He received no pay for these offerings, and expected none. They were sketches of a broadly burlesque sort, the robust horse-play kind of humor that belongs to the frontier. They were not especially promising efforts. One of them was about an old rackabones of a horse, a sort of preliminary study for “Oahu,” of the Sandwich Islands, or “Baalbec” and “Jericho,” of Syria. If any one had told him, or had told any reader of this sketch, that the author of it was knocking at the door of the house of fame such a person's judgment or sincerity would have been open to doubt. Nevertheless, it was true, though the knock was timid and halting and the summons to cross the threshold long delayed.
A winter mining-camp is the most bleak and comfortless of places. The saloon and gambling-house furnished the only real warmth and cheer. Our Aurora miners would have been less than human, or more, if they had not found diversion now and then in the happy harbors of sin. Once there was a great ball given at a newly opened pavilion, and Sam Clemens is said to have distinguished himself by his unrestrained and spontaneous enjoyment of the tripping harmony. Cal Higbie, who was present, writes:
In changing partners, whenever he saw a hand raised he would grasp
it with great pleasure and sail off into another set, oblivious to
his surroundings. Sometimes he would act as though there was no use
in trying to go right or to dance like other people, and with his
eyes closed he would do a hoe-down or a double-shuffle all alone,
talking to himself and saying that he never dreamed there was so
much pleasure to be obtained at a ball. It was all as natural as a
child's play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling over
themselves to get him for a partner, and most of the crowd, too full
of mirth to dance, were standing or sitting around, dying with
laughter.
What a child he always was—always, to the very end? With the first break of winter the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around camp stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies, and assailed the hills. There came then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt excitement had been mere intoxication. Higbie says:
It was amazing how wild the people became all over the Pacific
coast. In San Francisco and other large cities barbers, hack-
drivers, servant-girls, merchants, and nearly every class of people
would club together and send agents representing all the way from
$5,000 to $500,000 or more to buy mines. They would buy anything.
in the shape of quartz, whether it contained any mineral value or
not.
The letters which went from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly documentary. They are likely to be staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste in their composition, eagerness, and suppressed excitement; they are not always coherent; they are seldom humorous, except in a savage way; they are often profane; they are likely to be violent. Even the handwriting has a terse look; the flourish of youth has gone out of it. Altogether they reveal the tense anxiety of the gambling mania of which mining is the ultimate form. An extract from a letter of April is a fair exhibit:
Work not yet begun on the “Horatio and Derby”—haven't seen it yet.
It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks
—strike the ledge in July: Guess it is good—worth from $30 to $50
a foot in California....
Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim
on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die.
These mills here are not worth a d—n—except Clayton's—and it is
not in full working trim yet.
Send me $40 or $50—by mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrow
with pick and shovel. Something's got to come, by G—, before I let
go here.
By the end of April work had become active in the mines, though the snow in places was still deep and the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he writes:
I have been at work all day blasting and digging, and d—ning one of
our new claims—“Dashaway”—which I don't think a great deal of, but
which I am willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12 a feet. We
are following down under the ledge, but not taking it out. If we
get up a windlass to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and see
whether it is worth anything or not.
It must have been hard work picking away at the flinty ledges in the cold; and the “Dashaway” would seem to have proven a disappointment, for there is no promising mention of it again. Instead, we hear of the “Flyaway;” and “Annipolitan” and the “Live Yankee” and of a dozen others, each of which holds out the beacon of hope for a little while and then passes from notice forever. In May it is the “Monitor” that is sure to bring affluence, though realization is no longer regarded as immediate.