An impartial future may possibly grant the plenary inspiration of Vigilance Committees. Perhaps that better choice was in truth denied them; it may be the hour demanded a sudden blow of self-defence. Whether better or best, the act has not left unmixed blessing, although it now seems as if the lawlessness, which even till these later years has from time to time manifested itself, is gradually and surely dying out. Yet to-day, as I write, State troops are encamped at Amador, to suppress a spirit which has taken law in its own hand.
With the gradual decline of gold product, something like social equilibrium asserted itself. By 1860 California had made the vast, inspiring stride from barbarism to vulgarity.
In failing gold-industry, and the gradual abandonment of placer-ground to Chinamen, there is abundant pathos. You see it in a hundred towns and camps where empty buildings in disrepair stand in rows; no nailing up of blinds or closing of doors hides the vacancy. The cheap squalor of Chinese streets adds misery to the scene, besides scenting a pure mountain air with odors of complete wretchedness. Pigs prowl the streets. Every deserted cabin knows a story of brave, manly effort ended in bitter failure, and the lingering, stranded men have a melancholy look as of faint fish the ebb has left to die.
I recall one town into which our party rode at evening. A single family alone remained, too desperately poor to leave their home; all the other buildings—church, post-office, the half-dozen saloons, and many dwellings—standing with wide-open doors, their cloth walls and ceilings torn down to make squaws’ petticoats.
If our horses in the great, deserted livery stable were as comfortable as we, who each made his bed on a billiard table, they did well.
With this slow decay the venturous, both good and bad, have drifted off to other mining countries, leaving most often small cause to regret them.
Pathos and comedy so tenderly blent can rarely be found as here. Enterprise has shrunken away from its old belongings; a feeble rill of trade trickles down the broad channel of former affluence. Those few 49ers who linger ought to be gently preserved for historic specimens, as we used to care for that cannon-ball in the Boston bricks, or whatever might remind this youthful country of a past. They are altogether harmless now, possessing the peculiar charm of lions with drawn teeth.
Behold this old-school relic, a type known as the real Virginia gentleman, as of a mild summer twilight he walks along the quiet street, clad in black broadcloth and spotless linen, a heavy cane hanging by its curved handle from his wrist. He pauses by the “s’loon,” receiving respectful salutation from a mild company of bummers who hold him in awe, and call him nothing less than “Judge.” They omit their habitual sugar-and-water, and are at pains to swallow as stiff a glass and as “neat” as their hero.
The Judge is reminded of livelier days by certain unhealed bullet-holes in ceiling and wall, and recounts for the hundredth time, in chaste language, the whole affair; and in particular how three-fingered Jack blew the top of Alabam’s head off, and that stopped it all.
“We buried the six,” the Judge continues, “side and side, and it wasn’t a week before two of us found old Jack and his partner on the same limb, and they made eight graves. The ball that made that hole went through my hat, and I travelled after that for awhile, till the thing sort of blew over.