The Press., 1891-05-21

was in dimensions not more than 12 by 15 feet, and in height two stories. Within it was partitioned off into rooms not much larger than dry goods boxes. The railways were just wide enough to squeeze through, and very dark. It was intensely labyrinthian, and Keen was always making it moro so by devising new additions. No white man ever did know exactly where the structure began or ended. Keen was a merchant, deal ing principally in gin, fish and opium. His store was involved in this curious dwelling, all of his own construction.
 In the store there was counter. Be- hind it there was just room for Keen to sit down, and in front there was just room enough for the customer to turn around. When Keen was the merchant he looked imposing in an immense pair of Chinese spectacles When he shook his rocker in the bank he took off these spectacles. He was a large consumer of his own gin. once asked him for the amount of his weekly allowance. ''Me tink," said he, "one gallun hap" (half). From the upper story of the castle pro- truded huge spear head. It was made by the local blacksmith, and intended as menace to the Mexican bandits. As they grew bolder and more threatening. Keen sent down to San Francisco and purchased a lot of old pawnshop revolv- CTS. These being received, military preparation and drill went on for several weeks by Keen and his forces. He prac- ticed at target shooting, aimed at the mark with both eyes shut, and for those in it's immediate vicinity with a most ominous and threatening waver of the arm holding the weapon. It was proph- esied that Keen would kill somebody with that pistol. None ever expected that he would kill the proper person. Yet he did.
 One night an alarm was given. Keen's castle was attacked. The "boys," hear ing the disturbance, grabbed their rifles and pistols and sallied from the store. The robbers, finding themselves in a hornets nest, ran. By the uncertain light of a waning moon the Bar was seen covered with Chinamen gabbling and men were swimming. Keen, from the bank, pointed his revolver at one, shut his eyes and fired. One of the men crawled out of the water and tulnbled in a heap among the powders. The ''boys" crossed, and found there strange white man, with Keen's bullet through his backbone.
 experienced about the narrowest es- cape of my life ill a boat during a freshet on the Tuolunne crossing. I counted myself a good river boatman, and had just ferried over Swett's Bar miner. He had come to purchase a gallon of the native juice of the grape, which was then grown, pressed and sold at Red Mountain Bar. When he crossed with me he was loaded with it. Some of it was outside of him in demijohn and some of it was inside. Indeed, it was in- side of us both. l set him across all right. On returning, by taking advan- tage of a certain eddy one could be rushed up stream counter to the current coming'down for a quarter of mile, and at a very rapid rate. It was very exciting thus to be carried in an oppo- site direction, within ten feet of the great billowy swell coming down. It was a sort of sliding down hill without l the trouble of drawing ones sled up again. So I went up and down the 1 stream. The Red mountain wine mean time was working. Night came on, a glorious moon arose over the mountain tops, and l kept sliding up and down the | Tuolumne. I became more daring and l careless, so that suddenly in the very | fury of the mid-stream pillows I slipped | off the stern sheets at sudden dip of l the boat and fell into the river. was heavily clad in fannels and mining boots.
 l Of my stay under water I recollect only the thought, "You're in for it this 1 time. This is no common baptism. |" The next knew was clinging to rock | half mile below the scene of the sub- mergence. I had been swept under water through the Willow Bar, the walls of whose rocky channel, chiseled by the current of centuries, were narrower at the top than on the river bed, and through which the waters swept in a succession of boils and whirlpools. Wet and dripping, tramped to the nearest cabin, mile and a half distant, and staid there that night. Red Mountain Bar, on seeing the mishap, gave me up for lost-all but one man, who was mega tive on that point, for the reason, as he alleged, that was not destined to make the final exit by water. reappeared the next morning at the Bar. When I told the boys that had been swept through the Willow Bar they instituted comparisons of similarity in the matter 1 oG l>o -% of old. It was the current impression that no man could pass through the Will low Bar alive.
 Chinese. Camp, five miles distant, stood ss the metropolis for Red Mountain Bar. It contained but few hundred people. Yet in our estimation at that time 1t bore the same relative importance that New York does to some agricultural will lage hundred miles away. Chinese Camp meant restaurants, where we could revel in the luxury of eating meal we were not obliged to prepare ourselves, a luxury none can fully appreciate save those who have served for years as their own cooks. Chinese Camp meant sa- looms, palatial as compared with the Bar groggery; it meant daily mail and communication with the great world without; it meant hotels, where strange faces might be seen daily; it meant, per haps, above all, the nightly fandango. When living for months and years in such out-of-the-way hooks and corners as Red Mountain Bar, and as were thou sands of now forgotten and nameless flats, gulches and bars in California, cut off from all regular communication with the world, where the occasional passage ! of some stranger is an event, the limited stir and hustle of such place as Chinese Camp assumed an increased importance and interest.
 Chinese Camp justice presided at our lawsuits. Chinese Camp was the Mecca to which all hands resorted for the grand b1oxv mt at the close of the river mining