The number of murders here given is no doubt appalling, but it is apt to give an idea of an infinitely more dreadful state of society, and of much greater insecurity of life to peaceable citizens than was actually the case. If these murders were classified, it would be found that the frequency of fatal duels had greatly swelled the list, while, in the majority of cases, the murders would turn out to be the results of rencontres between desperadoes and ruffians, who, by having their little difficulties among themselves, and shooting and stabbing each other, and thus diminishing their own numbers, were rather entitled to the thanks of the respectable portion of the community. It is very certain that in San Francisco crime was fostered by the laxity of the law, but it is equally reasonable to believe that in the mines, where Lynch law had full swing, the amount of crime actually committed by the large criminally disposed portion of the community, consisting of lazy Mexican _ladrones_ and cutthroats, well-trained professional burglars from populous countries, and outcast desperadoes from all the corners of the earth, was not so great as would have resulted from the presence of the same men in any old country, where the law, clothed in all its majesty, is more mysterious and slow, however irresistible, in its action. CHAPTER XV GROWING OVER NIGHT Without having visited some distant place in the mountains, such as Downieville, it was impossible to realize fully the extraordinary extent to which the country had, in so short a time, been overrun and settled by a population whose energy and adaptive genius had immediately seized and improved every natural advantage which presented itself, and whose quickly acquired wealth enabled them to introduce so much luxury, and to afford employment to so many of those branches of industry which usually flourish only in old communities, that in some respects California can hardly be said to have ever been a new country, as compared with other parts of the world to which that term is applied. The men who settled the country imparted to it a good deal of their own nature, which knows no period of boyhood. The Americans spring at once from childhood, or almost from infancy, to manhood; and California, no less rapid in its growth, became a full-grown State, while one-half the world still doubted its existence. The amount of labor which had already been performed in the mines was almost incredible. Every river and creek from one end to the other presented a busy scene; on the “bars,” of course, the miners were congregated in the greatest numbers; but there was scarcely any part of their course where some work was not going on, and the flumes were so numerous, that for about one-third of their length the rivers were carried past in those wooden aqueducts.