While this simple pastoral life was cen-
tred arovmd the school-house in the clearing,
broken only by an occasional warning pistol-
shot in the direction of the Harrison-McKin-
stry boundaries, the more business part of
Indian Spring was overtaken by one of those
spasms of enterprise peculiar to aU Califor-
nian mining settlements. The opening of
the Eureka Ditch and the extension of stage-
coach communication from Big Bluff were
events of no small importance, and were
celebrated on the same day. The double
occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric
of the editor of the " Star " left him strug-
gling in the metaphorical difficulties of a
Pactolian Spring, which he had rashly turned
into the Ditch, and obliged him to transfer
the onerous duty of writing the editorial
on the Big Bluff Extension to the hands of
the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman
from Angel's. The loss of the Honorable
Mr. Dean's right eye in an early pioneer



CRESS r. 89

fiacas did not prevent him from looking into
the dim vista of the future and discovering
with that single unaided optic enough to fill
three columns of the " Star." " It is not too
extravagant to say," he remarked with
charming deprecation, " that Indian Spring,
through its own perfectly organized system
of inland transportation, the confluence of
its North Fork with the Sacramento Kiver,
and their combined effluence into the illimi-
table Pacific, is thus put not only into direct
communication with far Cathay but even re-
moter Antipodean markets. The citizen of
Indian Spring taking the 9 a. m. Pioneer
Coach and arriving at Big Bluff at 2.40 is
enabled to connect with the through express
to Sacramento the same evening, reaching
San Francisco per the Steam Navigation
Company's palatial steamers in time to take
the Pacific Mail Steamer to Yokohama on
the following day at 3.30 p. m." Although
no citizen of Indian Spring appeared to avail
himself of this admirable opportunity, nor
did it appear at all likely that any would,
everybody vaguely felt that an inestimable
boon lay in the suggestion, and even the
master professionally intrusting the reading
aloud of the editorial to Rupert Filgee with



90 CJtESST.
