content and permanence which now began to appear in well-tilled lands, with fences and drains in handsome dwellings with cultivated gardens and commodious outhouses. Culture and improvement began to be seriously considered; institutions were organized devoted to morals, religion, temperance, and the improvement of the mental and physical condition of the young. Plank roads were made, and substantial bridges built across the principal streams.

Some eastern men made money in California, but more lost heavily. If from sickness, fire, flood, or any other cause, the extravagant ideas of eastern speculators failed to be realized, agents were accused of fraud, and the reputation of the whole country called in question. A loss is mourned in louder tones than tell a profit, and as, owing to the chaotic state of affairs, venture after venture was lost, and men who had been known and trusted from boyhood slipped from the fingers of rectitude, the world was filled with complaints of California, and it was thought that gold and its corrupting influences had so undermined the principles of its votaries that the atmosphere of the Pacific slope was tainted with moral contagion. How many of those men labored true to their trust amidst the most disheartening reverses, their friends at home never knew. Rushing hither, blind to all before them, they found a condition of affairs very different from what they had anticipated. The mart was crowded with articles unsuited to the requirements of the country, and lacking what it needed most. The mines did not yield inevitable and immediate wealth, but severe labor was there rewarded by fluctuating success, so that the most faithful to their trust were sometimes forced to annul contracts and disappoint expectation.

CHAPTER XV.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE AND CHARACTER.

Al mondo mal non e senza rimedio.

-Sannazaro.

IN newly-settled regions rural simplicity is rare. Ignorance, stupidity, bigotry there may be in abundance, but that innocence which arises from isolation, from the absence of the contaminating influences of fashion, frivolity, falsity, from the arts and humbug of high life, and from the demoralizing tendencies of social intermixtures, leading to deceit and dissipation, is seldom found in rural districts recently occupied. For the harassing cares, the asperities, the trials of temper attending family migrations, the clearing of a wilderness, and the planting of a home are not such as foster single-mindedness, domestic religion, and the tenderer graces.

As time went by, the moral and social condition of the mining towns greatly improved. There was an industrious, orderly, and intelligent population, with wives and sisters; there were churches, and schools, and libraries, and newspapers; there were well-filled shops, and money enough to patronize them, but yet they were far from being like the clean quiet villages of New York or New England. The stores were open on Sunday, and the saloons were better filled than the churches. The door of the harlot opened upon the most public thoroughfare, and from within might be heard by the passer-by the ribald oath and obscene jest, and the chinking of the gambler's checks.

Houses, streets, and society, and life in general, appeared crude and raw, as indeed they were.

Immigration, though decreasing in numbers, gained in quality. The character of its composition changed. Men now came to stay, bringing with them their families, their lares and penates, and sufficient money to establish themselves in some industry tending to the increase of commerce, or to the development of the country. The fitful and irrational passion which prompted earlier immigration was less indulged in by later comers, who sought success where success is usually found, in permanent plodding rather than in sudden acquirement. There were new avenues of industry opened, and plains and valleys were ornamented with homes, made attractive by cultivation without and endearments within.

Immigration was wanted; but not that kind of immigration which characterized the first settlement of this country, and of many new countries; not the lowest and vilest from the purlieus of cities, nor gamblers, nor ephemeral speculators; but earnest, honest, hard-working and law-abiding men and women, who should come across the plains with their ox-teams, their household goods, and their little ones; or crossing the water, should come to plant themselves in a new soil, and there remain and build up for themselves and their posterity a new home. The days of the adventurers were past; in coming they fulfilled their destiny, acted their part in the great social upheavals which, in their coalescing, outlined the configurations of future institutions, gave boundaries to thought, and color and climax to ideas; but now their work was done, and the slower process of disintegration and alligation must be accomplished by other agencies.

Three years had scarcely passed before it was discovered that California possessed charms as powerful to retain as to attract. It was a proud thing for the young villager to visit his old home with well-lined

THE RETURNED CALIFORNIAN.

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pockets, the admiration of the girls, the envy of his former companions, and the special object of interest of the old folks. It was grand and heroic to be of California. Tamely to settle in the slow old home after participating in the glories of gold-digging, gambling, and free fighting was out of the question. Nor were home and friends and occupation to the more enlightened from the larger cities, ever again the same after a residence in San Francisco. Speculation and commercial pursuits after the old fashion offered no attractions after having made three or four fortunes with lightning rapidity one after another, though they were swept away by fire as fast as made. So gradually the contemplated brief sojourn lengthened into a fixed residence, the family was sent for, and then apparently for the first time the husband and father opened his eyes to the iniquity around him and went to work in company with wife and daughter to bring about a better state of things. And this moral morass was reclaimed almost as speedily as it was formed. Healthy plants could not grow in a swamp of festering corruption The question was simply should the country be reclaimed to virtue or should vice prevail. And now the easy citizen and loose moralist becomes a reformer. If the country is worth making his home in-and do his best he cannot live away from it-then it is worth purifying and directing in its young growth. So public gambling is suppressed, prostitution driven from the more prominent thoroughfares, libraries are founded, churches built, and schools established; charitable institutions spring up, and the ocean air, as it passes through the streets of the city and over the bay, toward the laborers in the valleys and in the mines, carries with it less of pollution and blasphemy than formerly; a long breath of it may now be taken without suffocation.

Enough sudden fortunes were made, enough rich deposits unlocked, to keep alive the flame of expectation. Who knows, thought the patient unsuccessful

delver but that my turn may come next, and my life be illuminated by the roseate tints of gold, warm mellow metal, transcendent gold. Take for example the tunneling operations which in 1854-5 dissected every hill. Without capital, without means even to buy bread, four or six or ten men form themselves into a company and coolly begin a work requiring years of labor and thousands of dollars to complete. Buoyed by faith in theories of world-building you hear them talking of ages past as other men talk of yesterday, reasoning of the time when channels of rivers wound round the lofty hills, when through a silent world tenantless streams rolled into a saltless

sea.

Thus strong in faith, hope feeds and clothes the philosophic miner for months and years. He lives and labors, he scarcely knows how. Time passes; the end approaches; the last blow is struck; the point is reached which marks success or failure. Round him who washes the first prospect-pan on reaching the end of the shaft or tunnel, a group gathers breathless with anxiety. One with furrowed brow, and silver-sprinkled hair, and features fixed and immobile from care and toil, thinks of her who with him has started down the limitless decline, whose days will soon be past brightening with gold, and whose fate for life with that of others dear to him, the next five minutes may decide. Arother, a young sire, forgotten of his children, scours into a fiery glow the hairy skin above the heart, calls back his flitting fancy from the heaven of the old home, and peers into that pan of dirt as into an oracle. Yet another, little more than boy in years, though old enough in experience, delicately featured and bearing signs of good breeding, the small hands hardened, and fingers cramped by crowbar and pickhandle, yet not so stiff but they can renew by every steamer the story of unchanged love to her whose image fills his heart, ah! What means the product of that pan of dirt to him?