Towards the latter part of the week, people were compelled to be a little more quiet, from sheer exhaustion, but on New Year's Day, when there was a grand dinner at Rich Bar, the excitement broke out, if possible, worse than ever. The same scenes, in a more or less aggravated form, in proportion as the strength of the actors held out, were repeated at Smith's Bar and The Junction.
Nearly every day I was dreadfully frightened by seeing a boat-load of intoxicated men fall into the river, where nothing but the fact of their being intoxicated saved many of them from drowning. One morning about thirty dollars' worth of bread (it must have been tipsy-cake), which the baker was conveying to Smith's Bar, fell overboard, and sailed merrily away towards Marysville. People passed the river in a boat, which was managed by a pulley and a rope that was strained across it from Indian Bar to the opposite shore.
Of the many acquaintances who had been in the habit of calling nearly evening, three, only, appeared in the cabin during as many weeks. Now, however, the saturnalia is about over. Ned and Chock have nearly fiddled themselves into their respective graves, the claret (a favorite wine with miners) and oysters are exhausted, brandied fruits are rarely seen, and even port-wine is beginning to look scarce. Old callers occasionally drop in, looking dreadfully sheepish and subdued, and so sorry, and people are evidently arousing themselves from the bacchanal madness into which they were so suddenly and so strangely drawn.
With the exception of my last, this is the most unpleasant letter which I have ever felt it my duty to write to you. Perhaps you will wonder that I should touch upon such a disagreeable subject at all. But I am bound, Molly, by my promise to give you a true picture (as much as in me lies) of mining-life and its peculiar temptations, nothing extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. But, with all their failings, believe me, the miners, as a class, possess many truly admirable characteristics.
I have had rather a stupid time during the storm. We have been in the habit of taking frequent rows upon the river, in a funny little toppling canoe carved out of a log. The bridge at one end of our boating-ground, and the rapids at the other, made quite a pretty lake. To be sure, it was so small that we generally passed and repassed its beautiful surface at least thirty times in an hour. But we did not mind that, I can assure you. We were only too glad to be able to go onto the water at all. I used to return loaded down with the magnificent large leaves of some aquatic plant which the gentle frosts had painted with the most gorgeous colors, lots of fragrant mint, and a few wan white flowers which had lingered past their autumnal glory. The richest hothouse bouquet could never give me half the pleasure which I took in arranging, in a pretty vase of purple and white, those gorgeous leaves. They made me think of Moorish arabesques, so quaint and bizarre, and at the same time dazzlingly brilliant, were the varied tints. They were in their glory at evening, for, like an oriental beauty, they lighted up splendidly. Alas! where, one little month ago, my little lake lay laughing up at the stars, a turbid torrent rushes noisily by. The poor little canoe was swept away with the bridge, and splendid leaves hide their bright heads forever beneath the dark waters.
But I am not entirely bereft of the beautiful. From my last walk I brought home a tiny bit of outdoors, which, through all the long, rainy months that are to come, will sing to me silently, yet eloquently, of the blue and gold of the vanished summer, and the crimson and purple of its autumn. It is a branch, gathered from that prettiest feature of mountain scenery,—a moss-grown fir-tree. You will see them at every step, standing all-lovely in this graceful robe. It is, in color, a vivid pea-green, with little hard flowers which look more like dots than anything else, and contrast beautifully with the deeper verdure of the fir. The branch which I brought home I have placed above my window. It is three feet in length, and as large round as a person's arm; and there it remains, a cornice wreathed with purple-starred tapestry, whose wondrous beauty no upholsterer can ever match.
I have got the prettiest New Year's present. You will never guess what it is, so I shall have to tell you. On the eve of the year, as the "General" was lifting a glass of water, which had just been brought from the river, to his lips, he was startled at the sight of a tiny fish. He immediately put it into a glass jar and gave it to me. It is that most lovely of all the creatures of Thetis, a spotted trout, a little more than two inches in length. Its back, of mingled green and gold, is splashed with dots of the richest sable. A mark of a dark-ruby color, in shape like an anchor, crowns its elegant little head. Nothing can be prettier than the delicate wings of pale purple with which its snowy belly is faintly penciled. Its jet-black eyes, rimmed with silver within a circlet of rare sea-blue, gleam like diamonds, and its whole graceful shape is gilded with a shimmering sheen infinitely lovely. When I watch it from across the room as it glides slowly round its crystal palace, it reminds me of a beam of many-colored light, but when it glides up and down in its gay playfulness, it gleams through the liquid atmosphere like a box of shining silver. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and truly I never weary watching the perfected loveliness of my graceful little captive.
In the list of my deprivations above written, I forgot to mention a fact which I know will gain me the sympathy of all carnivorously disposed people. It is, that we have had no fresh meat for nearly a month! Dark and ominous rumors are also floating through the moist air, to the effect that the potatoes and onions are about to give out! But don't be alarmed, dear Molly. There is no danger of a famine. For have we not got wagon-loads of hard, dark hams, whose indurated hearts nothing but the sharpest knife and the stoutest arm can penetrate? Have we not got quintals of dreadful mackerel, fearfully crystallized in black salt? Have we not barrels upon barrels of rusty pork, and flour enough to victual a large army for the next two years? Yea, verily, have we, and more also. For we have oysters in cans, preserved meats, and sardines (apropos, I detest them), by the hundred-boxful.
So, hush the trembling of that tender little heart, and shut those tearful and alarmed eyes while I press a good-night kiss On their drooping lids.
