events I have
ended as a mere bookkeeper is perhaps a good reason why one paragraph
will be enough. In my youth I had dreams a-plenty; but the event and the
peculiar twist of my own temperament prevented their fulfilment. Perhaps
in a more squeamish age--and yet that is not fair, either, to the men
whose destinies I am trying to record. Suffice it then that of these men
I have been the friend and companion, of these occasions I have been a
part, and that the very lacks and reservations of my own character that
have kept me to a subordinate position and a little garden have probably
made me the better spectator. Which is a longer paragraph about myself
than I had purposed writing.

Therefore I will pass over briefly the various reasons, romantic and
practical, why I decided to join the gold rush to California in the year
1849. It was in the air; and I was then of a romantic and adventurous
disposition.

The first news of the gold discovery filtered to us in a roundabout way
through vessels to the Sandwich Islands, and then appeared again in the
columns of some Baltimore paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but
everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as
now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well
be gold there; but more authentic were the reports of fleas, rawhides,
and a dried-up coast. Minstrel shows made a good deal of fun of it all,
I remember. Then, when we were of a broad grin, came the publication of
the letter written by Governor Mason to the War Department. That was a
sober official document, and had to be believed, but it read like a
fairy tale.

"I have no hesitation in saying," wrote the governor, "that there is
more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers than would pay the costs of the late war with Mexico a hundred
times over." And he then went on to report in detail big nuggets and big
washings, mentioning men, places, dates, in a circumstantial manner that
carried conviction.

Our broad grins faded. The minstrels' jokes changed colour. As I look
back, it seems to me that I can almost see with the physical eye the
broad restless upheaval beneath the surface of all society. The Mexican
war was just over, and the veterans--young veterans all--filled with the
spirit of adventure turned eagerly toward this glittering new emprise.
Out in the small villages, on the small farms, the news was talked over
seriously, almost w