DAWN AND THE DONS 166
peculiar circumstances?
Where was ever such harmony evolved out of so wonderful, so dangerous, so magnificent a chaos?
The elements of which the convention was composed were no less various, and in some respects antagonistic, than those combined in the mining population. The questions they had to settle were often perplexing from the remarkable position of the country, and the absence of all precedent. Besides, many of them were men unused to legislation. Some had for years past known no other life than that of the camp; others had nearly forgotten all law in the wild life of the mountains; others, again, were familiar only with that practiced under the rule of a different race. Yet the cour-
