after a six months business career in California, he returned home ruined and well-nigh heart-broken. No wonder that some, their fortunes smitten to dust, predicted for the city the fate of Babylon, and fled from its portals as from the gates of Sodom. But notwithstanding the rapid succession of disasters, which in any other country under heaven would have seemed fatal, again and again the city rose from its ashes, and its people buckled on anew their battered

armor.

Yet the spring trade of 1854 was good. It fell off as usual toward summer, when there were great complaints against insane and avaricious eastern shippers for glutting the market with goods. In August there was a revival in business and general prosperity throughout the state. Notwithstanding the many destructive fires, building was active, and in the interior towns a better class of houses were erected than ever before. Marysville was specially lively at this time, and the coast towns from San Diego to Puget Sound-San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Eureka, Trinidad, Crescent City, Port Orford, and others began to show signs of

progress.

At one of the sales of the state's interest in the city of San Francisco water lots, in October 1854, 132 lots were bid off to a certain person who subsequently made two payments on account of the same in accordance with the terms of sale. At the proper time the purchaser presented himself before the auctioneers, the agents of the board of commissioners, prepared to make the third and final payment, together with the usual commissions and a fair price for drawing up the deed. The agents for the sale of the state's interest refused to receive this last installment, unless the purchaser would pay them in addition to their legal commissions $1,980 for making out the deed, being at the rate of fifteen dollars a lot for the 132 lots. Although but one deed for the entire

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purchase was necessary, the auctioneer claimed the right to charge the same as if 132 different deeds had been drawn up. This exorbitant demand the purchaser refused to pay and the lots were resold by the commissioners' agents.

Thus matters progressed. From a savage wilderness there soon emerged a settled community; fortunes were made and lost; cities arose like magic and were destroyed by fire or flood in a breath; one day the noisy industry of a busy population echoed through the hills and ravines, and the next all was deserted as if smitten by the plague; speculative excess, gambling, and debauchery ran riot, while decency stood by helpless to restrain. Unworthy and unprincipled men usurped the highest offices, and by their nefarious schemes filled their pockets and those of their abettors with the ill-gotten gains of pilfering and dishonesty, and all this time the press was either silent through fear of personal injury, or basely sold itself to uphold iniquity. Then came a change for the better. Vice was compelled to retire from public gaze; the gambler and the harlot were no longer allowed to ply their trades on the most public thoroughfares in the broad light of open day, and the bench became in a measure purified.

Yet public and private enterprises of a substantial and permanent character were projected and carried out in greater numbers and more rapidly than hitherto. Formerly, such only were attempted as would immediately yield a rich reward, and these were accomplished with the least possible expense, and in such a manner as to last only for the time being. Tents, huts, and log-cabins were the homes of the miner, a raft was his ferry-boat, and a scratch upon the hillside his water-ditch. The towns and cities were of mushroom growth, merchants cooked and slept in their split-board stores, and guarded their goods and treasures from thieves and fires. Farming life was no better, and exhibited few evidences of that spirit of

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 cf 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.

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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