Not in all California--not even in the grandly glorious valley among
the cliffs and gorges of the famed Yosemite, can be found a wilder
scene than that exhibited where the Feather River breaks in furious
haste through an awful chasm in the Sierra Nevada. A friend, a dear
friend, who mined there for years, has described it over and over, and
talked to me about it till I can hear the eternal roar of the white
waters, feel the very cliffs shake with the dizzy dash and whirl of its
cataracts--look down on the eddies where gold, washed from the veins
above which may never be reached by mortal hand, has been accumulating
for centuries.
While our fair heroine was sleeping, taking the rest which nature
needed, in a small log cabin on a little shelf of rock and ground just
above where the Feather River broke in wild grandeur through the gorge,
before a fire made from the limbs of trees cast on shore by the torrent
in a whirling eddy just below, a young man sat, with a weary look on
his fine, intellectual face, looking into the fire.
Mining tools--a pick, shovels, crowbars, and hose--crucibles also,
empty and full flasks of quicksilver, with many other signs, told
that this man, young and slender, and not well fitted for toil, was
a searcher for the gold with which those eternal hills, that rushing
stream, are liberally stocked.
Fishing-rods and tackle, a double-barreled shotgun, and a
repeating-rifle stood in one corner of the cabin, showing that in the
water and among the hills the young man was prepared to find the food
which is so plentiful there, and was not dependent on the far-away
stores of Oroville, Marysville, or Sacramento, from which many of the
miners drew supplies.
Though this man was young--not over five-and-twenty years of age--there
was a weary look in his pale, handsome face, which made him look older.
Light-brown hair curled in heavy masses on his shapely head and fell
far down on his shoulders, and his beard, a soft, silken brown, not
heavy, but long, told that no tonsorial hand had touched it for many
months.
“It will be three years to-morrow,” he said. “Three years to-morrow
since I looked upon her in her glorious pride and beauty--three years
to-morrow since the hour when, madly disgraced by my own folly and the
wild passion for strong drink, which has ruined millions of better men
than I, I stood before her to hear my sentence, to be told to go from
her presence and never to return till she recalled me, which she would
only do when she knew I had forever conquered an appetite that had
debased my manhood and froze all the love she had given me--a love, oh,
so precious, so priceless, so pure!
“Wild with rage and disappointment, I tore myself away and fled with
the adventurous throng to this El Dorado, but I dared not stay where
men were and strong drink abounded. I wandered on and on until I
could go no farther, and here, the highest claim upon this mad river,
I fixed my home. Here have I toiled month after month, year after
year, increasing my golden store slowly and surely, but, best of all,
conquering that base appetite which lost heaven on earth for me, when
its gates were wide open.
“No beverage but that sparkling drink, which the hand of the Father
gives to man for his good, has passed my lips for these three long
years--water, blessed water, has strengthened my brain and given health
to my body.
“And now, confident in myself, I would go back and redeem my errors--go
back to claim the hand which had long, long ago been mine but for mine
own sin. Why will she not bid me come? I have written three times,
and have told her I am free from the chains of the demon now; that I
have wealth enough to satisfy all reasonable desire, and she has only
written: ‘It is not time--perhaps you do not yet know yourself.’
“Ah! could she but see me in this solitude--here where I have lived
alone so long--not a visitor, for I have kept my claim and home a
secret when I went to the nearest post station, and no one has ever
dared to pass the chasm below, which cuts off this last habitable spot
in the gorge. They have not learned my secret, or they might come, for
the greed for gold makes men dare all dangers.
“The sketch I sent her she received. Here is the single line she sent
in answer:
“‘The picture of your “Home” is here. God help the lone one to keep his
promises.’”
And the young man wept over the letters he held in his hand. At last he
aroused himself.
“Once more I will write to her,” he said; “I will tell her how, apart
from all men, visited by none--for none can reach me till they know the
secret of my path--I have worked and waited, waited and worked.
“Once every three months I go out to carry the gold I have gathered,
and to place it where it will not only be safe but draw an interest
that adds to it all the time. And once every three months I tread
streets where temptation glitters on every side of me; yet I turn from
it all with loathing, and hurry back to my solitude, where my only
company is a memory, ever present, ever dear, of her.
“To-morrow I shall go again, and the deposit I carry now will make my
all--full three hundred thousand dollars. I should be satisfied, but
what else can I do till I am recalled? Work keeps down sad thoughts;
work keeps hope alive; work gives me life and strength to wait.”
He drew up to a rough table made of slabs hewed out by himself, took
writing materials from a shelf overhead, and for a long time wrote
steadily.
He was explaining all his life to her--all his life in those dreary
hills, and praying that she would bid him come back to her with a
renewed and nobler life, chastened by toil and thought, made pure by
temperance in its most severe demands.
At last his letter was finished, folded, enveloped, and then he drew
from his finger a massive ring with a sapphire in the set. Deeply
engraved in the stone was the symbol--two hearts pierced with an arrow.
Dropping the red wax, which he had lighted at the candle, on his
letter, he impressed the seal, and it was ready for its far away
journey.
Now--long after midnight--he threw himself down on his blankets to
sleep.