Arizona republican., 1891-06-07

rne wor1d, 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 blow out at the close of the river mining season. With all their hard work what independent times were those after all! True, claims were uncertain as to yield; hopes of making fortunes had been given over. But so long as $1. 50 or $2 pickings remained on the banks men were com paratively their own masters. There was none of the inexorable demand of busi- ness consequent on situation and employ ment in the great city, where, sick or well, the toilSrs must hie with machine like regularity at the early morning hour to their posts of labor. If the Red Mountaineer didn't "feel like work" in the morning he didn't work. If he pre- ferred to commence digging and washing at 10 in the morning instead of 2, who should prevent him? If, after the morn ing labor, he desired siesta till 3 in the afternoon, it was his to take.
 Of what nature could give there was much at the Bar to make pleasant mans stay on earth, save great deal of cash. We enjoyed a mild climate-no long, hard winters to provide against; a soil that would raise almost any vegetable, a necessity or luxury. with very little labor; grapes or figs, apples or potatoes; land to be had for the asking; water for irrigation accessible on every hand; plenty of pasture room; no crowding. A quarter of section of such soil and climate within forty miles of New York city would be worth millions. Contrast such land with the bleak hills about Boston, where half the year is spent in struggle to provide for the other half. Yet we were all anxious to get away. Our heaven was not at Red Mountain. Fortunes could not be digged there. We spent time and strength in a scramble for few ounces of yellow metal, while in the spring time the wales and hillsides covered with flowers argued in vain that they had the greatest rewards for oul picks and shovels. But none listened. We groveled in the mud and stones of the oft worked bank. Yearly it respond ed less and less to our labors. One by one the "old timers" left.
 The boarding house of Dutch Bill at the farther end of the Bar long stood empty, and the meek eyed and subtle Chfnaman stole from its sides board after board; the sides skinned of, they took joist after joist from the framework. None ever saw them so doing. Thus silently and rnysteriously, like a melting snowbank, the great ramshackle board. ing house disappeared, until naught was left save the chimney. And that also vanished brick by brick. All of which material entered into the composition and construction of that irregularly built, smoke tanned conglomerate of Chinese huts clustered near the Keen Fam castle.
 "Old Grizzly" McFarlane went away So did Bloody Bill. So the Bars popula tion dwindled. Fewer travellers, dotlike, were seen climbing the steep trail oei Red mountain. Miller, the Chinese CamI news agent, who, with mail bags well filled with the New York papers, had for years cantered from Red mountain to Morgan's Bar, emptying his sack as he went at the rate of fifty and twenty five cents per sheet, paid the Bar his last visit and closed out the newspaper business there forever. Then the county supervisors abolished it as an election precinct, and its name no longer figured in the returns. No more after the vote was boiled and the result known did the active and ambitious partisan mount his horse and gallop over the mountain tc Sonora, the county seat, twenty miles away, to deliver the official count, signed, sealed and attested by the local Red mountain election inspectors. Finally the Bar dwindled to Thompson, Keen Fam and his Mongolian band. Then Thompson left. Keen Fam grieved at losing his friend and protector. He came on the eve of departure to the dis mantled store. Tears were in his eyes He presented Thompson with basket of tea and a silver half dollar, and bade him farewell in incoherent and intrans latable words of lamenting polyglot English. PRENTICE MULFoRD