The inundation continued to increase at each instant, and more than once the “yellowest” waves compelled me to retire. This it was which first led me to despair of my poor comrades, since I inferred that the torrent had burst its barrier only a short space before my arrival; and as the sunset was the hour when all the gold discovered during the day was washed, before being deposited in the smelting-house, I conjectured that my companions were overtaken at that moment by the descending flood, and that none had escaped destruction.
However the sad event took place, I never saw any of them after; and although I tracked the stream for miles, and spent the entire of two days in search of them, I did not discover one trace of the luckless expedition. So changed had everything become—such a terrible alteration had the scene undergone—that whenever I awoke from a sleep, short and broken as my feverish thoughts would make it, it was with difficulty I could believe that this was once the “Camp;” that where that swollen and angry torrent rolled, had been the dry, gravelly bed where joyous parties labored; that beneath those cedars, where now the young alligator stirred the muddy slime, we used to sit and chat in pleasant companionship; that human joys and passions and hopes once lived and flourished in that little space where ruin and desolation had now set their marks, and where the weariest traveller would not linger, so sorrow-struck and sad was every feature of the scene.
Poor Halkett was uppermost in my thoughts,—his remembrance of his old mother, his plans for her future happiness and comfort, formed, doubtless, many a long year before, and only realized to be dashed forever! How many a wanderer and outcast, doubtless, like him, have sunk into unhonored graves in far-away lands, and of whom no trace exists, and who are classed among the worthless and the heartless of their families; and yet, if we had record of them, we might learn, perhaps, how thoughts of home—of some dear mother, of some kind sister, of some brother who had been more than father—had spirited them on to deeds of daring and privation, and how, in all the terrible conflict of danger in which their days were spent, one bright hope, of returning home at last, glittered like a light-ship on a lonely sea, and shed a radiance when all around was dark and dreary.
The third day broke, and still found me lingering beside the fatal torrent, not only without meeting with any of my former comrades, but even of that party who had returned to the Indian village not one came back. In humble imitation of prairie habit, I erected a little cross on the spot, and with my penknife inscribed poor Halkett's name. This done, I led my horse slowly away through the tangled underwood till I reached the open plain, then I struck out in a gallop, and rode in the direction where the sun was setting.
The mere detail of personal adventures, in which the traits of character or the ever-varying aspects of human nature find no place, must always prove wearisome. The most “hair-breadth 'scapes” require for their interest the play of passions and emotions; and in this wise the perils of the lonely traveller amid the deserts of the Far West could not vie in interest with the slightest incident of domestic life, wherein human cares and hopes and joys are mingled up.
I will not longer trespass on the indulgence of any one who has accompanied me so far, by lingering over the accidents of my prairie life, nor tell by what chances I escaped death in some of its most appalling forms. The “Choctaw,” the jaguar, the spotted leopard of the jungle, the cayman of the sand lakes, had each in turn marked me for its prey, and yet, preserved from every peril, I succeeded in reaching the little village of “La Noria,” or the “Well,” which occupies one of the opening gorges of the Rocky Mountains, at the outskirts of which some of the inhabitants found me asleep, with clothing reduced to very rags, nothing remaining of all my equipment save my rifle and a little canvas pouch of ammunition.
My entertainers were miners, whose extreme poverty and privation would have been inexplicable, had I not learned that the settlement was formed exclusively of convicts, who had either been pardoned during the term of their sentence, or, having completed their time, preferred passing the remainder of their lives in exile. As a “billet of conduct” was necessary to all who settled at the village, the inhabitants, with a very few exceptions, were peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive; and of the less well disposed, a rigidly severe police took the most effective charge.
Had there been any way of disposing of me, I should not have been suffered to remain; but as there was no “parish” to which they could “send me on,” nor any distinct fund upon which to charge me, I was retained in a spirit of rude compassion, for which, had it even been ruder, I had been grateful. The “Gobernador” of the settlement was an old Mexican officer of Santa Anna's staff called Salezar, and whose “promotion” was a kind of penalty imposed upon him for his robberies and extortions in the commissariat of the army. He was not altogether unworthy of the trust, since it was asserted that there never was a convict vice nor iniquity in which he was not thoroughly versed, nor could any scheme be hatched, the clew to which his dark ingenuity could not discover.
