all lands and races who flocked to the Pacific coast
found there a motley state of society between civilization and savagery.
There were the relics of the old Mexican occupation, the Spanish
missions, with their Christianized Indians; the wild tribes of the
plains--Apaches, Utes, and Navajoes; the Chinese coolies and washermen,
all elements strange to the Atlantic seaboard and the States of the
interior. The gold-hunters crossed, in stages or caravans, enormous
prairies, alkaline deserts dotted with sage brush and seamed by deep
canons, and passes through gigantic mountain ranges. On the coast itself
nature was unfamiliar: the climate was sub-tropical; fruits and
vegetables grew to a mammoth size, corresponding to the enormous redwoods
in the Mariposa groves and the prodigious scale of the scenery in the
valley of the Yo Semite and the snow-capped peaks of the Sierras. At
first there were few women, and the men led a wild, lawless existence in
the mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the prospector followed the
dram-shop, the gambling-hell, and the dance-hall. Every man carried his
"Colt," and looked out for his own life and his "claim." Crime went
unpunished or was taken in hand, {577} when it got too rampant, by
vigilance committees. In the diggings, shaggy frontiersmen and "pikes"
from Missouri mingled with the scum of eastern cities and with
broken-down business men and young college graduates seeking their
fortune. Surveyors and geologists came of necessity, speculators in
mining stock and city lots set up their offices in the towns; later came
a sprinkling of school-teachers and ministers. Fortunes were made in one
day and lost the next at poker or loo. To-day the lucky miner who had
struck a good "lead" was drinking champagne out of pails and treating the
town; to-morrow he was "busted," and shouldered the pick for a new
onslaught upon his luck. This strange, reckless life, was not without
fascination, and highly picturesque and dramatic elements were present in
it. It was, as Bret Harte says, "an era replete with a certain heroic
Greek poetry," and sooner or later it was sure to find its poet. During
the war California remained loyal to the Union, but was too far from the
seat of conflict to experience any serious disturbance, and went on
independently developing its own resources and becoming daily more
civilized. By 1868 San Francisco had a literary magazine, the _Overland
Monthly_, which ran until