Oh, sacred spirit of Masonic love,
Offspring of Heaven, the angels' bond above,
Guardian of peace and every social tie,
How deep the sources of thy fountains lie!
How wide the realms that 'neath thy wings expand,
Embracing every clime, encircling every land!
He is gone! the young, and gifted!
By his own strong pinions lifted
To the stars;
Looking back into the past, and exploring by the light of authentic history, sacred as well as profane, the characteristics of former ages, the merest tyro in learning cannot fail to perceive that certain epochs stand prominently out on the "sands of time," and indicate vast activity and uncommon power in the human mind.
These epochs are so well marked that history has given them a designation, and to call them by their name, conjures up, as by the wand of an enchanter, the heroic representatives of our race.
If, for instance, we should speak of the era of Solomon, in sacred history, the memory would instantly picture forth the pinnacles of the Holy Temple, lifting themselves into the clouds; the ear would listen intently to catch the sweet intonations of the harp of David, vocal at once with the prophetic sorrows of his race, and swelling into sublime ecstasy at the final redemption of his people; the eye would glisten at the pomp and pageantry of the foreign potentates who thronged his court, and gloat with rapture over the beauty of the young Queen of Sheba, who journeyed from a distant land to seek wisdom at the feet of the wisest monarch that ever sat upon a throne. We should behold his ships traversing every sea, and pouring into the lap of Israel the gold of Ophir, the ivory of Senegambia, and the silks, myrrh, and spices of the East.
So, too, has profane history its golden ages, when men all seemed to be giants, and their minds inspired.
What is meant when we speak of the age of Pericles? We mean all that is glorious in the annals of Greece. We mean Apelles with his pencil, Phidias with his chisel, Alcibiades with his sword. We seem to be strolling arm-in-arm with Plato, into the academy, to listen to the divine teachings of Socrates, or hurrying along with the crowd toward the theatre, where Herodotus is reading his history, or Euripides is presenting his tragedies. Aspasia rises up like a beautiful apparition before us, and we follow willing slaves at the wheels of her victorious chariot. The whole of the Peloponnesus glows with intellect like a forge in blast, and scatters the trophies of Grecian civilization profusely around us. The Parthenon lifts its everlasting columns, and the Venus and Apollo are moulded into marble immortality.
Rome had her Augustan age, an era of poets, philosophers, soldiers, statesmen, and orators. Crowded into contemporary life, we recognize the greatest general of the heathen world, the greatest poet, the greatest orator, and the greatest statesman of Rome. Cæsar and Cicero, Virgil and Octavius, all trod the pavement of the capitol together, and lent their blended glory to immortalize the Augustan age.
Italy and Spain and France and England have had their golden age. The eras of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Louis Quatorze and of Elizabeth, can never be forgotten. They loom up from the surrounding gloom like the full moon bursting upon the sleeping seas; irradiating the night, clothing the meanest wave in sparkling silver, and dimming the lustre of the brightest stars. History has also left in its track mementoes of a different character. In sacred history we have the age of Herod; in profane, the age of Nero. We recognize at a glance the talismanic touch of the age of chivalry, and the era of the Crusades, and mope our way in darkness and gloom along that opaque track, stretching from the reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, to the reign of Edward the Third, in the fourteenth, and known throughout Christendom as the "Dark Ages." Let us now take a survey of the field we occupy, and ascertain, if possible, the category in which our age shall be ranked by our posterity.
But before proceeding to discuss the characteristics of our epoch, let us define more especially what that epoch embraces.
It does not embrace the American nor the French Revolution, nor does it include the acts or heroes of either. The impetus given to the human mind by the last half of the eighteenth century, must be carefully distinguished from the impulses of the first half of the nineteenth. The first was an era of almost universal war, the last of almost uninterrupted peace. The dying ground-swell of the waves after a storm belong to the tempest, not to the calm which succeeds. Hence the wars of Napoleon, the literature and art of his epoch, must be excluded from observation, in properly discussing the true characteristics of our era.
De Staël and Goethe and Schiller and Byron; Pitt and Nesselrode, Metternich and Hamilton; Fichte and Stewart and Brown and Cousin; Canova, Thorwaldsen and La Place, though all dying since the beginning of this century, belong essentially to a former era. They were the ripened fruits of that grand uprising of the human mind which first took form on the 4th day of July, 1776. Our era properly commences with the downfall of the first Napoleon, and none of the events connected therewith, either before or afterward, can be philosophically classed in the epoch we represent, but must be referred to a former period. Ages hence, then, the philosophic critic will thus describe the first half of the nineteenth century:
"The normal state of Christendom was peace. The age of steel that immediately went before it had passed. It was the Iron age.
"Speculative philosophy fell asleep; literature declined; Skepticism bore sway in religion, politics, and morals; Utility became the universal standard of right and wrong, and the truths of every science and the axioms of every art were ruthlessly subjected to the experimentum crucis. Everything was liable to revision. The verdicts pronounced in the olden time against Mohammed and Mesmer and Robespierre were set aside, and a new trial granted. The ghosts of Roger Bacon and Emanuel Swedenborg were summoned from the Stygian shore to plead their causes anew before the bar of public opinion. The head of Oliver Cromwell was ordered down from the gibbet, the hump was smoothed down on the back of Richard III, and the sentence pronounced by Urban VIII against the 'starry Galileo' reversed forever. Aristotle was decently interred beneath a modern monument inscribed thus: 'In pace requiescat;' whilst Francis Bacon was rescued from the sacrilegious hands of kings and peers and parliament, and canonized by the unanimous consent of Christendom. It was the age of tests. Experiment governed the world. Germany led the van, and Humboldt became the impersonation of his times."
Such unquestionably will be the verdict of the future, when the present time, with all its treasures and trash, its hopes and realizations, shall have been safely shelved and labeled amongst the musty records of bygone generations.
Let us now examine into the grounds of this verdict more minutely, and test its accuracy by exemplifications.
I. And first, who believes now in innate ideas? Locke has been completely superseded by the materialists of Germany and France, and all speculative moral philosophy exploded. The audiences of Edinburgh and Brown University interrupt Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Wayland in their discourses, and, stripping off the plumage from their theses, inquisitively demand, "Cui bono?" What is the use of all this? How can we apply it to the every-day concerns of life? We ask you for bread and you have given us a stone; and though that stone be a diamond, it is valueless, except for its glitter. No philosopher can speculate successfully or even satisfactorily to himself, when he is met at every turn by some vulgar intruder into the domains of Aristotle and Kant, who clips his wings just as he was prepared to soar into the heavens, by an offer of copartnership to "speculate," it may be, in the price of pork. Hence, no moral philosopher of our day has been enabled to erect any theory which will stand the assaults of logic for a moment. Each school rises for an instant to the surface, and sports out its little day in toss and tribulation, until the next wave rolls along, with foam on its crest and fury in its roar, and overwhelms it forever. As with its predecessor, so with itself.
II. But I have stated that this is an age of literary decline. It is true that more books are written and published, more newspapers and periodicals printed and circulated, more extensive libraries collected and incorporated, and more ink indiscriminately spilt, than at any former period of the world's history. In looking about us we are forcibly reminded of the sarcastic couplet of Pope, who complains—
Had a modern gentleman all the eyes of Argus, all the hands of Briareus, all the wealth of Crœsus, and lived to the age of Methuselah, his eyes would all fail, his fingers all tire, his money all give out, and his years come to an end, long before he perused one tenth of the annual product of the press of Christendom at the present day. It is no figure of rhetoric to say that the press groans beneath the burden of its labors. Could the types of Leipsic and London, Paris and New York, speak out, the Litany would have to be amended, and a new article added, to which they would solemnly respond: "Spare us, good Lord!"
A recent publication furnishes the following statistical facts relating to the book trade in our own country: "Books have multiplied to such an extent in the United States that it now takes 750 paper-mills, with 2000 engines in constant operation, to supply the printers, who work day and night, endeavoring to keep their engagements with publishers. These tireless mills produce 270,000,000 pounds of paper every year. It requires a pound and a quarter of old rags for one pound of paper, thus 340,000,000 pounds of rags were consumed in this way last year. There are about 300 publishers in the United States, and near 10,000 book-sellers who are engaged in the task of dispensing literary pabulum to the public."
It may appear somewhat paradoxical to assert that literature is declining whilst books and authors are multiplying to such a fearful extent. Byron wrote:
True enough; but books are not always literature. A man may become an author without ceasing to be an ignoramus. His name may adorn a title-page without being recorded in ære perenne. He may attempt to write himself up a very "lion" in literature, whilst good master Slender may be busily engaged "in writing him down an ass."
Not one book in a thousand is a success; not one success in ten thousand wreathes the fortunate author with the laurel crown, and lifts him up into the region of the immortals. Tell me, ye who prate about the literary glory of the nineteenth century, wherein it consists? Whose are
I cast my eyes up the long vista toward the Temple of Fame, and I behold hundreds of thousands pressing on to reach the shining portals. They jostle each other by the way, they trip, they fall, they are overthrown and ruthlessly trampled into oblivion, by the giddy throng, as they rush onward and upward. One, it may be two, of the million who started out, stand trembling at the threshold, and with exultant voices cry aloud for admittance. One perishes before the summons can be answered; and the other, awed into immortality by the august presence into which he enters, is transformed into imperishable stone.
Let us carefully scan the rolls of the literature of our era, and select, if we can, poet, orator, or philosopher, whose fame will deepen as it runs, and brighten as it burns, until future generations shall drink at the fountain and be refreshed, and kindle their souls at the vestal flame and be purified, illuminated and ennobled.
In poetry, aye, in the crowded realms of song, who bears the sceptre?—who wears the crown? America, England, France and Germany can boast of bards by the gross, and rhyme by the acre, but not a single poet. The poeta nascitur is not here. He may be on his way—and I have heard that he was—but this generation must pass before he arrives. Is he in America? If so, which is he? Is it Poe, croaking sorrowfully with his "Raven," or Willis, cooing sweetly with his "Dove"? Is it Bryant, with his "Thanatopsis," or Prentice, with his "Dirge to the Dead Year"? Perhaps it is Holmes, with his "Lyrics," or Longfellow, with his "Idyls." Alas! is it not self-evident that we have no poet, when it is utterly impossible to discover any two critics in the land who can find him?
True, we have lightning-bugs enough, but no star; foot-hills, it may be, in abundance, but no Mount Shasta, with its base built upon the everlasting granite, and its brow bathed in the eternal sunlight.
In England, Tennyson, the Laureate, is the spokesman of a clique, the pet poet of a princely circle, whose rhymes flow with the docility and harmony of a limpid brook, but never stun like Niagara, nor rise into sublimity like the storm-swept sea.
Béranger, the greatest poet of France of our era, was a mere song-writer; and Heine, the pride of young Germany, a mere satirist and lyrist. Freiligrath can never rank with Goethe or Schiller; and Victor Hugo never attain the heights trodden by Racine, Corneille, or Boileau.
In oratory, where shall we find the compeer of Chatham or Mirabeau, Burke or Patrick Henry? I have not forgotten Peel and Gladstone, nor Lamartine and Count Cavour, nor Sargent S. Prentiss and Daniel Webster. But Webster himself, by far the greatest intellect of all these, was a mere debater, and the spokesman of a party. He was an eloquent speaker, but can never rank as an orator with the rhetoricians of the last century.
And in philosophy and general learning, where shall we find the equal of that burly old bully, Dr. Sam Johnson? and yet Johnson, with all his learning, was a third-rate philosopher.
In truth, the greatest author of our era was a mere essayist. Beyond all controversy, Thomas Babington Macaulay was the most polished writer of our times. With an intellect acute, logical and analytic; with an imagination glowing and rich, but subdued and under perfect control; with a style so clear and limpid and concise, that it has become a standard for all who aim to follow in the path he trod, and with a learning so full and exact, and exhaustive, that he was nicknamed, when an undergraduate, the "Omniscient Macaulay;" he still lacks the giant grasp of thought, the bold originality, and the intense, earnest enthusiasm which characterize the master-spirits of the race, and identify them with the eras they adorn.
III. As in literature, so in what have been denominated by scholars the Fine Arts. The past fifty years has not produced a painter, sculptor, or composer, who ranks above mediocrity in their respective vocations. Canova and Thorwaldsen were the last of their race; Sir Joshua Reynolds left no successor, and the immortal Beethoven has been superseded by negro minstrelsy and senseless pantomime. The greatest architect of the age is a railroad contractor, and the first dramatist a cobbler of French farces.
IV. But whilst the highest faculty of the mind—the imagination—has been left uncultivated, and has produced no worthy fruit, the next highest, the casual, or the one that deals with causes and effects, has been stimulated into the most astonishing fertility.
Our age ignores fancy, and deals exclusively with fact. Within its chosen range it stands far, very far pre-eminent over all that have preceded it. It reaps the fruit of Bacon's labors. It utilizes all that it touches. It stands thoughtfully on the field of Waterloo, and estimates scientifically the manuring properties of bones and blood. It disentombs the mummy of Thotmes II, sells the linen bandages for the manufacture of paper, burns the asphaltum-soaked body for firewood, and plants the pint of red wheat found in his sarcophagus, to try an agricultural experiment. It deals in no sentimentalities; it has no appreciation of the sublime. It stands upon the ocean shore, but with its eyes fixed on the yellow sand searching for gold. It confronts Niagara, and, gazing with rapture at its misty shroud, exclaims, in an ecstasy of admiration, "Lord, what a place to sponge a coat!" Having no soul to save, it has no religion to save it. It has discovered that Mohammed was a great benefactor of his race, and that Jesus Christ was, after all, a mere man; distinguished, it is true, for his benevolence, his fortitude and his morality, but for nothing else. It does not believe in the Pope, nor in the Church, nor in the Bible. It ridicules the infallibility of the first, the despotism of the second, and the chronology of the third. It is possessed of the very spirit of Thomas; it must "touch and handle" before it will believe. It questions the existence of spirit, because it cannot be analyzed by chemical solvents; it questions the existence of hell, because it has never been scorched; it questions the existence of God, because it has never beheld Him.
It does, however, believe in the explosive force of gunpowder, in the evaporation of boiling water, in the head of the magnet, and in the heels of the lightnings. It conjugates the Latin verb invenio (to find out) through all its voices, moods and tenses. It invents everything; from a lucifer match in the morning to kindle a kitchen fire, up through all the intermediate ranks and tiers and grades of life, to a telescope that spans the heavens in the evening, it recognizes no chasm or hiatus in its inventions. It sinks an artesian well in the desert of Sahara for a pitcher of water, and bores through the Alleghanies for a hogshead of oil. From a fish-hook to the Great Eastern, from a pocket deringer to a columbiad, from a sewing machine to a Victoria suspension bridge, it oscillates like a pendulum.
Deficient in literature and art, our age surpasses all others in science. Knowledge has become the great end and aim of human life. "I want to know," is inscribed as legibly on the hammer of the geologist, the crucible of the chemist, and the equatorial of the astronomer, as it is upon the phiz of a regular "Down-Easter." Our age has inherited the chief failing of our first mother, and passing by the "Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden," we are all busily engaged in mercilessly plundering the Tree of Knowledge of all its fruit. The time is rapidly approaching when no man will be considered a gentleman who has not filed his caveat in the Patent Office.
The inevitable result of this spirit of the age begins already to be seen. The philosophy of a cold, blank, calculating materialism has taken possession of all the avenues of learning. Epicurus is worshiped instead of Christ. Mammon is considered as the only true savior. Dum Vivimus Vivamus, is the maxim we live by, and the creed we die by. We are all iconoclasts. St. Paul has been superseded by St. Fulton; St John by St. Colt; St. James by St. Morse; St. Mark by St. Manry; and St. Peter has surrendered his keys to that great incarnate representative of this age, St. Alexandre Von Humboldt.
The war-drum was silent, the cannon was mute,
The sword in its scabbard lay still,
And battle had gathered the last autumn fruit
That crimson-dyed river and rill,
When a Goddess came down from her mansion on high,
To gladden the world with her smile,
Leaving only her robes in the realm of the sky,
That their sheen might no mortal beguile.
I stood at my washstand, one bright sunny morn,
And gazed through the blinds at the upbringing corn,
And mourn'd that my summers were passing away,
Like the dew on the meadow that morning in May.
The following additional particulars, as sequel to the Summerfield homicide, have been furnished by an Auburn correspondent:
Mr. Editor: The remarkable confession of the late Leonidas Parker, which appeared in your issue of the 13th ultimo, has given rise to a series of disturbances in this neighborhood, which, for romantic interest and downright depravity, have seldom been surpassed, even in California. Before proceeding to relate in detail the late transactions, allow me to remark that the wonderful narrative of Parker excited throughout this county sentiments of the most profound and contradictory character. I, for one, halted between two opinions—horror and incredulity; and nothing but subsequent events could have fully satisfied me of the unquestionable veracity of your San Francisco correspondent, and the scientific authenticity of the facts related.
The doubt with which the story was at first received in this community—and which found utterance in a burlesque article in an obscure country journal, the Stars and Stripes, of Auburn—has finally been dispelled and we find ourselves forced to admit that we stand even now in the presence of the most alarming fate. Too much credit cannot be awarded to our worthy coroner for the promptitude of his action, and we trust that the Governor of the State will not be less efficient in the discharge of his duty.
[Since the above letter was written the following proclamation has been issued.—P. J.]
PROCLAMATION OF THE GOVERNOR.
$10,000 REWARD!
Department of State.
By virtue of the authority in me vested, I do hereby offer the above reward of ten thousand dollars, in gold coin of the United States, for the Arrest of Bartholomew Graham, familiarly known as Black Bart. Said Graham is accused of the murder of C. P. Gillson, late of Auburn, county of Placer, on the 14th ultimo. He is five feet ten inches and a half in height, thick set, has a mustache sprinkled with gray, grizzled hair, clear blue eyes, walks stooping, and served in the late civil war under Price and Quantrell, in the Confederate army. He may be lurking in some of the mining-camps near the foot-hills, as he was a Washoe teamster during the Comstock excitement. The above reward will be paid for him, dead or alive, as he possessed himself of an important secret by robbing the body of the late Gregory Summerfield.
By the Governor:
H. G. Nicholson,
Secretary of State.
Given at Sacramento, this the fifth day of June, 1871.
Our correspondent continues:
I am sorry to say that Sheriff Higgins has not been so active in the discharge of his duty as the urgency of the case required, but he is perhaps excusable on account of the criminal interference of the editor above alluded to. But I am detaining you from more important matters. Your Saturday's paper reached here at 4 o'clock, Saturday, 13th May, and, as it now appears from the evidence taken before the coroner, several persons left Auburn on the same errand, but without any previous conference. Two of these were named respectively Charles P. Gillson and Bartholomew Graham, or, as he was usually called, "Black Bart." Gillson kept a saloon at the corner of Prickly Ash Street and the Old Spring Road; and Black Bart was in the employ of Conrad & Co., keepers of the Norfolk livery stable. Gillson was a son-in-law of ex-Governor Roberts, of Iowa, and leaves a wife and two children to mourn his untimely end. As for Graham, nothing certain is known of his antecedents. It is said that he was engaged in the late robbery of Wells & Fargo's express at Grizzly Bend, and that he was an habitual gambler. Only one thing about him is certainly well known: he was a lieutenant in the Confederate army, and served under General Price and the outlaw Quantrell. He was a man originally of fine education, plausible manners and good family; but strong drink seems early in life to have overmastered him, and left him but a wreck of himself. But he was not incapable of generous, or rather, romantic, acts; for, during the burning of the Putnam House, in this town, last summer, he rescued two ladies from the flames. In so doing he scorched his left hand so seriously as to contract the tendons of two fingers, and this very scar may lead to his apprehension. There is no doubt about his utter desperation of character, and, if taken at all, it will probably be not alive.
So much for the persons concerned in the tragedy at the Flat.
Herewith I inclose copies of the testimony of the witnesses examined before the coroner's jury, together with the statement of Gillson, taken in articulo mortis:
DEPOSITION OF DOLLIE ADAMS.
State of California,
County of Placer.
} ss.
Said witness, being duly sworn, deposed as follows, to wit: My name is Dollie Adams; my age forty-seven years; I am the wife of Frank G. Adams, of this township, and reside on the North Fork of the American River, below Cape Horn, on Thompson's Flat; about one o'clock p. m., May 14, 1871, I left the cabin to gather wood to cook dinner for my husband and the hands at work for him on the claim; the trees are mostly cut away from the bottom, and I had to climb some distance up the mountain side before I could get enough to kindle the fire; I had gone about five hundred yards from the cabin, and was searching for small sticks of fallen timber, when I thought I heard some one groan, as if in pain; I paused and listened; the groaning became more distinct, and I started at once for the place whence the sounds proceeded; about ten steps off I discovered the man whose remains lie there (pointing to the deceased), sitting up, with his back against a big rock; he looked so pale that I thought him already dead, but he continued to moan until I reached his side; hearing me approach, he opened his eyes, and begged me, "For God's sake, give me a drop of water!" I asked him, "What is the matter?" He replied, "I am shot in the back." "Dangerously?" I demanded. "Fatally!" he faltered. Without waiting to question him further, I returned to the cabin, told Zenie—my daughter—what I had seen, and sent her off on a run for the men. Taking with me a gourd of water, some milk and bread—for I thought the poor gentleman might be hungry and weak, as well as wounded—I hurried back to his side, where I remained until "father"—as we all call my husband—came with the men. We removed him as gently as we could to the cabin; then sent for Dr. Liebner, and nursed him until he died, yesterday, just at sunset.
Question by the Coroner: Did you hear his statement, taken down by the Assistant District Attorney?—A. I did.
Q. Did you see him sign it?—A. Yes, sir.
Q. Is this your signature thereto as witness?—A. It is, sir.
(Signed)Dollie Adams.
DEPOSITION OF MISS X. V. ADAMS.
Being first duly sworn, witness testified as follows: My name is Xixenia Volumnia Adams; I am the daughter of Frank G. Adams and the last witness; I reside with them on the Flat, and my age is eighteen years; a little past 1 o'clock on Sunday last my mother came running into the house and informed me that a man was dying from a wound, on the side-hill, and that I must go for father and the boys immediately. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me to where they were "cleaning up," for they never cleaned up week-days on the Flat, and told the news; we all came back together and proceeded to the spot where the wounded man lay weltering in his blood; he was cautiously removed to the cabin, where he lingered until yesterday sundown, when he died.
Question. Did he speak after he reached the cabin? A. He did frequently; at first with great pain, but afterward more audibly and intelligibly.
Q. What did he say? A. First, to send for Squire Jacobs, the Assistant District Attorney, as he had a statement to make; and some time afterward, to send for his wife; but we first of all sent for the doctor.
Q. Who was present when he died? A. Only myself; he had appeared a great deal easier, and his wife had lain down to take a short nap, and my mother had gone to the spring and left me alone to watch; suddenly he lifted himself spasmodically in bed, glared around wildly and muttered something inaudible; seeing me, he cried out, "Run! run! run! He has it! Black Bart has got the vial! Quick! or he'll set the world afire! See, he opens it! Oh, my God! Look! look! look! Hold his hands! tie him! chain him down! Too late! too late! oh the flames! Fire! fire! fire!" His tone of voice gradually strengthened until the end of his raving; when he cried "fire!" his eyeballs glared, his mouth quivered, his body convulsed, and before Mrs. Gillson could reach his bedside he fell back stone dead.
(Signed)X. V. Adams.
The testimony of Adams corroborated in every particular that of his wife and daughter, but set forth more fully the particulars of his demoniac ravings. He would taste nothing from a glass or bottle, but shuddered whenever any article of that sort met his eyes. In fact, they had to remove from the room the cups, tumblers, and even the castors. At times he spoke rationally, but after the second day only in momentary flashes of sanity.
The deposition of the attending physician, after giving the general facts with regard to the sickness of the patient and his subsequent demise, proceeded thus:
I found the patient weak, and suffering from loss of blood and rest, and want of nourishment; occasionally sane, but for the most part flighty and in a comatose condition. The wound was an ordinary gunshot wound, produced most probably by the ball of a navy revolver, fired at the distance of ten paces. It entered the back near the left clavicle, beneath the scapula, close to the vertebrae between the intercostal spaces of the fifth and sixth ribs; grazing the pericardium it traversed the mediastinum, barely touching the œsophagus, and vena azygos, but completely severing the thoracic duct, and lodging in the xiphoid portion of the sternum. Necessarily fatal, there was no reason, however, why the patient could not linger for a week or more; but it is no less certain that from the effect of the wound he ultimately died. I witnessed the execution of the paper shown to me—as the statement of deceased—at his request; and at the time of signing the same he was in his perfect senses. It was taken down in my presence by Jacobs, the Assistant District Attorney of Placer County, and read over to the deceased before he affixed his signature. I was not present when he breathed his last, having been called away by my patients in the town of Auburn, but I reached his bedside shortly afterward. In my judgment, no amount of care or medical attention could have prolonged his life more than a few days.
(Signed)Karl Liebner, M. D.
The statement of the deceased was then introduced to the jury as follows:
People of the State of California
vs.
Bartholomew Graham.
}
Statement and Dying Confession of Charles P. Gillson, taken in articulo mortis by George Simpson, Notary Public.
On the morning of Sunday, the 14th day of May, 1871, I left Auburn alone in search of the body of the late Gregory Summerfield, who was reported to have been pushed from the cars at Cape Horn, in this county, by one Leonidas Parker, since deceased. It was not fully light when I reached the track of the Central Pacific Railroad. Having mined at an early day on Thompson's Flat, at the foot of the rocky promontory now called Cape Horn, I was familiar with the zigzag paths leading down that steep precipice. One was generally used as a descent, the other as an ascent from the cañon below. I chose the latter, as being the freest from the chance of observation. It required the greatest caution to thread the narrow gorge; but I finally reached the rocky bench, about one thousand feet below the grade of the railroad. It was now broad daylight, and I commenced cautiously the search for Summerfield's body. There is quite a dense undergrowth of shrubs thereabouts, lining the interstices of the granite rocks so as to obscure the vision even at a short distance. Brushing aside a thick manzanita bush, I beheld the dead man at the same instant of time that another person arrived like an apparition upon the spot. It was Bartholomew Graham, known as "Black Bart." We suddenly confronted each other, the skeleton of Summerfield lying exactly between us. Our recognition was mutual. Graham advanced and I did the same; he stretched out his hand and we greeted one another across the prostrate corpse.
Before releasing my hand, Black Bart exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "Swear, Gillson, in the presence of the dead, that you will forever be faithful, never betray me, and do exactly as I bid you, as long as you live!"
I looked him full in the eye. Fate sat there, cold and remorseless as stone. I hesitated; with his left hand he slightly raised the lappels of his coat, and grasped the handle of a navy revolver.
"Swear!" again he cried.
As I gazed, his eyeballs assumed a greenish tint, and his brow darkened into a scowl. "As your confederate," I answered, "never as your slave."
"Be it so!" was his only reply.
The body was lying upon its back, with the face upwards. The vultures had despoiled the countenance of every vestige of flesh, and left the sockets of the eyes empty. Snow and ice and rain had done their work effectually upon the exposed surfaces of his clothing, and the eagles had feasted upon the entrails. But underneath, the thick beaver cloth had served to protect the flesh, and there were some decaying shreds left of what had once been the terrible but accomplished Gregory Summerfield. A glance told us all these things. But they did not interest me so much as another spectacle, that almost froze my blood. In the skeleton gripe of the right hand, interlaced within the clenched bones, gleamed the wide-mouthed vial which was the object of our mutual visit. Graham fell upon his knees, and attempted to withdraw the prize from the grasp of its dead possessor. But the bones were firm, and when he finally succeeded in securing the bottle, by a sudden wrench, I heard the skeleton fingers snap like pipe-stems.
"Hold this a moment, whilst I search the pockets," he commanded.
I did as directed.
He then turned over the corpse, and thrusting his hand into the inner breast-pocket, dragged out a roll of MSS., matted closely together and stained by the winter's rains. A further search eventuated in finding a roll of small gold coin, a set of deringer pistols, a mated double-edged dirk, and a pair of silver-mounted spectacles. Hastily covering over the body with leaves and branches cut from the embowering shrubs, we shudderingly left the spot.
We slowly descended the gorge toward the banks of the American River, until we arrived in a small but sequestered thicket, where we threw ourselves upon the ground. Neither had spoken a word since we left the scene above described. Graham was the first to break the silence which to me had become oppressive.
"Let us examine the vial and see if the contents are safe."
I drew it forth from my pocket and handed it to him.
"Sealed hermetically, and perfectly secure," he added. Saying this he deliberately wrapped it up in a handkerchief and placed it in his bosom.
"What shall we do with our prize?" I inquired.
"Our prize?" As he said this he laughed derisively, and cut a most scornful and threatening glance toward me.
"Yes," I rejoined firmly; "our prize!"
"Gillson," retorted Graham, "you must regard me as a consummate simpleton, or yourself a Goliah. This bottle is mine, and mine only. It is a great fortune for one, but of less value than a toadstool for two. I am willing to divide fairly. This secret would be of no service to a coward. He would not dare to use it. Your share of the robbery of the body shall be these MSS.; you can sell them to some poor devil of a printer, and pay yourself for your day's work."
Saying this he threw the bundle of MSS. at my feet; but I disdained to touch them. Observing this, he gathered them up safely and replaced them in his pocket. "As you are unarmed," he said, "it would not be safe for you to be seen in this neighborhood during daylight. We will both spend the night here, and just before morning return to Auburn. I will accompany you part of the distance."
With the sangfroid of a perfect desperado, he then stretched himself out in the shadow of a small tree, drank deeply from a whisky flagon which he produced, and pulling his hat over his eyes, was soon asleep and snoring. It was a long time before I could believe the evidence of my own senses. Finally, I approached the ruffian, and placed my hand on his shoulder. He did not stir a muscle. I listened; I heard only the deep, slow breathing of profound slumber. Resolved not to be balked and defrauded by such a scoundrel, I stealthily withdrew the vial from his pocket, and sprang to my feet, just in time to hear the click of a revolver behind me. I was betrayed! I remember only a dash and an explosion—a deathly sensation, a whirl of the rocks and trees about me, a hideous imprecation from the lips of my murderer, and I fell senseless to the earth. When I awoke to consciousness it was past midnight. I looked up at the stars, and recognized Lyra shining full in my face. That constellation I knew passed the meridian at this season of the year after twelve o'clock, and its slow march told me that many weary hours would intervene before daylight. My right arm was paralyzed, but I put forth my left, and it rested in a pool of my own blood. "Oh, for one drop of water!" I exclaimed, faintly; but only the low sighing of the night blast responded. Again I fainted. Shortly after daylight I revived, and crawled to the spot where I was discovered on the next day by the kind mistress of this cabin. You know the rest. I accuse Bartholomew Graham of my assassination. I do this in the perfect possession of my senses, and with a full sense of my responsibility to Almighty God.
(Signed) C. P. Gillson.
George Simpson, Notary Public.
Chris. Jacobs, Assistant District Attorney.
Dollie Adams,
Karl Liebner,
} Witnesses.
The following is a copy of the verdict of the coroner's jury:
County of Placer,
Cape Horn Township.
} ss.
In re C. P. Gillson, late of said county, deceased.
We, the undersigned, coroner's jury, summoned in the foregoing case to examine into the causes of the death of said Gillson, do find that he came to his death at the hands of Bartholomew Graham, usually called "Black Bart," on Wednesday, the 17th May, 1871. And we further find said Graham guilty of murder in the first degree, and recommend his immediate apprehension.
(Signed)
John Quillan,
Peter McIntyre,
Abel George,
Alex. Scriber,
Wm. A. Thompson.
(Correct:)
Thos. J. Alwyn,
Coroner.
The above documents constitute the papers introduced before the coroner. Should anything of further interest occur, I will keep you fully advised.
Powhattan Jones.
Since the above was in type we have received from our esteemed San Francisco correspondent the following letter: