This page needs to be proofread.

ms joined



hands, and went down from there to the Klamat to gether. Our cabin stood down on the main stream, not far from the river.

The Forks had two butcher s shops ; and each of the rival houses sent up and down the streams two mules each day, laden with their meats ; left so much at each claim as directed, weighed it out themselves, kept the accounts themselves ; and yet, never to my knowledge, in any of the mining camps, did the but cher betray his trust. A small matter this, you say. No doubt it is. Yet it is true and new. Any new truth is always worthy of attention. I mention this particularly as an item of evidence confirmative of my belief, that we have only to trust man to make him honest, and, on the other hand, to watch and suspect him to make him a knave.

The principal saloon of The Forks was the "Howlin Wilderness;" an immense pine-log cabin, with higher walls than most cabins, earth floor, and an immense fire-place, where crackled and roared, day and night, a pine-log fire, that refreshes me even to this day to remember.

It is true the Howlin Wilderness was not high- toiied, was not even first-class in this fierce little mining camp of The Forks; but it was a spacious place always had more people in it and a bigger fire than other places, and so was a power and a centre in the town. Besides, all the important fights took place at the Howlin Wilderness, and if you wanted to be well up in the news, or to see the