Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-09-14
GOING HOME.

"
body In the mines and the mountains meant
TO stay there Still many good man staid.
But all along through the first fifteen
or twenty years If every man who wanted
20 go home could have gone there would
have been nothing left in the Sierras but
graves, heaps Of gravel, prospect holes and
battered old picks, shovels, toms, rockers,
boots. broken bottles and soon. The whole
land would have been as quiet and empty
mp there as a dead mans hand.
But years later, when men left Califor-
MIA, still fortune hunting, and went to the
northern mines, they somehow forgot all
about the old world, and when fortune
found them they came back to California
10 live and 10 die There was nothing,
however, very dramatic in this short, safe
return from the northern mines in the
days of stages. steamers and railroads
back to the Golden Gate. Still il was an
event and was enjoyed by all most heart
lily in each camp. And il always seemed
70 me that the men who took the deepest
and tenderest interest in the going home"
Of one Of their number were the very men
who were most helpless aud most incapa-
BILE of reaching this one desired end.
| know that when il began to be whis-
pered about that Fred Adams, Of Canyon
City, had made his pile" and was going
home there was Joy ia the heart of many a
gray headed man who knew right well IL
would never be said Of him that he had
made his pile and that he was going
home" And when Fred Adams quietly
slipped ont Of camp down TO q friends
house and staid all night and weighed
hts gold dust there on the butchers scales
before starting at daybreak the next morn
ing, and when the news came back TO town
that the dust weighed wen nigh TO hum
dred pounds, | tell You there were tears of
delight In many an Oil mans eyes at
thought Of Fred's good fortune. We
called him Fred Adams up there, but
his name il Judge Adams by title and
right, and he is now one Of the rich big
lawyers Of San Francisco.
The first going home" ever saw was
on Humbug creek. northern California. in
the winter Of 1854. tell you il took men
OF grit to get there The towards had
never started there, and the weak died ON
the way, so they were a powerful and Sc
lect lot Of men, and it took nerve, time
and dust, too, TO get away from there,
Think OF it! Ten miles on foot over a
mountain of snow to Yreka, then hundreds
OF miles through the savages by mule TO
Portland, then a sailing vessel to San
Francisco, then the steamer Panama, New
Orleans, up the Mississippi. and so on.
I had been blown into this canyon at the
forks of the Humbug, as bird. by the
winter storms, and had to bridge over a
mighty hard place as cook for my board.
But the provisions gave out pretty soon
and had to go. Then Frank Campbell.
brother Of the late BARLEY Campbell,
dramatist and member Of the legislature
when last heard from, got me a place TO
sit up with miner, who had been hurt in
q slide. got no wages, but IA had TO sit
mp at night ard 80 didn't need bed. and
as the man was too badly hurt to eat the
meals sent him from the hotel, / did not
suffer, but soon made friends with the
poor man by reading to him. Lots Of
miners used to drop in after night and
smoke and listen. The book was Harrison
Ainsworth's novels all bound up together.
"Dick TurpiD," Jack Sheppard" and so
on. Never had man or boy such listeners.
And when /, thirty years later, told dear old
Ainsworth in London how be had been read
and listened to in the heart Of the Sierras
he nearly crushed my hand In his two
hands But this Is scattering birdshot.
Let us 20 forward.
II is marvellous how ignorant those men
were They were from what was then the
'border," largely Missourians, and
doubt IL one-balf Of them could write their
names. know right well what say, for
wrote many letters for them OF course
there were other men there from other
countries. Pat Flanagan, for instance,
who kept the store. From France, do you
sayf No, he was a white Irishman, with
a very black beard, and now is the rich
and influential president of the Coos Bay
bank. He was very popular then, az be Is
still, reckon, and seeing the dismal f9no-
rance Of the miners he aud Frank Camp
bell set committee TO work TO get up O
public library" And this is one Of It's
methods; The secretary tackled up the fol
lowing notice on the door of the saloon
known as The Howlin Wilderness:
know ak men that emmy book in this
ere camp belongs TO the publick library
except the holy bibel, and emmy man found
gilty Of taking emmy book except said bibel
will be hung for horse stealing 50 help me
god. (Sighned) The iibrarion of bored Of
directors and secretary Of said library"
The result was, a preacher who went
away as provisions got short left behind
q copy Of Josephus. This made three
books in the library now and Pat Elan
nigan employed me at $3.50 a day, or
rather an hour, for the man could not
stand more, to go up the creek and read
Josephus, to a sick miner there. you
see he has got the scurvy and Rheumatism
and consumption; I'm afraid he's pretty
sick" said Pat pathetically as we APP
preached the low little cabin under the
dark FIR trees on the hillside.
SIS Josephus the short for Joseph"
asked the long, slim aud bony man, who
lay there with his big. bent and knotty
feet sticking far out from under the blan'
kets and over the pole that served for a
footboard.
"Yis, yis, sorr; Josephus Ia the shorrut
- T-..-h 0.ko ,.,of bov 10