第20章

LETTERS 1861-62.ON THE FRONTIER.MINING ADVENTURES.

JOURNALISTIC BEGINNINGS

Clemens went from the battle-front to Keokuk, where Orion was preparing to accept the appointment prophesied by Madame Caprell.

Orion was a stanch Unionist, and a member of Lincoln's Cabinet had offered him the secretaryship of the new Territory of Nevada.Orion had accepted, and only needed funds to carry him to his destination.

His pilot brother had the funds, and upon being appointed "private"secretary, agreed to pay both passages on the overland stage, which would bear them across the great plains from St.Jo to Carson City.

Mark Twain, in Roughing It, has described that glorious journey and the frontier life that followed it.His letters form a supplement of realism to a tale that is more or less fictitious, though marvelously true in color and background.The first bears no date, but it was written not long after their arrival, August 14, 1861.

It is not complete, but there is enough of it to give us a very fair picture of Carson City, "a wooden town; its population two thousand souls."Part of a letter to Mrs.Jane Clemens, in St.Louis:

(Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.)

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope you will all come out here someday.But I shan't consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style.But I guess we shall be able to do that, one of these days.I intend that Pamela shall live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist--say, about three months.

"Tell everything as it is--no better, and no worse."Well, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild cat" isn't worth ten cents.The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris, (gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes (pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.

I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest country under the sun."--and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to.It never rains here, and the dew never falls.No flowers grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye.The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with them.Only the crow and the raven tarry with us.Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest--most unadulterated, and compromising sand--in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush," ventures to grow.

If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire--set them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you'll understand (provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to wander through a sage-brush desert.When crushed, sage brush emits an odor which isn't exactly magnolia and equally isn't exactly polecat but is a sort of compromise between the two.It looks a good deal like grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of.It is gray in color.On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about twice as large as the common geranium--and in my opinion they are a very good substitute for that useless vegetable.Grease-wood is a perfect-most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color of it.As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain't any, except "Pulu" or "Tuler," or what ever they call it,--a species of unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson--a RIVER, 20yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again before some thirsty man came along and drank it up.I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert--true.And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains, that when you gaze at them awhile,--and begin to conceive of their grandeur--and next to feel their vastness expanding your soul--and ultimately find yourself growing and swelling and spreading into a giant--I say when this point is reached, you look disdainfully down upon the insignificant village of Carson, and in that instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand, put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it.

As to churches, I believe they have got a Catholic one here, but like that one the New York fireman spoke of, I believe "they don't run her now:" Now, although we are surrounded by sand, the greatest part of the town is built upon what was once a very pretty grassy spot; and the streams of pure water that used to poke about it in rural sloth and solitude, now pass through on dusty streets and gladden the hearts of men by reminding them that there is at least something here that hath its prototype among the homes they left behind them.And up "King's Canon,"(please pronounce canyon, after the manner of the natives,) there are "ranches," or farms, where they say hay grows, and grass, and beets and onions, and turnips, and other "truck" which is suitable for cows--yes, and even Irish potatoes; also, cabbage, peas and beans.

The houses are mostly frame, unplastered, but "papered" inside with flour-sacks sewed together, and the handsomer the "brand" upon the sacks is, the neater the house looks.Occasionally, you stumble on a stone house.On account of the dryness of the country, the shingles on the houses warp till they look like short joints of stove pipe split lengthwise.

(Remainder missing.)

In this letter is something of the "wild freedom of the West," which later would contribute to his fame.The spirit of the frontier--of Mark Twain--was beginning to stir him.