Alas! I would infinitely have preferred the humblest brown jug, for that really has a certain beauty of its own, and, besides, it would have been in keeping with my cabin. However, that good creature looked upon the miraculous vegetable, the fabulous quadrupeds, and the impossible bipeds, with so much pride that I had not the heart to tell him that the pitcher was a fright, but, graciously accepting it, I hid it out of sight as quickly as possible, on the trunk wash-stand behind the curtain.
We breakfast at nine and dine at six, with a dish of soup at noon for luncheon. Do not think we fare as sumptuously every day as we did at the coronation-dinner. By no means; and it is said that there will probably be many weeks, during the season, when we shall have neither onions, potatoes, nor fresh meat. It is feared that the former will not keep through the whole winter, and the rancheros cannot at all times drive in cattle for butchering, on account of the expected snow.
Ned is not the only distinguished person residing on this Bar. There is a man camping here who was one of Colonel Frémont's guides during his travels through California. He is fifty years of age perhaps, and speaks several languages to perfection. As he has been a wanderer for many years, and for a long time was the principal chief of the Crow Indians, his adventures are extremely interesting. He chills the blood of the green young miners, who, unacquainted with the arts of war and subjugation, congregate around him by the cold-blooded manner in which he relates the Indian fights that he has been engaged in.
There is quite a band of this wild people herding a few miles below us, and soon after my arrival it was confidently affirmed and believed by many that they were about to make a murderous attack upon the miners. This man, who can make himself understood in almost any language, and has a great deal of influence over all Indians, went to see them, and told them that such an attempt would result in their own certain destruction. They said that they had never thought of such a thing; that the Americans were like the grass in the valleys, and the Indians fewer than the flowers of the Sierra Nevada.
Among other oddities, there is a person here who is a rabid admirer of Lippard. I have heard him gravely affirm that Lippard was the greatest author the world ever saw, and that if one of his novels and the most fascinating work of ancient or modern times lay side by side, he would choose the former, even though he had already repeatedly perused it. He studies Lippard just as other folks do Shakespeare, and yet the man has read and admires the majestic prose of Chilton, and is quite familiar with the best English classics! He is a Quaker, and his merciless and unmitigated regard for truth is comically grand, and nothing amuses me more than to draw out that peculiar characteristic. For instance, after talking at him the most beautiful and eloquent things that I can think of, I will pitilessly nail him in this wise:—
"Now, I know that you agree with me, Mr. ——?"
It is the richest and broadest farce in this flattering and deceitful world to see him look right into my eyes while he answers smilingly, without the least evasion or reserve, the astounding truth,—
"I have not heard a word that you have been saying for the last half-hour; I have been thinking of something else!"
His dreamland reveries on these occasions are supposed to be a profound meditation upon the character and writings of his pet author. I am always glad to have him visit us, as some one of us is sure to be most unflatteringly electrified by his uncompromising veracity. I am, myself, generally the victim, as I make it a point to give him every opportunity for the display of this unusual peculiarity. Not but that I have had disagreeable truth told me often enough, but heretofore people have done it out of spitefulness; but Mr. ——, who is the kindest-hearted of mortals, never dreams that his merciless frankness can possibly wound one's self-love.
But the great man—officially considered—of the entire river is the "Squire," as he is jestingly called. It had been rumored for some time that we were about to become a law-and-order-loving community, and when I requested an explanation, I was informed that a man had gone all the way to Hamilton, the county seat, to get himself made into a justice of the peace. Many shook their wise heads, and doubted, even if suited to the situation, which they say he is not, whether he would take here; and certain rebel spirits affirmed that he would be invited to walk over the hill before he had been in the community twenty-four hours, which is a polite way these free-and-easy young people have of turning out of town an obnoxious individual. Not that the Squire is particularly objectionable per se, but in virtue of his office, and his supposed ineligibility to fill the same. Besides, the people here wish to have the fun of ruling themselves. Miners are as fond of playing at law making and dispensing as French novelists are of "playing at Providence." They say, also, that he was not elected by the voice of the people, but that his personal friends nominated and voted for him unknown to the rest of the community. This is perhaps true. At least, I have heard some of the most respectable men here observe that had they been aware of the Squire's name being up as candidate for an office which, though insignificant elsewhere, is one of great responsibility in a mining community, they should certainly have gone against his election.