This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help t...

My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory⁠—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and A...

The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Neva...

About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly over the road⁠—so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle, lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and du...

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of...

Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came, by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive soli...

Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours. Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, by stagecoach, was nearly nineteen hundr...

It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling ...

In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and watching for the “pony-rider”⁠—the fleet messenger who sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters ni...

We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow (apparently) looming vast and solitary⁠—a deep, dark, rich ind...

Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors had been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conc...

And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again. News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana (whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him...

Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd of loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-lookin...

We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables⁠—a great variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some, afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there...

Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters⁠—and considering that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabited mountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to t...

It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a Gent...

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is ...

At the end of our two days’ sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City hearty and well fed and happy⁠—physically superb but not so very much wiser, as regards the “Mormon question,” than we were when we ar...

At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been the important military station of “Camp Floyd,” some forty-five or fifty miles from Salt Lake City. At four p.m. we had doubled...

On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake. It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far fro...

On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless...

We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been ...

It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with the curious new country and concluded to put off my return ...

If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in person. We ...

I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displaye...

Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and a pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no end of hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon st...

By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. “Prospecting parties” were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking possession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz. ...

Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons⁠—a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eigh...

After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little way. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term “river” with a high degree of...

True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went out “prospecting” with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountainsides, and clambered among sagebrush, rocks and snow till we were read...

I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand “feet” in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which they believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand doll...

There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all cr...

We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by walking off in various directions⁠—the regular snow-mounds and the regular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found...

I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my ...

The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe Valleys⁠—very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the spring and the warm surface-earth begins to...

When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor’s brother. He had a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is...

I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I learned that the burrowing was only half the work; an...

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmera...

Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds...

About seven o’clock one blistering hot morning⁠—for it was now dead summer time⁠—Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of discovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but...

I now come to a curious episode⁠—the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddi...

Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old gentleman was himself⁠—which is to say, he was kindhearted and agreeable when comfortable, but a singularly violent wildcat when...

What to do next? It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends; and although he left us a sumptuous leg...

However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to any large extent, and became able to fill my columns wi...

My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and ...

The “flush times” held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer had borrowed forty dollars and set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the ne...

There were nabobs in those days⁠—in the “flush times,” I mean. Every rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of these. They were careless, easygoing fellows, as a general t...

Somebody has said that in order to know a community, one must observe the style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with most é...

The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will always say and believe. The reason why there was so much ...

An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a photograph that can need no embellishment: Fatal Shooting Affray.⁠—An affray occurred, last evening, in a billiard saloon on C street, b...

These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very extraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap of history familiar to all old Californians, and worthy to be known by...

Vice flourished luxuriantly during the heyday of our “flush times.” The saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the gambling dens, the brothels and the jails⁠—unfailing signs...

Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom...

Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather’s old ram⁠—but they always added that I must not mention the ...

Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia⁠—it is the case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless race when white men either let them alone or treat them no...

I began to get tired of staying in one place so long. There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and pumpk...

We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the clouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remark here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires dist...

It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold-mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttere...

For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of existence⁠—a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love...

For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, an...

By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him. We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there ...

One of my comrades there⁠—another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes⁠—was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and...

After a three months’ absence, I found myself in San Francisco again, without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and ther...

On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcom...

In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this: I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii tonight⁠—especially about sitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen or twe...

By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which commanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain and valley and ocean with a mellow radiance, and out of the s...

Passing through the market-place we saw that feature of Honolulu under its most favorable auspices⁠—that is, in the full glory of Saturday afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The nativ...

I still quote from my journal: I found the national legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and ministers (about a dozen...

While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King’s sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace t...

Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Hono...

We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and refresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen present; but there was one person, a middle-aged man, with...

At four o’clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant land journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fi...

In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the last god Lono. The high chief cook of this temple⁠—the priest who presided over it and roasted the human sacrifices⁠—was uncle...

At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at Honaunau in his canoe⁠—price two dollars⁠—reasonable enough, for a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both ways. The native canoe is...

We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau, where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain...

The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for we desired to traverse its floor and see the “North Lake” (of fire) which lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After d...

We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked road making the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very much. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kan...

I stumbled upon one curious character in the island of Maui. He became a sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occ...

After half a year’s luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping in a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco⁠—a voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident: unless...

I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in the Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose....

Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from o...

The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long⁠—and which they consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves⁠—they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The n...

[If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill, Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever th...

“Bunch-grass” grows on the bleak mountainsides of Nevada and neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and exposes it; ...