Part 4 (1/2)
Occasionally ould hear the cry, ”There she blows;” a jet of water being thrown up h in the air--a sper fish One day there was a school of them landed on the steas, but not of a very large size At another tiot its name fro on a piece of board or a stick of wood; sailors say they have seen them five hundred miles out to sea in that way This one you could take up and handle; it made no resistance On the coast of Central A out, individually, like the Pyramids, said to be extinct volcanoes that were thrown up from the internal fires of the earth, and which, at one time, belched forth melted lava and fire
We arrived safe in Panaht as well return and see my friends, and take a fresh start for California, and trythe railroad over the Isthmus, but it was not coation on the Chagres river, and went down that to its ia_ for New York, commanded by Captain Porter, of the United States navy--thedown the Mississippi river and successfully passing Vicksburg, which had so entleement of the vessel There were on the vessel well-dressed pickpockets, ent from New York to the Isthmus, to return by the stea Californians of their gold dust, as all of them had more or less of it on their persons One unfortunate victily to lish sailor, and had been two or three years up in the goldon his person He showed it to me I advised him to deposit it with the purser for safety; that I had done so with mine He said they could not rob him He was about the happiest , than the Vanderbilts He said he had a wife and children in Liverpool, and would take the first steamer from New York for that port He said he had not seen his faold he could e A few days after I heard he was sick He had fainted Some parties had helped him up; evidently pickpockets had taken that opportunity to rob hione I explained his case to Captain Porter, but nothing could be done There was no way to identify his gold dust from any other; it was all alike When he arrived in New York, he would have to go to the hospital until he got well enough to shi+p on some other vessel for 14 per month, and not be able to return to his wife and children with his gold, and make them happy, while these black-hearted villainsillians were spending his s of years I entered in a bond, with myself, that if I were ever on a jury I would never show anyht We were evidently nearing the great port of New York The land of Staten Island soon caht covered with snow It was late in the fall It was the first I had seen since hest peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains Here ends my personal adventures of the days of the Forty-niners, to be continued by the peroration on California
PERORATION
Onover my finances, I was no poorer than when I left It must be evident to the reader that I had acquired no wealth to astonish my friends with my riches, which was the visionary expectation of the early pioneers to the gold Eldorado I have been writing from personal recollections of events that occurred forty-five years ago Of course, there was nothing in my enterprises, or the little fluctuations of fortune that would be of particular interest to any one; but in the form of a personal narrative, it was the only way I could recall vividly to o There were a series of articles published in the _Century_ reat interest, for they were truthful, but no book has ever been published that took in fully those two years when coold Such an event was never known to occur before, and probably never will again I have not drawn on ination in the least in this narrative I have simply attempted to portray from memory events that actually occurred under my own observation Any Forty-niner will concede the truth of my narrative I did not return to California as I had expected Cupid's arrow piercedlady, and sealed e built in the quiet and beautiful valley of Schoharie, where I have passed more than thirty years of happythe wealth of the successful pioneer, I have been content
”A MONUMENT TO JACOB AL FISHER, A UNION SOLDIER
”_Intervieith Doctor Knoho has Charge of It--So Reminiscences of Forty-niners_
”A monument to be erected in the Old Stone Fort Cemetery to Jacob AL
Fisher, a Union soldier, by Abraham Schell, his uncle, of California
”A draft of the above monument is before us It is quite an affair, about twenty-seven feet high, with a full length statue of a soldier on top It is now being constructed in Des Moines, Iowa, to be shi+pped by the 1st of May, and unveiled on the 4th day of July, 1894, with appropriate cere the corner-stone to the David Williarandest celebration that ever occurred in this county This one he expects to rely to a great extent on the local aranizations of the county, as this honor paid to one of their compatriots in arms is an honor to them
”We have before us a copy of the Stockton (Cal) _Evening Mail_ of Nove a seven coluht's Ferry, Cal We quote froive a deed to the entire place and all of its appurtenances, last summer, to Herrick R Schell, his nepheho had served him faithfully as assistant and business associate for twenty-six years' The property conveyed consisted of three thousand acres, upon which Mr Schell had expended at the tiiven a quarter of a million of dollars We see by the same article that Abraham Schell's landed purchases in that locality, in the early days, amounted to fifteen thousand five hundred and thirty-five acres
”Mr Schell joined a company formed by Dr Knoho made an investment in it, and was then a resident of Albany), which sailed on the shi+p _Tarolinton_ from the port of New York, on the 13th of January, 1849 The doctor, the following spring, shi+pped froht on which was 5,000, he going by the way of the Isth in San Francisco on the 25th of Septee Terry, of Louisiana, who killed United States Senator Broderick in a duel, and as years afterward assassinated
”In these early days there was a contest between Northern and Southern pioneers whether California should come in the Union a free or a slave State Broderick, a Democrat from the city of New York, represented the Northern sentis of the State Coold It wasto do with the moral question of slavery They did not want to come in competition with slave labor The Northern element predominated, and California came in a free State Its first constitution ritten by George Washi+ngton Sherwood, as a Deton county, and copied after the constitution of this State
”California may be said to be the child of the State of New York; her citizens may be said to have been pre-ereatness
”Abraham Schell was born in Gallupville, and proposes to be buried in the neighboring village of Middleburgh, his wife's native place, where he has erected a monument
”They say that all Forty-niners who remained in California either became millionaires or paupers It seems that Mr Schell was one of the former
He was an unconditional Unionthe hospitals of the wounded soldiers, and assisting them by his means, and the erection of this monument to his nephew for his services in that war is but in accord with his acts of patriotism at that ti at this time I expected to find ht I would have the manuscript ready on his arrival and subo in partnershi+p with me in its publication, and have hih literary attainments, and an experienced Forty-niner, who could have added many important events to it that did not come underit properly before the public
DEATH OF A FORMER SCHOHARIAN
Intelligence reaches us of the death of Abrahaht's Ferry, California, in the early part of February Mr Schell was seventy-six years old, and was a native of this county, having been born in the town of Wright At the tiold excitement in 1849 he was in thea company of friends journeyed to California, where he invested his hly successful, ae fortune His vineyards and their product have long been celebrated A ht and fine literary attainments, he was one of the sons of Schoharie county, whose enterprise and intellectual culture we may take just pride in
His reht here in the spring by his nephew, and interred in their final resting place in the ceh, where he has a 2,000 monument erected
We learn from Dr Knower that the proposed monument to his nephew at Old Stone Fort will undoubtedly be erected, as it has been contracted for, but the full details he will not be posted on until the arrival of the nephew in the spring
The above will show that death, which plays an important hand in the events of huone on alone and submit it to the public, such as it is I hope and trust it may meet the approval of all Californians, more particularly of those of the days to which it refers If they will give their approval, it will add to the happiness and gratification of one of their compatriots of those early days of the pioneers and founders of the State of California What California has become since, we, at that ti it an utter i one railroad across the continent,have five Instead of conceiving the idea that it would never be an agricultural country, itcountry of the world, and it has a greater variety of productions than most any other land
The city of San Francisco, when I first entered it, had not as e Now it has a population of nearly four hundred thousand, and edifices that cost millions It has produced more millionaires, from persons that went there poor, than any other country before in the history of the world, and more money has been donated to science and education by those successful pioneers, ere the creators of their own fortune in the same time, than all the rest of the world in the past forty-five years, since the days of the Forty-niners
Lick's institution for the science of astronomy, Leland Stanford's twenty , open to all students, are illustrations of the above statements