Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

The wailing sounds grew fuller and louder as I advanced, and now I could distinguish that they were the cries of an animal in grief, and not of one in bodily pain. I increased my speed to the utmost, and suddenly I felt the warm tongue of a dog touch my hand, and his tail brush my legs, in sign of friendly welcome. I stopped to pat and caress him, but the poor creature uttered another cry so full of sorrow that all other thoughts were routed on the instant.

He now preceded me, turning at each moment as if to see that I followed, and whining in a low, faint tone, as before. We had not long proceeded thus, when he stopped suddenly, and set up a cry the most shrill and heart-thrilling. I saw that we were in front of a miserable shealing, the door of which lay open; but all was dark within. I struck a light with my flint, and lighted a little taper. To my surprise, the hut contained several articles of furniture; but I had not more than time to notice them, when the dog, darting forward, placed his fore-paws upon a low settle-bed, and gave a dismal howl. I turned and beheld the figure of a very old man, his white beard hanging down to his chest, as he lay in what seemed a heavy sleep. I touched him; he was cold. I placed my hand on his heart; it was still. I tried to detect breathing; there was none—he was quite dead!

The poor dog appeared to watch me with intense interest, as, one by one, I tried these different signs of life; but when he saw the hand fall heavily from my own, he again set up his cries, which now lasted for several minutes. The scene was a sad and touching one. The poor old miner,—for such his dress and the scattered implements of the craft bespoke him,—forgotten by all the world save by his dog, lay in all the seeming calm of sleep. A cup of water stood near him, and a little wooden crucifix lay on the bed, where probably it had fallen from his fingers. Everything around betokened great poverty. The few articles of furniture seemed as if they had been fashioned by himself, being of the rudest workmanship: his lamp was a dried gourd, and his one chair had been a stump, hollowed out with a hatchet. The most striking feature of all was a number of printed paragraphs cut from old newspapers and magazines and nailed against the planking of the hut; and these seemed to convey a little history of the old miner, so far, at least, as the bent and object of his life were implied. They were all, without exception, exaggerated and high-flown accounts of newly discovered “Placers,”—rich mines of gold,—some in the dark plains of the Ukraine, some in the deep forests of Mexico, some in the interior of Africa and on the far-away shores of the Pacific. Promises of golden harvest, visions of wealth rolling in vast abundance, great oceans of gain before the parched and thirsting lips of toil and famine! Little thought they who, half in the wantonness of fancy, colored these descriptions, what seeds they were sowing in many a rugged nature! what feverish passions they were engendering! what lures to wile men on and on, through youth and manhood and age, with one terrible fascination to enslave them!

If many of these contained interesting scraps of adventure and enterprise in remote and strange countries, others were merely dry and succinct notices of the discovery of gold in particular places, announcements which nothing short of an innate devotion to the one theme could possibly have dwelt upon; and these, if I were to judge from the situations they occupied, were the most favored paragraphs, and those most frequently read over; they were the daily food with which he fed his hope, through, doubtless, long years of suffering and toil. It was the oil which replenished the lamp when the wick had burned to the very socket!

How one could fancy the old Gambusino as he sat before his winter fire, half dozing in the solitude of his uncompanionable existence, revelling in all the illusions with which his mind was filled! With what sympathy must he have followed his fellow-laborers in every far-away quarter of the globe! how mourned over their disappointments, how exulted in their successes! These little scraps and sentences were the only links that tied him to the world—they were all that spoke to him of his own species!

As I went about the hut, the appearance of the greatest poverty and privation struck me on every side: his clothing, worn to very tatters, had been mended by skins of beasts and patches of canvas; the tools with which he worked showed marks of rude repair that proved how “he to himself sufficed,” without aid from others.

I passed the night without sleep, my mind full of the melancholy picture before me. When day broke, I walked forth into the cool air to refresh myself, and found, to my astonishment, that the spot had been a Placer of once great repute,—at least so the remains around attested. The ruined framework of miners' huts; the great massive furnaces for smelting; huge cradles, as they are called, for gold-sifting; long troughs, formed of hollowed trunks, for washing,—lay scattered on all sides. The number of these showed what importance the spot had once possessed, and the rotten condition in which they now were proved how long it had been deserted by all save him who was now to take his rest where, for many a weary year, he had toiled and labored.

A little cross, decorated with those insignia of torture so frequently seen in Catholic countries,—the pincers, the scourge, and the crown of thorns,—showed where Piety had raised an altar beside that of Mammon; and underneath this I resolved to lay the poor old Gambusino's bones, as in a Christian grave. I could not divest my mind of the impression that some power, higher than mere chance, had led me to the spot to perform those last offices to the poor outcast. Having eaten my breakfast, which I shared with the dog, I set to work to fashion something that should serve as a coffin. There was timber in abundance, and the old miner's tools sufficed for all I needed. My labor, however, was only completed as night closed in, so that I was obliged to wait for morning to finish my task.

Wearied by my exertions, I slept soundly, and never awoke till the bright sunbeams pierced through the chinks of the log-hut, and streamed in amidst its dusky atmosphere; then I arose, and placed the old man in his coffin. I sat down beside it, and as I looked at the calm, cold features I could not help reflecting that even he had not been more an outcast from his fellows than I was myself. If fate had cast his lot in the solitude of this dreary region, he was not more alone in the world than I, who had neither home nor family. How strange was it, too, that it should have devolved upon me to pay him these last rites. No, no; this could not be accident. The longer I dwelt upon this theme, the more strongly was I impressed by this one conviction; and now, looking back, after the lapse of years, that feeling is but more confirmed by time.

Taking the shovel and the pick, I set forth to dig the grave, the poor dog following at my heels, as though knowing in what cause I was laboring. The earth was hard and stony, so that at first I made but little progress; but soon I reached a clayey soft soil, which again was succeeded by a dense, firm stratum of stones, impacted closely together, like a pavement made by hands; indeed, it was difficult to conceive it otherwise, the stones being so nearly of the same size, and laid down with a regularity so striking and purposelike. I proceeded to loosen them with the barreta, but, to my surprise, no sooner had I displaced this layer than another exactly similar displayed itself underneath. If this be “Nature's handiwork,” thought I, “it is the strangest thing I ever saw.” I labored hard to remove this second tier, and now came down upon a light gravelly soil, into which the barreta passed easily. Shall I own that it was with a sense of disappointment that I perceived this? It was not that my expectations had taken any distinct or palpable form, but their vagueness somehow had not excluded hope!