side the ship. Her boiler and machinery were lowered into her, and soon put in place, and on the 15th a trial trip was successfully made, although it cannot be said that the speed was satisfactory. She was loaded, and, commanded by our first officer, William V. Wells, with Alfred N. Proctor as engineer and S. P. Barker as assistant, she started on her first voyage up the river on the 17th of August, 1849. The writer, in company with others, was a passenger on board. We reached Sacramento on

California Mining and Trading Joint Stock Company ceased to exist.

Out of this whole ship's company not more than thirty remained in California. So far as the writer has been able to ascertain, but fifteen are living there to-day. The others returned again to their Eastern homes, where their subsequent careers, with few exceptions, are unknown.

Some of the delusions of the time are curious. One ship's company, for example, came

the early morning of the 19th. The steam whistle was sounded on approaching, and the whole camp was soon assembled upon the river bank to receive us and witness the unique sight of a steamboat on the Sacramento. Such a greeting has seldom been witnessed. The blasts of the whistle and the yelling of the multitude ushered in a day of jollification, in which whisky was the fuel that kept up steam on shore long after the fires had gone out under the boilers of the little Pioneer.

As a coöperative body, the rest of the story of the Edward Everett company is soon told. Two weeks on the Mokelumne resulted in the unanimous decision that coöperative gold digging was impracticable, and a resolution to disband was adopted. Mr. J. L. Bates, one of the directors of the company, was authorized to return to Benicia, sell the ship, and close up the affairs of the company, while singly and in squads the men scattered, some to hunt for and dig gold on their individual account, others returning to Sacramento and San Francisco soon after, satisfied that they had mistaken their calling.

The ship was sold for $30,000; the little steamboat was purchased by Simmons, Hutchinson & Co. for $6000, and soon after was snagged on the Feather River, where it sank. A final dividend of $160 was paid to each member of the company, and the Boston and

in the expectation of dredging gold from the bottom of the Sacramento River or its branches. They brought with them a large scow, to be propelled by a stern wheel operated by an engine in the usual manner. A house, or workshop, was built over the entire boat, within which was the dredging apparatus, and quarters for men who were to operate it, and where they were to divide the proceeds of their labor as the gold was dredged from the bottom of the river. The unique craft steamed up the river and made experiments, which so completely convinced her owners of the absurdity of the scheme that they quietly dismantled and disposed of her.

This was not more delusive, however, than the attempt to dig gold upon the coöperative principle. It was assumed that a hundred or more men could be called together indiscriminately from every vocation in life, many of whom had never performed a stroke of hard labor, and that all could work in harmony together, some performing more daily labor than others and producing more than others, and all standing on a basis of perfect equality in the division of the combined product. Such was the underlying principle upon which the organization of the Edward Everett's company was based. Its brief existence when the mining region was reached, and the system of cooperative labor was attempted to be carried

into effect, attests its absurdity. It served its purpose, perhaps, in bringing about a combination of capital and effort to secure an economical method of reaching California, but beyond that it was a detriment to every man who really desired to "try his luck," so to speak, at gold digging. For instead of leaving the whole field of the California gold region open to every one of the company, it concentrated into one chance the opportunities of all. It disgusted the large majority of the company with gold digging at the very outset, and sent them back to their ordinary vocations at home or in California. Not one of the company ever grew rich by gold digging. There was really but little to choose between the folly of attempting to dredge gold in 1849 from the mud of the Sacramento, and that of digging gold in the foothills of the Sierras by coöperative labor.

Through the years 1849 and 1850, the Cape Horn route from the Atlantic States to California maintained the supremacy over all others, but towards the close of 1850 the Panama route gained the ascendancy. From that time on the voyage "round the Horn" ceased to command any considerable share of travel, and was finally given over to the famous fleet of American clippers so renowned in their day as fast freight carriers to the Pacific coast. It is interesting to note the relative share of travel by sea which these routes commanded in these early days. The only record in existence from which information can be obtained is that which was kept by Mr. Edward S. King, harbor master of San Francisco during that period, the custom house records having been destroyed by the great fire of May 4, 1851. This valuable record is now the property of the Society of California Pioneers in San Francisco, and from it the following compilation is made:

PASSENGER ARRIVALS BY SEA IN SAN FRANCISCO IN 1849.

It thus appears that more than half of these associated argonauts made the Cape Horn voyage. The list of "forty-niners" from which this tabulation is made embraces of course but a small portion of those who were eligible to membership had they not long since been gathered to their fathers, or been scattered to other parts of the world, or failed to avail themselves of their privilege.

It is a remarkable circumstance that out of a fleet of 760 vessels from American ports that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1849-50, not one was wrecked or sustained any serious disaster on the long and tempestuous voyage. Yet this great fleet was largely composed of old vessels that had long been regarded as unseaworthy, and in many instances had been condemned, but which had been patched up and pressed into service again. to meet the exigencies of the occasion. Many and many a ship entered the Golden Gate with pumps which had been almost constantly manned to keep it afloat, and many and many instead of coming to anchor were run directly upon the mud flats of Mission Bay, where they ended their sea-going days by being transformed into storehouses, hotels, or boardinghouses, finally to be broken up by the "old

VOL. XLII.—76–77.

junk" men. The Niantic, a large, full-rigged ship, that had seen service in every sea, was floated up to what is now the very heart of San Francisco, and there converted into a hotel. Over the gaping wound in her stout oaken side, where a doorway was cut for a public entrance, was inscribed the hospitable legend, "Rest for the weary and storage for trunks." The ship Apollo was converted into a saloon and lodginghouse, while on the opposite side of the way was the hulk of the brig Euphemia, which had been purchased by the ayuntamiento, or city council, for a prison, and was the first place for the confinement of criminals which the city of San Francisco owned. Many a ship was deserted by owners, officers, and crew for the more attractive "diggings."

The wonder becomes still greater that this vast fleet of vessels- many of them worn and unseaworthy-made the Cape Horn voyage successfully, when it is remembered that most of them made the passage in midwinter of that stormy region. The average number of days occupied in making the voyage by those which were off the cape in the summer months of that locality was 153, as against an average of 203 days for those which were there in the winter months. In some instances vessels "sighting" Staten Land, or even the cape itself, would be blown off eastward by the never-ceasing southwest gales, and after six weeks' battling with the storm would again find the same "landfall" to the windward, and actual progress round the bleak headland not yet begun. It was not an unusual experience

to lie close-hauled to the wind under a single storm staysail for week after week, the ship's rigging covered with icy sleet, her decks half the time covered with hail or buried in water, the sea breaking over her and washing everything away not securely bolted or lashed to her decks, the galley flooded with water so that little or no cooking could be done, and "old horse" and "hard tack" the only fare. Add to this the gloom of the long, dark winter nights, and the cheerlessness of the short winter days, the sun breaking through the murky atmosphere low down in the north for an hour or two, perhaps, now and then,hatches battened down, making life almost unendurable below decks, and discomfort and misery prevailing everywhere, the rolling and pitching of the ship rendering sleep next to impossible and actual rest unattainable, and this condition of things continuing in many instances for a period of two months before the work of "doubling the cape" was accomplished. The constant sense of danger that no man could fail to realize added misery to the situation yet more unpleasantly appreciable.

It is an interesting circumstance that every one of these vessels entered the harbor of San Francisco and found an anchorage without the aid of a pilot. It is none the less singular, perhaps, that not until after a pilot system was established was there a single wreck to record of vessels entering or attempting to enter the Golden Gate. Yet no more competent body of men than these pilots have ever pursued the calling in any part of the world.

UROPE is a garrison. Its frontiers are but a succession of fortresses, whose guards are bipedal dogs trained to fret at a strange face or to bite the uninvited guest. Its cities are scientific intrenchments, and its citizens are unwilling recruits. Spring is not hailed by the powers with poetic enthusiasm, nor is it greeted by the commoners in rhapsodies. The Continental spring may prove not the glad awakener of life but the signal for the final atrocity of high civilization-wholesale murder legalized. For with the new crispness of the grass, the tender buds upon the trees, and the bridal songs of the cuckoo and the lark, come the intricate evolutions of battalions of men taken from the plow, and come the rumors of war. Suspicions, jealousies, hatreds that have hibernated for very cold now creep forth and warm themselves into malignant activity. Frost deprives vipers of their sting and armies of success. Europe breathes a sigh of relief when the winter sets in cold. It trembles at the farmer's prediction of an early spring. It stands guard when the last ice is melted, and apprehensively awaits the mailed gauntlet, ignorant from what quarter the emblem of defiance will be cast. Is the Czar about to execute the dream of his dynasty against Constantinople? Has France intrigued with the Duke of Luxembourg? Or has she bribed Belgium? Or both? What means this new uprising in Bulgaria against the Turkish yoke? Will Austria break her last treaty with Germany, her hereditary foe, and afford Russia a highway for the price of the land filched by Frederick the Great from Maria Theresa? Why has France a standing army of three millions? Does she herself perchance menace, and still cherish the hope of Alsace and Lorraine? Is the German Empire the nut or the cracker?

During the spring of which we write the politics of Europe took to itself an unusually bloody hue. There was a strange restlessness in diplomatic circles which did not fail to communicate itself to the lower classes. It was rumored that the Czar was about to mobilize four army corps upon his western frontier; and it was known that the pneumatic rifle, the secret of which the Russian government had purchased from an American, noiselessly pro

jected its bullet at an initial velocity one-third greater than the smokeless rifles of Austria, Italy, Germany, and France. The commination of the Slavs, the nightmare of the Teutonic races, was almost a wakeful reality. An ambassadorial discourtesy, a drunken officer on the frontier, a mistaken despatch - these were sufficient to fulminate the catastrophe.

The famous remark of a German emperor, "I wish my subjects taught to be Germans, not hoary Romans; soldiers, not near-sighted dreamers," added a new fervor to patriotism. Enormous army-credits were voted by the Reichstag. The war-footing was increased five hundred thousand, and the women turned the clods in the valleys, and sowed the grain unaided by their men, as bravely and almost as sadly as if the battle were actually at hand.

The spring opened with manoeuvers upon field and ocean. Tactless Germany flaunted her lancers and artillery in the eyes of France; and France, rejoicing like the morning in her strength, shrugged her shoulders at her beery foe and suddenly massed a million men at St. Dié, Lunéville, Nancy, Verdun, Rocroy, Malplaquet, and Lille. Well said Jean Jacques Rousseau, "that it is nobler to plant trees on a terrace than colors on a breach." Who can understand that in the Christian year of our story a nation could be proud of the science of sending men out of the world?

Alas for Europe! When the first shot is fired there will come a struggle such as the world has never imagined. The strain will be terrible and long. There will be no masking of movements and surprises under the friendly cover of smoke. A new genius of victory must be evolved. A new courage and stimulus and discipline must be born. The carnage of the battlefield will be presented in all its ghastliness from dawn till dark. To win, the dead must outnumber the living. "War is an inexorable, dangerously incalculable thing," wrote Carlyle. "Is it not a terrible question, at whose door lies the beginning of a war?

It was the middle of March, and the wind blew as skittishly up the Charlottenburger Chaussée into the Thiergarten as it does up Fifth Avenue into Central Park. There was no snow; spring had promised early, but the ground was hard and dusty and uncompromising. Even a flurry of clean snow would have been easier to bear than these drifts of fetid powder that kissed a traveler with insulting

freedom, and then slapped him in the face and hurried on.

The traveler shook his head and shoulders bravely after each poisonous embrace, and walked the faster, for it was growing dark. A detachment of Pomeranian infantry had marched from Berlin to Potsdam that morning at five; a stranger had accompanied them to their barracks, and now he was returning to the capital. It was not quite time for the incandescent lights, and up the straight avenue from the railroad-crossing the Brandenburg Thor could be seen dimly whenever the warring hurricanes of dust permitted.

Our traveler had a high-born mien, and yet he had walked thirty miles that bitter day. He had not a military gait, and, as he must have been nearly forty years old, clearly he was not a German. He was tall and well-proportioned. From the rear view there was nothing that challenged attention about him except occasional quick upward motions of the head. These movements sometimes attracted the glances of stolid pedestrians whom he passed in his hurried walk, and awoke in their dull imaginations the idea of nervous resolve. But those who met the man face to face were startled. Many turned and stared at him. A few walked deliberately back and then turned again so as to see that face a second time. Certainly the stranger was not thinking of the weather; that would have distorted the symmetry of his countenance. Nor could he have been intent upon the noble park at his right, nor upon his journey's end before him, for this would have given to his look the expression of passing interest. His forehead was high above the eyes, and of the translucency of pallid onyx. His eyes were as deep as a coal-mine and as black; but from them there came a steady flow of light, heat, and emotion. When men saw his eyes for the first time it seemed to them as if they had lived unlighted and unwarmed until then. His mouth was fine and firm, and yet, in spite of its gravity, there played about its corners a humor that made children run after him to play; but they never touched him, they knew not why. His beard fell full to his breast, and his brown hair with virile waves clung to his shoulders. The delicacy of woman and the strength of man were revealed by the texture of his hair and the spring of his pace. As he walked, his look was inward rather than observant. He appeared entranced with a tremendous problem. People were bewildered and awed, even humbled, as they looked upon him; and then they looked again. The power that radiated from this stranger seemed to be the power of a body tingling with every function of life, whose mind was dominated by a unique idea, which the soul in turn ordered to a final expression.

Yet he stooped like one who carried a crushing burden, and his cheeks and eyes paled and glowed as if his were a sleepless mission.

"A hundred thousand thunders! What have we here now?"

Five officers had come down the broad walk abreast, arm in arm. Women had been pushed aside by them in their ungentlemanly advance. Children had rushed to the street to escape brutality. Civilians had slunk into the gutter, not daring to withstand the haughty onslaught. The stranger lifted up his eyes and looked upon them.

"Gott in Himmel!" began another, blusteringly, but the execration died away. A third touched his sword, but his hand dropped from its hilt. The five boisterous guardsmen shriveled under the calm gaze of this dusty wayfarer, saluted in a shamefaced way, and filed respectfully past him without a murmur. The stranger seemed in no wise elated by the humility of these military lords; it could hardly be said that he noticed what he seemed to take as a matter of course. Was he a general in disguise? Not so, for there is an edict that no officer shall appear without his uniform in the street. Von Moltke wore a civilian's dress but once in his official career of seventy years, and then he burned it after he had exchanged courtesies with an American. Could this stranger have been a prince incognito? Would a prince walk to Potsdam and back when there is a railroad-and in March?

And now he set his face more resolutely towards the Brandenburg Gate, and began to look about him as if he expected to be met. He passed a private and a corporal talking aloud.

"Ach, Rudolph, thinkest thou that the Kaiser will have war this summer?"

"Ei, Fritz; perhaps. I for my part am content as it is. Thou knowest I have nearly served my time, and in June I go back to the good mother and my sweetheart, please God."

"But, thou foolish head, if it be God's will that we smite the French? Thunder and lightning! There is glory for the Kaiser—”

"A dead soldier thinketh little of the Kaiser's glory," interrupted Rudolph, soberly. "Na-na, thou art a cabbage-head, and knowest nought of powder and glory—"

"I dare fight," protested the private, hotly; "thou knowest that, comrade. I go against the cursed Frenchman gladly, and that thou knowest also. Was not my father at Sedan, and Metz, and Paris? Now I understand this not. There are Hans, and Peter, and thy cousin Fried'l with the six infants. The frau of Hans is a sickly thing, and weepeth about his neck. When the two brothers of Peter were killed at Strasburg,- thou rememberest how the cap