THE ANCESTORS OF PETER ATHERLY


CHAPTER I


It must be admitted that the civilizing processes of Rough and Ready
were not marked by any of the ameliorating conditions of other improved
camps. After the discovery of the famous "Eureka" lead, there was the
usual influx of gamblers and saloon-keepers; but that was accepted as a
matter of course. But it was thought hard that, after a church was built
and a new school erected, it should suddenly be found necessary to have
doors that locked, instead of standing shamelessly open to the criticism
and temptation of wayfarers, or that portable property could no longer
be left out at night in the old fond reliance on universal brotherhood.
The habit of borrowing was stopped with the introduction of more money
into the camp, and the establishment of rates of interest; the poorer
people either took what they wanted, or as indiscreetly bought on
credit. There were better clothes to be seen in its one long straggling
street, but those who wore them generally lacked the grim virtue of the
old pioneers, and the fairer faces that were to be seen were generally
rouged. There was a year or two of this kind of mutation, in which the
youthful barbarism of Rough and Ready might have been said to struggle
with adult civilized wickedness, and then the name itself disappeared.
By an Act of the Legislature the growing town was called "Atherly,"
after the owner of the Eureka mine,--Peter Atherly,--who had given
largess to the town in its "Waterworks" and a "Gin Mill," as the new