They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever the
hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of profound
unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is thrust
upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a few logs
and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a rough
fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool.
The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the
trend of their owners' hard lives.
The ride from Murphy's to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long
after noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small
house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a
limestone hill. "That," said my guide, pointing to the house, "is Cave
City, and the cave is in that gray hill." Arriving at the one house of
this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men
who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to
keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide
was then in the cave with a party of ladies.
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