Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/628

 tive and energetic little prosecutor, that he was soon glad to buy escape by paying the claim and all the costs.

When men first began to steal along the happy foothills, the delving innocents regarded the matter lightly, often flippantly. A case is cited in which a man was taken before the justice at Downieville in 1850 for stealing a pair of boots. The justice was keeper of a saloon. The culprit was found guilty and adjudged first to restore the stolen property and then by way of fine to treat the crowd. The court and all present adjourned to the bar of the saloon to drink and joke at the criminal's expense. Ridicule is often a severer scourge than stripes. Regardless of the reckoning, and of the convict's ability to pay, drink after drink was called on and poured down the throats of the jovial assemblage until all, including judge, jury, and executioner became more engrossed in the pleasing pastime than in watching the prisoner, who, taking advantage of the opportunity, slipped out, packed his little property and was soon over the hills and out of sight. The chagrin of the justice may be imagined, who, when his bar-keeper summed up the bill for payment, found that his fine had been inflicted upon his own pocket.

High in the foothills, on the south Yuba, during the saturnian summer of 1850, stood a tented goldfield glorying in the name of Washington; glorying in its laxity and looseness, in its unincorporated social sentiment and dishevelled morals, in its free and easy justice and its alcalde of original rulings, and in its general indifference to Christian customs and institutions. Until recently the miners of this locality had revelled under the rule of an unhallowed theocracy, but eighteen hundred and fifty's fourth of July having just passed with the adoption of a name, which of itself should be sufficient for the maintenance of good