The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1872-02-09
THE LAST MAN OF MEXICAN
CAMP.
BY JOAQUIN MILLER.


Mexican Camp was a nest of snow
white miners tents huddled down in a
dimple of the Serras. If you had stood
uear the flag.pole in the centre of the
camp, on which the stars and stripes
were raised or lowered on the arrival or
the departure Of the Mustang express
the only "egular thread connecting
the camp with the outer woodland
looked intently west, you mi ght have
seen, on day Of singular clearness, be-
yond some newborn cities, the flash of
the Pacific in the sun. At your back,
mountains black with pine and cedar,
then bald and gray with granite, basalt
and cinder, then, white with everlasting
snow, made you feel strong and secure
of intrusion in the rear. Close about
you, on the hillside and in the gulch,
you had seen trees lifting their limbs
above the heads of thousands of men
who knew for the time no other shelter :;
while at your feet in the gulch and as
far down as the eye could follow it, the
little muddy stream struggled through
little fleets Of tin and iron pans, great
Mexican wooden bowls, and through
cradles, toms and sluices. You had
seen long gray lines of Mexican mules
stringing around the mountains, wind
ing into the camp with their heavy bur
dens; you had heard the shouts spiced
thick with oaths, of the tawny packers.
You had heard the sound Of the ham
mer and axe on every hand, for a new
city had been born as it were the night
before, and this was its first struggle-cry
and reaching of uncertain hands. All
day on either side the stream sat wall
of men washing for gold The Mexican
and American were side by side that had
been breast TO breast at Monterey ; the
lawyer wrought beside his client; the
porter found his strong arms made him
the superior here TO the dainty gentle.
man to whose wants he had once minis
tered.
Mexican Camp flourished like palm
for many years, then, like all placer
mining camps, it began to decline. The
gold was washed from the best part of
the gulch, and the best men of the
camp, one by one, returned to their
homes in other lands, or retired to
camps deeper in the mountains, as their
fortunes directed. As the Saxon went
out, the Celestial came in, but gave no
new blood TO the camp. Vacant cabins
and adobe chimneys stood all up and
down the gulch, and lizards summed
themselves upon them undisturbed.
The butcher, the great autocrat of the
mining camp, began to come around
with his laden mules but twice week
instead of twice a day. A bad sign for
the camp.
But there was one cabin that was never
vacant (; it stood apart from town, on the
brown hillside, and as it was one of the
first SO it promised to be the last OF the
camp. 1t always had an ugly bulldog
tied to the door, and was itself low,
spicious-looking structure that year
by year sank lower as the grass grew
taller around it, till it seemed trying to
hide in the chapparel. 1t had but one
occupant, silent, selfish man, who
never came out by day except to bury
himself alone in his claim at work.
Nothing was known of him at all, save
the story that he had killed his partner
in gambling house away back some.
where in '49. He was summed and
feared by all, and he approached and
spoke to no one, except the butcher, the
grocer, and expressman and to these
only briefly on business. believe, how
ever, that the old outcast known as
" Forty.nine Jimmy" sometimes sat Oh
the bank and talked to the murderer
at work in his claim. 1t was even said
that Forty-nine was on fair terms with
the dog at the door; but as this was
doubted by the man who kept the only
saloon now remaining in Mexican Camp,
and who was consequently an authority,
the report was not believed.
Let it be here observed that when a
mining camp sinks to the chronic state
Of decay that this now presented, the
men remaining in it as a rule are idlers,
and by no means representative miners.