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The two young Dons, Juan, Pablo, an old Indian servant, and three other Indians made up the party. Don Carlos and Don Ygnacio, well mounted on their favorite steeds, gaily caparisoned, Pablo on a reliable bronco, and Juan and the other Indians leading three burros that carried all their outfit-Pablo had had considerable experience in his youth in Northern Mexico, in placer mines as well as quartz, and he was careful enough to bring with him his horn and batea (the latter, a wooden bowl for washing the golden sands, soon to be replaced by the American gold pan.) Several picks and shovels were also packed upon the burros. The young men, expecting to stop over in Monterey (then the seat of government of Alta California), where they had some cousins, had carefully packed and wrapped in oil skin their finest clothes.

Juan could not point out the road to the Santa Lucia, but said he knew where the gold was when he got to the mountains, so Don Pedro directed the party to proceed by the usual road to Monterey, and then south into the Santa Lucias, where Juan was to be their guide.

A well filled purse of Mexican pesos for emergencies was strapped to the saddle of Don Ygnacio.

Just as the party were about to start their preceptor, who was the family priest, Padre Felipe, declared his intention of going with them and visiting the fathers at the Monterey Mission. So mounted on his mule he trotted in the rear of the procession. The good padre had some grievances that he kept to himself, and he was now going to share them with his superior at Monterey. Two things troubled him; first, that Don Pedro and the young Dons were indifferent to their religious exercises, none of them having been to confession for a long time; and they spoke lightly of the Church. Verily, the world was growing wicked! The women of the family were very devout. What, indeed, would become of the Church were it not for the women, who the world over implicitly

Secondly,

obeyed their confessors? here was Juan, who had confided his secret to Don Pedro, instead of to him, the priest; for did not all the gold in California, discovered and undiscovered, belong to the Church? And had not Juan violated the vow taken by all Christian Indians to reveal only to their confessors the places where the gold was found? However, he would lay the whole matter before the padres at Monterey, and try and save the gold for the Church.

Along down through the Santa Clara Valley, which was then an unbroken paradise of shrubs, trees and wild flowers, the gold seekers wended their way. Through ancient San Juan-over the ever remembered steep mountain grades-crossing the Salinas Valley and Sand Dunes, and then into Monterey-five days were occupied in traveling to this pueblo. The young Dons and the padre being hospitably entertained by the rancheros along the route; and the other members of the party sleeping in outhouses and barns or on the ground.

At Monterey the padre at once took up his quarters at the Mission; and the Dons were royally feted and fcasted at their cousin's. Balls and parties were given in their honor, and when the time came to resume their journey, it was very hard for them to tear themselves away from their beautiful friends and go into the Santa Lucias.

Ah! The lovely senoritas of Monterey! There is not a more charming personage on earth than the Spanish senorita. Grace enters into every line of their supple forms, and from those lovely, dark, liquid eyes Cupid sends his wireless messages of love. At least one of the party, Don Ygnacio, was ensnared, and in a journey made later on to Monterey he led the beautiful senorita to the altar.

Our party now journeyed southward to the Mission founded in 1770 by Father Junipero Serra. The roof of the ancient building had fallen in; and the old adobe quadrangle was fast going to decay; and no one lived there

but a few Indians. Through Juan acting as an interpreter, the Dons tried to find out if these Indios had ever heard of any gold placers; but true to their nature they denied all knowledge of any. It is rare that an Indian will tell a white man where any valuable metal can be found. Juan was a remarkable exception to this rule.

The Santa Lucia Mountains begin a short distance to the south of the Carmel River, and extend over a hundred miles along the Pacific Ocean shore. In places they rise to a height of nearly six thousand feet; one peak, the Santa Lucia, is about 5,900 feet. The larger portion of the range comprise barren hills, with occasional canyons and gulches, wherein grow redwoods and many species of trees, one of them the Santa Lucia fir, found no other place on earth. Beginning with Point Gorda on the southern Monterey coast, these redwoods continue along the Pacific Ocean northerly (with breaks here and there) until they cross a short distance over the Oregon State line.

It was just at the season when the wild flowers were at their best-babyblue-eyes and some of the earlier spring flowers had closed their eyes for the year-but the royal purple larkspur, the beautiful clarkias, godetias, poppies, collinsias, etc., covered the hills in the open. Under the trees, the fairy lanterns, mission bells and wild iris abounded; while in the damp places along the creeks, golden and crimson monkey flowers, columbine and purple nemophila were growing. The tree poppy skirted the high places.

As the land approached the ocean, the cliffs were precipitous, and the marine scenery in places unsurpassed in grandeur anywhere.

After reaching the Mission of San Carlos Borromeo (Carmel), our party stood beside the building, and Juan, pointing south, said:

"Senors, somewhere to the south, over that white scar on the mountain lies the placer."

It was not easy to find the way, for

Juan's recollection was hazed by his sickness, and the many years since he saw the placer.

For days and days, crossing numerous little streams, up each one of them a short distance, precipitous cliffs barring their way, our weary searchers went, until finally one day, as they turned to go up a little creek, Juan shouted:

"This is the very canyon through which ran the stream where I found the gold."

But to Juan's astonishment there had been a tremendous landslide there.

"El templor (an earthquake) has been here," said Juan. "Underneath this mass of earth and stones the creek flowed when I was here before." The water now ran on top of the debris. Search as they did, no nuggets were found. The slide had covered the bottom of the canyon many feet. Up the little stream some distance they found colors; and on a little bank Pablo showed as much as ten or fifteen cents gold dust every pan, but no nuggets. An industrious miner might make three or four dollars a day, but this was not what they came after; they wished to get to the nuggets and the quartz ledge which fed these placers.

Day after day the party searched the creek looking for gold, and the sides of the canyon for quartz ledges, but without success. There were no indications of the ancient river system in this country, for gold in the creeks all came from quartz ledges. It might be well to state here that the great placers in the Sierras were on the bottoms and banks of the Ancient Rivers. The modern placers were either washes from these or from the quartz ledge.

While Juan and Pablo were busy prospecting, the young Dons were having great sport, hunting and fishing. Deer were abundant, and the brush was alive with quail. The trout in all the streams flowing into the ocean, were the young of the steelhead salmon, and furnished fine sport and toothsome meals.

In about two weeks' thorough prosFecting it was decided that these dis

coveries so far would not justify any further effort to mine.

The nuggets and the great decomposed ledge which had produced them were deeply buried under the landslide; and where the ledge cropped out again it seemed impossible to find. Sorrowfully they turned their steps homeward. The Dons did not blame Juan, for it was evident that the great earth movement had covered the placers, and also the quartz ledges at that place, and where else to look they did not know.

I asked Don Ygnacio if his people ever made any further attempt to find the gold. He said no: it seemed useless, and would only be discovered accidentally by some hunter.

Several years after I heard Don Ygnacio's story, I met an Indian, who was camped with his family in the sand dunes at Twin Lakes. He was well educated and spoke good English. He said he had been looking for a gold mine in the Santa Lucias, but had failed, as had all before him. His grandfather had told him that he had found a sick Indian in those mountains who in his delirium spoke of a creek bottom covered with golden nuggets. But where, he didn't say.

"Senor, that is the Mystery of the Santa Lucias. Some day it will be solved."

Occasional nuggets have been found

in the small streams emptying into the ocean, one said to be worth $2,000, from the southern end of Monterey County. Colors can be seen all along the headwaters of the San Antonio River, and in some of the little brooks flowing into the Pacific Ocean. Numerous quartz locations have been made in the Los Burros district, but nothing very rich or permanent. Where is this great bonanza which has scattered its nuggets through the streams along the coast?

Who will solve the mystery? For the quartz ledge must crop out somewhere!

It is one of those peculiar freaks of the earth movements to cover those spots where the gold has been brought to the surface.

The United States engineers who surveyed through the Coast Ranges, held long ago that no permanent ledge would ever be found, that the formation was so broken by the upheaval, and the constantly recurring earthquakes, that the ledges approaching the surface were broken off and disappeared a short distance unaerneath.

However, there must be some very rich quartz ledges somewhere in these mountains, for once in a while a large nugget of gold is found in one of the creeks.

Where is the Mother Lode?
Quien sabe?

TO THE WESTERN SONG SPARROW

When sunset gates ajar reveal
Eternal deeps of space that gleam,
And slowly over hill and stream

The tender twilight 'gins to steal,

Then on the hushed air sounds the note
Breathed from the dusky sparrow's throat.

And through the daytime busily
This thrifty singer wings and flits,

He never idly mopes and sits,

But plies his cheerful industry:

True type of our great Western land,

Where thrift and joy go hand in hand.

EVERETT EARLE STANARD.

[graphic]

ELIN' THINGS INAMERICA

Florida. A Wonderful Adventure in

J

CHAPTER VI.

By Richard Bret Harte

ACKSONVILLE never appealed to me. The only attractive spot in the city to me was the Plaza. Most of the stores seemed pervaded with a "tourist catching" atmosphere, displaying large quantities of miniature alligators, pickaninnies and other so-called "souvenirs," frequently found on the parlor mantel-shelf of a second class New York boarding house. However, I was thankful for the warmth and the sunshine, and spent most of my time in studying the Florida literature, which consists principally of illustrated pamphlets containing impressive views of hotels especially enlarged for the near-sighted (?) tourist.

I was frantic to go to St. Augustine. I had read so much about it, and had seen so much of it in views, that my imagination became obsessed with luring visions of an old, romantic paradise whither Ponce de Leon had sought perpetual youth.

And I went to St. Augustine; but little did I anticipate the delightful ad

venture that was to take me there, and the sequence of extraordinary experiences that resulted from that memorable trip.

It happened one day, as I was sitting in the lobby of my hotel, that I fell into conversation with one of the guests. After exchanging introductions, he remembered having seen some of my caricatures in the northern papers, and immediately became interested. He was an actor and singer of considerable local reputation, having traveled in a stock company through the State, and having interests in the Jacksonville theatre. On learning my desire and financial inability to reach St. Augustine, he enthusiastically informed me that he was getting together a small vaudeville company to be tried out in St. Augustine, and later to tour the State if the enterprise proved successful. Perceiving, no doubt, that I had already succumbed to mental visions of a brilliant theatrical debut in the very city I longed to see, he offered me a position in the company as a quick-sketch artist, with a share of the proceeds and all ex

penses paid. I accepted the proposition with wild enthusiasm.

From that moment I felt like a newly discovered Frohman star. The glamour of a theatrical career absorbed by body and soul to such a degree that I immediately had all my suits pressed -my face massaged, my nails manicured, and spent so much money on hair pomades, cosmetics and cold cream that I was obliged to subsist on one meal a day for nearly a week.

Then followed days of the most laborious rehearsing in the privacy of my room. I worked in black crayon and powdered colors on large sheets of paper pinned to the wall. With the floor strewn with paper, and the walls and the bed and the chairs-in fact, every possible vacant spot covered with fantastic sketches, my room assumed the appearance of a futurist landscape. I lived in a kaleidoscope of powdered colors; my face and hands were smeared with all the hues of the rainbow. I went to bed in green and woke up in red; I washed in yellow and shaved in heliotrope, and the room with its entire contents reposed beneath a layer of powdered colors as thick and as bright as an Oriental rug.

At last the day of days arrived. With a bulging suit case in my right hand and my left arm encircling a gigantic roll of papers (for my act), I eventually joined the company at the depot, and we departed for St. Augustine. The company, by the way, consisted of three people, including myself and a child in arms. There was Mr. M- -, my actor friend, who was managing director and "star," "Miss" S, an attractive, young married girl with an infant, and myself-billed as "The Famous New "The Famous New York Cartoonist." Miss S— was a professional toe-dancer and singer, having met with success in a production of Ben Hur in New York.

We reached St. Augustine about noon, and drove immediately to the theatre for a rehearsal. The theatre was quite a fair sized house, and was showing motion pictures, with occasional "high class" vaudeville. When

R.BH

"I felt like a newly-discovered Frohman star."

I saw the bill posters (which I had designed) standing in the lobby, a thrill of tremendous importance suffused my being. After the rehearsal I sat in the drug store adjoining the theatre lobby and just gloated over the people as they stopped before the bill-board, gazing at my caricatures and passing various remarks which I naturally interpreted as being in reference to "The Famous New York Cartoonist."

Finally the hour of the first performance arrived. The evening suddenly turned unusually cold and developed a bitter frost which rather dampened

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