stagnation to their banks and margin. Here, alike, came the spendthrift
and the indolent, the dreamer and the outlaw, congregating, though
guided by contradictory impulses, in the formation of a common caste,
and the pursuit of a like object--some with the view to profit and gain;
others, simply from no alternative being left them; and that of
gold-seeking, with a better sense than their neighbors, being in their
own contemplation, truly, a _dernier_ resort.

The reader can better conceive than we describe, the sorts of people,
passions, and pursuits, herding thus confusedly together; and with these
various objects. Others, indeed, came into the society, like the rude
but honest woodman to whom we have already afforded an introduction,
almost purely from a spirit of adventure, that, growing impatient of the
confined boundaries of its birthplace, longs to tread new regions and
enjoy new pleasures and employments. A spirit, we may add, the same, or
not materially differing from that, which, at an earlier period of human
history, though in a condition of society not dissimilar, begot the
practices denominated, by a most licentious courtesy, those of chivalry.

But, of whatever stuff the _morale_ of this people may have been made
up, it is not less certain than natural that the mixture was still
incoherent--the parts had not yet grown together. Though ostensibly in
the pursuit of the same interest and craft, they had anything but a like
fortune, and the degree of concert and harmony which subsisted between
them was but shadowy and partial. A mass so heterogeneous in its origin
and tendency might not so readily amalgamate. Strife, discontent, and
contention, were not unfrequent; and the laborers at the same
instrument, mutually depending on each other, not uncommonly came to
blows over it. The successes of any one individual--for, as yet, their
labors were unregulated by arrangement, and each worked on his own