I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas near the
forge, with just a look over the dump on the green world below, and
seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence
broken only by the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the
royal family about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back
to the epoch of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand tutti
of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the
assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road,
and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the
iron chute. And now all gone--all fallen away into this sunny
silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining in the
assayer's office, making their beds in the big sleeping room
erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that once
rang with picks.
But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay,
was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other
flitting cities. Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake
County side there was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand
inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the
sale of whiskey. Round on the western side of Mount Saint Helena,
there was at the same date, a second large encampment, its name, if
it ever had one, lost for me.
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