The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1888-08-02

notwithstanding miner known as the
possessor of $1,000 was regarded as very well
of by his contemporaries, who seldom counted
so they called their own.
The land in 1860 was full of the poorest. i'm
telligent and educated white men on the face
of the earth. There was good reason for the
frequent poverty bars and ''poverty hills"
one then found tLe.c. These men lived year
| after year in squaid cabins. There was little
attempt to ornament them. A pair of blue
blankets. frying pan, coffee pot and the hum
biest table furniture might constitute the bulk
OF their worldly wealth. There was no induce
ment to make permanent home. They had
come to scratch what gold they could from the
SOL and get back with it as quickly as possible.
In this frame and determination Of mind they
STAYED year after year. OF these some were
men of sObriety and regular habits, and more
were not. think the hard drinkers and the
'>hiftless" were the luckiest. They ''changed
their base" more often than the steady and
temperate. If the latter pitched on a poor
claim they would stick to it. That often meant
sticking to bad luck. OF four men who struck
it rich at or near my locality all were ''hard
characters If Satan did lure the crowd to
California. he seemed to favor his own there.
There vas Jim Cole. of Hawkins Bar. Cole
seldom allowed sobriety to get the best of him.
tie rarely had over fifty cents in cash in his
pocket at once. lived, as he expressed it, for
months ION the smell of an oil rag" and struck
| it rich every three years. From ground that
|
worked out, Cole would bring to earth new
treasure ont of some overlooked corner. Then
he took his dust to the nearest camp, sold it,
put fifteen or twenty twenty-dollar pieces in
| his pocket, treated the crowd, went into a
! whisky oblivion, walked therefrom in three or
four days penniless. borrowed dollar from
the proprietor of the Phoenix saloon, got bot
tie of cocktails on trust. and logged back over
Red mountain to his solitary cabin, apparently
serene and contented.
/ o. I ~.
lit on in 1919. lie was the only man there.
| Eighteen years before the Bar boosted one
thousand voters. Coles cabin was but fifty
| feet from the camp graveyard. lie knew all
who lay there. His nearest neiyhbor was two
miles distant.
whisky drinking crowd at Indian Bar. They
were river bank diggers. without any regular
! claim. They worked here to-day and there to-
morrow as the ground paid. They were a
>hiftless crew, and reproach to the camp.
! Their leader. Pat McGurk was true born
rui!an. He thrashed his three followers and
! partners about once week, and apparently
| for this reason they stuck to him. These gen.
tlemen were not after ''big thing" They
were pccking away at the river bank. content
| with making grub and whisky money!"
when one day they struck an old channel of
| the Tuolumnc, back in the bowels of a noun
tain. 1t was very rich-aggravatingIy rich to
those of lis who had walked over it for wears
and deemed it valueless. 1t gave McGurk's
crowd more prosperity than they could stand.
| Prosperity with them meant plenty Of whisky.
think it took about four years to finish off all
but McGuirk with deirum tremens, more
commonly known in our parts as the ''snakes."
But Mctiurk survived. Saten held him in too
high esteem to allow him to perish premature
y. The claim panned out about 5000, 600, most
of which went into the pocket Of hard work
ing. thrifty Massachusetts, man, who bought
McGuirk out made his fortune and was at his
wit>-end to know what to do with himself on
finding he had no longer to work for living.
He, too. would have died, but fortunately a
woman sued him for breach of promise. This
gave his mind needed exercise and kept him
from ru>ting to death
An agreeable loafer went one day out of the
town of Columbia. seated himself under tree,
prodded in the ground with a stick, and prod
ded ont a $4,000 lump of gold. He would
never have prodded to such purpose had he
been an industrious. steady going man who
would stick patiently. perseveringy and pro-
pcrly to one thing. This golden lump made of
him for time respectable parsonage. and his
opinions on divers subjects were held by the
community at large in much higher repute the
day after his find.
Near lone trail in Mariposa county, 4 wan
derlnS miner seated himself on a ledge of rock,
ate his dinner and smoked his pipe. Looking
lndlflerently at the rock he saw gold in it. He
had seated himself on a fortune.
These facts came under my own limited field
for observation. Any old gold miner can ill
you full of them. The aggregate would fill
large volume. Ii seems to show that at times
and iii some localities. industry. perseverance
and temperate habits do not always bring what
is expected from their exercise.
do not believe the average Tor the California
gold digger since 1919 would amount to 81 Der
day. and do believe that the frtlitess labor en-
pended there would have built two railroads
reaching from the Pacific to the Atlantic. and
civ an as..Il l-.p t1,a,
farm in California, where the labor of one wear
devoted to cultvating the soil will yield results
It would take five years TO accomplish in the
New England states. There is vacant land
enough now on the foothills of the Sierre
NeHadas to give comfortable homes to million
of people. and on this land YOU can grow the
apple and the orange from the same acre
PRENTICE MULFoRD