Solitary Place Made Glad - H. T. Davis

DISAPPOINTED GOLD-SEEKERS--LONG ILLNESS--DOCTOR-BILL--WICKEDNESS RAMPANT--LYNCH LAW--SUMMARY PUNISHMENT--THE PALLADIUM OF THE PEOPLE--VIGILANCE COMMITTEES--BOLD ROBBERY--THE VICTIM CAPTURED AND HANGED.

HEN we reached Weaverville we were disappointed. Things were not as we expected to find them. Our expectations had been entirely too high; gold could by no means be picked up by the handful. Others were much worse disappointed than we. On every hand we saw the sad countenance and the dejected spirit. From many hope seemed to have taken its flight, and despair settled down upon them. The prospect of a fortune ahead had nerved the drooping spirit, and kept up the suffering emigrant during his long and weary journey until he reached the goal where the supposed fortune lay. But when the journey's end was reached, instead of stumbling over nuggets of gold and picking up the yellow dust by the handful, many were found working for their board, and many more were unable to find employment even for that. Not a

SOLITARY PLACES MADE GLAD

few were discouraged, and gave up in despair; others went to San Francisco, worked their way home on sail-vessels, going round Cape Horn, a trip which took them six months to make. Had they not been so hasty in their conclusions, and so easily discouraged, they might have saved this long and painful journey. Almost anywhere away from Weaverville ordinary wages commanded one hundred dollars per month. In two months they could have earned enough to take them home by the way of the Isthmus, and thus saved themselves three months of slavish toil.
By the roadside, a few miles vest of Weaverville, sat a middle-aged man, crying. A traveler said to him: "What's the matter?" "O," said the man, "I am three thousand miles from my wife and children. I have no money, can get nothing to do. I shall never see my loved ones again." And he boo-hooed right out, and cried as though his heart would break. He was only one of hundreds. Of the many thousands who reached the "New El Dorado," only a few were successful. The great majority were bitterly disappointed.
My brother and I went some twenty miles southwest of Weaverville, where we worked at mining until October, making enough during that time to purchase our winter supplies. Then we

went to Logtown, bought a cabin, and took up a miner's claim. Here we worked until the next summer, when we went up on the south fork of the American River. The next day after reaching this point I was taken very violently with erysipelas in its most malignant form, and for six weeks was confined to my cot, for two weeks being delirious and entirely blind. My face and head were swollen twice their usual size. When I began to recover, my hair all came out, leaving my scalp as bare as the palm of my hand. For several days the doctor said I could not live, declaring me beyond the power of medical skill. Providence ordered it otherwise, however, and I was restored. I have always thought my recovery from that terrible disease was owing, under God, to the kind care and attention of the faithful brother, who watched over me night and day with the tenderness and anxious solicitude of a mother.
I was then irreligious, and felt that if I died I should be lost forever. O, the terrible feeling of a soul dying "without God and without hope!" No language can possibly describe such feelings. "The way of the transgressor is hard," but the way of the Christian is delightful. It is a lovely, smooth, sunny pathway. I know it from heartfelt experience. "His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace."

As soon as I began to recover, my brother Albert was taken down with the same dreadful disease, accompanied with typhoid fever, and for six weeks was confined to his cot, during which time he passed as near death's door as I had done. Providence, however, raised him up also. Our doctor's bill amounted to the small sum of fourteen hundred dollars! But the doctor, being a very kindhearted man, was willing to take all the money we had, and give us a receipt in full. We paid him three hundred dollars, took his receipt, and squared accounts.
We then returned to Logtown, where we remained until we left the State. California was then new, and wickedness of every kind was rampant. The Sabbath was a day of festivity and hilarity. It was the great day of business for the gambler, the saloon-keeper, the auctioneer, the merchant, and the miner. The merchant made his greatest sales on the Sabbath; the gambler made his largest hauls from the crude and unsuspecting miner on the Sabbath; the houses whose "doors take hold on hell" were thronged with the largest number of visitors on the Sabbath; the miner washed his clothes, prepared wood, and purchased provisions for the coming week on the Sabbath; and each seemed to vie with the other in acts of crime and debauchery on the day belonging to God alone. What a

record was made for eternity on the Sabbath-day in the early history of California!
     In the mining districts pretty good order prevailed. The people were generally law-abiding; for citizens took the law into their own hands. The penalty for petit larceny was horsewhipping; the penalty for horse-stealing was death.
     A man was tried and convicted in Logtown by the citizens for stealing a pair of boots. He was sentenced to thirty-nine lashes. He was stripped to the waist, his hands tied together around a small tree, and as he thus hugged the tree a man plied the lash. Every stroke of the whip brought the blood, from the neck to the waist. After a few lashes had been given, the agony of the poor man was so great that in endeavoring to get away he tore the flesh from his breast on the rough bark of the tree; and the blood streaming from his bleeding back and lacerated breast, and his deep groans of agony, made me sick at heart, and I turned away from the dreadful scene. Horsewhipping was a terrible penalty for crime. A horse-thief was hanged to the limb of the nearest tree, and his dangling body struck terror to the would-be perpetrators of crime.
     This summary punishment of crime in the early settlement of California brought to the miner and his property almost perfect safety. We never felt more secure in our lives than

when we slept under a large pine-tree by the roadside near our claim, with the gold that we had washed out the day previous in the pan, standing where every passer-by could see it. We made no effort to hide anything, for we felt that everything was safe. The thief knew what a dangerous thing it was to steal from the miner.
     Some may seem surprised that a horse-thief should be hanged, when his crime is merely a question of property. "The term horse-thief," as one has justly remarked, "is really generic, or a synonym for a great variety of criminals. He is the thief of any movable property, a highwayman, a bandit a murderer, at his convenience, defiant of government, an outlaw, and the enemy, specific and in general, of society. The execution of a horse-thief, therefore, is ordinarily the administration of justice in gross, and not in severalty of crimes."
     The Vigilance Committees of San Francisco and Sacramento struck terror to the roughs, and saved those cities from the complete control of thieves, gamblers, and cut-throats.
     The Vigilance Committee of San Francisco was organized in 1851. The city had at that time about fifty thousand inhabitants. While there were many of the very best class of citizens in the city, the majority were among the vilest. The roughs had their way in everything. The

fame of the gold-mines had brought all sorts of people from all parts of the world. San Francisco was the rendezvous of the worst class of people that ever infested any city. The gamblers of the world seemed congregated here, and they plied their vocation without molestation from municipal authorities. A small tent on one of the principal streets rented, it was said, for forty thousand dollars a year for gambling purposes.
     Nearly the whole business part of the city was swept away by several great conflagrations. These conflagrations were the work of incendiaries, who had in view plunder alone. The best class of citizens felt that neither life nor property was safe. The administrators of law afforded them no protection whatever. The police officers, the judges, and prosecuting attorneys, when they were not the tools of gamblers and thugs, were weak and inefficient. Every means of preventing crime and bringing criminals to direct punishment had failed. The better class felt that something must be done, hence the Vigilance Committee was organized. This committee executed but few men. Its main work was to banish desperadoes, outlaws, and rascals. Its work was summary, and had a most happy and desirable effect, and soon restored law and order.
     At a later date, the old Vigilance Committee of 1851 was again called into requisition. James
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King was shot by James P. Casey, and died in a few days afterwards. On the same evening of the shooting, the Vigilance Committee of 1851 convened, and in less that two days, twenty-five hundred names were enrolled on the books of the Vigilance Committee, who pledged themselves to work together for the purging of the city of gamblers, foreign convicts, swindlers, thieves, high and low, and of villains generally.
     The Vigilance Committee selected as its head-quarters one of the most prominent places of the city, cleared the streets for two blocks, mounted six brass pieces, placed swivels loaded with grape on the roof, and put the streets under control of three hundred rifles and muskets.
     The excitement everywhere was at white heat. On the roof of the building used by the Committee, a massive triangle was swung, and its sounds could call thousands instantly, on an emergency. "Draymen stopped in the street, freed their horses, mounted, and went clattering to the rendezvous; store-keepers locked up hastily, and ran; clerks leaped over their counters; carpenters left the shaving in the plane; blacksmiths dropped the hammer by the red-hot iron on the anvil. All the city hurried to head-quarters for any sudden work."
     At one of the meetings, one of the speakers said "that probably more than five hundred murders,

had been committed in California during the preceding year, yet not more than five of the perpetrators had been punished according to the forms of the law."
     The newspapers, the clergy, the people generally, approved the formation of the committee. William Taylor, our bishop, now in Africa, was in San Francisco at the time, and witnessed the proceedings of the committee. He says: "In the administration of Lynch-law, so far as I have known or heard, the thunderbolt of public fury has always fallen only on the head of the guilty man, who, by the enormity and palpable character of his crimes, excited it; and then not till after his guilt was proved to the satisfaction of the masses composing the court. In proportion as the law acquires power in California for the protection of the citizens, in that proportion Lynch-law is dispensed with."
     Lynching in the Territories and new States comes in, and often works admirably, where the law is crude and feeble. But where the court-house appears in due dignity and power, Lynch-law disappears in the shadow. It will come to the front on any well-grounded call.
     Summary punishment for crime, when guilt is proved beyond a doubt, is one of the safeguards of the people. It is the palladium of the individual, the city, the State, the Nation.

We were present and witnessed the trial, by citizens, of two men charged with horse-stealing. One was a young man about twenty years old. The stolen horses were found in his possession. He pleaded "not guilty," and proved that he had been hired to take care of the horses, not knowing they were stolen property. He was acquitted. The other one pleaded "guilty." He was a large, burly Englishman, about forty-five years old. While the people were trying to decide what they should do with him, he made his escape from the second story of a large log house, where he had been placed and guarded. The lower room, and the yard all around the house, was full of people. How he made his escape no one could tell. It was a mystery to all. The only solution to the mystery was, that through the influence of money, he had been spirited away. He had been banished from England to New South Wales many years previous for crime. New South Wales was used by the English Government as a penal settlement from 1788 to 1840. During this time, about fifty-five thousand convicts had been sent to that land, and among them was this horse-thief. He came from there to California.
A six months after he had made his escape from the citizens near Logtown, he went on board a steamer at San Francisco, went into the clerk's office, picked up a United States express-box con-

taining a large amount of money, and walked off with it on his shoulder in the presence of officers of the ship and a large number of passengers. When the theft was discovered, the thief was pursued, and a short distance from the ship he was discovered--in a small boat in the bay, the valuable box by his side, and he was rowing away for his life. Three officers got into another boat, and, after an exciting race of four or five miles, captured and brought him back. A scaffold was at once erected. He was led to the top of the scaffold in the presence of hundreds of excited people. A noose was made in the rope, slipped over his head, and adjusted to his neck, and then he was asked if he had anything to say or any requests to make. He called for a glass of brandy and a cigar. They were brought. He drank the brandy, then calmly smoked the cigar, and having finished, he said: "I am now at your service." The trap was sprung, and his unprepared soul went into the presence of the Almighty. Such was life in the early settlement of California.


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