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

Some Reminiscences of Early Trinitv.
butchers and was directed one day to take
the knives to be ground. Putting them into his basket he started on his mission.
On the road he met three men, and knew
at once by their looks, that they were
fresh and verdant from the "States."
"Who are you? Where are you going?
What do you want here? Can you fight?
Can you cut? Here, take your choice,"
and he set the basket of knives down before
the astonished strangers, who heard and fled,
not stopping to draw breath until they
reached the Brown's Creek divide where,
meeting a party going toward the place they
had just left, they sought to turn them back
by telling what had happened.
A mining camp that flourished for a time
and got a reputation for pure cussedness
that may have been equaled but never excelled, was located about twenty miles from
the county seat. There was nothing vicious
about the good people of " Bagdad"-for
so they had named their city-but the
genius of the inhabitants was exercised on
every available occasion to extract fun and
amusement from any and every source.
Birds of a feather are said to flock together,
and the city of Bagdad held more than its
proportion of practical jokers, supplemented, if occasion required, by reinforcements from the "Algerines; " who dwelt
upon the opposite bank of the river. Generally speaking, their jokes were of a harmless nature, and they could give and take
with equal zest and relish. Their pranks
were usually played upon each other, and
the person of the chance visitor was held
sacred, unless he was thought to be "too
fresh," in which case the genius of the
jokers was set at once to work to "take him
down" a little. Craven Lee, the storekeeper,
was one of the most inveterate of the lot,
and though the boys might have the best of
him to-day, the tables would be turned and
he be on top of the heap to-morrow. When
the boys led him off one night to rob a Chinese melon patch, while at the same hour
another part of the crowd had taken advaintage of his absence to rob his own, and then
invited Lee to help eat his own melons in
the belief that they were stolen from McGillivray's four miles above, Lee did not wince;
and the only time he is said to have lost his
temper was when, having got his packs all
ready for a trip to Rattlesnake, twenty
miles away, the boys stole out two klegs of
gin, deftly abstracted the contents, refilled
the kegs with water and got them back in
place, leaving Lee to find out the substitution at the end of his journey.
I might fill scores of pages with the record
of pranks like the above, but the samples I
have given will suffice to show the kind of
people who flocked to Bagdad, and held
the fort there through many changing years.
But as the placer mines in the vicinity became exhausted the jokers sought for other
quarters, and to-day Bagdad, no longer socalled, consists of four or five buildings only.
Rich quartz discoveries on the streams tributary to Trinity that flow by the place may
bring to it something of its former prosperity
if the promise now given is realized, but to
get together such another set of jokers, is
something that will not happen in these
matter-of-fact times.
The memories of those days are in the
main pleasing ones; yet to one who has seen
the life and bustle of thirty years ago, and
contrasts it with the steady, plodding ways of
the present, the contrast is not inspiriting.
Along the course of the river are miles and
miles at a time where one can travel without
seeing a human face, unless, perhaps, some
plodding son of Asia is found striving to eke
out an existence by picking over a place
that has been picked and gouged a score
of times before. The river bars, where the
pioneers delved and toiled throughout the
"fifties," are buried deep under the washings of higher places; the channel of the
stream, in many places crowded over to the
opposite mountain from the side on which it
once ran, moves sluggishly along. Here
1887.]
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