The Golden Dream: Adventures in the Far West

And this is not to be wondered at, for Europe and America naturally poured the flood of their worst inhabitants over the land, in eager search for that gold, the love of which, we are told in Sacred Writ, “is the root of all evil.” True, there were many hundreds of estimable men who, failing, from adverse circumstances, to make a livelihood in their native lands, sought to better their fortunes in the far west; but, in too many cases, the gold-fever which raged there soon smote them down; and men who once regarded gold as the means to an end, came at last to esteem gold to be the end, and used every means, fair and foul, to obtain it. Others there were, whose constitutions were proof against the national disease; whose hearts deemed love to be the highest bliss of man, and doing good his greatest happiness.

But stilling and destructive though the air of the gold-mines was, there were a few hardy plants of moral goodness which defied it—and some of these bloomed in the colony of Little Creek.

The Sabbath morning dawned on Ned Sinton and his friends—the first Sabbath since they had begun to dig for gold. On that day the miners rested from their work. Shovel and pick lay quiet in the innumerable pits that had been dug throughout the valley; no cradle was rocked, no pan of golden earth was washed. Even reckless men had come to know from experience, that the Almighty in His goodness had created the Sabbath for the special benefit of man’s body as well as his soul, and that they wrought better during the six days of the week when they rested on the seventh.

Unfortunately they believed only what experience taught them; they kept the Sabbath according to the letter, not according to the spirit; and although they did not work, they did not refrain from “thinking their own thoughts and finding their own pleasure,” on God’s holy day. Early in the morning they began to wander idly about from hut to hut, visited frequently the grog-shops, and devoted themselves to gambling, which occupation materially marred even the physical rest they might otherwise have enjoyed.

“Comrades,” said Ned Sinton, as the party sat inside their tent, round the napkin on which breakfast was spread, “it is long since we have made any difference between Saturday and Sunday, and I think it would be good for us all if we were to begin now. Since quitting San Francisco, the necessity of pushing forward on our journey has prevented our doing so hitherto. How far we were right in regarding rapid travelling as being necessary, I won’t stop to inquire; but I think it would be well if we should do a little more than merely rest from work on the Sabbath. I propose that, besides doing this, we should read a chapter of the Bible together as a family, morning and evening on Sundays. What say you?”

There was a pause. It was evident that conflicting feelings were at work among the party.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Maxton; “I confess that I have troubled myself very little about religion since I came out here, but my conscience has often reproached me for it.”

“Don’t you think, messmates,” said Captain Bunting, lighting his pipe, “that if it gets wind the whole colony will be laughin’ at us?”

“Sure they may laugh,” said Larry O’Neil, “an’ after that they may cry, av it’ll do them good. Wot’s the differ to us?”

“I don’t agree with you, Ned,” said Tom Collins, somewhat testily; “for my part I like to see men straightforward, all fair and above-board, as the captain would say. Hypocrisy is an abominable vice, whether it is well meaning or ill meaning, and I don’t see the use of pretending to be religious when we are not.”

“Tom,” replied Ned, in an earnest voice, “don’t talk lightly of serious things. I don’t pretend to be religious, but I do desire to be so: and I think it would be good for all of us to read a portion of God’s Word on His own day, both for the purpose of obeying and honouring Him, and of getting our minds filled, for a short time at least, with other thoughts than those of gold-hunting. In doing this there is no hypocrisy.”

“Well, well,” rejoined Tom, “I’ll not object if the rest are agreed.”

“Agreed,” was the unanimous reply. So Ned rose, and, opening his portmanteau, drew forth the little Bible that had been presented to him by old Mr Shirley on the day of his departure from home.

From that day forward, every Sabbath morning and evening, Ned Sinton read a portion of the Word of God to his companions, as long as they were together; and each of the party afterwards, at different times, confessed that, from the time the reading of the Bible was begun, he felt happier than he did before.

After breakfast they broke up, and went out to stroll for an hour or two upon the wooded slopes of the mountains. Ned and Tom Collins went off by themselves, the others, with the exception of Larry, walked out together.

That morning Larry O’Neil felt less sociable than was his wont, so he sallied forth alone. For some time he sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, his black pipe in his mouth, a thick oak cudgel, of his own making, under his arm, and his hat set jauntily on one side of his head. He went along with an easy swagger, and looked particularly reckless, but no man ever belied his looks more thoroughly. The swagger was unintentional, and the recklessness did not exist. On the contrary, the reading of the Bible had brought back to his mind a flood of home memories, which forced more than one tear from his susceptible heart into his light-blue eye, as he wandered in memory over the green hills of Erin.

But the scenes that passed before him as he roamed about among the huts and tents of the miners soon drew his thoughts to subjects less agreeable to contemplate. On week-days the village, if we may thus designate the scattered groups of huts and tents, was comparatively quiet, but on Sundays it became a scene of riot and confusion. Not only was it filled with its own idle population of diggers, but miners from all the country round, within a circuit of eight or ten miles, flocked into it for the purpose of buying provisions for the week, as well as for the purpose of gambling and drinking, this being the only day in all the week in which they indulged in what they termed “a spree.”

Consequently the gamblers and store-keepers did more business on Sunday than on any other day. The place was crowded with men in their rough, though picturesque, bandit-like costumes, rambling about from store to store, drinking and inviting friends to drink, or losing in the gaming-saloons all the earnings of a week of hard, steady toil—toil more severe than is that of navvies or coal-heavers. There seemed to be an irresistible attraction in these gambling-houses. Some men seemed unable to withstand the temptation, and they seldom escaped being fleeced. Yet they returned, week after week, to waste in these dens of iniquity the golden treasure gathered with so much labour during their six working days.

Larry O’Neil looked through the doorway of one of the gambling-houses as he passed, and saw men standing and sitting round the tables, watching with eager faces the progress of the play, while ever and anon one of them would reel out, more than half-drunk with excitement and brandy. Passing on through the crowded part of the village, which looked as if a fair were being held there, he entered the narrow footpath that led towards the deeper recesses at the head of the valley. O’Neil had not yet, since his arrival, found time to wander far from his own tent. It was therefore with a feeling of great delight that he left the scene of riot behind him, and, turning into a bypath that led up one of the narrow ravines, opening into the larger valley, strolled several miles into deep solitudes that were in harmony with his feelings.

The sun streamed through the entrance to this ravine, bathing with a flood of light crags and caves and bush-encompassed hollows, that at other times were shrouded in gloom. As the Irishman stood gazing in awe and admiration at the wild, beautiful scene, beyond which were seen the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, he observed a small solitary tent pitched on a level patch of earth at the brow of a low cliff. Curiosity prompted him to advance and ascertain what unsociable creature dwelt in it. A few minutes sufficed to bring him close upon it, and he was about to step forward, when the sound of a female voice arrested him. It was soft and low, and the accents fell upon his ear with the power of an old familiar song. Being at the back of the tent, he could not see who spoke, but, from the monotonous regularity of the tone, he knew that the woman was reading. He passed noiselessly round to the front, and peeping over the tops of bushes, obtained a view of the interior.

The reader was a young woman, whose face, which was partially concealed by a mass of light-brown hair as she bent over her book, seemed emaciated and pale. Looking up just as Larry’s eye fell upon her, she turned towards a man whose gaunt, attenuated form lay motionless on a pile of brushwood beside her, and said, tenderly:

“Are ye tired, Patrick, dear, or would you like me to go on?”

Larry’s heart gave his ribs such a thump at that moment that he felt surprised the girl did not hear it. But he could not approach; he was rooted to the earth as firmly, though not as permanently, as the bush behind which he stood. An Irish voice, and an Irish girl, heard and seen so unexpectedly, quite took away his breath.

The sick man made some reply which was not audible, and the girl, shutting the book, looked up for a few moments, as if in silent prayer, then she clasped her hands upon her knees, and laying her head upon them, remained for some time motionless. The hands were painfully thin, as was her whole frame. The face was what might have been pretty at one time, although it was haggard enough now, but the expression was peculiarly sorrowful.

In a few minutes she looked up again, and spread the ragged blanket more carefully over the shoulders of the sick man, and Larry, feeling that he was at that time in the questionable position of an eavesdropper, left his place of concealment, and stood before the tent.

The sick man saw him instantly, and, raising himself slightly, exclaimed, “Who goes there? Sure I can’t git lave to die in pace!”

The familiar tones of a countryman’s voice fell pleasantly on Larry’s ear as he sprang into the tent, and, seizing the sick man’s hand, cried, “A blissin’ on the mouth that said that same. O Pat, darlint! I’m glad to mate with ye. What’s the matter with ye? Tell me now, an’ don’t be lookin’ as if ye’d seen a ghost.”

“Kape back,” said the girl, pushing Larry aside, with a half-pleased, half-angry expression. “Don’t ye see that ye’ve a’most made him faint? He’s too wake intirely to be—”

“Ah! then, cushla, forgive me; I wint and forgot meself. Blissin’s on yer pale face! sure yer Irish too.”

Before the girl could reply to this speech, which was uttered in a tone of the deepest sympathy, the sick man recovered sufficiently to say—

“Sit down, friend. How comed ye to larn me name? I guess I never saw ye before.”

“Sure, didn’t I hear yer wife say it as I come for’ard to the tint,” answered Larry, somewhat staggered at the un-Irish word “guess.”

“He is my brother,” remarked the girl.

“Troth, ye’ve got a dash o’ the Yankee brogue,” said Larry, with a puzzled look; “did ye not come from the owld country?”

The sick man seemed too much exhausted to reply, so the girl said—

“Our father and mother were Irish, and left their own country to sittle in America. We have never seen Ireland, my brother nor I, but we think of it as almost our own land. Havin’ been brought up in the woods, and seein’ a’most no one but father and mother for days an’ weeks at a time, we’ve got a good deal o’ the Irish tone.”

“Ah! thin, ye have reason to be thankful for that same,” remarked Larry, who was a little disappointed that his new friends were not altogether Irish; but, after a few minutes’ consideration, he came to the conclusion, that people whose father and mother were natives of the Emerald Isle could no more be Americans, simply because they happened to be born in America, than they could be fish if they chanced to be born at sea. Having settled this point to his satisfaction, he proceeded to question the girl as to their past history and the cause of their present sad condition, and gradually obtained from her the information that their father and mother were dead, and that, having heard of the mines of California, her brother had sold off his farm in the backwoods, and proceeded by the overland route to the new land of gold, in company with many other western hunters and farmers. They reached it, after the most inconceivable sufferings, in the beginning of winter, and took up their abode at Little Creek.

The rush of emigration from the western states to California, by the overland route, that took place at this time, was attended with the most appalling sufferings and loss of life. Men sold off their snug farms, packed their heavy waggons with the necessaries for a journey, with their wives and little ones, over a wilderness more than two thousand miles in extent, and set off by scores over the prairies towards the Ultima Thule of the far west. The first part of their journey was prosperous enough, but the weight of their waggons rendered the pace slow, and it was late in the season ere they reached the great barrier of the Rocky Mountains. But severe although the sufferings of those first emigrants were, they were as nothing compared with the dire calamities that befell those who started from home later in the season. All along the route the herbage was cropped bare by those who had gone before; their oxen broke down; burning sandy deserts presented themselves when the wretched travellers were well-nigh exhausted; and when at length they succeeded in reaching the great mountain-chain, its dark passes were filled with the ice and snow of early winter.

Hundreds of men, women, and children, fell down and died on the burning plain, or clambered up the rugged heights to pillow their dying heads at last on wreaths of snow. To add to the unheard-of miseries of these poor people, scurvy in its worst forms attacked them; and the air of many of their camping places was heavy with the stench arising from the dead bodies of men and animals that had perished by the way.

“It was late in the season,” said Kate Morgan, as Larry’s new friend was named, “when me brother Patrick an’ I set off with our waggon and oxen, an’ my little sister Nelly, who was just able to run about, with her curly yellow hair streamin’ over her purty shoulders, an’ her laughin’ blue eyes, almost spakin’ when they looked at ye.”

The poor girl spoke with deep pathos as she mentioned Nelly’s name, while Larry O’Neil sat with his hands clasped, gazing at her with an expression of the deepest commiseration.

“We got pretty well on at first,” she continued, after a pause, “because our waggon was lighter than most o’ the others; but it was near winter before we got to the mountains, an’ then our troubles begood. First of all, one o’ the oxen fell, and broke its leg. Then darlin’ Nelly fell sick, and Patrick had to carry her on his back up the mountains, for I had got so weak meself that I wasn’t fit to take her up. All the way over I was troubled with one o’ the emigrants that kep’ us company—there was thirty o’ us altogether—he was a very bad man, and none o’ us liked him. He took a fancy to me, an’ asked me to be his wife so often that I had to make Patrick order him to kape away from us altogether. He wint off in a black rage, swearin’ he’d be revenged,—an’ oh!” continued Kate, wringing her hands, “he kept his word. One day there was a dispute between our leaders which way we should go, for we had got to two passes in the mountains; so one party went one way, and we went another. Through the night, my—my lover came into our camp to wish me good-bye, he said, for the last time, as he was goin’ with the other party. After he was gone, I missed Nelly, and went out to seek for her among the tents o’ my neighbours, but she was nowhere to be found. At once I guessed he had taken her away, for well did he know I would sooner have lost my life than my own darlin’ Nell.”

Again the girl paused a few moments; then she resumed, in a low voice—

“We never saw him or Nelly again. It is said the whole party perished, an’ I believe it, for they were far spent, and the road they took, I’ve been towld, is worse than the one we took. It was dead winter when we arrived, and Patrick and me came to live here. We made a good deal at first by diggin’, but we both fell sick o’ the ague, and we’ve been scarce able to kape us alive till now. But it won’t last long. Dear Patrick is broken down entirely, as ye see, and I haven’t strength a’most to go down to the diggin’s for food. I haven’t been there for a month, for it’s four miles away, as I dare say ye know. We’ll both be at rest soon.”

“Ah! now, don’t say that again, avic,” cried Larry, smiting his thigh with energy; “ye’ll be nothin’ o’ the sort, that ye won’t; sure yer brother Pat is slaipin’ now like an infant, he is, an’ I’ll go down meself to the stores and git ye medicines an’ a doctor, an’ what not. Cheer up, now—”

Larry’s enthusiastic efforts to console his new friend were interrupted by the sick man, who awoke at the moment, and whispered the word “food.”

His sister rose, and taking up a small tin pan that simmered on the fire in front of the tent, poured some of its contents into a dish.

“What is it ye give him?” inquired Larry, taking the dish from the girl’s hands and putting it to his lips. He instantly spat out the mouthful, for it was soup made of rancid pork, without vegetables of any kind.

“’Tis all I’ve got left,” said the girl. “Even if I was able to go down for more, he wouldn’t let me; but I couldn’t, for I’ve tried more than once, and near died on the road. Besides, I haven’t a grain o’ goold in the tent.”

“O morther! Tare an’ ages!” cried Larry, staring first at the girl and then at her brother, while he slapped his thighs and twisted his fingers together as if he wished to wrench them out of joint.