Category: Biographies
One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that “them stories about finding gold in Californy was all true.” It was “wash day” and our folks and some of the neighbors were gathered in the “wash house” while...
One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that “them stories about finding gold in Californy was all true....
2. CHAPTER II.When I made up my mind to become a sailor, I had tried several of this world’s callings and seemed to find none suitable. I had asked counsel of several elderly gentlemen in my...
3. CHAPTER III.We were towed into the stream and anchored for the night. To look at New York City, with its many lights and its thousands amusing themselves in various ways, from the ship’s de...
4. CHAPTER IV.On the fourth day out the _Wizard_ was found to have four feet of water in her hold. The ship was pumped dry in about four hours, when she proceeded to fill up again. The Captai...
5. CHAPTER V.The _Wizard_ sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first land we had seen for four mon...
6. CHAPTER VI.I drifted around San Francisco for several months and finally shipped as cook and steward of the schooner _Henry_, bound from San Francisco for a whaling, sealing, abalone curin...
7. CHAPTER VII.St. Bartholomew or Turtle Bay is a small, almost circular, sheet of water and surrounded by some of the dreariest territory in the world. The mountains which stand about it seem...
8. CHAPTER VIII.Marguerita Bay lies on the Mexican coast about 200 miles north of Cape St. Lucas. On arriving the schooner was “kedged” up the lagoons running parallel with the coast fully one...
9. CHAPTER IX.In former days while narrating the events of this voyage, which I have done some thousands of times, I used to say “we whaled.” But I never whaled, never went in the boats, neve...
10. CHAPTER X.Two hundred miles from the Lower California coast lies the lone island of Guadalupe. Guadalupe is one of the twelve or twenty names which for centuries the Spaniards have been a...
11. CHAPTER XI.After a ten months’ cruise we went back to San Francisco with 500 barrels of oil and ten tons of abalones. My share of the proceeds amounted to $250, having shipped on a “lay.”...
12. CHAPTER XII.I think and hope that these attempts of mine to portray the history of the camps on one California gold-bearing river will touch a responsive chord in the hearts of some old Cal...
13. CHAPTER XIII.We got out of our blankets heavily. Legs and back were apt to be a little stiff in the morning. Or if not stiff, they lacked action. Working all the day previous, possibly in th...
14. CHAPTER XIV.No work on the claim to-day. It rains too hard. It is the winter rain of California--a warm, steady, continuous drizzle. The red earth is soft and soppy. It mires to the ankles....
15. CHAPTER XV.It is the same sunshine as that of the week day. Yet as the miner wakes and realizes it is Sunday it has a different appearance and conveys a different impression from that of t...
16. CHAPTER XVI.About this time (1861) a cow fever began to rage throughout the State. It got hold of people, and impressed them with a burning idea that the road to fortune was a cow path, and...
17. CHAPTER XVII.The California mining camp was ephemeral. Often it was founded, built up, flourished, decayed, and had weeds and herbage growing over its site and hiding all of man’s work insid...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.I was not confident of my ability to teach even a “common school” when the situation was offered me in a little Tuolumne County mining camp. I said so to my old friend, Pete H.,...
19. CHAPTER XIX.On those hot July and August afternoons, when the air simmered all along the heated earth, and I was trying to keep awake in my seminary on the hill, and wrestling with the merc...
20. CHAPTER XX.Ah Sam loved Miss Hi Sing. Ah Sam was by profession a cook in a California miners’ boarding house and trading post combined, at a little mining camp on the Tuolumne River. Follo...
21. CHAPTER XXI.Year after year, and term after term, the great case of Table Mountain Tunnel vs. New York Tunnel, used to be called in the Court held at Sonora, Tuolumne County. The opposing c...
22. CHAPTER XXII.I lived once with an unbalanced cook. Culinarily he was not self-poised. He lacked judgment. He was always taking too large cooking contracts. He was for a time my partner. He w...
23. CHAPTER XXIII.In 1862-63 a copper fever raged in California. A rich vein had been found in Stanislaus County. A “city” sprung up around it and was called Copperopolis. The city came and went...
24. CHAPTER XXIV.I trudged back nine miles to Sonora, my pockets full of “specimens” from the newly discovered claim, my head a cyclone of copper-hued air castles. I saw the “boys.” I was myster...
25. CHAPTER XXV.The failure of the Copperhead Claim and the collapse of Copperhead City did not discourage me. The flame only burned the brighter to go forth and unearth the veins of mineral we...
26. CHAPTER XXVI.The “Company” died its peaceful death where I brought up when the horse was demanded of me in Eureka Valley, some 8,000 feet above the sea level, at Dave Hays’ mountain ranch an...
27. CHAPTER XXVII.Near the end of March I resolved to leave Eureka Valley. Sonora, Tuolumne County, was fifty-six miles distant. That was my goal. Thirty miles of the way lay over deep snow, and...
28. CHAPTER XXVIII.In writing this experience I disdain all intent of making myself out a first-class sufferer or adventurer. Other men by hundreds on our frontiers have endured far more, suffered...
29. CHAPTER XXIX.On reaching Sonora, Tuolumne County, with the frozen toes alluded to in the great slide down the mountain, I went to work and dug post-holes for a living. Inspired by the posts...
30. CHAPTER XXX.This is the confession of a political villain; not, however, a perjured political villain. I never swore to run for office for my country’s good. I did run once for an office fo...
31. CHAPTER XXXI.Previous to this election which did not elect me, Williams and I canvassed the county together. He aspired to the office of Sheriff. We mounted our horses, and with long linen d...
32. CHAPTER XXXII.The world seemed coming to an end, I mean my world. I had “ran for office” and was not elected, I had lectured and the people did not call for more, my mines and all they contai...
33. CHAPTER XXXIII.In course of time I came temporarily to the occupancy of an editorial chair. I became a “We.” Because on becoming an editor you cease to be an “I,” you are more. You are several...
34. CHAPTER XXXIV.For five years I wrote for many papers in San Francisco and wrote some things good, some bad, some indifferent. I attacked and ridiculed the errors and foibles of others with th...
35. CHAPTER XXXV.I was soon to leave for the Eastern States. When I realized that I was going, I found to my surprise that I had made a home in California, that it was an old home and about it c...
36. CHAPTER XXXVI.After sixteen years of exile in California, I found myself rolling seaward and homeward through the Golden Gate in the Panama steamer Sacramento. The parting gun had been fired,...
37. VOLUME I._No._ 1--_You travel when you sleep._ “ 2--_Where you travel when you sleep._ “ 3--_The process of re-embodiment._ “ 4--_Re-embodiment universal in nature._ “ 5--_The art of for...
38. VOLUME II._No._ 14--_Some laws of health and beauty._ “ 15--_Mental intemperance._ “ 16--_Law of marriage._ “ 17--_The God in yourself._ “ 18--_Force, and how to get it._ “ 19--_The docto...
39. VOLUME III._No._ 26.--_The practical use of reverie._ “ 27.--_Your two memories._ “ 28.--_Self teaching; or, the art of learning how to learn._ “ 29.--_How to push your business._ “ 30.--_...