I used sometimes fairly to shake my fist at my handsome pile of mineral, my bullionless pockets of ore. There was gold in the quartz; there are pearls in the Jersey muds; there are plums in boarding-house puddings; there are sixpences in the straw of Broadway omnibuses.
Steady disappointment, by and by, informs a man that he is in the wrong place. All work, no play, no pay, is a hint to work elsewhere. But men must dig in the wrong spots to learn where these are, and so narrow into the right spot at last. Every man, it seems, must waste so much life. Every man must have so much imprisonment to teach him limits and fit him for freedom.
Nearly enough, however of Miei Prigioni. A word or two of my companions in jail. A hard lot they were, my neighbors within twenty miles! Jail-birds, some of them, of the worst kind. It was as well, perhaps, that my digging did not make money, and theirs did. They would not have scrupled to bag my gold and butcher me. But they were not all ruffians; some were only barbarians.
Pikes, most of these latter. America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the soul, as they are to beauty in the face.
He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith, which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths are to his words as Falstaff’s sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New York Aldermen, Digger Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are thorough-bred Pikes. The most vigorous of them leave their native landscape of cottonwood and sand-bars along the yellow ditches of the West, and emigrate with a wagon-load of pork and pork-fed progeny across the plains to California. There the miasms are roasted out of them; the shakes warmed away; they will grow rich, and possibly mellow, in the third or fourth generation. They had not done so in my time, I lived among them ad nauseam, month after month, and I take this opportunity to pay them parting compliments.
I went on toiling, day after day, week after week, two good years of my life, over that miserable mine. Nothing came of it. I was growing poorer with every ton we dug, poorer with every pound we crushed. In a few months more, I should have spent my last dollar and have gone to day labor, perhaps among the Pikes. The turnpike stuff refused to change into gold. I saw, of course, that something must be done. What, I did not know. I was in that state when one needs an influence without himself to take him by the hand gently, by the shoulder forcibly, by the hair roughly, or even by the nose insultingly, and drag him off into a new region.
The influence came. Bad news reached me. My only sister, a widow, my only near relative, died, leaving two young children to my care. It was strange how this sorrow made the annoyance and weariness of my life naught! How this responsibility cheered me! My life seemed no longer lonely and purposeless. Point was given to all my intentions at once. I must return home to New York. Further plans when I am there! But now for home! If any one wanted my quartz mine, he might have it. I could not pack it in my saddle-bags to present to a college cabinet of mineralogy.
I determined, as time did not absolutely press, to ride home across the plains. It is a grand journey. Two thousand miles, or so, on horseback. Mountains, deserts, prairies, rivers, Mormons, Indians, buffalo,—adventures without number in prospect. A hearty campaign, and no carpet knighthood about it.
It was late August. I began my preparations at once.