"Both were fearless types of a civilization that in the seventeenthcentury would have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply'reckless.'"
When Marshall's discovery caused a sudden influx of thousands ofadventurers from all classes and almost all countries, the conditions ofgovernment in California were almost the worst possible. Though theMexican system was unpopular and the Mexican law practically unknown,until other provision was made by congress, they had to continue inforce. But the free and slave states were equal in number; Californiawould turn the scale; there was a battle royal as to which pan shoulddescend, a battle that the congresses of 1848 and 1849 left unsettled onadjourning.
Under these circumstances, it might be supposed that the worst elementswould get the upper hand, crime become common, and anarchy result.Precisely the opposite happened. The de facto government was accepted asa necessity, and under its direction "alcaldes" and "ayuntamientos" wereelected. But the mining-camps, which were in a part of the country thathad not been settled by the Mexicans and were occupied by men who knewnothing of their system or laws, were left to work out their ownsalvation. The preponderating element was the Anglo-Saxon, and itsgenius for law and order asserted itself. Each camp elected its ownofficers, recognized the customary laws and adopted special ones, andpunished lawbreakers. Naturally theft was considered a more seriouscrime than it is in ordinary communities. As there were no jails orjailors, flogging and expulsion were the usual punishment, but inaggravated cases it was death. Even after the state government had beenorganized, indeed, the law for a short while permitted a jury toprescribe the death penalty for grand larceny, and, in fact, severalnotorious thieves were legally executed.
The testimony of all observers is that the camps were surprisinglyorderly, that crime was infrequent, and that its punishment, thoughswift and certain, leaned to mercy rather than rigor. Bayard Taylor, forexample, who was in the mines in '50 and '51, writes: "In a region fivehundred miles long, inhabited by a hundred thousand people, who hadneither locks, bolts, regular laws of government, military or civilprotection, there was as much security to life and property as in anystate of the Union."
As these "miners' courts" were allowed after the organization of thestate to retain jurisdiction in all questions that concerned theappropriation of claims, the miners but slowly appreciated that they hadbeen shorn of their criminal jurisdiction. But that they did come torecognize that "the old order changeth, yielding place to new," is, infact, shown by the very incident on which Harte based his of a lynching.
Spite of the autobiographic method that leads the casual reader to thinkthat Harte was intimately connected with this early pioneer life andderived the material for his sketches from personal observation andexperience, his is, in truth, only hearsay evidence. The hero