I WAS COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED.
All my fears were gone and I found the Captain's words true. As I looked at the hundreds of people on the open deck, there were eight hundred passengers, all happy and cheerful, I felt disgraced to have been such a coward. There was the boundless ocean on every side. No sign of land anywhere and, strange to say, I was not a bit afraid. The reassuring words of the Captain had saved me. Many a poor fellow has given up and gone down in the battle of life, who might have been saved if someone had only spoken the cheering words in time.
Down through the tropical islands to Aspinwall, now called Colon, across the Isthmus of Darien, where the Panama Canal is now being constructed, on the railroad to the ancient city of Panama and up the beautiful Pacific into the lovely harbor of Acapulco, Mexico, where we stopped a day for coal, and finally through the Golden Gate; we dropped anchor in the Bay of San Francisco, just twenty-four days from New York. Not a soul in all the great city did I know; but I was soon in the hands of the friends of my brother. I felt like Mrs. Partington when she struck land after being to sea, she exclaimed: "Thank the Lord for terra cotta," and I promised myself never again to get on an ocean steamer.
[Chapter Two]
Looking for a job; A hostler; In San Francisco; Packing gold through the streets; Moves to Oakland; Impulse to shout "Hurrah for Jeff Davis."
IN THE diggings, among the miners, I spent three months, "keeping bach," with a genteel old Scotchman, in my brother's cabin on the mountain side. From the little stoop in front of my cabin, I could see villages of Digger Indians, Chinese and Greasers, and people from every nation of the earth.
Later I was introduced to a Bostonian who was sheriff of Placer county. He had been told I was