THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ASSOCIATION. Ill
necessary for the journey, either by land or water, would be furnished by one in consideration of a prom- ise from the other to perform a certain amount cf labor, or to divide the profits. But so entirely then was California beyond the reach of law, or even light, or restraint, that a man must be impregnated with honesty and conscience in a remarkable degree long to be mindful of obligations entered into with those who are never to know if he keeps them.
No sooner was a family, for instance, fairly started overland, than the master was as much m the hands of the man as the man was in those of the master ; and often an emigrant was obliged to submit to insult and wrong heaped upon him by some base-minded churl to whom he was doing charity All the em- ployer could do in such cases was to turn the man adrift, but this was impracticable in the middle of the plains with teams and stock to be attended to. Moreover, such action might be exactly what the fellow would like, as he could then make his way for- ward untrammeled, with what his emploj^er would feel obliged to give him, or he could join some other band.
Often when ready to start, the most absurd rumors were rife. Some would say that the Mormons, ready to kill or convert the emigrants, waited and watched for them at the rivers ; in romantic regions savages lurked, if so be they should escape the avenging saints ; while still farther west, the emissaries of per- fidious fur-companies had penetrated to bribe with rum or blankets the unsophisticated red man, and stir him up against intruders upon the game-filled park that God had given him.
Full of fanciful theories, until experience beat prac- tical common-sense into them, some of the doinofs of the emigrants were most childish. One company a few days after starting was struck with a freak of law-making ; and immediately after attempting to put in practice the new regulations, as was often the
