The hydraulic press. (North San Juan, Nev. Co., Cal.) 1858-18??, 1858-09-11

| >-"' 49, 49, SAS III ~ SAA tlO Dl0CCS "
our nativity and made US wanderers
These have populated State after
State-connected east and west by
lines of cities, of iron roads, of tele
graph wires; and these are develop
ing those vast territories, from whose
borders the poet hears
"The first low sound of waves where soon
Shall roll human sea-"
But if these characteristics lead us
to greatness, they do also lead US tc
it by somewhat ignoble roads-by the
hard dry paths Of sordid selishness-
of money-seeking for no object be-
yond itself.
But let US not quarrel with motives
that have given us homes on the sun
ny slopes Of the Pacific. These cha
racteristics render US here, after ma
king the transit of our continent, i'm
pulsively obedient to the first sugges.
tons of personal interest. Fortune
is our goddess, and we fit about from
place to place with all the capricious>
ness that belongs to the bestowal of
her favors. Hence it comes that Ca
lifornia towns are SO peculiar. The
mining population is as shifting as the
sands of thesea, and moved by every
wave of fortune or breeze of good
report. Hundreds will come to day
and pitch their tents like an army;
forests fall before them, and hills, ol>
der than the Pyramids, glide rapidly
into the wales, at their bases. The
various characteristics of our civil.
cation gather and flourish in the
mushroom community, and it figures
for awhile in the newspapers Of the
State with all the Importance and
more than the pretension of the most
permanent town. Tomorrow comes,
and the wilderness camp has vanished.
Every tent is struck, and the army of
fortune hunters is on the march to
virgin placers. Thus it will continue
to be until all the broad gold fields of
California have been "prospected,"
and about those which are exhaust
less, or in the richest grain fields of
our State, steadfast cities assume
permanent dominion.
But in spite of this shifting and
transitory character, our mining towns
are not the abandoned and disorderly
places that might be supposed. Am
orleans carry with them, wherever
they go, the institutions which they
prize; every immigrant is State in
himself, and his first care is to estab-
lish laws. These may not be perfect
nor always regular according to legal
definition; but they answer the cardi-
nal purpose Of all law-and that is,
protection. A sense of justice, how
ever rude, pervades the inchoate COM
munity, and only occasionally does
national prejudice, stimulated by de-
sire for gain, operate to the injury Of
even the mcanest alien.
Thus it happens that the regulations
of self-congregated miners, in the
form of public meetings, presided
over by proper officers selected from
the crowd, and their deliberations
rudely published, come to be sanctions
ed as laws by the State, and respected
by its Judiciary. 1t is the preroga-
tive of Americans so 10 make laws,
and it is their glory that they seldom
make them unjust. Apart from obe-
dience to these, every mans individ-
uality can assert itself unchecked
hence these floating communities ex-
hibit the richest variety of character
anywhere to be found. Men from
every State, from every country, and
of every condition mingle as equals.
The honest miner is not ashamed to
sh axe hands 11; Wit. the the lawyer, nor does
the lawyer deem his soft palm conta-
minated by the horny touch of labor.
Hardly man can be found but whose
back has at some time, whatever his
present condition, been bent over the
flinty bosom of his mother earth.
The pickaxe might well stand with
us as the emblem Of equality.
Labor overcomes all things, says
the classic proverb; but it never before
overcame anything SO nearly invinci-
bic as castor the artificial distinctions
which terminate in even American
soil, as do the most loathsome weeds.
| love to contemplate this rough equa-
lily in mining communities. Even so
rude realization as it is of the phi,
lanthropist's and poets dreams, fills
me with pleasant speculations and in-