Lost Journals of a Pioneer.—I. [pp. 75-90]

The Lost Journals of a Pioneer.
merciful to you. Go, then, and be a man.
Kate shall never know of this from me. Of
course, you will do as you please."
She stood just there, while he bowed himself out of the door-how, he hardly knew.
Then she sank upon a lounge, covering her
white face with her hands, and moaned and
moaned:
"Oh, my God, I loved him! My God,
my God, I loved him."
Just two weeks after that night Clara Pow
ell received the following, post-marked San
Diego:
"Afy dear Friend(: You will be surprised at this,
I know, but I was married this morning to Kate
Trenton. We are very happy. We will take in
your town on our way up the coast —and then I will
tell you how it all came about. I know you are dying of curiosity this moment. Just now my wife is
calling me from below stairs, to give judgment as to
the set of a bonnet. You know what a connoisseur
I am in such matters. So I must go. Your friend,
" WILL. "
Sol. Shier/dan.
THE LOST JOURNALS OF A PIONEER. —I.
A CURIOUS relic of early days was brought
to light last August, in the neighborhood of
Martinez. George Bailey, the grandson of
Mr. M. R. Barber, of that place, chanced to
be in a portion of his grandfather's ranch,
about two and a half miles from Martinez,
between the Alhambra and Walnut Creek
roads, high up in the hills, where no one
would be likely to pass by, unless it were
some hunter. Near the division line between
Mr. Barber's land and Dr. Strentzel's, he
came upon the curious phenomenon of a little group of ancient-looking books, lying at
the foot of an oak tree. They were mouldy,
weather-stained, decaying at the corners, yet
still in fair preservation, and had apparently
been wrapped in a stout sack, whose rotting
remains had fallen from them, and lay close
by. The fresh traces of digging showed that
some animal doubtless a coyote —had very
recently scratched them out from under a
covering of leaves and earth that had hidden them no one knows how long.
The books were four in number. One
was a journal of the ninth session of the California Assembly. Another was a report of
the joint committee on the conduct of the
war, second session of the Thirty-eighth
Congress. The two others proved to be
ledgers, entirely filled with a fine and still
quite legible handwriting, and were easily
recognizable as private journals, dating back
to the beginning of the fifties; but no name
appeared on cover or title page, to tell who
was the pioneer that had thus mysteriously
left his books, like babes in the wood, under
the leaves and surface soil of a remote spot
in the Contra Costa hills. The initials "C.
E. M." and the word "Sacramento," carved
all over the leather cover of one volume,
amid swords, profiles, dates, and other evidences of an idle penknife, were the only
clue.
A closer examination of the contents of
the journals shed some light upon their origin. That their author was a man of some
education was evident by the motto in Greek,
signifying "Wealth is mortal, but thought is
immortal," conspicuously written at the top
of the first page of each journal. The entries were all made at Sacramento, beginning
with January i, I85i, and ending with January 3o, i857. They are systematically
kept, and an index has been begun at the
front, wherein weather-record, sermons heard,
legal matters, political events, poetry (for
the pages are interspersed with original verse
of an old-fashioned sort), books read, &c.,
were to be recorded in parallel colums, with
reference to pages; this index, however, was
not completed, and what there is of it has
become almost illegible. The weather is
recorded for every day during this six years;
and long and full entries comment on local
and general politics, the writer's legal practice, the books he finds to read in the Sac
1886.]
75