class or condition of men in the East. They were of every nationality
where news of gold-mines, of free settlers' sections, or of quick
fortunes in the New World had penetrated. I recognized Greeks, Finns,
Hungarians, Danes, Scotch, English, Irish, and Italians among them. Not
a man exhibited a coat, and all were tanned brown, and were as spare and
slender as excessively hard work can make a man. There was not a
superfluity or an ornament in sight as they walked past me; not a
necktie, a finger-ring, nor a watch-chain. There were some very
intelligent faces and one or two fine ones in the band. Two typical
old-fashioned prospectors especially attracted me. They were evidently
of gentle birth, but time and exposure had bent them, and silvered their
long, unkempt locks. Worse than all, it had planted in their faces a
blended expression of sadness and hope fatigued that was painful to see.
It is the brand that is on every old prospector's face. A very few of
the men were young fellows of thirty, or even within the twenties. Their
youth impelled them to break away from the table earlier than the
others, and, seizing their rods, to start off for the fishing in the
river.
But those who thought of active pleasure were few indeed. Theirs was
killing work, the most severe kind, and performed under the broiling
sun, that at high mountain altitudes sends the mercury above 100 on
every summer's day, and makes itself felt as if the rarefied atmosphere
was no atmosphere at all. After a long day at the drill or the pick or
shovel in such a climate, it was only natural that the men should, with
a common impulse, seek first the solace of their pipes, and then of the
shake-downs in their tents. I did not know until the next morning how
severely their systems were strained; but it happened at sunrise on that
day that I was at my ablutions on the edge of the river when Dan Dunn's
gong turned the silent forest into a bedlam. It was called the
seven-o'clock alarum, and was rung two hours earlier than that hour, so
that the men might take two hours after dinner out of the heat of the
day, "else the sun would kill them," Dunn said. This was apparently his
device, and he kept up the transparent deception by having every clock
and watch in the camp set two hours out of time.
With the sounding of the gong the men began to appear outside the little
tents in which they slept in couples. They came stumbling down the
bluff to wash in the river, and of all the pitiful sights I ever saw,
they presented one of the worst; of all the straining and racking and
exhaustion that ever hard labor gave to men, they exhibited the utmost.
They were but half awakened, and they moved so painfully and stiffly
that I imagined I could hear their bones creak. I have seen spavined
work-horses turned out to die that moved precisely as these men did. It
was shocking to see them hobble over the rough ground; it was pitiful to
watch them as they attempted to straighten their stiffened bodies after
they had been bent double over the water. They gained erectness by slow
jolts, as if their joints were of iron that had rusted. Of course they
soon regained whatever elasticity nature had left them, and were
themselves for the day--an active, muscular force of men. But that early
morning sight of them was not such a spectacle as a right-minded man
enjoys seeing his fellows take part in.
THE END
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=Transcriber's Notes:=
original hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in
the original
Page 7, "doctor's workshop" changed to "doctor's workshop."
Page 29, "he in vented concerning" changed to "he invented concerning"
Page 33, "through why it was" changed to "though why it was"
Page 110, "Nine times in-ten" changed to "Nine times in ten"
Page 156, "mainland" changed to "main-land" [Ed. for consistency]
Page 169, "to get baffalo meat" changed to "to get buffalo meat"
Page 238, "that we be come" changed to "that we become"
Page 282, "two-and-a half" changed to "two-and-a-half"