The Cave of Gold: A Tale of California in '49McNeil, Everett
General
The Cave of Gold: A Tale of California in '49
McNeil, Everett
California -- Gold discoveries -- Juvenile fiction
The house was a very rude affair--just four walls of logs, roughly
fitted with an ax and laid one on top of the other to a height of seven
feet, enclosing a space some twenty-five feet long by eighteen feet
wide, with a bark roof, ground floor, a door cut through the logs in the
middle of one side, and three windows, one in each side and one in the
end opposite the fireplace. The fireplace was very roughly constructed
of stones and sticks, plastered together with a clay-like mud, and with
the chimney built entirely outside of the house.
The furniture was in keeping with the house. The table was the split
halves of a log, cut about ten feet long and laid side by side, with
their flat sides up, supported by four short posts driven into the
ground near the center of the room. The chairs were blocks of wood, set
on end, reenforced by a couple of old boxes and two miners' easy chairs,
a unique production, made by cutting down an empty flour barrel to
something of the shape of an armed easy chair and attaching two rockers
to the bottom. The seats of these chairs were often lined and stuffed in
good shape and had the comfortable feel and rock of the more costly
chairs of civilization--and what more need a miner ask? Along the side
of the room opposite the door ran a double tier of rude bunks, one side
of the beds being supported by posts driven into the ground and the
other by the logs of the wall. On the wall near the fireplace hung the
frying-pans and the other rude cooking utensils; and in a corner were
piled the bags, barrels, kegs, and boxes containing their camp supplies.
When you are told that this, at that time in Hangtown, was considered a
rather luxurious style of living, you may be able to form something of
an idea of the kind of style in which the average miner lived.
"Well, they don't put on much style, do they?" and the eyes Thure turned
to Bud twinkled with excitement and interest.
"Don't they! Just feast your eyes on this!" and Bud, dropping down into
the soft seat of one of the "easy" chairs, leaned back comfortably and
began rocking. "Now, if this isn't style and comfort, then I don't know
what style and comfort are. Better try it," and he winked toward the
other "easy" chair.
Thure at once profited by the suggestion.
"Well, I swun to goodness!" he declared, as he rocked back and forth in
the novel chair, "if this doesn't beat mother's easy rocker for comfort.
I reckon dad will have to make her one, when we get back home," and he
grinned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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