There was in our party a Scotchman by the name of Campbell, one of the Sidney convicts. He was quite agreeable when he was sober, but sometimes he would get partially intoxicated, and then he was a bad man to get along with. He appeared to be a man of good education and understood surveying. Mr. Elder was obliged to be absent a part of the time, and in his absence he made Mr. Campbell his foreman.
Sometimes when he had indulged too freely of whiskey, he would neither work himself nor permit any one else. This did not suit me, as I intended to labor just as faithfully in the absence of Mr. Elder as I would if he were present.
One day when Mr. Campbell became quite drunk and foolish, and had allowed but very little work to be done by the party until afternoon, my patience had become exhausted. I undertook to drink from the waterpail that was standing nearby under a large tree, when he gave the pail a sharp tilt, which spilled some of the contents upon me. I started the second time to drink from the pail and he repeated the same foolish trick. After he had done this for several times, I dashed all the remaining water in the pail squarely into his face. He at once became almost frantic with rage, and seizing an axe threatened to cut me in pieces. I kept myself a short distance beyond his reach, and laughed at his threats.
I knew it was an easy matter for me to keep beyond his reach, but I didn’t know how long his anger would continue to rage, or whether he would revenge himself at some convenient time in the future when I might not be expecting it. After a short time he ordered me to go to the river near by and refill the pail with water, but he still held the axe in one hand and the pail in the other. I invited him to put aside the axe and give me the pail, which he finally did, and I immediately complied with his request.
After Mr. Elder returned I spoke to him in relation to Mr. Campbell’s actions, and he discharged him. The next winter I heard that he was lynched at some place in one of the mountain valleys for horse stealing.
One incident I always remembered which took place while we were employed on this job. When we were boarding at the French ranch, we carried a lunch for our dinners, which we would eat while seated under a large oak tree. One day we sat down in the shade of a large branching tree and ate our dinner and rested ourselves perhaps nearly an hour. Upon starting for our work we had gone but a short distance from the tree, where but a moment previous we had been quietly seated, when we heard a loud crash, and upon turning around we saw that a very large limb had broken from the tree and had fallen exactly upon the spot where we had been seated but a moment previous.
This branch at the point of breakage was more than a foot in diameter, and probably contained nearly a cord of wood. There was not a breath of wind stirring and the branch had broken from its own weight, being just fully leaved out. It seemed to me to be a very narrow escape from a serious accident. I afterwards learned from my own observation that it was very often that limbs broke from such trees when loaded with leaves and there was no wind stirring.
Mr. Elder seemed to manifest a deep interest in my welfare, and while he was drafting the plan of the survey we had made, desired me to learn to use the protractor, scale and dividers.
At that time I had no intention of taking up the business of surveying, although from what little experience I had had with it, I thought I would like the work very much. I practiced with the instruments as I had the time to spare from my other work, and learned something about protracting and the use of the scale and dividers.
Later in the same season I assisted Mr. Elder in laying out another “paper city,” but it was not of so large extent as was the former one.