The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1892-09-13
GOING HOME.

He is going home! Going homel That
was the climax of his California dream: the
end of the play-and the work: why. no
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
to 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 so on. The whole
land would have been az quiet and empty
up there as 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
to live and to die. There was nothing.
however, very dramatic In this short, safe
return from the northern mines In the
Gays or stages, steamers and railroads
back to the Golden Gate. Still 1t was an
event and was enjoyed by all most heart
ny IN each camp. And it always seemed
10 me that the men who took the deepest
ana tenderest interest in the ''going home"
or ono OF their number were the very men
Die OF reaching this one desired end.
l know that when it began to be vbIs.
pered about that Fred Adams, of Canyon
City, had made his pile" and was nolnu
nome there was Joy in the heart of many q
gray headed man who knew right we'll It
would never be said of him that he Ind
made his pile and that he was "coinp
home" And when Fred Adams onietIv
slipped out of camp down to a friends
house and staid all night and weighed
his gold dust there on the butchers scales
before starting Mt daybreak the next morn
ing, and when the news came back to town
that the dust weighed well nigh to a hun
dred pounds, tell you there were tears of
delight In mnny an old mans ewes nj
thought of Fred's good fortune. We
called him Fred Adams I'D there. but
his namo Is Judge Adams by title and
right, and ho is now one Of the rich bio
lawyers Of San Francisco.
The first going homo" ever saw was
on Humbug creek. northern California in
the winter of 1854. 1 tell you it took men
OF grit to get there The towards had
never started there. and the weak died on
tho way SO they We're powerful and Sc
iect lot OF men, and 1t took nerve, time
and dust, too, to get away from there
Think Of It'll 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.
had been blown into this CANYON ut tho
forks OF the Humbug, as a bird. by the
winter storms. and had to bridge over a
mighty hard place rs 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 lepislatu,,.
when last heard from. got me a place TO
SIT up with miner, who had been hurt in
a slide got no wages, but us had to sit
up at night and so didn't need a bed and
as the man was too badly hurt to eat the
meals sent him from the hotel, 1 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 Turpip," Jack Sheppard" and so
on. Never had man or boy such listeners
And when l, thirty years later, told dear old
A1nsworth In London how he had been read
and listened to In the heart of the Sierras
he nearly crushed my hand In his two
Let us go forward.
1t is marvellous how ignorant those men
were. They were from what was then the
border" largely Mssourians, and
doubt If one-half of them could write their
names. know right we'll what I say. for
wrote many letters for them. or course
there were other men there from other
countries. Pat Flanagan, for instance.
who kept the store. From France, do Won
says No, he was white Irishman. with
very black beard, and now is the rich
and influential president of the Coos BAY
bank. lie was very popular then. as no is
still. reckon, and seeing the dismal igno-
rance of the miners he and Frank Camn-
bell set q committee to work to get nm q
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 all men that emmy book in this
ere camp belongs to the publick library
except tho holy bibel, and emmy man found
gilty OF taking emmy book except said bibcl
will be hung for horse stealing so help me
god. (Sighned) The librarion of bored of
directors and secretary of snid library"
The result was, preacher who went
away as provisions got short left behind
copy of Joscphus. This made three
books In the library now, and Pat Elan
nigan employed me at $3.50 day, or
rather an hour, for the man could not
stand more, to go up the creek and read
Josephus, to q sick miner there. "You
see he has got the scurvy and rheumatism
and consumption; Pm afraid he's pretty
SICK" said Pat pathetically as we ap-
preached the low little cabin under the
dark fir trees on the hillside.
us Josephus the short for Joseph"
asked the long, slim and bony man, who
lay there with his big. bent and knotty
feet sticking far out from under the blan-