doors as the winter mud had lain. The waters of Rattlesnake Creek
dropped below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made
a detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation to
this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those
breaches in the banks made by the overflow. To wait for the "old
Rattlesnake sluicing" was a vernal hope of the trusting miner.
The history of "Jules'," however, was once destined to offer a singular
interruption of this peaceful and methodical process. The winter of
1859-60 was an exceptional one. But little rain had fallen in the
valleys, although the snow lay deep in the high Sierras. Passes were
choked, ravines filled, and glaciers found on their slopes. And when the
tardy rains came with the withheld southwesterly "trades," the regular
phenomenon recurred; Jules' Flat silently, noiselessly, and peacefully
went under water; the inhabitants moved to the higher ground, perhaps
a little more expeditiously from an impatience born of the delay. The
stagecoach from Marysville made its usual detour and stopped before the
temporary hotel, express offices, and general store of "Jules'," under
canvas, bark, and the limp leaves of a spreading alder. It deposited a
single passenger,--Miles Hemmingway, of San Francisco, but originally of
Boston,--the young secretary of a mining company, dispatched to report
upon the alleged auriferous value of "Jules'." Of this he had been by
no means impressed as he looked down upon the submerged cabins from the
box-seat of the coach and listened to the driver's lazy recital of
the flood, and of the singularly patient acceptance of it by the
inhabitants.
It was the old story of the southwestern miner's indolence and
incompetency,--utterly distasteful to his northern habits of thought
and education. Here was their old fatuous endurance of Nature's wild
caprices, without that struggle against them which brought others
strength and success; here was the old philosophy which accepted the
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