he Sierras, and
sat down in their midst to begin the old clothes business, without pay
or promise, was again settling back, as if about to surrender to sleep.

Cannon balls! conical shot! chain shot! and shot red hot! Never were
such oaths heard in the world before! The Chinaman fell over.

"Stop!" cried the bar-keeper of the Howling Wilderness, who didn't want
the expense of the funeral; "stop! do you mean to cuss him to death?"

The Chinaman was allowed time to recover, and then they sat him again on
the bench. A man fanned him with his broad bamboo hat, lest he should
faint before the last half of the punishment was nearly through, and the
Judge was called upon to enforce the remainder of their sentence.

The Judge come forward slowly, put his two hands back under his coat
tails, tilted forward on his toes and began:

"Washee-Washee! In this glorious climate of Californy--how could you?"

Washee-Washee nodded, and the Judge broke down badly embarrassed. At
last he recovered himself, and began in a deep, earnest and entreating
tone:

"Washee-Washee, in this glorious climate of Californy you should
remember the seventh Commandment, and never, under any circumstances or
temptations that beset you, should you covet your neighbor's goods, or
his boots, or his shirt, or his socks, or his handkerchief, or any thing
that is his, or--"

The Judge paused, the men giggled, and then they roared, and laughed,
and danced about their little Judge; for Washee-Washee had folded his
little brown hands in his lap, and was sleeping as sweetly as a baby in
its cradle.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME UNWRITTEN HISTORY.

The murder of Joseph Smith, the so-called prophet, meant more than any
other similar event in history. This man, as well as his brother, Hiram,
was not only an honest, brave gentleman, but also a man of culture and
refinement. The latter, it may not be generally known, was a candidate
for Congress, when that place was counted the post of honor.

Nothing in the New World ever so intensified the minds of men as the
life and death of this singular man, Joseph Smith. On the one hand he
was hated to death, on the other hand he was adored while living,
worshiped when dead. Men for his memory's sake burned their bridges
behind them, as it were, and fled destitute to the wilderness.

With no capital but a hoe and a wheelbarrow, they built up, in a quarter
of a century, in the middle of a desert, the most remote and the m