The Press., 1891-05-07

heart of some old Californian; for the life and incident of the bars I describe reflect in certain respects the life, his tory and incident of hundreds and thou sands of places settled in 49, and per haps abandoned by 50, which have now no name or place on the later maps of the state. Your genuine old miner likes to revisit the camp where first he dug for gold, in thought if not in person. It was no common affection they enter tained for these places.
 If the. "boys" moved away to other diggings they had always to make a yearly pilgrimage back, so long as the camp lasted. So, yearly from Vallecito, thirty miles distant, used Jake Wager to revisit Swett's, and he tramped the whole distance too. What was it that SO drew them back? Perhaps the mem ory of the new and exciting life they experienced from '49 say till '58 or 50, with it's "ups and downs," its gilt tering surprises in the shape of strikes" it's conradeship soon so developed among men who, meeting as strangers, so soon found out each others better qualities, it's freedom from the restraints of older communities, it's honesty and plainness in the expression of opinion, engendered by such freedom. All these thought over and over again during absence brought about that strong desire to see the old bar again, the scene of so much experience and private history. Then the visitor always met a hearty welcome. He was an old "residenter." Cabin own CTS contended for the pleasure of enter taining him. No wives or families were in the way. Conviviality was uninter- rupted.
 If black bottle could be produced it could be worshiped undisturbed until long past midnight. And such was al- ways produced on the return of the old acquaintance. When the "boys" at last tumbled into their hunks and smoked 8 nightcap pipe abed there was no wife in special charge of husband to molest or make them afraid or disturb their in- ternal peace by reason of her near pres ence. Those were the golden seasons of masculine domestic tranquility on the banks of the Tuolumne. Woman never disturbed the bar proper with her pres ence. It was always masculine bar, at least on the right bank of the river. On the left, at later date, on flat, where enjoyed the privilege of digging for next to nothing for two years, there did live for time three foreign house holds glorifed by woman's presence. But this was after the palmy days of Swett's Bar proper, right bank.
 l have heard that Swett's Bar was named after John Swett, once superin- !. tendent of, public instruction in Cali fornia. If so, he, never there left any relics or reminders of himself even a grammar. Swett's lies equidistant from Hawkins and Indian bars. When last 1 passed through it the floods had washed out every trace of mans pres ence on one side of the river, leaving there an enormous heap of logs and brushwood. The bar proper had been smoothed down by the flood, every hole or powder heap, or heap of "head- ings" or ''tailings," or the deep pits dug and laboriously kept free of water by machinery, or heavily rock freighted crib of logs, the work of miners in the rivers bed, had been planed away. The peb- bles and powders had all been rear ranged, the sands were smooth, white and glistening as though "fresh from the Creators hands," and none save those conversant with the rivers history could have guessed that every foot of the bank adjoining the river had been turned over and over again in the search for gold.
 We elected one member of the legis- lature from Swett's. When he left the Bar he distributed his cabin, blankets, and household effects among the remain ing miners. He confidently thought never to need these articles again. That was as great miscalculation as when.a Swett's Bar or any other bar miner would resolve and swear violently that never again would he "strike pick" in the river. We came to regard such an oath with 8 superstitious credulity that he certainly would strike such pick again, for never did such case occur in my recollection but that the mad resolver was back next season, ignoring his VOW and striking his pick on some claim gen. orally poorer than the one he worked the season previous. So at the end of four months, after cumbering the law books of the state of California with statutes, whose very existence was forgotten eight months after their passage, our Swett's Bar legislator was seen one even- ing coming down the hill bearing in one hand two whisky bottles tied together by one string-one being empty and the other full. *e#
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