Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 — Letter 04

ACCIDENTS--SURGERY--DEATH--FESTIVITY

RICH BAR, EAST BRANCH _of the_ NORTH FORK _of_ FEATHER RIVER, _September_ 22, 1851. There has been quite an excitement here for the last week, on account of a successful amputation having been performed upon the person of a young man by the name of W. As I happen to know all the circumstances of the case, I will relate them to you as illustrative of the frightful accidents to which the gold-seekers are constantly liable, and I can assure you that similar ones happen very often.

W.

was one of the first who settled on this river, and suffered extremely from the scarcity of provisions during the last winter.

By steady industry in his laborious vocation, he had accumulated about four thousand dollars.

He was thinking seriously of returning to Massachusetts with what he had already gained, when, in the early part of last May, a stone, unexpectedly rolling from the top of Smith's Hill, on the side of which he was mining, crushed his leg in the most shocking manner.

Naturally enough, the poor fellow shrank with horror from the idea of an amputation here in the mountains.

It seemed absolutely worse than death.

His physician, appreciating his feelings on the subject, made every effort to save his shattered limb, but, truly, the Fates seemed against him.

An attack of typhoid fever reduced him to a state of great weakness, which was still further increased by erysipelas--a common complaint in the mountains--in its most virulent form.

The latter disease, settling in the fractured leg, rendered a cure utterly hopeless.

His sufferings have been of the most intense description.

Through all the blossoming spring, and a summer as golden as its own golden self, of our beautiful California he has languished away existence in a miserable cabin, his only nurses men, some of them, it is true, kind and good, others neglectful and careless.

A few weeks since, F. was called in to see him.

He decided immediately that nothing but an amputation would save him.

A universal outcry against it was raised by nearly all the other physicians on the Bar.

They agreed, _en masse_, that he could live but a few weeks unless the leg--now a mere lump of disease--was taken off.

At the same time, they declared that he would certainly expire under the knife, and that it was cruel to subject him to any further suffering.

You can perhaps imagine F.' s anxiety.

It was a great responsibility for a young physician to take.

Should the patient die during the operation, F.' s professional reputation would, of course, die with him; but he felt it his duty to waive all selfish considerations, and give W. that one chance, feeble as it seemed, for his life.

Thank God, the result was most triumphant.

For several days existence hung upon a mere thread.

He was not allowed to speak or move, and was fed from a teaspoon, his only diet being milk, which we obtained from the Spanish Rancho, sending twice a week for it.

I should have mentioned that F. decidedly refused to risk an operation in the small and miserable tent in which W. had languished away nearly half a year, and he was removed to the Empire the day previous to the amputation.

It is almost needless to tell you that the little fortune, to accumulate which he suffered so much, is now nearly exhausted.

Poor fellow!

the philosophy and cheerful resignation with which he has endured his terrible martyrdom is beautiful to behold.

My heart aches as I look upon his young face and think of "his gentle dark-eyed mother weeping lonely at the North" for her far-away and suffering son.

As I sat by the bedside of our poor invalid, yielding myself up to a world of dreamy visionings suggested by the musical sweep of the pine branch which I waved above his head, and the rosy sunset flushing the western casement with its soft glory, he suddenly opened his languid eyes and whispered, "The Chileno procession is returning.

Do you not hear it?"

I did not tell him-- That the weary sound, and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank, had already informed me that a far other band than that of the noisy South Americans was solemnly marching by.

It was the funeral train of a young man who was instantly killed, the evening before, by falling into one of those deep pits, sunk for mining purposes, which are scattered over the Bar in almost every direction.

I rose quietly and looked from the window.

About a dozen persons were carrying an unpainted coffin, without pall or bier (the place of the latter being supplied by ropes), up the steep hill which rises behind the Empire, on the top of which is situated the burial-ground of Rich Bar.

The bearers were all neatly and cleanly dressed in their miner's costume, which, consisting of a flannel shirt (almost always of a dark-blue color), pantaloons with the boots drawn up over them, and a low-crowned broad-brimmed black felt hat (though the fashion of the latter is not invariable), is not, simple as it seems, so unpicturesque as you might perhaps imagine.

A

strange horror of that lonely mountain graveyard came over me as I watched the little company wending wearily up to the solitary spot.

The "sweet habitude of being"--not that I fear _death_, but that I love _life_ as, for instance, Charles Lamb loved it--makes me particularly affect a cheerful burial-place.

I know that it is dreadfully unsentimental, but I should like to make my last home in the heart of a crowded city, or, better still, in one of those social homes of the dead, which the Turks, with a philosophy so beautiful and so poetical, make their most cheerful resort.

Singularly enough, Christians seem to delight in rendering death particularly hideous, and graveyards decidedly disagreeable.

I, on the contrary, would "plant the latter with laurels, and sprinkle it with lilies."

I would wreathe "sleep's pale brother" so thickly with roses that even those rabid moralists who think that it makes us better to paint him as a dreadful fiend, instead of a loving friend, could see nothing but their blushing radiance.

I

would alter the whole paraphernalia of the coffin, the shroud, and the bier, particularly the first, which, as Dickens says, "looks like a high-shouldered ghost with its hands in its breeches-pockets."

Why should we endeavor to make our entrance into a glorious immortality so unutterably ghastly?

Let us glide into the "fair shadowland" through a "gate of flowers," if we may no longer, as in the majestic olden time, aspire heavenward on the wings of perfumed flame.

How oddly do life and death jostle each other in this strange world of ours!

How nearly allied are smiles and tears!

My eyes were yet moist from the egotistical _pitie de moi-meme_ in which I had been indulging at the thought of sleeping forever amid these lonely hills, which in a few years must return to their primeval solitude, perchance never again to be awakened by the voice of humanity, when the Chileno procession, every member of it most intensely drunk, really _did_ appear.

I never saw anything more diverting than the whole affair.

Of course, _selon les regles_, I ought to have been shocked and horrified, to have shed salt tears, and have uttered melancholy jeremiads over their miserable degradation; but the world is so full of platitudes, my dear, that I think you will easily forgive me for not boring you with a temperance lecture, and will good-naturedly let me have my laugh, and not think me _very_ wicked, after all.

You must know that to-day is the anniversary of the independence of Chile.

The procession got up in honor of it consisted, perhaps, of twenty men, nearly a third of whom were of that class of Yankees who are particularly noisy and particularly conspicuous in all celebrations where it is each man's most onerous duty to get what is technically called "tight."

The man who headed the procession was a complete comic poem in his own individual self.

He was a person of Falstaffian proportions and coloring, and if a brandy-barrel ever _does_ "come alive," and, donning a red shirt and buckskin trousers, betake itself to pedestrianism, it will look more like my hero than anything else that I can at present think of.

With that affectionateness so peculiar to people when they arrive at the sentimental stage of intoxication, although it was with the greatest difficulty that he could sustain his own corporosity, he was tenderly trying to direct the zigzag footsteps of his companion, a little withered-up, weird-looking Chileno.

Alas for the wickedness of human nature!

The latter, whose drunkenness had taken a Byronic and misanthropical turn, rejected with the basest ingratitude these delicate attentions.

Do not think that my incarnated brandy-cask was the only one of the party who did unto others as he would they should do unto him, for the entire band were officiously tendering to one another the same good-Samaritan-like assistance.

I was not astonished at the Virginia-fence-like style of their marching when I heard a description of the feast of which they had partaken a few hours before.

A friend of mine, who stepped into the tent where they were dining, said that the board--really, _board_--was arranged with a bottle of claret at each plate, and, after the cloth (metaphorically speaking, I mean, for table-linen is a mere myth in the mines) was removed, a twenty-gallon keg of brandy was placed in the center, with quart dippers gracefully encircling it, that each one might help himself as he pleased.

Can you wonder, after that, that every man vied with his neighbor in illustrating Hogarth's line of beauty?

It was impossible to tell which nation was the more gloriously drunk; but this I _will_ say, even at the risk of being thought partial to my own beloved countrymen, That, though the Chilenos reeled with a better grace, the Americans did it more _naturally_!

LETTER _the_ FIFTH [_The_ PIONEER, _June_, 1854] DEATH _of a_ MOTHER--LIFE _of_ PIONEER WOMEN SYNOPSIS

Death of one of the four pioneer women of Rich Bar.

The funeral from the log-cabin residence.

Sickly ten-months-old baby moans piteously for its mother.

A handsome girl of sick years, unconscious of her bereavement, shocks the author by her actions.

A monte-table cover as a funeral pall.

Painful feelings when nails are driven into coffin.

The extempore prayer.

Every observance possible surrounded the funeral.

Visit to a canvas house of three "apartments".

Barroom, dining-room, kitchen with bed-closet.

A sixty-eight-pound woman.

"A magnificent woman, a wife of the right sort".

"Earnt her 'old man' nine hundred dollars in nine weeks, by washing".

The "manglers" and the "mangled".

Fortitude of refined California women pioneers.

The orphaned girl a "cold-blooded little wretch".

Remorse of the author.

"Baby decanters".

The gayety and fearlessness of the orphaned girl.

Letter _the_ Fifth DEATH _of a_ MOTHER--LIFE _of_ PIONEER WOMEN RICH BAR, EAST BRANCH _of the_ NORTH FORK _of_ FEATHER RIVER,