The end of all good government is the safety and happiness of the governed. It is not possible that a high state of civilization and progress can be maintained unless the tenure of life and property is secure; and it follows that the first efforts of a people in a new country for the inauguration of the reign of peace, the sure precursor of prosperity and stability, should be directed to the accomplishment of this object. In newly settled mining districts, the necessity for some effective organization of a judicial and protective character is more keenly felt than it is in other places, where the less exciting pursuits of agriculture and commerce mainly attract the attention and occupy the time of the first inhabitants.
There are good reasons for this difference. The first is the entirely dissimilar character of the populations; and the second, the possession of vast sums of money by uneducated and unprincipled people, in all places where the precious metals may be obtained at the cost of the labor necessary to exhume them from the strata in which they lie concealed.
In an agricultural country, the life of the pioneer settler is always one of hard labor, of considerable privation, and of more or less isolation, while the people who seek to clear a farm in the wild forest, or who break up the virgin soil of the prairies are usually of the steady and hard-working classes, needing little assistance from courts of justice to enable them to maintain rights which are seldom invaded; and whose differences, in the early days of the country, are, for the most part, so slight as to be scarcely worth the cost of a litigation more complicated than a friendly and, usually, gratuitous, arbitration--submitted to the judgment of the most respected among the citizens.
In marked contrast to the peaceful life of the tiller of the soil, and to the placid monotony of his pursuits are the turbulent activity, the constant excitement and the perpetual temptations to which the dweller in a mining camp is subject, both during his sojourn in the gulches, or, if he be given to prospecting, in his frequent and unpremeditated change of location, commonly called a “stampede.” There can scarcely be conceived a greater or more apparent difference than exists between the staid and sedate inhabitants of rural districts, and the motley group of miners, professional men and merchants, thickly interspersed with sharpers, refugees, and a full selection from the dangerous classes that swagger, armed to the teeth, through the diggings and infest the roads leading to the newly discovered gulches, where lies the object of their worship--Gold.
Fortunately the change to a better state of things is rapid, and none who now walk the streets of Virginia would believe that, within two years of this date, the great question to be decided was, which was the stronger, right or might?
And here it must be stated, that the remarks which truth compels us to make, concerning the classes of individuals which furnish the law defying element of mining camps, are in no wise applicable to the majority of the people, who, while exhibiting the characteristic energy of the American race in the pursuit of wealth, yet maintain, under every disadvantage, an essential morality, which is the more creditable since it must be sincere, in order to withstand the temptations to which it is constantly exposed. “Oh, cursed thirst of gold,” said the ancient, and no man has even an inkling of the truth and force of the sentiment, till he has lived where gold and silver are as much the objects of desire, and of daily and laborious exertion, as glory and promotion are to the young soldier. Were it not for the preponderance of this conservative body of citizens, every camp in remote and recently discovered mineral regions would be a field of blood; and where this is not so, the fact is proof irresistible that the good is in sufficient force to control the evil, and eventually to bring order out of chaos.
Let the reader suppose that the police of New York were withdrawn for twelve months, and then let them picture the wild saturnalia which would take the place of the order that reigns there now. If, then, it is so hard to restrain the dangerous classes of old and settled communities, what must be the difficulty of the task, when, tenfold in number, fearless in character, generally well armed, and supplied with money to an extent unknown among their equals in the east, such men find themselves removed from the restraints of civilized society, and beyond the control of the authority which there enforces obedience to the law.
Were it not for the sterling stuff of which the mass of miners is made, their love of fair play, and their prompt and decisive action in emergencies, this history could never have been written, for desperadoes of every nation would have made this country a scene of bloodshed and a sink of iniquity such as was never before witnessed.
Together with so much that is evil, no where is there so much that is sternly opposed to dishonesty and violence as in the mountains; and though careless of externals and style, to a degree elsewhere unknown, the intrinsic value of manly uprightness is no where so clearly exhibited and so well appreciated as in the Eldorado of the west. Middling people do not live in these regions. A man or a woman becomes better or worse by a trip towards the Pacific. The keen eye of the experienced miner detects the imposter at a glance, and compels his entire isolation, or his association with the class to which he rightfully belongs.
Thousands of weak-minded people return, after a stay in the mountains, varying in duration from a single day to a year, leaving the field where only the strong of heart are fit to battle with difficulty, and to win the golden crown which is the reward of persevering toil and unbending firmness. There is no man more fit to serve his country in any capacity requiring courage, integrity, and self-reliance, than an “honest miner,” who has been tried and found true by a jury of mountaineers.
The universal license that is, at first, a necessity of position in such places, adds greatly to the number of crimes, and to the facilities for their perpetration. Saloons, where poisonous liquors are vended to all comers, and consumed in quantities sufficient to drive excitable men to madness and to the commission of homicide, on the slightest provocation, are to be found in amazing numbers, and the villainous compounds there sold, under the generic name of whiskey, are more familiarly distinguished by the cognomens of “Tangle-leg,” “Forty-rod,” “Lightning,” “Tarantula-juice,” etc., terms only too truly describing their acknowledged qualities.
The absence of good female society, in any due proportion to the numbers of the opposite sex, is likewise an evil of great magnitude; for men become rough, stern and cruel, to a surprising degree, under such a state of things.
In every frequent street, public gambling houses with open doors and loud music, are resorted to, in broad daylight, by hundreds--it might almost be said--of all tribes and tongues, furnishing another fruitful source of “difficulties,” which are commonly decided on the spot, by an appeal to brute force, the stab of a knife, or the discharge of a revolver. Women of easy virtue are to be seen promenading through the camp, habited in the gayest and most costly apparel, and receiving fabulous sums for their purchased favors. In fact, all the temptations to vice are present in full display, with money in abundance to secure the gratification of the desire for novelty and excitement, which is the ruling passion of the mountaineer.
One “institution,” offering a shadowy and dangerous substitute for more legitimate female association, deserves a more peculiar notice. This is the “Hurdy-Gurdy” house. As soon as the men have left off work, these places are opened, and dancing commences. Let the reader picture to himself a large room, furnished with a bar at one end--where champagne at $12 (in gold) per bottle, and “drinks” at twenty-five to fifty cents, are wholesaled, (correctly speaking)--and divided, at the end of this bar, by a railing running from side to side. The outer enclosure is densely crowded (and, on particular occasions, the inner one also) with men in every variety of garb that can be seen on the continent. Beyond the barrier, sit the dancing women, called “hurdy-gurdies,” sometimes dressed in uniform, but, more generally, habited according to the dictates of individual caprice, in the finest clothes that money can buy, and which are fashioned in the most attractive styles that fancy can suggest. On one side is a raised orchestra. The music suddenly strikes up, and the summons, “Take your partners for the next dance,” is promptly answered by some of the male spectators, who paying a dollar in gold for a ticket, approach the ladies’ bench, and--in style polite, or otherwise, according to antecedents--invite one of the ladies to dance.
The number being complete, the parties take their places, as in any other dancing establishment, and pause for the performance of the introductory notes of the air.
Let us describe a first class dancer--“sure of a partner every time”--and her companion. There she stands at the head of the set. She is of middle height, of rather full and rounded form; her complexion as pure as alabaster, a pair of dangerous looking hazel eyes, a slightly Roman nose, and a small and prettily formed mouth. Her auburn hair is neatly banded and gathered in a tasteful, ornamented net, with a roll and gold tassels at the side. How sedate she looks during the first figure, never smiling till the termination of “promenade, eight,” when she shows her little white hands in fixing her handsome brooch in its place, and settling her glistening ear-rings. See how nicely her scarlet dress, with its broad black band round the skirt, and its black edging, sets off her dainty figure. No wonder that a wild mountaineer would be willing to pay--not one dollar, but all that he has in his purse, for a dance and an approving smile from so beautiful a woman.
Her cavalier stands six feet in his boots, which come to the knee, and are garnished with a pair of Spanish spurs, with rowels and bells like young water wheels. His buckskin leggings are fringed at the seams, and gathered at the waist with a U. S. belt, from which hangs his loaded revolver and his sheath knife. His neck is bare, muscular and embrowned by exposure, as is also his bearded face, whose sombre hue is relieved by a pair of piercing dark eyes. His long, black hair hangs down beneath his wide felt hat, and, in the corner of his mouth, is a cigar, which rolls like the lever of an eccentric, as he chews the end in his mouth. After an amazingly grave salute, “all hands round” is shouted by the prompter, and off bounds the buckskin hero, rising and falling to the rhythm of the dance, with a clumsy agility and a growing enthusiasm, testifying his huge delight. His fair partner, with practiced foot and easy grace, keeps time to the music like a clock, and rounds to her place as smoothly and gracefully as a swan. As the dance progresses, he of the buckskins gets excited, and nothing but long practice prevents his partner from being swept off her feet, at the conclusion of the miner’s delight, “set your partners,” or “gents to the right.” An Irish tune or a hornpipe generally finishes the set, and then the thunder of heel and toe, and some amazing demivoltes are brought to an end by the aforesaid, “gents to the right,” and “promenade to the bar,” which last closes the dance. After a treat, the bar-keeper mechanically raps his blower as a hint to “weigh out,” the ladies sit down, and with scarcely an interval, a waltz, polka, shottische, mazurka, varsovienne, or another quadrille commences.
