"To the Argonauts was given a duty. They were appointed to redeem a wild and create a sovereign state. I believe they were a brave, true race. The proof is, that without the restraint of pure women and without law, they enforced order. Their energy, also, was something tremendous. After building up California, they, in great part, made a nucleus for civilization to gather to in each of half-a-dozen neighboring Territories. But they had advantages which the men who settled the Eastern States--the region beyond the Mississippi River, I mean--never possessed. They had better food to eat, a better climate to live in. If they did not have capital, they knew a living, at least, could be had from the nearest gravel bank or ravine, and if they lacked the encircling love of wife and children, they were spared the sorrow of seeing dear women wear out lives of hardship and poverty, as has been seen on all other frontiers in America. "If some fell by the wayside, it was natural, for human nature is weak and Death is everywhere; if some in the pitiless struggle failed, they had no right to cease to try, for when men do that the hope that to them will come the perfume or that upon their eyes will ever shine the light, is forever closed." "All that is good," said Carlin, "but the rule does not always hold true. There is sometimes a limit to man's capacity to suffer, and his heart breaks; and still after that his face gives no sign, and there is no abatement of his energies. In such cases, however, men generally lose the capacity to reason calmly and chase impossibilities. I saw a case yesterday. I met a man mounted on a cheap mustang, and leading another on which was packed a little coarse food, a pick, shovel, pan, coffee-pot and frying pan. As he moved slowly up C. street, a friend--himself an Argonaut--clutched me by the arm with one hand, and with the other pointing to the man on horseback, asked me if I knew him. Replying that I did not, he said: 'Why, that is "Prospecting Joe"; I thought everybody knew him.' I told him I had never heard of him, when he related his story, almost word for word, as follows: