A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
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Thomas Dykes Beasley >> A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
When quartz lodes began to be discovered and worked, it was found that
the location of claims by square feet did not protect the miner or
afford sufficient territory upon which to expend his labor. Accordingly
a miners' meeting was held in Nevada City on December 20, 1852, and a
body of laws prescribed, governing all quartz mines within the county of
Nevada. The following were the salient features: "Each proprietor of a
quartz claim shall be entitled to one hundred feet on a quartz ledge or
vein; the discoverer shall be allowed one hundred feet additional. Each
claim shall include all the dips, angles, and variations of the same."
The remaining articles related to the working, holding and recording of
claims. This law was incorporated in the raining legislation of the
State of Nevada and has formed the basis of the mining laws of each
territory of the United States. Thus we have a proof not only of the
intelligence of the early miner, but also of his capacity for
self-government. It must be remembered that the miners came from all
over the United States, but principally from the West and the South.
Probably none had seen a quartz ledge before coming to California, yet
the necessity for extending a claim as far as the ledge dipped was soon
perceived, as also the taking into consideration a change in the
direction or course of the lode. Commenting on these laws and the causes
leading to their adoption, Mr. Muslin became emphatic. He said:
"No body of rough, uncouth, pistolled ruffians, such as Bret Harte
depicts the miners, would have formed such a group of benevolent,
far-reaching and comprehensive laws. The early miner represented the
best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles,
enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the long
journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea;
undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of
the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of
the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which
distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing
dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous
hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. It is another way of stating the
maxim of law and equity: 'so use your own property, as not to injure
that of another.'"
Mr. Maslin agrees with Ben Taylor that the hangings and shootings of the
period following the discovery of gold have been grossly exaggerated. On
this point he said: "I will venture to assert that in certain of the
Mississippi Valley States, in their early settlement, more men were
killed in one year than in ten of the early mining years in California."
Of lynching, he said: "There were few lynchings in California, and those
mostly in the southern tier of counties, of persons convicted of
cattle-stealing." In connection with lynching he related a serio-comic
incident that occurred in Grass Valley in the early days.
Several fires had taken place in the town and the inhabitants were in
consequence much excited. A watchman on his rounds espied a light in a
vacant log cabin, and entering, caught a man in the act of striking a
match. He arrested him and the populace were for taking summary
vengeance. A man known as "Blue Coat Osborne" cried out, "Let's hang
him! Nevada City once hanged a man and Grass Valley never did!" This was
an effective appeal, for the rivalry that has lasted ever since already
existed. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed; the man was subsequently
tried and acquitted, it appearing that he was a traveling prospector who
had merely entered the cabin in order to light his pipe! In this
connection, I may state that Mr. Maslin confirmed the story of the three
friends in Nevada City, who attempted to withstand "the ordeal by fire."
Mr. Maslin is justly jealous for the reputation of the Argonauts.
Perhaps Bret Harte's miner, with his ready pistol, was as far from the
mark as Rudyard Kipling's picture of Tommy Atkins as "an absentminded
beggar" - an imputation the real "Tommy" hotly resented. At the same
time, such stories as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Tennessee's
Partner," not to quote others, prove Bret Harte conceded to the miner,
courage, patience, gentleness, generosity and steadfastness in
friendship. If Bret Harte really "hurt" California, it was because,
leaving the State for good in February, 1871, he carried with him the
atmosphere of the early mining days and never got out of it. He never
realized the transition from mining to agriculture and horticulture, as
the leading industries of the State. Thus his later stories which dealt
with California, written long after the subsidence of the mining
excitement, continued to convey to the Eastern or English reader an
impression of the Californian as a bearded individual, his trousers
tucked into long boots and the same old "red shirt" with the sleeves
rolled back to the shoulders! As lately - comparatively speaking - as
the Chicago Columbian Exposition, a lady told me she met at the Fair a
woman who said she wanted to visit California, and asked if it would be
safe to do so "on account of the Indians!" While Indians do not appear
in Bret Harte's pages, it is a safe conjecture that, through association
of ideas, this lady conjured up a vague vision of a "prairie schooner"
crossing the plains, harassed by the Indian of the colored prints!
The following picture of the trying of a civil suit under difficulties,
though in all probability causing little comment at the time, would
undoubtedly do so at the present day, were the conditions possible. In
1853 Mr. Maslin owned, with his brother, a one-fifth interest in ten
gravel claims at Pike Flat near Grass Valley. On the ground of alleged
imperfection of location of a portion of these claims, they were
"jumped," and litigation followed.
The case was called before "Si" Brown, a justice of the peace, at Rough
and Ready, in a building (of which I obtained a photograph) used as a
hotel and for other purposes. In the long room, now occupied as a store,
Judge Brown held his court. On the right was a door leading to the bar.
Extending the whole length of the room were four faro tables. At the
rear the judge, jury, attorneys and the principals in the lawsuit made
the best of the accommodations.
After stating the case, Judge Brown thus addressed the gamblers at the
faro tables: "Boys, the court is now opened, call your games low!" In
accordance with this request, though still audible, came in a monotonous
undertone, the faro, dealers' oft-repeated call: "Gents, make your game
- make your game!" The bets were put down and the cards called, in the
same subdued voice. At intervals, an attorney on one side or the other
would arise and say: "I move you, your Honor, that the court do now take
a recess of ten minutes." The court: "The motion is sustained; but go
softly, gentlemen, go softly!" It is probably needless to add that
judge, jury, principals, attorneys and witnesses filed out of the door
leading to the right; returning in ten minutes to resume the trial to
the not altogether inappropriate accompaniment from the faro dealers,
"Make your game, gents, make your game!"
The spirit of rivalry between Grass Valley and Nevada City has been
accentuated, of late, by the efforts of the former town to secure the
honor of being the county seat, on the claim that it possesses nearly
double the population of Nevada City. Politics serve to intensify the
feeling; Grass Valley, which contains many people of Southern birth,
being largely Democratic in its affiliations, whilst Nevada City is as
strongly, and, one may add, as conservatively, Republican.
Possibly the oldest building in Grass Valley is the Western Hotel. It is
so hidden in the surrounding trees that it was with difficulty I took a
photograph in which any portion of the hotel itself appeared. In the
garden stands a splendid English walnut over forty years old; and on the
porch, the well and pump to which I have before alluded as a
distinguishing feature of the old-time hostelry, add a quaint and
characteristic touch.
Grass Valley and Nevada City are nearly three thousand feet above sea
level. The air, in consequence, is light and pure and the heat seldom
excessive. It would be difficult, the world over, to find a more
agreeable or salubrious climate.
It was with genuine regret that I left Grass Valley the following
morning; not even Sonora possessed for me a stronger attraction. As I
paused on the summit of the hill, for a farewell view of the town, I
mentally resolved - the Fates permitting - I would pay another and more
protracted visit to this land of enchantment.
Chapter VII
Grass Valley to Smartsville. Sucker Flat and its Personal Appeal.
I was heading due west for Smartsville, just across the line in Yuba
County. In four miles, I came to Rough and Ready, once a famous camp.
Save for the inevitable hotel, now used in part as a store, there was
nothing to suggest the cause of its pristine glory or the origin of its
emphatic designation; today it is simply a picturesque, rural hamlet. In
Penn Valley, a mile or two farther on, I passed a smashed and abandoned
automobile, the second wreck I had encountered. I thanked my star I
traveled afoot; heavy going, it is true, in places, but safe and sure.
Notwithstanding the ubiquity of the autocar, it is still a fact that
between the man in the car and the man on foot is set an impassable
gulf. You are walking through a mountainous country, where every bend of
the road reveals some new charm; absorbed in silent enjoyment of the
scene, you have forgotten the very existence of the machine, when a
raucous "honk" jolts you out of your daydream and causes you to jump for
your life. In a swirl of dust the monster engulfs you, leaving you the
dust and the stench of gasoline as souvenirs, but followed by your
anathemas! This doubtless is where the man in the car thinks he has
scored. Perhaps he has. When the dust on the road has settled and you
have rubbed it out of your eyes, once more you forget his existence.
But the very speed with which he travels is the reason why the man in
the car misses nearly all the charm of the country through which he is
passing. On this tramp I took forty-odd photographs, all more or less of
historical interest. Riding in an automobile, many of the subjects I
would not have noticed or, if I had, I would not have been able to bring
my camera into play. On several occasions I retraced my steps a good
quarter of a mile, feeling I had lost a landscape, or street scene I
might never again have the opportunity to behold.
What is of far greater consequence, the man on the road comes into touch
not only with Nature, but the Children of Nature! In these days,
automobiles are as thick as summer flies; you cannot escape them even in
the Sierra foot-hills. No attention is paid them by the country people,
unless they are in trouble or have caused trouble, which is mostly the
case. But the man who "hikes" for pleasure is a source of perennial
interest not unmixed with admiration, especially when walking with the
thermometer indicating three figures in the shade. To him the small boy
opens his heart; the "hobo" passes the time of day with a merry jest
thrown in; the good housewife brings a glass of cold water or milk,
adding womanlike, a little motherly advice; the passing teamster, or
even stage-driver - that autocrat of the "ribbons" - shouts a cheery
"How many miles today, Captain?" or, "Where did yon start from this
morning, Colonel?" - these titles perhaps due to the battered old coat
of khaki.
All the humors of the road are yours. In fact, you yourself contribute
to them, by your unexpected appearance on the scene and the novelty of
your "make-up," if I may be pardoned the expression. At the hotel bar,
you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into
immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant." After dinner, seated on a
bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the
nation or of the town - usually the latter - with the man who in the
morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you
declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly
interest are met more than half way.
The early romances, the prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don
Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than
narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular -
perhaps Fielding's masterpiece - is simply the story of a journey from
London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant.
In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the
various characters, thrown together by chance, there assembled. Dickens
unquestionably derived inspiration from Smollett and Fielding; nor is
there any doubt but that Harte made a close study of Dickens.
From which preamble we come to the statement; if you would study human
nature on the road, you must simply go where men congregate and exchange
ideas. The plots of nearly all Bret Harte's mining stories are thus
closely associated with the bar-rooms and taverns of the mining towns of
his day. What would remain of any of Phillpott's charming stories of
rural England, if you eliminated the bar-room of the village inn? In
hospitality and generous living, the inns of the mining towns still keep
up the old traditions. The card room and bar-room are places where men
meet; to altogether avoid them from any pharisaical assumption of moral
superiority is to lose the chance of coming in contact with the leading
citizen, philanthropist, or eccentric character.
In the old romances it must be admitted there is much brawling and heavy
drinking, as well as unseemliness of conduct. Yet in spite of the fact
that hotel bars and saloons abound in all the old mining towns, the
writer throughout his travels and notwithstanding the intense heat, not
only saw no person under the influence of liquor, but also never heard a
voice raised in angry dispute. Moderation, decency and a kindly
consideration for the rights of others seem habitual with these people.
It is fifteen miles from Grass Valley to Smartsville, and I arrived at
the SmartsviIle Hotel in time for the midday meal. Smartsville has "seen
better days," but still maintains a cheerful outlook on life. The
population has dwindled from several thousand to about three hundred. It
is, however, the central point for quite an extensive agricultural and
pastoral country surrounding it.
The swinging sign over the hotel bears the legend, "Smartsville Hotel,
John Peardon, Propr." The present proprietor is named "Peardon," but
everyone addressed him as "Jim." Having established a friendly footing,
I said: "Mr. Peardon, I notice the sign over the door reads John
Peardon. How is it that they all call you 'Jim?'" "Oh," he replied,
"John Peardon was my father, I was born in this hotel;" - another of the
numerous instances that came under my observation of the way these
people "stay where they are put."
John Peardon was an Englishman. The British Isles furnished a very
considerable percentage of the pioneers, the evidences whereof remain
unto this day. The swinging signs over the hotels for one; another, the
prevalence in all the mining towns of Bass's pale ale. You will find it
in the most unpretentious hotels and restaurants. An Englishman expects
his ale or beer, as a matter of course, whether at the Equator or at the
Arctic Circle. When I first arrived in California in 1868, I drifted
down into the then sheep and cattle country in the lower end of Monterey
County. An English family living on an isolated ranch sent home for a
girl who had worked for them in the old country. Upon her arrival, the
first question she asked was: "How far is it to the church?" The second:
"Where can I get my beer?" When informed there was no church within a
hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest
saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad! Bereft, at
one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground
seemed to have given way from under her feet. For her, these two
particulars comprised the whole of the British Constitution.
Smartsville possessed a sentimental interest for me, for the reason that
in the sixties my father mined and taught a private school in an
adjoining camp bearing the derogatory appellation "Sucker Flat." What
mischance prompted this title will never now be known. In my father's
time, it contained a population of nearly a thousand persons; and
judging from the manner in which the gulch and the contiguous flat have
been torn, scarred, burrowed into and tunneled under, if gold there was,
most strenuous efforts had been made to bring it to light.
I asked if there was anyone in Smartsville who would be likely to
remember my father, and was referred by Mr. Peardon to "Bob" Beatty,
who, he said, had, lived in Smartsville all his life and knew everybody.
As Mr. Beatty was within a stone's throw, at the Excelsior Store, I had
no difficulty in finding him. Introducing myself, I asked Mr. Beatty if
he remembered my father. "To be sure I do," he exclaimed, "I went to his
school, and," laughing heartily, "well I remember a licking he gave me!"
He said that among the boys who attended that school, several in after
years, as men, had become prominent in the history of the State.
Mr. Beatty - now a pleasant, genial gentleman of fifty-two - very kindly
walked with me to the brow of the hill commanding a view of Sucker Flat,
and pointed out the exact spot where the school had stood, for not a
stick or a stone remains to mark the locus of the town - it is simply a
name upon the map.
I mention this incident as being another proof of the extraordinary hold
the Sierra foot-hill country has upon the people who were born there, as
well as upon those who have drifted there by force of circumstances. It
is forty-six or forty-seven years since my father conducted that school,
yet I felt so sure from previous experiences there would be in
Smartsville someone who remembered him, that I determined to include it
in my itinerary.
Chapter VIII
Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
Early the next morning I started for Marysville, the last leg in my
journey, and a long twenty miles distant. I had been dreading the pull
through the Sacramento Valley, having a lively recollection of my
experience in the San Joaquin, on leaving Stockton. The day was sultry,
making the heat still more oppressive. After leaving the foot-hills for
good, I walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a
shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized
there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the
shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light
breeze sprang up - the fag end of the trade wind - and, though hot, it
served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry
weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one
hundred miles due north of Stockton - of course, much farther by rail -
and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the
cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole
distance. It is a country to avoid.
About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by
the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts
Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly
offered to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He
seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I
prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a
man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel
experience, and served to deprive him of further speech. He simply sat
and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his
machine.
A sturdy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the
scene, shouted as he passed: "Why didn't yer ride wid de guy?" I replied
as before, "Because I prefer to walk;" adding for his benefit, "I've no
use for autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal
after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce
joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this
fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance
of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can
of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing a
ride - in an autocar, at that - appealed with irresistible force.
To walk in the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine
tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a
general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because
he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible
onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his
back that infuriates the average dog, as I have on several occasions
found to my annoyance. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his whimsical and
altogether delightful "Travels with a Donkey," thus vents his opinion
anent the dog question:
"I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear
more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver and is, besides, supported by
a sense of duty. If you kill a wolf you meet with encouragement and
praise, but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the
domestic affections come clamoring around you for redress. At the end of
a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen
annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and
respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of the
clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not
amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from traveling a-foot.
I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway or
sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them."
I confess to a feeling of sympathy with the men we so indiscriminately
brand with the contemptuous epithet, "hobo." In the first place, the
road itself, with its accompanying humors and adventures, forms a mutual
and efficacious bond. How little we know of the "Knights of the Road,"
or the compelling circumstances that turned them adrift upon the world!
"All sorts and conditions of men" are represented, from the college
professor to the ex-pugilist. I have "hit the ties" in company with a
so-called "hobo" who quoted Milton and Shakespeare by the yard,
interspersed with exclamations appreciative of his enjoyment of the
country through which we were passing. And once when on a tramp along
the coast from San Francisco to Monterey, I fell in at Point San Pedro
with a professional, who bitterly regretted the coming of the Ocean
Shore Railway, then in process of construction. "For years," said he, "I
have been in the habit of making this trip at regular intervals, on my
way south. I had the road to myself and thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful
beauty of the scene; but now this railroad has come with its mushroom
towns, and all the charm has gone. Never again for me! This is my last
trip!"
I have not the slightest doubt that sheer love of the road - and only a
tramp knows what those words mean - is the controlling influence which
keeps fifty per cent of the fraternity its willing slaves. What was
Senhouse - that most fascinating of Maurice Hewlett's creations - but a
tramp? A gentleman tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the
reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply
because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry
is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at
least has poetry in his soul. In a decadent age symbolized by the tango
and the problem play, it is at least an encouraging sign for the future
that such a character as Senhouse came to the jaded reader of the erotic
fiction of the day, as a whiff of sea breeze on a parched plain, and was
hailed with corresponding delight.
Of course there are "hoboes" and "hoboes," as in any other profession,
but so far as my experience goes, the "hobo" is an idealist. Of the many
reasons he has taken to the road, not the least is the freedom from the
shackles of convention and the "Gradgrind" methods of an utilitarian and
materialistic age. Nor is he a pessimist. Whatever his trouble, the road
has eased him of his burden and made him a philosopher.
Thoreau, writing in the middle of the last century, deplores the fact
that in his day, as now, but few of his countrymen took any pleasure in
walking, and that very rarely one encountered a person with any real
appreciation of the beauty of Nature, which if he could but see it, lay
at his very door. Speaking for himself and companion in his rambles, he
says: "We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts (Concord,
Massachusetts) practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at
least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen
would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy
the requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are the capital in
this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct
dispensation from Heaven to become a Walker. Ambulator nascitur non fit.
Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me,
walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods."