Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/81

 door, and being sure that we were alone, shuffled up to the counter, and drew out a purse from his right pocket, half the length of my arm.

"Ned," he cried, in a harsh, cracked voice, "don't you know me? That's gold; and I know where there's bushels of it."

"What! Baboon?—beg pardon, Mr. Bablaine."

"No! Baboon. Old Baboon; that's my name. Old Baboon."

As this man was the real finder of that vast gold-field, including Salmon, Warren's, Boise, Owyhee, and Blackfoot, it is but right that the world should have a brief of his history, as well as his photograph.

Peter Bablaine, Esq., of Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, reached San Francisco in 1849, as refined and intelligent a gentleman as could be found. A few weeks of luckless ventures, however, left him unable to respond to his landlady's bill. She said, fiercely, "You are no gentleman." He answered, quietly, "Neither are you, Mrs. Flanagan;" and quietly left the house. He felt that he had lost or left something behind him. He had. The "Esq." had been knocked from his name as easily as you would wish to kick a hat from the pavement on the first day of April.

Another week of wandering about the town in dirty linen, and his acquaintances treated the tail-end of his Christian name as Alcibiades did the celebrated dog of Athens. He was now simply "Pete Bablaine," and thus set out for the mines. A few months of hard usage, and he found the whole front of his name ripped off and lost. "Bablaine" was all that was left.

Ten years now passed. Ten terrible years, in which this brave and resolute man had dared more than Cesar, had endured more than Ney; and he found that the entire end of his father's name had been, somewhere in the Sierras,

worn or torn away, and hid or covered up forever in the tailings. He was now nothing but "Bab." Here, while groundsluicing one night on Big Humbug, and possibly wondering what other deduction could be made and not leave him nameless, he was caught in a cave, sluiced out, and carried head-first through the flume. This last venture wore him down to about the condition of an old quartercoin, where neither date, name, nor nationality can be deciphered. His jaws were crushed, and limbs broken, till they lay in every direction, like the claws of a sea-crab. They took him to the County Hospital, and there they called him "Old Bab." It was a year before he got about; and then he came leaning on a staff, with a frightful face. He had lost all spirit. He sat moodily about the hospital, and sometimes said bitter things. One day he said of Grasshopper Jim, who was a great talker: "That man must necessarily lie. There is not truth enough in the United States to keep his tongue going forever as it does." One evening a young candidate told him he was going to make a speech, and very patronizingly asked him to come out and hear him. Old Bab looked straight at the wall, as if counting the stripes on the paper, then said, half to himself, "The fact of Balaam's ass making a speech has had a more demoralizing influence than any other event told in the Holy Bible; for ever since that time, every lineal descendant seems determined to follow his example." His face was never relieved by a smile, and his chin stuck out fearfully; so that one day, when Snapping Andy, who was licensed by the miners to be the champion growler of the camp, called him "Old Baboon," it was as complete as a baptismal, and he was known by no other name.

"The sorrowful know the sorrowful." I was then a helpless, sensitive, white-headed boy, and so found refuge and re-