It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver exhausted description and
condensed its virtues in a single phrase: "Gin and ginger." This
felicitous epithet, flung out in a generous comparison with his
favorite drink, "rum and gum," clung to it ever after.
Such was the current comment on this vale of spices. Like most human
criticism it was hasty and superficial. No one yet had been known to
have penetrated deeply its mysterious recesses. It was still far below
the summit and its wayside inn. It had escaped the intruding foot of
hunter and prospector; and the inquisitive patrol of the county
surveyor had only skirted its boundary. It remained for Mr. Lance
Harriott to complete its exploration. His reasons for so doing were
simple. He had made the journey thither underneath the stage-coach, and
clinging to its axle. He had chosen this hazardous mode of conveyance
at night, as the coach crept by his place of concealment in the wayside
brush, to elude the sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were
after him. He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers, as
they already knew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he
deemed it unwise to present himself in his newer reputation of a man
who had just slain a brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a
reward was offered.
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