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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1884)
358 THE WEST SHORE. decrees inexorable and summary. It occasionally hap pened, however, that the wrong man dangled from a pine limb, or climbed the steep bide of the gulch with blood flowing from his luceratod back, an exile from an out raged camp; yet these incidents were by no means as frequent as is generally supposed, and there were hun dreds of mining camps, long since abandoned and, per haps, forgotten, which never witnessed such an exposition of popular justice. When thievery thus became common and gold dust could no longer be left exposed to view with a certainty of its remaining undisturbod, many were the devices resorted to by the minors for its safe keeping. It became the gonoral custom to bury it in the ground or secret it in some secure hiding place, known only to the o vner of the gold and his partner, if he had one; and this gave rise to many complications, both serious and comic. Frequently the place of secretion was forgotten, or so imperfectly remembered as to throw the unfortu nato owner into a state of excitement and perturbation bordonng upon insanity, while yards of earth were over turned with feverish haste until the hidden dust was found. That, howovor, was not the only result of many such cases of forgotfulness. More than one man for feited his life, Hho innocent victim of erring circum Htantial evidence, and many a stripe was laid upon the bare and blooding back of tho guiltless, charged with the theft of that which uovor was stolon, and which, perhaps, ..AMI .1.. 2.. !l t 11.-- 11 i . nun mnm miugijr in na lurguttuu Hiding place. A miner often died suddenly, or was killed in his claim or in some causeless quarrel, and diligent search failed to reveal tho dust he was supposed to have accumulated Occasionally, as tho years rolled on, these "plants" were accidentally discovered; but the great majority of them and who can say how many? still nestle in their earthy neste, and may, perhaps, till Gabriel's blast shall make them valueless in mortal eyes. Au instance of this kind ocourred at Drews' Flat in the summer of 1852. This was then a typical mining camp, situated on Salmon River, four miles above Saw yer's liar. It was a lively camp, in the fullest aecei.f. ance of the term, and howled even as Rome was made to howl in pagan days of old Oiie of the miners working on tho flat, Frank Ring by name, buried thirteen ounces of dust in a leather purse, near tho trunk of a fallen tree. He, alone, knew of its hiding place, and was one day overcome with astonishment to discover tho ground dug up and tho treasure gone. That ho had been robbed by Hiunn one who had discovered his place of deposit ho had no doubt, and his mind at once rested upon Charles Clark, a man whom ho had observed loitering in the vicinity of his earthly savings bank. The eye of suspi cion once fixed uion an. individual, the strong arm of hasty ami inconsiderate action immediately followed Tho news spread through the camp, and a ffi,i ;..n ' gathered, bent u,k.h administering swift justice, as they often tho verv justice which is understood it that essence of iniquity. Tho intended victim was an Englishman, an old man- o'-war's man. as simple, harmless nnA child, the last man in the camp who should have been suspected of such a crime', yet he had boon beeU i the vicinity of the fallen tree, and that was evidence enough. His age, however, was in his favor, and it was decided not to hang him, but to go through the form of doing so choking him enough to make him confess the robbery and surrender the stolen purse. As he was led out, with the harsh rope encircling his neck, he cried like a child with grief and shame. This was more than some of his judges could endure; craven appeals for mercy or ruf fianly bravado would have fallen like rain drops uoon 8 rock, but tears like those, welling up to the eyes from an agonized heart, broke down the barrier of prejudice, and he found many champions among those who had been so quick to condemn him. He was released, and wandered away, no one knew whither, while his acensnr wont - t ' "vim mi Australia, and the incident was forgotten, fading quickly rrom ine screen or memory before the. many that fol- lowed. A few months later another miner, James Lee, took it upon himself to build a shak.i house, u somewhat preten tious structure for such a community. In furtherance of this purpoie he was one clay coming into camp with a load of shakes upon his back, his head bowed forward and his eyes fixed upon the ground. Upon a log which lay in his pathway his practiced eye detected a faint streak of gold dust, and the load of shakes was thrown hastily down, while he investigated these strange I' colors." He followed the "lead" until it disappeared in the end of the log, and still pursuing his investigation he came upon a squirrel's nest, in which were tho lost leather purse, gnawed in two by the sharp teeth of the bushy-tailed robber, and a liberal sprinkling of its yellow contents. The mystery of the lost purse was solved. Poetic justice, so beautiful in the conventional teles of story writers, has but few exhibitions in the cold reality of life, and had far less in those early mining days, when men came and went bo quickly and so quietly that few noticed either their coming or their going. There cer tainly -was none in this case; for the innocent old man and his hasty accuser, as well as many of those who placed that cruel rope around his neck, died, or still live, in ignorance of the fact that a tragedy nearly resulted from the providential instinct of an industrious squirrel. Hakev L. Wells. It do not cover the sea floor further than 300 miles seaward. These deposits are four miles deep in places. Far at w lttf HlirfllPO iu n.,,l . .111. 11 Ml.11 nnilllullL -..vw .a wicicu wiiii very biiiiwi biien a" There is a patch of them in the North Atlantic 1,300 it. 1 . It- mues long and several hundred miles wide. Their sueu finally sink to the bottom and form chalk. In the gre abvssea rt tVi i xi -i-iij l!c.ilve D uuouh, However, inese bueiw Iwflll'A llimt .!. 11.. 1 ii tt ii 1 IXtinnto wj, iTOuu me Doiiom. iiere tne oniy nuiuw- the sea floor is made of wrecks, iceberg washings, dost carried by the wind, pumice from volcanoes and Petor,c! atones. The accretion is infinitely slow,