The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-02-27
THE ARGoNAUTS.
BY AN "otD VETERAN"

May you die among your own peo- ole" thought then, as think still, that hls is among the kindest wishes one can upress in California. To make you re- .r. it must reproduce this scene:
 The time was early in '49. The place
 Gorgcna Before you the village lies on
 the brow of the hill. Many of the Pacific
 yard emigrants, having provided them. selves with tents and provisions for the emergencies of the then unknown land
 to which they were going, put them to
 use during their detention on the Isth- mus, so that quite canvas town had
 thus sprung up on the slope of the hill Some few only of the tents were occupied I by families. Nearly all had before them rude board on barrels, displaying bot ties of brandy or other liquors, jars of pickles, little mounds of dried apples
 h fact anything they possessed that corld attract the native population, or those travellers less we'll supplied, and so assist
 them to provide for tho heavy and unex-
 pected expenses entailed by the delay lp |the journey. The most profitable were 8 the monte tents, where few cards fur nished all the capital needed The Mex iean war had mads many Americans proficient in this new branch of industry, which fourished under the forced inac- Ehviy and craving for excitement of this dammed-up people. The rcd flannel of I the American was to be seen there, crowded in with the naked, black muscu-
 lar shoulders of the Chagres boatmen
 vho regularly lost, withio the day of re- eeiving it, the extortionate sum paid them : by those they had brought in their bun-
 goes up the river. The chink and clang of coin was eJer absent from the place where dingy, small tent, crowded with whites and negroes, was lit up by single aaing candle, as soon as, tne sun went down, and the play went on from night $ i'll morning and from morning till night. There were but few women among this 5 hrst emigration, and those who were of it had each an ample share of its harrass- ings and sufferings. There was one tent facing the river. Lovely trees shaded 1t,
 and it was so placed that the shelving
 green bank was seen sloping into the
 ands, and beyond the clear, beautiful liver, rose on the opposite side tangled
 Aicket of lowering trees growing in scar
 let and purple, and farther of and above them the blue heights of the barriers
 that separated the ocean which rolled its
 smooth blue to their new home, from the rough old Atlantic. By day the dazzling sunshine lit up all this with a glory in. describable. Bat none cared to look upon it, for the sunbeams fell like plates oi heated metal, and although cool breezes came with sunset, or sunfall, as one might call the eading of the day in the tropics, yet they had their danger, Eeater, perhaps, than that of the day. The levers caased by this alternating beat and cooaness, and the miasma from
 the beds of decaying leaves in the forest nound. aided death to the other dis. tesses oi those who tarried there.
 ca bed, on the flooring made by an India rubber cloth, lay na m, still young. but ghastly, yellow and wrinkled with the paIching fever. The crisis was past, but he lay in a stupor from which his wife had in vain tried to arouse him, and her babe was jast yielding it's young life to Ine same fever. Already anxiety, fatigue and the great heats had poisoned the mothers nourishment, and now the fear ef losing both the father and child had Deprived it of even that resource. In vain ne hali-frantic mother tried to make it
 ake the milk of some of the plying na- avs women who offered to share with it. The child was past ali hope. Finding the mother insensible to all their rough but lSeil.meant consolation, the men grad |aalty stole away, for man has not woman's |pahent endurance of mental anguish. So 9Aey were alone. The ma lay in so deep Eorpor that the moth CT might be said to |oe alone-alone with her dying child, Dor whom she could do nothing but press 'R to her bleeding heart, with dumb hps |sad bicod-shot eyes; every pang that anlled its little frame, convulsed her. bat |no sound, no tears. Why should she Iseep? Tears are so vain, and there was fo one to wipe them away. All her sim pie resources were exhausted. A physi- l1an. who had been appealed to, gave her so hope, and she saw that the ch;s1 mast aie. It was only littie babe. it coaid Dot speak yet, but its eyes. had smiled Pack to hers, and when her tears feil. nany and iast af leaving her ather's Bone, it's sweet looks had brought com Ozt to her. And then it was her child, ler only child, and she far from her own people. She sat outwardly still, but with
 busy memory, picturing far different
 cnes A tttle brother had died when ae was herself a child. The neighbors Eane in; the clergyman was there :; many
 md hands brought flowers to place
 round his marble form in the cold, still
 oom where he lay, and pious voices an-
 :eTei to the prayers that ascended from
 s graveside.
 Could her baby die without those cares 2 ias ii to be So different Io~? Th2: hot,
 Daring sun 1; that sultry silence, broken
 aiy by the chink of money and occa- aonal oaths from the gaming tent near p; no mother, no kind hand to hold lers when those little ones had become e'e,er chilled. And the grave She saw
 sain the scene Of its birth all the care
 ad love that had guarded her then 1; then foable followed and loss of their little Aeans; thea the black night, in which,