-born serpent Python crushing all within its coils; or like the Harpyise sweeping flighty souls away in the storm wind; or like the Eumenides taking from men all peace of. mind and leading them into misery and misfortune. The flow of this fiery liquid was like the pouring out of the seven vials of wrath by the apocalyptic angels, which should send abroad disease, turn elements of life into elements of death; which should scorch with fire, darken the intellect, dry up the affections, and cause men to blaspheme the God of heaven because of their pains and sores ; or like the surgings of the river of Erebus, the dark and gloomy passage to stygian realms.
For all these ills, and more, it would require to consummate the scene that followed. In less than an hour were heard the ominous breathings of the approaching storm. By nine o'clock there was scarcely a sober man in camp. On every side was rioting, hair-pulling, striking, brandishing of knives, and firing of pistols, accompanied with no little blood-letting. All nature was that ni'^ht intoxicated. Even the ​
A WHISKY-SMITTEN CAMP. 817
river seemed to reel, and the hills and sky to roll together in sudden drunkenness. The morning sun, bleareyed and red, rose upon a picture disgusting, damnable. Scattered about the streets, stretched at full length on their backs, and sides, and faces, under logs and beside their cloth houses, were mingled promiscuously tamed men of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and mild mannered women of America, drunk, dead drunk, and drunk dead. And lighted by that sorrowful sun Ricord left them there; left with them and in them every drop of his detestable poison ; but carried away gold, as much as he could several times lift. ​
INDEX,
Acapiilco, descript. of, 209-13.
Adams, G., story of, 720-1.
Agua Frio, justice at, 1852, 627-9.
Alaska, want of prison facilities in, 434.
Almond, W. B., peanut peddler, 1849, 591-2; judge, 593-600.
Alvarado, D., death of, 744-5.
Alvarado,'€rOV., " Historia de California," 41; statement of, 46.
Amador, justice at, 1854, 646-7.
Ames, A. M., the Chico riots, 1877, 573.
Anderson, C, duel with Lewis, 1866, 780; story of, 793.
Angel island, duelling at, 1858, 762-3.
Applegate, I., mention of, 457; conference with Capt. Jack, 1871, 459-60; 1872, 465-6; the Modoc outbreak, 471, 478-82; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 496.
Applegate, J., Capt. Jack's demands on, 1871, 458-9; conference with Capt. Jack, 1872, 465-6; the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 478-82; peace coirmissioner, 1873, 510; resigns, 519; rept. of, 519-20.
Applegate, L., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 482.
AiJplegate, 0., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 478.
Applegate, 0. C., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 486-7; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 490-504; at Linkville, 1873, 534-5.
Ashley, discoveries of, 90.
Aspinwall, descript. of, 1852, 158-60.
Atherton, M., trial of, 1877, 580.
Atwell, R. H., mention of, 513.
Auctions, descript. of, 346-7, 350-1, 358-9.
Austin, duelling at, 1864, 778.
Azanza, M. J. de, exploration of, 31.
B
Babbitt, A. W., mention of, 434. Badger Hill; justice at, 614-15. Baird, 0. T., duel with Wright, 1853,
756. Baldwin, J., death of, 404. Bancroft, H. H., voyage to Cal.,
1853, 124-224. Bandini, J., remark." of, 55. Banking, James, descript. of, 700-3. Barbour, W. T., story of, 611-12. Barlow, Capt. G., voyage of, 1719,
30. Barry, Justice R. C, administ. of,
1851, 6.30-2. Bates, Alcalde, mention of, 60S. Beane, C. E., duel with Wilson, 1870,
783. Beideman, H., challenge of, 1854,
761. Belt, G., alcalde, etc., 1849, 609-10. Benedict XIV, Pope, bull of, 746. Benham, C, Terry's second, 771-2. Benson, T. L., duel with Menzies,
1854, 759.
Bernard, Capt., the Modoc war,
1872-3, 485-504, 548. Bein, W., rascality of, 1857, 342. Bennett, gold found by, 58. Briddle, Col., reconnoissances of,
1873, 528-9. Bidwell, J., mention of, 570-2. Bigler, Gov., the gold discov., 76-81. Biven, R., duel with Dorsey, 1854,
760. Blackburn, Alcalde W., story of,
652-3. Blair, J., duel of, 1852, 752. Blake, H. B., statement of, 43. Blake, M. P., mention of, 772. Boddy, Massacre, descript. of, 1872,
473-5. Boddy, R., killed by Modocs, 1872,
474-5. Boise city, disposal of lots at, 412. (81S) ​
INDEX.
819
Boddy, W., killed by Modocs, 1872,
474-5. Boise County Jail, mention of, 431. Bonneville, Capt., adventures of,
1832, 91. Booth, Gov., the Modocs' outbreak,
1872, 486. Booth, Mrs, the Laura D. Fair trial,
625-6. Borondo, C. S., duel with Soto, 1825,
746. 'Boston Charley,' interview with
Roseborough, 536; surrender and
execution of, 558. Bontelle, affray with Modocs, 1872,
470-1. Bowie, H., mention of, 758. Boyle, Capt. W. H., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 488. Bojde, Lieut, escape of, 544-5. Boyle, Quartermaster, campaign at
the lava beds, 1872-3, 503. Bowman, trial, etc. of, 636-8. Brannan, S., stories of, 246-7, 607;
trial of Pickett, 1848, 608-9. Brazer, M. C, duel with Park, 1854,
760. Briarly, Surgeon, mention of, 760. Broderick, T>. C, duel with Smith,
1852, 752-3; with Terry, 18.59, 76,3 72; quarrel with Perley, 765-6. Brotherton Massacre, desoript. of,
474-7. Brotherton, Mrs, narr. of, 476-7. Brown, J., story of, 604^5. Brown, Judge, administ. of, 653-5. Bull-fighting, descript. of, 283-5. Burnton, G. H., the Modoc outbreak,
1872, 488. Burton, Capt., campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 494, 499, "48.
C
Cabaniss, Dr, mention of, 544-5.
Cabello, L., works of, 28.
Calaveras county, justice in, 648-50.
Calaveras grove, descript. of, 15.
California, valleys of, 2-13; mountains, 2-22; scenery, 2-24; climate, 6-7; gold discoveries, 25-88; overl. and travel to 89-120; the voyage to, 121-224; mining in, 228-47, 364-6, 381-95, early miners of, 249-59; dejcript. of San Francisco, 260-93; society, 294-314; pursuit of wealth, 316-18; i^ofanity, 31920; travel, 326-31; pack trains, 331-2; commerce, 335-58; stockbroking, 336-7; 'Strikes, 339-iO;
California, coinage, 340-1; bank and business failures, 341, :>44; prices, 347-51; rest'ts, 349-50; buoinesii depression in, 1851-4, 356-7; progress of, 359-60; life and character in, 361-80; the Jewish element, 372-4; lack of gov't in, 375; evilrepxite of, 375-6; squatter troubles, etc., in, 396-412; land commission for,
1851, 398-9; prisons, 413-30; the Modoc war, 446-560; outrages cm Chinese, 1871, 1877, 561-81; justice and judiciary, 582-657; drinking, 661-84; hotels, 666-7; restauranti, 668; saloons, 669, 674-8; gaml^ling, miscell. stories, 785-817; church, 797-805.
Canby, Gen., appointment of, 1870, 453; petition to, 461; correspond, with Meacham, 460-4; with Wheatton, 470; the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 487; dispositions of, 1873, 504-5; correspond, with Sherman, 505-6; 516-17, 526-7; reply to peace commis., 519; negotiations, etc., of, 521, 531; messages to, 521-5; reports of, 530-2; conference with Modocs, 538-42, 543^; death of, 542-3.
Cardwell, stories of, 443-5.
Carmelo creek, gold discov'd on, 58-9.
Carpentier, M. le, collection, etc. of, 44-5.
Carson hill, disturbance at, 237-40.
Carson jail, buildings, etc., 426; escapes from, 1871, 1877, 426-30.
Carson's creek, gopher story at, 794— 5.
Carson, J. H., 'Early recollections,etc., 33-4.
Carter, W. H., duel with De Courcy.
1852, 753.
Case, S., peace commissioner, 1873,
510; resigns, 519. Castillo, descript. of, 201. Castro, P., story of, 654-5. Catala, Padre, M., prediction of, 40. Caucasians, order of, described, 570-2, Caulfield, affray with Judge Wilson,
1852, 640. Cavallier, E., mention of, 758. Cave, story of, 442. Cemeteries, descript. of, 290-1. CeiTuti, story of, 627. Chagres river, boating on, 1852,
162-9; descript. of, 165-9. Champ, Justice J. W., administ. of, 635-8. ​
820
INDEX.
Chagres, descript. of, 1852, 158. Chapin, Lieiit, campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 548. Chaviteaux, H., duel with Richards,
1854, 758. Chico, outrages on Chinese in, 1876 568-81. Chinese, outrages on, 1871, 1877, 561 81; duelling among, 1851, 760-1. Church, sketch of in Cal., 797-805. City Hall, San Francisco, descript.
of, 1849, 265. ClifiFord, the Carson jail emeute, 1871,
426-7. Climate, (Cal.) descript. of, 6-7. Clinton, Dr, story of, 351. Coinage, mention of, 340-1. Coleman, T., duel with Mulligan,
1864, 778. Collett, J. W., death of, 1848, 748. Coloma, gold discov. at, 62-86; mining dispute at, 1851, 245-6. Colombo, Dr, mention of, 779. Colton, D. D., Broderick's second,
771. Colton, Rev., statements, etc., of,
59-60; story of, 437-8. Commerce, descript. of, 335-58. Congress, land commission app'd by,
1851, 398-9; memorial to, 400. Conway, F., the Chico riots, 1877,
572-6; arrest, etc., of, 577-9. Cotter, J., duel with Nugent, 1852.
754. Crabb, Senator, mention of, 760. Crane, A., duel with Toby, 1853,
857. Cranston, Lieut, campaign at the
lava beds, 1872-3, 548-9. Crawley, D., affray with Modocs,
1872, 472-3. Crook, Gen., petition to, etc., 1869,
450; removal of, 1870, 443; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3,
500-1.
D
Dana, J. D., remarks of, 46-7.
Davila, P., founds Panama, etc., 178.
Davis, B., story of, 720-1.
Death, remarks on, 658-60.
De Courcy, H. A., duel with Carter,
1852, 753. Deer Lodge Prison, descript. of, 431 4. Delano, Secretary, the Modoc war,
1872-3, 506-7; answer to Grover's
protest, 1873, 510.
Delano, Secretary, letter to Meacham,
516; correspond, with Canby, 533;
indignation against, 546-7. Den, mention of, 411. Denter, C. W., story of, 635-8. Denver, J. W., duel with Gilbert,
etc., 1852, 755-6. Denver, Lieut Gov., the emeute at
Carson jail, 1871,427-8. Devil's Canon, duelling at, 1855, 761 2. Dibble, G. M., duel with Lundy,
1851, 751-2. Dickson, J. P., duel with Thomas,
1854, 758. Donkeyville, justice at, 640-3. Donner tragedy, descript. of, 93-109. Dorris, recommendation, etc., of,
493-4. Dorsey, H. P., duel with Biven, 1854,
760. Dougherty, E., story of, 1852, 626-7. Dowdigan, C. duel with Hawkins,
1854, 758-9. Downieville, justice at, 1850, 616. Drake, Sir F., voyage, etc., of, 25-7. Dress, descript. of, 295-6. Drew, reconnoissance of, 455. Drinking, evils, etc., of, 660-84;
stories about, 662-84; customs,
664-5, 671-2; saloons, 669, 674-8;
toasts, 676-7. Dubert, duel with EUseler, 1854, 760. Duelling, origin, etc., of, 735-6; folly,
etc., of, 737, 742-4; hist, of, 740-1;
in Cal., 741-84; in Spanish Amer.,
744r-5. 'Duke John,' story of, 727-33. Duran, Father, report of, 1825, 746. Dyar, Agent, conference with Capt.
Jack, etc., 1872, 465-6; the Modoc
outbreak, 1872, 478; at Camp
Yainax, 491; peace commissioner,
1873, 528; conference with Modocs,
538-42; escape of, 542-3.
E
Eagan, Lieut, campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 549. Easterbrook, J. E., duel with Knight,
1859, 776. Eddy, W. H., the 'Donner tragedy,*
93-106. Eggleston, G., story of, 348. El Dorado, name, etc., 225-7. Ellseller, duel with Dubert, 1854,
760. Estill. J. M., prison contracts of,
1851-6, 415-16.
INDEX
821
' Euphemia, ' prison ship, purchase,
etc., of, 1849, 415. Eureka, duelling at, 1850, 748-9. Evans, D., duel with Northrup, 1S77,
784. Evans, G. M., statements, etc., of,
55-8. Ewer, letter of, 279-81.
Fahey, J., the Chico riots, 1877, 573-4.
Fair, L. D., trial of, 623-6.
Fairchild, Capt., campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 494-504; negotiations of, 512-14; the peace commission, 513-14; interview with Capt. Jack, 535-6; Modocs surrender to, 557-8.
Fairfax, C. S., mention of, 759.
Feather river, alleged gold discov. on, 1818, 37-8.
Fellen, relief of Donner party, 102, 107.
Ferguson, Senator, duel with Johnson, 1858, 762-3.
Ferree, D. J., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 478. _
Ferrend, Major, mention of, 782,
Field, Judge S. J., story of, 1850, 610-11.
Finnegan, mining claim of, 239-40.
Fisck, G., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 479.
Fitch, T., duel with Goodman, etc., 1863, 776-8.
Flannagan, il. E., challenge of, 1854, 749.
Fletcher, story of, 3S7-8.
Folsom, justice at, 612.
Folsom, Capt., squatter troubles of, 404.
Folsom, duel with Russell, 1851, 751.
Forbes, A., statements of, 1835, 42-3.
Foreigners, polit. influence of, 561-2.
Fouke, duel with Safford, 1865, 779.
Fremont, Gen., story of, 748.
Frisbie, J. B., mention of, 412.
G
Galvez, J., exploration of, 31.
Gambling, evils, etc., of, 686-98; laws against, 687-S; tricks in, 687, 6912; prevalence of, 680; inCal., 694733; effect of, 695; banking games, 700-3; lasquenet, 700-3; rondo, 701; gamblers, the personnel of, 703-9.
Gaming-houses, 708-10; montn, 711;
stories, 695-7,713-.33, 801-4; poker,
719-20; chances in, 72.3-6. Gate wood, W. J., duel with Goodwin, 1859, 775-6. Geary, J. W., alcalde, 1850, 600-1. Geysers, descript. of, 17-21. Gilbert, E., duel with Denver, etc.,
1852, 755-6. Gillem, Gen. A. C, supersedes
Wheaton, 1873, 506; the Modoc
war, 509, 547-59. Gillespie, story of, 346-7. Glover, A., relief of Donner party,
102-5. Godfrey, G. K., sham duel of, 1859,
774-5. Gold Discoveries, in Cal., 25-88. Gold-dust, traffic in, 340. Gonard, the emeute at Carson jail,
1878, 4.S0. Goodale, Lieut, at Ft Klamath, 18G9,
450-3. Goodman, J. T., duel with Fitch,
1863, 776-8. Goodwin, P., duel with Gatewood,
1859, 775-6. Gordon, W., story of, 629. Gorgona, descript. of, 170-1. Goscolo, Chief, death of, 747-8. Gould, story of, 639. Graham, W. H., duels, etc., of, 1851,
750. Graham, W. R., challenge sent to,
1854, 749. Grand Jury, descript. of, 1850, 600-1. Gray, statement of, 41. Grayson, A. J., the Donner tragedy,
94-5. Green, Col J., at Ft Klamath, 1872,
469-70; correspond with Wheatou,
484-5; campaign at the lava beds,
1872-3, 491-503, 548-52. Griffith, J., story of, 1851, 796-7. Grover, Gov., petition, etc., to, 1872,
463-4; to Modoc outbreak, 1872,
486; protest of, 510; orders of,
1873, 555. Guzman, T. de, discovers site of
Panamd, 1515, 178. Gwin, W. M., duel of, 1853, 756.
Habana, descript. of, 151-2. Hacker, D. E., duel with London,
1854, 759-60. Hager, Judge, the Terry case, 772-3 Hanley, P., affray with O'Brien, etc.,
1877, 783-4. ​
822
INDEX.
Hamljleton, Mrs, death of, 238-9.
Hardcoop, death of, 97-8.
Hardy, Judge J. H., the Terry case,
1859, 773; indicted for murder, 774. Haraszthy, Augustin, of U. S. branch
mint, 342. Hargraves, story of, 65. Hashrouck, H. C., mention of, 554. Hastings, L. W., the Downer tragedy,
99. Haverstick, Registrar, trial before,
639. Hawkins, J., duel with Dowdigan,
1854, 758-9. Hayes, Alderman, duel with Nugent,
1853, 754-5. Hayes, T., Terry's second, 771. Healdsburg, squatter troubles near,
411-12. Herbert, P. T., mention of, 759. Hertz, H., story of, 800-12. Hill, D., campaign at the lava beds,
1872-3, 495. Hitchcock, C. M., mention of, 760. Hizer, Lieut, campaign at the lava
beds, 1872^, 498. Hoadley, M., robbery, etc., of, 1877,
644-0. Holderbaum, A., the Chico riots,
1877, 573; trial of, 579. Holiday, outrage of, 410-11. 'Hooker Jim,' campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 492, 498; surrender
of, 558. Hot creek, Indians of, 483-4, 487. Hovey, E., death of, 552. Howard & Mellus, mention of, 345. Howe, Lieut, campaign at the lava
beds, 187-23, 549, 554. Hoyt, exped. of. 33. Hubert, N., duel with Hunt, 1854,
759. Hudson, story of, 728-32. Hunt, G. T., duel with Hubert, 1854,
759. Hunt, Major, mention of, 468. Hunter, J., duel with Pitcher, 782. Huntington, Superintendent, treaty
with Indians, 1864, 446-7.
Idaho, convicts of, 431.
Immigration, character of, 361-3.
Irish, polit. influence of, 561.
Indians, traffic with, 436-7; employment of, 438^2; treaties with, 1864, 446-50; the Modoc war, 446560.
Inge, S.W., duel with Stanley, 750.
Jack, Capt., treaty with, 1864, 44650; negotiations with, 450-1, 457-9; 405-9, 483-4; at Modoc point, 451; at Lost river, 451, 454; complaints of, 452; land claimed by, 453-5; raids, etc., of, 1870-1, 455-7; conference with, 1871, 459-GO; 1872, 465-6; insolence of, 46G-9; attempted arrest of, 470^3; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 488-504, 547-57; message to Canby, 522-5; conference with peace commiss., 538-42; massacre of commiss., 5426; surrender and execution of, 558.
Jackson, Capt. J., at Ft Klamath, 1S70, 457; affray with Modocs, 1872, 470-2; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 490-504.
.Jews, status, etc., of in Cal., 372-4.
Jimeno grant, disturbance at, 1853, 410.
Jones, H. J., the Chico riots, 1887, 572.
Jones, H. T., conviction of, 1877, 579.
Jones, W. H., the Hayes-Nugent duel, 1853, 755.
Johnson, Dr, sayings of, 663-6.
Johnson, G. P., duel with Ferguson, 1858, 762-3; trial of, 763.
Johnson, Sheriff, mention of, 403-4.
Judiciary, character of, 582-5, 590; stories of the, 591-657.
Justice, administ., etc., of, 586-656.
K
Kanakas, employment of, 441-2.
Kearn, D., mention of, 448.
Kelly, Capt. H., the Modoc outbreak,
1872, 482; campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 491-503. Kelsey, G., story of, 1850, 617-21. Kemble, E. C, duel with McDougal,
1851, 751. Ketchum, suit of, 639. Kewen, A., duel with Woodlief, etc.,
1854, 760-1. Keys, Capt., m'^ntion of, 403. Kiesburg, the Donner tragedy, 97-8,
106-8. King, T. S., influence of, 798. Kingston, descript. of, 153. Klamath basin, petition from settlers
of, 1872, 403. Klamath, Fort, reservation at, 450;
forces at, 1870, 454. Klamaths, treaty with, 1864, 446-50;
raids of, 1863, 447. ​
INDEX.
823
Klaniaths, raids of, at Modoc point, 452-5: ca:npaigii at the lava beds, • 1872-3, 492-3.
Knapp, P. C, at Ft Klamath, 1870, 451-3; meetiag with Capt. Jack, 456; relieved, 1870, 457.
Knight, G., voyage of, 1719, SO.
Knight, S., duel with Easterbrook, 1859, 776.
Krng, C, duel with Loehr, 1853, 756-7.
Kyle, Lieut, J. G., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 485; campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 490-501,
La Page, L., mention of, 779. Lagrode, the Terry-Broderick duel,
768. Lake county, justice in, 1865, 647-S. Lalake, Chief, raids of, 1863, 447,
454-5. Land commission, appointment, etc.
of, 1851, 398-9. Langell valley, Modoc raids, '73, 534. Langdon, S., duel with Ryer, '57, 761-2 Lark, Justice A., administ. of, 1854,
646-7. Larkin, T. 0., statements of, 1846,
53-4. Lansquenet, descript. of, 700-3. Lava beds, descript. of, 4S8-9; campaign of the, 1872-3, 490-505, 547 57. Law-courts, 298; descript. of, 590 656. Lawson, F., mention of, 406. Leary, Lieut, mention of, 554. Lee, B., story of, 354-5. Leggett, W., duel with Morrison,
1852, 752. Lemm, C, the Chico riots, 1877, 574. Leon, P. de, duel with Velasco, 744. Levi, sham duel of, 1859, 775. Lewis. T. D. P., duel with Somers, ■ 1853, 757.
Lewis, duel with Anderson, 1866, . 780.
Lick, J., squatter troubles of, 405. I.inkville, alarm at, 1873, 534-5. Loehr, Dr, duel with Krug, 1853,
756-7. Loker, T., suit of, 1850, 619-21. London, J. S., duel with Hacker,
1854, 759-60. Lopez, F., gold discov'd by, 1842,
47-S. Los Angeles, descript. of Negro Alley,
562-3; Chinese riot at, 1871, 563-4.
Los Angeles, outrages on Chinese at, 564-7; inquest at, 5G7-8; duelling at, 1852, 753-4; 1870, 783.
Lost river, Indian raids near, 1864, 449; 1870-1, 455-7; camp on, 1873, 505.
Lower California, coast of, 216.
Ludington, Inspector, report of, 1871, 4G0-1.
Lundy, E. B., duel with Dibble, etc., 1851, 751-2.
Luttrell, J. K., mention of, 556.
M
Magruder, Col, mention of, 753-4. ]^Jahoney, J., trial of, 1877, 579. Mammoth trees, descript. of, 14-15. Manoa, fabled treasures of, 226. Manzanillo, descript. of, 215. Mariposa, grove, descript. of, 15. Marshall, J. W., the golddiscov.. 57 8, 63-76; mining adventure of, 232. Martinez, adventure of, 226. Marysville, justice at, 1850, 610-11,
623. Mason, Col, the Modoc outbreak,
1872, 487-8; campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 494-5, 502, 547-50. Mason, story of, 442. Matthewson, the emeute at Carson
jail, 1877, 429-30. May, E., murder of, 580. May, Senator, duel with Rowe, 1853,
757. Mazatlan, descript. of, 215-16. McChristian, P., story of, 385-6. McCorkle, J. W., duel with Gwin,
1853, 756.
McDonald, story of, 1814, 745. McDougal, G., duel with Kemble,
1851, 751.
McDougal, Gov., mention of, 760. McDougal, J., duel with Russell,
1852, 756.
McEldery, affray with Modocs, 1872,
470. McFarland co., suit of the, 641-2. McGowan, E., stories of, 602-4. McKay, D., campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 492-3, 547. McKibbin, J., Broderick's second,
771. McKune, affray with Judge Wilson,
1852, 640. McNabb, J., mention of, 779. McNamara, Capt., J., campaign in
the lava beds, 1872-3, 494. Meiggs, H., defalcation, etc., of,
1854, 287-90. ​
824
INDEX.
Meacham, Superintendent, negotiations of, 420-1; treatment of Indians, 452; policy of, 457-8; at Ft Klamath, 1870, 457; conference with Capt. Jack, 1871, 459 60; correspond, of, 1871-3, 460-4, 5302; relieved, 1872, 464; chairman of peace commission, 1873, 507; instructions to, 526; disgust of, 527-6; interview with Capt. Jack, 535-6: conference with Modocs, 538—42; attempted assass. of, 543.
Mendenhall, Capt. J., mention of, 554.
Menzies, R., duel with Benson, 1854, 7.59.
Miller, H. F., mention of, 460; death of, 476.
Miller, Lieut, campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 494-5, 548-9.
Mills, Capt. C. S., mention of, 486.
Miners, characteristics, etc., of, 24759, 364-6, 381-95; fortune and misfortunes, 383-4; stories of, 385-94.
Mining, descript. of, 228-30; discrimination against foreigners, 232-6; regvilations and disputes, 236-47; camps, 381-2, 394; stories, 385-94, 807-9, 815-17.
Modocs, name, 446; treaty with, 1804, 446-50; raids of, 1863, 447; 1870-2, 455-82; removed to reservation, 450-1; treatment of, 451-2; affray with, 1872, 470-3; campaign of the lava beds, 1872-3, 488-504; 547-57; the peace commiss., 505-42; massacred by, 542-6; surrender and disposal of, 557-9.
Mokelumne river, duelling on the, 1851, 750-1.
Money making, remarks on, 302.
ISIontana, penitentiary of, 431-2.
Monterey, descript. of, 222.
Montour, duel with Pillet, 1813, 745.
Monte, descript. of, 711.
Moore, H. de W., the Modoc outbreak, 1872, 488.
Moore, Lieut, campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3,494.
Morgan, A., mining claim of, 237-40.
Mormon island, Indians at, 1848, 438-41.
Morrison, J., duel with Leggett, 1852, 752.
Mountains of Cal., descript. of, 2-16.
Mulligan, W., mention of, 759; duel with Coleman, 1864, 778.
Murchison, Sir R., remarks of, 47.
Murphy, J. C, trial, etc, of, 629.
Murphy, camp of, 441.
Murray, B., letter of, 546-7. Murray, Judge, H. C, character, etc. of, 605-7.
N
Negro alley, (Los Angeles) descript.
of, 1871, 562-3. Nevada city, justice at, 1852, 626-7;
duelling at, 1851, 751-2. Newell, S. T., killing of, 774. NezPerces, trouble with, 1873, 528. Nicaragua, Lake, descript. of, 201-2. Nicaragua route, descript. of the, 198 202. Nieto, S., mention of, 748. Niles, Jiistice J., administ., etc. of,
640-3. 'North America,' wreck of the, 213 14. Northrup, M. V., duel with Evans,
1877, 784. Nugent, J., duels of, 1852, 754-5.
Oak grove, duelling at, 1852, 755-6;
1854, 758. Oakland, disturbance in, 1853, 408. O'Brien, J., affray with Hanley, 1877,
783. Odeneal, L. B., Ind, superintendent,
1872, 464—70; peace commissioner,
1873, 510.
Ohio Diggings, search for the, 231-2, Old Kentuck Co., suit against the,
641-2. Oregon, prisons of, 430-1; the Modoc
war, 446-50. Oroville, rioters tried at, 1877, 577-9. Otis, Major, the Modoc troubles,
1872, 464-9.
Pacific Mail Co., origin of, 125, operations, 125-6.
Pack-trains, descript. of, 331-2.
Palomares, F., narr. of, 747-8.
Panama bay, descript. of, 184—5.
Panama city, hist, sketch of, 158-9; descript. of, 1852, 179-87.
Panama, Isthmus, descript. of, 15588; travel across, 1852, 156-77; population, 183; climate, 184.
Park bar, mining dispute at, 1851, 246-7.
Park. T. W., duel with Brazer, 1854, 760.
Parker, R., story of, 348. ​
INDEX.
825
Parsons, G. F., the gold discov., 72-3. Pattie, J. 0., explorations of, 1832, 90-1.
Pawnbrokiiig, descript. of, 324—6. Peace commission, appointment, etc.
of, 1873, 505-11; negotiations, 511 16; report of, 517-19; conference
with Modocs, 538-42; coinmiss.
massacred, 542-6. Peachy, A. C, duel of, 1852, 752. Pearl islands, descript. of, 185. Pearson, H., mention of, 406. Pena Corporal, mention of, 747-8. Per ley, D. W., quarrel with Broder ick, 765-6. Perry, Capt., the Modoc outbreak,
1872, 485-8; campaign at the lav-a
beds, 1872-3, 490-503, 548, 553;
Capt. Jack surrenders to, 558. Pettigrove, S., story of, 785-7. Physicians, fees of, 1850, 351. Pickett, E. E., statements of, 50, 55;
story of, 365-7; trial of, 1848,
608-9. Piercy, C. W., duel with Showalter, • 1861, 776.
Pilenlriving, descript. of, 1849, 264-5. Pillet, duel with Montour, 1813, 745. Pitcher, W., duel ^ith Hunter, 782. Pizarro, H., mention of, 744-5. Pollock, Capt., at Ft Klamath, 1873,
534. Post office (San Francisco) descript.
of, 1851, 278-9. Postal delivery, descript. of, 272-4. Potter, E. W., mention of, 448. Powers, J., squatter disturbance of,
1853, 411. Prices, extravagance of, 1849-50,
347-51. Prisons, San Quentin, 413-26; the
'Euphemia,' 415; management of,
417-22; Carson, 426-30; Salem,
430-1; Steilacoom, 431; Boise
county, 431; Deer Lodge, 431-4;
of Alaska, 434; of Utah, 434; of
Arizona, 434^5. Profanity, prevalence of, 319-20. Prudon, story of, 789-93.
R
Raleigh, Sir W., exped's, etc., of, 1595, 1617, 226-7. Randolph, mention of, 760.
Raoussel-Boulbou, Comte de, mention of, 758.
Raymond, duel with Tucker, 749.
Ream, Lieut, campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 503-4.
Reed, J. F., the Donner tragedy, 93105.
Restaurants, descript. of, 349-50.
Reynolds, W., mention of, 407.
Bich Bar, stories of, 662, 727-33.
Richards, M., duel with Chaviteaux, 1854, 758.
Richard, S. R., prison inspector, 1854, 434.
Ricord, story of, 1849, 815-17.
Riddle, T., warning of, 525; interpreter to peace commiss., etc., 1873, 537-40; escape of, 543.
Riley, C. W., saloon keeper and judge, 622-3.
Riley, Gen., mention of, 415.
Roberts, E., the Chico riots, 1877, 573-6; trial, etc., of, 578-9.
Roberts, Lieut G., wounded at the lava beds, 1873, 501
Robinson, Dr, the squatter riots, 1849-50, 410.
Rockwood, A. P., prison inspector,
1854, 434.
Rogers, Judge, story of, 656.
Rogue river valley, Lidiau raid in,
1855, 445-6.
Romles, P., the Chico riots, 1877,
572. Rondo, descript. of, 701-2. Rosel)orough, peace commissioner,
1873, 512-13; interview with Capt.
Jack, 5.35-6; with Boston Charley,
536. Ross, C. L., story of, 34.5-6. Ross, Gen. J. E., the Modoc war,
1872-3, 486-95, 500. Rough and Ready, camp, story of,
788-9. Rowe, E., duel with May, 1853, 757. Ruelle, J. R., story of, 52. Russell, A. C, duel with Folsom,
1851, 751. Russell, T., mention of. 747 Russell, duel with McDougal, '52, 756. Rust, duel with Stidger, 1853, 757. Rutland, J. P. quarrel with Thomas,
etc., 1854, 757-8. Ryer, W. M., duel with Langdon, '57,
761-2.
S
Sacramento squatter riot, 1850, 40810; justice at, 1856, 623; affray at, 1852, 640; gambling incidents, 1850, 722; cholera at, 1850, 790-2.
Safford, C, duel with Fouke, '65, 779.
Safford, Judge, trial of Chico rioters, 1877, 579. ​
826
INDEX.
iSalein prison, descript. of, 4S0-1.
Salooxid, descript. of, 674-8.
San Andreas, justice at, 1877, 644-5; dwelling near, 1859, 775-6.
San Antonio, dwelling at, 1853,. 7567. San Bias, descript. of, 215.
San Diego, descript. of, 1852, 217; storm at, 1849, 217-21; jxistice at, 1849, 613; duelling fined at, 183641, 746-7.
San Francisco, bay of, 21-3; buildings and streets of, 1849, 260-5, 281-2, 286-7; pile-driving in, 2645; character of population, 265-6; the drama, 267-9; arrival of steamers, 270-2; postal delivery, 272-4; steamer-day, 275-6; post-ofSce, 278-9; poverty in, 1852-3, 283; bull -fighting, 283-5; promenades, 285; cemeteries, 290-1; homes, 2912; climate, 292; the new city, 2923; society, 294-314; pawnbroking, 324-6; commerce, 335-58; stockbroking, 336-7; strikes, 339^0; coinage, 340-1; banks and business failures, 341, 344; auctions, 346-7, 350-1, 358-9; prices, 347-51; business depression in, 1851-5, 356-7; squatter troubles, etc. in, 396^07; prisons, 415; law-courts, 590, 6236, 639-40; grand jurv, 1850. 600-1; gambling in, 697-727; duelling, 1851-09, 749-83.
Sanlsidro, alleged gold discov. near, 40.
San Jose, justice at, 656; Goscolo's outrages, etc. at, 747-8.
San Juan del Norte, descript. of, 199.
San Quentin, name, 413; under Spanish regime, 414-15; stateprison built at, 416; contracts, etc., 416-17; site, 418; buildings, 41819; treatment of prisoners, 419-22; escapes from, 425-6; aiiray at, 1877, 783-4. _
San Rafael, disturbance near, 407; town of svirveyed, 407; duelling near, 1861, 776.
Sandels, Dr, explorations of, 51-2.
Santa Barbara, duelling at, 1825, 746.
Santa Cruz, justice at, 652-5.
Scala, Count, 'Nouvelles Annales,35-6.
' Scarface, Chief, ' campaign at the lava beds, 1872-3, 492; surrender of, 558.
Scenery, (Cal.) descript. of, 2-24.
Schira, Mrs, narr. of, 474-5.
Schira, N., killed by Modocs, 1872,
474-5. Sconchin, Chief, raids of 1863, 447;
at Modoc point, 451-4; the Modoc
outbreak, 1872, 466, 478-81. 487;
the peace commission, 511, 514-15;
message to Canby, 521-2; mediation
of, 529; insolence of, 541; execution of, 558. Schroeder, J., killed by Modocs,
1872, 476. Scott, Dr, mention of, 798. Scott, W. H., duel with Smith, 1853,
757. Scott bar, election at, 1851, 651. Settlers, definition of word, 396-7;
contrasted with squatters, 397. Sheldon, mining dispute, etc. of, 246. Shelvocke, G., voyage, etc. of, 1719 22, 29-30. Shephard, P. W., mention of, 772. Sherman, Gen., the Modoc war,
1872-3, 505-6; correspond with
Canby, 516-17, 526-7. Sherwood, Lieut, death of, 544-5. Shillaber, T., mention of, 403. Shillingow, A., killed by Modocs,
1872, 477. Shoalwater bay, justice at, 635-8. Showalter, D., duel with Piercy,
1861, 776. Silva, Capt., G. M. C, the Modoc
outbreak, 1872, 488. Silvas, N., mention of, 748. Simmons, W., judge at Scott Bar,
etc., 1821, 651. Simpson, H. I., story of, 438-41. Sinclair, story of, 385-6. Siskiyou county, petition from, 1869,
450. Slaughter, C, the Chico riots, 1877,
572-0; arrest, etc, of, 577-9. Slavery, question of, 365. Sloat, L. W., prediction of, 54. Smith, C. T., storyof, 801-4. Smith, G., story of, 71-2. Smith, H., mention of, 774. Smith, J., gold discov'd by, 39. Smith, J. C., duel with Broderiek,
1852, 752-3. Smith, P., duel with Scott, 1853, 757. Smith, explorations of, 90. Society, descript. of, 294-314, 361-80. Somers, C, duel with Lewis, 1853,
757. Sonoma, justice at, 627. Sonora, justice at, 1851, 630-3; duelling at, 1852, 753; 1859, 776. Soto, M., duel with Borondo, 1825,
467. ​
INDEX.
827
Spanisli America, duelling in, 744-5. fcparks, Dr, story of, 351. Spokane, Fort, duelling at, 1814, 745. Sprague, T., statement of, 39. .Springer, T. A., mention of, 629. Squatterism, name, 396; descript. and
evils of, 397-412. Squatters, name, 39G-7; contrasted
with settlers, 397; greed of, 397-8;
power of, 401-2; riots, etc., 402-12. St Helena, Mount, descript. of, 16. Staging, descript. of, 327-31. Stainbrook, T., the Chico riots, 1877,
575-6; trial of, 579. Stanley, E., duel with Inge, 1851,
750. Steamer day, descript. of, 275-6. Steele, E., mention of, 443; Ind.
superintendent, 1863, 447; treaty
with Indians, 1864, 448-50. Steele, negotiations, etc., of, 1873,
512-15. Steilacoom, prison, mention of, 431. Stevens, E., exped. of, 52. Stevens, E. P., the Laura D. Fair
trial, 625. Stidger, duel wath Rust, 1853, 757. Stockbroking, descript. of, 336-7. Stock gambling, evils, etc., of, 686,
692-5. Stockton, election, etc., at, 1849,
609-10; gambling incident at, 1850,
717-18; duelling at, 1854, 7C0. Stoddard, W. P., mention of, 774-5. Stone, story of, 720. Strickland, E. A., attempted escape
of, 426. Strikes, descript. of, 339-40. Suisun, squatter trouble near, 1862,
412. 'Sunday Dispatch,' letter in, 1851,
279-81. Sunset, tropical, descript. of, 203-5. Surprise valley, protection of, 1873,
505 Sutter, Gen. J. A., the gold discov.,
69-76, 84; squatter troubles of, 1850, 408; experience with Indians,
etc., 441-2. Sutter's fort, justice at, 1848, 607-9.
Taylor, C, story of, 353-5.
Terry, D. S., duel with Broderick,
etc., 763-72; trial, etc., of, 772-4. Thellar, Lieut, campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 547, 550. Thiel, the Chico riots, 580.
Thomas, Rev. E., peace commissioner,
1873, 528; indiscretion of, 537;
conference with Modocs, 538-42;
death of, 542-3. Thomas, Major, campaign at the lava
beds, 1872-3, 549-50; 55^7.
Thomas, P. W., duel with Dickson,
1854, 758. Thompson, J. H., story of, 648. Thompson, W. F., gold discov'd by,
1839, 45. Throckmorton, Major, mention of,
509; campaign at the lava beds,
1882-3, 548. Tobin & Duncan, auction rooms, etc.,
of, 1852-3, 356-7. Toby, E., duel with Crane, 1853, 757. Tracy, outrage upon, 41 1-12. Travel, descript. of, 326-31. Truckee, jiistice at, 651-2. True, B., the Chico riots, 1877, 573. Truett, E., mention of, 772. Tucker, duel with Raymond, 1850,
749. Tule lake, Ind. outrages near, 1872,
473-7. Turk, F., story of, 597-8. Tuthill, F., remark of, 47.
U
Usury laws, remarks on, 343-4. Utah penitentiary, mention of, 434.
Vail, G. C, alcalde of Yreka, 1851,
650-1. Vallejo, justice at, 722-3. Vallejo, Gen. M. G., ' Historia de
California,' 38; prison contract of,
1852, 415. Van Hutten, exped. of, 1541-5, 226. Vaughn, Capt. G., voyage of, 1719,
30. Velasco, duel with Ponce de Leon,
744. Venable, J. W., journey to Cal.,
1849, 191-2. Ver Mehr, Dr, mention of, 267. Viader, Padre, predictions of, 40. Virginia city, duelling, etc. at, 1865,
779-82. Vizcasno, S., voyage, etc. of, 27-8? Voorhies, W. Van, address of, 1853,
263-4.
W
Wadsworth, C. L,, alcalde, etc., 1849, 609-10. ​
828
INDEX.
Wadsworth, Dr, mention of, 798.
Wagoner, Mrs, death of, 1855, 445-6.
Wainwright, J. E., Beideman's challenge to, 1854, 761.
Walker, duel with Graham, 1851, 749-50.
Wall, J., story of 646-7.
War, remarks on, 737-42.
Warner, Camp, force at, 1870, 454.
Washburn, Editor, duel with Washington, 1854, 760.
Washington, (Cal.) justice at, 1850, 616-21.
Washington, Editor, duel with Washburn, 1854, 760.
Washington territory, convicts of, 431.
Water-lots, appropriation, etc. of, 405-7.
Watson, mention of, 760.
Wealth, pursuit of in Cal., 316-18.
Wethered, duel with Winter, 1852, 753.
Wheaton, Col. F., siapersedes Otis, 1872, 469; correspond, with Canby, 470; the Modoc war, 1872-3, 484-5, 488, 490-504; superseded, 506.
Wheeler, W. F., mention of, 432-4. 753.
Whittle, R., the peace commission,
1873, 511-12. Widney, R. M., mention of, 639. Wiener, Mrs, the gold discov., 74-6. Wilbur, J. H,, peace commissioner,
1873, 510. Wilder, M., story of, 786-7. Wilson, J. B., duel with Beane, 1870,
783. Wilson, Judge, aflPray with McKeene,
1852, 640. Winter, duel with Wethered, 1852, Woman, sphere of in Cal., 305-14. Woodlief, D. J., duel with Kewen,
etc., 1874, 760-1. Woodruff, W., prison inspector, 1854,
434. Wright, C. J., duel with Baird, 1853,
756. Wright, H. C, the Chico riots, 1877,
570-6; arrest, etc. of, 577-9. Wyeth, Capt., expeds, etc. of, 91.
Yolo county, justice in, 629. Yreka, justice at, 1851, 650-1. Yosemite valley, descript. of, 8-13. Yuma Jail, mention of,