CHAPTER XXIX.
THE TRAGEDY AT SAN MIGUEL.—COURT AND CULPRITS.—AGE AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THOSE WHO SHOULD COME TO CALIFORNIA.—CONDITION OF THE PROFESSIONS.—THE WRONGS OF CALIFORNIA.—CLAIMS ON THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.—JOURNALISTS.
Retribution follows fast on the heels of crime in California. Two persons, a Hessian and Irishman, whom I had met in the Stanislaus, left the mines for the seaboard. On their way to Stockton, they fell in with two miners asleep under a tree, whom they murdered and robbed of their gold; with this booty they hastened across the valley of the San Joaquin, and skirting the mountains to avoid all frequented paths, held their course south to La Solidad. Here they fell in with three deserters from the Pacific squadron, who joined them, and the whole party proceeded south to San Miguel, where they quartered themselves for the night on the hospitality of Mr. Reade, an English ranchero of respectability and wealth. In the morning they took their departure, but had proceeded only a short distance, when it was agreed they should return and rob their host. During the ensuing night they rose on the household, consisting of Mr. Reade, his wife, and three children, a kinswoman with four children, and two Indian domestics, and murdered the whole! Having rifled the money-chest of a large amount of gold dust, the blood-stained party renewed their flight south, and had reached a secluded cove in a bend of the sea, below Santa Barbara, where they were overtaken by a band of citizens, who had tracked them from the neighborhood of San Miguel. The fugitives were armed, and avowed their determination to shoot down any person who should attempt to apprehend them. The citizens, though few, and badly provided with weapons, were resolute and determined. A desperate conflict ensued, in which one of the felons was shot dead; another, having discharged the last barrel of his revolver, jumped into the sea and was drowned; the remaining three were at length disarmed and secured. Of the citizens several were wounded, and one—the father of a beloved family—lay a corpse! The next morning, as there was no alcalde in the vicinity, the three prisoners were brought before a temporary court organized for the purpose, wherein twelve good and lawful men took oath to render judgment according to conscience. Each person when brought to the bar told his own story, inextricably involving his associates in the guilt of deliberate murder, and who, in their turn, wove the same terrible web about him. Of their guilt, though convicted without the testimony of an impartial witness, no doubt remained to disturb the convictions of the court. They were sentenced to death, and before the sun went down were in their graves! The whole five were buried among the stern rocks which frown on the sea, and which seem as if there to stay the tide of crime, as well as the storms of ocean. What a tragedy of depravity and despair! Thirteen innocent persons—men, women, and children—swept in an unsuspecting moment from life; and the five perpetrators of the crime, crushed into a hurried grave, under the avenging arm of justice! There is a spirit in California that will rightly dispose of the murderer; it may at times be hasty, and too little observant of the forms of law, but it reaches its object; it leaves the guilty no escape through the defects of an indictment, the ingenuity of counsel, or the clemency of the executive. It plants itself on the ground that the first duty society owes itself, is to protect its members; and to secure this object, it throws around the sanctity of life, the defenses found in the terrors of death. The grave is the prison which God has sunk in the path of the murderer. Let not man attempt to bridge it.
WHO SHOULD STAY AND WHO COME.
The indiscretion with which so many thousands are rushing to California will be a source of regret to them, and of sorrow to their friends. Not one in twenty will bring back a fortune, and not more than one in ten secure the means of defraying the expenses of his return. I speak now of those whose plans and efforts are confined to the mines, and who rely on the proceeds of their manual labor: when they have defrayed the expenses incident to their position, liquidated all demands for food, clothing, and implements for the year, their yellow heap will dwindle to a point. This might serve as the nucleus of operations which are to extend through a series of years; but as the result of the enterprise, involving privation and hardship, is a failure, no man should come to California under the impression that he can in a few months pick a fortune out of its mines. He may here and there light on a more productive deposit, but the chances are a hundred to one that his gains will be slenderly and laboriously acquired. He is made giddy with the reports of sudden wealth; these are the rare prizes, while the silence of the grave hangs over the multitudinous blanks.
A young man endowed with a vigorous constitution, and who possesses sterling habits of sobriety and application, and who has no dependencies at home, can do well in California. But he should come with the resolute purpose of remaining here eight or ten years, and with a spirit that can throw its unrelaxed energies into any enterprise which the progress of the country may develop. He must identify himself for the time being with all the great interests which absorb attention, and quicken labor. If he has not the enterprise and force of purpose which this requires, he should remain at home. There is another class of persons whom domestic obligations and motives of prudence should dissuade from a California adventure. It is blind folly in a man, who has a family dependent on him for a support, to exhaust the little means, which previous industry and frugality have left, in defraying the expenses of a passage here, with the vague hope that in a year or two he can return with an ample competence. I respect his feelings and motives, but honorable intentions cannot save him from disappointment. When the expenses which the most rigid economy could not avoid have been paid, and the obligations connected with the support of his family at home have been discharged, the results of his enterprise will leave him poor. He may never tell you of broken hopes and a shattered constitution, but his hearth-stone is strewn with their pale, admonitory fragments. Let me persuade those whom God has blessed with a faithful wife and interesting family, not to abandon these objects of affection for the gold mines of California. Do not come out here under the delusive belief that you can in a few months, or a brief year, on the proceeds of the mattock and bowl, accumulate a fortune. This has rarely if ever been done, even where the deposits were first disturbed by the more fortunate adventurer. If it could not be done in the green tree, what are you to expect in the dry? If when the placers were fresh, many gathered but little more than sufficient to meet their current wants, what can you anticipate when they are measurably exhausted? They who inflame your imagination with tales of inexhaustible deposits which only wait your spade and wash-bowl, abuse your credulity, and dishonor their own claims to truth.
THE PROFESSIONS AND PURSUITS.
All the secular professions and more privileged or prescribed pursuits in California are crowded to overflowing. Physicians are without patients; lawyers without clients; surveyors without lands; hydrographers without harbors; actors without audiences; painters without pupils; financiers without funds; minters without metals; printers without presses; hunters without hounds, and fiddlers without fools. And all these must take to the plough, the pickaxe, and spade. Even California, with all her treasured hills and streams, fell under that primal malediction which threw its death-shade on the infant world. It is as true here as among the granite rocks of New England—in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Let none think to escape this labor-destiny here; it environs the globe, and binds every nation and tribe in its inexorable folds.
The merchant, whose shrewdness avails him everywhere else, will often be wrecked here. The markets of a single month have all the phases of its fickle moon. The slender crescent waxes into the circle; and the full orb passes under a total eclipse. The man that figured on its front is gone, and with him the hopes of the millionaire. The bullfrog in his croaking pond, and the owl in his hooting tree, remain; but the speculator, like a ghost at the glimmer of day, hath fled. You can only dimly remember the phantom’s shape and where he walked, and half doubt the dream in which he denizened and dissolved from sight. But still the gulf of vision swarms with realities—with beings where the play of life and death, joy and grief, wealth and want, are the portion of the living and the legacy of the dead. California is a continent swelling between the hopes of the future and the wrecks of the past; but like all other continents, will be visited with the alternation of day and night. The cloud will travel where the sunbeam hath been.