David Egelston.
A Forty-Niner, and the Discoverer of Gold Hill.
"I've heard tell, an' I believe it, that across the desert stretch a man could ha' walked for forty miles an' put his foot on a bone at every step. An' o' those who did reach, most o' them were so weak that camp fever an' dysentery took 'em off like flies. A good half died at the diggin's before they ever found a bit o' gold.
"How many o' the forty-niners died at sea? There's no tellin'. Ships set out from all corners o' the globe. There was a wild rush from England. That meant goin' round the Horn, an' there weren't many steamships, then. Sailin'-ships, so rotten that their owners were glad to get rid of 'em, were sold to forty-niners at fancy prices. In one week, eighteen ships sailed from England to go round the Horn to Californy an' seven arrived. The gold o' Sutter's Mill called many a good man to leave his bones on the ocean bottom.
"But it wasn't all bad luck an' dyin'. Lots o' the diggers struck it rich an' spent it quick. Gamblin' an' drinkin' an' work—that's all there was to a minin' camp in them days. Spendin' freely give a man a minute's glory. Treatin' the crowd was the only way to be popular. An', in a minin' camp, where there's no women to live with, no children to think of, no homes to go to, what is there but the saloon, an' what's the use o' the saloon without friends! A bag o' gold-dust was enough for a spree.
"Gold-diggin' don't go to make a man careful. It's always to-morrow that's goin' to be the lucky day. What's the use o' savin' ten dollars when a stroke o' the pick or a swirl o' the pan may suddenly give a man a thousand? So they thought. One miner found a pocket that netted him $60,000 in two weeks, an' when he sobered up, he hadn't six dollars' worth o' dust left.
"There was some that stuck to their earnin's, just the same, but they was either quick with a gun or slow wi' their tongues. Six brothers come out from England, none o' them ever havin' roughed it before, but they stuck together an' stayed sober. They were let alone, because to touch one meant to fight six. They went back to England, at the end o' the first season, with a million dollars between 'em.
"One man, who started out from 'Frisco wi' a drove of a hundred hogs, figurin' on sellin' 'em in the minin' camps for fresh meat, reached Feather River wi' five. But he sold those five for more'n twice as much as he'd paid for the hundred. An' that was only the beginnin'! On the way, his hogs rootin' in the ground had uncovered two pockets. He covered the places an' marked 'em wi' crosses, so's folks should think they was graves. On his way back, he took $5,000 out o' one pocket an' $10,000 out o' the other. An' then some folks try to make out that there ain't no such thing as luck!"
"But is it all so chancy as that?" queried Clem. "Surely if a chap knew in what sort of ground or near what sort of rock gold was generally found, he'd have some idea where to look."