Greater Britain Part 13

Hearing a greater jingling of gla.s.ses from one bar-room than from all the other hundred whisky-shops of Placerville, I turned into it to seek the cause, and found a Vermonter lecturing on Lincoln and the war to an audience of some fifty diggers. The lecturer and bar-keeper stood together within the sacred inclosure, the one mixing his drinks, while the other rounded off his periods in the inflated Western style. The audience was critical and cold till near the close of the oration, when the "corpse revivers" they were drinking seemed to take effect, and to be at the bottom of the stentorian shout, "Thet's bully," with which the peroration was rewarded. The Vermonter told me that he had come round from Panama, and was on his way to Austin, as Placerville was "played out" since its "claims" had "fizzled."

They have no lecture-room here at present, as it seems; but that there are churches, however small, appears from a paragraph in the Placerville news-sheet of to-day, which chronicles the removal of a Methodist meeting-house from Block A to Block C, _vice_ a Catholic chapel retired, "having obtained a superior location."

A few days were all that I could spend in the valleys that lie between the Sierra and the Contra Costa Range, basking in a rich sunlight, and unsurpa.s.sed in the world for climate, scenery, and soil. This single State--one of forty-five--has twice the area of Great Britain, the most fertile of known soils, and the sun and sea-breeze of Greece. Western rhapsodies are the expression of the intoxication produced by such a spectacle; but they are outdone by facts.

For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the palm between the cracks and canyons of the Sierra and the softer vales of the Coast Range, where the hot sun is tempered by the cool Pacific breeze, and thunder and lightning are unknown. To one coming from the wilds of the Carson Desert and of Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the lower dells has for the eye the relief that travelers from the coast must seek in the loftier heights and precipices of the Yosemite. The oak-filled valleys of the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive repose of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines and the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona; but California has the advantage in her skies.

Italy has the blue, but not the golden haze.

Nothing can be more singular than the variety of beauty that lies hid in these Pacific slopes; all that is best in Canada and the Eastern States finds more than its equal here. The terrible grandeur of Cape Trinite on the Saguenay, and the panorama of loveliness from the terrace at Quebec, are alike outdone.

Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery; but neither need they go to California, or even Colorado. Those who tell us that there is no such thing as natural beauty west of the Atlantic can scarcely know the Eastern, while they ignore the Western and Central States. The world can show few scenes more winning than Israel's River Valley in the White Mountains of New Hamps.h.i.+re, or North Conway in the southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can be more full of grandeur than the pa.s.sage of the James at Balcony Falls, where the river rushes through a crack in the Appalachian chain; the wilderness of Northern New York is unequaled of its kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the Adirondacks. As for river scenery, the Hudson is grander than the Rhine; the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse; the Schuylkill prettier than the Seine; the Mohawk more enchanting than the Dart. Of the rivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is not beaten in the States.

Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but pretend that it is wholly wanting in the interest that historic memories bestow. So-called republicans affect to find a charm in Bishop Hatto's Tower which is wanting in Irving's "Sunnyside;" the ten thousand virgins of Cologne live in their fancy, while Const.i.tution Island and Fort Was.h.i.+ngton are forgotten names. Americans or Britishers, we Saxons are all alike--a wandering, discontented race; we go 4000 miles to find us Sleepy Hollow, or Kilian Van Rensselaer's Castle, or Hiawatha's great red pipe-stone quarry; and the Americans, who live in the castle, picnic yearly in the Hollow, and flood the quarry for a skating-rink, come here to England to visit Burns's house, or to sit in Pope's arm-chair.

Down South I saw clearly the truth of a thought that struck me before I had been ten minutes west of the Sierra Pa.s.s. California is Saxon only in the looks and language of the people of its towns. In Pennsylvania, you may sometimes fancy yourself in Suss.e.x; while in New England, you seem only to be in some part of Europe that you have never happened to light upon before; in California, you are at last in a new world. The hills are weirdly peaked or flattened, the skies are new, the birds and plants are new; the atmosphere, crisp though warm, is unlike any in the world but that of South Australia. It will be strange if the Pacific coast does not produce a new school of Saxon poets--painters it has already given to the world.

Returning to Placerville, after an eventless exploration of the exquisite scenery to the south, I took the railway once again, for the first time since I had left Manhattan City--1800 miles away--and was soon in Sacramento, the State capital, now recovering slowly from the flood of 1862. Near the city I made out Oak Grove--famed for duels between well-known Californians. Here it was that General Denver, State Senator, shot Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Congress, in a duel fought with rifles. Here, too, it was that Mr. Thomas, district attorney for Placer County, killed Dr. d.i.c.kson, of the Marine Hospital, in a duel with pistols in 1854. Records of duels form a serious part of the State history. At Lone Mountain Cemetery near San Francisco, there is a great marble monument to the Hon. David Broderick, shot by Chief Justice Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859.

A few hours' quiet steaming in the sunlight down the Sacramento River, past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which the grand volcanic peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel watching over the Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and west a vast mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the fortified island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the opposite sh.o.r.es of San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. At last I was across the continent, and face to face with the Pacific.

CHAPTER XXI.

LYNCH LAW.

"Californians are called the sc.u.m of the earth, yet their great city is the best policed in the world," said a New York friend to me, when he heard that I thought of crossing the continent to San Francisco.

"Them New Yorkers is a sight too fond of looking after other people's morals," replied an old "Forty-niner," to whom I repeated this phrase, having first toned it down however. "Still," he went on, "our history's baddish, but it ain't for us to play showman to our own worst pints:--let every man skin his own skunk!"

The story of the early days of San Francisco, as to which my curiosity was thus excited, is so curious an instance of the development of an English community under the most inauspicious circ.u.mstances, that the whole time which I spent in the city itself I devoted to hearing the tale from those who knew the actors. Not only is the history of the two Vigilance Committees in itself characteristic, but it works in with what I had gathered in Kansas, and Illinois, and Colorado as to the operation of the claim-clubs; and the stories, taken together, form a typical picture of the rise of a New English country.

The discovery of gold in 1848 brought down on luckless California the idle, the reckless, the vagabonds first of Polynesia, then of all the world. Street fighting, public gaming, masked b.a.l.l.s given by unknown women and paid for n.o.body knew how, but attended by governor, supervisors, and alcalde--all these were minor matters by the side of the general undefined ruffianism of the place. Before the end of 1849, San Francisco presented on a gigantic scale much the same appearance that Helena in Montana wears in 1866.

Desperadoes poured in from all sides, the best of the bad flocking off to the mines, while the worst among the villains--those who lacked energy as well as moral sense--remained in the city, to raise by thieving or in the gambling-booth the "pile" that they were too indolent to earn by pick and pan. Hundreds of "emancipists" from Sydney, "old lags" from Norfolk Island, the pick of the criminals of England, still further trained and confirmed in vice and crime by the experiences of Macquarie Harbor and Port Arthur, rushed to San Francisco to continue a career which the vigilance of the police made hopeless in Tasmania and New South Wales. The floating vice of the Pacific ports of South America soon gathered to a spot where there were not only men to fleece, but men who, being fleeced, could pay. The police were necessarily few, for, appoint a man to-day, and to-morrow he was gone to the placers with some new friend; those who could be prevailed upon to remain a fortnight in the force were accessible to bribes from the men they were set to watch.

They themselves admitted their inaction, but ascribed it to the continual change of place among the criminals, which prevented the slightest knowledge of their characters and haunts. The Australian jail-birds formed a quarter known as "Sydney Town," which soon became what the Bay of Islands had been ten years before--the Alsatia of the Pacific. In spite of daily murders, not a single criminal was hanged.

The ruffians did not all agree: there were jealousies among the various bands; feuds between the Australians and Chilians; between the Mexicans and the New Yorkers. Under the various names of "Hounds," "Regulators,"

"Sydney ducks," and "Sydney coves," the English convict party organized themselves in opposition to the Chilenos as well as to the police and law-abiding citizens. Gangs of villains, whose sole bond of union was robbery or murder, marched, armed with bludgeons and revolvers, every Sunday afternoon, to the sound of music, unhindered through the streets, professing that they were "guardians of the community" against the Spaniards, Mexicans, and South Americans.

At last a movement took place among the merchants and reputable inhabitants which resulted in the break-up of the Australian gangs. By an uprising of the American citizens of San Francisco, in response to a proclamation by T. M. Leavenworth, the alcalde, twenty of the most notorious among the "Hounds" were seized and s.h.i.+pped to China: it is believed that some were taken south in irons, and landed near Cape Horn.

"Anywhere so that they could not come back," as my informant said.

For a week or two things went well, but a fresh impour of rogues and villains soon swamped the volunteer police by sheer force of numbers; and in February, 1851, occurred an instance of united action among the citizens which is noticeable as the forerunner of the Vigilance Committees. A Mr. Jansen had been stunned by a blow from a slung-shot, and his person and premises rifled by Australian thieves. During the examination of two prisoners arrested on suspicion, five thousand citizens gathered round the City Hall, and handbills were circulated in which it was proposed that the prisoners should be lynched. In the afternoon an attempt to seize the men was made, but repulsed by another section of the citizens--the Was.h.i.+ngton Guard. A meeting was held on the plaza, and a committee appointed to watch the authorities, and prevent a release. A well-known citizen, Mr. Brannan, made a speech, in which he said: "We, the people, are the mayor, the recorder, and the laws." The alcalde addressed the crowd, and suggested, by way of compromise, that they should elect a jury, which should sit in the regular court, and try the prisoners. This was refused, and the people elected not only a jury, but three judges, a sheriff, a clerk, a public prosecutor, and two counsel for the defense. This court then tried the prisoners in their absence, and the jury failed to agree--nine were for conviction, and three were doubtful. "Hang 'em, anyhow; majority rules," was the shout, but the popular judges stood firm, and discharged their jury, while the people acquiesced. The next day the prisoners were tried and convicted by the regular court, although they were ultimately found to be innocent men.

Matters now went from bad to worse: five times San Francisco was swept from end to end by fires known to have been helped on, if not originally kindled, by incendiaries in the hope of plunder; and when, by the fires of May and June, 1851, hardly a house was left untouched, the pious Bostonians held up their hands, and cried "Gomorrah!"

Immediately after the discovery that the June fire was not an accident, the Vigilance Committee was formed, being self-appointed, and consisting of the foremost merchants in the place. This was on the 7th of June, according to my friend; on the 9th, according to the Californian histories. It was rumored that the committee consisted of two hundred citizens; it was known that they were supported by the whole of the city press. They published a declaration, in which they stated that there is "no security for life or property under the ... law as now administered." This they ascribed to the "quibbles of the law," the "corruption of the police," the "insecurity of prisons," the "laxity of those who pretend to administer justice." The secret instructions to the committee contained a direction that the members should at once a.s.semble at the committee-room whenever signals, consisting of two taps on a bell, were heard at intervals of one minute. The committee was organized with president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant-at-arms, standing committee on qualifications, and standing committee of finance.

No one was to be admitted a member unless he were a "respectable citizen, and approved by the Committee on Qualifications."

The very night of their organization, according to the histories, or three nights later, according to my friend Mr. A----, the work of the committee began. Some boatmen at Central Wharf saw something which led them to follow out into the Yerba Buena cove a man, whom they captured after a sharp row. As they over-hauled him, he threw overboard a safe, just stolen from a bank, but this was soon fished out. He was at once carried off to the committee-room of the Vigilants, and the bell of the Monumental Engine Company struck at intervals, as the rule prescribed.

Not only the committee, but a vast surging crowd collected, although midnight was now past. A---- was on the plaza, and says that every man was armed, and evidently disposed to back up the committee. According to the _Alta Californian_, the chief of the police came up a little before 1 A.M., and tried to force an entrance to the room; but he was met, politely enough, with a show of revolvers sufficient to annihilate his men, so he judged it prudent to retreat.

At one o'clock, the bell of the engine-house began to toll, and the crowd became excited. Mr. Brannan came out of the committee-room, and, standing on a mound of sand, addressed the citizens. As well as my friend could remember, his words were these: "Gentlemen, the man--Jenkins by name--a Sydney convict, whose supposed offense you know, has had a fair trial before eighty gentlemen, and been unanimously found guilty by them. I have been deputed by the committee to ask whether it is your pleasure that he be hanged." "Ay!" from every man in the crowd.

"He will be given an hour to prepare for death, and the Rev. Mr. Mines has been already sent for to minister to him. Is this your pleasure?"

Again a storm of "Ay!" Nothing was known in the crowd of the details of the trial, except that counsel had been heard on the prisoner's behalf.

For another hour the excitement of the crowd was permitted to continue, but at two o'clock the doors of the committee-room were thrown open, and Jenkins was seen smoking a cigar. Mr. A---- said that he did not believe the prisoner expected a rescue, but thought that an exhibition of pluck might make popular with the crowd, and save him. A procession of Vigilants with drawn Colts was then formed, and set off in the moonlight across the four chief streets to the plaza. Some of the people shouted "To the flagstaff!" but there came a cry, "Don't desecrate the Liberty Pole. To the old adobe! the old adobe!" and to the old adobe custom-house the prisoner was dragged. In five minutes he was hanging from the roof, three hundred citizens lending a hand at the rope. At six in the morning, A---- went home, but he heard that the police cut down the body about that time, and carried it to the coroner's house.

An inquest was held next day. The city officers swore that they had done all they could to prevent the execution, but they refused to give up the names of the Vigilance Committee. The members themselves were less cautious. Mr. Brannan and others came forward of their own proper motion, and disclosed all the circ.u.mstances of the trial: 140 of the committee backed them up by a written protestation against interference with the Vigilants, to which their signatures were appended. Protest and evidence have been published, not only in the newspapers of the time, but in the San Francisco "Annals." The coroner's jury found a verdict of "Strangulation, consequent on the concerted action of a body of citizens calling themselves a Committee of Vigilance." An hour after the verdict was given, a ma.s.s meeting of the whole of the respectable inhabitants was held in the plaza, and a resolution approving of the action of the committee pa.s.sed by acclamation.

In July, 1851, the committee hanged another man on the Market Street wharf, and appointed a sub-committee of thirty to board every s.h.i.+p that crossed the bar, seize all persons suspected of being "Sydney Coves,"

and res.h.i.+p them to New South Wales.

In August came the great struggle between the Vigilants and const.i.tuted authority. It was sharp and decisive. Whittaker and McKenzie, two Sydney Coves, were arrested by the committee for various crimes, and sentenced to death. The next day, Sheriff Hays seized them on a writ of habeas corpus, in the rooms of the committee. The bell was tolled: the citizens a.s.sembled, the Vigilants told their story, the men were seized once more, and by noon they were hanging from the loft of the committee-house, by the ordinary lifting tackle for heavy goods. Fifteen thousand people were present, and approved. "After this," said A----, "there could be no mistake about the citizens supporting the committee."

By September, the Vigilants had transported all the "Coves" on whom they could lay hands; so they issued a proclamation, declaring that for the future they would confine themselves to aiding the law by tracing out and guarding criminals; and in pursuance of their decision, they soon afterward helped the authorities in preventing the lynching of a s.h.i.+p-captain for cruelty to his men.

After the great sweep of 1851, things became steadily worse again till they culminated in 1855, a year to which my friend looked backed with horror. Not counting Indians, there were four hundred persons died by violence in California in that single year. Fifty of these were lynched, a dozen were hanged by law, a couple of dozen shot by the sheriffs and tax-collectors in the course of their duty. The officers did not escape scot free. The under-sheriff of San Francisco was shot in Mission Street, in broad daylight, by a man upon whom he was trying to execute a writ of ejectment.

Judges, mayors, supervisors, politicians, all were bad alike. The merchants of the city were from New England, New York, and foreign lands; but the men who a.s.sumed the direction of public affairs, and especially of public funds, were Southerners, many of them "Border Ruffians" of the most savage stamp--"Pikes," as they were called, from Pike's County in Missouri, from which their leaders came. Instead of banding themselves together to oppose the laws, these rogues and ruffians found it easier to control the making of them. Their favorite method of defeating their New England foes was by the simple plan of "stuffing," or filling the ballot-box with forged tickets when the elections were concluded. Two Irishmen--Casey and Sullivan--were their tools in this shameful work. Werth, a Southerner, the leader of Casey's gang, had been denounced in the _San Francis...o...b..lletin_ as the murderer of a man named Kittering; and Casey, meeting James King, editor of the _Bulletin_, shot him dead in Montgomery Street in the middle of the day.

Casey and one of his a.s.sistants--a man named Cora--were hanged by the people as Mr. King's body was being carried to the grave, and Sullivan committed suicide the same day.

Books were opened for the enrollment of the names of those who were prepared to support the committee: nine thousand grown white males inscribed themselves within four days. Governor Johnson at once declared that he should suppress the committee, but the City of Sacramento prevented war by offering a thousand men for the Vigilants' support, the other Californian cities following suit. The committee got together 6000 stand of arms and thirty cannon, and fortified their rooms with earthworks and barricades. The governor, having called on the general commanding the Federal forces at Benicia, who wisely refused to interfere, marched upon the city, was surrounded, and taken prisoner with all his forces without the striking of a blow.

Having now obtained the control of the State government, the committee proceeded to banish all the "Pikes" and "Pukes." Four were hanged, forty transported, and many ran away. This done, the committee prepared an elaborate report upon the property and finances of the State, and then, after a great parade, ten regiments strong, upon the plaza and through the streets, they adjourned forever, and "the thirty-three" and their ten thousand backers retired into private life once more, and put an end to this singular spectacle of the rebellion of a free people against rulers nominally elected by itself. As my friend said, when he finished his long yarn, "This has more than archaeologic interest: we may live to see a similar Vigilance Committee in New York."

For my own part, I do not believe that an uprising against bad government is possible in New York City, because there the supporters of bad government are a majority of the people. Their interest is the other way: in increased city taxes they evidently lose far more than, as a cla.s.s, they gain by what is spent among them in corruption; but when they come to see this, they will not rebel against their corrupt leaders, but elect those whom they can trust. In San Francisco, the case was widely different: through the ballot frauds, a majority of the citizens were being infamously misgoverned by a contemptible minority, and the events of 1856 were only the necessary acts of the majority to regain their power, coupled with certain exceptional acts in the shape of arbitrary transportation of "Pikes" and Southern rowdies, justified by the exceptional circ.u.mstances of the young community. At Melbourne, under circ.u.mstances somewhat similar, our English colonists, instead of setting up a committee, built Pentridge Stockade with walls some thirty feet high, and created a military police, with almost arbitrary power.

The difference is one of words. The whirl of life in a young gold country not only prevents the best men entering the political field, and so forces citizens to exercise their right of choice only between candidates of equal badness, but so engrosses the members of the community who exercise the ballot as to prevent the detection of fraud till it has ruled for years. Throughout young countries generally you find men say: "Yes! we're robbed, we know; but no one has time to go into that." "I'm for the old men," said a Californian elector once, "for they've plundered us so long that they're gorged, and can't swallow any more." "No," said another, "let's have fresh blood. Give every man a chance of robbing the State. Shape and share alike." The wonder is, not that in such a State as California was till lately the machinery of government should work unevenly, but that it should work at all.

Democracy has never endured so rough a test as that from which it has triumphantly emerged in the Golden State and City.

The public spirit with which the merchants came forward and gave time and money to the cause of order is worthy of all praise, and the rapidity with which the organization of a new government was carried through is an instance of the singular power of our race for building up the machinery of self-government under conditions the most unpromising.

Instead of the events of 1856 having been a case of opposition to law and order, they will stand in history as a remarkable proof of the law-abiding character of a people who vindicated justice by a demonstration of overwhelming force, laid down their arms, and returned in a few weeks to the peaceable routine of business life.

If, in the merchant founders of the Vigilance Committees of San Francisco we can see the descendants of the justice-loving Germans of the time of Tacitus, I found in another cla.s.s of vigilants the moral offspring of Alfred's village aldermen of our own Saxon age. From Mr.

William M. Byers, now editor of the _Rocky Mountain News_, I had heard the story of the early settlers' land-law in Missouri; in Stanton's office in Denver City, I had seen the records of the Arrapahoe County Claim-club, with which he had been connected at the first settlement of Colorado; but at San Jose, I heard details of the settlers'

custom-law--the Californian "grand-cotumier," it might be called--which convinced me that, in order to find the rudiments of all that, politically speaking, is best and most vigorous in the Saxon mind, you must seek countries in which Saxon civilization itself is in its infancy. The greater the difficulties of the situation, the more racy the custom, the more national the law.

When a new State began to be "settled up"--that is, its lands entered upon by actual settlers, not landsharks--the inhabitants often found themselves in the wilderness, far in advance of attorneys, courts, and judges. It was their custom when this occurred to divide the territory into districts of fifteen or twenty miles square, and form for each a "claim-club" to protect the land-claims, or property of the members.

Whenever a question of t.i.tle arose, a judge and jury were chosen from among the members to hear and determine the case. The occupancy t.i.tle was invariably protected up to a certain number of acres, which was differently fixed by different clubs, and varied in those of which I have heard the rules from 100 to 250 acres, averaging 150. The United States "Homestead" and "Pre-emption" laws were founded on the practice of these clubs. The claim-clubs interfered only for the protection of their members, but they never scrupled to hang willful offenders against their rules, whether members or outsiders. Execution of the decrees of the club was generally left to the county sheriff, if he was a member, and in this case a certain air of legality was given to the local action. It is perhaps not too much to say that a Western sheriff is an irresponsible official, possessed of gigantic powers, but seldom known to abuse them. He is a Caesar, chosen for his honesty, fearlessness, clean shooting, and quick loading, by men who know him well: if he breaks down, he is soon deposed, and a better man chosen for dictator. I have known a Western paper say: "Frank is our man for sheriff, next October. See the way he shot one of the fellows who robbed his store, and followed up the other, and shot him too the next day.

Frank is the boy for us." In such a state of society as this, the distinction between law and lynch-law can scarcely be said to exist, and in the eyes of every Western settler the claim-club backed by the sheriff's name was as strong and as full of the majesty of the law as the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Byers told me of a case of the infliction of death-punishment by a claim-club which occurred in Kansas after the "Homestead" law was pa.s.sed allowing the occupant when he had tilled and improved the land for five years, to purchase it at one and a quarter dollars an acre. A man settled on a piece of land, and labored on it for some years. He then "sold it," which he had, of course, no power to do, the land being still the property of the United States. Having done this, he went and "pre-empted" it under the Homestead Act, at the government price. When he attempted to eject the man to whom he had a.s.sumed to sell, the club ordered the sheriff to "put the man away," and he was never seen again. Perhaps Mr. Byers was the sheriff; he seemed to have the details at his fingers' ends, and his later history in Denver, where he once had the lynching rope round his neck for exposing gamblers, testifies to his boldness.

Some of the rascalities which the claim-clubs were expected to put down were ingenious enough. Sometimes a man would build a dozen houses on a block of land, and, going there to enter on possession after they were complete, would find that in the night the whole of them had disappeared. Frauds under the Homestead Act were both many and strange.

Men were required to prove that they had on the land a house of at least ten feet square. They have been known to whittle out a toy-house with their bowie, and, carrying it to the land, to measure it in the presence of a friend--twelve inches by thirteen. In court the pre-emptor, examining his own witness, would say, "What are the dimensions of that house of mine?" "Twelve by thirteen." "That will do." In Kansas a log-house of the regulation size was fitted up on wheels, and let at ten dollars a day, in order that it might be wheeled on to different lots, to be sworn to as a house upon the land. Men have been known to make a window-sash and frame, and keep them inside of their windowless huts, to swear that they had a window in their house--another of the requirements of the act. It is a singular mark of deference to the traditions of a Puritan ancestry that such accomplished liars as the Western landsharks should feel it necessary to have any foundation whatever for their lies; but not only in this respect are they a curious race. One of their peculiarities is that, however wealthy they may be, they will never place their money out at interest, never sink it in a speculation, however tempting, when there is no prospect of almost immediate realization. To turn their money over often, at whatever risk, is with these men an axiom. The advanced-guard of civilization, they push out into an unknown wilderness, and seize upon the available lots, the streams, the springs, the river bottoms, the falls or "water-privileges," and then, using their interest in the territorial legislature--using, perhaps, direct corruption in some cases--they procure the location of the State capital upon their lands, or the pa.s.sage of the railroads through their valleys. The capital of Nebraska has been fixed in this manner at a place two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest settlement. A newspaper appeared suddenly, dated from "Lincoln City, center of Nebraska Territory," but published in reality in Omaha. To cope with such fellows, Western sheriffs must be no ordinary men.

Thanks to the Vigilance Committees, California stands now before the other far-western States. Rowdyism is being put down as the G.o.d-fearing Northerners gain ground. It may still be dangerous to stroke your beard in a bar-room at Placerville or El Dorado; "a gentleman in the loafing and chancing line" may still be met with in Sacramento; here and there a Missourian "Pike," as yet unhung, may boast that he can whip his weight in wild cats,--but San Francisco has at least reached the age of outward decorum, has shut up public gaming-houses, and supports four church papers.

In Colorado lynch law is not as yet forgotten: the day we entered Denver the editor of the _Gazette_ expressed, "on historical grounds," his deep regret at the cutting down of two fine cottonwood-trees that stood on Cherry Creek. When we came to talk to him we found that the "history"