The Press., 1891-07-30

' E0&A1G0u LlffAt was SO-
 s1 ing found to my sur
 sA3 prise that had made a
 70 home in California, that
 ' it was an old home and
 ~8E S about it chung all the memories and associations of an old home.
 wanted to visit the mines and take a farewell look at the camps where had lived and worked in period now fast becoming Told times. and Istraightway went. .s~r ,,
 The term antiquity is relative in its character. Twenty years may involve an antiquity as much as two hundred or two thousand. Indeed, as regards sen sation and emotion, the more recent an- Hquity is the more strongly is it realized and more keenly felt. Standing today on the hillside and looking down on the site of, the camp where you mined twenty-five years ago. and then going down that hill and treading oyer. that site, now silent and deserted, and you realize, 50 to speak, live antiquity So far as ancient Greece or Rome are con cerned. their histories would make no different impression on us if dated six hundred years ago or six thousand. We arc imposed upon by these rows of ci- phers. They convey really no sense of times duration. They are but mathe- nautical sounds. We know only that these nations and these men and women lived, ate, slept, drank, quarreled, GOV eted, loved, hated and died long time ere we were born, and that Of it all we have but fragments of their history, or rather fragments of the history of a few prominent individuals. &xs 2sE$<E
 But when you stand alone at Dry Bar, where you mined when it was a lively camp in 1857, with it's score of muddy sluice streams coursing hither and thither, its stores, its saloons, its hotel and its express office, and see now but one rotting pine log cabin, whose roof has tumbled in and whose sides have tumbled out; where all about is silent waste of long worked off banks or bare ledge and piles of powders in which the herbage has taken root; where every mark of the former houses and cabins has disappeared, save a mound here, or pile of stone indicating former chim- ney there, you have lively realization of antiquity, though it be a recent one. You knew the menwho lived here; you worked with them. You know the sites of the houses in which they lived; you have an event and memory for every acre of territory hereabout. Down there, where the river narrows between those two high points of rock, once stood a rickety bridge. It became more and more shaky and dangerous, until one day, Tom w harton, the justice of the peace. fired by Ia desire pro bono publico and rather more than his ordinary quan- 'tity of whisky, cnt the bridge away with his ax, and t Aoated down stream. Over yonder, On that sandy point, was the richest claim oh the Bar.
 Will you go, down to the Pot Hole Bar, two miles Below? The trail ran by theriVer; But freshet after freshet has rushed over the bank and dwiped out the track made by~the footprints of few years. There is no trace of the trail. The chaparral has grown over and quite closed it up. Here and there is 8 faint trace, and then it brings up short against young pine or 8 buckeye, the growth of the last ten years. Yet in former days this path ranked in your mind of the importance of town street. You had no idea how quickly nature, if left alone, will restore things to what we term primitive conditions"
 If a great city was deserted in these foothills, within twenty years time the native growths would creep down and in upon it, start plantations of chaparral in the streets, festoon the houses with vines, while winged seeds would fill the gutters and cornices with verdure. It is hard struggle through the undergrowth to Pot Hole Bar. No man lives there now. No man goes there. Even the powder piles and bare lodges of fifteen years ago, marking, the scarifying work of your race on mother earth's face, are now mounds overgrown with weeds. What solitude of ancient ruined cities equals this? Their former thousands are nothing to you as individuals, but you knew all the boys at Pot Hole. It was a favorite after supper trip from Dry Bar to Pot Hole to see how the '.boys" were getting on, and vice versa from Pot Hole to Dry Bar. .-.......---..--.
 A cottontai1 rabbit sends a Hash of white through the bushes. His family now inhabits Pot Hole. They came back after all of your troublesome race had left, and very glad were the ''cot- tontails" of theariddance. There is 8 broken shovel at your feet, and near by in the long grass you see the fragment of 8 sluice's false bottom, bored through with auger holes to catch the gold, and worn quite thin by the attrition of peb- ble and powder along it's upper surface. This is about the only vestige of the miners former work. Stopl On the hillside yonder is moundlike elevation, and beyond that 8 long green raised line. One marks the reservoir and tho other the ditch. .~- ~y~ j. .-,.,-,--. L: 1t was the. Pot Hole company's reaer- evoir, built after they had concluded to take water from the ditch and wash of point of gravel jutting toward the river. They had washed ii. all of by 1858, and then the company disbanded and went their respective ways Pot Hole lay yveryquiet for couple of years. but little doing there save rocker wash- ing for grub and whisky by four or five men who had concluded that tsgrub and whisky were about all in life worth Hv- ing for. A "slouchy" crowd, prone to bits Of rope to tie up their suspenders, unshaven faces, and not Sunday suit among them. l&tJ&Ss<S a&SE
 They have long since gone. They are scattered for the most part you know not where. Two are living in San Francispo and are now men Of might and mark. Another you have heard of far away in the eastern states, living in