In the old romances it must be admitted there is much brawling and heavy drinking, as well as unseemliness of conduct.  Yet in spite of the fact that hotel bars and saloons abound in all the old mining towns, the writer throughout his travels and notwithstanding the intense heat, not only saw no person under the influence of liquor, but also never heard a voice raised in angry dispute.  Moderation, decency and a kindly consideration for the rights of others seem habitual with these people.

It is fifteen miles from Grass Valley to Smartsville, and I arrived at the SmartsviIle Hotel in time for the midday meal.  Smartsville has “seen better days,” but still maintains a cheerful outlook on life.  The population has dwindled from several thousand to about three hundred.  It is, however, the central point for quite an extensive agricultural and pastoral country surrounding it.

The swinging sign over the hotel bears the legend, “Smartsville Hotel, John Peardon, Propr.”  The present proprietor is named “Peardon,” but everyone addressed him as “Jim.”  Having established a friendly footing, I said:  “Mr. Peardon, I notice the sign over the door reads John Peardon.  How is it that they all call you ‘Jim?’” “Oh,” he replied, “John Peardon was my father, I was born in this hotel;” — another of the numerous instances that came under my observation of the way these people “stay where they are put.”

John Peardon was an Englishman.  The British Isles furnished a very considerable percentage of the pioneers, the evidences whereof remain unto this day.  The swinging signs over the hotels for one; another, the prevalence in all the mining towns of Bass’s pale ale.  You will find it in the most unpretentious hotels and restaurants.  An Englishman expects his ale or beer, as a matter of course, whether at the Equator or at the Arctic Circle.  When I first arrived in California in 1868, I drifted down into the then sheep and cattle country in the lower end of Monterey County.  An English family living on an isolated ranch sent home for a girl who had worked for them in the old country.  Upon her arrival, the first question she asked was:  “How far is it to the church?” The second:  “Where can I get my beer?” When informed there was no church within a hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad!  Bereft, at one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground seemed to have given way from under her feet.  For her, these two particulars comprised the whole of the British Constitution.

Smartsville possessed a sentimental interest for me, for the reason that in the sixties my father mined and taught a private school in an adjoining camp bearing the derogatory appellation “Sucker Flat.”  What mischance prompted this title will never now be known.  In my father’s time, it contained a population of nearly a thousand persons; and judging from the manner in which the gulch and the contiguous flat have been torn, scarred, burrowed into and tunneled under, if gold there was, most strenuous efforts had been made to bring it to light.