No, it was not even decent to begin with; and you would not like to believe it, at least.

Then the Gopher's theory?

Based on a violation of the simplest rules of addition to be found in the Mental Arithmetic.

By the law of nature.

Then she was not a bad woman? She was an angel.

Then?
Listen to me.

the day of the country's development, there were a thousand strong men to tempt one weak woman.

And she?

ITH a solitary companion at my side, I stood, one bright morning in midsummer, on an Alpine summit near the head of Lake Constance, in Switzerland. The smiling villages that dot and adorn the Canton of St. Gallen were sleeping at our feet, while the distant summits of the Montfalon range, robed in white and scaling the heavens, rose in sublime and misty grandeur in the west. Before us, as far as the eye could reach, the clear blue waters of the lake spread out like a mimic ocean to the belt of the horizon; the young Rhine debouched in full sight into the lake, and for many miles mingled its crystal stream with the azure sea of Constance. With the aid of a good opera-glass we could just discern where it again issued forth, and set out on its long journey to the Northern Ocean, fertilizing the country through which it passed, and recording upon its banks the history of modern Europe. Parting here, it was again reunited yonder, rolling freer, with a broader, deeper current, and rejoicing on its way to its final bourne.

My companion was a gentleman from

the northern part of Wales, and bore one of the most ancient patronymics of that old Celtic nest. It was perhaps his name and native land, or else the lesson of the landscape before us, which awakened the train of thought into which I fell, and gave expression to the Californian romance I am about to relate. At all events, commenting upon the peculiarity of the River Rhine just described, its separation and reunion, my thoughts recurred to the no less strange history of a Californian family I had recently met in the city of Washington. He was a Senator, and the representative of a sovereign State; she had been the reigning belle of the city of San Francisco. Both were opulent-she owning almost a principality in her own right, and he being a mining millionaire. Their tastes were similar-refined, highly cultivated, and intellectual. There was a similarity in the general type of their features, from which some distant relationship might easily be inferred. After I had learned his history-for hers I had known from my earliest boyhood—I no longer wondered at the resemblance.

"That river," said I to my companion, "reminds me of the fortunes of a Senator of the United States."

"In what manner?" he inquired. I then proceeded to narrate the following authentic facts:

"We must leave this mountain land," said I, "cross the seas, and traverse half the American continent, to reach the first scene of my story. We must proceed even still farther, and pierce the wild wildernesses of the far Missouri. There, upon the banks of the longest river that frets the surface of our globe, and within reach of the old six-pounders of Fort Hempstead, erected in the early part of the present century, stood the little village of Franklin. It was a frontier settlement, and, like all such towns at that early day, was inhabited by a mixed but bold and enterprising population. It was the home of the bravest mountaineer that ever hunted, trapped, or climbed the Rocky Mountains-the kind, fearless, and peerless Kit Carson! It was the spot whence the annual caravans set out on their perilous trading expeditions, south-westwardly to New Mexico, and westwardly into the Rocky Mountains and beyond. In front rolled the swift Missouri, and behind frowned an unbroken forest. Hundreds of tribes of hostile savages roamed undisputed lords of plain and prairie. Danger peeped into every cabin door, and death, from the barbed arrow or the unerring rifle, very often entered the open window. Every corral was a fortification, and every house a fortress. The woods were infested by day with predatory bands of Sacs and Foxes, and the warwhoops of the Cheyennes and Sioux often aroused the hardy pioneers from their midnight slumbers. But if there were danger and privation, there were also adventure and profit to be found; and hence, in spite of the disadvantages of the location, hundreds of fierce and adventurous spirits flocked thither from

every part of the globe, to whom danger was a delight and hardship recreation. Among a population with whom personal bravery is the highest virtue, the lower forms of vice are unknown, and peril and privation unite the whole community into a band of brothers.

"It was to this border village of the then far West that an early pioneer came, during the first quarter of this century, to find a home and found a family. His parents had emigrated from the northern part of Wales. He brought with him no one except a young, beautiful, and intelligent wife, and plunged eagerly into all the enterprises of western life and encountered all its dangers. Gradually the frontier extended farther back, and before he had been settled many years at Franklin he became the owner of a fine farm near the village. A large family of rosy and healthful children grew up around him, and doubly compensated him for his early perils with their love and reverence. Foremost among them was his eldest daughter, a woman of rare beauty of form and feature and possessed of a heroic heart; and many were the admirers who pined at her feet and fought bloody duels for her hand. For a long time she discarded all their offers, seeming unwilling to bestow her heart upon another. Finally, however, a handsome and youthful stranger made his appearance in Franklin, and she beheld in him her hope and destiny.

"This young man was a native of the mountains of North Carolina, and a splendid type of vigorous and perfect manhood. Tall, lithe, and powerful in frame, active in mind, adventurous in spirit, and dauntless in soul, he came to her almost as a messenger from Jove himself. She beamed upon him like the first blush of morning, the first flower of spring-time, the first breath of roses. It is needless to add that love, wild, overpowering, and mutual, vanquished both hearts at the same time. Their mar

riage followed in due time and in the order of such events, and their home was blessed with several children. He became a successful Santa Fé trader, and for many years the monotony of their married life was broken only by the annual caravan to the West.

"Well do I remember as a boy the scenes of those partings. The whole village was out in holiday attire to bid adieu to the adventurous traders. They set out in vast bands, made up of laden teams, each drawn by a dozen mules, then harnessed for the first time; of horsemen armed to the teeth, with rifles or immense horse-pistols, with bowieknives and ancient sabres, and almost every other conceivable weapon of warfare, offensive or defensive; of footmen and drivers, of camp-followers, and the indispensable mayordomo and his guides, forming a train often a mile in length, almost every family in the village being represented, either by father, husband, son, or brother. The road was unbroken for almost the entire distance to be traveled. It ran along the high table-lands and undulating plains, where the tracks of the wheels would disappear in a few days, or close to the banks of rapid streams, where the current shifted the channel almost every season, washing away the banks and obliterating all traces of travel. The trail sometimes led up steep mountains, requiring the use of improvised windlasses and the application of ropes with which to raise and lower the wagons. Bridges there were none, and every stream and bayou had to be forded. The trip was no less perilous than prolonged. The Indians, of course, had to be fought and defeated. They would pursue the train day and night, lying in ambush, or startling the camp by 'stampeding' the animals. In addition to these formidable pests, very frequently the caravan would be attacked by bands of Mexican outlaws, who, driven forth from the

populated states of Mexico in their unsuccessful, revolutionary pronunciamientos, took to the plunder of these merchant traders as a natural and easy step in their downward career of brigandage and crime. It was a happy day for the traders when the old cracked bell of the adobe cathedral in Santa Fé greeted their ears. This joy was only exceeded when the white cottages of Franklin were discerned through the forests of Missouri, upon their successful return. Such was the life of the mountaineer previous to his advent in California.

"In the spring of 1830 he left Franklin, as usual, at the head of a select party of traders, bound, for the first time, into the interior of Chihuahua -a long distance from the customary terminus of the route. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, afterward so celebrated as the bloody and ambitious tyrant of Mexico, had just issued his first pronunciamiento at the city of Vera Cruz, and thousands of discontented spirits flocked to his banner. The émeute extended into all the states of Mexico, from Jalisco to Texas. Mostly destitute of arms and the munitions of war, the appearance of a trading party of Americans in the interior of Chihuahua was the signal for an organized attack upon the caravan by these marauders, at a narrow defile in the Sierra Madre. The attack, being entirely unexpected, it is needless to say was perfectly successful. The traders fought with their usual desperation, but before midday the entire party was annihilated with one single exception. Wounded and a prisoner, the mountaineer was carried far to the south and west, and after two or three months' wandering with the guerrillas, he finally made his escape and arrived safely in Hermosillo, in the state of Sonora. It soon became apparent that he could not live in a city where every inhabitant was an enemy of his race; and without a single

companion he again escaped, and pursued his journey still farther from the regions of civilization.

"It was in the spring of 1831 that he made his appearance at the old Mission of Sonoma, in the then province of Alta California. He was kindly welcomed by the good priests in charge, then the only White men on this coast. Here he found an old Frenchman who had fought as a sergeant under the star of the first Napoleon, and a firm friendship soon grew up between them. The American mountaineer was of course a great hunter, trapper, and warrior, well versed in the use of the knife and the rifle, and a perfect master of the arts of Indian warfare. For some years he followed the occupation of trapper, principally for sea-otter, then abounding in the country. In the year 1836 he obtained a grant of a large tract of land lying in the beautiful and fertile valley of Napa. During that year he remained alone on his rancho, and was the only White man between the Mission of Sonoma on the south to the trading-posts of the Hudson's Bay Company on the north. The whole country was overrun with Indians, there being no less than 12,000 ranging between Napa and Clear Lake. Grizzly-bears were abundant, and, as the old pioneer has stated, 'they were everywhere upon the plains, in the valleys, and on the mountains, even venturing into the company's grounds, so that I have often killed as many as five or six in one day; and it was not unusual to see fifty or sixty within twenty-four hours.'

"Determined to make Napa his final resting-place, he erected a stockade for protection against Indians, and put up the inevitable log-cabin-the first ever erected on this coast-which contained the only chimney in the province. The Spanish padres, on seeing the blue smoke curling up toward heaven through an open embrasure, exclaimed to the pi

oneer, 'My son, you will make yourself grow old by having a fire in your house.' The Indians were no less astonished, and for the first time grew suspicious of the pale-face, and regarded him as a sorcerer. Frequent attacks were made upon his house by Indians, and in an engagement with them at what is now known as Pope's Valley, he, with the assistance of twenty-five dusky warriors, defeated more than five hundred of the Digger tribe in the open field.

"Prosperity attended him; he could look out of his stockade and see hill and valley for miles around him covered with his flocks and herds. But with all this there was an aching void in his heart. In dreams he went back to the little village of Franklin on the banks of the far Missouri, and again felt the pressure of a gentle hand within his own. But it was only in dreams; where was the trusted wife of his early manhood, or they, the first-fruits of his love and affection? Had he been silent all these years? Had absence and danger hardened his heart? Had he never sent a line to the mourning household, who had heard of his death in the defiles of the Sierra Madre, and mourned his loss, but had not learned of his resurrection in California? Far otherwise. It is true that he was cut off from the Atlantic sea-board as completely as if he had emigrated to the moon, there being absolutely no communication with 'the States.' After awhile, however, tradingships from Boston anchored inside the Golden Gate, and Polar whalers paused for water at Saucelito, on their dreary voyages to the Arctic Ocean. But these were extremely rare, perhaps not more than once a year, He possessed no writing materials of any kind. However, after he had built his cabin, he managed to borrow some stamped paper from the padres, and addressed annually a fond letter to his wife and children. But they never reached their

destination, and the wife put on her widow's weeds and his children became orphans. Some of these epistles were afterward disentombed in the office of the United States Consular Agent at Honolulu, in 1847, where they had rested ten or a dozen years, and extracts from several of them were at the time printed and published at that place. One of them is now before me, and breathes the spirit of undying affection for the fond ones so long lost to our pioneer. In one of them he incidentally mentions the discovery of gold at the Pueblo de los Angeles, and predicts the future wealth of California. In the early part of the year 1841 he visited the place known as Yerba Buena (now San Francisco), for the purpose of disposing of hides and peltry, in exchange for cotton goods and ammunition, when he accidentally encountered an old trapper acquaintance from Missouri. He learned with dismay that his family had never heard from him, and that under the laws of that State his unexplained absence for such a great length of time constituted his wife a widow, with all the rights of a femme sole. He resolved at once to send for his family. His old friend was duly commissioned for the purpose, and joyfully accepted the holy trust, and with means then and there provided, set out, with the promise to perform his task in person, and also to pilot the family across the almost interminable plains to California.

"It was spring-time in the year 1842. The dense forests of walnut and sycamore, of hickory and oak, had made room for the orchards and meadows around Franklin, and the Red warriors of the west had all disappeared. Flowers and fruit-trees blossomed where but a few years before the jungles of wild vine and the marshes of swamp willow had afforded a shelter for the prowling Indian. Cultivated fields were seen in all directions, and the noisy

steamboat passed hourly up or down the turbid waters of the winding Missouri, supplanting the keel-boat, the barge, and canoe. Stores, shops, and mills greeted the eye everywhere, and church-steeples and school-houses dotted the thriving town with their placid and quiet smiles.

A

"Let us visit one of the latter. messenger hurriedly enters and requests of the master leave of absence for a beautiful and blooming lassie of fourteen summers, and the favorite of her playmates. He confers a moment with her, and the poor child is carried fainting from the room. An exciting and noisy scene followed. All the scholars, myself among the number, left their seats and went rushing into the open air, whither they had borne our companion. She was gently laid on the piazza in front, where, after a few deep-drawn sighs, she awoke to consciousness and joy—a joy that we now know was never broken afterward. Orphan no longer, rescued, too, from dependence, the little maiden passed from our sight like the fairy of a dream, to a new life of hope, joy, and happiness, of adventure and fortune.

"The village was wild with astonished delight. The lost had been found, the dead restored to life, and orphanage had wiped away its tears. We brought out the rusty iron six-pounder, raked from the debris of the old fort, and signalized the occurrence by the discharge of artillery. There was not a heavy heart or dry eye in all the town that night. There had not been such a 'time' since General Jackson was elected president. And what was it all about? Nothing, except that the friend of the California pioneer had arrived in town with news from the long-lost wanderer and a message to his family.

"I will pass in silence the dreary, toilsome journey across the plains, so full of adventure and peril at that early date; but at the end of six months after