Some Reminiscences of Early Trinity [pp. 17-32]

Some Reminiscences of Early Trinity.
it was decided nem. con. to have a meal of
potatoes. A prospecting tour in all the
pockets of all hands resulted in fishing up
six bits, with which one of the party went
to town and soon returned with its equivalent in potatoes-three pounds. The potatoes were speedily washed, put into the kettle,
and hung from the crane to boil. Seated
at either corner and in front of the fireplace,
the three watched the bubbling water with
grand anticipation of the feast in store. A
large blue house lizard appeared on the
scene. He sat on the end of the cross stick
from which the boiling kettle depended,
and after one or two preparatory humps,
evidently concluded he could make the trip
and started across. But the minute he
struck the ascending steam of the kettle
down he went into it. Neither of the three
said a word; each felt himself incompetent
to do justice to the occasion. Miller took
the kettle off and walked out of the door,
the others following. He gave it a kick,
starting it down the hill, and all hands followed, giving a kick in turn, until it bumped
against the stones of the creek below. Then
they sadly returned to their dinner of bacon
and beans.
Lathrop, soon after his fortunate winter, sold
his Trinity property and sought other fields
of enterprise in the southern portion of the
State, where I hear he has made and lost
fortunes as he did here. Of the beautiful
garden spot which stood him in such good
stead that winter, scarce a vestige remains.
Many interesting stories could be told
of the experiences of men during that
year but the scope of this article is too
small to permit it. I was at a gathering
once where a dozen or more men were present, each of whom in turn had related his
experience except Bill Keith, who was so
busy stringing up an old fiddle that he had
said nothing. The crowd having talked
itself out wanted to hear from Keith and
told him so.
"Oh, I was all right," said Keith, "I
had plenty to eat, and made $250 without
doing a thing."
"How the d did you do that?"
"Well, you see, it was this way. I bought
two hundred of flour in the fall for two bits a
hundred. It raised to be worth a dollar and
a half a pound on Indian Creek, and I ate
it all myself."
Lathrop's ditch was about the first large
ditch leading along the river. The earlier
miners had a theory (since proven to be
false) that small heads of water should be
used in washing for gold, and the first
ditches constructed were small affairs.'The
first mining with the primitive rocker was,
as in other places, followed by the tom; and
it is curious to look upon some of the old
records and see the property conveyed by
the bills of sale there preserved. Yet even
with the small heads of water then in use,
so many different claims were run that not
enough came down in the natural way to
supply all, and the ditches were supplemented by a system of huge reservoirs, which
retained the water at night and doubled the
amount distributed by day. This was not
effected without some "kicking" upon the
part of those working in the natural channels of the streams below where the ditches
were taken out, who claimed with a certain
degree of justice that they were entitled to
a sort of riparian ownership of the waters
for mining, and enforced this argument
with a few strokes of the pick and shovel
that sent the water from its artificial to its
natural channels again. As the anti-ditchers were much greater in point of numbers
than those who owned ditches and water
rights, the minority appealed for protection to
the courts: and as anti-ditchers had, in the
exuberance of their zeal, destroyed, or
rather injured, a ditch after the water was
out of it, the two chief offenders were
arrested. Upon this, all the miners on
the gulch below, to the number of about
forty-seven, demanded to be put in jail with
the others. Sheriff Lowe obligingly tried to
27
1887.]