to Chinamen, there is abundant pathos. You see it in a hundred towns and
camps where empty buildings in disrepair stand in rows; no nailing up of
blinds or closing of doors hides the vacancy. The cheap squalor of
Chinese streets adds misery to the scene, besides scenting a pure
mountain air with odors of complete wretchedness. Pigs prowl the
streets. Every deserted cabin knows a story of brave, manly effort ended
in bitter failure, and the lingering, stranded men have a melancholy
look as of faint fish the ebb has left to die.
I recall one town into which our party rode at evening. A single family
alone remained, too desperately poor to leave their home; all the other
buildings--church, post-office, the half-dozen saloons, and many
dwellings--standing with wide-open doors, their cloth walls and ceilings
torn down to make squaws’ petticoats.
If our horses in the great, deserted livery stable were as comfortable
as we, who each made his bed on a billiard table, they did well.
With this slow decay the venturous, both good and bad, have drifted off
to other mining countries, leaving most often small cause to regret
them.
Pathos and comedy so tenderly blent can rarely be found as here.
Enterprise has shrunken away from its old belongings; a feeble rill of
trade trickles down the broad channel of former affluence. Those few
49ers who linger ought to be gently preserved for historic specimens,
as we used to care for that cannon-ball in the Boston bricks, or
whatever might remind this youthful country of a past. They are
altogether harmless now, possessing the peculiar charm of lions with
drawn teeth.
Behold this old-school relic, a type known as the real Virginia
gentleman, as of a mild summer twilight he walks along the quiet street,
clad in black broadcloth and spotless linen, a heavy cane hanging by its
curved handle from his wrist. He pauses by the “s’loon,” receiving
respectful salutation from a mild company of bummers who hold him in
awe, and call him nothing less than “Judge.” They omit their habitual
sugar-and-water, and are at pains to swallow as stiff a glass and as
“neat” as their hero.
The Judge is reminded of livelier days by certain unhealed bullet-holes
in ceiling and wall, and recounts for the hundredth time, in chaste
language, the whole affair; and in particular how three-fingered Jack
blew the top of Alabam’s head off, and that stopped it all.
“We buried the six,” the Judge continues, “side and side, and it wasn’t
a week before two of us found old Jack and his partner on the same
limb, and they made eight graves. The ball that made that hole went
through my hat, and I travelled after that for awhile, till the thing
sort of blew over.
“Ah! boys,” he winds up, in tones tremulous with tearful regret, “you
fellows will never see such lively times as we of the early days.”
His tall figure passes on with uncertain gait, stopping at garden fences
here and there to execute one or two old-school compliments for the
ladies who are spending their evenings under vine-draped porches; and
when he takes an easy-chair by invitation, and begins a story laid in
the spring of 50, the Judge is conscious in his heart that the full
saloon veranda is looking and saying, “The _wimmun_ always did like
him.”
The 49 rough, too, still stays in almost every camp. He evaded rope by
joining the “Vigilants,” and has become a safe and fangless wolf in
sheep’s clothing. He found early that he could sponge and swindle a
larger amount from any given community than could be plundered, to say
nothing of the advantages of personal security. But now all these
characters are, God be thanked! few and widely scattered. Our present
census enrolls a safe, honest, reputable population, who respect law and
personal rights, and who, besides, look into the future with a sense of
responsibility and resolve.
It is very much the habit of newly arrived people to link the past and
present too closely in their estimate of the existing status. That
dreadful nightmare of early years is unfortunately, not to say cruelly,
mixed up with to-day. I think this must in great measure account for the
virtuous horror of that saintly army of travellers who write about
California, taking pains to open fire (at sublimely long range) with
their very hottest shot upon the devoted dwellers here. Such bombardment
in large pica, with all the added severity of double-leading, does not
interrupt the Sierra tranquillity; they marry and are given in marriage,
as in the days of Noah, regardless of explosions of many literary
batteries. Nor is this peaceful state altogether because the projectiles
fall short. There are people here who read, and read thoroughly. Can we
think them hyper-sensitive if surprised when, after opening heart and
doors to scribbling visitors, they find themselves held up to ridicule
or execration in unimpeachable English and tasteful typography?
An equally false impression is spread by that considerable class of men
whose courage and energy were not enough to win in open contest there,
and who publicly shake off dust from departing feet, go East in ballast,
and make a virtue of burning their ships, forgetful that for one
waterlogged craft a hundred stanch keels will furrow the Golden Gate.
Between the cruelly superficial criticism of most Eastern writers and
dark predictions from those smug prophets, the physical geographers,
Californians have nothing left them but their own conscious power; not
the poorest reliance in practical business, like building futures, one
should say.
I am not going to deny that even yet there flickers up now and then a
lingering flame of that 49 Inferno. If I did, the lively and
picturesque _auto-da-fé_ of “Austrian George,” the other day, would be
moved to amend me.
We must admit the facts. California people are not living in a tranquil,
healthy, social _régime_. They are provincial,--never, however, in a
local way, but by reason of limited thought. Aspirations for wealth and
ease rise conspicuously above any thirst for intellectual culture and
moral peace. Energy and a glorious audacity are their leading traits.
To the charge of light-hearted gayety, so freely trumpeted by graver
home critics, I plead them guilty. There is nowhere that dull, weary
expression and rayless sedateness of face we of New England are fonder
of ascribing to our tender conscience than to east winds. So, too, are
wanting difficulties of bronchia and lungs, which might inferentially be
symptoms of original sin.
Is Californian cheerfulness due to wide-spread moral levity, or to
perpetual sunshine and green salads through the round year tempting weak
human nature to smile?
I believe it climatic, and humbly offer my tribute to the
thermometer-man, who among many ventures has this time probably stumbled
upon truth.
Let us not grieve because the writers and lecturers have not found
Californian society all their ideals demanded, for (saving always the
dry-bulb readers of past and future) their dictum is confined to
existing conditions. Have they forgotten that these are less potent
factors in development than the impulse, that what a man _is_, is of far
less consequence than what he is _becoming_?
Show these gloomy critics a bare stretch of vulgar Sierra earth, and
they will tell you how barren, how valueless it is, ignorant that the
art of any Californian can banish every grain of sand into the Pacific’s
bottom, and gather a residuum of solid gold. Out of the race of men whom
they have in the same shallow way called common, I believe Time shall
separate a noble race.
Travelling to-day in foot-hill Sierras, one may see the old, rude scars
of mining; trenches yawn, disordered heaps cumber the ground, yet they
are no longer bare. Time, with friendly rain, and wind, and flood,
slowly, surely, levels all, and a compassionate cover of innocent
verdure weaves fresh and cool from mile to mile. While Nature thus
gently heals the humble Earth, God, who is also Nature, moulds and
changes Man.
THE END.