The works of Robert Louis Stevenson

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National Library of Scotland
*B000297139*

Since the issue of the last volume, Mr. Steven-
sorCs readers throughout the world have had to
deplore the tidings of his untimely death. That
event will make no difference in the plan or
progress of this Edinburgh Edition of his zvorks.
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by Mr. Sidney Colvin, with the author''s correc-
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be numbered and signed by Mr. W. B. Blaikie.

January 1895.

Attention may be called to the fact that
pp. 1-106 of the present volume contain matter
hitherto unpublished.

National Library of Scotland
*B000297139*

This Edinburgh Edition consists of

one thousand and thirty-five copies

all numbered

M-MSSM

IrA A

Vo/. III. ofisszie : Jan. i{

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

EDINBURGH EDITION

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

National Library of Scotland

http://www.archive.org/details/amateuremigrantOOstev

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS
VOLUME II

EDINBURGH

PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE FOR

LONGMANS GREEN AND CO : CASSELL AND CO.

SEELEY AND CO : CHAS. SCRIBNER'S SONS

AND SOLD BY CHATTO AND WINDUS

PICCADILLY : LONDON

1895

y'^V"^'-'- •■■■

'J\i^

^•iod^^

THE
AMATEUR EMIGRANT

THE OLD AND NEW
PACIFIC CAPITALS

THE SILVERADO
SQUATTERS

CONTENTS

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

PAGE

I. FROM THE CLYDE TO SANDY HOOK . 5

II. ACROSS THE PLAINS . .107
THE OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

I. MONTEREY . . .167

II. SAN FRANCISCO . . . .192

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS . . .203

THE AMATEUR
EMIGRANT

Part I. Written i&7g, abridged 1894, and now
published for the first time.

Part II. Written 1879, abridged and recast
1883; originally published, Long-
man's Magazine, July and August
1883; reprinted in 'Across the
Plains': Chatto and W%ndus,i?>g2.

CONTENTS

Dedication

PART I

FROM THE CLYDE TO SANDY HOOK

The Second Cabin .... 7

Early Impressions . . . .17

Steerage Scenes . . . .28

Steerage Types . . . .38

The Sick Man . . . .52

The Stowaways . . . .64

Personal Experience and Review . . 81

New York ..... 95

PART II

ACROSS THE PLAINS

Notes by the Way to Council Bluffs . .109

The Emigrant Train . . . .128

3— A I

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

The Plains of Nebraska
The Desert of Wyoming
Fellow- Passengers
Despised Races
To the Golden Gates .

PAGE

138
143
150
156
161

TO

ROBERT ALAN MOWBRA Y STEVENSON

Our JrieridsMp was not only founded before we were horn hy a
community of blood, but is in itself near as old as my life. It
began with our early ages, and, like a history, has been con-
tinued to the present time. Although we may not be old in the
world, we are old to each other, having so long been intimates.
We are now widely separated, a great sea and continent inter-
vening ; but memory, like care, mounts into iron ships and rides
post behind the horseman. Neither time nor space nor enmity
can conquer old qff'ection ; and as I dedicate these sketches, it is
not to you only, but to all in the old country, that I send the
greeting of my heart.

R. L. S.
1879.

PART I

FROM THE CLYDE TO
SANDY HOOK

THE SECOND CABIN

I FIRST encountered my fellow-passengers on the
Broomielaw in Glasgow. Thence we descended the
Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance on
each other as on possible enemies. A few Scan-
dinavians, who had already grown acquainted on
the North Sea, were friendly and voluble over their
long pipes ; but among English speakers distance
and suspicion reigned supreme. The sun was soon
overclouded, the wind freshened and grew sharp as
we continued to descend the widening estuary ; and
with the falling temperature the gloom among the
passengers increased. Two of the women wept.
Any one who had come aboard might have supposed
we were all absconding from the law. There was
scarce a word interchanged, and no common senti-
ment but that of cold united us, until at length,
having touched at Greenock, a pointing arm and a
rush to the starboard bow announced that our ocean
steamer was in sight. There she lay in mid-river,
at the tail of the Bank, her sea-signal flying : a wall
of bulwark, a street of white deck-houses, an aspir-
ing forest of spars, larger than a church, and soon to

7

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

be as populous as many an incorporated town in the
land to which she was to bear us.

I was not, in truth, a steerage passenger. Although
anxious to see the worst of emigrant life, I had some
work to finish on the voyage, and was advised to go
by the second cabin, where at least I should have a
table at command. The advice was excellent; but
to understand the choice, and what I gained, some
outline of the internal disposition of the ship will
first be necessary. In her very nose is Steerage
No. 1, down two pair of stairs. A little abaft,
another companion, labelled Steerage No. 2 and 3,
gives admission to three galleries, two running for-
ward towards Steerage No. 1, and the third aft
towards the engines. The starboard forward gallery
is the second cabin. Away abaft the engines and
below the officers' cabins, to complete our survey of
the vessel, there is yet a third nest of steerages,
labelled 4 and 5. The second cabin, to return, is
thus a modified oasis in the very heart of the steer-
ages. Through the thin partition you can hear
the steerage passengers being sick, the rattle of tin
dishes as they sit at meals, the varied accents in
which they converse, the crying of their children
terrified by this new experience, or the clean flat
smack of the parental hand in chastisement.

There are, however, many advantages for the in-
habitant of this strip. He does not require to bring
his own bedding or dishes, but finds berths and a
table completely if somewhat roughly furnished.
He enjoys a distinct superiority in diet; but this,
8

THE SECOND CABIN

strange to say, differs not only on different ships,
but on the same ship according as her head is to the
east or west. In my own experience, the prin-
cipal difference between our table and that of the
true steerage passenger was the table itself, and
the crockery plates from which we ate. But lest
I should show myself ungrateful, let me recapitu-
late every advantage. At breakfast, we had a
choice between tea and coffee for beverage ; a
choice not easy to make, the two were so sur-
prisingly alike. I found that I could sleep after
the coffee and lay awake after the tea, which is proof
conclusive of some chemical disparity ; and even by
the palate I could distinguish a smack of snuff in
the former from a flavour of boiling and dish-cloths
in the second. As a matter of fact I have seen
passengers, after many sips, still doubting which had
been supplied them. In the way of eatables at the
same meal we were gloriously favoured ; for in
addition to porridge, which was common to all, we
had Irish stew, sometimes a bit of fish, and some-
times rissoles. The dinner of soup, roast fresh beef,
boiled salt junk, and potatoes, was, I believe, exactly
common to the steerage and the second cabin ; only
I have heard it rumoured that our potatoes were of
a superior brand ; and twice a week, on pudding
days, instead of duff, we had a saddle-bag filled with
currants under the name of a plum-pudding. At
tea we were served with some broken meat from the
saloon ; sometimes in the comparatively elegant
form of spare patties or rissoles; but as a general

9

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

thing, mere chicken-bones and flakes of fish neither
hot nor cold. If these were not the scrapings of
plates their looks belied them sorely ; yet we were all
too hungry to be proud, and fell to these leavings
greedily. These, the bread, which was excellent,
and the soup and porridge which were both good,
formed my whole diet throughout the voyage ; so
that except for the broken meat and the convenience
of a table I might as well have been in the steerage
outright. Had they given me porridge again in the
evening, I should have been perfectly contented
with the fare. As it was, with a few biscuits and
some whisky and water before turning in, I kept
my body going and my spirits up to the mark.

The last particular in which the second cabin
passenger remarkably stands ahead of his brother of
the steerage is one altogether of sentiment. In the
steerage there are males and females ; in the second
cabin ladies and gentlemen. For some time after I
came aboard I thought I was only a male ; but in
the course of a voyage of discovery between decks,
I came on a brass plate, and learned that I was still
a gentleman. Nobody knew it, of course. I was
lost in the crowd of males and females, and rigor-
ously confined to the same quarter of the deck.
Who could tell whether I housed on the port or star-
board side of steerage No. 2 and 3 ? And it was only
there that my superiority became practical ; every-
where else I was incognito, moving among my in-
feriors with simplicity, not so much as a swagger to
indicate that I was a gentleman after all, and had

lO

THE SECOND CABIN

broken meat to tea. Still, I was like one with a
patent of nobility in a drawer at home ; and when
I felt out of spirits I could go down and refresh
myself with a look of that brass plate.

For all these advantages I paid but two guineas.
Six guineas is the steerage fare ; eight that by the
second cabin ; and when you remember that the
steerage passenger must supply bedding and dishes,
and, in five cases out of ten, either brings some
dainties with him, or privately pays the steward for
extra rations, the difference in price becomes almost
nominal. Air comparatively fit to breathe, food
comparatively varied, and the satisfaction of being still
privately a gentleman, may thus be had almost for
the asking. Two of my fellow-passengers in the
second cabin had already made the passage by the
cheaper fare, and declared it was an experiment not
to be repeated. As I go on to tell about my steer-
age friends, the reader will perceive that they were
not alone in their opinion. Out of ten with whom
I was more or less intimate, I am sure not fewer
than five vowed, if they returned, to travel second
cabin ; and all who had left their wives behind
them assured me they would go without the com-
fort of their presence until they could afPord to bring
them by saloon.

Our party in the second cabin was not perhaps
the most interesting on board. Perhaps even in
the saloon there was as much good-will and charac-
ter. Yet it had some elements of curiosity. There
was a mixed group of Swedes, Danes, and Norse-

II

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

men, one of whom, generally known by the name
of * Johnny,' in spite of his own protests, greatly
diverted us by his clever, cross-country efforts to
speak English, and became on the strength of that
an universal favourite — it takes so little in this world
of shipboard to create a popularity. There was,
besides, a Scots mason, known from his favourite
dish as ' Irish Stew,' three or four nondescript Scots,
a fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of young
men who deserve a special word of condemnation.
One of them was Scots : the other claimed to be
American ; admitted, after some fencing, that he
was born in England ; and ultimately proved to be
an Irishman born and nurtured, but ashamed to own
his country. He had a sister on board, whom he
faithfully neglected throughout the voyage, though
she was not only sick but much his senior, and
had nursed and cared for him in childhood. In
appearance he was like an imbecile Henry the Third
of France. The Scotsman, though perhaps as big
an ass, was not so dead of heart ; and I have only
bracketed them together because they were fast
friends, and disgraced themselves equally by their
conduct at the table.

Next, to turn to topics more agreeable, we had a
newly married couple, devoted to each other, with a
pleasant story of how they had first seen each other
years ago at a preparatory school, and that very
afternoon he had carried her books home for her. I
do not know if this story will be plain to Southern
readers ; but to me it recalls many a school idyll,

12

THE SECOND CABIN

with wrathful swains of eight and nine confronting
each other stride-legs, flushed with jealousy ; for to
carry home a young lady's books was both a delicate
attention and a privilege.

Then there Avas an old lady, or indeed I am not
sure that she was as much old as antiquated and
strangely out of place, who had left her husband, and
was travelling all the way to Kansas by herself We
had to take her own word that she was married ; for
it was sorely contradicted by the testimony of her
appearance. Nature seemed to have sanctified her
for the single state ; even the colour of her hair was
incompatible with matrimony, and her husband, I
thought, should be a man of saintly spirit and phan-
tasmal bodily presence. She was ill, poor thing;
her soul turned from the viands ; the dirty table-
cloth shocked her like an impropriety ; and the
whole strength of her endeavour was bent upon
keeping her watch true to Glasgow time till she
should reach New York. They had heard reports,
her husband and she, of some unwarrantable disparity
of hours between these two cities ; and with a spirit
commendably scientific, had seized on this occasion
to put them to the proof. It was a good thing for
the old lady; for she passed much leisure time in
studying the watch. Once, when prostrated by
sickness, she let it run down. It was inscribed on
her harmless mind in letters of adamant that the
hands of a watch must never be turned backwards ;
and so it behoved her to lie in wait for the exact
moment ere she started it again. When she imagined

13

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

this was about due, she sought out one of the young
second-cabin Scotsmen, who was embarked on the
same experiment as herself and had hitherto been
less neglectful. She was in quest of two o'clock ;
and when she learned it was already seven on the
shores of Clyde, she lifted up her voice and cried
* Gravy ! ' I had not heard this innocent expletive
since I was a young child ; and I suppose it must
have been the same with the other Scotsmen present,
for we all laughed our fill.

Last but not least, I come to my excellent friend
Mr. Jones. It would be difficult to say whether I
was his right-hand man, or he mine, during the
voyage. Thus at table I carved, while he only
scooped gravy ; but at our concerts, of which more
anon, he was the president who called up performers
to sing, and I but his messenger who ran his errands
and pleaded privately with the over-modest. I knew
I liked Mr. Jones from the moment I saw him. I
thought him by his face to be Scottish ; nor could
his accent undeceive me. For as there is a lingua
franca of many tongues on the moles and in the
feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a free or
common accent among English-speaking men who
follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New
England Port ; from a cockney skipper even a
Scotsman sometimes learns to drop an A ; a word of
a dialect is picked up from another hand in the fore-
castle ; until often the result is undecipherable, and
you have to ask for the man's place of birth. So it
was with Mr. Jones. I thought him a Scotsman
14

THE SECOND CABIN

who had been long to sea ; and yet he was from
Wales, and had been most of his life a blacksmith at
an inland forge ; a few years in America and half a
score of ocean voyages having sufficed to modify his
speech into the common pattern. By his own
account he was both strong and skilful in his trade.
A few years back, he had been married and after a
fashion a rich man ; now the wife was dead and the
money gone. But his was the nature that looks
forward, and goes on from one year to another and
through all the extremities of fortune undismayed ;
and if the sky were to fall to-morrow, I should look
to see Jones, the day following, perched on a step-
ladder and getting things to rights. He was always
hovering round inventions like a bee over a flower,
and lived in a dream of patents. He had with him
a patent medicine, for instance, the composition of
which he had bought years ago for five dollars from an
American pedlar, and sold the other day for a hun-
dred pounds (I think it was) to an English apothe-
cary. It was called Golden Oil ; cured all maladies
without exception ; and I am bound to say that I
partook of it myself with good results. It is a char-
acter of the man that he was not only perpetually
dosing himself with Golden Oil, but wherever there
was a head aching or a finger cut, there would be
Jones with his bottle.

If he had one taste more strongly than another, it
was to study character. Many an hour have we two
walked upon the deck dissecting our neighbours in a
spirit that was too purely scientific to be called un-

15

THE AMATEUH EMIGRANT

kind ; whenever a quaint or human trait shpped out
in conversation, you might have seen Jones and me
exchanging glances ; and we could hardly go to bed
in comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed
the day's experience. We were then like a couple
of anglers comparing a day's kill. But the fish we
angled for were of a metaphysical species, and we
angled as often as not in one another's baskets.
Once, in the midst of a serious talk, each found there
was a scrutinising eye upon himself; I own I paused
in embarrassment at this double detection ; but
Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of
unaffected laughter, and declared, what was the
truth, that there was a pair of us indeed.

i6

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night,
and early on the Friday forenoon we took in our last
batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in Ireland, and
said farewell to Europe. The company was now
complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable
magnetisms, upon the deck. There were Scots and
Irish in plenty, a few Enghsh, a few Americans, a
good handful of Scandinavians, a German or two,
and one Russian ; all now belonging for ten days to
one small iron country on the deep.

As I walked the deck and looked round upon my
fellow-passengers, thus curiously assorted from all
northern Europe, I began for the first time to
understand the nature of emigration. Day by day
throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all
the States, and on to the shores of the Pacific, this
knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. Emi-
gration, from a word of the most cheerful import,
came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is
nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more
pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived
at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man,
3— B 17

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues
forth into hfe, that great battle, to fight for his own
hand. The most pleasant stories of ambition, of
difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are
but as episodes to this great epic of self-help. The
epic is composed of individual heroisms ; it stands
to them as the victorious war which subdued an
empire stands to the personal act of bravery which
spiked a single cannon and was adequately rewarded
with a medal. For in emigration the young men
enter direct and by the shipload on their heritage of
work; empty continents swarm, as at the bo'sun's
whistle, with industrious hands, and whole new
empires are domesticated to the service of man.

This is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to
consist mostly of embellishments. The more I saw
of my fellow-passengers, the less I was tempted to
the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were
below thirty ; many were married and encumbered
with families ; not a few were already up in years ;
and this itself was out of tune with my imaginations,
for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young.
Again, I thought he should oifer to the eye some
bold type of humanity, with bluff or hawk-like
features, and the stamp of an eager and pushing
disposition. Now those around me were for the
most part quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family
men broken by adversity, elderly youths who had
failed to place themselves in life, and people who had
seen better days. Mildness was the prevailing char-
acter ; mild mirth and mild endurance. In a word

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

I was not taking part in an impetuous and conquer-
ing sally, such as swept over Mexico or Siberia, but
found myself, like Marmion, 'in the lost battle,
borne down by the flying.'

Labouring mankind had in the last years, and
throughout Great Britain, sustained a prolonged and
crushing series of defeats. I had heard vaguely of
these reverses ; of whole streets of houses standing
deserted by the Tyne, the cellar-doors broken and
removed for firewood ; of homeless men loitering at
the street-corners of Glasgow with their chests beside
them ; of closed factories, useless strikes, and starv-
ing girls. But I had never taken them home to me
or represented these distresses livingly to my imagina-
tion. A turn of the market may be a calamity as
disastrous as the French retreat from Moscow ; but
it hardly lends itself to lively treatment, and makes
a trifling figure in the morning papers. We may
struggle as we please, we are not born economists.
The individual is more affecting than the mass. It
is by the scenic accidents, and the appeal to the
carnal eye, that for the most part we grasp the
significance of tragedies. Thus it was only now,
when I found myself involved in the rout, that I
began to appreciate how sharp had been the battle.
We were a company of the rejected ; the drunken,
the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, all who had
been unable to prevail against circumstances in the
one land, were now fleeing pitifully to another ; and
though one or two might still succeed, all had already
failed. We were a shipful of failures, the broken

19

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

men of England. Yet it must not be supposed that
these people exhibited depression. The scene, on the
contrary, was cheerful. Not a tear was shed on board
the vessel. All were full of hope for the future, and
showed an inchnation to innocent gaiety. Some
were heard to sing, and all began to scrape acquaint-
ance with small jests and ready laughter.

The children found each other out like dogs, and
ran about the decks scraping acquaintance after
their fashion also. ' What do you call your mither?'
I heard one ask. *Mawmaw,' was the reply, indicat-
ing, I fancy, a shade of difference in the social scale.
When people pass each other on the high seas of
life at so early an age, the contact is but slight, and
the relation more like what we may imagine to be
the friendship of flies than that of men ; it is so
quickly joined, so easily dissolved, so open in its
communications and so devoid of deeper human
qualities. The children, I observed, were all in a
band, and as thick as thieves at a fair, while their
elders were still ceremoniously manoeuvring on the
outskirts of acquaintance. The sea, the ship, and
the seamen were soon as familiar as home to these
half-conscious little ones. It was odd to hear them,
throughout the voyage, employ shore words to
designate portions of the vessel. ' Co' 'way doon to
yon dyke,' I heard one say, probably meaning the
bulwark. I often had my heart in my mouth,
watching them chmb into the shrouds or on the
rails while the ship went swinging through the
waves ; and I admired and envied the courage of
20

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

their mothers, who sat by in the sun and looked on
with composure at these perilous feats. 'He '11 maybe
be a sailor,' I heard one remark ; ' now 's the time to
learn. ' I had been on the point of running forward
to interfere, but stood back at that, reproved. Very
few in the more delicate classes have the nerve to
look upon the peril of one dear to them ; but the
Hfe of poorer folk, where necessity is so much more
immediate and imperious, braces even a mother to
this extreme of endurance. And perhaps, after all,
it is better that the lad should break his neck than
that you should break his spirit.

And since I am here on the chapter of the chil-
dren, I must mention one little fellow, whose family
belonged to Steerage No. 4 and 5, and who, wherever
he went, was Hke a strain of music round the ship.
He was an ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three,
his lint-white hair in a tangle, his face smeared with
suet and treacle ; but he ran to and fro with so
natural a step, and fell and picked himself up again
with such grace and good-humour, that he might
fairly be called beautiful when he was in motion. To
meet him, crowing with laughter and beating an
accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon
upon a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph of the
human species. Even when his mother and the rest
of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he
sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the
pleasant heartlessness of infancy.

Throughout the Friday, intimacy among us men
made but few advances. We discussed the probable

21

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

duration of the voyage, we exchanged pieces of
information, naming our trades, what we hoped to
find in the new world, or what we were fleeing from
in the old ; and, above all, we condoled together over
the food and the vileness of the steerage. One or
two had been so near famine that you may say they
had run into the ship with the devil at their heels ;
and to these all seemed for the best in the best of
possible steamers. But the majority were hugely
discontented. Coming as they did from a country in
so low a state as Great Britain, many of them from
Glasgow, which commercially speaking was as good
as dead, and many having long been out of work, I
was surprised to find them so dainty in their notions.
I myself lived almost exclusively on bread, porridge,
and soup, precisely as it was supplied to them, and
found it, if not luxurious, at least sufficient. But
these working men were loud in their outcries. It
was not ' food for human beings,' it was ' only fit for
pigs,' it was ' a disgrace.' Many of them lived almost
entirely upon biscuit, others on their own private
supplies, and some paid extra for better rations from
the ship. This marvellously changed my notion of
the degree of luxury habitual to the artisan. I was
prepared to hear him grumble, for grumbling is the
traveller's pastime ; but I was not prepared to find
him turn away from a diet which was palatable to
myself. Words I should have disregarded, or taken
with a liberal allowance ; but when a man prefers dry
biscuit there can be no question of the sincerity of
his disgust.

22

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

With one of their complaints I could most heartily
sympathise. A single night of the steerage had
filled them with horror. I had myself suffered, even
in my decent second-cabin berth, from the lack of
air ; and as the night promised to be fine and quiet,
I determined to sleep on deck, and advised all who
complained of their quarters to follow my example.
I daresay a dozen of others agreed to do so, and I
thought we should have been quite a party. Yet
when I brought up my rug about seven bells, there
was no one to be seen but the watch. That chimerical
terror of good night-air, which makes men close
their windows, Hst their doors, and seal themselves
up with their own poisonous exhalations, had sent
all these healthy workmen down below. One w^ould
think we had been brought up in a fever country ;
yet in England the most malarious districts are in
the bedchambers.

I felt saddened at this defection, and yet half-
pleased to have the night so quietly to myself. The
wind had hauled a little ahead on the starboard bow,
and was dry but chilly. I found a shelter near the
fire-hole, and made myself snug for the night. The
ship moved over the uneven sea with a gentle and
cradhng movement. The ponderous, organic labours
of the engine in her bowels occupied the mind, and
prepared it for slumber. From time to time a
heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, and recall
me to the obscure borders of consciousness; or I
heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note of
the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry,

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

'AH 's well ! ' 1 know nothing, whether for poetry
or music, that can surpass the effect of these two
syllables in the darkness of a night at sea.

The day dawned fairly enough, and during the
early part we had some pleasant hours to improve
acquaintance in the open air ; but towards nightfall
the wind freshened, the rain began to fall, and the
sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep one's
footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts.
We were indeed a musical ship's company, and
cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the
accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good,
bad, or indifferent — Scottish, English, Irish, Russian,
German or Norse, — the songs were received with
generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very
spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scottish accent,
varied the proceedings ; and once we sought in vain
to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together, to
the music of the violin. The performers were all
humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in
private life ; but as soon as they were arranged for
the dance, they conducted themselves like so many
mutes at a funeral. I have never seen decorum
pushed so far ; and as this was not expected, the
quadrille was soon whistled down, and the dancers
departed under a cloud. Eight Frenchmen, even
eight Englishmen from another rank of society,
would have dared to make some fun for themselves
and the spectators ; but the working man, when
sober, takes an extreme and even melancholy view
of personal deportment. A fifth-form schoolboy
24

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

is not more careful of dignity. He dares not be
comical ; his fun must escape from him unprepared,
and above all, it must be unaccompanied by any
physical demonstration. I like his society under
most circumstances, but let me never again join with
him in public gambols.

But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed
over modesty and even the inclemencies of sea and
sky. On this rough Saturday night, we got together
by the main deck-house, in a place sheltered from
the wind and rain. Some clinging to a ladder which
led to the hurricane deck, and the rest knitting arms
or taking hands, we made a ring to support the
women in the violent lurching of the ship ; and when
we were thus disposed, sang to our hearts' content.
Some of the songs were appropriate to the scene ;
others strikingly the reverse. Bastard doggrel of
the music-hall, such as, ' Around her splendid form,
I weaved the magic circle,' sounded bald, bleak, and
pitifully silly. 'We don't want to fight, but, by
Jingo, if we do,' was in some measure saved by the
vigour and unanimity with which the chorus was
thrown forth into the night. I observed a Platt-
Deutsch mason, entirely innocent of EngUsh, adding
heartily to the general effect. And perhaps the
German mason is but a fair example of the sincerity
with which the song was rendered; for nearly all with
whom I conversed upon the subject were bitterly
opposed to war, and attributed their own misfor-
tunes, and frequently their own taste for whisky,
to the campaigns in Zululand and Afghanistan.

25

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

Every now and again, however, some song that
touched the pathos of our situation was given forth ;
and you could hear by the voices that took up the
burden how the sentiment came home to each.
' The Anchor 's Weighed ' was true for us. We
were indeed ' Rocked on the bosom of the stormy
deep.' How many of us could say with the singer,
' I 'm lonely to-night, love, without you,' or ' Go,
some one, and tell them from me, to write me a letter
from home ! ' And when was there a more appro-
priate moment for ' Auld Lang Syne ' than now,
when the land, the friends, and the affections of that
mingled but beloved time were fading and fleeing
behind us in the vessel's wake ? It pointed forward
to the hour when these labours should be overpast,
to the return voyage, and to many a meeting in the
sanded inn, when those who had parted in the spring
of youth should again drink a cup of kindness in
their age. Had not Burns contemplated emigration,
I scarce believe he would have found that note.

All Sunday the weather remained wild and cloudy;
many were prostrated by sickness ; only five sat
down to tea in the second cabin, and two of these
departed abruptly ere the meal was at an end. The
Sabbath was observed strictly by the majority of
the emigrants. I heard an old woman express her
surprise that 'the ship didna gae doon,' as she saw
some one pass her with a chess-board on the holy
day. Some sang Scottish psalms. Many went to
service, and in true Scottish fashion came back
ill pleased with their divine. ' I didna think he
26

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

was an experienced preacher,' said one girl to
me.

It was a bleak, uncomfortable day ; but at night,
by six bells, although the wind had not yet moder-
ated, the clouds were all wrecked and blown away
behind the rim of the horizon, and the stars came
out thickly overhead. I saw Venus burning as
steadily and sweetly across this hurly-burly of the
winds and waters as ever at home upon the summer
woods. The engine pounded, the screw tossed out
of the water with a roar, and shook the ship from
end to end; the bows battled with loud reports
against the billows ; and as I stood in the lee-scuppers
and looked up to where the funnel leaned out over
my head, vomiting smoke, and the black and mon-
strous topsails blotted, at each lurch, a different crop
of stars, it seemed as if all this trouble were a thing
of small account, and that just above the mast
reigned peace unbroken and eternal.

27

STEERAGE SCENES

Our companion (Steerage No. 2 and 3) was a
favourite resort. Down one flight of stairs there
was a comparatively large open space, the centre
occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient
seat for about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of
rope, and the carpenter's bench afforded perches for
perhaps as many more. The canteen, or steerage
bar, was on one side of the stair ; on the other, a no
less attractive spot, the cabin of the indefatigable
interpreter. I have seen people packed into this
space hke herrings in a barrel, and many merry
evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the
lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go
to roost.

It had been rumoured since Friday that there was
a fiddler aboard, who lay sick and unmelodious in
Steerage No. 1 ; and on the Monday forenoon, as
I came down the companion, I was saluted by some-
thing in Strathspey time. A white-faced Orpheus
was cheerily playing to an audience of white-faced
women. It was as much as he could do to play,
and some of his hearers were scarce able to sit;
28

STEERAGE SCENES

yet they had crawled from their bunks at the first
experhnental flourish, and found better than medicine
in the music. Some of the heaviest heads began to
nod in time, and a degree of animation looked from
some of the palest eyes. Humanly speaking, it is a
more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly,
than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.
What could Mr. Darwin have done for these sick
women ? But this fellow scraped away ; and the
world was positively a better place for all who heard
him. We have yet to understand the economical
value of these mere accomplishments. I told the
fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness
about with him in his fiddle-case, and he seemed
alive to the fact.

* It is a privilege,' I said. He thought a while
upon the word, turning it over in his Scots head, and
then answered with conviction, ' Yes, a privilege.'

That night I was summoned by 'Merrily danced
the Quaker's wife ' into the companion of Steerage
No. 4 and 5. This was, properly speaking, but a
strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern
which swung to and fro with the motion of the
ship. Through the open slide-door we had a glimpse
of a grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent
foam flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the
horizon rising and falling as the vessel rolled to the
wind. In the centre the companion ladder plumped
down sheerly like an open pit. Below, on the first
landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and lasses
danced, not more than three at a time for lack of

29

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

space, in jigs and reels and hornpipes. Above, on
either side, there was a recess railed with iron,
perhaps two feet wide and four long, which stood for
orchestra and seats of honour. In the one balcony,
five slatternly Irish lasses sat woven in a comely
group. In the other was posted Orpheus, his body,
which was convulsively in motion, forming an odd
contrast to his somnolent, imperturbable Scots face.
His brother, a dark man with a vehement, interested
countenance, who made a god of the fiddler, sat by
with open mouth, drinking in the general admiration
and throwing out remarks to kindle it.

' That 's a bonny hornpipe now,' he would say ;
' it 's a great favourite with performers ; they dance
the sand dance to it.' And he expounded the sand
dance. Then suddenly, it would be a long ' Hush !'
with uplifted finger and glowing, supplicating eyes ;
' he 's going to play " Auld Robin Gray " on one
string ! ' And throughout this excruciating move-
ment,— ' On one string, that 's on one string ! ' he kept
crying. I would have given something myself that
it had been on none ; but the hearers were much
awed. I called for a tune or two, and thus intro-
duced myself to the notice of the brother, who
directed his talk to me for some little while, keeping,
I need hardly mention, true to his topic, like the
seamen to the star. ' He 's grand of it,' he said con-
fidentially. ' His master was a music-hall man.'
Indeed the music-hall man had left his mark, for our
fiddler was ignorant of many of our best old airs ;
' Logic o' Buchan,' for instance, he only knew as a

STEERAGE SCENES

quick, jigging figure in a set of quadrilles, and had
never heard it called by name. Perhaps, after all,
the brother was the more interesting performer of
the two. I have spoken with him afterwards re-
peatedly, and found him always the same quick,
fiery bit of a man, not without brains ; but he
never showed to such advantage as when he was
thus squiring the fiddler into public note. There
is nothing more becoming than a genuine admira-
tion ; and it shares this with love, that it does not
become contemptible although misplaced.

The dancing was but feebly carried on. The
space was almost impracticably small ; and the Irish
wenches combined the extreme of bashfulness about
this innocent display with a surprising impudence
and roughness of address. Most often, either the
fiddle lifted up its voice unheeded, or only a couple
of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on
the landing. And such was the eagerness of the
brother to display all the acquirements of his idol,
and such the sleepy indifference of the performer,
that the tune would as often as not be changed, and
the hornpipe expire into a ballad before the dancers
had cut half a dozen shuffles.

In the meantime, however, the audience had been
growing more and more numerous every moment ;
there was hardly standing-room round the top of the
companion ; and the strange instinct of the race
moved some of the new-comers to close both the
doors, so that the atmosphere grew insupportable.
It was a good place, as the saying is, to leave.

31

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

The wind hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten
at night heavy sprays were flying and drumming
over the forecastle ; the companion of Steerage
No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communica-
tion through the second cabin thrown open. Either
from the convenience of the opportunity, or because
we had already a number of acquaintances in that
part of the ship, Mr. Jones and I paid it a late visit.
Steerage No. 1 is shaped like an isosceles triangle,
the sides opposite the equal angles bulging outward
with the contom' of the ship. It is lined with eight
pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four bunks below and
four above on either side. At night the place is lit
with two lanterns, one to each table. As the steamer
beat on her way among the rough billows, the hght
passed through violent phases of change, and was
thrown to and fro and up and down with starthng
swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as you
looked, how so thin a ghmmer could control and
disperse such solid blackness. When Jones and I
entered we found a httle company of our acquaint-
ances seated together at the triangular foremost
table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal cir-
cumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The
motion here in the ship's nose was very violent ;
the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud.
The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and
round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air
was hot, but it struck a chill from its foetor. From
all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely human
noises of the sick joined into a kind of farmyard
32

STEERAGE SCENES

chorus. In the midst, these five friends of mine
were keeping up what heart they could in com-
pany. Singing was their refuge from discomfortable
thoughts and sensations. One piped, in feeble tones,
' O why left I my hame ? ' which seemed a pertinent
question in the circumstances. Another, from the
invisible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon
the upper shelf, found courage, in a blink of his
sufferings, to give us several verses of the * Death of
Nelson ' ; and it was odd and eerie to hear the chorus
breathe feebly from all sorts of dark corners, and
'this day has done his dooty' rise and fall and be
taken up again in this dim inferno, to an accom-
paniment of plunging, hollow-sounding bows and
the rattling spray-showers overhead.

All seemed unfit for conversation ; a certain dizzi-
ness had interrupted the activity of their minds ; and
except to sing they were tongue-tied. There was
present, however, one tall, powerful fellow of doubtful
nationality, being neither quite Scotsman nor alto-
gether Irish, but of surprising clearness of conviction
on the highest problems. He had gone nearly beside
himself on the Sunday, because of a general back-
wardness to indorse his definition of mind as *a
living, thinking, substance which cannot be felt,
heard, or seen ' — nor, I presume, although he failed
to mention it, smelt. Now he came forward in a
pause with another contribution to our culture.

'Just by way of change,' said he, 'I '11 ask you a
Scripture riddle. There's profit in them too,' he
added ungrammatically.

3-c Z2,

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

This was the riddle —

' C and P Without the leave of G.

Did agree All the people cried to see

To cut down C ; The crueltie

But C and P . Of C and P.'
Could not agree

Harsh are the words of Mercury after the songs of
Apollo ! We were a long while over the problem,
shaking our heads and gloomily wondering how a
man could be such a fool ; but at length he put us
out of suspense and divulged the fact that C and P
stood for Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate.

I think it must have been the riddle that settled
us ; but the motion and the close air likewise hurried
our departure. We had not been gone long, we
heard next morning, ere two or even three out of the
five fell sick. We thought it little wonder on the
whole, for the sea kept contrary all night. I now
made my bed upon the second cabin floor, where,
although I ran the risk of being stepped upon, I had
a free current of air, more or less vitiated indeed, and
running only from steerage to steerage, but at least
not stagnant ; and from this couch, as well as the
usual sounds of a rough night at sea, the hateful
coughing and retching of the sick and the sobs of
children, I heard a man run wild with terror beseech-
ing his friend for encouragement. ' The ship 's going
down ! ' he cried with a thrill of agony. * The ship 's
going down ! ' he repeated, now in a blank whisper,
now with his voice rising towards a sob ; and his
friend might reassure him, reason with him, joke
34

STEEKAGE SCENES

at him — all was in vain, and the old cry came back,
' The ship 's going down ! ' There was something
panic and catching in the emotion of his tones ; and
I saw in a clear flash what an involved and hideous
tragedy was a disaster to an emigrant ship. If this
whole parishful of people came no more to land, into
how many houses would the newspaper carry woe,
and what a great part of the web of our corporate
human life would be rent across for ever !

The next morning when I came on deck I found
a new world indeed. The wind was fair ; the sun
mounted into a cloudless heaven ; through great
dark blue seas the ship cut a swathe of curded foam.
The horizon was dotted all day with companionable
sails, and the sun shone pleasantly on the long,
heaving deck.

We had many fine- weather diversions to beguile
the time. There was a single chess-board and a
single pack of cards. Sometimes as many as twenty
of us would be playing dominoes for love. Feats of
dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence, some arith-
metical, some of the same order as the old problem
of the fox and goose and cabbage, were always
welcome ; and the latter, I observed, more popular
as well as more conspicuously well done than the
former. We had a regular daily competition to
guess the vessel's progress ; and twelve o'clock, when
the result was pubhshed in the wheel-house, came
to be a moment of considerable interest. But the
interest was unmixed. Not a bet was laid upon our
guesses. From the Clyde to Sandy Hook I never

35

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

heard a wager offered or taken. We had, besides,
romps in plenty. Puss in the Corner, which we had
rebaptized, in more manly style. Devil and four
Corners, was my own favourite game ; but there
were many who preferred another, the humour of
which was to box a person's ears until he found
out who had cuffed him.

This Tuesday morning we were all dehghted with
the change of weather, and in the highest possible
spirits. We got in a cluster like bees, sitting be-
tween each other's feet under lee of the deck-houses.
Stories and laughter went around. The children
climbed about the shrouds. White faces appeared
for the first time, and began to take on colour from
the wind. I was kept hard at work making cigarettes
for one amateur after another, and my less than
moderate skill was heartily admired. Lastly, down
sat the fiddler in our midst and began to discourse
his reels, and jigs, and ballads, with now and then a
voice or two to take up the air and throw in the
interest of human speech.

Through this merry and good-hearted scene there
came three cabin passengers, a gentleman and two
young ladies, picking then- way with httle gracious
titters of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful air about
nothing, which galled me to the quick. I have Httle
of the radical in social questions, and have always
nourished an idea that one person was as good as
another. But I began to be troubled by this
episode. It was astonishing what insults these
people managed to convey by their presence. They
36

STEERAGE SCENES

seemed to throw their clothes in our faces. Their
eyes searched us all over for tatters and incongruities.
A laugh was ready at their lips ; but they were too
well-mannered to indulge it in our hearing. Wait a
bit, till they were all back in the saloon, and then
hear how wittily they would depict the manners of
the steerage. We were in truth very innocently,
cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no
shadow of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority
with which these damsels passed among us, or for
the stiff and waggish glances of their squire. Not a
word was said ; only when they were gone Mackay
sullenly damned their impudence under his breath ;
but we were all conscious of an icy influence and a
dead break in the course of our enjoyment.

Z1

STEERAGE TYPES

We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for
all the world hke a beggar in a print by CaUot ; one-
eyed, with great, splay crow's-feet round the sockets ;
a knotty squab nose coming down over his moustache;
a miraculous hat ; a shirt that had been white, ay,
ages long ago ; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves ; and,
without hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. Even
in these rags and tatters, the man twinkled all over
with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery ; and
I have heard him offer a situation to one of his fellow-
passengers with the air of a lord. Nothing could
overHe such a fellow ; a kind of base success was
written on his brow. He was then in his ill days ;
but I can imagine him in Congress with his mouth
full of bombast and sawder. As we moved in the
same circle, I was brought necessarily into his society.
I do not think I ever heard him say anything that
was true, kind, or interesting ; but there was enter-
tainment in the man's demeanour. You might call
him a half-educated Irish Tigg.

Our Russian made a remarkable contrast to this
impossible fellow. Rumours and legends were
38

STEEKAGE TYPES

current in the steerages about his antecedents.
Some said he was a NihiHst escaping ; others set him
down for a harmless; spendthrift, who had squandered
fifty thousand roubles, and whose father had now
despatched him to America by way of penance.
Either tale might flourish in security ; there was
no contradiction to be feared, for the hero spoke not
one word of Enghsh. I got on with him lumber-
ingly enough in broken German, and learnt from his
own lips that he had been an apothecary. He
carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-
book, and remarked that it did not do her justice.
The cut of his head stood out from among the
passengers with an air of starthng strangeness. The
first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado ;
but although the features, to our Western eyes, had
a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye both reassured
and touched. It was large and very dark and soft,
with an expression of dumb endurance, as if it had
often looked on desperate circumstances and never
looked on them without resolution.

He cried out when I used the word. * No, no,' he
said, 'not resolution.'

' The resolution to endure,' I explained.

And then he shrugged his shoulders, and said,
* Ach, jaj with gusto, like a man who has been
flattered in his favourite pretensions. Indeed, he
was always hinting at some secret sorrow ; and his
Hfe, he said, had been one of unusual trouble and
anxiety ; so the legends of the steerage may have
represented at least some shadow of the truth. Once,

39

THE AMATEUR EMIGUANT

and once only, he sang a song at our concerts, stand-
ing forth without embarrassment, his great stature
somewhat humped, his long arms frequently ex-
tended, his Kalmuck head thrown backward. It
was a suitable piece of music, as deep as a cow's
bellow and wild hke the White Sea. He was struck
and charmed by the freedom and sociality of our
manners. At home, he said, no one on a journey
would speak to him, but those with whom he would
not care to speak ; thus unconsciously involving him-
self in the condemnation of his countrymen. But
Russia was soon to be changed ; the ice of the Neva
was softening under the sun of civilisation ; the new
ideas, 'wie einfeines Violin,' were audible among the
big, empty drum-notes of Imperial diplomacy ; and
he looked to see a great revival, though with a some-
what indistinct and childish hope.

We had a father and son who made a pah' of
Jacks-of-aU-trades. It was the son who sang the
' Death of Nelson ' under such contrarious circum-
stances. He was by trade a shearer of ship plates ;
but he could touch the organ, had led two choirs,
and played the flute and piccolo in a professional
string band. His repertory of songs was, besides,
inexhaustible, and ranged impartially from the very
best to the very worst within his reach. Nor did he
seem to make the least distinction between these
extremes, but would cheerfully follow up ' Tom
Bowhng' with 'Around her splendid form.'

The father, an old, cheery, small piece of manhood,
could do everything connected with tinwork from
40

STEERAGE TYPES

one end of the process to the other, use almost every
carpenter's tool, and make picture-frames to boot.
' I sat down with silver plate every Sunday,' said he,
' and pictures on the wall. I have made enough
money to be rolling in my carriage. But, sir,' look-
ing at me unsteadily with his bright rheumy eyes,
* I was troubled with a di'unken wife.' He took a
hostile view of matrimony in consequence. ' It 's an
old saying,' he remarked : 'God made 'em, and the
devil he mixed 'em.'

I think he was justified by his experience. It was
a dreary story. He would bring home three pounds
on Saturday, and on Monday all the clothes would
be in pawn. Sick of the useless struggle, he gave up
a paying contract, and contented himself with small
and ill-paid jobs. ' A bad job was as good as a good
job for me,' he said ; ' it all went the same way.'
Once the wife showed signs of amendment ; she
kept steady for weeks on end ; it was again worth
while to labour and to do one's best. The husband
found a good situation some distance from home, and,
to make a little upon every hand, started the wife in
a cook-shop ; the children were here and there, busy
as mice ; savings began to grow together in the bank,
and the golden age of hope had returned again
to that unhappy family. But one week my old
acquaintance, getting earlier through with his work,
came home on the Friday instead of the Saturday,
and there was his wife to receive him, reeling drunk.
He 'took and gave her a pair o' black eyes,' for
which I pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop door,

41

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

gave up his situation, and resigned himself to a hfe
of poverty, with the workhouse at the end. As the
children came to their full age they fled the house,
and established themselves in other countries ; some
did well, some not so well ; but the father remained
at home alone with his drunken wife, all his sound-
hearted pluck and varied accomphshments depressed
and negatived.

Was she dead now ? or, after all these years, had
he broken the chain, and run from home like a
schoolboy ? I could not discover which ; but here
at least he was, out on the adventure, and still one
of the bravest and most youthful men on board.

'Now, I suppose, I must put my old bones to
work again,' said he ; ' but I can do a turn yet.'

And the son to whom he was going, I asked, was
he not able to support him ?

' Oh yes,' he replied. * But I 'm never happy
without a job on hand. And I 'm stout ; I can eat
a'most anything. You see no craze about me.'

This tale of a drunken wife was paralleled on board
by another of a drunken father. He was a capable
man, with a good chance in life ; but he had drunk
up two thriving businesses like a bottle of sherry,
and involved his sons along with him in ruin. Now
they were on board with us, fleeing his disastrous
neighbourhood.

Total abstinence, like all ascetical conclusions, is

unfriendly to the most generous, cheerful, and human

parts of man ; but it could have adduced many

instances and arguments from among our ship's

42

STEERAGE TYPES

company. I was one day conversing with a kind
and happy Scotsman, rmming to fat and perspiration
in the physical, but with a taste for poetry and a
genial sense of fun. I had asked him his hopes in
emigrating. They were like those of so many others,
vague and unfounded : times were bad at home ;
they were said to have a turn for the better in the
States ; and a man could get on anywhere, he
thought. That was precisely the weak point of his
position ; for if he could get on in America, why
could he not do the same in Scotland ? But I never
had the courage to use that argument, though it was
often on the tip of my tongue, and instead I agreed
with him heartily, adding, with reckless originality,
* If the man stuck to his work, and kept away from
drink.'

' Ah ! ' said he slowly, ' the drink ! You see, that 's
just my trouble.'

He spoke with a simplicity that was touching,
looking at me at the same time with something
strange and timid in his eye, half-ashamed, half- sorry,
like a good child who knows he should be beaten.
You would have said he recognised a destiny to
which he was born, and accepted the consequences
mildly. Like the merchant Abudah, he was at the
same time fleeing from his destiny and carrying it
along with him, the whole at an expense of six
guineas.

As far as I saw, drink, idleness, and incompetency
were the three great causes of emigration, and for
all of them, and drink first and foremost, this trick

43

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

of getting transported over-seas appears to me the
silliest means of cure. You cannot run away from
a weakness ; you must some time fight it out or
perish ; and if that be so, why not now, and where
you stand ? Cvelum non anmiam. Change Glenlivat
for Bourbon, and it is still whisky, only not so good.
A sea-voyage will not give a man the nerve to put
aside cheap pleasure ; emigration has to be done
before we climb the vessel ; an aim in life is the only
fortune worth the finding ; and it is not to be found
in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.

Speaking generally, there is no vice of this kind
more contemptible than another ; for each is but a
result and outward sign . of a soul tragically ship-
wrecked. In the majority of cases, cheap pleasure
is resorted to by way of anodyne. The pleasure-
seeker sets forth upon life with high and difficult
ambitions ; he meant to be nobly good and nobly
happy, though at as little pains as possible to him-
self; and it is because all has failed in his celestial
enterprise that you now behold him rolling in the
garbage. Hence the comparative success of the
teetotal pledge ; because to a man who had nothing
it sets at least a negative aim in life. Somewhat
as prisoners beguile their days by taming a spider,
the reformed drunkard makes an interest out of
abstaining from intoxicating drinks, and may live
for that negation. There is something, at least, not
to be done each day ; and a cold triumph awaits him
every evening.

We had one on board with us, whom I have
44

STEERAGE TYPES

already referred to under the name of Mackay, who
seemed to me not only a good instance of this failure
in life of which we have been speaking, but a good
type of the intelligence which here surrounded me.
Physically he was a small Scotsman, standing a
little back as though he were already carrying the
elements of a corporation, and his looks somewhat
marred by the smallness of his eyes. Mentally, he
was endowed above the average. There were but
few subjects on which he could not converse with
understanding and a dash of wit ; delivering himself
slowly and with gusto, like a man w^ho enjoyed his
own sententiousness. He was a dry, quick, pertinent
debater, speaking with a small voice, and swinging
on his heels to launch and emphasise an argument.
When he began a discussion, he could not bear to
leave it off, but would pick the subject to the bone,
without once relinquishing a point. An engineer
by trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfec-
tibility of all machines except the human machine.
The latter he gave up with ridicule for a compound
of carrion and perverse gases. He had an appetite
for disconnected facts which I can only compare to
the savage taste for beads. What is called informa-
tion was indeed a passion with the man, and he not
only delighted to receive it, but could pay you back
in kind.

With all these capabilities, here was Mackay,
already no longer young, on his way to a new
country, with no prospects, no money, and but
little hope. He was almost tedious in the cynical

45

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

disclosures of his despair. * The ship may go down
for me,' he would say, * now or to-morrow. I have
nothing to lose and nothing to hope.' And again :
*I am sick of the whole damned performance.' He
was, like the kind little man already quoted, another
so-called victim of the bottle. But Mackay was
miles from publishing his weakness to the world;
laid the blame of his failure on corrupt masters and
a corrupt State policy ; and after he had been one
night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his
cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all
reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him
manage this ; the various jesters withered under his
gaze, and you were forced to recognise in him a
certain steely force, and a gift of command which
might have ruled a senate.

In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him ;
he was ruined long before for all good human pur-
poses but conversation. His eyes were sealed by
a cheap, school-book materialism. He could see
nothing in the world but money and steam-engines.
He did not know what you meant by the word
happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions
of childhood, and perhaps never encountered the
delights of youth. He believed in production, that
useful figment of economy, as if it had been real
Hke laughter ; and production, without prejudice to
liquor, was his god and guide. One day he took me
to task — a novel cry to me — upon the over-payment
of literature. Literary men, he said, were more
highly paid than artisans ; yet the artisan made
46 ,

STEERAGE TYPES

threshing-machines and butter-churns, and the man
of letters, except in the way of a few useful hand-
books, made nothing worth the while. He pro-
duced a mere fancy article. Mackay's notion of a
book was Hoppus's Measurer. Now in my time I
have possessed and even studied that work ; but
if I were to be left to-morrow on Juan Fernandez,
Hoppus's is not the book that I should choose for
my companion volume.

I tried to fight the point with Mackay. I made
him own that he had taken pleasure in reading books
otherwise, to his view, insignificant ; but he was too
wary to advance a step beyond the admission. It
was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure
ready-made and running from the spring, whereas
his ploughs and butter-churns were but means and
mechanisms to give men the necessary food and
leisure before they start upon the search for plea-
sure ; he jibbed and ran away from such conclusions.
The thing was different, he declared, and nothing
was serviceable but what had to do with food. ' Eat,
eat, eat ! ' he cried ; *that 's the bottom and the top.'
By an odd irony of circumstance, he grew so much
interested in this discussion that he let the hour slip
by unnoticed and had to go without his tea. He
had enough sense and humour, indeed he had no
lack of either, to have chuckled over this himself in
private ; and even to me he referred to it with the
shadow of a smile.

Mackay was a hot bigot. He would not hear of
religion. I have seen him waste hours of time in

47

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

argument with all sorts of poor human creatures who
understood neither him nor themselves, and he had
had the boyishness to dissect and criticise even so
small a matter as the riddler's definition of mind.
He snorted aloud with zealotry and the lust for
intellectual battle. Anything, whatever it was, that
seemed to him likely to discourage the continued
passionate production of corn and steam-engines he
resented like a conspiracy against the people. Thus,
when I put in the plea for literature, that it was
only in good books, or in the society of the good,
that a man could get help in his conduct, he declared
I was in a different world from him. 'Damn my
conduct ! ' said he. * I have given it up for a bad
job. My question is. Can I drive a nail ? ' And he
plainly looked upon me as one who was insidiously
seeking to reduce the people's annual bellyful of corn
and steam-engines.

It may be argued that these opinions spring from
the defect of culture ; that a narrow and pinching
way of life not only exaggerates to a man the im-
portance of material conditions, but indirectly, by
denying him the necessary books and leisure, keeps
his mind ignorant of larger thoughts ; and that
hence springs this overwhelming concern about diet,
and hence the bald view of existence professed by
Mackay. Had this been an English peasant the
conclusion would be tenable. But Mackay had
most of the elements of a liberal education. He
had skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies.
He had a thoughtful hold of what he knew, which
48

STEERAGE TYPES

would be exceptional among bankers. He had been
brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and
told, with incongruous pride, the story of his own
brother's deathbed ecstasies. Yet he had somehow
failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a dead
thing among external circumstances, without hope
or Hvely preference or shaping aim. And further,
there seemed a tendency among many of his fellows
to fall into the same blank and unlovely opinions.
One thing, indeed, is not to be learned in Scotland,
and that is, the way to be happy. Yet that is the
whole of culture, and perhaps two-thirds of morahty.
Can it be that the Puritan school, by divorcing a
man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and
setting the stamp of its disapproval on whole fields
of human activity and interest, leads at last directly
to material greed ?

Nature is a good guide through life, and the love
of simple pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue ;
and we had on board an Irishman who based his
claim to the widest and most affectionate popularity
precisely upon these two qualities, that he was natural
and happy. He boasted a fresh colour, a tight
little figure, unquenchable gaiety, and indefatigable
good- will. His clothes puzzled the diagnostic mind,
until you heard he had been once a private coach-
man, when they became eloquent and seemed a
part of his biography. His face contained the rest,
and, I fear, a prophecy of the future ; the hawk's
nose above accorded so ill with the pink baby's
mouth below. His spirit and his pride belonged,

3— 1> 49

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

you might say, to the nose : while it was the
general shiftlessness expressed by the other that
had thrown him from situation to situation, and at
length on board the emigrant ship. Barney ate,
so to speak, nothing from the galley ; his own tea,
butter, and eggs supported him throughout the
voyage ; and about meal-time you might often find
him up to the elbows in amateur cookery. His
was the first voice heard singing among all the
passengers ; he was the first who fell to dancing.
From Loch Foyle to Sandy Hook, there was not
a piece of fun undertaken but there was Barney in
the midst.

You ought to have seen him when he stood up
to sing at our concerts — his tight little figure step-
ping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air,
his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement —
and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated
between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsi-
ness, with which he brought each song to a con-
clusion. He was not only a great favourite among
ourselves, but his songs attracted the lords of the
saloon, who often leaned to hear him over the rails of
the hurricane-deck. He was somewhat pleased but
not at all abashed, by this attention ; and one night,
in the midst of his famous performance of 'Billy
Keogh,' I saw him spin half round in a pirouette and
throw an audacious wink to an old gentleman above.

This was the more characteristic, as, for all his
daffing, he was a modest and very polite little
fellow among ourselves. He would not have hurt
50

STEERAGE TYPES

the feelings of a fly, nor throughout the passage
did he give a shadow of offence ; yet he was always,
by his innocent freedoms and love of fun, brought
upon that narrow margin where politeness must be
natural to walk without a fall. He was once
seriously angry, and that in a grave, quiet manner,
because they supplied no fish on Friday ; for Barney
was a conscientious Catholic. He had likewise strict
notions of refinement ; and when, late one evening,
after the women had retired, a young Scotsman
struck up an indecent song, Barney's drab clothes
were immediately missing from the group. His
taste was for the society of gentlemen, of whom,
with the reader's permission, there was no lack in
our five steerages arid second cabin ; and he avoided
the rough and positive with a girlish shrinking.
Mackay, partly from his superior powers of mind,
which rendered him incomprehensible, partly from
his extreme opinions, was especially distasteful to the
Irishman. I have seen him slink off, with back-
ward looks of terror and offended delicacy, while
the other, in his witty, ugly way, had been pro-
fessing hostility to God, and an extreme theatrical
readiness to be shipwrecked on the spot. These
utterances hurt the little coachman's modesty Hke
a bad word.

51

THE SICK MAN

One night Jones, the young O'Reilly, and myself
were walking arm-in-arm and briskly up and down
the deck. Six bells had rung ; a head- wind blew
chill and fitful, the fog was closing in with a sprinkle
of rain, and the fog-whistle had been turned on, and
now divided time with its unwelcome outcries, loud
like a bull, thrilhng and intense like a mosquito.
Even the watch lay somewhere snugly out of sight.

For some time we observed something lying black
and huddled in the scuppers, which at last heaved a
little and moaned aloud. We ran to the rails. An
elderly man, but whether passenger or seaman it
was impossible in the darkness to determine, lay
groveUing on his belly in the wet scuppers, and kick-
ing feebly with his outspread toes. We asked him
what was amiss, and he replied incoherently, with a
strange accent and in a voice unmanned by terror,
that he had cramp m the stomach, that he had
been ailing all day, had seen the doctor twice, and
had walked the deck against fatigue till he was over-
mastered and had fallen where we found him.

Jones remained by his side, while O'Reilly and I
52

THE SICK MAN

hurried off to seek the doctor. We knocked in vain
at the doctor's cabin ; there came no reply ; nor
could we find any one to guide us. It was no time
for delicacy ; so we ran once more forward ; and
I, whipping up a ladder and touching my hat to
the officer of the watch, addressed him as politely as
I could —

' I beg your pardon, sir ; but there is a inan lying-
bad with cramp in the lee scuppers ; and I can't find
the doctor.'

He looked at me peeringly in the darkness ; and
then, somewhat harshly, ' Well, / can't leave the
bridge, my man,' said he.

' No, sir ; but you can tell me what to do,' I
returned.
' * Is it one of the crew ? ' he asked.

' I beheve him to be a fireman,' I rephed.

I daresay officers are much annoyed by complaints
and alarmist information from their freight of human
creatures ; but certainly, whether it was the idea
that the sick man was one of the crew, or from
something concihatory in my address, the officer in
question was immediately reheved and molhfied ;
and speaking in a voice much freer from constraint,
advised me to find a steward and despatch him in
quest of the doctor, who would now be in the
smoking-room over his pipe.

One of the stewards was often enough to be found
about this hour down our companion. Steerage No.
2 and 3 ; that was his smoking-room of a night. Let
me call him Blackwood. O'Reilly and I rattled

53

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

down the companion, breathing hurry ; and in his
shirt-sleeves and perched across the carpenter's
bench upon one thigh, found Blackwood ; a neat,
bright, dapper, Glasgow-looking man, with a bead
of an eye and a rank twang in his speech. I forget
who was with him, but the pair were enjoying a
deliberate talk over their pipes. I daresay he was
tired with his day's work, and eminently comfort-
able at that moment ; and the truth is I did not
stop to consider his feeUngs, but told my story in a
breath.

' Steward,' said I, ' there 's a man lying bad with
cramp, and I can't find the doctor.'

He turned upon me as pert as a sparrow, but with
a black look that is the prerogative of man ; and
taking his pipe out of his mouth —

' That 's none of my business,' said he. ' I don't
care. '

I could have strangled the Httle ruffian where he
sat. The thought of his cabin civihty and cabin
tips filled me with indignation. I glanced at
O'Reilly ; he was pale and quivering, and looked
like assault and battery every inch of him. But we
had a better card than violence.

* You will have to make it your business,' said
I, * for I am sent to you by the officer on the
bridge.'

Blackwood was fairly tripped. He made no
answer, but put out his pipe, gave me one murder-
ous look, and set off upon his errand strolling.
From that day forward, I should say,| he improved
54

THE SICK MAN

to me in courtesy, as though he had repented his
evil speech and were anxious to leave a better im-
pression.

When we got on deck again, Jones was still beside
the sick man ; and two or three late stragglers had
gathered round and were offering suggestions. One
proposed to give the patient water, which was
promptly negatived. Another bade us hold him
up ; he himself prayed to be let lie ; but as it was
at least as well to keep him off the streaming decks,
O'Reilly and I supported him between us. It was
only by main force that we did so, and neither an
easy nor an agreeable duty ; for he fought in his
paroxysms Hke a frightened child, and moaned miser-
ably when he resigned himself to our control.

' O let me lie ! ' he pleaded. ' I'll no' get better
anyway.' And then, with a moan that went to
my heart, ' O why did I come upon this miserable
journey ? '

I was reminded of the song which I had heard
a little while before in the close, tossing steerage :
' O why left I my hame ? '

Meantime Jones, reheved of his immediate charge,
had gone off to the galley, where we could see a
light. There he found a belated cook scouring pans
by the radiance of two lanterns, and one of these
he sought to borrow. The scullion was backward.
'Was it one of the crew ? ' he asked. And when
Jones, smitten with my theory, had assured him that
it was a fireman, he reluctantly left his scouring
and came towards us at an easy pace, with one of

55

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the lanterns swinging from his finger. The light, as
it reached the spot, showed us an elderly man, thick-
set, and grizzled with years ; but the shifting and
coarse shadows concealed from us the expression and
even the design of his face.

So soon as the cook set eyes on him he gave a
sort of whistle.

' It 's only a passenger ! ' said he ; and turning
about, made, lantern and all, for the galley.

' He 's a man anyway,' cried Jones in indignation.

* Nobody said he was a woman,' said a gruff voice,
which I recognised for that of the bo's'un.

All this while there was no word of Blackwood or
the doctor ; and now the officer came to our side of
the ship and asked, over the hurricane-deck rails, if
the doctor were not yet come. We told him not.

' No ?' he repeated with a breathing of anger ; and
we saw him hurry aft in person.

Ten minutes after the doctor made his appearance
dehberately enough and examined our patient with
the lantern. He made little of the case, had the
man brought aft to the dispensary, dosed him, and
sent him forward to his bunk. Two of his neigh-
bours in the steerage had now come to our assistance,
expressing loud sorrow that such *a fine cheery
body ' should be sick ; and these, claiming a sort of
possession, took him entirely under their own care.
The drug had probably relieved him, for he struggled
no more, and was led along plaintive and patient,
but protesting. His heart recoiled at the thought
of the steerage. 'O let me lie down upon the
56

THE SICK MAN

bieldy side,' he cried ; ' O dinna take me down ! '
And again: *0 why did ever I come upon this
miserable voyage ? ' And yet once more, with a gasp
and a waihng prolongation of the fourth word : ' I
had no call to come.' But there he was ; and by the
doctor's orders and the kind force of his two ship-
mates disappeared down the companion of Steerage
No. 1 into the den allotted him.

At the foot of our own companion, just where I
had found Blackwood, Jones and the bo's'un were
now engaged in talk. This last was a gruff, cruel-
looking seaman, who must have passed near half a
century upon the seas ; square-headed, goat-bearded,
with heavy blonde eyebrows, and an eye without
radiance, but inflexibly steady and hard. I had not
forgotten his rough speech ; but I remembered also
that he had helped us about the lantern ; and now
seeing him in conversation with Jones, and being
choked with indignation, I proceeded to blow off my
steam.

' Well,' said I, 'I make you my compliments
upon your steward,' and furiously narrated what had
happened.

' I 've nothing to do with him,' replied the bo's'un.
' They 're all alike. They wouldn't mind if they saw
you all lying dead one upon the top of another.'

This was enough. A very little humanity went a
long way with me after the experience of the evening.
A sympathy grew up at once between the bo's'un
and myself; and that night, and during the next few
days, I learned to appreciate him better. He was a

57

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

remarkable type, and not at all the kind of man you
find in books. He had been at Sebastopol under
English colours ; and again in a States ship, * after
the Alabama, and praying God we shouldn't find
her.' He was a high Tory and a high Englishman.
No manufacturer could have held opinions more
hostile to the working man and his strikes. 'The
workmen,' he said, ' think nothing of their country.
They think of nothing but themselves. They're
damned greedy, selfish fellows.' He would not hear
of the decadence of England. ' They say they send
us beef from America,' he argued ; ' but who pays
for it? All the money in the world's in England.'
The Royal Navy was the best of possible services,
according to him. ' Anyway the officers are gentle-
men,' said he ; ' and you can't get hazed to death by

a damned non-commissioned as you can in the

army.' Among nations, England was the first ; then
came France. He respected the French navy and
liked the French people ; and if he were forced to
make a new choice in life, ' by God, he would try
Frenchmen ! ' For all his looks and rough cold
manners, I observed that children were never fright-
ened by him; they divined him at once to be a
friend ; and one night when he had chalked his hand
and went about stealthily setting his mark on people's
clothes, it was incongruous to hear this formidable
old salt chuckling over his boyish monkey trick.

In the morning, my first thought was of the sick
man. I was afraid I should not recognise him, so
baffling had been the light of the lantern ; and found
58

THE SICK MAN

myself unable to decide if he were Scots, English, or
Irish. He had certainly employed north-country
words and elisions ; but the accent and the pro-
nunciation seemed unfamiliar and incongruous in
my ear.

To descend on an empty stomach into Steerage
No. 1 was an adventure that required some nerve.
The stench was atrocious ; each respiration tasted in
the throat Mke some horrible kind of cheese ; and
the squalid aspect of the place was aggravated by so
many people worming themselves into their clothes
in the twilight of the bunks. You may guess if I
was pleased, not only for him, but for myself also,
when I heard that the sick man was better and had
gone on deck.

The morning was raw and foggy, though the sun
suffused the fog with pink and amber ; the fog-horn
still blew, stertorous and intermittent; and to add
to the discomfort, the seamen were just beginning to
wash down the decks. But for a sick man this was
heaven compared to the steerage. I found him
standing on the hot-water pipe, just forward of the
saloon deck-house. He was smaller than I had
fancied, and plain-looking ; but his face was distin-
guished by strange and fascinating eyes, limpid grey
from a distance, but, when looked into, full of
changing colours and grains of gold. His manners
were mild and uncompromisingly plain ; and I soon
saw that, when once started, he delighted to talk.
His accent and language had been formed in the
most natural way, since he was born in Ireland, had

59

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

lived a quarter of a century on the banks of Tyne,
and was married to a Scots wife. A fisherman in
the season, he had fished the east coast from Fisher-
row to Whitby. When the season was over, and
the great boats, which required extra hands, were
once drawn up on shore till the next spring, he
worked as a labourer about chemical furnaces, or
along the wharves unloading vessels. In this com-
paratively humble way of life he had gathered a
competence, and could speak of his comfortable
house, his hayfield, and his garden. On this ship,
where so many accomplished artisans were fleeing
from starvation, he was present on a pleasure trip to
visit a brother in New York.

Ere he started, he informed me he had been
warned against the steerage and the steerage fare,
and recommended to bring with him a ham and tea
and a spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn such
counsels. ' / 'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser,
* / 7/ get on for ten days. I 've not been a fisherman
for nothing.' For it is no light matter, as he re-
minded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-
deep with herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and
for miles on every hand lee-shores, unbroken,
iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an
anchorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour
impossible to enter with the wind that blows. The
life of a North Sea fisher is one long chapter of
exposure and hard work and insufficient fare ; and
even if he makes land at some bleak fisher port,
perhaps the season is bad or his boat has been
60

THE SICK MAN

unlucky, and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance
and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a loaf of
bread. Yet the steerage of the emigrant ship had
been too vile for the endurance of a man thus rudely
trained. He had scarce eaten since he came on
board, until the day before, when his appetite was
tempted by some excellent pea-soup. We were all
much of the same mind on board, and beginning
with myself, had dined upon pea-soup not wisely but
too well ; only with him the excess had been
punished, perhaps because he was weakened by
former abstinence, and his first meal had resulted in
a cramp. He had determined to live henceforth on
biscuit ; and when, two months later, he should
return to England, to make the passage by saloon.
The second cabin, after due inquiry, he scouted as
another edition of the steerage.

He spoke apologetically of his emotion when ill.
' Ye see, I had no call to be here,' said he ; ' and I
thought it was by with me last night. I 've a good
house at home, and plenty to nurse me, and I had
no real call to leave them.' Speaking of the atten-
tions he had received from his shipmates generally,
' they were all so kind,' he said, ' that there 's none
to mention.' And except in so far as I might share
in this, he troubled me with no reference to my
services.

But what affected me in the most lively manner
was the wealth of this day-labourer, paying a two
months' pleasure visit to the States, and preparing to
return in the saloon, and the new testimony rendered

6i

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

by his story, not so much to the horrors of the
steerage as to the habitual comfort of the working
classes. One foggy, frosty December evening, I
encountered on Liberton Hill, near Edinburgh, an
Irish labourer trudging homeward from the fields.
Our roads lay together, and it was natural that we
should fall into talk. He was covered with mud ;
an inoffensive, ignorant creature, who thought the
Atlantic Cable was a secret contrivance of the
masters the better to oppress labouring mankind;
and I confess I was astonished to learn that he had
nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. But this
man had travelled over most of the world, and
enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some American
railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on
Sunday and at night ; whereas my fellow-passenger
had never quitted Tyneside, and had made all that
he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling
England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, mill-
wrights, and carpenters were fleeing as from the
native country of starvation.

Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes
and wages and hard times. Being from the Tyne,
and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket
by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held
strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply
of the masters, and, when I led him on, of the
men also. The masters had been selfish and obstruc-
tive ; the men selfish, silly, and light-headed. He
rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he
had been present, and the somewhat long discourse
62

THE SICK MAN

which he had there pronounced, calling into question
the wisdom and even the good faith of the Union
delegates ; and although he had escaped himself
through flush times and starvation times with a
handsomely provided purse, he had so little faith in
either man or master, and so profound a terror for
the unerring Nemesis of mercantile affairs, that he
could think of no hope for our country outside of a
sudden and complete political subversion. Down
must go Lords and Church and Army ; and capital,
by some happy direction, must change hands from
worse to better, or England stood condemned. Such
principles, he said, were growing * like a seed.'

From this mild, soft, domestic man, these words
sounded unusually ominous and grave. I had heard
enough revolutionary talk among my workmen fellow-
passengers ; but most of it was hot and turgid, and
fell discredited from the lips of unsuccessful men.
This man was calm ; he had attained prosperity and
ease ; he disapproved the policy which had been
pursued by labour in the past ; and yet this was his
panacea, — to rend the old country from end to end,
and from top to bottom, and in clamour and civil
discord remodel it with the hand of violence.

THE STOWAWAYS

On the Sunday, among a party of men who were
talking in our companion. Steerage No. 2 and 3, we
remarked a new figure. He wore tweed clothes,
well enough made if not very fresh, and a plain
smoking-cap. His face was pale, with pale eyes,
and spiritedly enough designed ; but though not
yet thu'ty, a sort of blackguardly degeneration had
already overtaken his features. The fine nose had
grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were
sunk in fat. His hands were strong and elegant ;
his experience of life evidently varied ; his speech
full of pith and verve ; his manners forward, but
perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the
second cabin told me, in answer to a question, that
he did not know who he was, but thought, ' by his
way of speaking, and because he was so pohte, that
he was some one from the saloon.'

I was not so sure, for to me there was something
equivocal in his air and bearing. He might have
been, I thought, the son of some good family who
had fallen early into dissipation and run from home.
But, making every allowance, how admirable was
64

THE STOWAWAYS

his talk ! I wish you could have heard him tell his
own stories. They were so swingingly set forth, in
such dramatic language, and illustrated here and
there by such luminous bits of acting, that they
could only lose in any reproduction. There were
tales of the P. and O. Company, where he had
been an officer ; of the East Indies, where in former
years he had hved lavishly ; of the Royal En-
gineers, where he had served for a period ; and of
a dozen other sides of hfe, each introducing some
vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the talk to
himself that night, we were aU so glad to Usten.
The best talkers usually address themselves to some
particular society ; there they are kings, elsewhere
camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and
yet be ignorant of Spanish ; but this fellow had a
frank, headlong power of style, and a broad, human
choice of subject, that would have turned any circle
in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a
Homeric talker, plain, strong, and cheerful ; and the
things and the people of which he spoke became
readily and clearly present to the minds of those
who heard him. This, with a certain added colour-
ing of rhetoric and rodomontade, must have been
the style of Burns, who equally charmed the ears of
duchesses and hostlers.

Yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points
remained obscure in his narration. The Engineers,
for instance, was a service which he praised highly ;
it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants ;
but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own,
3— E 65

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

in particular, one among ten thousand. It sounded
so far exactly like an episode in the rakish, topsy-
turvy life of such an one as I had imagined. But
then there carrie incidents more doubtful, which
showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities,
and a truly impudent disregard for truth. And
then there was the tale of his departure. He had
wearied, it seems, of Woolwich, and one fine day,
with a companion, slipped up to London for a spree.
I have a suspicion that spree was meant to be a long
one ; but God disposes all things ; and one morning,
near Westminster Bridge, whom should he come
across but the very sergeant who had recruited him
at first ! What followed ? He himself indicated
cavaherly that he had then resigned. Let us put it
so. But these resignations are sometimes very trying.

At length, after having dehghted us for hours, he
took himself away from the companion ; and I could
ask Mackay who and what he was. 'That?' said
Mackay. ' Why, that 's one of the stowaways.'

' No man,' said the same authority, ' who has had
anything to do with the sea, would ever think of
paying for a passage.' I give the statement as
Mackay 's, without indorsement ; yet I am tempted
to beheve that it contains a grain of truth ; and if
you add that the man shall be impudent and
thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even pass for a
fair representation of the facts. We gentlemen of
England who hve at home at ease have, I suspect,
very insufficient ideas on the subject. All the world
over, people are stowing away in coal-holes and dark
66

THE STOWAWAYS

corners, and when ships are once out to sea, appear-
ing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The
career of these sea-tramps partakes largely of the
adventurous. They may be poisoned by coal-gas, or
die by starvation in their place of concealment ; or
when found they may be clapped at once and
ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their
promised land, the port of destination, and alas !
brought back in the same way to that from which
they started, and there dehvered over to the magis-
trates and the seclusion of a county jail. Since I
crossed the Atlantic, one miserable stowaway was
found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but
a word or two, and departed for a farther country
than America.

When the stowaway appears on deck, he has but
one thing to pray for : that he be set to work, which
is the price and sign of his forgiveness. After half
an hour with a swab or a bucket, he feels himself as
secure as if he had paid for his passage. It i§ not
altogether a bad thing for the company, who get
more or less efficient hands for nothing but a few
plates of junk and duff; and every now and again
find themselves better paid than by a whole family
of cabin passengers. Not long ago, for instance, a
packet was saved from nearly certain loss by the
skill and courage of a stowaway engineer. As was
no more than just, a handsome subscription rewarded
him for his success ; but even without such excep-
tional good fortune, as things stand in England and
America, the stowaway will often make a good profit

67

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

out of his adventure. Four engineers stowed away-
last summer on the same ship, the Cir cassia ; and
before two days after their arrival each of the four
had found a comfortable berth. This was the most
hopeful tale of emigration that I heard from first to
last ; and as you see, the luck was for stowaways.

My curiosity was much inflamed by what I heard ;
and the next morning, as I was making the round
of the ship, I was dehghted to find the ex-Royal
Engineer engaged in washing down the white paint
of a deck-house. There was another fellow at work
beside him, a lad not more than twenty, in the most
miraculous tatters, his handsome face sown with
grains of beauty and hghted up by expressive eyes.
Four stowaways had been found aboard our ship
before she left the Clyde ; but these two had alone
escaped the ignominy of being put ashore. Ahck,
my acquaintance of last night, was Scots by birth,
and by trade a practical engineer ; the other was
from Devonshire, and had been to sea before the
mast. Two people more unhke by training, char-
acter, and habits, it would be hard to imagine ; yet
here they were together, scrubbing paint.

AHck had held all sorts of good situations, and
wasted many opportunities in hfe. I have heard
him end a story with these words : * That was in my
golden days, when I used finger-glasses.' Situation
after situation failed him ; then followed the depres-
sion of trade, and for months he had hung round
with other idlers, playing marbles all day in the
West Park, and going home at night to tell his
68

THE STOWAWAYS

landlady how be had been seeking for a job. I
believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant
to Alick himself, and he might have long continued
to enjoy idleness and a life on tick ; but he had a
comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive.
This fellow was continually threatening to shp his
cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday,
Glasgow was left widowed of her Brown. Some
months afterwards, Alick met another old chum in
Sauchiehall Street.

' By the by, AUck,' said he, ' I met a gentleman in
New York who was asking for you.'

' Who was that ?' asked Ahck.

' The new second engineer on board the So-and-so,''
was the reply.

' Well, and who is he ?'

' Brown, to be sin-e.'

For Brown had been one of the fortunate quartette
aboard the Circassia. If that was the way of it in
the States, Alick thought it was high time to follow
Brown's example. He spent his last day, as he put
it, 'reviewing the yeomanry,' and the next morning
says he to his landlady, ' Mrs. X., I '11 not take
porridge to-day, please ; I '11 take some eggs.'

' Why, have you found a job ? ' she asked, de-
lighted.

' Well, yes,' returned the perfidious Alick ; * I
think I '11 start to-day.'

And so, well lined with eggs, start he did, but for
America. I am afraid that landlady has seen the
last of him.

69

THE AMATEUK EMIGRANT

It was easy enough to get on board in the con-
fusion that attends a vessel's departure ; and in one
of the dark corners of Steerage No. 1, flat in a bunk
and with an empty stomach, Ahck made the voyage
from the Broomielaw to Greenock. That night, the
ship's yeoman pulled him out by the heels and had
him before the mate. Two other stowaways had
already been found and sent ashore ; but by this
time darkness had fallen, they were out in the middle
of the estuary, and the last steamer had left them till
the morning.

' Take him to the forecastle and give him a meal,'
said the mate, ' and see and pack him off the first
thing to-morrow.'

In the forecastle he had supper, a good night's
rest, and breakfast ; and was sitting placidly with a
pipe, fancying all was over and the game up for
good with that ship, when one of the sailors grumbled
out an oath at him, with a 'What are you doing
there ? ' and ' Do you call that hiding, anyway ? '
There was need of no more : Alick was in another
bunk before the day was older. Shortly before the
passengers arrived, tlie ship was cursorily inspected.
He heard the round come down the companion and
look into one pen after another, until they came
within two of the one in which he lay concealed.
Into these last two they did not enter, but merely
glanced from without ; and Ahck had no doubt that
he was personally favoured in this escape. It was
the character of the man to attribute nothing to luck
and but little to kindness ; whatever happened to
70

THE STOWAWAYS

him he had earned in his own right amply ; favours
came to him from his singular attraction and adroit-
ness, and misfortunes he had always accepted with
his eyes open. Half an hour after the searchers had
departed, the steerage began to fill with legitimate
passengers, and the worst of AHck's troubles was at
an end. He was soon making himself popular,
smoking other people's tobacco, and poHtely sharing
their private stock of delicacies, and when night
came, he retired to his bunk beside the others with
composure.

Next day by afternoon. Lough Foyle being already
far behind, and only the rough north-western hills of
Ireland within view, Ahck appeared on deck to court
inquiry and decide his fate. As a matter of fact, he
was known to several on board, and even intimate
with one of the engineers ; but it was plainly not the
etiquette of such occasions for the authorities to
avow their information. Every one professed surprise
and anger on his appearance, and he was led prisoner
before the captain.

' What have you got to say for yoiu-self ?' inquired
the captain.

* Not much,' said AUck ; ' but when a man has
been a long time out of a job, he will do things he
would not under other circumstances.'

' Are you willing to work V

AUck swore he was burning to be useful.

' And what can you do V asked the captain.

He replied composedly that he was a brass-fitter
by trade.

71

THE AMATEUR EMIGUANT

'1 think you will be better at engineering?'
suggested the officer, with a shrewd look.

' No, sir,' says Ahek simply. — ' There 's few can
beat me at a he,' was his engaging commentary to
me as he recounted the affair.

' Have you been to sea ? ' again asked the captain.

' I 've had a trip on a Clyde steamboat, sir, but no
more,' replied the unabashed Ahck.

* Well, we must try and find some work for you,'
concluded the officer.

And hence we behold Alick, clear of the hot
engine-room, lazily scraping paint and now and then
taking a pull upon a sheet. ' You leave me alone,'
was his deduction. ' When I get talking to a man,
I can get round him.'

The other stowaway, whom I will call the
Devonian — it was noticeable that neither of them
told his name — had both been brought up and seen
the world in a much smaller way. His father, a
confectioner, died and was closely followed by his
mother. His sisters had taken, I think, to dress-
making. He himself had returned from sea about a
year ago and gone to hve with his brother, who kept
the ' George Hotel '■ — ' it was not quite a real hotel,'
added the candid fellow — and had a hu-ed man to
mind the horses. At first the Devonian was very
welcome ; but as time went on his brother not un-
naturally grew cool towards him, and he began to
find himself one too many at the ' George Hotel.'
' I don't think brothers care much for you,' he said,
as a general reflection upon hfe. Hurt at this
72

THE STOWAWAYS

change, nearly penniless, and too proud to ask for
more, he set off on foot and walked eighty miles to
Weymouth, hving on the journey as he could. He
would have enlisted, but he was too small for the
army and too old for the navy ; and thought himself
fortunate at last to find a berth on board a trading
dandy. Somewhere in the Bristol Channel, the
dandy sprung a leak and went down ; and though
the crew were picked up and brought ashore by
fishermen, they found themselves with nothing but
the clothes upon their back. His next engagement
was scarcely better- starred ; for the ship proved so
leaky, and frightened them all so heartily during a
short passage through the Irish Sea, that the entire
crew deserted and remained behind upon the quays
of Belfast.

Evil days were now coming thick on the Devonian.
He could find no berth in Belfast, and had to work
a passage to Glasgow on a steamer. She reached the
Broomielaw on a Wednesday : the Devonian had a
bellyful that morning, laying in breakfast manfully
to provide against the future, and set off along the
quays to seek employment. But he was now not
only penniless, his clothes had begun to fall in
tatters ; he had begun to have the look of a street
Arab ; and captains will have nothing to say to a
ragamuffin ; for in that trade, as in all others, it is
the coat that depicts the man. You may hand, reef,
and steer like an angel, but if you have a hole in
your trousers, it is hke a millstone round your
neck. The Devonian lost heart at so many refusals.

72>

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

He had not the unpudence to beg ; although, as he
said, * when I had money of my own, I always gave
it.' It was only on Saturday morning, after three
whole days of starvation, that he asked a scone from
a milkwoman, who added of her own accord a glass
of milk. He had now made up his mind to stow
away, not from any desire to see America, but merely
to obtain the comfort of a place in the forecastle and
a supply of familiar sea-fare. He hved by begging,
always from milkwomen, and always scones and milk,
and was not once refused. It was vile wet weather,
and he could never have been dry. By night he
walked the streets, and by day slept upon Glasgow
Green, and heard, in the intervals of his dozing, the
famous theologians of the spot clear up intricate
points of doctrine and appraise the merits of the
clergy. He had not much instruction ; he could
' read bills on the street,' but was ' main bad at writ-
ing ; ' yet these theologians seem to have impressed
him with a genuine sense of amusement. Why he did
not go to the Sailors' Home I know not ; I presume
there is in Glasgow one of these institutions, which
are by far the happiest and the wisest effort of con-
temporaneous charity ; but I must stand to my
author, as they say in old books, and relate the story
as I heard it. In the meantime, he had tried four
times to stow away in different vessels, and four
times had been discovered and handed back to starva-
tion. The fifth time was lucky ; and you may judge
if he were pleased to be aboard ship again, at his old
work, and with duff twice a week. He was, said

74

THE STOWAWAYS

Alick, ' a devil for the duff.' Or if devil was not the
word, it was one if anything stronger.

The difference in the conduct of the two was
remarkable. The Devonian was as wiUing as any
paid hand, swarmed aloft among the first, pulled his
natural weight and firmly upon a rope, and found
work for himself when there was none to show him.
Alick, on the other hand, was not only a skulker in
the grain, but took a humorous and fine-gentlemanly
view of the transaction. He would speak to me
by the hour in ostentatious idleness ; and only
if the bo's'un or a mate came by, fell-to languidly
for just the necessary time till they were out of
sight. * I 'm not breaking my heart with it,' he re-
marked.

Once there was a hatch to be opened near where
he was stationed ; he watched the preparations for a
second or so suspiciously, and then, * Hullo,' said he,
* here 's some real work coming — I'm off,' and he
was gone that moment. Again, calculating the six
guinea passage-money, and the probable duration
of the passage, he remarked pleasantly that he was
getting six shillings a day for this job, * and it 's
pretty dear to the company at that.' ' They are
making nothing by me,' was another of his observa-
tions ; ' they 're making something by that fellow.'
And he pointed to the Devonian, who was just then
busy to the eyes.

The more you saw of Alick, the more, it must be
owned, you learned to despise him. His natural
talents were of no use either to himself or others ; for

75

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

his character had degenerated like his face, and be-
come pulpy and pretentious. Even his power of
persuasion, which was certainly very surprising, stood
in some danger of being lost or neutralised by over-
confidence. He lied in an aggressive, brazen manner,
like a pert criminal in the dock ; and he was so vain
of his own cleverness that he could not refrain from
boasting, ten minutes after, of the very trick by
which he had deceived you. 'Why, now I have
more money than when I came on board,' he said
one night, exhibiting a sixpence, ' and yet I stood
myself a bottle of beer before I went to bed yester-
day. And as for tobacco, I have fifteen sticks of it.'
That was fairly successful indeed ; yet a man of his
superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy, might,
who knows ? have got the length of half a crown.
A man who prides himself upon persuasion should
learn the persuasive faculty of silence, above all as to
his own misdeeds. It is only in the farce and for
dramatic purposes that Scapin enlarges on his peculiar
talents to the world at large.

Scapin is perhaps a good name for this clever,
unfortunate Alick ; for at the bottom of all his mis-
conduct there was a guiding sense of humour that
moved you to forgive him. It was more than half
as a jest that he conducted his existence. ' Oh,
man,' he said to me once with unusual emotion,
hke a man thinking of his mistress, ' I would give
up anything for a lark.'

It was in relation to his fellow-stowaway that
Alick showed the best, or perhaps I should say, the
76

THE STOWAWAYS

only, good points of his nature. * Mind you,' he said
suddenly, changing his tone, * mind you, that 's a
good boy. He wouldn't tell you a lie. A lot of
them think he is a scamp because his clothes are
ragged, but he isn't; he's as good as gold.' To
hear him, you became aware that Alick himself had
a taste for virtue. He thought his own idleness and
the other's industry equally becoming. He was no
more anxious to ensure his own reputation as a liar
than to uphold the truthfulness of his companion ; and
he seemed unaware of what was incongruous in his
attitude, and was plainly sincere in both characters.

It was not surprising that he should take an
interest in the Devonian, for the lad worshipped and
served him in love and wonder. Busy as he was, he
would find time to warn Alick of an approaching
officer, or even to tell him that the coast was clear,
and he might slip off and smoke a pipe in safety.
' Tom,' he once said to him, for that was the name
which Alick ordered him to use, ' if you don't like
going to the galley, I '11 go for you. You ain't used
to this kind of thing, you ain't. But I 'm a sailor ;
and I can understand the feelings of any fellow, I
can.' Again, he was hard up and casting about for
some tobacco, for he was not so hberally used in this
respect as others perhaps less worthy, when Alick
offered him the half of one of his fifteen sticks. I
think, for my part, he might have increased the offer
to a whole one, or perhaps a pair of them, and not
lived to regret his liberality. But the Devonian
refused. 'No,' he said, ' you 're a stowaway like me ;

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

I won't take it from you, I '11 take it from some one
who 's not down on his luck.'

It was notable in this generous lad that he was
strongly under the influence of sex. If a woman
passed near where he was working, his eyes lit up,
his hand paused, and his mind wandered instantly
to other thoughts. It was natural that he should
exercise a fascination proportionally strong upon
women. He begged, you will remember, from
women only, and was never refused. Without wish-
ing to explain away the charity of those who helped
him, I cannot but fancy he may have owed a little
to his handsome face, and to that quick, responsive
nature, formed for love, which speaks eloquently
through all disguises, and can stamp an impression
in ten minutes' talk or an exchange of glances. He
was the more dangerous in that he was far from
bold, but seemed to woo in spite of himself, and
with a soft and pleading eye. Ragged as he was,
and many a scarecrow is in that respect more com-
fortably furnished, even on board he was not without
some curious admirers.

There was a girl among the passengers, a tall,
blonde, handsome, strapping Irishwoman, with a
wild, accommodating eye, whom Alick had dubbed
Tommy, with that transcendental appropriateness
that defies analysis. One day the Devonian was
lying for warmth in the upper stoke-hole, which
stands open on the deck, when Irish Tommy came
past, very neatly attired, as was her custom.

'Poor fellow,' she said, stopping, 'you haven't avest.'
78

' THE STOWAWAYS

* No,' he said ; ' I wish I 'ad.'

Then she stood and gazed on him in silence, until,
in his embarrassment, for he knew not how to look
under this scrutiny, he pulled out his pipe and began
to fill it with tobacco.

' Do you want a match ? ' she asked. And before
he had time to reply, she ran off and presently
returned with more than one.

That was the beginning and the end, as far as our
passage is concerned, of what I will make bold to
call this love-affair. There are many relations which
go on to marriage and last during a Hfetime, in which
less human feeling is engaged than in this scene of
five minutes at the stoke-hole.

Rigidly speaking, this would end the chapter of
the stowaways ; but in a larger sense of the word I
have yet more to add. Jones had discovered and
pointed out to me a young woman who was remark-
able among her fellows for a pleasing and interesting
air. She was poorly clad, to the verge, if not over
the line, of disrespectabiHty, with a ragged old jacket
and a bit of a sealskin cap no bigger than your fist ;
but her eyes, her whole expression, and her manner,
even in ordinary moments, told of a true womanly
nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. She
had a look, too, of refinement, hke one who might
have been a better lady than most, had she been
allowed the opportunity. When alone she seemed
pre-occupied and sad ; but she was not often alone ;
there was usually by her side a heavy, dull, gross
man in rough clothes, chary of speech and gesture

79

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

— not from caution, but poverty of disposition; a
man like a ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting ;
whom she petted and tended and waited on with
her eyes as if he had been Amadis of Gaul. It was
strange to see this hulking fellow dog-sick, and this
delicate, sad woman caring for him. He seemed,
from first to last, insensible of her caresses and
attentions, and she seemed unconscious of his in-
sensibility. The Irish husband who sang his wife
to sleep, and this Scottish girl serving her Orson,
were the two bits of human nature that most
appealed to me throughout the voyage.

On the Thursday before we arrived, the tickets
were collected ; and soon a rumour began to go
round the vessel ; and this girl, with her bit of
sealskin cap, became the centre of whispering and
pointed fingers. She also, it was said, was a stow-
away of a sort ; for she was on board with neither
ticket nor money ; and the man with whom she
travelled was the father of a family, who had left
wife and children to be hers. The ship's officers
discouraged the story, which may therefore have
been a story and no more ; but it was believed in
the steerage, and the poor girl had to encounter
many curious eyes from that day forth.

80

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
AND REVIEW

Travel is of two kinds ; and this voyage of mine
across the ocean combined both. * Out of my coun-
try and myself I go,' sings the old poet : and I was
not only travelling out of my country in latitude
and longitude, but out of myself in diet, associates,
and consideration. Part of the interest and a great
deal of the amusement flowed, at least to me, from
this novel situation in the world.

I found that I had what they call fallen in Hfe
with absolute success and verisimilitude. I was taken
for a steerage passenger ; no one seemed surprised
that I should be so ; and there was nothing but the
brass plate between decks to remind me that I had
once been a gentleman. In a former book, de-
scribing a former journey, I expressed some wonder
that I could be readily and naturally taken for a
pedlar, and explained the accident by the difference
of language and manners between England and
France. I must now take a humbler view ; for
here I was among my own countrym^en, somewhat
roughly clad, to be sure, but with every advantage
of speech and manner ; and I am bound to confess
3-F 8 1

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

that I passed for nearly anything you please except
an educated gentleman. The sailors called me
' mate,' the officers addressed me as ' my man/ my
comrades accepted me without hesitation for a person
of their own character and experience, but with some
curious information. One, a mason himself, beheved
I was a mason ; several, and among these at least
one of the seamen, judged me to be a petty officer
in the American navy ; and I was so often set down
for a practical engineer that at last I had not the
heart to deny it. From all these guesses I drew
one conclusion, which told against the insight of my
companions. They might be close observers in their
own way, and read the manners in the face ; but it
was plain that they did not extend their observation
to the hands.

To the saloon passengers also I sustained my part
without a hitch. It is true I came httle in their
way; but when we did encounter, there was no
recognition in their eye, although I confess I some-
times courted it in silence. All these, my inferiors
and equals, took me, hke the transformed monarch
in the story, for a mere common, human man. They
gave me a hard, dead look, with the flesh about the
eye kept unrelaxed.

With the women this surprised me less, as I had
already experimented on the sex by going abroad
through a suburban part of London simply attired
in a sleeve-waistcoat. The result was curious. I
then learned for the first time, and by the exhaustive
process, how much attention ladies are accustomed
82

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

to bestow on aU male creatures of their own station ;
for, in my humble rig, each one who went by me
caused me a certain shock of surprise and a sense of
something wanting. In my normal circumstances,
it appeared, every young lady must have paid me
some passing tribute of a glance ; and though I had
often been unconscious of it when given, I was well
aware of its absence when it was withheld. My
height seemed to decrease with every woman who
passed me, for she passed me like a dog. This is one
of my grounds for supposing that what are called the
upper classes may sometimes produce a disagreeable
impression in what are called the lower ; and I wish
some one would continue my experiment, and find
out exactly at what stage of toilette a man becomes
invisible to the well-regulated female eye.

Here on shipboard the matter was put to a more
complete test ; for, even with the addition of speech
and manner, I passed among the ladies for precisely
the average man of the steerage. It was one after-
noon that I saw this demonstrated. A very plainly
dressed woman was taken ill on deck. I think I
had the luck to be present at every sudden seizure
during aU the passage ; and on this occasion found
myself in the place of importance, supporting the
sufferer. There was not only a large crowd imme-
diately around us, but a considerable knot of saloon
passengers leaning over our heads from the hurricane-
deck. One of these, an elderly managing woman,
hailed me with counsels. Of course I had to reply ;
and as the talk went on, I began to discover that

83

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the whole group took me for the husband. I looked
upon my new wife, poor creature, with mingled
feelings ; and I must own she had not even the
appearance of the poorest class of city servant-maids,
but looked more like a country wench who should
have been employed at a roadside inn. Now was
the time for me to go and study the brass plate.

To such of the officers as knew about me — the
doctor, the purser, and the stewards — I appeared in
the hght of a broad joke. The fact that I spent the
better part of my day in writing had gone abroad
over the ship and tickled them all prodigiously.
Whenever they met me they referred to my absurd
occupation with famiharity and breadth of humor-
ous intention. Their manner was well calculated
to remind me of my fallen fortunes. You may be
sincerely amused by the amateur literary efforts of
a gentleman, but you scarce publish the feeling to
his face. ' Well !' they would say : ' still writing V
And the smile would widen into a laugh. The
purser came one day into the cabin, and, touched
to the heart by my misguided industry, offered me
some other kind of writing, 'for which,' he added
pointedly, ' you will be paid.' This was nothing else
than to copy out the list of passengers.

Another trick of mine which told against my
reputation was my choice of roosting-place in an
active draught upon the cabin floor. I was openly
jeered and flouted for this eccentricity ; and a con-
siderable knot would sometimes gather at the door
to see my last dispositions for the night. This was
84

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

embarrassing, but I learned to support the trial with
equanimity.

Indeed I may say that, upon the whole, my new
position sat lightly and naturally upon my spirits.
I accepted the consequences with readiness, and
found them far from difficult to bear. The steerage
conquered me ; I conformed more and more to the
type of the place, not only in manner but at heart,
growing hostile to the officers and cabin passengers
who looked down upon me, and day by day greedier
for small delicacies. Such was the result, as I fancy,
of a diet of bread and butter, soup and porridge.
We think we have no sweet tooth as long as we are
full to the brim of molasses ; but a man must have
sojourned in the workhouse before he boasts himself
indifferent to dainties. Every evening, for instance,
I was more and more pre-occupied about our doubt-
ful fare at tea. If it was delicate my heart was much
lightened; if it was but broken fish I was propor-
tionally downcast. The offer of a little jelly from a
fellow-passenger more provident than myself caused
a marked elevation in my spirits. And I would have
gone to the ship's end and back again for an oyster
or a chipped fruit.

In other ways I was content with my position.
It seemed no disgrace to be confounded with my
company ; for I may as well declare at once I found
their manners as gentle and becoming as those of
any other class. I do not mean that my friends
could have sat down without embarrassment and
laughable disaster at the table of a duke. That

85

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

does not imply an inferiority of breeding, but a
difference of usage. Thus I flatter myself that I
conducted myself well among my fellow-passengers ;
yet my most ambitious hope is not to have avoided
faults, but to have committed as few as possible. I
know too well that my tact is not the same as their
tact, and that my habit of a different society con-
stituted, not only no qualification, but a positive
disability to move easily and becomingly in this.
When Jones complimented me — because I ' managed
to behave very pleasantly ' to my fellow-passengers,
was how he put it — I could follow the thought in
his mind, and knew his compliment to be such as
we pay foreigners on their proficiency in English.
I daresay this praise was given me immediately on
the back of some unpardonable solecism, which had
led him to review my conduct as a whole. We are all
ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords ; we
should consider also the case of a lord amons; the
ploughmen. I have seen a lawyer in the house of a
Hebridean fisherman ; and I know, but nothing will
induce me to disclose, which of these two was the
better gentleman. Some of our finest behaviour,
though it looks well enough from the boxes, may
seem even brutal to the gallery. We boast too
often manners that are parochial rather than univer-
sal ; that, like a country wine, will not bear trans-
portation for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour
to the kitchen. To be a gentleman is to be one all
the world over, and in every relation and grade of
society. It is a high calling, to which a man must
86

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

first be born, and then devote himself for Hfe. And,
unhappily, the manners of a certain so-called upper
grade have a kind of currency, and meet with a
certain external acceptation throughout all the
others, and this tends to keep us well satisfied with
slight acquirements and the amateurish accomplish-
ments of a clique. But manners, like art, should be
human and central.

Some of my fellow-passengers, as I now moved
among them in a relation of equality, seemed to me
excellent gentlemen. They were not rough, nor
hasty, nor disputatious ; debated pleasantly, differed
kindly ; were helpful, gentle, patient, and placid.
The type of manners was plain, and even heavy ;
there was little to please the eye, but nothing to
shock ; and I thought gentleness lay more nearly at
the spring of behaviour than in many more ornate
and delicate societies. I say delicate, where I can-
not say refined ; a thing may be fine like ironwork,
without being delicate like lace. There was here
less delicacy ; the skin supported more callously the
natural surface of events, the mind received more
bravely the crude facts of human existence ; but I
do not think that there was less eiFective refinement,
less consideration for others, less polite suppression
of self. I speak of the best among my fellow-
passengers ; for in the steerage, as well as in the"
saloon, there is a mixture. Those, then, with
whom I found myself in sympathy, and of whom I
may therefore hope to write with a greater measure
of truth, were not only as good in their manners, but

87

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

endowed with very much the same natural capacities,
and about as wise in deduction, as the bankers and
barristers of what is called society. One and all
were too much interested in disconnected facts, and
loved information for its own sake with too rash a
devotion ; but people in all classes display the same
appetite as they gorge themselves daily with the
miscellaneous gossip of the newspaper. Newspaper
reading, as far as I can make out, is often rather a
sort of brown study than an act of culture. I have
myself palmed off yesterday's issue on a friend, and
seen him re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes
with an air at once refreshed and solemn. Workmen,
perhaps, pay more attention ; but though they may
be eager listeners, they have rarely seemed to me
either willing or careful thinkers. Culture is not
measured by the greatness of the field which is
covered by our knowledge, but by the nicety with
which we can perceive relations in that field, whether
great or small. Workmen, certainly those who were
on board with me, I found wanting in this quality or
habit of the mind. They did not perceive relations,
but leaped to a so-called cause, and thought the
problem settled. Thus the cause of everything in
England was the form of government, and the cure
for all evils was, by consequence, a revolution. It is
surprising how many of them said this, and that none
should have had a definite thought in his head as he
said it. Some hated the Church because they dis-
agreed with it ; some hated Lord Beaconsfield because
of war and taxes ; all hated the masters, possibly with
88

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

reason. But these feelings were not at the root
of the matter ; the true reasoning of their souls ran
thus — I have not got on ; I ought to have got on ;
if there was a revolution I should get on. How?
They had no idea. Why ? Because — because —
well, look at America !

To be politically bhnd is no distinction ; we are all
so, if you come to that. At bottom, as it seems to
me, there is but one question in modern home politics,
though it appears in many shapes, and that is the
question of money ; and but one poUtical remedy,
that the people should grow wiser and better. My
workmen fellow-passengers were as impatient and
dull of hearing on the second of these points as
any member of Parliament ; but they had some
glimmerings of the first. They would not hear of
improvement on their part, but wished the world
made over again in a crack, so that they might
remain improvident and idle and debauched, and
yet enjoy the comfort and respect that should
accompany the opposite virtues ; and it was in this
expectation, as far as I could see, that many of them
were now on their way to America. But on the
point of money they saw clearly enough that inland
politics, so far as they were concerned, were reducible
to the question of annual income ; a question which
should long ago have been settled by a revolution,
they did not know how, and which they were now
about to settle for themselves, once more they knew
not how, by crossing the Atlantic in a steamship of
considerable tonnage.

89

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

And yet it has been amply shown them that the
second or income question is in itself nothing, and
may as well be left undecided, if there be no wisdom
and virtue to profit by the change. It is not by a
man's purse, but by his character, that he is rich or
poor. Barney will be poor, Ahck will be poor,
Mackay will be poor, let them go where they wiU,
and wreck all the governments under heaven ; they
will be poor until they die.

Nothing is perhaps more notable in the average
workman than his surprising idleness, and the candour
with which he confesses to the failing. It has to me
been always something of a relief to find the poor, as
a general rule, so little oppressed with work, I can
in consequence enjoy my own more fortunate be-
ginning with a better grace. The other day I was
living with a farmer in America, an old frontiersman,
who had worked and fought, hunted and farmed,
from his childhood up. He excused himself for his
defective education on the ground that he had been
overworked from first to last. Even now, he said,
anxious as he was, he had never the time to take up
a book. In consequence of this, I observed him
closely ; he was occupied for four or, at the extreme
outside, for five hours out of the twenty-four, and
then principally in walking ; and the remainder of
the day he passed in sheer idleness, either eating fruit
or standing with his back against a door. I have
known men do hard literary work all morning, and
then undergo quite as much physical fatigue by way
of relief as satisfied this powerful frontiersman for the
90

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

day. He, at least, like all the educated class, did so
much homage to industry as to persuade himself he
was industrious. But the average mechanic recog-
nises his idleness with effrontery ; he has even, as I
am told, organised it.

I give the story as it was told me, and it was told
me for a fact. A man fell from a housetop in the
city of Aberdeen, and was brought into hospital with
broken bones. He was asked what was his trade,
and replied that he was a tappe?\ No one had ever
heard of such a thing before ; the officials were filled
with curiosity ; they besought an explanation. It
appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged
upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a
fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for ex-
ample, might shp away from her work and no one be
the wiser ; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping
of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbour-
hood be advertised of their defection. Hence the
career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and
keep up an industrious bustle on the housetop during
the absence of the slaters. When he taps for only
one or two the thing is child's-play, but when he has
to represent a whole troop, it is then that he earns
his money in the sweat of his brow. Then must he
bound from spot to spot, reduphcate, triplicate, sex-
tuplicate ^is single personality, and swell and hasten
his blows, until he produce a perfect illusion for the
ear, and you would swear that a crowd of emulous
masons were continuing merrily to roof the house.
It must be a strange sight from an upper window.

91

THE AMATEUK EMIGRANT

I heard nothing on board of the tapper ; but I was
astonished at the stories told by my companions.
Skulking, shirking, malingering, were all established
tactics, it appeared. They could see no dishonesty
when a man who is paid for an hour's work gives
half an hour's consistent idling in its place. Thus
the tapper would refuse to watch for the police during
a burglary, and call himself an honest man. It is
not sufficiently recognised that our race detests to
work. If I thought that I should have to work every
day of my life as hard as I am working now, I should
be tempted to give up the struggle. And the work-
man early begins on his career of toil. He has never
had his fill of holidays in the past, and his prospect of
holidays in the future is both distant and uncertain.
In the circumstances, it would require a high degree
of virtue not to snatch alleviations for the moment.

There were many good talkers on the ship ; and
I beUeve good talking of a certain sort is a common
accomplishment among working men. Where books
are comparatively scarce, a greater amount of in-
formation will be given and received by word of
mouth ; and this tends to produce good talkers,
and, what is no less needful for conversation, good
listeners. They could all tell a story with effect.
I am sometimes tempted to think that the less
literary class show always better in narrat^ion ; they
have so much more patience with detail, are so
much less hurried to reach the points, and preserve
so much juster a proportion among the facts. At
the same time their talk is dry; they pursue a
92

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

topic ploddingly, have not an agile fancy, do not
throw sudden lights from unexpected quarters, and
when the talk is over they often leave the matter
where it was. They mark time instead of march-
ing. They think only to argue, not to reach new
conclusions, and use their reason rather as a weapon
of offence than as a tool for self-improvement.
Hence the talk of some of the cleverest was un-
profitable in result, because there was no give and
take ; they would grant you as little as possible
for premise, and begin to dispute under an oath
to conquer or to die.

But the talk of a workman is apt to be more
interesting than that of a wealthy merchant, because
the thoughts, hopes, and fears of which the work-
man's life is built lie nearer to necessity and nature.
They are more immediate to human life. An in-
come calculated by the week is a far more human
thing than one calculated by the year, and a small
income, simply from its smallness, than a large one.
I never wearied listening to the details of a work-
man's economy, because every item stood for some
real pleasure. If he could afford pudding twice a
week, you know that twice a week the man ate with
genuine gusto and was physically happy ; while if you
learn that a rich man has seven courses a day, ten to
one the half of them remain untasted, and the whole
is but misspent money and a weariness to the flesh.

The difference between England and America to
a working man was thus most humanly put to me
by a fellow-passenger: 'In America,' said he, 'you

93

THE AMATEUK EMIGRANT

get pies and puddings.' I do not hear enough,
in economy books, of pies and pudding. A man
hves in and for the dehcacies, adornments, and
accidental attributes of life, such as pudding to eat
and pleasant books and theatres to occupy his
leisure. The bare terms of existence would be re-
jected with contempt by all. If a man feeds on
bread and butter, soup and porridge, his appetite
grows wolfish after dainties. And the workman
dwells in a borderland, and is always within sight
of those cheerless regions where life is more difficult
to sustain than worth sustaining. Every detail of
our existence, where it is worth while to cross the
ocean after pie and pudding, is made alive and
enthralling by the presence of genuine desire ; but
it is all one to me whether Croesus has a hundred
or a thousand thousands in the bank. There is
more adventure in the life of the working man
who descends as a common soldier into the battle
of life, than in that of the millionaire who sits
apart in an office, hke Von Moltke, and only directs
the manoeuvres by telegraph. Give me to hear
about the career of him who is in the thick of the
business ; to whom one change of market means an
empty belly, and another a copious and savoury
meal. This is not the philosophical, but the human
side of economics ; it interests like a story ; and the
life of all who are thus situated partakes in a small
way of the charm of Robinson Crusoe ; for every
step is critical, and human life is presented to you
naked and verging to its lowest terms.
94

NEW YORK

As we drew near to New York I was at first
amused, and then somewhat staggered, by the
cautions and the grisly tales that went the round.
You would have thought we were to land upon a
cannibal island. You must speak to no one in the
streets, as they would not leave you till you were
rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with
mihtary precautions; for the least you had to
apprehend was to awake next morning without
money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone
forked radish in a bed ; and if the worst befell, you
would instantly and mysteriously disappear from
the ranks of mankind,

I have usually found such stories correspond to
the least modicum of fact. Thus I was warned,
I remember, against the roadside inns of the Ce-
vennes, and that by a learned professor ; and when
I reached Pradelles the warning was explained ; it
was but the far-away rumour and reduplication of
a single terrifying story already half a century old,
and half forgotten in the theatre of the events. So
I was tempted to make light of these reports against

95

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

America. But we had on board with us a man
whose evidence it would not do to put aside. He
had come near these perils in the body ; he had
visited a robber inn. The public has an old and
well-grounded favour for this class of incident, and
shall be gratified to the best of my power.

My fellow - passenger, whom we shall call
M'Naughten, had come from New York to Boston
with a comrade, seeking work. They were a pair
of rattling blades ; and, leaving their baggage at
the station, passed the day in beer-saloons, and with
congenial spirits, until midnight struck. Then they
applied themselves to find a lodging, and walked
the streets till two, knocking at houses of enter-
tainment and being refused admittance, or them-
selves declining the terms. By two the inspiration
of their liquor had begun to wear off; they were
weary and humble, and after a great circuit found
themselves in the same street where they had begun
their search, and in front of a French hotel where
they had already sought accommodation. Seeing the
house still open, they returned to the charge. A
man in a white cap sat in an office by the door.
He seemed to welcome them more warmly than
when they had first presented themselves, and the
charge for the night had somewhat unaccountably
fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They thought
him ill-looking, but paid their quarter apiece, and
were shown upstairs to the top of the house. There,
in a small room, the man in the white cap wished
them pleasant slumbers.
96

NEW YORK

The room was furnished with a bed, a chair, and
some conveniences. The door did not lock on the
inside ; and the only sign of adornment was a couple
of framed pictures, one close above the head of the
bed, and the other opposite the foot, and both
curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-
colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art
more than usually skittish in the subject. It was
perhaps in the hope of finding something of this
last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled
aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly
disappointed. There was no picture. The frame
surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide,
an oblong aperture in the partition, through which
they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person
standing without could easily take a purse from
under the pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he lay
abed. M'Naughten and his comrade stared at each
other like Balboa and his men, ' with a wild sur-
mise ; ' and then the latter, catching up the lamp,
ran to the other frame and roughly raised the cur-
tain. There he stood, petrified ; and M'Naughten,
who had followed, grasped him by the wrist in
terror. They could see into another room, larger
in size than that which they occupied, where three
men sat crouching and silent in the dark. For a
second or so these five persons looked each other
in the eyes, then the curtain was dropped, and
M'Naughten and his friend made but one bolt of
it out of the room and down the stairs. The man
in the white cap said nothing as they passed him ;
3-G 97

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

and they were so pleased to be once more in the
open night that they gave up all notion of a bed,
and walked the streets of Boston till the morning.

No one seemed much cast down by these stories,
but all inquired after the address of a respectable
hotel ; and I, for my part, put myself under the
conduct of Mr. Jones. Before noon of the second
Sunday we sighted the low shores outside of New
York harbour ; the steerage passengers must remain
on board to pass through Castle Garden ori the
following morning ; but we of the second cabin
made our escape along with the lords of the saloon ;
and by six o'clock Jones and I issued into West
Street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an
open baggage- waggon. It rained miraculously ; and
from that moment till on the following night I left
New York, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation
of the downpour. The roadways were flooded; a
loud strident noise of falling water filled the air ;
the restaurants smelt heavily of wet people and
wet clothing.

It took us but a few minutes, though it cost us a
good deal of money, to be rattled along West Street
to our destination : ' Reunion House, No. 10 West
Street, one minute's walk from Castle Garden ; con-
venient to Castle Garden, the Steamboat Landings,
California Steamers and Liverpool Ships ; Board and
Lodging per day 1 dollar, single meals 25 cents,
lodging per night 25 cents ; private rooms for
families ; no charge for storage or baggage ; satis-
faction guaranteed to all persons ; Michael MitcheU,
98

NEW YORK

Proprietor.' Reunion House was, I may go the
length of saying, a humble hostelry. You entered
through a long bar-room, thence passed into a little
dining-room, and thence into a still smaller kitchen.
The furniture was of the plainest ; but the bar was
hung in the American taste, with encouraging and
hospitable mottoes.

Jones was well known ; we were received warmly ;
and two minutes afterwards I had refused a drink
from the proprietor, and was going on, in my plain
European fashion, to refuse a cigar, when Mr.
Mitchell sternly interposed, and explained the situa-
tion. He was offering to treat me, it appeared ;
whenever an American bar-keeper proposes any-
thing, it must be borne in mind that he is offering
to treat ; and if I did not want a drink, I must at
least take the cigar. I took it bashfully, feehng I
had begun my American career on the wrong foot.
I did not enjoy that cigar ; but this may have been
from a variety of reasons, even the best cigar often
failing to please if you smoke three-quarters of it in
a drenching rain.

For many years America was to me a sort of pro-
mised land. ' Westward the march of empire holds
its way ; ' the race is for the moment to the young ;
what has been and what is we imperfectly and
obscurely know ; what is to be yet hes beyond the
flight of our imaginations. Greece, Rome, and
Judeea are gone by for ever, leaving to generations
the legacy of their accomplished work ; China still
endures, an old inhabited house in the brand-new

99

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

city of nations ; England has already declined, since
she has lost the States ; and to these States, there-
fore, yet undeveloped, full of dark possibilities, and
grown, like another Eve, from one rib out of the side
of their own old land, the minds of young men in
England turn naturally at a certain hopeful period
of their age. It will be hard for an American to
understand the spirit. But let him imagine a young
man who shall have grown up in an old and rigid
circle, following bygone fashions and taught to dis-
trust his own fresh instincts, and who now suddenly
hears of a family of cousins, all about his own age,
who keep house together by themselves and live far
from restraint and tradition ; let him imagine this,
and he will have some imperfect notion of the
sentiment with which spirited English youths turn
to the thought of the American Republic. It seems
to them as if, out west, the w^r of life was still con-
ducted in the open air, and on free barbaric terms ;
as if it had not yet been narrowed into parlours, nor
begun to be conducted, like some unjust and dreary
arbitration, by compromise, costume, forms of pro-
cedure, and sad, senseless self-denial. Which of
these two he prefers, a man with any youth still
left in him will decide rightly for himself. He would
rather be houseless than denied a pass-key ; rather
go without food than partake of a stalled ox in stiff,
respectable society ; rather be shot out of hand than
direct his hfe according to the dictates of the world.
He knows or thinks nothing of the Maine Laws,
the Puritan sourness, the fierce, sordid appetite for

lOO

NEW YORK

dollars, or the dreary existence of country towns.
A few wild story-books which delighted his child-
hood form the imaginative basis of his picture of
America. In course of time, there is added to this
a great crowd of stimulating details — vast cities that
grow up as by enchantment ; the birds, that have
gone south in autumn, returning with the spring to
find thousands camped upon their marshes, and the
lamps burning far and near along populous streets ;
forests that disappear like snow ; countries larger
than Britain that are cleared and settled, one man
running forth with his household gods before another,
while the bear and the Indian are yet scarce aware
of their approach ; oil that gushes from the earth ;
gold that is washed or quarried in the brooks or
glens of the Sierras ; and all that bustle, courage,
action, and constant kaleidoscopic change that Walt
Whitman has seized and set forth in his vigorous,
cheerful, and loquacious verses.

Here I was at last in America, and was soon out
upon New York streets, spying for things foreign.
The place had to me an air of Liverpool ; but such
was the rain that not Paradise itself would have
looked inviting. We were a party of four, under
two umbrellas ; Jones and I and two Scots lads,
recent immigrants, and not indisposed to welcome a
compatriot. They had been six weeks in New York,
and neither of them had yet found a single job or
earned a single halfpenny. Up to the present they
were exactly out of pocket by the amount of the
fare.

lOI

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

The lads soon left us. Now I had sworn by all
my gods to have such a dinner as would rouse the
dead ; there was scarce any expense at which I
should have hesitated ; the devil was in it but Jones
and I should dine like heathen emperors. I set to
work, asking after a restaurant ; and I chose the
wealthiest and most gastronomical-looking passers-by
to ask from. Yet, although I had told them I was
wilUng to pay anything in reason, one and all sent
me off to cheap, fixed-price houses, where I would
not have eaten that night for the cost of twenty
dinners. I do not know if this were characteristic
of New York, or whether it was only Jones and I
who looked un-dinerly and discouraged enterprising
suggestions. But at length, by our own sagacity,
we found a French restaurant, where there was a
French waiter, some fair French cooking, some so-
called French wine, and French coffee to conclude
the whole. I never entered into the feelings of
Jack on land so completely as when I tasted that
coffee.

I suppose we had one of the ' private rooms for
families ' at Reunion House. It was very small ;
furnished with a bed, a chair, and some clothes-pegs ;
and it derived all that was necessary for the life of
the human animal through two borrowed lights ; one,
looking into the passage, and the second opening,
without sash, into another apartment, where three
men fitfully snored, or, in intervals of wakefulness,
drearily mumbled to each other all night long. It
will be observed that this was almost exactly the dis-

I02

NEW YORK

position of the room in M'Naughten's story. Jones
had the bed ; I pitched my camp upon the floor ; he
did not sleep until near morning, and I, for my part,
never closed an eye.

At sunrise I heard a cannon fired; and shortly
afterwards the men in the next room gave over
snoring for good, and began to rustle over their
toilettes. The sound of their voices as they talked
was low and moaning, Hke that of people watching
by the sick. Jones, who had at last begun to doze,
tumbled and murmured, and every now and then
opened unconscious eyes upon me where I lay. I
found myself growing eerier and eerier, for I dare-
say I was a httle fevered by my restless night, and
hurried to dress and get down-stairs.

You had to pass through the rain, which still fell
thick and resonant, to reach a lavatory on the other
side of the court. There were three basin-stands,
and a few crumpled towels and pieces of wet soap,
white and slippery Hke fish ; nor should I forget a
looking-glass and a pair of questionable combs.
Another Scots lad was here, scrubbing his face
with a good will. He had been three months in
New York and had not yet found a single job nor
earned a single halfpenny. Up to the present, he
also was exactly out of pocket by the amount of the
fare. I began to grow sick at heart for my fellow-
emigrants.

Of my nightmare wanderings in New York I
spare to tell. I had a thousand and one things to
do ; only the day to do them in, and a journey across

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the continent before me in the evening. It rained
with patient fury ; every now and then I had to get
under cover for a while in order, so to speak, to give
my mackintosh a rest; for under this continued
drenching it began to grow damp on the inside. I
went to banks, post-offices, railway-offices, restau-
rants, pubHshers, booksellers, money-changers, and
wherever I went a pool would gather about my feet,
and those who were careful of their floors would
look on with an unfriendly eye. Wherever I went,
too, the same traits struck me : the people were all
surprisingly rude and surprisingly kind. The money-
changer cross-questioned me like a French commis-
sary, asking my age, my business, my average income,
and my destination, beating down my attempts at
evasion, and receiving my answers in silence ; and
yet when all was over, he shook hands with me up
to the elbows, and sent his lad nearly a quarter of a
mile in the rain to get me books at a reduction.
Again, in a very large publishing and bookselling
establishment, a man, who seemed to be the manager,
received me as I had certainly never before been
received in any human shop, indicated squarely that
he put no faith in my honesty, and refused to look
up the names of books or give me the shghtest help
or information, on the ground, hke the steward, that
it was none of his business. I lost my temper at
last, said I was a stranger in America and not learned
in their etiquette; but I would assure him, if he
went to any bookseller in England, of more hand-
some usage. The boast was perhaps exaggerated;
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NEW YORK

but like many a long shot, it struck the gold. The
manager passed at once from one extreme to the
other ; 1 may say that from that moment he loaded
me with kindness ; he gave me all sorts of good
advice, wrote me down addresses, and came bare-
headed into the rain to point me out a restaurant
where I might lunch, nor even then did he seem to
think that he had done enough. These are (it is
as well to be bold in statement) the manners of
America. It is this same opposition that has most
struck me in people of almost all classes and from
east to west. By the time a man had about strung
me up to be the death of him by his insulting
behaviour, he himself would be just upon the point
of melting into confidence and serviceable attentions.
Yet I suspect, although I have met with the Hke in
so many parts, that this must be the character of
some particular State or group of States ; for in
America, and this again in all classes, you will find
some of the softest-mannered gentlemen in the
world.

I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell's to-
wards the evening, that I had simply to divest
myself of my shoes, socks, and trousers, and leave
them behind for the benefit of New York city.
No fire could have dried them ere I had to start;
and to pack them in their present condition was to
spread ruin among my other possessions. With a
heavy heart I said farewell to them as they lay a
pulp in the middle of a pool upon the floor of
Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they are dry by now.

105

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

Mitchell hired a man to carry my baggage to the
station, which was hard by, accompanied me thither
himself, and recommended me to the particular atten-
tion of the officials. No one could have been kinder.
Those who are out of pocket may go safely to
Reunion House, where they will get decent meals
and find an honest and obhging landlord. I owed
him this word of thanks, before I enter fairly on the
second chapter of my emigrant experience.

1 06

PART II
ACROSS THE PLAINS

NOTES BY THE WAY TO
COUNCIL BLUFFS

Monday. — It was, if I remember rightly, five
o'clock when we were all signalled to be present
at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An emigrant
ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday
night, another on the Sunday morning, our own on
Sunday afternoon, a fourth early on Monday ; and
as there is no emigrant train on Sunday, a great
part of the passengers from these four ships was
concentrated on the train by which I was to travel.
There was a Babel of bewildered men, women, and
children. The wretched little booking-office, and
the baggage-room, which was not much larger, were
crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and
rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open
carts full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the
rain. The officials loaded each other with recrim-
inations. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom
I take to have been an emigrant agent, was all
over the place, his mouth full of brimstone, bluster-
ing and interfering. It was plain that the whole

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

system, if system there was, had utterly broken
down under the strain of so many passengers.

My own ticket was given me at once, and an
oldish man, who preserved his head in the midst
of this turmoil, got my baggage registered, and
counselled me to stay quietly where I was till he
should give me the word to move. I had taken
along with me a small valise, a knapsack, which I
carried on my shoulders, and in the bag of my
railway rug the whole of Bancroft's History of the
United States, in six fat volumes. It was as much
as I could carry with convenience even for short
distances, but it ensured me plenty of clothing, and
the valise was at that moment, and often after,
useful for a stool. I am sure I sat for an hour in
the baggage-room, and wretched enough it was ; yet,
when at last the word was passed to me, and I picked
up my bundles and got under way, it was only to
exchange discomfort for downright misery and danger.

I followed the porters into a long shed reaching
downhill from West Street to the river. It was
dark, the wind blew clean through it from end to
end ; and here I found a great block of passengers
and baggage, hundreds of one and tons of the
other. I feel I shall have a difficulty to make
myself believed ; and certainly the scene must have
been exceptional, for it was too dangerous for daily
repetition. It was a tight jam ; there was no fan-
way through the mingled mass of brute and Hving
obstruction. Into the upper skirts of the crowd,
porters, infuriated by hurry and overwork, clove

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their way with shouts. I may say that we stood
like sheep, and that the porters charged among us
like so many maddened sheep-dogs ; and I believe
these men were no longer answerable for their acts.
It mattered not what they were carrying, they drove
straight into the press, and when they could get
no farther, blindly discharged their barrowful. With
my own hand, for instance, I saved the life of a
child as it sat upon its mother's knee, she sitting
on a box ; and since I heard of no accident, I must
suppose that there were many similar interpositions
in the course of the evening. It will give some
idea of the state of mind to which we were reduced
if I tell you that neither the porter nor the mother
of the child paid the least attention to my act. It
was not till some time after that I understood what
I had done myself, for to ward off heavy boxes
seemed at the moment a natural incident of human
life. Cold, wet, clamour, dead opposition to pro-
gress, such as one encounters in an evil dream, had
utterly daunted the spirits. We had accepted this
purgatory as a child accepts the conditions of the
world. For my part, I shivered a little, and my
back ached wearily; but I beheve I had neither a
hope nor a fear, and all the activities of my nature
had become tributary to one massive sensation of
discomfort.

At length, and after how long an interval I
hesitate to guess, the crowd began to move, heavily
straining through itself About the same time some
lamps were lighted, and threw a sudden flare over

III

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the shed. We were being filtered out into the
river boat for Jersey City. You may imagine how
slowly this filtering proceeded, through the dense,
choking crush, every one overladen with packages
or children, and yet under the necessity of fishing
out his ticket by the way ; but it ended at length
for me, and I found myself on deck, under a flimsy
awning, and with a trifle of elbow-room to stretch
and breathe in. This was on the starboard; for
the bulk of the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the
port side, by which we had entered. In vain the
seamen shouted to them to move on, and threatened
them with shipwreck. These poor people were
under a speU of stupor, and did not stir a foot. It
rained as heavily as ever, but the wind now came
in sudden claps and capfuls, not without danger
to a boat so badly ballasted as ours ; and we crept
over the river in the darkness, traihng one paddle
in the water like a wounded duck, and passed ever
and again by huge, illuminated steamers running
many knots, and heralding their approach by strains
of music. The contrast between these pleasm-e
embarkations and our own grim vessel, with her
list to port and her freight of wet and silent
emigrants, was of that glaring description which
we count too obvious for the pvu'poses of art.

The landing at Jersey City was done in a stam-
pede. I had a fixed sense of calamity, and, to
judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common
to us all. A panic selfishness, like that produced
by fear, presided over the disorder of our landing.

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People pushed, and elbowed and ran, their families
following how they could. Children fell, and were
picked up, to be rewarded by a blow. One child,
who had lost her parents, screamed steadily and
with increasing shrillness, as though verging towards
a fit ; an official kept her by him, but no one else
seemed so much as to remark her distress ; and I am
ashamed to say that I ran among the rest. I was
so weary that I had twice to make a halt and set
down my bundles in the hundred yards or so
between the pier and the railway station, so that
I was quite wet by the time that I got under
cover. There was no waiting-room, no refresh-
ment-room ; the cars were locked ; and for at least
another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp
upon the draughty, gas-lit platform. I sat on my
valise, too crushed to observe my neighbours ; but
as they were all cold, and wet, and weary, and
driven stupidly crazy by the mismanagement to
which we had been subjected, I beUeve they can
have been no happier than myself. I bought half
a dozen oranges from a boy, for oranges and nuts
were the only refection to be had. As only two
of them had even a pretence of juice, I threw the
other four under the cars, and beheld, as in a
dream, grown people and children groping on the
track after my leavings.

At last we were admitted into the cars, utterly

dejected, and far from dry. For my own part, I

got out a clothes-brush, and brushed my trousers

as hard as I could, till I had dried them and wariiied

3— H 113

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

my blood into the bargain ; but no one else, except
my next neighbour, to whom I lent the brush,
appeared to take the least precaution. As they
were, they composed themselves to sleep.- I had
seen the lights of Philadelphia, and been twice
ordered to change carriages and twice counter-
manded, before I allowed myself to follow their
example.

Tuesday. — When I awoke it was already day ;
the train was standing idle ; I was in the last car-
riage, and, seeing some others strolling to and fro
about the lines, I opened the door and stepped
forth, as from a caravan by the wayside. We were
near no station, nor even, as far as I could see,
within reach of any signal. A green, open, un-
dulating country stretched away upon all sides.
Locust-trees and a single field of Indian corn gave
it a foreign grace and interest ; but the contours
of the land were soft and English. It was not
quite England, neither was it quite France ; yet
like enough either to seem natural in my eyes.
And it was in the sky, and not upon the earth,
that I was surprised to find a change. Explain it
how you may, and for my part I cannot explain
it at all, the sun rises with a different splendour in
America and Europe. There is more clear gold
and scarlet in our old-country mornings ; more
purple, brown, and smoky orange in those of the
new. It may be from habit, but to me the coming
of day is less fresh and inspiriting in the latter ; it
has a duskier glory, and more nearly resembles
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TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

sunset; it seems to fit some subsequential, evening
epoch of the world, as though America were in
fact, and not merely in fancy, farther from the
orient of Aurora and the springs of day. I thought
so then, by the railroad-side in Pennsylvania, and I
have thought so a dozen times since in far distant
parts of the continent. If it be an illusion, it is
one very deeply rooted, and in which my eyesight
is accomplice.

Soon after a train whisked by, announcing and
accompanying its passage by the swift beating of a
sort of chapel-bell upon the engine ; and as it was
for this we had been waiting, we were summoned
by the cry of ' All aboard ! ' and went on again
upon our way. The whole line, it appeared, was
topsy-turvy ; an accident at midnight having thrown
all the traffic hours into arrear. We paid for this
in the flesh, for we had no meals all that day.
Fruit we could buy upon the cars ; and now and
then we had a few minutes at some station with
a meagre show of rolls and sandwiches for sale ;
but we were so many and so ravenous that, though
I tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always
exhausted before I could elbow my way to the
counter.

Our American sunrise had ushered in a noble
summer's day. There was not a cloud ; the sun-
shine was baking ; yet in the woody river- valleys
among which we wound our way the atmosphere
preserved a sparkling freshness till late in the after-
noon. It had an inland sweetness and variety to

115

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

one newly from the sea ; it smelt of woods, rivers,
and the delved earth. These, though in so far a
country, were airs from home. I stood on the plat-
form by the hour ; and as I saw, one after another,
pleasant villages, carts upon the highway and fishers
by the stream, and heard cockcrows and cheery
voices in the distance, and beheld the sun no longer
shining blankly on the plains of ocean, but striking
among shapely hills, and his light dispersed and
coloured by a thousand accidents of form and sur-
face, I began to exult with myself upon this rise
in life like a man who had come into a rich estate.
And when I had asked the name of a river from
the brakesman, and heard that it was called the
Susquehanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be
part and parcel of the beauty of the land. As when
Adam with divine fitness named the creatures, so
this word Susquehanna was at once accepted by
the fancy. That was the name, as no other could
be, for that shining river and desirable valley.

None can care for literature in itself who do
not take a special pleasure in the sound of names ;
and there is no part of the world where nomencla-
ture is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque
as the United States of America, All times, races,
and languages have brought their contribution.
Pekin is in the same State with Euclid, with Belle-
fontaine, and with Sandusky. Chelsea, with its
London associations of red brick, Sloane Square,
and the King's Road, is own suburb to stately and
primeval Memphis ; there they have their seat,
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TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

translated names of cities, where the Mississippi runs
by Tennessee and Arkansas ^ ; and both, while 1
was crossing the continent, lay watched by armed
men, in the horror and isolation of a plague. Old,
red Manhattan Hes, like an Indian arrowhead under
a steam factory, below Anglified New York. The
names of the States and Territories themselves form
a chorus of sweet and most romantic vocables :
Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Dakota, Iowa,
Wyoming, Minnesota, and the Carolinas ; there are
few poems with a nobler music for the ear : a song-
ful, tuneful land ; and if the new Homer shall arise
from the Western continent, his verse will be en-
riched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the names
of states and cities that would strike the fancy in
a business circular.

Late in the evening we were landed in a waiting-
room at Pittsburg. I had now under my charge a
young and sprightly Dutch widow with her chil-
dren ; these I was to watch over providentially for a
certain distance farther on the way ; but as I found
she was furnished with a basket of eatables, I left
her in the waiting-room to seek a dinner for myself

I mention this meal, not only because it was
the first of which I had partaken for about thirty
hours, but because it was the means of my first
introduction to a coloured gentleman. He did me
the honour to wait upon me after a fashion, while
I was eating ; and with every word, look, and
gesture marched me farther into the country of

^ Please pronounce Arkansaw, with the accent on the first.

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

surprise. He was indeed strikingly unlike the negroes
of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, or the Christy Minstrels of
my youth. Imagine a gentleman, certainly some-
what dark, but of a pleasant warm hue, speaking
English with a slight and rather odd foreign accent,
every inch a man of the world, and armed with
manners so patronisingly superior that I am at a
loss to name their parallel in England. A butler
perhaps rides as high over the unbutlered, but then
he sets you right with a reserve and a sort of sigh-
ing patience which one is often moved to admire.
And again, the abstract butler never stoops to
familiarity. But the coloured gentleman will pass
you a wink at a time ; he is familiar like an upper-
form boy to a fkg ; he unbends to you like Prince
Hal with Poins and FalstafF, He makes himself
at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this
waiter behaved himself to me throughout that
supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not
very self-respecting master might behave to a good-
looking chambermaid. I had come prepared to pity
the poor negro, to put him at his ease, to prove
in a thousand condescensions that I was no sharer
in the prejudice of race ; but I assure you I put
my patronage away for another occasion, and had
the grace to be pleased with that result.

Seeing he was a very honest fellow, I consulted
him upon a point of etiquette : if one should offer
to tip the American waiter ? Certainly not, he told
me. Never. It would not do. They considered
themselves too highly to accept. They would even
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TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

resent the offer. As for him and me, we had en-
joyed a very pleasant conversation ; he, in particular,
had found much pleasure in my society ; I was a
stranger ; this was exactly one of those rare conjunc-
tures. . . . Without being very clear-seeing, I can
still perceive the sun at noonday ; and the coloured
gentleman deftly pocketed a quarter. ^

Wednesday. — A httle after midnight I convoyed
my widow and orphans on board the train ; and
morning found us far into Ohio. This had early
been a favourite home of my imagination ; I have
played at being in Ohio by the week, and enjoyed
some capital sport there with a dummy gun, my
person being still unbreeched. My preference was
founded on a work which appeared in CasselVs
Family Paper, and was read aloud to me by
my nurse. It narrated the doings of one Custa-
loga, an Indian brave, who, in the last chapter,
very obligingly washed the paint off his face and
became Sir Reginald Somebody-or-other ; a trick I
never forgave him. The idea of a man being an
Indian brave, and then giving that up to be a
baronet, was one which my mind rejected. It
offended verisimilitude, like the pretended anxiety
of Robinson Crusoe and others to escape from un-
inhabited islands.

But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured it.
We wer^ now on those great plains which stretch
unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The country
was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All
through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

much as I saw of them from the train and in
my waking moments, it was rich and various, and
breathed an elegance pecuHar to itself. The tall
corn pleased the eye ; the trees were graceful in
themselves, and framed the plain into long, aerial
vistas ; and the clean, bright, gardened townships
spoke of country fare and pleasant summer even-
ings on the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise ;
but, I am afraid, not unfrequented by the devil.
That morning dawned with such a freezing chill as
I have rarely felt; a chiU that was not perhaps so
measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon
the heart and seemed to travel with the blood.
Day came in with a shudder. White mists lay
thinly over the surface of the plain, as we see them
more often on a lake ; and though the sun had
soon dispersed and drunk them up, leaving an
atmosphere of fever-heat and crystal pureness from
horizon to horizon, the mists had still been there,
and we knew that this paradise was haunted by
killing damps and foul malaria. The fences along
the line bore but two descriptions of advertisement ;
one to recommend tobacco;s, and the other to vaunt
remedies against the ague. At the point of day,
and while we were all in the grasp of that first
chill, a native of the State, who had got in at some
way-station, pronounced it, with a doctoral air, ' a
fever-and-ague morning.' *

The Dutch widow was a person of some character.
She had conceived at first sight a great aversion
for the present writer, which she was at no pains to
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TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

conceal. But, being a woman of a practical spirit,
she made no difficulty about accepting my attentions,
and encouraged me to buy her children fruits and
candies, to carry all her parcels, and even to sleep
upon the floor that she might profit by my empty
seat. Nay, she was such a rattle by nature, and so
powerfully moved to autobiographical talk, that she
was forced, for want of a better, to take me into
confidence and tell me the story of her life. I heard
about her late husband, who seemed to have made
his chief impression by taking her out pleasuring on
Sundays. I could tell you her prospects, her hopes,
the amount of her fortune, the cost of her house-
keeping by the week, and a variety of particular
matters that are not usually disclosed except to
friends. At one station she shook up her children
to look at a man on the platform and say if he were
not like Mr. Z. ; while to me she explained how she
had been keeping company with this Mr. Z., how far
matters had proceeded, and how it was because of
his desistance that she was now travelhng to the
west. Then, when I was thus put in possession of
the facts, she asked my judgment on that type of
manly beauty. I admired it to her heart's content.
She was not, I think, remarkably veracious in talk,
but broidered as fancy prompted, and built castles in
the air out of her past ; yet she had that sort of
candour, to keep me, in spite of all these confidences,
steadily aware of her aversion. Her parting words
were ingeniously honest. ' I am sure,' said she, 'we
all ought to be very much obhged to you.' I cannot

121

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

pretend that she put me at my ease ; but I had a
certain respect for such a genuine dishke. A poor
nature would have sHpped, in the course of these
famiharities, into a sort of worthless toleration for
me.

We reached Chicago in the evening. I was turned
out of the cars, bundled into an omnibus, and driven
off through the streets to the station of a different
railroad. Chicago seemed a great and gloomy city.
I remember having subscribed, let us say sixpence,
towards its restoration at the period of the fire ; and
now when I beheld street after street of ponderous
houses and crowds of comfortable burghers, I thought
it would be a graceful act for the corporation to
refund that sixpence, or, at the least, to entertain
me to a cheerful dinner. But there was no word of
restitution. I was that city's benefactor, yet I was
received in a third-class waiting-room, and the best
dinner I could get was a dish of ham and eggs at
my own expense.

I can safely say, I have never been so dog-tired as
that night in Chicago. When it was time to start, I
descended the platform like a man in a dream. It
was a long train, Hghted from end to end ; and car
after car, as I came up with it, was not only filled,
but overflowing. My valise, my knapsack, my rug,
with those six ponderous tomes of Bancroft, weighed
me double ; I was hot, feverish, painfully athirst ;
and there was a great darkness over me, an internal
darkness, not to be dispelled by gas. When at last
I found an empty bench, I sank into it like a bundle

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of rags, the world seemed to swim away into the
distance, and my consciousness dwindled within me
to a mere pin's head, like a taper on a foggy
night.

When I came a little more to myself, I found that
there had sat down beside me a very cheerful, rosy
little German gentleman, somewhat gone in drink,
who was talking away to me, nineteen to the dozen,
as they say. I did my best to keep up the conver-
sation ; for it seemed to me dimly as if something
depended upon that. I heard him relate, among
many other things, that there were pickpockets on
the train, who had already robbed a man of forty
dollars and a return ticket ; but though I caught
the words, I do not think I properly understood the
sense until next morning ; and I believe I replied at
the time that I was very glad to hear it. What else
he talked about I have no guess ; I remember a gab-
bhng sound of words, his profuse gesticulation, and
his smile, which was highly explanatory ; but no
more. And I suppose I must have shown my con-
fusion very plainly; for, first, I saw him knit his
brows at me like one who has conceived a doubt ;
next, he tried me in German, supposing perhaps
that I was unfamiliar with the EngUsh tongue;
and finally, in despair, he rose and left me. I felt
chagrined ; but my fatigue was too crushing for
delay, and, stretching myself as far as that was
possible upon the bench, I was received at once
into a dreamless stupor.

The little German gentleman was only going a

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

little way into the suburbs after a diner fin, and
was bent on entertainment while the journey lasted.
Having failed with me, he pitched next upon another
emigrant, who had come through from Canada, and
was not one jot less weary than myself. Nay, even
in a natural state, as I found next morning when we
scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, uncommuni-
cative man. After trying him on different topics,
it appears that the little German gentleman flounced
into a temper, swore an oath or two, and departed
from that car in quest of livelier society. Poor little
gentleman ! I suppose he thought an emigrant
should be a rollicking, free-hearted blade, with a
flask of foreign brandy and a long, comical story
to beguile the moments of digestion.

Thursday . — I suppose there must be a cycle in
the fatigue of travelling, foi- when I awoke next
morning I was entirely renewed in spirits, and ate a
hearty breakfast of porridge, with sweet milk, and
coffee and hot cakes, at Burlington upon the Missis-
sippi. Another long day's ride followed, with but
one feature worthy of remark. At a place called
Creston, a drunken man got in. He was aggres-
sively friendly, but, according to English notions,
not at all unpresentable upon a train. For one
stage he eluded the notice of the officials ; but just
as we were beginning to move out of the next
station, Cromwell by name, by came the conductor.
There was a word or two of talk ; and then the
official had the man by the shoulders, twitched him
from his seat, marched him through the car, and
124

TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

sent him flying on to the track. It was done in
three motions, as exact as a piece of driU. The
train was still moving slowly, although beginning
to mend her pace, and the drunkard got his feet
without a fall. He carried a red bundle, though not
so red as his cheeks ; and he shook this menacingly
in the air with one hand, while the other stole
behind him to the region of the kidneys. It was
the first indication that I had come among revolvers,
and I observed it with some emotion. The con-
ductor stood on the steps with one hand on his hip,
looking back at him ; and perhaps this attitude
imposed upon the creature, for he turned without
further ado, and went off staggering along the track
towards Cromwell, followed by a peal of laughter
from the cars. They were speaking English all
about me, but I knew I was in a foreign land.

Twenty minutes before nine that night we were
deposited at the Pacific Transfer Station near Coun-
cil Bluffs, on the eastern bank of the Missouri river.
Here we were to stay the night at a kind of caravan-
serai, set apart for emigrants. But I gave way to a
thirst for luxury, separated myself from my com-
panions, and marched with my effects into the
Union Pacific Hotel. A white clerk and a coloured
gentleman, whom, in my plain European way, I
should call the boots, were installed behind a
counter like bank tellers. They took my name,
assigned me a number, and proceeded to deal with
my packages. And here came the tug of war. I
wished to give up my packages into safe keeping ;

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

but I did not wish to go to bed. And this, it
appeared, was impossible in an American hotel.

It was, of course, some inane misunderstanding,
and sprang from my unfamiharity with the language.
For although two nations use the same words and
read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by
the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on
by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and
almost a slang signification. Some international
obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured
gentleman at Council Bluffs ; so that what I was
asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared
to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that
with the plainness of the West. This American
manner of conducting matters of business is, at first,
highly unpalatable to the European. When we
approach a man in the way of his calling, and for
those services by which he earns his bread, we con-
sider him for the time being our hired servant. But
in the American opinion, two gentlemen meet and
have a friendly talk with a view to exchanging
favours if they shall agree to please. I know not
which is the more convenient, nor even which is the
more truly courteous. The English stiffness un-
fortunately tends to be continued after the particular
transaction is at an end, and thus favours class
separations. But on the other hand, these equali-
tarian plainnesses leave an open field for the in-
solence of Jack-in-office.

I was nettled by the coloured gentleman's refusal,
and unbuttoned my wrath under the simihtude of
126

TO COUNCIL BLUFFS

ironical submission. I knew nothing, I said, of the
ways of American hotels ; but I had no desire to
give trouble. If there was nothing for it but to
get to bed immediately, let him say the word, and
though it was not my habit, I should cheerfully
obey.

He burst into a shout of laughter. ' Ah ! ' said he,
'you do not know about America. They are fine
people in America. Oh ! you will hke them very
well. But you mustn't get mad. I know what you
want. You come along with me.'

And issuing from behind the counter, and taking
me by the arm like an old acquaintance, he led me
to the bar of the hotel.

'There,' said he, pushing me from him by the
shoulder, * go and have a drink ! '

127

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

All this while I had been travelling by mixed
trains, where I might meet with Dutch widows and
little German gentry fresh from table. I had been
but a latent emigrant ; now I was to be branded
once more, and put apart with my fellows. It was
about two in the afternoon of Friday that I found
myself in front of the Emigrant House, with more
than a hundred others, to be sorted and boxed for
the journey. A white-haired official, with a stick
under one arm, and a list in, the other hand, stood
apart in front of us, and called name after name in
the tone of a command. At each name you would
see a family gather up its brats and bundles and run
for the hindmost of the three cars that stood await-
ing us, and I soon concluded that this was to be set
apart for the women and children. The second or
central car, it turned out, was devoted to men
traveUing alone, and the third to the Chinese.
The official was easily moved to anger at the
least delay ; but the emigrants were both quick at
answering their names, and speedy in getting them-
selves and their effects on board.
128

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

The families once housed, we men carried the
second car without ceremony by simultaneous
assault. I suppose the reader has some notion of
an American railroad-car, that long, narrow wooden
box, Hke a flat-roofed Noah's ark, with a stove and a
convenience, one at either end, a passage down the
middle, and transverse benches upon either hand.
Those destined for emigrants on the Union Pacific
are only remarkable for their extreme plainness,
nothing but wood entering in any part into their
constitution, and for the usual inefficacy of the
lamps, which often went out and shed but a dying
glimmer even while they burned. The benches are
too short for anything but a young child. Where
there is scarce elbow-room for two to sit, there will
not be space enough for one to lie. Hence the com-
pany, or rather, as it appears from certain bills about
the Transfer Station, the company's servants, have
conceived a plan for the better accommodation of
travellers. They prevail on every two to chum to-
gether. To each of the chums they sell a board and
three square cushions stuffed with straw and covered
with thin cotton. The benches can be made to face
each other in pairs, for the backs are reversible. On
the approach of night the boards are laid from bench
to bench, making a couch wide enough for two, and
long enough for a man of the middle height ; and
the chums lie down side by side upon the cushions
with the head to the conductor's van and the feet
to the engine. When the train is full, of course this
plan is impossible, for there must not be more than
3~i 129

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

one to every bench, neither can it be carried out
unless the chums agree. It was to bring about this
last condition that our white-haired official now
bestirred himself. He made a most active master
of ceremonies, introducing hkely couples, and even
guaranteeing the amiability and honesty of each.
The greater the number of happy couples the better
for his pocket, for it was he who sold the raw
material of the beds. His price for one board and
three straw cushions began with two dollars and a
half; but before the train left, and I am sorry to
say long after I had purchased mine, it had faUen
to one dollar and a half

The match -maker had a difficulty with me ; per-
haps, like some ladies, I showed myself too eager for
union at any price ; but certainly the first who was
picked out to be my bedfellow declined the honour
without thanks. He was an old, heavy, slow-spoken
man, I think from Yankeeland, looked me all over
with great timidity, and then began to excuse him-
self in broken phrases. He didn't know the young
man, he said. The young man might be very honest,
but how was he to know that ? There was another
young man whom he had met already in the train ;
he guessed he was honest, and would prefer to chum
with him upon the whole. All this without any sort
of excuse, as though I had been inanimate or absent.
I began to tremble lest every one should refuse my
company, and I be left rejected. But the next in
turn was a tail, strapping, long-limbed, small-headed,
curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutchman, with a soldierly
130

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had
acquired it in the navy. But that was all one ; he
had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he
accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler
pronounced the connubial benediction, and pocketed
his fees.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in making up
the train. I am afraid to say how many baggage-
waggons followed the engine — certainly a score ; then
came the Chinese, then we, then the families, and
the rear was brought up by the conductor in what,
if I have it rightly, is called his caboose. The class
to which I belonged was of course far the largest,
and we ran over, so to speak, to both sides ; so that
there were some Caucasians among the Chinamen
and some bachelors among the famihes. But our
own car was pure from admixture, save for one little
boy of eight or nine who had the whooping-cough.
At last, about six, the long train crawled out of the
Transfer Station and across the wide Missouri river
to Omaha, westward bound.

It was a troubled, uncomfortable evening in the
cars. There was thunder in the air, which helped to
keep us restless. A man played many airs upon the
cornet, and none of them were much attended to,
until he came to ' Home, sweet Home.' It was truly
strange to note how the talk ceased at that, and the
faces began to lengthen. I have no idea whether
musically this air is to be considered good or bad ;
but it belongs to that class of art which may be best
described as a brutal assault upon the feelings.

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

Pathos must be relieved by dignity of treatment.
If you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author
of ' Home, sweet Home,' you make your hearers
weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet
they are moved, they despise themselves and hate
the occasion of their weakness. It did not come to
tears that night, for the experiment was interrupted.
An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard,
and about as much appearance of sentiment as you
would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a
start and bade the performer stop that ' damned
thing.' ' I 've heard about enough of that,' he
added ; ' give us something about the good country
we're going to.' A murmur of adhesion ran round
the car ; the performer took the instrument from his
lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into a
dancing measure ; and, like a new Timotheus, stilled
immediately the emotion he had raised.

The day faded ; the lamps were lit ; a party of
wild young men, who got off next evening at North
Platte, stood together on the stern platform, singing
' The Sweet By-and-bye ' with very tuneful voices ;
the chums began to put up their beds ; and it seemed
as if the business of the day were at an end. But it
was not so ; for, the train stopping at some station,
the cars were instantly thronged with the natives,
wives and fathers, young men and maidens, some of
them in little more than nightgear, some with stable-
lanterns, and all offering beds for sale. Their charge
began with twenty-five cents a cushion, but feU,
before the train went on again, to fifteen, with the
132

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

bed-board gratis, or less than one-fifth of what I had
paid for mine at the Transfer. This is my contribu-
tion to the economy of future emigrants.

A great personage on an American train is the
newsboy. He sells books (such books !), papers,
fruit, lollipops, and cigars ; and on emigrant journeys,
soap, towels, tin washing-dishes, tin coffee pitchers,
coffee, tea, sugar, and tinned eatables, mostly hash or
beans and bacon. Early next morning the newsboy
went around the cars, and chumming on a more
extended principle became the order of the hour.
It requires but a co-partnery of two to manage beds ;
but washing and eating can be carried on most
economically by a syndicate of three. I myself entered
a httle after sunrise into articles of agreement, and
became one of the firm of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare,
and Dubuque. Shakespeare was my own nickname
on the cars ; Pennsylvania that of my bedfellow ;
and Dubuque, the name of a place in the State of
Iowa, that of an amiable young fellow going west
to cure an asthma, and retarding his recovery by
incessantly chewing or smoking, and sometimes
chewing and smoking together. I have never seen
tobacco so sillily abused. Shakespeare bought a tin
washing-dish, Dubuque a towel, and Pennsylvania a
brick of soap. The partners used these instruments,
one after another, according to the order of their first
awaking ; and when the firm had finished there was
no want of borrowers. Each filled the tin dish at
the water filter opposite the stove, and retired with
the whole stock in trade to the platform of the

133

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

car. There he knelt down, supporting himself by a
shoulder against the woodwork, or one elbow crooked
about the railing, and made a shift to wash his face
and neck and hands, — a cold, an insufficient, and,
if the train is moving rapidly, a somewhat dangerous
toilet.

On a similar division of expense, the firm of Penn-
sylvania, Shakespeare, and Dubuque supplied them-
selves with coffee, sugar, and necessary vessels ; and
their operations are a type of what went on through
all the cars. Before the sun was up the stove would
be brightly burning ; at the first station the natives
would come on board with milk and eggs and coffee
cakes ; and soon from end to end the car would be
filled with little parties breakfasting upon the bed-
boards. It was the pleasantest hour of the day.

There were meals to be had, however, by the way-
side ; a breakfast in the morning, a dinner somewhere
between eleven and two, and supper from five to
eight or nine at night. We had rarely less than
twenty minutes for each ; and if we had not spent
many another twenty minutes waiting for some
express upon a side track among miles of desert, we
might have taken an hour to each repast and arrived
at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not the
foible of an emigrant train. It gets through on
sufferance, running the gauntlet among its more
considerable brethren ; should there be a block, it is
unhesitatingly sacrificed ; and they cannot, in con-
sequence, predict the length of the passage within
a day or so. Civility is the main comfort that you
134

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

miss. Equality, though conceived very largely in
America, does not extend so low down as to an
emigrant. Thus in all other trains a warning cry of
' All aboard ! ' recalls the passengers to take their
seats ; but as soon as I was alone with emigrants,
and from the Transfer all the way to San Fran-
cisco, I found this ceremony was pretermitted ; the
train stole from the station without note of warning,
and you had to keep an eye upon it even while you
ate. The annoyance is considerable, and the dis-
respect both wanton and petty.

Many conductors, again, will hold no communica-
tion with an emigrant. I asked a conductor one
day at what time the train would stop for dinner ;
as he made no answer I repeated the question, with
a like result ; a third time I returned to the charge,
and then Jack-in-office looked me coolly in the face
for several seconds and turned ostentatiously away.
I believe he was half-ashamed of his brutality ;
for when another person made the same inquiry,
although he still refused the information, he con-
descended to answer, and even to justify his reti-
cence in a voice loud enough for me to hear. It
was, he said, his principle not to tell people where
they were to dine ; for one answer led to many other
questions, as, what o'clock it was ; or, how soon
should we be there ? and he could not afford to be
eternally worried.

As you are thus cut off from the superior author-
ities, a great deal of your comfort depends on the
character of the newsboy. He has it in his power

135

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

indefinitely to better and brighten the emigrant's
lot. The newsboy with whom we started from the
Transfer was a dark, bullying, contemptuous, insolent
scoundrel, who treated us like dogs. Indeed, in his
case, matters came nearly to a fight. It happened
thus: he was going his rounds through the cars with
some commodities for sale, and coming to a party who
were at Seven-up or Cascino (our two games) upon a
bed-board, slung down a cigar-box in the middle of the
cards, knocking one man's hand to the floor. It was
the last straw. In a moment the whole party were
upon their feet, the cigars were upset, and he was
ordered to ' get out of that directly, or he would get
more than he reckoned for.' The fellow grumbled
and muttered, but ended by making off, and was less
openly insulting in the future. On the other hand,
the lad who rode with us in this capacity from Ogden
to Sacramento made himself the friend of all, and
helped us with information, attention, assistance, and
a kind countenance. He told us where and when
we should have our meals, and how long the train
would stop ; kept seats at table for those who were
delayed, and watched that we should neither be left
behind nor yet unnecessarily hurried. You, who live
at home at ease, can hardly realise the greatness of
this service, even had it stood alone. When I think
of that lad coming and going, train after train, with
his bright face and civil words, I see how easily a
good man may become the benefactor of his kind.
Perhaps he is discontented with himself, perhaps
troubled with ambitions ; why, if he but knew it, he
136

THE EMIGHANT TRAIN

is a hero of the old Greek stamp ; and while he thinks
he is only earning a profit of a few cents, and that
perhaps exorbitant, he is doing a man's work and
bettering the world.

I must tell here an experience of mine with an-
other newsboy. I tell it because it gives so good an
example of that uncivil kindness of the American,
which is perhaps their most bewildering character to
one newly landed. It was immediately after I had
left the emigrant train ; and I am told I looked like a
man at death's door, so much had this long journey
shaken me. I sat at the end of a car, and the catch
being broken, and myself feverish and sick, I had to
hold the door open with my foot for the sake of air.
In this attitude my leg debarred the newsboy from his
box of merchandise. I made haste to let him pass
when I observed that he was coming ; but I was busy
with a book, and so once or twice he came upon me
unawares. On these occasions he most rudely struck
my foot aside ; and though I myself apologised, as if
to show him the way, he answered me never a word.
I chafed furiously, and I fear the next time it would
have come to words. But suddenly I felt a touch
upon my shoulder, and a large juicy pear was put into
my hand. It was the newsboy, who had observed
that I was looking ill, and so made me this present
out of a tender heart. For the rest of the journey
I was petted like a sick child ; he lent me news-
papers, thus depriving himself of his legitimate profit
on their sale, and came repeatedly to sit by me and
cheer me up.

137

THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA

It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun
rose on Saturday without a cloud. We were at sea
— there is no other adequate expression — on the
plains of Nebraska. I made my observatory on the
top of a fruit- waggon, and sat by the hour upon
that perch to spy about me, and to spy in vain for
something new. It was a world almost without a
feature ; an empty sky, an empty earth ; front and
back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to
horizon, like a cue across a billiard-board ; on either
hand, the green plain ran till it touched the skirts of
heaven. Along the track innumerable wild sun-
flowers, no bigger than a crown-piece, bloomed in a
continuous flower-bed ; grazing beasts were seen
upon the prairie at all degrees of distance and dimi-
nution ; and now and again we might perceive a few
dots beside the railroad, which grew more and more
distinct as we drew nearer, till they turned into
wooden cabins, and then dwindled and dwindled in
our wake until they melted into their surroundings,
and we were once more alone upon the billiard-board.
The train toiled over this infinity like a snail ; and
138

THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA

being the one thing moving, it was wonderful what
huge proportions it began to assume in our regard.
It seemed miles in length, and either end of it within
but a step of the horizon. Even my own body or my
own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I
note the feeling the more readily as it is the contrary
of what I have read of in the experience of others.
Day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears
were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grass-
hoppers— a noise like the winding up of countless
clocks and watches, which began after a while to seem
proper to that land.

To one hurrying through by steam there was a
certain exhilaration in this spacious vacancy, this
greatness of the air, this discovery of the whole arch
of heaven, this straight, unbroken, prison-line of the
horizon. Yet one could not but reflect upon the
weariness of those who passed by there in old days,
at the foot's pace of oxen, painfully urging their
teams, and with no landmark but that unattainable
evening sun for which they steered, and which daily
fled them by an equal stride. They had nothing, it
would seem, to overtake ; nothing by which to reckon
their advance ; no sight for repose or for encourage-
ment ; but stage after stage, only the dead green
waste under foot, and the mocking, fugitive horizon.
But the eye, as I have been told, found differences
even here ; and at the worst the emigrant came, by
perseverance, to the end of his toil. It is the settlers,
after all, at whom we have a right to marvel. Our
consciousness, by which we live, is itself but the

139

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

creature of variety. Upon what food does it subsist
in such a land ? What hvehhood can repay a human
creature for a Hfe spent in this huge sameness ? He
is cut off from books, from news, from company, from
all that can relieve existence but the prosecution
of his affairs. A sky full of stars is the most varied
spectacle that he can hope for. He may walk five
miles and see nothing ; ten, and it is as though he
had not moved; twenty, and still he is in the midst of
the same great level, and has approached no nearer to
the one object within view, the flat horizon which
keeps pace with his advance. We are full at home
of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise
people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted
by sedative surroundings. But what is to be said of
the Nebraskan settler ? His is a wall-paper with a
vengeance — one quarter of the universe laid bare in
all its gauntness. His eye must embrace at every
glance the whole seeming concave of the visible
world ; it quails before so vast an outlook, it is tor-
tured by distance ; yet there is no rest or shelter, till
the man runs into his cabin, and can repose his sight
upon things near at hand. Hence, I am told, a sick-
ness of the vision peculiar to these empty plains.

Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadee, summer
and winter, cattle, wife and family, the settler may
create a full and various existence. One person at
least I saw upon the plains who seemed in every way
superior to her lot. This was a woman who boarded
us at a way-station, selhng milk. She was largely
formed ; her features were more than comely ; she
140

THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA

had that great rarity — a fine complexion which be-
came her ; and her eyes were kind, dark, and steady.
She sold milk with patriarchal grace. There was not
a line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and
sleepy voice, but spoke of an entire contentment with
her^ life. It would have been fatuous arrogance to
pity such a woman. Yet the place where she hved
was to me almost ghastly. Less than a dozen
wooden houses, all of a shape and all nearly of a
size, stood planted along the railway lines. Each
stood apart in its own lot. Each opened direct off
the billiard-board, as if it were a billiard-board indeed,
and these only models that had been set down upon
it ready-made. Her own, into which I looked, was
clean but very empty, and showed nothing home-like
but the burning fire. This extreme newness, above
all in so naked and flat a country, gives a strong
impression of artificiality. With none of the litter
and discoloration of human life ; with the paths
unworn, and the houses still sweating from the axe,
such a settlement as this seems purely scenic. The
mind is loth to accept it for a piece of reality ; and
it seems incredible that life can go on with so few
properties, or the great child, man, find entertainment
in so bare a playroom.

And truly it is as yet an incomplete society in
some points ; or at least it contained, as I passed
through, one person incompletely civihsed. At North
Platte, where we supped that evening, one man
asked another to pass the milk-jug. This other was
well dressed, and of what we should call a respectable

141

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

appearance ; a darkish man, high-spoken, eating as
though he had some usage of society ; but he turned
upon the first speaker with extraordinary vehemence
of tone —

' There 's a waiter here ! ' he cried.

' I only asked you to pass the milk,' explained the
first.

Here is the retort verbatim —

' Pass ? Hell ! I 'm not paid for that business ;
the waiter 's paid for it. You should use civility at
table, and, by God, I 'II show you how ! '

The other man very wisely made no answer, and
the bully went on with his supper as though nothing
had occurred. It pleases me to think that some day
soon he will meet with one of his own kidney ; and
that perhaps both may fall.

142

THE DESERT OF WYOMING

To cross such a plain is to grow home-sick for the
mountains. I longed for the Black Hills of Wyoming,
which I knew we were soon to enter, like an ice-
bound whaler for the spring. Alas ! and it was
a worse country than the other. All Sunday and
Monday we travelled through these sad mountains,
or over the main ridge of the Rockies, which is a fair
match to them for misery of aspect. Hour after
hour it was the same unhomely and unkindly world
about our onward path ; tumbled boulders, cliffs that
drearily imitate the shape of monuments and forti-
fications— how drearily, how tamely, none can tell
who has not seen them ; not a tree, not a patch of
sward, not one shapely or commanding mountain
form ; sage-brush, eternal sage-brush ; over all, the
same weariful and gloomy colouring, greys warming
into brown, greys darkening towards black ; and for
sole sign of life, here and there a few fleeing
antelopes ; here and there, but at incredible intervals,
a creek running in a canon. The plains have a
grandeur of their own ; but here there is nothing but
a contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was

143

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

light and stimulating, there was not one good cir-
cumstance in that God-forsaken land.

I had been suffering in my health a good deal all
the way ; and at last, whether I was exhausted by my
complaint or poisoned in some wayside eating-house,
the evening we left Laramie I fell sick outright.
That was a night which I shall not readily forget.
The lamps did not go out ; each made a faint shining
in its own neighbourhood, and the shadows were con-
founded together in the long, hollow box of the car.
The sleepers lay in uneasy attitudes ; here two chums
alongside, flat upon their backs like dead folk ; there
a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his
arm ; there another half-seated with his head and
shoulders on the bench. The most passive were con-
tinually and roughly shaken by the movement of the
train ; others stirred, turned, or stretched out their
arms like children ; it was surprising how many
groaned and murmured in their sleep ; and as I passed
to and fro, stepping across the prostrate, and caught
now a snore, now a gasp, now a half-formed word, it
gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest in
that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill, I was
obliged to open my window, for the degradation of
the air soon became intolerable to one who was awake
and using the full supply of life. Outside, in a
ghmmering night, I saw the black, amorphous hills
shoot by unweariedly into our wake. They that long
for morning have never longed for it more earnestly
than I.

And yet when day came, it was to shine upon the
144

THE DESERT OF WYOMING

same broken and unsightly quarter of the world.
Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a river.
Only down the long, sterile canons, the train shot
hooting, and awoke the resting echo. That train was
the one piece of life in all the deadly land ; it was
the one actor, the one spectacle fit to be observed in
this paralysis of man and nature. And when I think
how the railroad has been pushed through this un-
watered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes, and
now will bear an emigrant for some twelve pounds
from the Atlantic to the Golden Gates ; how at each
stage of the construction, roaring, impromptu cities,
full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died
away again, and are now but wayside stations in the
desert; how in these uncouth places pig- tailed Chinese
pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and
broken men from Europe, talking together in a
mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking,
quarrelHng, and murdering like wolves ; how the
plumed hereditary lord of all America heard, in this
last fastness, the scream of the ' bad medicine-wag-
gon ' charioting his foes ; and then when I go on to
remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted
by gentlemen in frock-coats, and with a view to
nothing more extraordinary than a fortune and a
subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to me, I own, as
if this railway were the one typical achievement of
the age in which we live, as if it brought together
into one plot all the ends of the world and all the
degrees of social rank, and offered to some great
writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most

3—^ 145

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

varied subject for an enduring literary work. If it
be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we
require, what was Troy town to this ? But, alas ! it
is not these things that are necessary — it is only
Homer.

Here also we are grateful to the train, as to some
god who conducts us swiftly through these shades
and by so many hidden perils. Thirst, hunger, the
sleight and ferocity of Indians, are all no more feared,
so lightly do we skim these horrible lands ; as the
gull, who wings safely through the hurricane and
past the shark. Yet we should not be forgetful of
these hardships of the past ; and to keep the balance
true, since I have complained of the trifling dis-
comforts of my journey perhaps more than was
enough, let me add an original document. It was
not written by Homer, but by a boy of eleven, long
since dead, and is dated only twenty years ago. I
shall punctuate, to make things clearer, but not
change the spelhng : —

* My dear Sister 3Iary, — / am afraid you will go
nearly crazy when you read my letter. If Jerry '
{the writer'' s eldest brother) ^has not written to you
before now, you will be surprised to heare that we
are in California, and that poor Thomas^ {another
brother, of fifteen) 'is dead. We started from

in July, with plenty of provisions and too

yoke oxen. We went along very well till we got
within siao or seven hundred miles of Calfornia, when
the Indians attacked us. * We found places where
146

THE DESERT OF WYOMING

they had killed the emigrants. We had one passenger
with us, too guns, and one revolver ; so we ran all
the lead We had . into bullets {and) hung the guns up
in the wagon so that we could get at them in a minit
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon ; droave the
cattel a little way ; when a praiiie chicken alited a
little way from the wagon.

'Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, and
told Tom drive the oxen. Tom and I drove the oxen,
and Jerry and the passenger went on. Then, after
a little, I left Tom and caught up with Jerry and
the other man. Jerry stopped for Tom to come up ;
me and the man went on and sit down by a little
stream. In a few minutes we heard some noise ; then
three shots {they all struck poor Tom, I suppose) ;
then they gave the war hoop, and as many as twenty
of the red skins came down upon us. The three that
shot Tom was hid hy the side of the road in the
hushes.

'I thought the Tom and Jerry were shot ; so I
told the other man that Tom and Jerry were dead,
and that we had better try to escape, if possible. I
had no shoes on ; having a sore foot, I thought I
would not put them on. The man and me run down
the road, but We was soon stopt by an Indian on a
pony. We then turend the other way, and run up
the side of the Mountain, and hid behind some cedar
trees, and stayed there till dark. The Indians hunted
all over after us, and verry close to us, so close that
we could here there tomy hawks Jingle. At dark the
man and me started on, I stubing my toes against

147

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

sticks and stones. We traveld on all night; and
next morning. Just as it was getting gray, we saw
something in the shape of a man. It layed Down in
the grass. We went up to it, and it was Jerry. He
thought we ware Indians. You can imagine how
glad he was to see me. He thought we was all dead
hut him, and we thought him and Tom was dead. He
had the gun that he took out of the wagon to shoot
the prairie Chicken ; all he had was the load that was
in it.

*We traveld on till about eight o'clock. We caught
up with one wagon with too men with it. We had
traveld xmth them before one day ; we stopt and they
Drove on ; we knew that they was ahead of us, unless
they had been killed to. 3Iy feet was so sore when
we caught up with them that I had to lide ; I coidd
not step. We traveld on for too days, when the men
that owned the cattle said they would {coidd) not
drive them another inch. We unyoked the oocen ; we
had about seventy pounds of flour ; we took it out
and divided it into four packs. Each of the men took
about 18 pounds apiece and a blanket. I carried a
little bacon, dried meat, and little quilt; I had in
all about twelve pounds. We had one pint of flour
a day for our alloyance. So7netimes we made soup of
it; sometiines we {made) pancakes; and sometimes
mixed it up with cold water and eat it that way. We
traveld twelve or fourteen days. The time came at last
when we should have to reach some place or starve.
We saw fresh horse and cattle tracks. The morning
come, we scraped all the flour oid of the sack, mixed
148

THE DESERT OF WYOMING

it up, and baked it into bread, and made some soup,
and eat everything we had. We traveld on all day
without anything to eat, and that evening we Caught
up with a sheep train of eight wagons. We traveld
with them till we arrived at the settlements ; and know
1 am safe in California, and got to good home, and
going to school.

'Jerry is working in . It is a good

country. You can get from 50 to 60 and 75 Dollars
for cooking. Tell me all about the affairs in the
States, and how all the folks get along.'

And so ends this artless narrative. The httle
man was at school again, God bless him ! while his
brother lay scalped upon the deserts.

149

FELLOW-PASSENGERS

At Ogden we changed cars from the Union Pacific
to the Central Pacific line of railroad. The change
was doubly welcome ; for, first, we had better cars
on the new line ; and, second, those in which we
had been cooped for more than ninety hours had
begun to stink abominably. Several yards away, as
we returned, let us say from dinner, our nostrils were
assailed by rancid air. I have stood on a platform
while the whole train was shunting ; and as the
dwelHng-cars drew near, there would come a whiff of
pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men
instead of monkeys. I think we are human only in
virtue of open windows. Without fresh air, you
only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command
of the Queen's Enghsh, to become such another as
Dean Swift ; a kind of leering, human goat, leaping
and wagging your scut on mountains of offence. I
do my best to keep my head the other way, and look
for the human rather than the bestial in this Yahoo-
hke business of the emigrant train. But one thing
I must say : the car of the Chinese was notably the
least offensive.
150

FELLOW-PASSENGERS

The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly twice
as high, and so proportionally airier ; they were freshly
varnished, which gave us all a sense of cleanliness as
though we had bathed; the seats drew out and
joined in the centre, so that there was no more need
for bed-boards ; and there was an upper tier of berths
which could be closed by day and opened at night.

I had by this time some opportunity of seeing
the people whom I was among. They were in rather
marked contrast to the emigrants I had met on
board ship while crossing the Atlantic. They were
mostly lumpish fellows, silent and noisy, a common
combination; somewhat sad, I should say, with an
extraordinary poor taste in humour, and little interest
in their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap and
merely external curiosity. If they heard a man's
name and business, they seemed to think they had
the heart of that mystery ; but they were as eager to
know that much as they were indifferent to the rest.
Some of them were on nettles till they learned your
name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker ;
but beyond that, whether you were Catholic or
Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all
one to them. Others who were not so stupid gos-
siped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly.
A favourite witticism was for some lout to raise the
alarm of ' All aboard ! ' while the rest of us were
dining, thus contributing his mite to the general
discomfort. Such a one was always much applauded
for his high spirits. When I was ill coming through
Wyoming, I was astonished — fresh from the eager

151

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

humanity on board ship — to meet with httle but
laughter. One of the young men even amused
himself by incommoding me, as was then very easy ;
and that not from ill-nature, but mere clod-like
incapacity to think, for he expected me to join the
laugh. I did so, but it was phantom merriment.
Later on, a man from Kansas had three violent
epileptic fits, and though, of course, there were not
wanting some to help him, it was rather superstitious
terror than sympathy that his case evoked among
his fellow-passengers. ' Oh, I hope he 's not going
to die ! ' cried a woman ; ' it would be terrible to
have a dead body ! ' And there was a very general
movement to leave the man behind at the next
station. This, by good fortune, the conductor
negatived.

There was a good deal of story-telling in some
quarters ; in others, little but silence. In this society,
more than any other that ever I was in, it was the
narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative.
It was rarely that any one listened for the listening.
If he lent an ear to another man's story, it was
because he was in iinmediate want of a hearer for
one of his own. Food and the progress of the train
were the subjects most generally treated ; many
joined to discuss these who otherwise would hold
their tongues. One small knot had no better occu-
pation than to worm out of me my name ; and the
more they tried, the more obstinately fixed I grew
to baffle them. They assailed me with artful ques-
tions and insidious offers of correspondence in the
152

FELLOW-PASSENGERS

future ; but I was perpetually on my guard, and
parried their assaults with inward laughter. I am
sure Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for
the secret. He owed me far more, had he understood
life, for thus preserving him a lively interest through-
out the journey. I met one of my fellow-passengers
months after, driving a street tramway car in San
Francisco ; and, as the joke was now out of season,
told him my name without subterfuge. You never
saw a man more chapfallen. But had my name been
Demogorgon, after so prolonged a mystery he had
still been disappointed.

There were no emigrants direct from Europe —
save one German family and a knot of Cornish
miners who kept grimly by themselves, one reading
the New Testament all day long through steel
spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets
of their old-world, mysterious race. Lady Hester
Stanhope believed she could make something great
of the Cornish ; for my part, I can make nothing of
them at all. A division of races, older and more
original than that of Babel, keeps this close, esoteric
family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. Not
even a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes.
This is one of the lessons of travel — that some of
the strangest races dwell next door to you at home.

The rest were all American born, but they came
from almost every quarter of that continent. All
the States of the North had sent out a fugitive to
cross the plains with me. From Virginia, from
Pennsylvania, from New York, from far western

153

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

Iowa and Kansas, from Maine that borders on the
Canadas, and from the Canadas themselves — some
one or two were fleemg in quest of a better land and
better wages. The talk in the train, like the talk I
heard on the steamer, ran upon hard times, short
commons, and hope that moves ever westward. I
thought of my shipful from Great Britain with a
feeling of despair. They had come 3000 miles, and
yet not far enough. Hard times bowed them out of
the Clyde, and stood to welcome them at Sandy
Hook. Where were they to go ? Pennsylvania,
Maine, Iowa, Kansas ? These were not places for
immigration, but for emigration, it appeared ; not
one of them, but I knew a man who had lifted up
his heel and left it for an ungrateful country. And
it was still westward that they ran. Hunger, you
would have thought, came out of the east like the
sun, and the evening was made of edible gold. And,
meantime, in the car in front of me, were there not
half a hundred emigrants from the opposite quarter ?
Hungry Europe and hungry China, each pouring
from their gates in search of provender, had here
come face to face. The two waves had met; east
and west had alike failed ; the whole round world
had been prospected and condemned ; there was no
El Dorado anywhere ; and till one could emigrate
to the moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently at
home. Nor was there wanting another sign, at
once more picturesque and more disheartening ; for
as we continued to steam westward toward the land
of gold, we were continually passing other emigrant
154

FELLOW-PASSENGERS

trains upon the journey east; and these were as
crowded as our own. Had all these return voyagers
made a fortune in the mines ? Were they all bound
for Paris, and to be in Rome by Easter ? It would
seem not, for, whenever we met them, the passengers
ran on the platform and cried to us through the
windows, in a kind of wailing chorus, to ' come back.'
On the plains of Nebraska, in the mountains of
Wyoming, it was still the same cry, and dismal to
my heart, ' Come back ! ' That was what we heard
by the way ' about the good country we were going
to.' And at that very hour the Sand-lot of San
Francisco was crowded with the unemployed, and
the echo from the other side of Market Street was
repeating the rant of demagogues.

If in truth it were only for the sake of wages
that men emigrate, how many thousands would regret
the bargain ! But wages, indeed, are only one con-
sideration out of many ; for we are a race of gipsies,
and love change and travel for themselves.

155

DESPISED RACES

Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow-
Caucasians towards our companions in the Chinese
car was the most stupid and the worst. They
seemed never to have looked at them, listened to
them, or thought of them, but hated them a priori.
The Mongols were their enemies in that cruel and
treacherous battle-field of money. They could work
better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and
hence there was no calumny too idle for the Cauca-
sians to repeat and even to believe. They declared
them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking
in the throat when they beheld them. Now, as a
matter of fact, the young Chinese man is so like
a large class of European women, that on raising
my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a
considerable distance, I have for an instant been
deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it is the
most attractive class of our women, but for all that
many a man's wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again,
my emigrants declared that the Chinese were dirty.
I cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible
upon the journey ; but in their efforts after cleanli-
156

DESPISED RACES

ness they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged
and stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces
for half a minute daily on the platform, and were
unashamed. But the Chinese never lost an oppor-
tunity, and you would see them washing their feet
— an act not dreamed of among ourselves — and going
as far as decency permitted to wash their whole
bodies. I may remark by the way that the dirtier
people are in their persons the more delicate is their
sense of modesty. A clean man strips in a crowded
boathouse ; but he who is unwashed slinks in and
out of bed without uncovering an inch of skin.
Lastly, these very foul and malodorous Caucasians
entertained the surprising illusion that it was the
Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I
have said already that it was the exception, and
notably the freshest of the three.

These judgments are typical of the feeling in all
Western America. The Chinese are considered
stupid because they are imperfectly acquainted with
English. They are held to be base because their
dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the
lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be
thieves ; I am sure they have no monopoly of that.
They are called cruel ; the Anglo-Saxon and the
cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears
the accusation. I am told, again, that they are of
the race of river pirates, and belong to the most
despised and dangerous class in the Celestial Empire.
But if this be so, what remarkable pirates have we
here ! and what must be the virtues, the industry,

157

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the education, and the intelligence of their superiors
at home !

A while ago it was the Irish, now it is the Chinese
that must go. Such is the cry. It seems, after all,
that no country is bound to submit to immigration
any more than to invasion : each is war to the knife,
and resistance to either but legitimate defence. Yet
we may regret the free tradition of the republic,
which loved to depict herself with open arms, wel-
coming all unfortunates. And certainly, as a man
who believes that he loves freedom, I may be excused
some bitterness when I find her sacred name misused
in the contention. It was but the other day that I
heard a vulgar fellow in the Sand-lot, the popular
tribune of San Francisco, roaring for arms and
butchery. 'At the call of Abreham Lincoln,' said
the orator, 'ye rose in the name of freedom to set
free the negroes ; can ye not rise and liberate your-
selves from a few dhirty Mongolians ? '

For my own part I could not look but with
wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their fore-
fathers watched the stars before mine had begun
to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the
other day we imitated, and a school of manners
which we never had the delicacy so much as to
desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity.
They walk the earth with us, but it seems they must
be of different clay. They hear the clock strike the
same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. They
travel by steam conveyance, yet with such a baggage
of old Asiatic thoughts and superstitions as might
^5^

DESPISED RACES

check the locomotive in its course. Whatever is
thought within the circuit of the Great Wall ; what
the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in
the hamlets round Pekin ; religions so old that our
language looks a halfling boy alongside ; philosophy
so wise that our best philosophers find things therein
to wonder at ; all this travelled alongside of me
for thousands of miles over plain and mountain.
Heaven knows if we had one common thought or
fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet
were formed* upon the same design, beheld the same
world out of the railway windows. And when either
of us turned his thoughts to home and childhood,
what a strange dissimilarity must there not have
been in these pictures of the mind — when I beheld
that old, grey, castled city, high throned above the
firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and the red-coat
sentry pacing over all ; and the man in the next car
to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda
and a fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same
affection, home.

Another race shared among my fellow-passengers
in the disfavour of the Chinese ; and that, it is hardly
necessary to say, was the noble red man of old story
— he over whose own hereditary continent we had
been steaming all these days. I saw no wild or
independent Indian ; indeed, I hear that such avoid
the neighbourhood of the train ; but now and again
at way -stations, a husband and wife and a few
children, disgracefully dressed out with the sweep-
ings of civihsation, came forth and stared upon the

159

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

emigrants. The silent stoicism of their conduct, and
the pathetic degradation of their appearance, would
have touched any thinking creature, but my fellow-
passengers danced and jested round them with a
truly Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the
thing we call civiUsation, We should carry upon
our consciences so much, at least, of our forefathers'
misconduct as we continue to profit by ourselves.

If oppression drives a wise man mad, what should
be raging in the hearts of these poor tribes, who
have been driven back and back, step after step,
their promised reservations torn from them one after
another as the States extended westward, until at
length they are shut up into these hideous mountain
deserts of the centre — and even there find them-
selves invaded, insulted, and hunted out by rufBanly
diggers ? The eviction of the Cherokees (to name
but an instance), the extortion of Indian agents, the
outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of all, nay, down
to the ridicule of such poor beings as were here with
me upon the train, make up a chapter of injustice
and indignity such as a man must be in some ways
base if his heart will suffer him to pardon or forget.
These old, well-founded, historical hatreds have a
savour of nobility for the independent. That the
Jew should not love the Christian, nor the Irishman
love the English, nor the Indian brave tolerate the
thought of the American, is not disgraceful to the
nature of man ; rather, indeed, honourable, since it
depends on wrongs ancient like the race, and not
personal to him who cherishes the indignation.
1 60

TO THE GOLDEN GATES

A LITTLE corner of Utah is soon traversed, and
leaves no particular impressions on the mind. By
an early hour on Wednesday morning we stopped to
breakfast at Toano, a little station on a bleak, high-
lying plateau in Nevada. The man who kept the
station eating-house was a Scot, and learning that I
was the same, he grew very friendly, and gave me
some advice on the country I was now entering.
* You see,' said he, ' I tell you this, because I come
from your country.' Hail, brither Scots !

His most important hint was on the moneys of
this part of the world. There is something in the
simplicity of a decimal coinage which is revolting to
the human mind ; thus the French, in small affairs,
reckon strictly by halfpence ; and you have to solve,
by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as
thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence.
In the Pacific States they have made a bolder push
for complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that
no longer exists — the hit, or old Mexican real. The
supposed value of the bit is twelve and a half cents,
eight to the dollar. When it comes to two bits, the
3— L i6i

THE AMATEUR EMIGUANT

quarter-dollar stands for the required amount. But
how about an odd bit ? The nearest coin to it is a
dime, which is short by a fifth. That, then, is called
a short bit. If you have one, you lay it triumphantly
down, and save two and a half cents. But if you
have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper
or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of
change ; and thus you have paid what is called a
long bit, and lost two and a half cents, or even, by
comparison with a short bit, five cents. In country
places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than
a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases
the cost of life ; as even for a glass of beer you must
pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case
may be. You would say that this system of mutual
robbery was as broad as it was long ; but I have
discovered a plan to make it broader, with which I
here endow the public. It is brief and simple —
radiantly simple. There is one place where five
cents are recognised, and that is the post-office. A
quarter is only worth Wo bits, a short and a long.
Whenever you have a quarter, go to the post-office
and buy five cents' worth of postage-stamps ; you
will receive in change two dimes, that is, two short
bits. The purchasing power of your money is un-
diminished. You can go and have your two glasses
of beer all the same ; and you have made yourself a
present of five cents' worth of postage-stamps into
the bargain. Benjamin Franklin would have patted
me on the head for this discovery.

From Toano we travelled all day through deserts
162

TO THE GOLDEN GATES

of alkali and sand, horrible to man, and bare sage-
brush country that seemed Uttle kindlier, and came
by supper-time to Elko. As we were standing, after
our manner, outside the station, I saw two men
whip suddenly from underneath the cars, and take
to their heels across country. They were tramps, it
appeared, who had been riding on the beams since
eleven of the night before ; and several of my fellow-
passengers had already seen and conversed with them
while we broke our fast at Toano. These land
stowaways play a great part over here in America,
and I should have Hked dearly to become acquainted
with them.

At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. I was
coming out from supper, when I was stopped by a
small, stout, ruddy man, followed by two others
taller and ruddier than himself.

* Ex-cuse me, sir,' he said, ' but do you happen to
be going on ? '

I said I was, whereupon he said he hoped to
persuade me to desist from that intention, ^e had
a situation to offer me, and if we could come to
terms, why, good and well. ' You see,' he continued,
* I 'm running a theatre here, and we 're a little short
in the orchestra. You 're a musician, I guess ? '

I assured him that, beyond a rudimentary acquaint-
ance with ' Auld Lang Syne ' and ' The Wearing of
the Green,' I had no pretension whatever to that
style. He seemed much put out of countenance ;
and one of his taller companions asked him, on the
nail, for five dollars.

163

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

•• You see, sir,' added the latter to me, ' he bet you
were a musician ; I bet you weren't. No oiFence,
I hope ? '

'None whatever,' I said, and the two with-
drew to the bar, where I presume the debt was
liquidated.

This little adventure woke bright hopes in my
fellow-travellers, who thought they had now come
to a country where situations went a-begging. But
I am not so sure that the offer was in good faith.
Indeed, I am more than half persuaded it was but a
feeler to decide the bet.

Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, for
the best of all reasons, that I remember no more
than that we continued through desolate and desert
scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. But some time
after I had fallen asleep that night, I was awakened
by one of my companions. It was in vain that I
resisted. A fire of enthusiasm and whisky burned in
his eyes ; and he declared we were in a new country,
and I, must come forth upon the platform and see
with my own eyes. The train was then, in its
patient way, standing halted in a by-track. It was
a clear, moonht night ; but the valley was too narrow
to admit the moonshine direct, and only a diffused
glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the
blackness of the pines. A hoarse clamour filled the
air ; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade some-
where near at hand among the mountains. The air
struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the
nostrils — a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I
164

TO THE GOLDEN GATES

was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a
grateful mountain feeling at my heart.

When I awoke next morning, I was puzzled for
a while to know if it were day or night, for the
illumination was unusual. I sat up at last, and
found we were grading slowly downward through
a long snowshed; and suddenly we shot into an
open ; and before we were swallowed into the next
length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a
huge pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming
river, and a sky already coloured with the fires of
dawn. I am usually very calm over the displays of
nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart
leaped at this. It was like meeting one's wife. I
had come home again — home from unsightly deserts
to the green and habitable corners of the earth.
Every spire of pine along the hill- top, every trouty
pool along that mountain river, was more dear to
me than a blood-relation. Few people have praised
God more happily than I did. And thenceforward,
down by Blue Canon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the
old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests,
dropping thousands of feet toward the far sea-level
as we went, not I only, but all the passengers on
board, threw off their sense of dirt and heat and
weariness, and bawled like schoolboys, and thronged
with shining eyes upon the platform, and became
new creatures within and without. The sun no
longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone laugh-
ingly along the mountain-side, until we were fain to
laugh ourselves for glee. At every turn we could

165

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

see farther into the land and our own happy futures.
At every town the cocks were tossing their clear
notes into the golden air, and crowing for the new
day and the new country. For this was indeed our
destination ; this was ' the good country ' we had
been going to so long.

By afternoon we were at Sacramento, the city of
gardens in a plain of corn ; and the next day before
the dawn we were lying-to upon the Oakland side
of San Francisco Bay. The day was breaking as we
crossed the ferry ; the fog was rising over the citied
hills of San Francisco ; the bay was perfect — not a
ripple, scarce a stain, upon its blue expanse ; every-
thing was waiting, breathless, for the sun. A spot
of cloudy gold lit first upon the head of Tamalpais,
and then widened downward on its shapely shoulder ;
the air seemed to awaken, and began to sparkle ;
and suddenly

' The tall hills Titan discovered,'

and the city of San Francisco, and the bay of gold
and corn, were lit from end to end with summer
daylight.

i66

THE OLD AND NEW
PACIFIC CAPITALS

Part I. Originally published, Fraser's Magazine,
November 1880; reprinted in 'Across
the Plains ' : Ghatto and Windus, 1 892 .

Part II. Originally published. Magazine of Art,
May i883j and now reprinted for the
first time.

I
MONTEREY

The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less
a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-
hook ; and the comparison, if less important than
the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a
soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at
the shank ; the mouth of the Salinas river is at the
middle of the bend ; and Monterey itself is cosily
ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient capital
of CaHfornia faces across the bay, while the Pacific
Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bom-
bards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf.
In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach
trends north and north-west, and then westward to
enclose the bay. The waves which lap so quietly
about the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger
in the distance ; you can see the breakers leaping
high and white by day ; at night, the outhne of the
shore is traced in transparent silver by the moonhght
and the flying foam ; and from all round, even in
quiet weather, the low, distant, thrilling roar of the
Pacific hangs over the coast and the adjacent country
like smoke above a battle.

169

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

These long beaches are enticing to the idle man.
It would be hard to find a walk more solitary and at
the same time more exciting to the mind. Crowds
of ducks and sea-gulls hover over the sea. Sand-
pipers trot in and out by troops after the retiring
waves, trilling together in a chorus of infinitesimal
song. Strange sea-tangles, new to the European
eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole
whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poison-
ing the wind. He scattered here and there along the
sands. The waves come in slowly, vast and green,
curve their translucent necks, and burst with a sur-
prising uproar, that runs, waxing and waning, up
and down the long key-board of the beach. The
foam of these great ruins mounts in an instant to
the ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back again,
and is met and buried by the next breaker. The
interest is perpetually fresh. On no other coast that
I know shall you enjoy, in calm, sunny weather,
such a spectacle of Ocean's greatness, such beauty of
changing colour, or such degrees of thunder in the
sound. The very air is more than usually salt by
this Homeric deep.

Inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the
beach. Here and there a lagoon, more or less
brackish, attracts the birds and hunters, A rough,
spotty undergrowth partially conceals the sand. The
crouching, hardy, live oaks flourish singly or in
thickets — the kind of wood for murderers to crawl
among — and here and there the skirts of the forest
extend downward from the hills with a floor of turf
170

MONTEREY

and long aisles of pine-trees hung with Spaniard's
Beard. Through this quaint desert the railway cars
drew near to Monterey from the junction at Salinas
City — though that and so many other things are
now for ever altered — and it was from here that you
had the first view of the old township lying in the
sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill,
perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening
drawing drearily around it from the sea.

The one common note of all this country is the
haunting presence of the ocean. A great faint sound
of breakers follows you high up into the inland
canons ; the roar of water dwells in the clean, empty
rooms of Monterey as in a shell upon the chimney ;
go where you will, you have but to pause and listen
to hear the voice of the Pacific. You pass out of the
town to the south-west, and mount the hill among
pine woods. Glade, thicket, and grove surround
you. You follow winding sandy tracks that lead
nowhither. You see a deer ; a multitude of quail
arises. But the sound of the sea still follows you as
you advance, like that of wind among the trees, only
harsher and stranger to the ear ; and when at length
you gain the summit, out breaks on every hand and
with freshened vigour that same unending, distant,
whispering rumble of the ocean ; for now you are
on the top of Monterey peninsula, and the noise no
longer only mounts to you from behind along the
beach towards Santa Cruz, but from your right also,
round by Chinatown and Pinos lighthouse, and from
down before you to the mouth of the Carmello

171

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

river. The whole woodland is begirt with thunder-
ing surges. The silence that immediately surrounds
you where you stand is not so much broken as it is
haunted by this distant, circling rumour. It sets
your senses upon edge ; you strain your attention ;
you are clearly and unusually conscious of small
sounds near at hand; you walk Hstening like an
Indian hunter; and that voice of the Pacific is a
sort of disquieting company to you in your walk.

When once I was in these woods I found it
difficult to turn homeward. All woods lure a
rambler onward; but in those of Monterey it was
the surf that particularly invited me to prolong my
walks. I would push straight for the shore where
I thought it to be nearest. Indeed, there was scarce
a direction that would not, sooner or later, have
brought me forth on the Pacific. The emptiness
of the woods gave me a sense of freedom and dis-
covery in these excursions. I never in all my visits
met but one man. He was a Mexican, very dark
of hue, but smiUng and fat, and he carried an axe,
though his true business at that moment was to
seek for straying cattle. I asked him what o'clock
it was, but he seemed neither to know nor care;
and when he in his turn asked me for news of his
cattle, I showed myself equally indifferent. We
stood and smiled upon each other for a few seconds,
and then turned without a word and took our several
ways across the forest.

One day — I shall never forget it— I had taken a
trail that was new to me. After a while the woods
172

MONTEREY

began to open, the sea to sound nearer hand.
I came upon a road, and, to my surprise, a stile.
A step or two farther, and, without leaving the
woods, I found myself among trim houses. I
walked through street after street, parallel and at
right angles, paved with sward and dotted with
trees, but still undeniable streets, and each with its
name posted at the corner, as in a real town.
Facing down the main thoroughfare — ' Central
Avenue,' as it was ticketed — I saw an open-air
temple, with benches and sounding-board, as though
for an orchestra. The houses were all tightly shut-
tered ; there was no smoke, no sound but of the
waves, no moving thing. I have never been in any
place that seemed so dream-like. Pompeii is all in
a bustle with visitors, and its antiquity and strange-
ness deceive the imagination ; but this town had
plainly not been built above a year or two, and
perhaps had been deserted overnight. Indeed it
was not so much like a deserted town as like a
scene upon the stage by daylight, and with no one
on the boards. The barking of a dog led me at
last to the only house still occupied, where a Scots
pastor and his wife pass the winter alone in this
empty theatre. The < place was *The Pacific Camp
Grounds, the Christian Seaside Resort.' Thither, in
the warm season, crowds come to enjoy a life of
teetotalism, religion, and flirtation, which I am
willing to think blameless and agreeable. The
neighbourhood at least is well selected. The Pacific
booms in front. Westward is Point Pinos, with

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

the lighthouse in a wilderness of sand, where you
will find the lightkeeper playing the piano, making
models and bows and arrows, studying dawn and
sunrise in amateur oil-painting, and with a dozen
other elegant pursuits and interests to surprise his
brave, old-country rivals. To the east, and still
nearer, you will come upon a space of open down,
a hamlet, a haven among rocks, a world of surge
and screaming sea-gulls. Such scenes are very
similar in different climates; they appear homely
to the eyes of all ; to me this was like a dozen
spots in Scotland. And yet the boats that ride in
the haven are of strange outlandish design ; and, if
you walk into the hamlet you will behold costumes
and faces, and hear a tongue, that are unfamiliar to
the memory. The joss-stick burns, the opium-pipe
is smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of
coloured paper — prayers, you would say, that had
somehow missed their destination — and a man guid-
ing his upright pencil from right to left across the
sheet writes home the news of Monterey to the
Celestial Empire.

The woods and the Pacific rule between them
the climate of this seaboard region. On the streets
of Monterey, when the air does not smell salt from
the one, it will be blowing perfumed from the
resinous tree-tops of the other. For days together
a hot, dry air will overhang the town, close as from
an oven, yet healthful and aromatic in the nostrils.
The cause is not far to seek, for the woods are
afire, and the hot wind is blowing from the hills.
174

MONTEREY

These fires are one of the great dangers of Cahfornia.
I have seen from Monterey as many as three at the
same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by night a
red coal of conflagration in the distance. A little
thing will start them, and, if the wind be favour-
able, they gallop over miles of country faster than
a horse. The inhabitants must turn out and work
like demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that
are destroyed ; the climate and the soil are equally at
stake, and these fires prevent the rains of the next
winter and dry up perennial fountains. California
has been a land of promise in its time, like Palestine ;
but if the woods continue so swiftly to perish, it
may become, like Palestine, a land of desolation.

To visit the woods while they are languidly burn-
ing is a strange piece of experience. The fire passes
through the underbrush at a run. Every here and
there a tree flares up instantaneously from root to
summit, scattering tufts of flame, and is quenched,
it seems, as quickly. But this last is only in sem-
blance. For after this first squib-Hke conflagration
of the dry moss and twigs, there remains behind a
deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very entrails
of the tree. The resin of the pitch-pine is principally
condensed at the base of the bole and in the spread-
ing roots. Thus, after the light, showy, skirmish-
ing flames, which are only as the match to the
explosion, have already scampered down the wind
into the distance, the true harm is but beginning
for this giant of the woods. You may approach
the tree from one side, and see it, scorched indeed

175

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

from top to bottom, but apparently survivor of the
peril. Make the circuit, and there, on the other
side of the column, is a clear mass of living coal,
spreading like an ulcer ; while underground, to their
most extended fibre, the roots are being eaten out
by fire, and the smoke is rising through the fissures
to the surface. A little while and, without a nod
of warning, the huge pine-tree snaps off short across
the ground, and falls prostrate with a crash. Mean-
while the fire continues its silent business ; the roots
are reduced to a fine ash ; and long afterwards, if
you pass by, you will find the earth pierced witli
radiating galleries, and preserving the design of all
these subterranean spurs, as though it were the
mould for a new tree instead of the print of an old
one. These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the
single exception of the Monterey cypress, the most
fantastic of forest trees. No words can give an idea
of the contortion of their growth ; they might figure
without change in a circle of the nether hell as
Dante pictured it ; and at the rate at which trees
grow, and at which forest fires spring up and gallop
through the hills of California, we may look for-
ward to a time when there will not be one of them
left standiiig in that land of their nativity. At
least they have not so much to fear from the axe,
but perish by what may be called a natural although
a violent death ; while it is man in his short-sighted
greed that robs the country of the nobler redwood.
Yet a little while and perhaps all the hills of sea-
board California may be as bald as Tamalpais.
176

MONTEREY

I have an interest of my own in these forest
fires, for I came so near to lynching on one occa-
sion, that a braver man might have retained a thrill
from the experience. I wished to be certain whether
it was the moss, that quaint funereal ornament of
Californian forests, which blazed up so rapidly when
the flame first touched the tree. I suppose I must
have been under the influence of Satan, for instead
of plucking off a piece for my experiment, what
should I do but walk up to a great pine tree in a
portion of the wood which had escaped so much
as scorching, strike a match, and apply the flame
gingerly to one of the tassels. The tree went off"
simply like a rocket ; in three seconds it was a
roaring pillar of fire. Close by I could hear the
shouts of those who were at work combating the
original conflagration. I could see the waggon that
had brought them tied to a live oak in a piece of
open ; I could even catch the flash of an axe as it
swung up through the underwood into the sunlight.
Had any one observed the result of my experiment
my neck was literally not worth a pinch of snufi^;
after a few minutes of passionate expostulation I
should have been run up to a convenient bough.

' To die for faction is a common evil ;
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.'

I have run repeatedly, but never as I ran that day.
At night I went out of town, and there was my
own particular fire, quite distinct from the other,
and burning, as I thought, with even greater vigour.

3~M 177

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

But it is the Pacific that exercises the most direct
and obvious power upon the climate. At sunset,
for months together, vast, wet, melancholy fogs
arise and come shoreward from the ocean. From
the hill-top above Monterey the scene is often
noble, although it is always sad. The upper air is
still bright with sunlight ; a glow still rests upon
the Gabelano Peak ; but the fogs are in possession
of the lower levels ; they crawl in scarves among
the sandhills ; they float, a little higher, in clouds
of a gigantic size and often of a wild configuration ;
to the south, where they have struck the seaward
shoulder of the mountains of Santa Lucia, they
double back and spire up skyward like smoke.
Where their shadow touches, colom- dies out of
the world. The air grows chill and deadly as they
advance. The trade-wind freshens, the trees begin
to sigh, and all the windmills in Monterey are whirl-
ing and creaking and filling their cisterns with the
brackish water of the sands. It takes but a little
while till the invasion is complete. The sea, in its
lighter order, has submerged the earth. Monterey
is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt, and
frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns ; and
before the sun's rays they slowly disperse and retreat
in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. And
yet often when the fog is thickest and most chill,
a few steps out of the town and up the slope, the
night will be dry and warm and full of inland
perfume.

178

MONTEREY

MEXICANS, AMERICANS, AND INDIANS

The history of Monterey has yet to be written.
Founded by Catholic missionaries, a place of wise
beneficence to Indians, a place of arms, a Mexican
capital continually wrested by one faction from
another, an American capital when the first House
of Representatives held its deliberations, and then
falling lower and lower from the capital of the
State to the capital of a county, and from that
again, by the loss of its charter and town lands,
to a mere bankrupt village, its rise and decline is
typical of that of all Mexican institutions and even
Mexican families in California.

Nothing is stranger in that strange State than
the rapidity with which the soil has changed hands.
The Mexicans, you may say, are all poor and land-
less, like their former capital ; and yet both it
and they hold themselves apart, and preserve their
ancient customs and something of their ancient
air.

The town, when I was there, was a place of two
or three streets, economically paved with sea-sand,
and two or three lanes, which were water-courses
in the rainy season, and at all times were rent up
by fissures four or five feet deep. There were no
street lights. Short sections of wooden sidewalk
only added to the dangers of the night, for they
were often high above the level of the roadway,
and no one could tell where they would be likely

179

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

to begin or end. The houses were for the most
part built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them
old for so new a country, some of very elegant
proportions, with low, spacious, shapely rooms, and
walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried
them to the heart. At the approach of the rainy
season a deathly chill and a graveyard smell began
to hang about the lower floors ; and diseases of the
chest are common and fatal among house-keeping
people of either sex.

There was no activity but in and around the
saloons, where people sat almost all day long playing
cards. The smallest excursion was made on horse-
back. You would scarcely ever see the main street
without a horse or two tied to posts, and making
a fine figure with their Mexican housings. It struck
me oddly to come across some of the Cornhill illus-
trations to Mr. Blackmore's JErema, and see all the
characters astride on English saddles. As a matter
of fact, an English saddle is a rarity even in San
Francisco, and you may say a thing unknown in
all the rest of California. In a place so exclusively
Mexican as Monterey, you saw not only Mexican
saddles but true Vaquero riding — men always at
the hand-gallop up hill and down dale, and round
the sharpest corner, urging their horses with cries
and gesticulations and cruel rotatory spurs, check-
ing them dead with a touch, or wheeling them
right-about-face in a square yard. The type of
face and character of bearing are surprisingly un-
American. The first ranged from something like
i8o

MONTEREY

the pure Spanish, to something, in its sad fixity,
not unHke the pure Indian, although I do not
suppose there was one pure blood of either race in
all the country. As for the second, it was a matter
of perpetual surprise to find, in that world of abso-
lutely mannerless Americans, a people full of de-
portment, solemnly courteous, and doing all things
with grace and decorum. In dress they ran to
colour and bright sashes. Not even the most
Americanised could always resist the temptation
to stick a red rose into his hatband. Not even
the most Americanised would descend to wear the
vile dress-hat of civilisation. Spanish was the
language of the streets. It was difficult to get
along without a word or two of that language for
an occasion. The only communications in which
the population joined were with a view to amuse-
ment. A weekly public ball took place with great
etiquette, in addition to the numerous fandangoes
in private houses. There was a really fair amateur
brass band. Night after night serenaders would be
going about the street, sometimes in a company
and with several instruments and voices together,
sometimes severally, each guitar before a different
window. It was a strange thing to lie awake in
nineteenth-century America, and hear the guitar
accompany, and one of these old, heart-breaking
Spanish love-songs mount into the night air, perhaps
in a deep baritone, perhaps in that high-pitched,
pathetic, womanish alto which is so common among
Mexican men, and which strikes on the unaccustomed

i8i

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

ear as something not entirely human, but altogether
sad.

The town, then, was essentially and wholly
Mexican ; and yet almost all the land in the
neighbourhood was held by Americans, and it was
from the same class, numerically so small, that the
principal officials were selected. This Mexican and
that Mexican would describe to you his old family
estates, not one rood of which remained to him.
You would ask him how that came about, and
elicit some tangled story back-foremost, from which
you gathered that the Americans had been greedy
like designing men, and the Mexicans greedy like
children, but no other certain fact. Their merits
and their faults contributed alike to the ruin of
the former landholders. It is true they were im-
provident, and easily dazzled with the sight of
ready money ; but they were gentlefolk besides,
and that in a way which curiously unfitted them to
combat Yankee craft. Suppose they have a paper
to sign, they would think it a reflection on the other
party to examine the terms with any great minute-
ness ; nay, suppose them to observe some doubtful
clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from
delicacy to object to it. I know I am speaking
within the mark, for I have seen such a case occur,
and the Mexican, in spite of the advice of his
lawyer, has signed the imperfect paper like a lamb.
To have spoken in the matter, he said, above all
to have let the other party guess that he had
seen a lawyer, would have ' been like doubting
182

MONTEREY

his word.' The scruple sounds oddly to one of
ourselves, who have been brought up to under-
stand all business as a competition in fraud, and
honesty itself to be a virtue which regards the
carrying out, but not the creation, of agreements.
This single unworldly trait will account for much
of that revolution of which we are speaking. The
Mexicans have the name of being great swindlers,
but certainly the accusation cuts both ways. In a
contest of this sort, the entire booty would scarcely
have passed into the hands of the more scrupulous
race.

Physically the Americans have triumphed ; but it
is not entirely seen how far they have themselves
been morally conquered. This is, of course, but a
part of a part of an extraordinary problem now in
the course of being solved in the various States of the
American Union. I am reminded of an anecdote.
Some years ago, at a great sale of wine, all the odd
lots were purchased by a grocer in a small way in
the old town of Edinburgh. The agent had the
curiosity to visit him some time after and inquire
what possible use he could have for such material.
He was shown, by way of answer, a huge vat where
all the liquors, from humble Gladstone to imperial
Tokay, were fermenting together. 'And what,' he
asked, ' do you propose to call this ? ' 'I 'm no'
very sure,' replied the grocer, 'but I think it's
going to turn out port.' In the older Eastern
States, I think we may say that this hotch-potch
of races is going to turn out English, or there-

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS *

about. But the problem is indefinitely varied in
other zones. The elements are differently mingled
in the south, in what we may call the Territorial
belt, and in the group of States on the Pacific
coast. Above all, in these last we may look to
see some singular hybrid — whether good or evil,
who shall forecast ? but certainly original and all
their own. In my little restaurant at Monterey,
we have sat down to table, day after day, a French-
man, two Portuguese, an Itahan, a Mexican, and a
Scotsman : we had for common visitors an American
from Illinois, a nearly pure-blood Indian woman,
and a naturalised Chinese ; and from time to time
a Switzer and a German came down from country
ranches for the night. No wonder that the Pacific
coast is a foreign land to visitors from the Eastern
States, for each race contributes something of its
own. Even the despised Chinese have taught the
youth of CaHfornia, none indeed of their virtues,
but the debasing use of opium. And chief among
these influences is that of the Mexicans.

The Mexicans, although in the State, are out of
it. They still preserve a sort of international inde-
pendence, and keep their affairs snug to themselves.
Only four or five years ago, Vasquez the bandit, his
troops being dispersed and the hunt too hot for him
in other parts of California, returned to his native
Monterey, and was seen publicly in her streets and
saloons, fearing no man. The year that I was there
there occurred two reputed murders. As the Mon-
tereyans are exceptionally vile speakers of each other
184

MONTEREY

and of every one behind his back, it is not possible for
me to judge how much truth there may have been in
these reports ; but in the one case every one beheved,
and in the other some suspected, that there had been
foul play ; and nobody dreamed for an instant of
taking the authorities into their counsel. Now this
is, of course, characteristic enough of the Mexicans ;
but it is a noteworthy feature that all the Ameri-
cans in Monterey acquiesced without a word in this
inaction. Even when I spoke to them upon the
subject, they seemed not to understand my sur-
prise; they had forgotten the traditions of their
own race and upbringing, and become, in a word,
wholly Mexicanised.

Again, the Mexicans, having no ready money to
speak of, rely almost entirely in their business trans-
actions upon each other's worthless paper. Pedro
the penniless pays you with an I O U from the
equally penniless Miguel. It is a sort of local
currency by courtesy. Credit in these parts has
passed into a superstition. I have seen a strong,
violent man struggling for months to recover a debt,
and getting nothing but an exchange, of waste paper.
The very storekeepers are averse to asking for cash
payments, and are more surprised than pleased when
they are offered. They fear there must be something
under it, and that you mean to withdraw your custom
from them. I have seen the enterprising chemist
and stationer begging me with fervour to let my
account run on, although I had my purse open in my
hand ; and partly from the commonness of the case,

185

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

partly from some remains of that generous old
Mexican tradition which made all men welcome to
their tables, a person may be notoriously both un-
willing and unable to pay, and still find credit for
the necessaries of life in the stores of Monterey.
Now this villainous habit of living upon ' tick ' has
grown into Californian nature. I do not mean that
the American and European storekeepers of Monterey
are as lax as Mexicans ; I mean that American
farmers in many parts of the State expect unlimited
credit, and profit by it in the meanwhile without a
thought for consequences. Jew storekeepers have
already learned the advantage to be gained from
this ; they lead on the farmer into irretrievable
indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their
bond-slave hopelessly grinding in the mill. So the
whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and ex-
cept that the Jew knows better than to foreclose,
you may see Americans bound in the same chains
with which they themselves had formerly bound the
Mexican. It seems as if certain sorts of follies,
like certain sorts of grain, were natural to the soil
rather than to the race that holds and tills it for
the moment.

In the meantime, however, the Americans rule in
Monterey County. The new county seat, Salinas
City, in the bald, corn-bearing plain under the Gabe-
lano Peak, is a town of a purely American character.
The land is held, for the most part, in those enormous
tracts which are another legacy of Mexican days,
and form the present chief danger and disgrace of
i86

MONTEREY

California ; and the holders are mostly of Ameri-
can or British birth. We have here in England
no idea of the troubles and inconveniences which
flow from the existence of these large landholders
— land-thieves, land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they
are more commonly and plainly called. Thus the
townlands of Monterey are all in the hands of a
single man. How they came there is an obscure,
vexatious question, and rightly or wrongly the
man is hated with a great hatred. His life has
been repeatedly in danger. Not very long ago,
I was told, the stage was stopped and examined
three evenings in succession by disguised horsemen
thirsting for his blood. A certain house on the
Salinas road, they say, he always passes in his buggy
at full speed, for the squatter sent him warning
long ago. But a year since he was publicly pointed
out for death by no less a man than Mr. Dennis
Kearney. Kearney is a man too well known in
California, but a word of explanation is required for
English readers. Originally an Irish drayman, he
rose, by his command of bad language, to almost
dictatorial authority in the State ; throned it there
for six months or so, his mouth full of oaths,
gallowses, and conflagrations ; was first snuffed out
last winter by Mr. Coleman, backed by his San Fran-
cisco Vigilantes and three Gatling guns ; completed
his own ruin by throwing in his lot with the grotesque
Greenbacker party ; and had at last to be rescued by
his old enemies, the police, out of the hands of his
rebellious followers. It was while he was at the top

187

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

of his fortune that Kearney visited Monterey with
his battle-cry against Chinese labour, the railroad
monopolists, and the land-thieves; and his one
articulate counsel to the Montereyans was to 'hang
David Jacks.' Had the town been American, in my
private opinion, this would have been done years
ago. Land is a subject on which there is no jest-
ing in the West, and I have seen my friend the
lawyer drive out of Monterey to adjust a competi-
tion of titles with the face of a captain going into
battle, and his Smith-and- Wesson convenient to his
hand.

On the ranche of another of these landholders you
may find our old friend, the Truck system, in full
operation. Men live there, year in year out, to cut
timber for a nominal wage, which is all consumed in
supplies. The longer they remain in this desirable
service the deeper they will fall in debt — a burlesque
injustice in a new country, where labour should be
precious, and one of those typical instances which
explains the prevailing discontent and the success of
the demagogue Kearney.

In a comparison between what was and what is in
California, the praisers of times past will fix upon the
Indians of Carmel. The valley drained by the river
so named is a true Californian valley, bare, dotted
with chaparal, overlooked by quaint, unfinished hills.
The Carmel runs by many pleasant farms, a clear and
shallow river, loved by wading kine ; and at last, as
it is falling towards a quicksand and the great Pacific,
passes a ruined mission on a hill. From the mission
i88

MONTEREY

church the eye embraces a great field of ocean,
and the ear is filled with a continuous sound of
distant breakers on the shore. But the day of the
Jesuit has gone by, the day of the Yankee has
succeeded, and there is no one left to care for the
converted savage. The church is roofless and ruin-
ous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the alternation of
the rain and sunshine, daily widening the breaches
and casting the crockets from the wall. As an
antiquity in this new land, a quaint specimen of
missionary architecture, and a memorial of good
deeds, it had a triple claim to preservation from
all thinking people ; but neglect and abuse have
been its portion. There is no sign of American
interference, save where a head-board has been torn
from a grave to be a mark for pistol-bullets. So it
is with the Indians for whom it was erected. Their
lands, I was told, are being yearly encroached upon
by the neighbouring American proprietor, and with
that exception no man troubles his head for the
Indians of Carmel. Only one day in the year, the
day before our Guy Fawkes, the padre drives over ,
the hill from Monterey ; the little sacristy, which is
the only covered portion of the church, is filled with
seats and decorated for the service ; the Indians
troop together, their bright dresses contrasting with
their dark and melancholy faces ; and there, among
a crowd of unsympathetic holiday-makers, you
may hear God served with perhaps more touch-
ing circumstances than in any other temple under
heaven. An Indian, stone-blind and about eighty

189

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

years of age, conducts the singing ; other Indians
compose the choir ; yet they have the Gregorian
music at their finger-ends, and pronounce the Latin
so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they
sang. The pronunciation was odd and nasal, the
singing hurried and staccato. ' In ssecula sseculo-ho-
horum,' they went, with a vigorous aspirate to every
additional syllable. I have never seen faces more
vividly Ht up with joy than the faces of these Indian
singers. It was to them not only the worship of
God, nor an act by which they recalled and com-
memorated better days, but was besides an exercise
of culture, where all they knew of art and letters
was united and expressed. And it made a man's
heart sorry for the good fathers of yore who had
taught them to dig and to reap, to read and to
sing, who had given them European mass-books
which they still preserve and study in their cottages,
and who had now passed away from all authority
and influence in that land — to be succeeded by
greedy land-thieves and sacrilegious pistol-shots.
So ugly a thing may our Anglo-Saxon Protestant-
ism appear beside the doings of the Society of
Jesus.

But revolution in this world succeeds to revolution.
All that I say in this paper is in a paulo-past tense.
The Monterey of last year^ exists no longer. A huge
hotel has sprung up in the desert by the railway.
Three sets of diners sit down successively to table.
Invaluable toilettes figure along the beach and be-

1 1879,
190

MONTEREY

tween the live oaks ; and Monterey is advertised in
the newspapers, and posted in the waiting-rooms at
railway stations, as a resort for wealth and fashion.
Alas for the Httle town ! it is not strong enough to
resist the influence of the flaunting caravanserai, and
the poor, quaint, penniless native gentlemen of
Monterey must perish, hke a lower race, before the
millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bonanza.

191

II
SAN FHANCISCO

The Pacific coast of the United States, as you may
see by the map, and still better in that admirable
book, Two Years before the Mast, by Dana, is one
of the most exposed and shelterless on earth. The
trade-wind blows fresh ; the huge Pacific swell
booms along degree after degree of an unbroken line
of coast. South of the joint firth of the Columbia
and Williamette, there flows in no considerable
river; south of Puget Sound there is no protected
inlet of the ocean. Along the whole seaboard of
California there are but two unexceptionable anchor-
ages,— the bight of the Bay of Monterey, and the
inland sea that takes its name from San Francisco.

Whether or not it was here that Drake put in in
1597, we cannot tell. There is no other place so
suitable; and yet the narrative of Francis Pretty
scarcely seems to suit the features of the scene.
Viewed from seaward, the Golden Gates should give
no very English impression to justify the name of
a New Albion. On the west, the deep Hes open ;
nothing near but the still vexed Farallones. The
coast is rough and barren. Tamalpais, a mountain of
a memorable figure, springing direct from the sea-
192

SAN FRANCISCO

level, over-plumbs the narrow entrance from the north.
On the south, the loud music of the Pacific sounds
along beaches and cUffs, and among broken reefs,
the sporting-place of the sea-Hon. Dismal, shifting
sandhills, wrinkled by the wind, appear behind.
Perhaps, too, in the days of Drake, Tamalpais would
be clothed to its peak with the majestic redwoods.

Within the memory of persons not yet old, a
mariner might have steered into these narrows — not
yet the Golden Gates — opened out the surface of
the bay — here girt with hills, there lying broad to
the horizon — and beheld a scene as empty of the
presence, as pure from the handiwork, of man, as in
the days of our old sea-commander. A Spanish
mission, fort, and church took the place of those
* houses of the people of the country' which were
seen by Pretty, 'close to the water-side.' All else
would be unchanged. Now, a generation later, a
great city covers the sandhUls on the west, a grow-
ing town hes along the muddy shallows of the east ;
steamboats pant continually between them from
before sunrise till the small hours of the morning;
lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at anchor ;
colours fly upon the islands ; and from all around
the hum of corporate life, of beaten bells, and steam,
and running carriages, goes cheerily abroad in the
sunshine. Choose a place on one of the huge throb-
bing ferry-boats, and, when you are midway between
the city and the suburb, look around. The air is
fresh and salt as if you were at sea. On the one
hand is Oakland, gleaming white among its gardens.
3— N 193

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

On the other, to seaward, hill after hill is crowded
and crowned with the palaces of San Francisco ; its
long streets lie in regular bars of darkness, east and
west, across the sparkling picture ; a forest of masts
bristles like bulrushes about its feet ; nothing remains
of the days of Drake but the faithful trade-wind
scattering the smoke, the fogs that will begin to
muster about sundown, and the fine bulk of Tamal-
pais looking down on San Francisco, Hke Arthur's
Seat on Edinburgh.

Thus, in the course of a generation only, this city
and its suburb have arisen. Men are alive by the
score who have hunted all over the foundations in
a dreary waste. I have dined, near the ' punctual
centre ' of San Francisco, with a gentleman (then
newly married), who told me of his former pleasures,
wading with his fowhng-piece in sand and scrub, on
the site of the house where we were dining. In this
busy, moving generation, we have all known cities
to cover our boyish playgrounds, we have all started
for a country walk and stumbled on a new suburb ;
but I wonder what enchantment of the Arabian
Nights can have equalled this evocation of a roaring-
city, in a few years of a man's life, from the marshes
and the blowing sand. Such swiftness of increase,
as with an overgrown youth, suggests a correspond-
ing swiftness of destruction. The sandy peninsula
of San Francisco, mirroring itself on one side in the
bay, beaten on the other by the surge of the Pacific,
and shaken to the heart by frequent earthquakes,
seems in itself no very durable foundation. Accord-
194

SAN FRANCISCO

ing to Indian tales, perhaps older than the name of
CaHfornia, it once rose out of the sea in a moment,
and sometime or other shall, in a moment, sink
again. No Indian, they say, cares to linger on that
doubtful land. 'The earth hath bubbles as the
water has, and this is of them.' Here, indeed, all is
new, nature as well as towns. The very hills of
California have an unfinished look; the rains and
the streams have not yet carved them to their perfect
shape. The forests spring like mushrooms from the
unexhausted soil ; and they are mown down yearly
by the forest fires. We are in early geological
epochs, changeful and insecure ; and we feel, as with
a sculptor's model, that the author may yet grow
weary of and shatter the rough sketch.

Fancy apart, San Francisco is a city beleaguered
with alarms. The lower parts, along the bay side,
sit on piles ; old wrecks decaying, fish dwelling un-
sunned, beneath the populous houses ; and a trifling
subsidence might drown the business quarters in an
hour. Earthquakes are not only common, they are
sometimes threatening in their violence ; the fear of
them grows yearly on a resident ; he begins with
indifference, ends in sheer panic ; and no one feels
safe in any but a wooden house. Hence it comes
that, in that rainless clime, the whole city is built of
timber — a woodyard of unusual extent and compH-
cation ; that fires spring up readily, and served by the
unwearying trade-wind, swiftly spread ; that all over
the city there are fire-signal boxes; that the sound of
the bell, telling the number of the threatened ward,

195

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

is soon familiar to the ear ; and that nowhere else in
the world is the art of the fireman carried to so nice
a point.

Next, perhaps, in order of strangeness to the
rapidity of its appearance, is the mingling of the
races that combine to people it. The town is essen-
tially not Anglo-Saxon; still more essentially not
American. The Yankee and the Englishman find
themselves ahke in a strange country. There are
none of these touches — not of nature, and I dare
scarcely say of art — ^by which the Anglo-Saxon feels
himself at home in so great a diversity of lands.
Here, on the contrary, are airs of Marseilles and of
Pekin. The shops along the street are hke the
consulates of different nations. The passers-by vary
in feature like the sUdes of a magic-lantern. For we
are here in that city of gold to which adventurers
congregated out of all the winds of heaven; we
are in a land that till the other day was ruled and
peopled by the countrymen of Cortes ; and the sea
that laves the piers of San Francisco is the ocean of
the East and of the isles of summer. There goes the
Mexican, unmistakable ; there the blue-clad China-
man with his white shppers ; there the soft-spoken,
brown Kanaka, or perhaps a waif from far-away
Malaya. You hear French, German, Itahan, Spanish,
and English indifferently. You taste the food of all
nations in the various restaurants ; passing from a
French prioc-fioce where every one is , French, to a
roaring German ordinary where every one is German ;
ending, perhaps, in a cool and silent Chinese tea-
196

SAN FRANCISCO

house. For every man, for every race and nation,
that city is a foreign city ; humming with foreign
tongues and customs; and yet each and all have
made themselves at home. The Germans have a
German theatre and innumerable beer-gardens. The
French Fall of the Bastille is celebrated with squibs
and banners, and marching patriots, as noisily as the
American Fourth of July. The Itahans have their
dear domestic quarter, with Italian caricatures in the
windows, Chianti and polenta in the taverns. The
Chinese are settled as in China. The goods they
offer for sale are as foreign as the lettering on the
signboard of the shop : dried fish from the China
seas ; pale cakes and sweetmeats — the like, perhaps,
once eaten by Badroubadour ; nuts of unfriendly
shape ; ambiguous, outlandish vegetables, misshapen,
lean, or bulbous — telling of a country where the trees
are not as our trees, and the very back-garden is a
cabinet of curiosities. The joss-house is hard by,
heavy with incense, packed with quaint carvings and
the paraphernalia of a foreign ceremonial. All these
you behold, crowded together in the narrower arteries
of the city, cool, sunless, a little mouldy, with the
unfamiliar faces at your elbow, and the high, musical
sing-song of that alien language in your ears. Yet
the houses are of Occidental build; the Hues of a
hundred telegraphs pass, thick as a ship's rigging,
overhead, a kite hanging among them, perhaps, or
perhaps two, one European, one Chinese, in shape
and colour ; mercantile Jack, the Italian fisher, the
Dutch merchant, the Mexican vaquero, go hustling

197

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

by ; at the sunny end of the street, a thoroughfare
roars with European traffic; and meanwhile, high
and clear, out breaks perhaps the San Francisco fire-
alarm, and people pause to count the strokes, and in
the stations of the double fire-service you know that
the electric bells are ringing, the traps opening, and
clapping to, and the engine, manned and harnessed,
being whisked into the street, before the sound of
the alarm has ceased to vibrate on your ear. Of all
romantic places for a boy to loiter in, that Chinese
quarter is the most romantic. There, on a half-
hohday, three doors from home, he may visit an
actual foreign land, foreign in people, language,
things, and customs. The very barber of the Arabian
Nights shall be at work before him, shaving heads ;
he shall see Aladdin playing on the streets; who
knows but among those nameless vegetables the
fruit of the nose-tree itself may be exposed for sale ?
And the interest is heightened with a chill of horror.
Below, you hear, the cellars are alive with mystery ;
opium dens, where the smokers lie one above another,
shelf above shelf, close-packed and grovelling in
deadly stupor; the seats of unknown vices and
cruelties, the prisons of anacknowledged slaves and
the secret lazarettos of disease.

With all this mass of nationalities, crime is com-
mon. There are rough quarters where it is dangerous
o' nights ; cellars of pubHc entertainment which the
wary pleasure-seeker chooses to avoid. Concealed
weapons are unlawful, but the law is continually
broken. One editor was shot dead while 1 was
198

SAN FRANCISCO

there; another walked the streets accompanied by
a bravo, his guardian angel. I have been quietly
eating a dish of oysters in a restaurant, where, not
more than ten minutes after I had left, shots were
exchanged and took effect; and one night about
ten o'clock, I saw a man standing watchfully at a
street-corner with a long Smith-and- Wesson glitter-
ing in his hand behind his back. Somebody had
done something he should not, and was being looked
for with a vengeance. It is odd, too, that the seat
of the last vigilance committee I know of — a
mediaeval Vehmgericht — was none other than the
Palace Hotel, the world's greatest caravanserai,
served by lifts and lit with electricity ; where, in the
great glazed court, a band nightly discourses music
from a grove of palms. So do extremes meet in this
city of contrasts : extremes of wealth and poverty,
apathy and excitement, the conveniences of civilisa-
tion and the red justice of Judge Lynch.

The streets lie straight up and down the hills, and
straight across at right angles, these in sun, those in
shadow, a trenchant pattern of gloom and glare ; and
what with the crisp illumination, the sea-air singing
in your ears, the chill and ghtter, the changing aspects
both of things and people, the fresh sights at every
corner of your walk — sights of the bay, of Tamalpais,
of steep, descending streets, of the outspread city —
whiffs of ahen speech, sailors singing on shipboard,
Chinese coolies toiling on the shore, crowds brawling
all day in the street before the Stock Exchange —
one brief impression follows and obliterates another,

199

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

and the city leaves upon the mind no general and
stable picture, but a profusion of airy and incon-
gruous images, of the sea and shore, the east and
west, the summer and the winter.

In the better parts of the most interesting city
there is apt to be a touch of the commonplace. It
is in the slums and suburbs that the city dilettante
finds his game. And there is nothing more charac-
teristic and original than the outlying quarters of
San Francisco. The Chinese district is the most
famous ; but it is far from the only truffle in the pie.
There is many another dingy corner, many a young
antiquity, many a terrain vague with that stamp of
quaintness that the city lover seeks and dwells on ;
and the indefinite prolongation of its streets, up hill
and down dale, makes San Francisco a place apart.
The same street in its career visits and unites so
many different classes of society, here echoing with
drays, there lying decorously silent between the
mansions of Bonanza milHonaires, to founder at last
among the drifting sands beside Lone Mountain
cemetery, or die out among the sheds and lumber of
the north. Thus you may be struck with a spot, set it
down for the most romantic of the city, and, glancing
at the name-plate, find it is in the same street that
you yourself inhabit in another quarter of the town.

The great net of straight thoroughfares lying at
right angles, east and west and north and south, over
the shoulders of Nob Hill, the hill of palaces, must
certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco.
It is there that the millionaires are gathered together
200

SAN FRANCISCO

vying with each other in display. From thence,
looking down over the business wards of the city, we
can descry a building with a little belfry, and that is
the Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco : a
great pump we might call it, continually pumping
up the savings of the lower quarters into the pockets
of the millionaires upon the hill. But these same
thoroughfares that enjoy for a while so elegant a
destiny have their lines prolonged into more unplea-
sant places. Some meet their fate in the sands ;
some must take a cruise in the ill-famed China
quarters ; some run into the sea ; some perish unwept
among pig-sties and rubbish-heaps.

Nob Hill comes, of right, in the place of honour ;
but the two other hills of San Francisco are more
entertaining to explore. On both there are a world
of old wooden houses snoozing together all forgot-
ten. Some are of the quaintest design, others only
romantic by neglect and age. Some have been
almost undermined by new thoroughfares, and sit
high up on the margin of the sandy cutting, only to
be reached by stairs. Some are curiously painted,
and I have seen one at least with ancient carvings
panelled in its wall. Surely they are not of Cah-
fornian building, but far voyagers from round the
stormy Horn, like those who sent for them and
dwelt in them at first. Brought to be the favourites
of the wealthy, they have sunk into these poor, for-
gotten districts, where, like old town toasts, they keep
each other silently in countenance. Telegraph Hill
and Rincon Hill, these are the two dozing quarters

201

OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

that I recommend to the city dilettante. There
stand these forgotten houses, enjoying the unbroken
sun and quiet. There, if there were such an author,
would the San Francisco Fortune de Boisgobey
pitch the first chapter of his mystery. But the first
is the quainter of the two, and commands, moreover,
a noble view. As it stands at the turn of the bay,
its skirts are all waterside, and round from North
Reach to the Bay Front you can follow doubtful
paths from one quaint corner to another. Every-
where the same tumble-down decay and sloppy
progress, new things yet unmade, old things totter-
ing to their fall ; everywhere the same out-at-elbows,
many-nationed loungers at dim, irregular grog-shops ;
everywhere the same sea-air and isleted sea-prospect ;
and for a last and more romantic note, you have on
the one hand Tamalpais standing high in the blue
air, and on the other the tail of that long alignment
of three-masted, full-rigged, deep-sea ships that make
a forest of spars along the eastern front of San Fran-
cisco. In no other port is such a navy congregated.
For the coast trade is so trifling, and the ocean trade
from round the Horn so large, that the smaller ships
are swallowed up, and can do nothing to confuse
the majestic order of these merchant princes. In an
age when the ship-of-the-hne is already a thing of
the past, and we can never again hope to go coasting
in a cock-boat between the ' wooden walls ' of a
squadron at anchor, there is perhaps no place on
earth where the power and beauty of sea architec-
ture can be so perfectly enjoyed as in this bay.
202

THE SILVERADO
SQUATTERS

Vixerunt nonnulli in agris, delectati
re sua familiari. His idem pro-
posifum fuit quod regibus, ut ne
qua re agerent, ne cui parerent,
libertate uterentur : cujus pro-
prium est sic mvere ut velis.

CIC. DB OFF. I, XX.

TO

VIRGIL WILLIAMS AND

DORA NORTON WILLIAMS

THESE SKETCHES ARE AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED BY THEIR FRIEND

THE AUTHOR

First Complete Edition : Chatto and Windus,

London, 1883.
Originally published (with some omissions) :

' Century Magazine,' November and

December 1883.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Silverado Squatters

. 209

In the Valley :

I. Cahstoga

. 217

II. The Petrified Forest .

. 223

III. Napa Wine .

. 229

IV. The Scot Abroad

. 236

With the Children of Israel :

I. To Introduce Mr. Kelmar

. 243

II. First Impressions of Silverado

. 248

III. The Return . . - .

. 261

The Act of Squatting .

. 267

The Hunter's Family .

. 279

The Sea Fogs ....

. 291

207

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

PAGE

The ToU House . . . .299

A Starry Drive ..... 305
Episodes in the Story of a Mine . .310

Toils and Pleasures . . , . 323

2o8

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

The scene of this little book is on a high mountain.
There are, indeed, many higher ; there are many of
a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for
the summary globe-trotter ; but to one who lives
upon its sides. Mount Saint Helena soon becomes
a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one
section of the Cahfornian Coast Range, none of its
near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It
looks down on much green, intricate country. It
feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks.
From its summit you must have an excellent lesson
of geography : seeing, to the south, San Francisco
Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte
Diablo on the other ; to the west, and thirty miles
away, the open ocean ; eastward, across the corn-
lands and thick tule swamps of Sacramento Valley,
to where the Central Pacific railroad begins to climb
the sides of the Sierras ; and northward, for what I
know, the white head of Shasta looking down on
Oregon. Three counties, Napa County, Lake
County, and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy
shoulders. Its naked peak stands nearly four thou-
3 — o 209

THE SILVEKADO SQUATTEHS

sand five hundred feet above the sea ; its sides are
fringed with forest ; and the soil, where it is bare,
glows warm with cinnabar.

Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks,
and bears, and rattlesnakes, and former mining
operations, are the staple of men's talk. Agriculture
has only begun to mount above the valley. And
though in a few years from now the whole district
may be smiling with farms, passing trains shaking
the mountain to the heart, many-windowed hotels
lighting up the night hke factories, and a prosperous
city occupying the site of sleepy Cahstoga ; yet in
the meantime, around the foot of that mountain the
silence of nature reigns in a great measure unbroken,
and the people of hill and valley go sauntering about
their business as in the days before the flood.

To reach Mount Saint Helena from San Fran-
cisco, the traveller has twice to cross the bay : once
by the busy Oakland ferry, and again, after an hour
or so of the railway, from Vallejo junction to Vallejo.
Thence he takes rail once more to mount the long
green strath of Napa Valley.

In all the contractions and expansions of that
inland sea, the Bay of San Francisco, there can be
few drearier scenes than the Vallejo Ferry. Bald
shores and a low, bald islet enclose the sea ; through
the narrows the tide bubbles, muddy like a river.
When we made the passage (bound, although yet
we knew it not, for Silverado) the steamer jumped,
and the black buoys were dancing in the jabble ; the
ocean breeze blew killing chill; and, although the

2IO

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

upper sky was still unflecked with vapour, the sea
fogs were pouring in from seaward, over the hill-
tops of Marin County, in one great, shapeless, silver
cloud.

South Vallejo is typical of many Californian
towns. It was a blunder ; the site has proved un-
tenable ; and, although it is still such a young place
by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be
deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North
Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking-saloons,
a hotel of a great size, marshy pools where the frogs
keep up their croaking, and even at high noon the
entire absence of any human face or voice — these
are the marks of South Vallejo. Yet there was a
tall building beside the pier, labelled the Star Flour
Mills; and sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close
alongshore, waiting for their cargo. Soon these
would be plunging round the Horn, soon the flour
from the Star Flour Mills would be landed on the
wharves of Liverpool. For that, too, is one of
England's outposts ; thither, to this gaunt mill,
across the Atlantic and Pacific deeps and round
about the icy Horn, this crowd of great, three-
masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing, and
return with bread.

The Frisby House, for that was the name of the
hotel, was a place of fallen fortunes, hke the town.
It was now given up to labourers, and partly ruinous.
At dinner there was the ordinary display of what is
called in the west a two-bit house : the tablecloth
checked red and white, the plague of flies, the wire

211

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

hencoops over the dishes, the great variety and
invariable vileness of the food, and the rough, coat-
less men devouring it in silence. In our bedroom
the stove would not burn, though it would smoke ;
and while one window would not open, the other
would not shut. There was a view on a bit of
empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering
with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with
a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about
that dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus.

Early the next morning we mounted the hill
along a wooden footway, bridging one marish spot
after another. Here and there, as we ascended, we
passed a house embowered in white roses. More
of the bay became apparent, and soon the blue peak
of Tamalpais rose above the green level of the island
opposite. It told us we were still but a little way
from the city of the Golden Gates, already, at that
hour, beginning to awake among the sandhills. It
called to us over the waters as with the voice of a
bird. Its stately head, blue as a sapphire on the
paler azure of the sky, spoke to us of wider outlooks
and the bright Pacific. For Tamalpais stands sentry,
like a Ughthouse, over the Golden Gates, between
the bay and the open ocean, and looks down in-
differently on both. Even as we saw and hailed it
from Vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were scanning
it with shaded eyes ; and, as if to answer to the
thought, one of the great ships below began silently
to clothe herself with white sails, homeward bound
for England.

212

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

For some way beyond Vallejo the railway led us
through bald green pastures. On the west the rough
highlands of Marin shut off the ocean ; in the midst,
in long, straggling, gleaming arms, the bay died out
among the grass ; there were few trees and few
enclosures ; the sun shone wide over open uplands,
the displumed hills stood clear against the sky. But
by and by these hills began to draw nearer on either
hand, and first thicket and then wood began to
clothe their sides ; and soon we were away from
all signs of the sea's neighbourhood, mounting an
inland, irrigated valley. A great variety of oaks
stood, now severally, now in a becoming grove,
among the fields and vineyards. The towns were
compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new
wooden houses and great and growing forest trees ;
and the chapel-bell on the engine sounded most
festally that sunny Sunday, as we drew up at one
green town after another, with the townsfolk troop-
ing in their Sunday's best to see the strangers, with
the sun sparkling on the clean houses, and great
domes of foliage humming overhead in the breeze.

This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its north end,
blockaded by our mountain. There, at Calistoga,
the railroad ceases, and the traveller who intends
faring farther, to the Geysers or to the springs in
Lake County, must cross the spurs of the mountain
by stage. Thus, Mount Saint Helena is not only
a summit, but a frontier ; and, up to the time of
writing, it has stayed the progress of the iron horse.

213

IN THE VALLEY

CALISTOGA

It is difficult for a European to imagine Calistoga,
the whole place is so new, and of such an Occidental
pattern ; the very name, I hear, was invented at a
supper-party by the man who found the springs.

The railroad and the highway come up the valley
about parallel to one another. The street of Calis-
toga joins them, perpendicular to both — a wide
street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there
a verandah over the sidewalk, here and there a
horse-post, here and there lounging townsfolk. Other
streets are marked out, and most likely named ; for
these towns in the New World begin with a firm
resolve to grow larger, Washington and Broadway,
and then First and Second, and so forth, being
boldly plotted out as soon as the community indulges
in a plan. But, in the meanwhile, all the life and
most of the houses of Calistoga are concentrated
upon that street between the railway station and
the road. I never heard it called by any name, but
I will hazard a guess that it is either Washington or

217

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

Broadway. Here are the blacksmith's, the chemist's,
the general merchant's, and Kong Sam Kee, the
Chinese laundryman's ; here, probably, is the office
of the local paper (for the place has a paper — they
all have papers) ; and here certainly is one of the
hotels, Cheeseborough's, whence the daring Foss,
a man dear to legend, starts his horses for the
Geysers.

It must be remembered that we are here in a land
of stage-drivers and highwaymen : a land, in that
sense, like England a hundred years ago. The
highway robber — road-agent, he is quaintly called —
is still busy in these parts. The fame of Vasquez is
still young. Only a few years go, the Lakeport
stage was robbed a mile or two from Cahstoga. In
1879, the dentist of Mendocino City, fifty miles
away upon the coast, suddenly threw off the gar-
ments of his trade, like GrindofF, in The Miller and
his Men, and flamed forth in his second dress as a
captain of banditti. A great robbery was followed
by a long chase, a chase of days, if not of weeks,
among the intricate hill-country ; and the chase was
followed by much desultory fighting, in which several
— and the dentist, I believe, amongst the number —
bit the dust. The grass was springing for the first
time, nourished upon their blood, when I arrived in
Calistoga. I am reminded of another highwayman
of that same year. ' He had been unwell,' so ran
his humorous defence, ' and the doctor told him to
take something, so he took the express-box.'

The cultus of the stage- coachman always flourishes
218

CALISTOGA

highest where there are thieves on the road, and
where the guard travels armed, and the stage is not
only a link between country and city, and the
vehicle of news, but has a faint warfaring aroma,
like a man who should be brother to a soldier. Cali-
fornia boasts her famous stage-drivers, and among
the famous Foss is not forgotten. Along the un-
fenced, abominable mountain roads, he launches his
team with small regard to human life or the doctrine
of probabilities. FHnching travellers, who behold
themselves coasting eternity at every corner, look
with natural admiration at their driver's huge, im-
passive, fleshy countenance. He has the very face
for the driver in Sam Weller's anecdote, who upset
the election party at the required point. Wonderful
tales are current of his readiness and skill. One in
particular, of how one of his horses fell at a ticklish
passage of the road, and how Foss let slip the reins,
and, driving over the fallen animal, arrived at the
next stage with only three. This I relate as I heard
it, without guarantee.

I only saw Foss once, though, strange as it may
sound, I have twice talked with him. He lives out
of Calistoga, at a ranche called Fossville. One
evening, after he was long gone home, I dropped
into Cheeseborough's, and was asked if I should like
to speak with Mr. Foss. Supposing that the inter-
view was impossible, and that I was merely caUed
upon to subscribe the general sentiment, I boldly
answered 'Yes.' Next moment, I had one instru-
ment at my ear, another at my mouth, and found

219

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

myself, with nothing in the world to say, conversing
with a man several miles off among desolate hills.
Foss rapidly and somewhat plaintively brought the
conversation to an end; and he returned to his
night's grog at Fossville, while I strolled forth
again on Calistoga high street. But it was an odd
thing that here, on what we are accustomed to con-
sider the very skirts of civilisation, I should have
used the telephone for the first time in my civilised
career. So it goes in these young countries ; tele-
phones, and telegraphs, and newspapers, and adver-
tisements running far ahead among the Indians and
the grizzly bears.

Alone, on the other side of the railway, stands the
Springs Hotel, with its attendant cottages. The
fl.oor of the valley is extremely level to the very
roots of the hills ; only here and there a hillock,
crowned with pines, rises like the barrow of some
chieftain famed in war ; and right against one of
these hillocks is the Springs Hotel — is or was ; for
since I was there the place has been destroyed by
fire, and has risen again from its ashes. A lawn runs
about the house, and the lawn is in its turn sur-
rounded by a system of little five-roomed cottages,
each with a verandah and a weedy palm before the
door. Some of the cottages are let to residents, and
these are wreathed in flowers. The rest are occu-
pied by ordinary visitors to the hotel ; and a very
pleasant way this is, by which you have a little
country cottage of your own, without domestic
burthens, and by the day or week.
220

CALISTOGA

The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena
is full of sulphur and of boiling springs. The Gey-
sers are famous ; they were the great health resort
of the Indians before the coming of the whites.
Lake County is dotted with spas ; Hot Springs
and White Sulphur Springs are the names of two
stations on the Napa Valley railroad ; and Calistoga
itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling,
subterranean lake. At one end of the hotel en-
closure are the springs from which it takes its name,
hot enough to scald a child seriously while I was
there. At the other end, the tenant of a cottage
sank a well, and there also the water came up boiling.
It keeps this end of the valley as warm as a toast.
I have gone across to the hotel a little after five
in the morning, when a sea-fog from the Pacific was
hanging thick and grey, and dark and dirty overhead,
and found the thermometer had been up before me,
and had already climbed among the nineties ; and in
the stress of the day it was sometimes too hot to
move about.

But in spite of this heat from above and below,
doing one on both sides, Calistoga was a pleasant
place to dwell in ; beautifully green, for it was then
that favoured moment in the Californian year, when
the rains are over and the dusty summer has not yet
set in ; often visited by fresh airs, now from the
mountain, now across Sonoma from the sea ; very
quiet, very idle, very silent but for the breezes and
the cattle-bells afield. And there was something
satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that

221

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

enclosed us to the north : whether it stood robed in
sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the
heat and brightness of the day ; or whether it set
itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing,
trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue.

The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foothills
that enclose the valley, shutting it off from Sonoma
on the west, and from Yolo on the east — rough
as they were in outline, dug out by winter streams,
crowned by cliffy bluffs and nodding pine-trees —
were dwarfed into satellites by the bulk and bearing
of Mount Saint Helena. She over-towered them by
two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them
by the boldness of her profile. Her great bald
summit, clear of trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz
and cinnabar, rejected kinship with the dark and
shaggy wilderness of lesser hill-tops.

222

II

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in
the afternoon. The sun warmed me to the heart.
A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the
valley, laden with perfume. Up at the top stood
Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare
atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiating warmth.
Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and ex-
quisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a
finished composition. We passed a cow stretched
by the roadside, her bell slowly beating time to the
movement of her ruminating jaws, her big red face
crawled over by half a dozen flies, a monument of
content.

A Httle farther, and we struck to the left up a
mountain road, and for two hours threaded one
valley after another, green, tangled, full of noble
timber, giving us every now and again a sight of
Mount Saint Helena and the blue hilly distance,
and crossed by many streams, through which we
splashed to the carriage-step. To the right or the

223

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

left, there was scarce any trace of man but the road
we followed ; I think we passed but one ranchero's
house in the whole distance, and that was closed and
smokeless. But we had the society of these bright
streams — dazzlingly clear as is their wont, splashing
from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively
coolness through the sunshine. And what with
the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of
foliage tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of dis-
tance, the descents into seemingly impenetrable
thickets, the continual dodging of the road which
made haste to plunge again into the covert, we had
a fine sense of woods, and spring-time, and the open
air.

Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on
Californian trees — a thing I was much in need of,
having fallen among painters who know the name
of nothing, and Mexicans who know the name of
nothing in English. He taught me the madrona,
the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple ; he showed
me the crested mountain quail ; he showed me
where some young redwoods were already spiring
heavenwards from the ruins of the old ; for in this
district all had already perished : redwoods and red-
skins, the two noblest indigenous living things, alike
condemned.

At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge
wooden gate with a sign upon it like an inn. ' The
Petrified Forest. Proprietor : C. Evans,' ran the
legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, was the house
of the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by
224

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

to serve as a museum, where photographs and petri-
factions were retailed. It was a pure little isle of
touristry among these solitary hills.

The proprietor was a brave old white-faced Swede.
He had wandered this way, Heaven knows how,
and taken up his acres — I forget how many years
ago — all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with
six bits in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder.
Long, useless years of seafaring had thus discharged
him at the end, penniless and sick. Without doubt
he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no
good from that; without doubt he had loved the
bottle, and Uved the life of Jack ashore. But at
the end of these adventures, here he came ; and, the
place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new
life of it, far from crimps and the salt sea. And the
very sight of his ranche had done him good. It
was ' the handsomest spot in the Californy moun-
tains.' 'Isn't it handsome, now?' he said. Every
penny he makes goes into that ranche to make it
handsomer. Then the climate, with the sea-breeze
every afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had
gradually cured the sciatica ; and his sister and niece
were now domesticated with him for company — or,
rather, the niece came only once in the two days,
teaching music the meanwhile in the valley. And then
for a last piece of luck, ' the handsomest spot in the
Californy mountains' had produced a petrified forest,
which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest figure
of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital
when he first came there mth an axe and a sciatica.
3— p 225

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

This tardy favourite of fortune — hobbling a little,
I think, as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not
a trace that I can remember of the sea — thoroughly
ruralised from head to foot, proceeded to escort us
up the hill behind his house.

* Who first found the forest ? ' asked my wife.

' The first ? I was that man,' said he. ' I was
cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when I found
this ' — kicking a great redwood, seven feet in dia-
meter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart,
clinging lumps of bark, all changed into grey stone,
with veins of quartz between what had been the
layers of the wood.

' Were you surprised ? '

' Surprised ? No ! What would I be surprised
about ? What did I know about petrifactions —
following the sea ? Petrifaction ! There was no
such word in my language ! I knew about putre-
faction, though ! I thought it was a stone ; so
would you if you was cleaning up pasture.'

And now he had a theory of his own, which I did
not quite grasp, except that the trees had not
' grewed ' there. But he mentioned, with evident
pride, that he differed from all the scientific people
who had visited the spot ; and he flung about such
words as ' tufa ' and ' silica ' with careless free-
dom.

When I mentioned I was from Scotland, ' My

old country,' he said ; ' my old country ' — with a

smiling look and a tone of real affection in liis

voice. I was mightily surprised, for he was ob-

226

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

viously Scandinavian, and begged him to explain.
It seemed he had learned his English and done
nearly all his sailing in Scottish ships. * Out of
Glasgow,' said he, ' or Greenock ; but that 's all
the same — they all hail from Glasgow.' And he
was so pleased with me for being a Scotsman, and
his adopted compatriot, that he made me a present
of a very beautiful piece of petrifaction — I believe
the most beautiful and portable he had.

Here was a man, at least, who was a Swede, a
Scot, and an American, acknowledging some kind
allegiance to three lands. Mr. Wallace's Scoto-
Circassian will not fail to come before the reader. I
have myself met and spoken with a Fifeshire Ger-
man, whose combination of abominable accents
struck me dumb. But, indeed, I think we all
belong to many countries. And perhaps this habit
of much travel, and the engendering of scattered
friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient
nations.

And the forest itself ? Well, on a tangled, briary
hiUside — for the pasture would bear a little further
cleaning up, to my eyes — there lie scattered thickly
various lengths of petrified trunk, such as the one
already mentioned. It is very curious, of course,
and ancient enough, if that were all. Doubtless the
heart of the geologist beats quicker at the sight ;
but, for my part, I was mightily unmoved. Sight-
seeing is the art of disappointment.

' There 's nothing undei* heaven so blue,
That 's fairly worth the travelling to.'

227

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

But, fortunately, Heaven rewards us with many
agreeable prospects and adventures by the way ; and
sometimes, when we go out to see a petrified forest,
prepares a far more delightful curiosity in the form
of Mr. Evans, whom may all prosperity attend
throughout a long and green old age.

228

Ill
NAPA WINE

I WAS interested in Calif ornian wine. Indeed, I am
interested in all wines, and have been all my life,
from the raisin-wine that a school-fellow kept secreted
in his play-box up to my last discovery, those
notable Valtellines, that once shone upon the board
of Caesar.

Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread
the shadows falling on the age : how the uncon-
querable worm invades the sunny terraces of France,
and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere
Arabia Petrsea. Chateau Neuf is dead, and I have
never tasted it ; Hermitage — a hermitage indeed
from all life's sorrows — lies expiring by the river.
And in the place of these imperial elixirs, beautiful
to every sense, gem-hued, flower-scented, dream-
compellers : — behold upon the quays at Cette the
chemicals arrayed ; behold the analyst at Marseilles,
raising hands in obsecration, attesting god Lyseus,
and the vats staved in, and the dishonest wines
poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only ;
Bacchus, too, is dead.

229

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance,
the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be
invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their
talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences
— for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines
ever in the retrospect — if wine is to desert us,
go thy ways, old Jack ! Now we begin to have
compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles
squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests
drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even
the schoolboy * took his whack,' like liquorice-water.
And at the same time we look timidly forward, with
a spark of hope, to where the new lands, already
weary of producing gold, begin to green with vine-
yards. A nice point in human history falls to be
decided by Californian and Australian wines.

Wine in California is still in the experimental
stage ; and when you taste a vintage, grave econo-
mical questions are involved. The beginning of
vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the
precious metals : the wine-grower also ' prospects.'
One corner of land after another is tried with one
kind of grape after another. This is a failure ; that
is better ; a third best. So, bit by bit, they grope
about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafitte. Those
lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the
precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and
soft fire ; those virtuous Bonanzas, where the soil
has sublimated under sun and stars to something
finer, and the wine is bottled poetry : these still lie
undiscovered ; chaparral conceals, thicket embowers
230

NAPA WINE

them ; the miner chips the rock and wanders farther,
and the grizzly muses undisturbed. But there they
bide their hour, awaiting their Columbus ; and
nature nurses and prepares them. The smack of
Californian earth shall linger on the palate of your
grandson.

Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine ; the
best that I have tasted — better than a Beaujolais, and
not unlike. But the trade is poor ; it lives from
hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and
forced to sell its vintages. To find one properly
matured, and bearing its own name, is to be fortune's
favourite.

Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the
innuendo.

* You want to know why California wine is not
drunk in the States?' a San Francisco wine-merchant
said to me, after he had shown me through his
premises. ' Well, here's the reason.'

And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many
little drawers, he proceeded to shower me all over
with a great variety of gorgeously tinted labels, blue,
red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and
haihng from such a profusion of clos and chateaux,
that a single department could scarce have furnished
forth the names. But it was strange that all looked
unfamiliar.

' Chateaux X ? ' said I. ' I never heard of

that.'

' I daresay not,' said he. ' I had been reading one

ofX 's novels.'

231

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

They were all castles in Spain ! But that sure
enough is the reason why California wine is not
drunk in the States.

Napa Valley has been long a seat of the wine-
growing industry. It did not here begin, as it does
too often, in the low valley lands along the river,
but took at once to the rough foothills, where alone
it can expect to prosper. A basking inclination,
and stones, to be a reservoir of the day's heat, seem
necessary to the soil for wine ; the grossness of the
earth must be evaporated, its marrow daily melted
and refined for ages ; until at length these clods that
break below our footing, and to the eye appear but
common earth, are truly and to the perceiving mind
a masterpiece of nature. The dust of Richebourg,
which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis
of the dust ! Not man himself can seem a stranger
child of that brown, friable powder, than the blood
and sun in that old flask behind the fagots.

A Californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in
the wilderness, has features of its own. There is
nothing here to remind you of the Rhine or Rhone,
of the low Cote d'Or, or the infamous and scabby
deserts of Champagne ; but all is green, sohtary,
covert. We visited two of them, Mr. Schram's and
Mr. M'Eckron's, sharing the same glen.

Some way down the valley below Calistoga we
turned sharply to the south and plunged into the
thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly mounting ;
a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big
enough perhaps after the rains, but already yielding

2.^2

NAPA WINE

up its life ; overhead and on all sides a bower of
green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still
flower-bespangled by the early season, where thimble-
berry played the part of our English hawthorn, and
the buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns
of blossom : through all this we struggled toughly
upwards, canted to and fro by the roughness of the
trail, and continually switched across the face by
sprays of leaf or blossom. The last is no great in-
convenience at home ; but here in California it is a
matter of some moment. For in all woods and by
every wayside there prospers an abominable shrub or
weed, called poison-oak, whose very neighbourhood
is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is
avoided by the most impervious.

The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each
in a green niche of its own in this steep and narrow
forest dell. Though they were so near, there was
already a good difference in level ; and Mr.
M'Eckron's head must be a long way under the feet
of Mr. Schram. No more had been cleared than
was necessary for cultivation ; close around each
oasis ran the tangled wood ; the glen enfolds them :
there they lie basking in sun and silence, concealed
from all but the clouds and the mountain birds.

Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor establishment ; a
little bit of a wooden house, a small cellar hard by
in the hillside, and a patch of vines planted and
tended single-handed by himself. He had but
recently begun ; his vines were young, his business
young also ; but I thought he had the look of a man

233

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

who succeeds. He hailed from Greenock : he re-
membered his father putting him inside Mons Meg,
and that touched me home ; and we exchanged a
word or two of Scots, which pleased me more than
you would fancy.

Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest
vineyard in the valley, eighteen years old, I think ;
yet he began a penniless barber, and even after he
had broken ground up here with his black malvoisies,
continued for long to tramp the valley with his
razor. Now, his place is the picture of prosperity ;
stuffed birds in the verandah, cellars far dug into the
hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit's cave : —
all trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among
the tangled wildwood. Stout, smiling Mrs, Schram,
who has been to Europe and apparently all about
the States for pleasure, entertained Fanny in the
verandah while I was tasting wines in the cellar. To
Mr. Schram this was a solemn office ; his serious
gusto warmed my heart ; prosperity had not yet
wholly banished a certain neophyte and girlish trepida-
tion, and he followed every sip and read my face with
proud anxiety. I tasted all. I tasted every variety
and shade of Schramberger, red and white Schram-
berger, Burgundy Schramberger, Schramberger
Hock, Schramberger Golden Chasselas, the latter
with a notable bouquet, and I fear to think how
many more. Much of it goes to London — most, I
think ; and Mr. Schram has a great notion of the
English taste.

In this wild spot I did not feel the sacredness of

234

NAPA WINE

ancient cultivation. It was still raw ; it was no
Marathon, and no Johannisberg ; yet the stirring
sunlight, and the growing vines, and the vats and
bottles in the cavern, made a pleasant music for the
mind. Here, also, earth's cream was being skimmed
and garnered ; and the London customers can taste,
such as it is, the tang of the earth in this green
valley. So local, so quintessential is a wine, that it
seems the very birds in the verandah might com-
municate a flavour, and that romantic cellar influence
the bottle next to be uncorked in Pimlico, and
the smile of jolly Mr. Schram might mantle in the
glass.

But these are but experiments. All things in this
new land are moving farther on : the wine-vats and
the miner's blasting tools but picket for a night, Hke
Bedouin pavilions ; and to-morrow, to fresh woods !
This stir of change and these perpetual echoes of
the moving footfall haunt the land. Men move
eternally, still chasing Fortune; and. Fortune found,
still wander. As we drove back to Calistoga the
road lay empty of mere passengers, but its green
side was dotted with the camps of travelling famihes :
one cumbered with a great waggonful of household
stuff, settlers going to occupy a ranche they had
taken up in Mendocino, or perhaps Tehama County ;
another, a party in dust coats, men and women, whom
we found camped in a grove on the roadside, all on
pleasure bent, with a Chinaman to cook for them,
and who waved their hands to us as we drove by.

235

IV
THE SCOT ABROAD

A FEW pages back I wrote that a man belonged, in
these days, to a variety of countries ; but the old
land is still the true love, the others are but pleasant
infidelities. Scotland is indefinable ; it has no unity
except upon the map. Two languages, many dialects,
innumerable forms of piety, and countless local
patriotisms and prejudices, part uS among ourselves
more widely than the extreme east and west of that
great continent of America. When I am at home,
I feel a man from Glasgow to be something like a
rival, a man from Barra to be more than half a
foreigner. Yet let us meet in some far country, and,
whether we hail from the braes of Manor or the
braes of Mar, some ready-made affection joins us on
the instant. It is not race. Look at us. One is
Norse, one Celtic, and another Saxon. It is not
community of tongue. We have it not among our-
selves ; and we have it, almost to perfection, with
Enghsh, or Irish, or American. It is no tie of faith,
for we detest each other's errors. And yet some-
236

THE SCOT ABROAD

where, deep down in the heart of each one of us,
something yearns for the old land and the old kindly
people.

Of all mysteries of the human heart this is per-
haps the most inscrutable. There is no special
loveliness in that grey country, with its rainy, sea-
beat archipelago ; its fields of dark mountains ; its
unsightly places, black with coal ; its treeless, sour,
unfriendly -looking corn -lands ; its quaint, grey,
castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and
the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat.
I do not even know if I desire to live there ; but
let me hear, in some far land, a kindred voice sing
out, ' O why left I my hame ? ' and it seems at
once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no
society of the wise and good, can repay me for my
absence from my country. And though I think I
would rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts
I long to be buried among good Scots clods. I will
say it fairly, it grows on me with every year : there
are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps.
When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my right
hand forget its cunning !

The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scots-
man. You must pay for it in many ways, as for
all other advantages on earth. You have to learn
the Paraphrases and the Shorter Catechism ; you
generally take to drink ; your youth, as far as I can
find out, is a time of louder war against society, of
more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you had
been born, for instance, in England. But somehow

237

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

life is warmer and closer ; the hearth burns more
redly ; the lights of home shine softer on the rainy
street ; the very names, endeared in verse and music,
cling nearer round our hearts. An Englishman may
meet an Englishman to-morrow, upon Chimborazo,
and neither of them cares ; but when the Scots
wine-grower told me of Mons Meg it was hke
magic.

' From the dim shieling on the misty island
Mountains divide iis^ and a world of seas ;
Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides.'

And, Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are
Scottish.

Only a few days after I had seen M'Eckron, a
message reached me in my cottage. It was a Scots-
man who had come down a long way from the hills
to market. He had heard there was a countryman
in Calistoga, and came round to the hotel to see
him. We said a few words to each other ; we had
not much to say — should never have seen each other
had we stayed at home, separated alike in space and
in society ; and then we shook hands, and he went
his way again to his ranche among the hills, and that
was all.

Another Scotsman there was, a resident, who for
the mere love of the common country, douce, serious,
religious man, drove me all about the valley, and
took as much interest in me as if I had been his son:
more, perhaps; for the son has faults too keenly
238

THE SCOT ABROAD

felt, while the abstract countryman is perfect — like
a whiff of peats.

And there was yet another. Upon him I came
suddenly, as he was calmly entering my cottage, his
mind quite evidently bent on plunder : a man of
about fifty, filthy, ragged, roguish, with a chimney-
pot hat and a tail-coat, and a pursing of his mouth
that might have been envied by an elder of the kirk.
He had just such a face as I have seen a dozen
times behind the plate.

' Hullo, sir ! ' I cried. ' Where are you going ? '

He turned round without a quiver.

* You 're a Scotsman, sir ? ' he said gravely. ' So
am I ; I come from Aberdeen. This is my card,'
presenting me with a piece of pasteboard which he
had raked out of some gutter in the period of the
rains. ' I was just examining this palm,' he con-
tinued, indicating the misbegotten plant before our
door, 'which is the largest specimen I have yet
observed in Califoarnia.'

There were four or five larger within sight. But
where was the use of argument ? He produced a
tape-line, made me help him to measure the tree at
the level of the ground, and entered the figures in a
large and filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of
Solomon. He then thanked me profusely, remarking
that such httle services were due between country-
men ; shook hands with me, ' for auld lang syne,' as
he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating
dirt and humbug as he went.

A month or two after this encounter of mine,

239

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

there came a Scot to Sacramento — perhaps from
Aberdeen. Anyway, there never was any one more
Scottish in this wide world. He could sing and
dance — and drink, I presume; and he played the
pipes with vigour and success. All the Scots in
Sacramento became infatuated with him, and spent
their spare time and money driving him about in an
open cab, between drinks, while he blew himself
scarlet at the pipes. This is a very sad story. After
he had borrowed money from every one, he and his
pipes suddenly disappeared from Sacramento, and
when I last heard, the pohce were looking for him.

I cannot say how this story amused me, when I
felt myself so thoroughly ripe on both sides to be
duped in the same way.

It is at least a curious thing, to conclude, that the
races which wander widest, Jews and Scots, should
be the most clannish in the world. But perhaps
these two are cause and effect: 'For ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt.'

240

WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL

3-Q

TO INTRODUCE MR KELMAR

One thing in this new country very particularly
strikes a stranger, and that is the number of anti-
quities. Already there have been many cycles of
population^ succeeding each other, and passing away
and leaving behind them relics. These, standing on
into changed times, strike the imagination as forcibly
as any pyramid or feudal tower. The towns, like
the vineyards, are experimentally founded : they
grow great and prosper by passing occasions ; and
when the lode comes to an end, and the miners
move elsewhere, the town remains behind them, like
Palmyra in the desert. I suppose there are, in no
country in the world, so many deserted towns as
here in California.

The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena,
now so quiet and sylvan, was once alive with mining-
camps and villages. Here there would be two thou-
sand souls under canvas ; there one thousand or
fifteen hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in a town
of comfortable houses. But the luck had failed, the

243

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

mines petered out; and the army of miners had
departed, and left this quarter of the world to the
rattlesnakes and deer and grizzlies, and to the slower
but steadier advance of husbandry.

It was with an eye on one of these deserted places.
Pine Flat, on the Geysers road, that we had come
first to Calistoga. There is something singularly
enticing in the idea of going, rent-free, into a ready-
made house. And to the British merchant, sitting
at home at ease, it may appear that, with such a roof
over your head and a spring of clear water hard by,
the whole problem of the squatter's existence would
be solved. Food, however, has yet to be considered.
I will go as far as most people on tinned meats ;
some of the brightest moments of my life were
passed over tinned mulligatawny in the cabin of a
sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed in Portree Bay ;
but after suitable experiments, I pronounce authori-
tatively that man cannot live by tins alone. Fresh
meat must be had on an occasion. It is true that
the great Foss, driving by along the Geysers road,
wooden-faced, but glorified with legend, might have
been induced to bring us meat, but tlie great Foss
could hardly bring us milk. To take a cow would
have involved taking a field of grass and a milkmaid ;
after which it would have been hardly worth while
to pause, and we might have added to our colony a
flock of sheep and an experienced butcher.

It is really very disheartening how we depend on
other people in this life. ' Mihi est propositum,' as
you may see by the motto, 'ide7?i quod regibus\'
244

TO INTRODUCE MR KELMAR

and behold, it cannot be carried out, unless I find
a neighbour rolling in cattle.

Now, my principal adviser in this matter was one
whom I will call Kelmar. That was not what he
called himself, but as soon as I had set eyes on him,
I knew it was or ought to be his name ; I am sure
it will be his name among the angels. Kelmar was
the storekeeper, a Russian Jew, good-natured, in a
very thriving way of business, and, on equal terms,
one of the most serviceable of men. He also had
something of the expression of a Scottish country
elder, who, by some peculiarity, should chance to be
a Hebrew. He had a projecting under-lip, with
which he continually smiled, or rather smirked. Mrs.
Kelmar was a singularly kind woman ; and the oldest
son had quite a dark and romantic bearing, and
might be heard on summer evenings playing senti-
mental airs on the violin.

I had no idea, at the time I made his acquaintance,
what an important person Kelmar was. But the
Jew storekeepers of California, profiting at once by
the needs and habits of the people, have made
themselves in too many cases the tyrants of the
rural population. Credit is offered, is pressed on the
new customer, and when once he is beyond his
depth, the tune changes, and he is from thenceforth
a white slave. I believe, even from the little I saw,
that Kelmar, if he chose to put on the screw, could
send half the settlers packing in a radius of seven
or eight miles round Calistoga. These are con-
tinually paying him, but are never suffered to get

245

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

out of debt He palms dull goods upon them, for
they dare not refuse to buy ; he goes and dines with
them when he is on an outing, and no man is loudlier
welcomed ; he is their family friend, the director of
their business, and, to a degree elsewhere unknown
in modern days, their king.

For some reason, Kelmar always shook his head
at the mention of Pine Flat, and for some days I
thought he disapproved of the whole scheme and
was proportionately sad. One fine morning, how-
ever, he met me, wreathed in smiles. He had
found the very place for me — Silverado, another old
mining town, right up the mountain. Rufe Hanson,
the hunter, could take care of us — fine people the
Hansons ; we should be close to the Toll House,
where the Lakeport stage called daily ; it was the
best place for my health, besides. Rufe had been
consumptive, and was now quite a strong man, ain't
it ? In short, the place and all its accompaniments
seemed made for us on purpose.

He took me to his back-door, whence, as from
every point of Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could
be seen towering in the air. There, in the nick, just
where the eastern foothills joined the mountain, and
she herself began to rise above the zone of forest —
there was Silverado. The name had already pleased
me ; the high station pleased me still more. I began
to inquire with some eagerness. It was but a little
while ago that Silverado was a great place. The
mine — a silver mine, of course — had promised great
things. There was quite a lively population, with
246

TO INTRODUCE MR KELMAR

several hotels and boarding-houses ; and Kelmar him-
self had opened a branch store, and done extremely
well — ' Ain't it ? ' he said, appealing to his wife.
And she said, 'Yes; extremely well.' Now there
was no one living in the town but Rufe the hunter ;
and once more I heard Rufe's praises by the yard,
and this time sung in chorus.

I could not help perceiving at the time that there
was something underneath ; that no unmixed desire
to have us comfortably settled had inspired the
Kelmars with this flow of words. But T was im-
patient to be gone, to be about my kingly project ;
and when we were offered seats in Kelmar 's waggon,
I accepted on the spot. The plan of their next
Sunday's outing took them, by good fortune, over
the border into Lake County. They would carry us
so far, drop us at the Toll House, present us to the
Hansons, and call for us again on Monday morning
early.

247

II
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

We were to leave by six precisely ; that was
solemnly pledged on both sides ; and a messenger'
came to us the last thing at night, to remind us of
the hour. But it was eight before we got clear of
Calistoga : Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, a friend of theirs
whom we named Abramina, her little daughter, my
wife, myself, and, stowed away behind us, a cluster
of ship's coffee-kettles. These last were highly orna-
mental in the sheen of their bright tin, but I could
invent no reason for their presence. Our carriageful
reckoned up, as near as we could get at it, some
three hundred years to the six of us. Four of the
six, besides, were Hebrews. But I never, in all my
life, was conscious of so strong an atmosphere of
holiday. No word was spoken but of pleasure ; and
even when we drove in silence, nods and smiles went
round the party like refreshments.

The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Close at
the zenith rode the belated moon, still clearly visible,
and, along one margin, even bright. The wind blew
24S

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

a gale from the north ; the trees roared ; the corn
and the deep grass in the valley fled in whitening
surges ; the dust towered into the air along the road
and dispersed like the smoke of battle. It was clear
in our teeth from the first, and for all the windings
of the road it managed to keep clear in our teeth
until the end.

For some two miles we rattled through the valley,
skirting the eastern foothills ; then we struck off to
the right, through haugh-land, and presently, cross-
ing a dry water-course, entered the Toll road, or, to
be more local, entered on 'the grade.' The road
mounts the near shoulder of Mount Saint Helena,
bound northward into Lake County. In one place
it skirts along the edge of a narrow and deep canon,
filled with trees, and I was glad, indeed, not to be
driven at this point by the dashing Foss. Kelmar,
with his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of
the trap, drove for all the world like a good, plain
country clergyman at home ; and I profess I blessed
him unawares for his timidity.

Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed
with thicket, gave place more and more as we
ascended to woods of oak and madrona, dotted with
enormous pines. It was these pines, as they shot
above the lower wood, that produced that pencilling
of single trees I had so often remarked from the
valley. Thence, looking up and from however far,
each fir stands separate against the sky no bigger
than an eyelash ; and all together lend a quaint,
fringed aspect to the hills. The oak is no baby;

249

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

even the madrona, upon these spurs of Mount Saint
Helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with forest
trees ; but the pines look down upon the rest for
underwood. As Mount Saint Helena among her
foothills, so these dark giants out-top their fellow-
vegetables. Alas ! if they had left the redwoods,
the pines, in turn, would have been dwarfed. But
the redwoods, fallen from their high estate, are
serving as family bedsteads, or yet more humbly as
field fences, along all Napa Valley.

A rough smack of resin was in the air, and a
crystal mountain purity. It came pouring over these
green slopes by the oceanful. The woods sang
aloud, and gave largely of their healthful breath.
Gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and
we had left indifference behind us in the valley. ' I
to the hills will lift mine eyes ! ' There are days in
a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands seems
like scaling heaven.

As we continued to ascend, the wind fell upon us
with increasing strength. It was a wonder how the
two stout horses managed to pull us up that steep
incHne and still face the athletic opposition of the
wind, or how their great eyes were able to endure
the dust. Ten minutes after we went by, a tree fell,
blocking the road ; and even before us leaves w^ere
thickly strewn, and boughs had fallen, large enough
to make the passage difficult. But now we were
hard by the summit. The road crosses the ridge,
just in the nick that Kelmar showed me from below,
and then, without pause, plunges down a deep,
250

FIKST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

thickly-wooded glen on the farther side. At the
highest point a trail strikes up the main hill to the
leftward ; and that leads to Silverado. A hundred
yards beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the glen,
stands the Toll House Hotel. We came up the one
side, were caught upon the summit by the whole
weight of the wind as it poured over into Napa
Valley, and a minute after had drawn up in shelter,
but all buffeted and breathless, at the Toll House
door.

A water-tank, and stables, and a grey house of
two stories, with gable-ends and a verandah, are
jammed hard against the hillside, just where a stream
has cut for itself a narrow canon, filled with pines.
The pines go right up overhead ; a little more and
the stream might have played, like a fire-hose, on
the Toll House roof In front the ground drops as
sharply as it rises behind. There is just room for
the road and a sort of promontory of croquet ground,
and then you can lean over the edge and look deep
below you through the wood. I said croquet
ground, not green ; for the surface was of brown,
beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other
note of originality : a long beam, turning on a post,
and kept slightly horizontal by a counterweight of
stones. Regularly about sundown this rude barrier
was swung, like a derrick, across the road and made
fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther side.

On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the
bar. I was presented to Mr. Corwin, the landlord ;
to Mr. Jennings, the engineer, who lives there for

251

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

his health ; to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant little
gentleman, once a member of the Ohio legislature,
again the editor of a local paper, and now, with
undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll House bar.
I had a number of drinks and cigars bestowed on me,
and enjoyed a famous opportunity of seeing Kelmar
in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, steadily edging
one of the ship's kettles on the reluctant Corwin.
Corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and for
that bout victory crowned his arms.

At last we set forth for Silverado on foot.
Kelmar and his jolly Jew girls were full of the
sentiment of Sunday outings, breathed geniality and
vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the
hotel to lead them here and there about the woods.
For three people all so old, so bulky in body, and
belonging to a race so venerable, they could not but
surprise us by their extreme and almost imbecile
youthfulness of spirit. They were only going to
stay ten minutes at the Toll House ; had they not
twenty long miles of road before them on the other
side ? Stay to dinner ? Not they ! Put up the
horses ? Never. Let us attach them to the verandah
by a wisp of straw-rope, such as would not have
held a person's hat on that blustering day. And
with all these protestations of hurry, they proved
irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd
old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to
have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted
himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy
was patently fallacious ; and for that matter a most
252

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

unsympathetic urchin, raised apparently on ginger-
bread. He was bent on his own pleasure, nothing
else ; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the
same shrewd smirk. If the boy said there was 'a
hole there in the hill ' — a hole, pure and simple,
neither more nor less — Kelmar and his Jew ffirls
would follow him a hundred yards to look com-
placently down that hole. For two hours we looked
for houses ; and for two hours they followed us,
smelling trees, picking flowers, foisting false botany
on the unwary. Had we taken five, with that vile
lad to head them off on idle divagations, for five
they would have smiled and stumbled through the
woods.

However, we came forth at length, and as by
accident, upon a lawn, sparse planted like an orchard,
but with forest instead of fruit trees. That was the
site of Silverado mining town. A piece of ground
was levelled up, where Kelmar 's store had been ; and
facing that we saw Rufe Hanson's house, still bear-
ing on its front the legend Silverado Hotel. Not
another sign of habitation. Silverado town had all
been carted from the scene ; one of the houses was
now the school-house far down the road; one was
gone here, one there, but all were gone away. It
was now a sylvan soHtude, and the silence was un-
broken but by the great, vague voice of the wind.
Some days before our visit, a grizzly bear had been
sporting round the Hansons' chicken-house.

Mrs. Hanson was at home alone, we found. Rufe
had been out after a ' bar,' had risen late, and was

253

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

now gone, it did not clearly appear whither. Perhaps
he had had wind of Kelmar's coming, and was now
ensconced among the underwood, or watching us
from the shoulder of the mountain. We, hearing
there were no houses to be had, were for immediately
giving up all hopes of Silverado. But this, somehow,
was not to Kelmar's fancy. He first proposed that
we should ' camp someveres around, ain't it ? ' waving
his hand cheerily as though to weave a spell ; and
when that was firmly rejected, he decided that we
must take up house with the Hansons. Mrs.
Hanson had been, from the first, flustered, subdued,
and a little pale ; but from this proposition she
recoiled with haggard indignation. So did we, who
would have preferred, in a manner of speaking, death.
But Kelmar was not to be put by. He edged Mrs.
Hanson into a corner, where for a long time he
threatened her with his forefinger, like a character
in Dickens ; and the poor woman, driven to her
entrenchments, at last remembered with a shriek
that there were still some houses at the tunnel.

Thither we went; the Jews, who should already
have been miles into Lake County, still cheerily
accompanying us. For about a furlong we followed
a good road along the hillside through the forest,
until suddenly that road widened out and came
abruptly to an end. A canon, woody below, red,
rocky, and naked overhead, was here walled across
by a dump of rolling stones, dangerously steep, and
from twenty to thirty feet in height. A rusty iron
chute on wooden legs came flying, like a monstrous
254

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

gargoyle, across the parapet. It was down this that
they poured the precious ore ; and below here the
carts stood to wait their lading, and carry it mill-
ward down the mountain.

The whole canon was so entirely blocked, as if
by some rude guerilla fortification, that we could
only mount by lengths of wooden ladder, fixed in
the hillside. These led us round the farther corner
of the dump ; and when they were at an end, we
still persevered over loose rubble and wading deep
in poison-oak, till we struck a triangular platform,
filling up the whole glen, and shut in on either hand
by bold projections of the mountain. Only in front
the place was open like the proscenium of a theatre,
and we looked forth into a great realm of air, and
down upon tree-tops and hill-tops, and far and near
on wild and varied country. The place still stood
as on the day it was deserted : a line of iron rails
with a bifurcation ; a truck in working order ; a
world of lumber, old wood, old iron ; a blacksmith's
forge on one side, half-buried in the leaves of dwarf
madronas ; and on the other, an old brown wooden
house.

Fanny and I dashed at the house. It consisted
of three rooms, and was so plastered against the hill,
that one room was right atop of another, that the
upper floor was more than twice as large as the
lower, and that all three apartments must be entered
from a different side and level. Not a window-sash
remained. The door of the lower room was smashed,
and one panel hung in splinters. We entered that,

255

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

and found a fair amount of rubbish : sand and gravel
that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds;
straw, sticks, and stones ; a table, a barrel ; a plate-
rack on the wall ; two home-made bootjacks, signs
of miners and their boots ; and a pair of papers
pinned on the boarding, headed respectively ' Funnel
No. 1,' and ' Funnel No. 2,' but with the tails torn
away. The window, sashless of course, was choked
with the green and sweetly smelling foliage of a bay;
and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison -
oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in
the interior. It was my first care to cut away that
poison-oak, Fanny standing by at a respectfnl dis-
tance. That was our first improvement by which
we took possession.

The room immediately above could only be en-
tered by a plank propped against the threshold,
along which the intruder must foot it gingerly,
clutching for svipport to sprays of poison-oak, the
proper product of the country. Herein was, on
either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had
once lain ; and the other gable was pierced by a
sashless window and a doorless doorway opening on
the air of heaven, five feet above the ground. As
for the third room, which entered squarely from the
ground level, but higher up the hill and farther up
the canon, it contained only rubbish and the up-
rights for another triple tier of beds.

The whole building was overhung by a bold, lion-
like, red rock. Poison-oak, sweet bay trees, calcan-
thus, brush and chaparral, grew freely but sparsely
256

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

all about it. In front, in the strong sunshine, the
platform lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though
the labours of the mine might begin again to-morrow
in the morning.

Following back into the canon, among the mass
of rotting plant and through the flowering bushes,
we came to a great crazy staging, with a wry wind-
lass on the top ; and clambering up, we could look
into an open shaft, leading edgeways down into the
bowels of the mountain, trickling with water, and lit
by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not. In
that quiet place the still far-away tinkle of the water-
drops was loudly audible. Close by, another shaft
led edgeways up into the superincumbent shoulder
of the hill. It lay partly open ; and sixty or a hun-
dred feet above our head we could see the strata
propped apart by solid wooden wedges, and a pine,
half undermined, precariously nodding on the verge.
Here also a rugged, horizontal tunnel ran straight
into the unsunned bowels of the rock. This secure
angle in the mountain's flank was, even on this wild
day, as still as my lady's chamber. But in the
tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously blew.
Nor have I ever known that place otherwise than
cold and windy.

Such was our first prospect of Juan Silverado. I
own I had looked for something different : a clique
of neighbourly houses on a village green, we shall
say, all empty to be sure, but swept and varnished ;
a trout stream brawling by ; great elms or chestnuts,
humming with bees and nested in by song-birds ;
3— 1< 257

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

and the mountains standing round about as at
Jerusalem. Here, mountain and house and the old
tools of industry were all alike rusty and down-
falling. The hill was here wedged up, and there
poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral;
man with his picks and powder, and nature with her
own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring
together at the ruin of that proud mountain. The
view up the canon was a glimpse of devastation ;
dry red minerals sliding together, here and there
a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the
general glissade, and over all a broken outhne
trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards
indeed, from our rock eyrie, we beheld the greener
side of nature ; and the bearing of the pines and
the sweet smell of bays and nutmegs commended
themselves gratefully to our senses. One way and
another, now the die was cast. Silverado be it !

After we had got back to the Toll House, the
Jews were not long of striking forward. But I
observed that one of the Hanson lads came down,
before their departure, and returned with a ship's
kettle. Happy Hansons ! Nor was it until after
Kelmar was gone, if I remember rightly, that Rufe
put in an appearance to arrange the details of our
installation.

The latter part of the day, Fanny and I sat in the
verandah of the Toll House, utterly stunned by the
uproar of the wind among the trees on the other
side of the valley. Sometimes, we would have it
it was like a sea, but it was not various enough
258

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO

for that ; and again, we thought it Uke the roar
of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the
cataract ; and then we would decide, speaking in
sleepy voices, that it could be compared with
nothing but itself My mind was entirely pre-
occupied by the noise. I hearkened to it by the
hour, gapingiy hearkened, and let my cigarette go
out. Sometimes the wind would make a sally
nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling crash
among the fohage on our side of the glen ; and
sometimes a back-draught would strike into the
elbow where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn
leaves into our faces. Butj for the most part, this
great, streaming gale passed unweariedly by us into
Napa Valley, not two hundred yards away, visible by
the tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and yet not
moving a hair upon our heads. So it blew all night
long while I was writing up my journal, and after
we were in bed, under a cloudless, star-set heaven ;
and so it was blowing still next morning when we
rose.

It was a laughable thought to us, what had be-
come of our cheerful, wandering Hebrews. We
could not suppose they had reached a destination.
The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their
way to see a gopher-hole. Boys we felt to be their
special danger ; none others were of that exact pitch
of cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway
upon their minds : but before the attractions of a boy
their most settled resolutions would be wax. We
thought we could follow in fancy these three aged

259

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

Hebrew truants wandering in and out on hill- top and
in thicket, a demon boy trotting far ahead, their
will-o'-the-wisp conductor ; and at last, about mid-
night, the wind still roaring in the darkness, we had
a vision of all three on their knees upon a mountain-
top around a glow-worm.

260

Ill
THE RETURN

Next morning we were up by half-past five, ac-
cording to agreement, and it was ten by the clock
before our Jew boys returned to pick us up : Kelmar,
Mrs. Kelmar, and Abramina, all smiling from ear to
ear, and full of tales of the hospitaUty they had found
on the other side. It had not gone unrewarded ;
for I observed with interest that the ship's kettles,
all but one, had been 'placed.' Three Lake County
families, at least, endowed for hfe with a ship's kettle.
Come, this was no mis-spent Sunday. The absence
of the kettles told its own story : our Jews said
nothing about them ; but, on the other hand, they
said many kind and comely things about the people
they had met. The two women, in particular, had
been charmed out of themselves by the sight of a
young girl surrounded by her admirers ; all evening,
it appeared, they had been triumphing together in
the girl's innocent successes, and to this natural and
unselfish joy they gave expression in language that
was beautiful by its simplicity and truth.

261

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

Take them for all in all, few people have done
my heart more good ; they seemed so thoroughly
entitled to happiness, and to enjoy it in so large a
measure and so free from after-thought ; almost they
persuaded me to be a Jew. There was, indeed, a
chink of money in their talk. They particularly
commended people who were well-to-do. ' He don't
care — ain't it?' was their highest word of commenda-
tion to an individual fate ; and here I seem to grasp
the root of their philosophy — it was to be free from
care, to be free to make these Sunday wanderings,
that they so eagerly pursued after wealth ; and all
this carefulness was to be careless. The fine good-
humour of all three seemed to declare they had
attained their end. Yet there was the other side
to it ; and the recipients of kettles perhaps cared
greatly.

No sooner had they returned than the scene of
yesterday began again. The horses were not even
tied with a straw rope this time — it was not worth
while ; and Kelmar disappeared into the bar, leaving
them under a tree on the other side of the road. I
had to devote myself I stood under the shadow of
that tree for, I suppose, hard upon an hour, and had
not the heart to be angry. Once some one remem-
bered me, and brought me out half a tumblerful of
the playful, innocuous American cocktail. I drank
it, and lo ! veins of living fire ran down my leg ; and
then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my
stomach, not unpleasantly, for a quarter of an hour.
I love these sweet, fiery pangs, but I will not court
262

THE KETURN

them. The bulk of the time I spent in repeating as
much French poetry as I could remember to the
horses, who seemed to enjoy it hugely. And now
it went —

' O ma vieille Font-georges
Oil volent les rouges-gorges : '

and again, to a more trampling measure —

' Et tout tremble, Irun, Coimbre,
Sautander, Almodovar,
Sitot qu'on entend le timbre
Des cymbales de Bivar.'

The redbreasts and the brooks of Europe, in that
dry and songless land ; brave old names and wars,
strong cities, cymbals, and bright armour, in that
nook of the mountain, sacred only to the Indian
and the bear ! This is still the strangest thing in all
man's travelling, that he should carry about with
him incongruous memories. There is no foreign
land ; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and
now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up
the contrasts of the earth.

But while I was thus wandering in my fancy,
great feats had been transacted in the bar. Corwin
the bold had fallen, Kelmar was again crowned with
laurels, and the last of the ship's kettles had changed
hands. If I had ever doubted the purity of Kelmar 's
motives, if I had ever suspected him of a single eye
to business in his eternal dallyings, now at least,
when the last kettle was disposed of, my suspicions
must have been allayed. I dare not guess how much
more time was wasted ; nor how often we drove off,

263

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

merely to drive back again and renew interrupted
conversations about nothing, before the Toll House
was fairly left behind. Alas ! and not a mile down
the grade there stands a ranche in a sunny vineyard,
and here we must all dismount again and enter.

Only the old lady was at home, Mrs. Guele, a
brown old Swiss dame, the picture of honesty ; and
with her we drank a bottle of wine and had an
age-long conversation, which would have been highly
delightful if Fanny and I had not been faint with
hunger. The ladies each narrated the story of
her marriage, our two Hebrews with the prettiest
combination of sentiment and financial bathos.
Abramina, specially, endeared herself with every
word. She was as simple, natural, and engaging as
a kid that should have been brought up to the
business of a money-changer. One touch was so
resplendently Hebraic that I cannot pass it over.
When her ' old man ' wrote home for her from
America, her old man's family would not intrust her
with the money for the passage, till she had bound
herself by an oath — on her knees, J think she said
— not to employ it otherwise, "this had tickled
Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled me fully
more,

Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in
the long winters ; of her honest, country-woman
troubles and alarms upon the journey ; how in the
bank at Frankfort she had feared lest the banker,
after having taken her cheque, should deny all
knowledge of it — a fear I have myself every time
264

THE RETURN

I go to a bank ; and how crossing the Luneburger
Heath, an old lady, witnessing her trouble and
finding whither she was bound, had given her ' the
blessing of a person eighty years old,' which would
be sure to bring her safely to the States. ' And the
first thing I did,' added Mrs. Guele, 'was to fall
down-stairs. '

At length we got out of the house, and some of
us into the trap, when — judgment of Heaven ! — here
came Mr. Guele from his vineyard. So another
quarter of an hour went by ; till at length, at our
earnest pleading, we set forth again in earnest,
Fanny and I white-faced and silent, but the Jews
still smiling. The heart fails me. There was yet
another stoppage ! And we drove at last into
Calistoga past two in the afternoon, Fanny and
I having breakfasted at six in the morning, eight
mortal hours before. We were a pallid couple ; but
still the Jews were smiling.

So ended our excursion with the village usurers ;
and, now that it was done, we had no more idea of
the nature of the business, nor of the part we had
been playing in it, than the child unborn. That all
the people we had met were the slaves of Kelmar,
though in various degrees of servitude ; that we
ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the
interests of none but Kelmar ; that the money we
laid out, dollar by doUar, cent by cent, and through
the hands of various intermediaries, should all hop
ultimately into Kelmar's till ; — these were facts that
we only grew to recognise in the course of time and

265

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

by the accumulation of evidence. At length all
doubt was quieted, when one of the kettle-holders
confessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, a
little way out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many
words, that he dare not show face there with an
empty pocket. 'You see, I don't mind if it was
only five dollars, Mr. Stevens,' he said, ' but I must
give Mr. Kelmar something^'

Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me,
I cannot find it in my heart to be as angry as per-
haps I should be with the Hebrew tyrant. The
whole game of business is beggar my neighbour ;
and though perhaps that game looks uglier when
played at such close quarters and on so small a scale,
it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that.
The village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity
and human progress as the millionaire manufacturer,
fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, and yet
declaiming from the platform against the greed and
dishonesty of landlords. If it were fair for Cobden
to buy up land from owners whom he thought
unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough
for my Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers.
Kelmar, if he was unconscious of the beam in his
own eye, was at least silent in the matter of his
brother's mote.

266

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

There were four of us squatters — myself and my
wife, the King and Queen of Silverado ; Lloyd, the
Crown Prince ; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke.
Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most
unsuited for a rough life. He had been nurtured
tenderly in the society of ladies ; his heart was large
and soft ; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rock
necessary of existence. Though about the size of a
sheep, he loved to sit in ladies' laps ; he never said a
bad word in all his blameless days ; and if he had
seen a flute, I am sure he could have played upon it
by nature. It may seem hard to say it of a dog,
but Chuchu was a tame cat.

The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket
of cold provender for immediate use, set forth from
Calistoga in a double buggy ; the crown prince, on
horseback, led the way like an outrider. Bags and
boxes and a second-hand stove were to follow close
upon our heels by Hanson's team.

It was a beautiful still day ; the sky was one field
of azure. Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared
in heaven. Only from the summit of the moun-

267

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

tain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another
kept detaching itself, hke smoke from a volcano,
and blowing southward in some high stream of air :
Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task,
making the weather, like a Lapland witch.

By noon we had come in sight of the mill : a
great brown building, half-way up the hill, big as a
factory, two stories high, and with tanks and ladders
along the roof; which, as a pendicle of Silverado
mine, we held to be an outlying province of our
own. Thither, then, we went, crossing the valley
by a grassy trail ; and there lunched out of the
basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering,
while we ate, at this great bulk of useless building.
Through a chink we could look far down into the
interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and
striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery.
It cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred English
sovereigns ; and now, here it stands deserted, like
the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy millers
toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there,
mill and mill-town showed no sign of life ; that part
of the mountain-side, which is very open and green,
was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves
and the insects ; and nothing stirred but the cloud
manufactory upon the mountain summit. It was
odd to compare tliis with the former days, when the
engine was in full blast, the mill palpitating to
its strokes, and the carts came rattling down from
Silverado, charged with ore.

By two we had been landed at the mine, the
268

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

buggy was gone again, and we were left to our own
reflections and the basket of cold provender, until
Hanson should arrive. Hot as it was by the sun,
there was something chill in such a home-coming, in
that world of wreck and rust, splinter and rolhng
gravel, where for so many years no fire had smoked.
Silverado platform filled the whole width of the
canon. Above, as I have said, this was a wild, red,
stony gully in the mountains ; but below, it was a
wooded dingle. And through this, I was told, there
had gone a path between the mine and the Toll
House — our natural north-west passage to civilisa-
tion. I found and followed it, clearing my way as I
went through fallen branches and dead trees. It
went straight down that steep canon, till it brought
you out abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. There
was nowhere any break in the descent. It almost
seemed as if, were you to drop a stone down the old
iron chute at our platform, it would never rest until
it hopped upon the Toll House shingles. Signs were
not wanting of the ancient greatness of Silverado.
The footpath was well marked, and had been well
trodden in the old days by thirsty miners. And far
down, buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado,
I came on a last outpost of the mine — a mound of
gravel, some wreck of wooden aqueduct, and the
mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure grotto in a fairy
story. A stream of water, fed by the invisible
leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar
or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the
cave ; and, looking far under the arch, I could see

269

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

something like an iron lantern fastened on the rocky
wall. It was a promising spot for the imagination.
No boy could have left it unexplored.

The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom
of the dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant
warbling in the leaves. Once, I suppose, it ran
splashing down the whole length of the canon, but
now its head- waters had been tapped by the shaft
at Silverado, and for a great part of its course it
wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain.
No wonder that it should better its pace when it
sees, far before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or
that it should come trotting forth into the sunlight
with a song.

The two stages had gone by when I got down,
and the Toll House stood, dozing in sun and dust
and silence, like a place enchanted. My mission
was after hay for bedding, and that I was readily
promised. But when I mentioned that we were
waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads.
Rufe was not a regular man any way, it seemed ; and

if he got playing poker Well, poker was too

many for Rufe. I had not yet heard them bracketed
together ; but it seemed a natural conjunction, and
commended itself swiftly to my fears ; and as soon
as I returned to Silverado and had told my story,
we practically gave Hanson up, and set ourselves to
do what we could find do-able in our desert-island
state.

The lower room had been the assayer's office. The
floor was thick with debris — part human, from the
270

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

former occupants ; part natural, sifted in by moun-
tain winds. In a sea of red dust there swam or
floated sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper ;
ancient newspapers, above all — for the newspaper,
especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity —
and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, some
dated Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. Here is one,
verbatim ; and if any one can calculate the scale of
charges, he has my envious admiration.

Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875.
John Stanley

To S. Chapman, C^
To board from April 1st, to April 30 . . $25 75

„ „ „ May 1st, to 3rd . . .2 00

$27 75

Where is John Stanley mining now ? Where is
S. Chapman, within whose hospitable walls we were
to lodge ? The date was but five years old, but in
that time the world had changed for Silverado ; like
Palmyra in the desert, it had outlived its people and
its purpose ; we camped, like Layard, amid ruins,
and these names spoke to us of prehistoric time. A
bootjack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and these
bills of Mr. Chapman's, were the only speaking rehcs
that we disinterred from all that vast Silverado
rubbish-heap ; but what would I not have given to
unearth a letter, a pocket-book, a diary, only a
ledger, or a roll of names, to take me back, in a more
personal manner, to the past ? It pleases me, besides,
to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, or one of their

271

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be
struck by the name, and read some news of their
anterior home, coming, as it were, out of a subse-
quent epoch of history in that quarter of the world.

As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the
floor, kicking it with our feet, and groping for these
written evidences of the past, Lloyd, with a some-
what whitened face, produced a paper bag. ' What 's
this ? ' said he. It contained a granulated powder,
something the colour of Gregory's Mixture, but
rosier ; and as there were several of the bags, and
each more or less broken, the powder was spread
widely on the floor. Had any of us ever seen giant
powder ? No, nobody had ; and instantly there
grew up in my mind a shadowy belief, verging with
every moment nearer to certitude, that I had some-
where heard somebody describe it as just such a
powder as the one around us. I have learnt since
that it is a substance not unlike tallow, and is
made up in rolls for all the world hke tallow candles.

Fanny, to add to our happiness, told us a story
of a gentleman who had camped one night, like our-
selves, by a deserted mine. He was a handy, thrifty
fellow, and looked right and left for plunder, but all
he could lay his hands on was a can of oil. After
dark he had to see to the horses with a lantern ; and
not to miss an opportunity, filled up his lamp from
the oil-can. Thus equipped, he set forth into the
forest. A little while after, his friends heard a loud
explosion ; the mountain echoes bellowed, and then
all was still. On examination, the can proved to
272

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

contain oil, with the trifling addition of nitro-
glycerine ; but no research disclosed a trace of either
man or lantern.

It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see
us sweeping out the giant powder. It seemed never
to be far enough away. And, after all, it was only
some rock pounded for assay.

So much for the lower room. We scraped some
of the rougher dirt off the floor, and left it. That
was our sitting-room and kitchen, though there was
nothing to sit upon but the table, and no provision
for a fire except a hole in the roof of the room
above, which had once contained the chimney of a
stove.

To that upper room we now proceeded. There
were the eighteen bunks in a double tier, nine on
either hand, where from eighteen to thirty-six miners
had once snored together all night long, John
Stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. There was the
roof, with a hole in it through which the sun now
shot an arrow. There was the floor, in much the
same state as the one below, though, perhaps, there
was more hay, and certainly there was the added
ingredient of broken glass, the man who stole the
window-frames having apparently made a miscarriage
with this one. Without a broom, without hay or
bedding, we could but look about us with a begin-
ning of despair. The one bright arrow of day, in
that gaunt and shattered barrack, made the rest look
dirtier and darker, and the sight drove us at last into
the open.

3— s 273

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

Here, also, the handiwork of man lay ruined : but
the plants were all ahve and thriving ; the view
below was fresh with the colours of nature ; and we
had exchanged a dim, human garret for a corner,
even although it were untidy, of the blue hall of
heaven. Not a bird, not a beast, not a reptile.
There was no noise in that part of the world, save
when we passed beside the staging, and heard the
water musically falHng in the shaft.

We wandered to and fro. We searched among
that drift of lumber — wood and iron, nails and rails,
and sleepers and the wheels of trucks. We gazed up
the cleft into the bosom of the mountain. We sat
by the margin of the dump, and saw, far below us,
the green tree-tops standing still in the clear air.
Beautiful perfumes, breaths of bay, resin, and nut-
meg, came to us more often, and grew sweeter and
sharper as the afternoon dechned. But still there
was no word of Hanson.

I set-to with pick and shovel, and deepened the
pool behind the shaft, till we were sure of sufficient
water for the morning ; and by the time I had
finished, the sun had begun to go down behind the
mountain shoulder, the platform was plunged in
quiet shadow, and a chill descended from the sky.
Night began early in our cleft. Before us, over the
margin of the dump, we could see the sun still
striking aslant into the wooded nick below, and on
the battlemented, pine-bescattered ridges on the
farther side.

There was no stove, of course, and no hearth in
274

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

our lodging, so we betook ourselves to the black-
smith's forge across the platform. If the platform be
taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the
dump to represent the line of the footlights, then our
house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and
this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in
size, the foremost on the right. It was a low, brown
cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung
by the fohage and peeling boughs of a madrona
thicket. Within, it was full of dead leaves and
mountain dust and rubbish from the mine. But
we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close
about it on impromptu seats. Chuchu, the slave
of sofa-cushions, whimpered for a softer bed; but
the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted by
that good creature — fire, which gives us warmth and
light and companionable sounds, and colours up the
emptiest building with better than frescoes. For a
while it was even pleasant in the forge, with the
blaze in the midst, and a look over our shoulders on
the woods and mountains where the day was dying
like a dolphin.

It was between seven and eight before Hanson
arrived, with a waggonful of our effects and two of
his wife's relatives to lend him a hand. The elder
showed surprising strength. He would pick up a
huge packing-case full of books, of all things, swing
it on his shoulder, and away up the two crazy ladders
and the break-neck spout of rolHng mineral, familiarly
termed a path, that led from the cart-track to our
house. Even for a man unburthened, the ascent was

275

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

toilsome and precarious ; but Irvine sealed it with a
light foot, carrying box after box, as the hero whisks
the stage child up the practicable footway beside the
waterfall of the fifth act. With so strong a helper,
the business was speedily transacted. Soon the
assayer's office was thronged with our belongings,
piled higgledy-piggledy, and upside down, about
the floor. There were our boxes, indeed, but my
wife had left her keys in Calistoga. There was the
stove, but, alas ! our carriers had forgot the chim-
ney, and lost one of the plates along the road. The
Silverado problem was scarce solved.

Rufe himself was grave and good-natured over his
share of blame ; he even, if I remember right, ex-
pressed regret. But his crew, to my astonishment
and anger, grinned from ear to ear, and laughed
aloud at our distress. They thought it ' real funny '
about the stove-pipe they had forgotten ; ' real
funny ' that they should have lost a plate. As for
hay, the whole party refused to bring us any till
they should have supped. See how late they were !
Never had there been such a job as coming up that
grade ! Nor often, I suspect, such a game of poker
as that before they started. But about nine, as a
particular favour, we should have some hay.

So they took their departure, leaving me still
staring, and we resigned ourselves to wait for their
return. The fire in the forge had been suffered to
go out, and we were one and all too weary to kindle
another. We dined, or, not to take that word in
vain, we ate after a fashion, in the nightmare dis-
276

THE ACT OF SQUATTING

order of the assayer's office, perched among boxes.
A single candle lighted us. It could scarce be called
a house-warming ; for there was, of course, no fire,
and with the two open doors and the open window
gaping on the night, like breaches in a fortress, it
began to grow rapidly chill. Talk ceased ; no-
body moved but the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest
of sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among
the trunks. It required a certain happiness of dis-
position to look forward hopefully, from so dismal a
beginning, across the brief hours of night, to the
warm shining of to-morrow's sun.

But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with
our last spark of courage, to the bedroom. We had
improved the entrance, but it was still a kind of
rope-walking ; and it would have been droll to see us
mounting, one after another, by candle-hght, under
the open stars.

The western door — that which looked up the
canon, and through which we entered by our
bridge of flying plank — was still entire, a handsome,
panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry
in Silverado. And the two lowest bunks next to
this we roughly filled with hay for that night's use.
Through the opposite, or eastern-looking gable, with
its open door and window, a faint, diff'used starshine
came into the room like mist ; and when we were
once in bed, we lay, awaiting sleep, in a haunted,
incomplete obscurity. At first the silence of the
night was utter. Then a high wind began in the
distance among the tree-tops, and for hours con-

277

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

tinued to grow higher. It seemed to me much such
a wind as we had found on our visit; yet here in
our open chamber we were fanned only by gentle
and refreshing draughts, so deep was the canon,
so close our house was planted under the overhang-
ing rock.

278

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

There is quite a large race or class of people in
America for whom we scarcely seem to have a
parallel in England. Of pure white blood, they are
unknown or unrecognisable in towns; inhabit the
fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of
the country; rebeUious to all labour, and pettily
thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically ig-
norant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the
dexterity of the savage. Whence they came is a
moot point. At the time of the war they poured
north in thousands to escape the conscription ; lived
during summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty
theft; and at the approach of winter, when these
supplies failed, built great fires in the forest, and
there died stoically by starvation. They are widely
scattered, however, and easily recognised. Loutish,
but not ill-looking, they will sit all day, swinging
their legs on a field-fence, the mind seemingly as
devoid of all reflection as a Suffolk peasant's, care-
less of politics, for the most part incapable of read-
ing, but with a rebellious vanity and a strong sense
of independence. Hunting is their most congenial

279

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur
detection. In tracking a criminal, following a par-
ticular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing
inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of these
somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display
activity of body and finesse of mind. By their
names ye may know them, the women figuring as
Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the
men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, pro-
nounced Orrion, with the accent on the first.
Whether they are indeed a race, or whether this
is the form of degeneracy common to all back-
woodsmen, they are at least known by a generic
byword, as Poor Whites or I^ow-downers.

I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor
White, because the name savours of offence; but
I may go as far as this— they were, in many points,
not un similar to the people usually so called.
Rufe himself combined two of the quahfications,
for he was both a hunter and an amateur detective.
It was he who pursued Russel and Dollar, the
robbers of the Lake Port stage, and captured them
the very morning after the exploit, while they were
still sleeping in a hay-field. Russel, a drunken
Scots carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his
own, and he expressed much grave commiseration
for his fate. In all that he said and did Rufe was
grave. I never saw him hurried. When he spoke,
he took out his pipe with ceremonial dehberation,
looked east and west, and then, in quiet tones and
few words, stated his business or told his story.
280

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

His gait was to match ; it would never have sur-
prised you if, at any step, he had turned round
and walked away again, so warily and slowly, and
with so much seeming hesitation did he go about.
He lay long in bed in the morning — rarely, indeed,
rose before noon ; he loved all games, from poker
to clerical croquet ; and in the Toll House croquet-
ground I have seen him toiling at the latter with
the devotion of a curate. He took an interest in
education, was an active member of the local school
board, and when I was there he had recently lost
the school-house key. His waggon was broken,
but it never seemed to occur to him to mend it.
Like all truly idle people, he had an artistic eye.
He chose the print stuff' for his wife's dresses, and
counselled her in the making of a patchwork quilt,
always, as she thought, wrongly, but to the more
educated eye, always with bizarre and admirable
taste — the taste of an Indian. With all this, he
was a perfect, unoffending gentleman in word and
act. Take his clay pipe from him, and he was
fit for any society but that of fools. Quiet as he
was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement
in his dark-blue eyes ; and when this grave man
smiled, it was like sunshine in a shady place.

Mrs. Hanson {iiee, if you please, Lovelands) was
more commonplace than her lord. She was a
comely woman, too, plump, fair- coloured, with
wonderful white teeth ; and in her print dresses
(chosen by Rufe) and with a large sun-bonnet
shading her valued complexion, made, I assure you,

281

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

a very agreeable figure. But she was on the sur-
face, what there was of her, outspoken and loud-
spoken. Her noisy laughter had none of the charm
of one of Hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles ;
there was no reticence, no mystery, no manner
about the woman : she was a first-class dairy-maid,
but her husband was an unknown quantity between
the savage and the nobleman. She was often in
and out with us, merry, and healthy, and fair; he
came far seldomer — only, indeed, when there was
business, or, now and again, to pay a visit of
ceremony, brushed up for the occasion, with his
wife on his arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth.
These visits, in our forest state, had quite the air
of an event, and turned our red canon into a salon.

Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado
Hotel, among the windy trees, on the mountain
shoulder overlooking the whole length of Napa
Valley, as the man aloft looks down on the ship's
deck. There they kept house, with sundry horses
and fowls, and a family of sons, Daniel Webster,
and I think George Washington, among the number.
Nor did they want visitors. An old gentleman, of
singular stolidity, and called Breedlove — I think he
had crossed the plains in the same caravan with
Rufe — housed with them for a while during our
stay ; and they had besides a permanent lodger, in
the form of Mrs. Hanson's brother, Irvine Love-
lands. I spell Irvine by guess, for I could get no
information on the subject, just as I could never
find out, in spite of many inquiries, whether or not
282

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

Rufe was a contraction for Rufus. They were all
cheerfully at sea about their names in that genera-
tion. And this is surely the more notable where
the names are all so strange, and even the family
names appear to have been coined. At one time,
at least, the ancestors of all these Alvins and Alvas,
Loveinas, Lovelands, and Breedloves, must have
taken serious counsel and found a certain poetry in
these denominations ; that must have been, then,
their form of hterature. But still times change ;
and their next descendants, the George Washing-
tons and Daniel Websters, will at least be clear
upon the point. And anyway, and however his
name should be spelt, this Irvine Lovelands was
the most unmitigated Caliban I ever knew.

Our very first morning at Silverado, when we
were full of business, patching up doors and win-
dows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough
lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their
appearance together, she for neighbourhness and
general curiosity; he, because he was working for
me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget how
much a day. The way that he set about cutting
wood was characteristic. We were at that moment
patching up and unpacking in the kitchen. Down
he sat on one side, and down sat his sister on the
other. Both were chewing pine-tree gum, and he,
to my annoyance, accompanied that simple pleasure
with profuse expectoration. She rattled away,
talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing
her head, showing her brilliant teeth. He looked

283

THE SILVERADO SQUATTEKS

on in silence, now spitting heavily on the floor,
now putting his head back and uttering a loud,
discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock
hair, the colour of wool ; his mouth was a grin ;
although as strong as a horse, he looked neither
heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in
the road. But it was plain he was in high spirits,
thoroughly enjoying his visit ; and he laughed
frankly whenever we failed to accomplish what we
were about. This was scarcely helpful : it was
even, to amateur carpenters, embarrassing ; but it
lasted until we knocked off work and began to get
dinner. Then Mrs. Hanson remembered she should
have been gone an hour ago ; and the pair retired,
and the lady's laughter died away among the
nutmegs down the path. That was Irvine's first
day's work in my employment — the devil take
him !

The next morning he returned, and as he was
this time alone, he bestowed his conversation upon
us with great liberality. He prided himself on
his intelligence ; asked us if we knew the school
ma'am. He didn't think much of her, anyway.
He had tried her, he had. He had put a question
to her. If a tree a hundred feet high were to fall
a foot a day, how long would it take to fall right
down? She had not been able to solve the pro-
blem. * She don't know nothing,' he opined. He
told us how a friend of his kept a school with a
revolver, and chuckled mightily over that ; his friend
could teach school, he could. All the time he kept
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THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

chewing gum and spitting. He would stand a while
looking down ; and then he would toss back his
shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, and spit, and
bring forward a new subject. A man, he told us,
who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his
dog. ' That was a low thing for a man to do now,
wasn't it ? It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But
I got even with him : I pisoned Ms dog.' His
clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner,
set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks.
I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of
two words until I knew Irvine — the verb loaf, and
the noun oaf\ between them, they complete his
portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub
himself against the wall, and grin, and be more
in everybody's way than any other two people that
I ever set my eyes on. Nothing that he did became
him ; and yet you were conscious that he was one
of your own race, that his mind was cumbrously
at work, revolving the problem of existence like a
quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner enjoy-
ing life, and passing judgment on his fellows.
Above all things, he was delighted with himself.
You would not have thought it, from his uneasy
manners and troubled, struggling utterance ; but
he loved himself to the marrow, and was happy and
proud like a peacock on a rail.

His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his
harness. He could be got to work, and even kept
at work, by flattery. As long as my wife stood
over him, crying out how strong he was, so long

285

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

exactly he would stick to the matter in hand ; and
the moment she turned her back, or ceased to
praise him, he would stop. His physical strength
was wonderful; and to have a woman stand by
and admire his achievements warmed his heart like
sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly as he was power-
ful, and felt no shame in owning to the weakness.
Something was once wanted from the crazy plat-
form over the shaft, and he at once refused to
venture there — did not like, as he said, 'foolen'
round them kind o' places,' and let my wife go
instead of him, looking on with a grin. Vanity,
where it rules, is usually more heroic : but Irvine
steadily approved himself, and expected others to
approve him ; rather looked down upon my wife,
and decidedly expected her to look up to him, on
the strength of his superior prudence.

Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was
perhaps this, that Irvine was as beautiful as a statue.
His features were, in themselves, perfect; it was
only his cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression
that disfigured them. So much strength residing
in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the
accuracy of his shape. He must have been built
somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard ; but
the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was
no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of
his mind no less than by the vigour of his body
that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect
implements, turning the very obstacles to service.
Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and
286

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

spat, and grumbled curses. He had the soul of a
fat sheep, but, regarded as an artist's model, the
exterior of a Greek god. It was a cruel thought
to persons less favoured in their birth, that this
creature, endowed — to use the language of theatres
— with extraordinary ' means,' should so manage
to misemploy them that he looked ugly and almost
deformed. It was only by an effort of abstraction,
and after many days, that you discovered what
he was.

By playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing
closely over him, we got a path made round the
corner of the dump to our door, so that we could
come and go with decent ease ; and he even enjoyed
the work, for in that there were boulders to be
plucked up bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and other
occasions for athletic display ; but cutting wood
was a different matter. Anybody could cut wood ;
and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising him,
and had other things to attend to. And, in short,
days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked
and lounged and spat; but the firewood remained
intact as sleepers on the platform or growing trees
upon the mountain side. Irvine, as a woodcutter,
we could tolerate ; but Irvine as a friend of the
family, at so much a day, was too bald an imposi-
tion, and at length, on the afternoon of the fourth
or fifth day of our connection, I explained to him,
as clearly as I could, the light in which I had
grown to regard his presence. I pointed out to
him that 1 could not continue to give him a salary

287

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

for spitting on the floor ; and this expression, which
came after a good many others, at last penetrated
his obdurate wits. He rose at once, and said if
that was the way he was going to be spoke to, he
reckoned he would quit. And, no one interposing,
he departed.

So far, so good. But we had no firewood. The
next afternoon I strolled down to Rufe's and con-
sulted him on the subject. It was a very droU in-
terview, in the large, bare north room of the Silverado
Hotel, Mrs. Hanson's patchwork on a frame, and
Rufe, and his wife, and I, and the oaf himself, all
more or less embarrassed. Rufe announced there
was nobody in the neighbourhood but Irvine who
could do a day's work for anybody. Irvine, there-
upon, refused to have any more to do with my
service ; he ' wouldn't work no more for a man as
had spoke to him 's I had done.' I found myself on
the point of the last humiliation — driven to beseech
the creature whom I had just dismissed with insult :
but I took the high hand in despair, said there must
be no talk of Irvine coming back unless matters
were to be differently managed ; that I would rather
chop firewood for myself than be fooled ; and, in
short, the Hansons being eager for the lad's hire, I
so imposed upon them with merely affected resolu-
tion that they ended by begging me to re-employ
him again, on a solemn promise that he should be
more industrious. The promise, I am bound to say,
was kept. We soon had a fine pile of firewood at
our door ; and if Caliban gave me the cold shoulder
288

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

and spared me his conversation, I thought none the
worse of him for that, nor did I find my days much
longer for the deprivation.

The leading spirit of the family was, I am inclined
to fancy, Mrs. Hanson. Her social brilliancy some-
what dazzled the others, and she had more of the
small change of sense. It was she who faced Kelmar,
for instance ; and perhaps, if she had been alone,
Kelmar would have had no rule within her doors.
Rufe, to be sure, had a fine, sober, open-air attitude of
mind, seeing the world without exaggeration — per-
haps, we may even say, without enough ; for he lacked,
along with the others, that commercial idealism which
puts so high a value on time and money. Sanity
itself is a kind of convention. Perhaps Rufe was
wrong ; but, looking on life plainly, he was unable
to perceive that croquet or poker were in any way
less important than, for instance, mending his
waggon. Even his own profession, hunting, was
dear to him mainly as a sort of play ; even that he
would have neglected, had it not appealed to his
imagination. His hunting-suit, for instance, had
cost I should be afraid to say how many bucks —
the currency in which he paid his way ; it was all
befringed, after the Indian fashion, and it was dear
to his heart. The pictorial side of his daily business
was never forgotten. He was even anxious to stand
for his picture in those buckskin hunting clothes ;
and I remember how he once warmed almost into
enthusiasm, his dark-blue eyes growing perceptibly
larger, as he planned the composition in which he
3 — T 289

THE SILVEKADO SQUATTERS

should appear, " with the horns of some real big
bucks, and dogs, and a camp on a crick ' (creek,
stream).

There was no trace in Irvine of this woodland
poetry. He did not care for hunting, nor yet for
buckskin suits. He had never observed scenery.
The world, as it appeared to him, was almost obliter-
ated by his own great grinning figure in the fore-
ground : Caliban-Malvolio. And it seems to me as
if, in the persons of these brothers-in-law, we had
the two sides of rusticity fairly well represented : the
hunter living really in nature ; the clodhopper living
merely out of society : the one bent up in every
corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing
at least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and
thoroughly alive to all that touches it ; the other
in the inert and bestial state, walking in a faint
dream, and taking so dim an impression of the
myriad sides of life that he is truly conscious of
nothing but himself It is only in the fastnesses of
nature, forests, mountains, and the back of man's
beyond, that a creature endowed with five senses
can grow up into the perfection of this crass and
earthy vanity. In towns or the busier country-sides
he is roughly reminded of other men's existence ; and
if he learns no more, he learns at least to fear con-
tempt. But Irvine had come scatheless through life,
conscious only of himself, of his great strength and
intelligence ; and in the silence of the universe to
which he did not listen, dwelling with delight on the
sound of his own thoughts.
290

THE SEA FOGS

A CHANGE in the colour of the Hght usually called
me in the morning. By a certain hour, the long
vertical chinks in our western gable, where the
boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly
into my eyes as stripes of dazzhng blue, at once so
dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the
qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour
the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured,
but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the
cafion already glowed with sunlight in a wonderful
compound of gold and rose and green ; and this too
would kindle, although more mildly and with rain-
bow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. If I were
sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue that struck
me awake ; if more lightly, then I would come to
myself in that earher and fairer light.

One Sunday morning, about five, the first bright-
ness called me. I rose and turned to the east, not
for my devotions, but for air. The night had been
very still. The little private gale that blew every
evening in our cafion, for ten minutes or perhaps a
quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself out ; in

291

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

the hours that followed not a sigh of wind had
shaken the tree-tops ; and our barrack, for all its
breaches, was less fresh that morning than of wont.
But I had no sooner reached the window than I
forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and
I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down
the crazy plank to the platform.

The sun was still concealed below the opposite
hill-tops, though it was shining already, not twenty
feet above my head, on our own mountain slope.
But the scene, beyond a few near features, was
entirely changed. Napa Valley was gone ; gone
were all the lower slopes and woody foothills of the
range ; and in their place, not a thousand feet below
me, rolled a great level ocean. It was as though I
had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook
of inland mountains, and had awakened in a bay
upon the coast. I had seen these inundations from
below ; at Cahstoga I had risen and gone abroad in
the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under
fathoms on fathoms of grey sea-vapour, hke a cloudy
sky — a dull sight for the artist, and a painful ex-
perience for the invahd. But to sit aloft one's self
in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of
heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of
the valley, was strangely different, and even delight-
ful to the eyes. Far away were hill-tops Hke little
islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot
of precipices and poured into all the coves of these
rough mountains. The colour of that fog-ocean
was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant,
292

THE SEA FOGS

among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I
have seen something hke it on the sea itself. But
the white was not so opaline ; nor was there, what
surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless,
crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods
the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or
lisping on the sand ; but that vast fog-ocean lay in a
trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morn-
ing tremble with a sound.

As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to
observe that this sea was not so level as at first sight
it appeared to be. Away in the extreme south, a
little hill of fog arose against the sky above the
general surface, and as it had already caught the sun,
it shone on the horizon like the topsails of some
giant ship. There were huge waves, stationary, as
it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea ; and yet, as I
looked again, I was not sure but they were moving
after all, with a slow and august advance. And
while I was yet doubting, a promontory of the hills
some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a
bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant over-
taken and swallowed up. It appeared in a little,
with its pines, but this time as an islet, and only to
be swallowed up once more, and then for good. This
set me looking nearer, and I saw that in every cove
along the line 'of mountains the fog was being piled in
higher and higher, as though by some wind that was
inaudible to me. I could trace its progress, one pine-
tree first growing hazy and then disappearing after
another ; although sometimes there was none of this

293

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

forerunning haze, but the whole opaque white ocean
gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a
gulp. It was to flee these poisonous fogs that I had
left the seaboard, and climbed so high among the
mountains. And now, behold, here came the fog to
besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came so
beautifully that my first thought was of welcome.

The sun had now gotten much higher, and through
all the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold
across that white ocean. An eagle, or some other
very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over
the nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and some-
thing sideways, as if to look abroad on that unwonted
desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, for the eyries
of her comrades. Then, with a long cry, she dis-
appeared again towards Lake County and the clearer
air. At length it seemed to me as if the flood were
beginning to subside. The old landmarks, by whose
disappearance I had measured its advance, here a
crag, there a brave pine-tree, now began, in the
inverse order, to make their reappearance into day-
light. I judged all danger of the fog was over.
This was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning
spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it
came. So, mightily relieved, and a good deal ex-
hilarated by the sight, I went into the house to
light the fire. »;

I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more
mounted the platform to look abroad. The fog-
ocean had swelled up enormously since last I saw
it ; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep
294

THE SEA FOGS

gap where the Toll House stands and the road runs
through into Lake County, it had already topped
the slope, and was pouring over and down the other
side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed
along with it ; and though I was still in calm air, I
could see the trees tossing below me, and their long,
strident sighing mounted to me where I stood.

Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all
the ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a
shoulder of the mountain still warded it out of our
canon. Napa Valley and its bounding hills were
now utterly blotted out. The fog, sunny white in
the sunshine, was pouring over into Lake County
in a huge ragged cataract, tossing tree-tops appear-
ing and disappearing in the spray. The air struck
with a little chill, and set me coughing. It smelt
strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house,
but with a shrewd tang of the sea-salt.

Had it not been for two things — the sheltering
spur which answered as a dyke, and the great valley
on the other side which rapidly engulfed whatever
mounted — our own little platform in the canon
must have been already buried a hundred feet in
salt and poisonous air. As it was, the interest of
the scene entirely occupied our minds. We were
set just out of the wind, and but just above the fog ;
we could listen to the voice of the one as to music
on the stage ; we could plunge our eyes down into
the other as into some flowing stream from over the
parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a
strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the

295

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape
changing from moment to moment like figures in a
dream.

The imagination loves to trifle with what is not.
Had this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt
more strongly, but the emotion would have been
similar in kind. I played with the idea, as the child
flees in delighted terror from the creations of his
fancy. The look of the thing helped me. And
when at last I began to flee up the mountain, it was
indeed partly to escape from the raw air that kept
me coughing, but it was also part in play.

As I ascended the mountain side I came once
more to overlook the upper surface of the fog ; but
it wore a different appearance from what I had
beheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on
it from high overhead, and its surface shone and
undulated like a great norland moor country, sheeted
with untrodden morning snow. And next, the new
level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred
feet higher than the old, so that only five or six
points of all the broken country below me still
stood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma
on the west. On the hither side, only a thin, scat-
tered fringe of blufls was unsubmerged ; and through
all the gaps the fog was pouring over, hke an ocean,
into the blue, clear, sunny country on the east.
There it was soon lost ; for it fell instantly into the
bottom of the valleys, following the watershed;
and the hill-tops in that quarter were still clear cut
upon the eastern sky.
296

THE SEA FOGS

Through the Toll House gap and over the near
ridges on the other side the deluge was immense.
A spray of thin vapour was thrown high above it,
rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes.
The speed of its course was like a mountain torrent.
Here and there a few tree-tops were discovered and
then whelmed again ; and for one second the bough
of a dead pine beckoned out of the spray like the
arm of a drowning man. But still the imagination
was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for something
more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed so
to the eye) with what a plunge of reverberating-
thunder would it have rolled upon its course, dis-
embowelling mountains and deracinating pines !
And yet water it was, and sea-water at that — true
Pacific billows, only somewhat rarefied, roUing in
mid-air among the hill-tops.

I climbed still higher, among the red rattling
gravel and dwarf underwood of Mount Saint Helena,
until I could look right down upon Silverado, and
admire the favoured nook in which it lay. The
sunny plain of fog was several hundred feet higher ;
behind the protecting spur a gigantic accumulation
of cottony vapour threatened, with every second, to
blow over and submerge our homestead ; but the
vortex setting past the Toll House was too strong ;
and there lay our little platform, in the arms of the
deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine.
About eleven, however, thin spray came flying over
the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog
had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the

297

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

last effort. The wind veered while we were at
dinner, and began to blow squally from the mountain
summit ; and by half-past one all that world of sea-
fogs was utterly routed and flying here and there
into the south in little rags of cloud. And instead
of a lone sea-beach, we found ourselves once more
inhabiting a high mountain-side, with the clear green
country far below us, and the light smoke of Cahs-
toga blowing in the air.

This was the great Russian campaign for that
season. Now and then, in the early morning, a little
white lakelet of fog would be seen far down in Napa
Valley ; but the heights were not again assailed,
nor was the surrounding world again shut off from
Silverado.

298

THE TOLL HOUSE

The Toll House, standing alone by the wayside
under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-
tank ; its backwoods, toU-bar, and well-trodden
croquet-ground ; the ostler standing by the stable
door chewing a straw; a glimpse of the Chinese
cook in the back parts ; and Mr. Hoddy in the bar,
gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to
lend or borrow books ; — dozed all day in the dusty
sunshine, more than half asleep. There were no
neighbours, except the Hansons up the hill. The
traffic on the road was infinitesimal ; only, at rare
intervals, a couple in a waggon, or a dusty farmer
on a spring-board, toiling over *the grade' to that
metropolitan hamlet, Calistoga ; and, at the fixed
hours, the passage of the stages.

The nearest building was the school-house, down
the road ; and the school-ma'am boarded at the Toll
House, walking thence in the morning to the little
brown shanty where she taught the young ones of
the district, and returning thither pretty weary in
the afternoon. She had chosen this outlying situa-
tion, I understood, for her health. Mr. Corwin was
consumptive; so was Rufe; so was Mr. Jennings,

299

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

the engineer. In short, the place was a kind of
small Davos : consumptive folk consorting on a hill-
top in the most unbroken idleness. Jennings never
did anything that I could see, except now and then
to fish, and generally to sit about in the bar and the
verandah, waiting for something to happen. Corwin
and Rufe did as little as possible ; and if the school-
ma'am, poor lady, had to work pretty hard all
morning, she subsided when it was over into much
the same dazed beatitude as all the rest.

Her special corner was the parlour — a very genteel
room, with Bible prints, a crayon portrait of Mrs.
Corwin in the height of fashion, a few years ago,
another of her son (Mr. Corwin was not represented),
a mirror, and a selection of dried grasses. A large
book was laid rehgiously on the table — From Palace
to Hovel, I believe, its name — full of the raciest
experiences in England. The author had mingled
freely with all classes, the nobility particularly
meeting him with open arms ; and I must say that
traveller had ill requited his reception. His book, in
short, was a capital instance of the Penny Messalina
school of literature ; and there arose from it, in that
cool parlour, in that silent wayside mountain inn, a
rank atmosphere of gold and blood and 'Jenkins,'
and the ' Mysteries of London,' and sickening,
inverted snobbery, fit to knock you down. The
mention of this book reminds me of another and
far racier picture of our island life. The latter parts
of Rocambole are surely too sparingly consulted in
the country which they celebrate. No man's educa-
300

THE TOLL HOUSE

tion can be said to be complete, nor can he pronounce
the world yet emptied of enjoyment, till he has
made the acquaintance of ' the Reverend Patterson,
director of the Evangehcal Society.' To follow the
evolutions of that reverend gentleman, who goes
th ough scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would
hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas.
But, alas ! there was no Patterson about the Toll
House. Only, alongside of From Palace to Hovel,
a sixpenny ' Ouida ' figured. So literature, you see,
was not unrepresented.

The school-ma'am had friends to stay with her,
other school-ma'ams enjoying their holidays, quite a
bevy of damsels. They seemed never to go out, or
not beyond the verandah, but sat close in the little
parlour, quietly talking or listening to the wind
among the trees. Sleep dwelt in the Toll House,
like a fixture : summer sleep, shallow, soft, and
dreamless. A cuckoo-clock, a great rarity in such a
place, hooted at intervals about the echoing house ;
and Mr. Jennings would open his eyes for a moment
in the bar, and turn the leaf of a newspaper, and
the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour would be
recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. Busy
Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard
indeed, in the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling
dishes ; or perhaps Rufe had called up some of the
sleepers for a game of croquet, and the hollow strokes
of the mallet sounded far away among the woods ;
but with these exceptions, it was sleep and sunshine
and dust, and the wind in the pine-trees, all day long.

301

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

A little before stage-time that castle of indolence
awoke. The ostler threw his straw away and set
to his preparations. Mr. Jennings rubbed his eyes ;
happy Mr. Jennings, the something he had been
waiting for all day about to happen at last ! The
boarders gathered in the verandah, silently giving
ear, and gazing down the road with shaded eyes.
And as yet there was no sign for the senses, not a
sound, not a tremor of the mountain road. The
birds, to whom the secret of the hooting cuckoo is
unknown, must have set down to instinct this pre-
monitory bustle.

And then the first of the two stages swooped
upon the Toll House with a roar and in a cloud of
dust; and the shock had not yet time to subside,
before the second was abreast of it. Huge concerns
they were, well-horsed and loaded, the men in their
shirt-sleeves, the women swathed in veils, the long
whip cracking like a pistol; and as they charged
upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding a
dust-storm, the dead place blossomed into life and
talk and clatter. This the Toll House? — with its
city throng, its jostling shoidders, its infinity of
instant business in the bar ? The mind would not
receive it ! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is
hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of
letters from the post-bag, the childish hope and
interest with which one gazed in all these strangers'
eyes. They paused there but to pass : the blue-clad
China boy, the San Francisco magnate, the mystery
in the dust-coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, the
302

THE TOLL HOUSE

ogling, well-shod lady with her troop of girls ; they
did but flash and go ; they were hull-down for us
behind life's ocean, and we but hailed their topsails
on the hne. Yet, out of our great solitude of four-
and-twenty mountain hours, we thrilled to their
momentary presence ; gauged and divined them,
loved and hated; and stood light-headed in that
storm of human electricity. Yes, like Piccadilly
Circus, this is also one of hfe's crossing-places.
Here I beheld one man, already famous, or infamous,
a centre of pistol-shots : and another who, if not yet
known to rumour, will fill a column of the Sunday
paper when he comes to hang — a burly, thickset,
powerful Chinese desperado, six long bristles upon
either lip ; redolent of whisky, playing cards, and
pistols ; swaggering in the bar with the lowest
assumption of the lowest European manners ; rap-
ping out blackguard English oaths in his canorous
Oriental voice ; and combining in one person the
depravities of two races and two civilisations. For
all his lust and vigour he seemed to look cold upon
me from the valley of the shadow of the gallows.
He imagined a vain thing ; and while he drained his
cocktail, Holbein's Death was at his elbow. Once,
too, I fell in talk with another of these flitting
strangers— like the rest, in his shirt-sleeves and all
begrimed with dust — and the next minute we were
discussing Paris and London, theatres and wines.
To him, journeying from one human place to an-
other, this was a trifle ; but to me ! No, Mr. Lillie,
I have not forgotten it.

303

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

And presently the city tide was at its flood and
began to ebb. Life runs in Piccadilly Circus, say,
from nine to one, and then, there also, ebbs into the
small hours of the echoing policeman and the lamps
and stars. But the Toll House is far up stream,
and near its rural springs ; the bubble of the tide
but touches it. Before you had yet grasped your
pleasure, the horses were put to, the loud whips
volleyed, and the tide was gone. North and south
had the two stages vanished, the towering dust sub-
sided in the woods ; but there was still an interval
before the flush had fallen on your cheeks, before
the ear became once more contented with the silence,
or the seven sleepers of the Toll House dozed back
to their accustomed corners. Yet a little, and the
ostler would swing round the great barrier across the
road; and in the golden evening that dreamy inn
begin to trim its lamps and spread the board for
supper.

As I recall the place — the green dell below ; the
spires of pine ; the sun-warm, scented air ; that grey,
gabled inn, with its faint stirrings of life amid the
slumber of the mountains — I slowly awake to a
sense of admiration, gratitude, and almost love. A
fine place, after all, for a wasted life to doze away
in — the cuckoo-clock hooting of its far home country;
the croquet mallets, eloquent of English lawns ; the
stages daily bringing news of the turbulent world
away below there ; and perhaps once in the summer,
a salt fog pouring overhead with its tale of the
Pacific.

304

A STARRY DRIVE

In our rule at Silverado there was a melancholy
interregnum. The queen and the crown prince with
one accord fell sick; and, as I was sick to begin
with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was
no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to
Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that
time we had begun to realise the difficulties of our
position. We had found what an amount of labour
it cost to support life in our red caiion ; and it was
the dearest desire of our hearts to get a China boy
to go along with us when we returned. We could
have given him a whole house to himself — self-
contained, as they say in the advertisements ; and
on the money question we were prepared to go
far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was
intrusted with the affair ; and from day to day it
languished on, with protestations on our part and
mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee.

At length, about half-past eight of our last even-
ing, with the waggon ready harnessed to convey us
up the grade, the washerman, with a somewhat
sneering air, produced the boy. He was a hand-
some, gentlemanly lad, attired in rich dark blue, and
3-u 305

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

shod with snowy white ; but, alas ! he had heard
rumours of Silverado. He knew it for a lone place
on the mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house
near by, where he might smoke a pipe of opium
o' nights with other China boys, and lose his little
earnings at the game of tan ; and he first backed out
for more money ; and then, when that demand was
satisfied, refused to come point-blank. He was
wedded to his wash-houses ; he had no taste for the
rural life ; and we must go to our mountain servant-
less. It must have been near half an hour before we
reached that conclusion, standing in the midst of
Cahstoga high street under the stars, and the China
boy and Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English
in the sweetest voices and with the most musical
inflections.

We were not, however, to return alone ; we
brought with us a painter guest, who proved to be
a most good-natured comrade and a capital hand
at an omelette. I do not know in which capacity
he was most valued — as a cook or a companion ; and
he did excellently well in both.

The Kong Sam Kee negotiation had delayed us
unduly ; it must have been half-past nine before we
left Cahstoga, and night came fully ere we struck
the bottom of the grade. I have never seen such a
night. It seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of
all the painters that ever dabbled in starlight. The
sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless, chang-
ing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back.
The stars, by innumerable miUions, stuck boldly
306

A STARRY DRIVE

forth like lamps. The milky way was bright, like
a moonlit cloud ; half heaven seemed milky way.
The greater luminaries shone each more clearly than
a winter's moon. Their light was dyed in every sort
of colour — red, like fire ; blue, like steel ; green, like
the tracks of sunset ; and so sharply did each stand
forth in its own lustre that there was no appearance
of that flat, star-spangled arch we know so well in
pictures, but all the hollow of heaven was one chaos
of contesting luminaries — a hurly-burly of stars.
Against this the hills and rugged tree-tops stood out
redly dark.

As we continued to advance, the lesser lights
and milky ways first grew pale, and then vanished ;
the countless hosts of heaven dwindled in number
by successive millions ; those that still shone had
tempered their exceeding brightness and fallen back
into their customary wistful distance; and the sky
declined from its first bewildering splendour into the
appearance of a common night. Slowly this change
proceeded, and still there was no sign of any cause.
Then a whiteness like mist was thrown over the
spurs of the mountain. Yet a while, and, as we
turned a corner, a great leap of silver fight and net
of forest shadows fell across the road and upon our
wondering waggonful ; and, swimming low among
the trees, we beheld a strange, misshapen, waning
moon, half-tilted on her back.

' Where are ye when the moon appears ? ' so the
old poet sang, half-taunting, to the stars, bent upon
a courtly purpose.

307

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

' As the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight tower of
shadow pours^
Streaming past the dim, wide portals.
Viewless to the eyes of mortals,
Till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's golden
shores.'

So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration.
And so had the sunhght flooded that pale islet of
the moon, and her lit face put out, one after another,
that galaxy of stars. The wonder of the drive was
over; but, by some nice conjunction of clearness
in the air and fit shadow in the valley where we
travelled, we had seen for a Mttle while that brave
display of the midnight heavens. It was gone, but
it had been ; nor shall I ever again behold the stars
with the same mind. He who has seen the sea
commoved with a great hurricane thinks of it very
differently from him who has seen it only in a calm.
And the difference between a calm and a hurricane
is not greatly more striking than that between the
ordinary face of night and the splendour that shone
upon us in that drive. Two in our waggon knew
night as she shines upon the tropics, but even that
bore no comparison. The nameless colour of the
sky, the hues of the star-fire, and the incredible pro-
jection of the stars themselves, starting from their
orbits, so that the eye seemed to distinguish their
positions in the hollow of space — these were things
that we had never seen before and shall never see agam.
Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on
our way among the scents and silence of the forest,
reached the top of the gi-ade, wound up by Hanson's,
308

A STARRY DRIVE

and came at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle
of the chute. Lloyd, who had been lying back, fast
asleep, with the moon on his face, got down, with
the remark that it was pleasant *to be home.' The
waggon turned and drove away, the noise gently
dying in the woods, and we clambered up the rough
path, Caliban's great feat of engineering, and came
home to Silverado.

The moon shone in at the eastern doors and
windows, and over the lumber on the platform.
The one tall pine beside the ledge was steeped in
silver. Away up the canon, a wild cat welcomed
us with three discordant squalls. But once we had
lit a candle, and began to review our improvements,
homely in either sense, and count our stores, it was
wonderful what a feehng of possession and perman-
ence grew up in the hearts of the lords of Silverado.
A bed had still to be made up for our guest, and the
morning's water to be fetched, with clinking pail ;
and as we set about these household duties, and
showed off our wealth and conveniences before the
stranger, and had a glass of wine, I think, in honour
of our return, and trooped at length one after
another up the flying bridge of plank, and lay down
to sleep in our shattered, moon-pierced barrack, we
were among the happiest sovereigns in the world,
and certainly ruled over the most contented people.
Yet, in our absence, the palace had been sacked.
Wild cats, so the Hansons said, had broken in and
carried off" a side of bacon, a hatchet, and two
knives.

309

EPISODES m THE STORY OF A MINE

No one could live at Silverado and not be curious
about the story of the mine. We were surrounded
by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived
so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, hke
mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the
old din and bustle haunted our repose. Our own
house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails,
the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two
tunnels, one far below in the 'green dell, the other
on the platform where we kept our wine ; the deep
shaft, with the sun-glints and the water-di'ops ;
above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out of
the mountain shoulder, propped apart by wooden
wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above
our heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded —
these stood for its greatness ; while the dog-hutch,
bootjacks, old boots, old tavern bills, and the very
beds that we inherited from bygone miners, put in
human touches and realised for us the story of the
past.

I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick
madronas near the forge, with just a look over the
310

EPISODES m THE STOKY OF A MINE

dump on the green world below, and seen the sun
lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence
broken only by the tinkling water in the shaft, or a
stir of the royal family about the battered palace,
and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the
Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand tutti of
pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the
caiion ; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room ;
the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red
mineral bounding aud thundering down the iron
chute. And now all gone — all fallen away into this
sunny silence and desertion : a family of squatters
dining in the assayer's office, making their beds in
the big sleeping-room erstwhile so crowded, keeping
their wine in the tunnel that once rang with picks.

But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn
into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had suc-
ceeded to other mines and other flitting cities.
Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake
County side, there was a place, Jonestown by name,
with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under can-
vas, and one roofed house for the sale of whisky.
Round on the western side of Mount Saint Helena
there was at the same date a second large encamp-
ment, its name, if it ever had one, lost for me. Both
of these have perished, leaving not a stick and
scarce a memory behind them. Tide after tide of
hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about
the mountain, coming and going, now by lone pro-
spectors, now with a rush. Last in order of time
came Silverado, reared the big mill in the valley,

311

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

founded the town which is now represented, monu-
mentally, by Hanson's, pierced all these slaps and
shafts and tunnels, and in turn declined and died
away.

* Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.'

As to the success of Silverado in its time of being,
two reports were current. According to the first,
six hundred thousand doUars were taken out of that
great upright seam, that still hung open above us
on crazy wedges. Then the ledge pinched out, and
there followed, in quest of the remainder, a great
drifting and tunnelling in all directions, and a great
consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being
sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the
town decamped. Accordij;ig to the second version,
told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole
affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one
majestic swindle. There had never come any silver
out of any portion of the mine ; there was no silver
to come. At midnight trains of pack-horses might
have been observed winding by devious tracks about
the shoulder of the mountain. They came from far
away, from Amador or Placer, laden with silver in
'old cigar-boxes.' They discharged their load at
Silverado, in the hour of sleep ; and before the
morning they were gone again with their mysterious
drivers to their unknown source. In this way,
twenty thousand pounds' worth of silver was
smuggled in under cover of night, in these old
312

EPISODES m THE STORY OF A MINE

cigar-boxes ; mixed with Silverado mineral ; carted
down to the mill ; crushed, amalgamated, and re-
fined, and despatched to the city as the proper pro-
duct of the mine. Stockjobbing, if it can cover
such expenses, must be a profitable business in San
Francisco.

I give these two versions as I got them. But I
place little rehance on either, my belief in history
having been greatly shaken. For it chanced that
I had come to dwell in Silverado at a critical hour ;
great events in its history were about to happen —
did happen, as I am led to believe ; nay, and it will
be seen that I played a part in that revolution
myself. And yet from first to last I never had a
glimmer of an idea what was going on; and even
now, after full reflection, profess myself at sea. That
there was some obscure intrigue of the cigar-box
order, and that I, in the character of a wooden
puppet, set pen to paper in the interest of some-
body,— so much, and no more, is certain.

Silverado, then under my immediate sway, be-
longed to one whom I will call a Mr. Ronalds. I

o

only knew him through the extraordinarily distorting
medium of local gossip, now as a momentous jobber ;
now as a dupe to point an adage ; and again, and
much more probably, as an ordinary Christian gen-
tleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and
worked it for a while with better and worse fortune.
So, through a defective window-pane, you may see
the passer-by shoot up into a hunchbacked giant
or dwindle into a pot-bellied dwarf.

313

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

To Ronalds, at least, the mine belonged ; but the
notice by which he held it would run out upon the
30th of June — or rather, as I suppose, it had run
out already, and the month of grace would expire
upon that day, after which any American citizen
might post a notice of his own, and make Silverado
his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told
me at an early period of our acquaintance. There
was no silver, of course ; the mine ' wasn't worth
nothing, Mr. Stevens,' but there was a deal of old
iron and wood around, and to gain possession of this
old wood and iron, and get a right to the water,
Rufe proposed, if I had no objections, to 'jump the
claim.'

Of course I had no objection. But I was filled
with wonder. If all he wanted was the wood and
iron, what, in the name of fortune, was to prevent
him taking them ? ' His right there was none to
dispute.' He might lay hands on aU to-morrow, as
the wild cats had laid hands upon our knives and
hatchet. Besides, was this mass of heavy mining
plant worth transportation ? If it was, why had
not the rightful owners carted it away ? If it was,
would they not preserve their title to these move-
ables, even after they had lost their title to the
mine ? And if it were not, what the better was
Rufe? Nothing would grow at Silverado; there
was even no wood to cut ; beyond a sense of pro-
perty, there was nothing to be gained. Lastly, was
it at all credible that Ronalds would forget what
Rufe remembered ? The days of grace were not yet
314

EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE

over : any fine morning he might appear, paper in
hand, and enter for another year on his inherit-
ance. However, it was none of my business ; all
seemed legal ; Rufe or Ronalds, all was one to me.

On the morning of the 27th, Mrs. Hanson ap-
peared with the milk as usual, in her sun-bonnet.
The time would be out on Tuesday, she reminded
us, and bade me be in readiness to play my part,
though I had no idea what it was to be. And
suppose Ronalds came? we asked. She received
the idea with derision, laughing aloud with all her
fine teeth. He could not find the mine to save his
life, it appeared, without Rufe to guide him. Last
year, when he came, they heard him ' up and down
the road a-hollerin' and a-raisin' Cain.' And at last
he had to come to the Hansons in despair, and bid
Rufe, ' Jump into your pants and shoes, and show
me where this old mine is, anyway ! ' Seeing that
Ronalds had laid out so much money in the spot,
and that a beaten road led right up to the bottom
of the dump, I thought this a remarkable example.
The sense of locality must be singularly in abeyance
in the case of Ronalds.

That same evening, supper comfortably over, our
guest busy at work on a drawing of the dump and
the opposite hills, we were all out on the platform
together, sitting there, under the tented heavens,
with the same sense of privacy as if we had been
cabined in a parlour, when the sound of brisk foot-
steps came mounting up the path. We pricked our
ears at this, for the tread seemed lighter and firmer

315

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

than was usual with our country neighbours. And
presently, sure enough, two town gentlemen, with
cigars and kid gloves, came debouching past the
house. They looked in that place like a blasphemy.

* Good-evening,' they said. For none of us had
stirred ; we all sat stiif with wonder.

* Good-evening,' I returned ; and then, to put
them at their ease, ' A stiff cUmb,' I added.

' Yes,' replied the leader ; ' but we have to thank
you for this path.'

I did not hke the man's tone. None of us liked
it. He did not seem embarrassed by the meeting,
but threw us his remarks like favours, and strode
magisterially by us towards the shaft and tunnel.

Presently we heard his voice raised to his com-
panion. ' We drifted every sort of way, but couldn't
strike the ledge.' Then again : ' It pinched out here.'
And once more : ' Every miner that ever worked upon
it says there 's bound to be a ledge somewhere.'

These were the snatches of his talk that reached
us, and they had a damning significance. We, the
lords of Silverado, had come face to face with our
superior. It is the worst of all quaint and of all
cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the
pinch of some humiliation. I Hked well enough to
be a squatter when there was none but Hanson by ;
before Ronalds, I will own, I somewhat quailed. I
hastened to do him fealty, said I gathered he was
the Squattee, and apologised. He threatened me
with ejection, in a manner grimly pleasant — more
pleasant to him, I fancy, than to me ; and then he
316

EPISODES m THE STORY OF A MINE

passed off into praises of the former state of Silver-
ado. ' It was the busiest httle mining town you
ever saw : ' a population of between a thousand and
fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full blast, the
mill newly erected ; nothing going but champagne,
and hope the order of the day. Ninety thousand
dollars came out ; a hundred and forty thousand
were put in, making a net loss of fifty thousand.
The last days, I gathered, the days of John Stanley,
were not so bright ; the champagne had ceased to
flow, the population was already moving elsewhere,
and Silverado had begun to wither in the branch
before it was cut at the root. The last shot that
was fired knocked over the stove chimney, and made
that hole in the roof of our barrack, through which
the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards after-
noon. A noisy last shot, to inaugurate the days of
silence.

Throughout this interview my conscience was a
good deal exercised; and I was moved to throw
myself on my knees and own the intended treachery.
But then I had Hanson to consider. I was in much
the same position as Old Rowley, that royal
humorist, whom 'the rogue had taken into his
confidence.' And again, here was Ronalds on the
spot. He must know the day of the month as well
as Hanson and I. If a broad hint were necessary,
he had the broadest in the world. For a large board
had been nailed by the crown prince on the very
front of our house, between the door and window,
painted in cinnabar — the pigment of the country —

Z^7

THE SILVEHADO SQUATTERS

with doggerel rhymes and contumehous pictures, and
announcing, in terms unnecessarily figurative, that the
trick was already played, the claim already jumped,
and the author of the placard the legitimate successor
of Mr. Ronalds. But no, nothing could save that
man ; quern deus vult yerdere^ prius dementat. As
he came so he went, and left his rights depending.

Late at night, by Silverado reckoning, and after

we were all abed, Mrs. Hanson returned to give us

the newest of her news. It was Hke a scene in a

ship's steerage : all of us abed in our different tiers,

the single candle strugghng with the darkness, and

this plump, handsome woman, seated on an upturned

valise beside the bunks, talking and showing her

fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. Any

ship, to be sure, with a hundredth part as many holes

in it as our barrack, must long ago have gone to her

last port. Up to that time I had always imagined

Mrs. Hanson's loquacity to be mere incontinence,

that she said what was uppermost for the pleasure of

speaking, and laughed and laughed again as a kind

of musical accompaniment. But I now found there

was an art in it. I found it less communicative than

silence itself. I wished to know why Ronalds had

come ; how he had found his way without Rufe ;

and why, being on the spot, he had not refreshed his

title. She talked interminably on, but her replies

were never answers. She fled under a cloud of

words; and when I had made sure that she was

purposely eluding me, I dropped the subject in my

turn, and let her rattle where she would.

318

EPISODES m THE STORY OF A MINE

She had come to tell us that, instead of waiting
for Tuesday, the claim was to be jumped on the
morrow. How ? If the time were not out, it was
impossible. Why ? If Ronalds had come and gone,
and done nothing, there was the less cause for hurry.
But again I could reach no satisfaction. The claim
was to be jumped next morning, that was aU that
she would condescend upon.

And yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor
yet the next, and a whole week had come and gone
before we heard more of this exploit. That day
week, however, a day of great heat, Hanson, with a
little roll of paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe
alight ; Breedlove, his large, dull friend, to act, I
suppose, as witness ; Mrs. Hanson, in her Sunday
best ; and all the children, from the oldest to the
youngest ; — arrived in a procession, tailing one
behind another up the path. Caliban was absent,
but he had been chary of his friendly visits since the
row ; and with that exception, the whole family was
gathered together as for a marriage or a christening.
Strong was sitting at work, in the shade of the
dwarf madronas near the forge ; and they planted
themselves about him in a circle, one on a stone,
another on the waggon rails, a third on a piece of
plank. Gradually the children stole away up the
canon to where there was another chute, somewhat
smaller than the one across the dump ; and down this
chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one
avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes
of the glen. Meantime, we elders sat together on the

319

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

platform, Hanson and his friend smoking in silence
like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson rattling on as
usual with an adroit volubihty, saying nothing, but
keeping the party at their ease like a courtly hostess.
Not a word occurred about the business of the
day. Once, twice, and thrice I tried to slide the
subject in, but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of
Rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of
his wife. There is nothing of the Indian brave about
me, and I began to grill with impatience. At last,
like a highway robber, I cornered Hanson, and bade
him stand and deliver his business. Thereupon he
gravely rose, as though to hint that this was not a
proper place, nor the subject one suitable for squaws,
and I, following his example, led him up the plank
into our barrack. There he bestowed himself on a
box, and unrolled his papers with fastidious delibera-
tion. There were two sheets of note-paper, and an
old mining notice, dated May 30th, 1879, part print,
part manuscript, and the latter much obliterated by
the rains. It was by this identical piece of paper
that the mine had been held last year. For thirteen
months it had endured the weather and the change
of seasons on a cairn behind the shoulder of the
canon ; and it was now my business, spreading it
before me on the table, and sitting on a valise, to
copy its terms, with some necessary changes, twice
over on the two sheets of note-paper. One was then
to be placed on the same cairn — ' a mound of rocks '
the notice put it ; and the other to be lodged for
registration.
320

EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE

Rufe watched me, silently smoking, till I came to
the place for the locator's name at the end of the
first copy ; and when I proposed that he should sign,
I thought I saw a scare in his eye. ' I don't think
that'll be necessary,' he said slowly ; 'just you write
it down.' Perhaps this mighty hunter, who was the
most active member of the local school-board, could
not write. There would be nothing strange in that.
The constable of Calistoga is, and has been for years,
a bedridden man, and, if I remember rightly, blind.
He had more need of the emoluments than another,
it was explained ; and it was easy for him to
*depytise,' with a strong accent on the last. So
friendly and so free are popular institutions.

When I had done my scrivening, Hanson strolled
out, and addressed Breedlove, ' Will you step up
here a bit ? ' and after they had disappeared a little
while into the chaparral and madrona thicket, they
came back again, minus a notice, and the deed was
done. The claim was jumped ; a track of mountain-
side, fifteen hundred feet long by six hundred wide,
with all the earth's precious bowels, had passed from
Ronalds to Hanson, and, in the passage, changed its
name from the 'Mammoth' to the 'Calistoga.' I
had tried to get Rufe to call it after his wife, after
himself, and after Garfield, the Republican Presi-
dential candidate of the hour — since then elected,
and^ alas ! dead — but all was in vain. The claim had
once been called the Calistoga before, and he seemed
to feel safety in returning to that.

And so the history of that mine became once more
3— X 321

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

plunged in darkness, lit only by some monster
pyroteehnical displays of gossip. And perhaps the
most curious feature of the whole matter is this :
that we should have dwelt in this quiet corner of
the mountains, with not a dozen neighbours, and yet
struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, in
this sea of falsities and contradictions. Wherever a
man is, there will be a lie.

322

TOILS AND PLEASURES

I MUST try to convey some notion of our life, of how
the days passed and what pleasure we took in them,
of what there was to do and how we set about doing
it, in our mountain hermitage. The house, after we
had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in
some of the doors and windows with white cotton
cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwelling-
place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the
outdoor perfumes of the glen. Within, it had the
look of habitation, the human look. You had only
to go into the third room, which we did not use,
and see its stones, its sifting earth, its tumbled litter;
and then return to our lodging, with the beds made,
the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water
behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner,
and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal,
— and man's order, the little clean spots that he
creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the
rich passivity of nature. And yet our house was
everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came
and went so freely, the sun found so many portholes,
the golden outdoor glow shone in so many open

323

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of
the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and
brightness of alfresco hfe, A single shower of rain,
to be sure, and we should have been drowned out
like mice. But ours was a Californian summer, and
an earthquake was a far likelier accident than a
shower of rain.

Trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house
for kitchen and bedroom, and used the platform as
our summer parlour. The sense of privacy, as I
have said already, was complete. We could look
over the dump on miles of forest and rough hill-top ;
our eyes commanded some of Napa Valley, where
the train ran, and the little country townships sat so
close together along the line of the rail. But here
there was no man to intrude. None but the Hansons
were our visitors. Even they came but at long
intervals, or twice daily at a stated hour, with milk.
So our days, as they were never interrupted, drew
out to the greater length; hour melted insensibly into
hour ; the household duties, though they were many,
and some of them laborious, dwindled into mere
islets of business in a sea of sunny day-time ; and it
appears to me, looking back, as though the far
greater part of our life at Silverado had been passed,
propped upon an elbow, or seated on a plank, lis-
tening to the silence that there is among the hills.

My work, it is true, was over early in the morning.

I rose before any one else, ht the stove, put on the

water to boil, and strolled forth upon the platform

to wait till it was ready. Silverado would then be

324

TOILS AND PLEASURES

still in shadow, the sun shining on the mountain
higher up. A clean smell of trees, a smell of the
earth at morning, hung in the air. Regularly, every-
day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awk-
wardly chirruping among the green raadronas, and
the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did
not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of
meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale ; it was
mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was con-
scious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning
seasons remained with me far on into the day.

As soon as the kettle boiled, I made porridge
and coffee ; and that, beyond the literal drawing of
water, and the preparation of kindling, which it
would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood,
ended my domestic duties for the day. Thenceforth
my wife laboured single-handed in the palace, and I
lay or wandered on the platform at my own sweet
will. The little corner near the forge, where we
found a refuge under the madronas from the un-
sparing early sun, is indeed connected in my mind
with some nightmare encounters over Euclid and the
Latin Grammar. These were known as the Crown
Prince's lessons. He was supposed to be the victim
and the sufferer ; but here there must have been some
misconception, for whereas I generally retired to bed
after one of these engagements, he was no sooner
set free than he dashed up to the Chinaman's house,
where he had installed a printing-press, that great
element of civilisation, and the sound of his labours
would be faintly audible about the canon half the day.

325

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

To walk at all was a laborious business ; the foot
sank and slid, the boots were cut to pieces, among
sharp, uneven, rolling stones. When we crossed
the platform in any direction, it was usual to lay a
course, following as much as possible the line of
waggon rails. Thus, if water were to be drawn, the
water-carrier left the house along some tilting planks
that we had laid down, and not laid down very well.
These carried him to that great highroad, the rail-
way; and the railway served him as far as to the
head of the shaft. But from thence to the spring
and back again he made the best of his unaided way,
staggering among the stones, and wading in low
growth of the calcanthus, where the rattlesnakes lay
hissing at his passage. Yet I liked to draw water.
It was pleasant to dip the grey metal pail into the
clean, colourless, cool water ; pleasant to carry it
back, with the water lipping at the edge, and a
broken sunbeam quivering in the midst.

But the extreme roughness of the walking con-
fined us in common practice to the platform, and,
indeed, to those parts of it that were most easily
accessible along the line of rails. The rails came
straight forward from the shaft, here and there over-
grown with little green bushes, but still entire, and
still carrying a truck, which it was Lloyd's dehght to
trundle to and fro by the hour with various ladings.
About midway down the platform the railroad trended
to the right, leaving our house and coasting along
the far side within a few yards of the madronas
and the forge, and not far from the latter, ended in a
326

TOILS AND PLEASURES

sort of platform on the edge of the dump. There,
in old days, the trucks were tipped, and their load
sent thundering down the chute. There, besides,
was the only spot where we could approach the
margin of the dump. Anywhere else, you took your
life in your right hand when you came within a yard
and a half to peer over. For at any moment the
dump might begin to slide and carry you down and
bury you below its ruins. Indeed, the neighbour-
hood of an old mine is a place beset with dangers.
For as still as Silverado was, at any moment the
report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform
had fallen into the shaft ; the dump might begin to
pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the
great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of moun-
tain bury the scene of our encampment.

I have already compared the dump to a rampart,
built certainly by some rude people, and for pre-
historic wars. It was likewise a frontier. All below
was green and woodland, the tall pines soaring one
above another, each with a firm outhne and full
spread of bough. All above was arid, rocky, and
bald. The great spout of broken mineral, that had
dammed the caiion up, was a creature of man's
handiwork, its material dug out with a pick and
powder, and spread by the service of the trucks.
But nature herself, in that upper district, seemed to
have had an eye to nothing besides mining; and
even the natural hillside was all sliding gravel and
precarious boulder. Close at the margin of the well,
leaves would decay to skeletons and mummies,

327

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

which at length some stronger gust would carry clear
of the canon and scatter in the subjacent woods.
Even moisture and decaying vegetable matter could
not, with all nature's alchemy, concoct enough soil
to nourish a few poor grasses. It is the same, they
say, in the neighbourhood of all silver mines; the
nature of that precious rock being stubborn with
quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. Both were
plenty in our Silverado. The stones sparkled white
in the sunshine with quartz ; they were all stained
red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, came the Indians
of yore to paint their faces for the war-path ; and
cinnabar, if I remember rightly, was one of the few
articles of Indian commerce. Now, the Crown Prince
had it in his undisturbed possession, to pound down
and slake and paint his rude designs with. But to
me it had always a fine flavour of poetry, compounded
out of Indian story and Hawthornden's allusion : —

' Desire, alas ! desire a Zeuxis new.
From Indies borrowing gold, from Eastern skies
Most bright cinoper . . .'

Yet this is but half the picture; our Silverado
platform has another side to it. Though there was
no soil, and scarce a blade of grass, yet out of these
tumbled gravel-heaps and broken boulders a flower-
garden bloomed as at home in a conservatory. Cal-
canthus crept, like a hardy weed, all over our rough
parlour, choking the railway, and pushing forth its
rusty, aromatic cones from between two blocks of
shattered mineral. Azaleas made a big snow-bed
just above the well. The shoulder of the hill waved
328

TOILS AND PLEASURES

white with Mediterranean heath. In the crannies
of the ledge and about the spurs of the tall pine, a
red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. Even
the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like
blossom. Close at the foot of our path nutmegs
prospered, delightful to the sight and smell. At
sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of the
sweet bay-trees filled the canon, and the down-
blowing night-wind must have borne it hundreds of
feet into the outer air.

All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The
madrona was here no bigger than the manzanita ;
the bay was but a stripUng shrub ; the very pines,
with four or five exceptions in all our upper caiion,
were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and
the most of them came lower than my waist. For
a prosperous forest tree we must look below, where
the glen was crowded with green spires. But for
flowers and ravishing perfume we had none to envy :
our heap of road-metal was thick with bloom, like
a hawthorn in the front of June ; our red, baking
angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant
scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, as I
dreamed about the platform, following the progress
of the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves,
the azalea and calcanthus with their blossoms, could
find moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy
growths, or the bay-tree collect the ingredients of
its perfume. But there they all grew together,
healthy, happy, and happy-making, as though rooted
in a fathom of black soil.

329

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

Nor was it only vegetable life that prospered.
We had, indeed, few birds, and none that had much
of a voice or anything worthy to be called a song.
My morning comrade had a thin chirp, unmusical
and monotonous, but friendly and pleasant to hear.
He had but one rival : a fellow with an ostentatious
cry of near an octave descending, not one note of
which properly followed another. This is the only
bird I ever knew with a wrong ear ; but there was
something enthralling about his performance. You
listened and listened, thinking each time he must
surely get it right ; but no, it was always wrong,
and always wrong the same way. Yet he seemed
proud of his song, delivered it with execution and
a manner of his own, and was charming to his mate.
A very incorrect, incessant human whistler had thus
a chance of knowing how his own music pleased the
world. Two great birds— eagles, we thought — dwelt
at the top of the caiion, among the crags that were
printed on the sky. Now and again, but very rarely,
they wheeled high over our heads in silence, or with
a distant, dying scream ; and then, with a fresh
impulse, winged fleetly forward, dipped over a hill-
top, and were gone. They seemed solemn and
ancient things, sailing the blue air ; perhaps coeval
with the mountain where they haunted, perhaps
emigrants from Rome, where the glad legions may
have shouted to behold them on the morn of battle.

But if birds were rare, the place abounded with
rattlesnakes — the rattlesnake's nest, it might have
been named. Wherever we brushed among the
330

TOILS AND PLEASURES

bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One
dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes,
when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head
between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The
rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-
inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp itself for ever
in the memory. But the sound is not at all alarm-
ing ; the hum of many insects and the buzz of the
wasp convince the ear of danger quite as readily."
As a matter of fact, we lived for weeks in Silverado,
coming and going, with rattles sprung on every
side, and it never occurred to us to be afraid. I
used to take sun-baths and do cahsthenics in a
certain pleasant nook among azalea and calcanthus,
the rattles whizzing on every side like spinning-
wheels, and the combined hiss or buzz rising louder
and angrier at any sudden movement; but I was
never in the least impressed, nor ever attacked. It
was only towards the end of our stay, that a man
down at Cahstoga, who was expatiating on the
terrifying nature of the sound, gave me at last a
very good imitation ; and it burst on me at once
that we dwelt in the very metropolis of deadly
snakes, and that the rattle was simply the commonest
noise in Silverado. Immediately on our return, we
attacked the Hansons on the subject. They had
formerly assured us that our caiion was favoured,
Hke Ireland, with an entire immunity from poisonous
reptiles ; but, with the perfect inconsequence of the
natural man, they were no sooner found out than
they went off at score in the contrary direction,

331

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

and we were told that in no part of the world did
rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as
among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of Silverado.
This is a contribution rather to the natural history
of the Hansons than to that of snakes.

One person, however, better served by his instinct,
had known the rattle from the first ; and that was
Chuchu, the dog. No rational creature has ever
led an existence more poisoned by terror than that
dog's at Silverado. Every whiz of the rattle made
him bound. His eyes rolled ; he trembled ; he
would be often wet with sweat. One of our great
mysteries was his terror of the mountain. A little
way above our nook, the azaleas and almost all the
vegetation ceased. Dwarf pines not big enough to
be Christmas-trees grew thinly among loose stones
and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder
sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till
the next rain in his long sHde down the mountain.
There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you
could see clearly where you trod ; and yet the higher
I went, the more abject and appeaHng became
Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of
that composite language in which dogs communi-
cate with men, and he would assure me, on his
honour, that there was some peril on the mountain ;
appeal to me, by all that I held holy, to turn back ;
and at length, finding all was in vain, and that
I still persisted, ignorantly foolhardy, he would sud-
denly whip round and make a bee-line down the
slope for Silverado, the gravel showering after him.
332

TOILS AND PLEASURES

What was he afraid of? There were admittedly
brown bears and Cahfornian hons on the mountain ;
and a grizzly visited Rufe's poultry-yard not long
before, to the unspeakable alarm of Caliban, who
dashed out to chastise the intruder, and found him-
self, by moonlight, face to face with such a Tartar.
Something at least there must have been ; some
hairy, dangerous brute lodged permanently among
the rocks a little to the north-west of Silverado,
spending his summer thereabout, with wife and
family.

And there was, or there had been, another
animal. Once, under the broad daylight, on that
open stony hillside, v/here the baby pines were
growing, scarcely tall enough to be a badge for
a MacGregor's bonnet, I came suddenly upon his
innocent body, lying mummified by the dry air and
sun : a pigmy kangaroo. I am ingloriously ignorant
of these subjects ; had never heard of such a beast ;
thought myself face to face with some incomparable
sport of nature ; and began to cherish hopes of im-
mortality in science. Rarely have I been conscious
of a stranger thrill than when I raised that singular
creature from the stones, dry as a board, his innocent
heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. His
long hind-legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched
upon his breast, as if to leap ; his poor life cut
short upon that mountain by some unknown acci-
dent. But the kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such
unknown animal ; and my discovery was nothing.

Crickets were not wanting. I thought I could

333

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

make out exactly four of them, each with a corner
of his own, who used to make night musical at
Silverado. In the matter of voice they far ex-
celled the birds, and their ringing whistle sounded
from rock to rock, calling and replying the same
thing, as in a meaningless opera. Thus children in
full health and spirits shout together, to the dismay
of neighbours ; and their idle, happy, deafening
vociferations rise and fall, like the song of the
crickets. I used to sit at night on the platform,
and wonder why these creatures were so happy ;
and what was wrong with man that he also did not
wind up his days mth an hour or two of
shouting ; but I suspect that all long-lived animals
are solemn. The dogs alone are hardly used by
nature ; and it seems a manifest injustice for poor
Chuchu to die in his teens, after a life so shadowed
and troubled, continually shaken with alarm, and
the tear of elegant sentiment permanently in his eye.
There was another neighbour of ours at Silverado,
small but very active, a destructive fellow. This
was a black, ugly fly — a bore, the Hansons called
him — who lived by hundreds in the boarding of
our house. He entered by a round hole, more
neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet,
and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out
the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelhng
or a store-house, I could never find. When I used
to lie in bed in the morning for a rest — we had no
easy-chairs in Silverado — I would hear, hour after
hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and
334

TOILS AND PLEASURES

from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would
fall upon the blankets. There lives no more in-
dustrious creature than a bore.

And now that I have named to the reader all our
animals and insects without exception — only I find
I have forgotten the flies — he will be able to appre-
ciate the singular privacy and silence of our days.
It was not only man who was excluded : animals,
the song of birds, the lowing of cattle, the bleating
of sheep, clouds even, and the variations of the
weather, were here also wanting ; and as, day after
day, the sky was one dome of blue, and the pines
below us stood motionless in the still air, so the
hours themselves were marked out from each other
only by the series of our own affairs, and the sun's
great period as he ranged westward through the
heavens. The two birds cackled a while in the
early morning ; all day the water tinkled in the
shaft, the bores ground sawdust in the planking of
our crazy palace — infinitesimal sounds ; and it was
only with the return of night that any change
would fall on our surroundings, or the four crickets
begin to flute together in the dark.

Indeed, it would be hard to exaggerate the
pleasure that we took in the approach of evening.
Our day was not very long, but it was very tiring.
To trip along unsteady planks or wade among shift-
ing stones, to go to and fro for water, to clamber
down the glen to the Toll House after meat and
letters, to cook, to make fires and beds, were all
exhausting to the body. Life out of doors, besides,

335

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

under the fierce eye of day, draws largely on the
animal spirits. There are certain hours in the after-
noon when a man, unless he is in strong health or
enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a
cool corner of a house and sit upon the chairs of
civilisation. About that time the sharp stones, the
planks, the upturned boxes of Silverado, began to
grow irksome to my body ; I set out on that hope-
less, never-ending quest for a more comfortable pos-
ture ; I would be fevered and weary of the staring
sun ; and just then he would begin courteously
to withdraw his countenance, the shadows length-
ened, the aromatic airs awoke, and an indescribable
but happy change announced the coming of the
night.

The hours of evening, when we were once cur-
tained in the friendly dark, sped lightly. Even as
with the crickets, night brought to us a certain
spirit of rejoicing. It was good to taste the air;
good to mark the dawning of the stars, as they
increased their glittering company ; good, too, to
gather stones, and send them crashing down the
chute, a wave of light. It seemed, in some way,
the reward and the fulfilment of the day. So it is
when men dwell in the open air; it is one of the
simple pleasures that we lose by living cribbed and
covered in a house, that, though the coming of the
day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure,
also, and the return of night, refresh, renew, and
quiet us ; and in the pastures of the dusk we stand,
like cattle, exulting in the absence of the load.
Z2>^

TOILS AND PLEASURES

Our nights were never cold, and they were always
still, but for one remarkable exception. Regularly,
about nine o'clock, a warm wind sprang up, and
blew for ten minutes, or maybe a quarter of an
hour, right down the canon, fanning it well out,
airing it as a mother airs the night-nursery before
the children sleep. As far as I could judge, in the
clear darkness of the night, this wind was purely
local : perhaps dependent on the configuration of
the glen. At least, it was very welcome to the
hot and weary squatters ; and if we were not abed
already, the springing up of this Lilliputian valley-
wind would often be our signal to retire.

I was the last to go to bed, as I was still the
first to rise. Many a night I have strolled about
the platform, taking a bath of darkness before I
slept. The rest would be in bed, and even from
the forge I could hear them talking together from
bunk to bunk. A single candle in the neck of a
pint bottle was their only illumination ; and yet
the old cracked house seemed literally bursting
with the light. It shone keen as a knife through all
the vertical chinks ; it struck upward through the
broken shingles ; and through the eastern door and
window it fell in a great splash upon the thicket
and the overhanging rock. You would have said
a conflagration, or at the least a roaring forge ; and
behold it was but a candle. Or perhaps it was yet
more strange to see the procession moving bedwards
round the corner of the house, and up the plank
that brought us to the bedroom door; under the
3-Y 337

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

immense spread of the starry heavens, down in a
crevice of the giant mountain, these few human
shapes, with their unshielded taper, made so dis-
proportionate a figure in the eye and mind. But
the more he is alone with nature, the greater man
and his doings bulk in the consideration of his
fellow-men. Miles and miles away upon the oppo-
site hill-tops, if there were any hunter belated or
any traveller who had lost his way, he must have
stood, and watched and wondered, from the time
the candle issued from the door of the assayer's
office till it had mounted the plank and disappeared
again into the miners' dormitory.

338

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