DESOLATION
It was in this Sac Valley that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and
you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured by the
avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see such disfigurements far and
wide over California — and in some such places, where only meadows and forests are visible — not a
living creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a sound, not even a
whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness — you will find it hard to believe that there stood at one
time a wildly, fiercely-flourishing little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its
newspaper, fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth of July
processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobacco smoke, profanity, and
rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with tables heaped with glittering gold dust
sufficient for the revenues of a German principality — streets crowded and rife with business —
town lots worth $400 a front foot — labor, laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shooting,
stabbing — a bloody inquest and a man for breakfast every morning — every thing that
goes to make life happy and desirable — all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and
prosperous and promising young city, — and now nothing is left but a lifeless, homeless
solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the name of the place is
forgotten. In no other land do towns so absolutely die and disappear, as in the old mining regions
of California.
