Often his consignments were
quite arbitrary and not at all what he ordered. The story is told of one
man who received what, to judge by the smell, he thought was three
barrels of spoiled beef. Throwing them out in the back way, he was
interested a few days later to find he had acquired a rapidly increasing
flock of German scavengers. They seemed to be investigating the barrels
and carrying away the spoiled meat. When the barrels were about empty,
the storekeeper learned that the supposed meat was in reality
sauerkraut!
The outstanding fact about these camps was that they possessed no
solidarity. Each man expected to exploit the diggings and then to depart
for more congenial climes. He wished to undertake just as little
responsibility as he possibly could. With so-called private affairs
other than his own he would have nothing to do. The term private affairs
was very elastic, stretching often to cover even cool-blooded murder.
When matters arose affecting the whole public welfare in which he
himself might possibly become interested, he was roused to the point of
administering justice. The punishments meted out were fines, flogging,
banishment, and, as a last resort, lynching. Theft was considered a
worse offense than killing. As the mines began to fill up with the more
desperate characters who arrived in 1850 and 1851, the necessity for
government increased.
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