ELAM'S ADVENTURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 949, 10 July 1877, Page 3

ELAM'S ADVENTURE.

(Argosy.) ‘ Can’t you tell us some of your adventures ?” I a-<ked of my friend Elam, who had returned from his many years’ travels in the hush and other outlandish places, and was sitting with me and my wife. And, though absent so long, he was, so to say, a young man yet. ‘ Adventures ? Well, I have had plenty. Rough ones, some of them.’ * Please tell us one,’ chimed in Mary. Elam laughed. ‘‘ I can tell you of a curious one that I met with in the mountains. ’

‘ Oh, yes ; do. Which mountains ? ’ ‘ In California ; up in one of its wild districts ’

* That will be the very thing.’ ‘ Well, said Elam, running his tapering fingers through his hair, and smiling at my wife, * I’ll soften down things in the telling as well as my blunt speech and uncivilised modes of thought will allow of, and you must excuse the rest.’

‘ Oh, I’ll excuse anything. Please begin.’

‘ When I started from home to settle iu unfrequented districts,’ began Elam, ‘I set up a theory that no young man should ask a woman to marry him until he had prepared a home for her. It is surprising how much you begin to think of a wife over yonder, arising I suppose from the extreme loneliness of one’s existence. I was no exception. The land I took up was in the Mogue river Valley ; and, after I had got it a bit shipshape, I worked away with that object in view -to bring home a wife. ’ ‘ But, Elam, had you selected a wife ?’ I asked. ‘No. I intended to do that as soon as I could, though you may say I was full young to be thinking of it. I worked on, and was pretty successful. I built me a house, got a considerable quantity of stacks, made a flower garden for my wife ; even put up the pegs and nails she would want to hang her dresses on. I intended that same autumn to get me on my horse, ride through the Wallamet Valley, and find me my wife, marry her, and bring her home.” At the notion of courting in that off-hand style, we laughed a little. Elam laughed too, as if the recollection pleased him. ‘ You think it strange, J see. It was not so very strange over there in those days, where girls were as scarce as ‘angels. There was not a girl within forty miles of me ; and I assure you that the very thought of one, as I drove in those nails for her garments to hang on, went through me like a thrill. You don’t believe ? Go out, yourself, and try it.’ ‘ But I do believe. ,

‘ I had about two hundred and fifty head of cattle, a good house with a garden, a young orchard, vegetables growing, sweetscented flowers—all in readiness for the wife I hoped to bring home to bless me and to take care of this, my possession. And what do you think happened to it ?’ We could not tell.

‘ There came such a plague of grasshoppers upon the valley that everything perished. Crops, orchard, flowers, grass, every green and delightful and promising thing ; the grasshoppers destroyed all. You remember the second chapter of Joel ? ’ I nodded.

‘ The laud is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness,’ I was ruined. My stock died; at least, the greater portion; they had nothing to feed upon. Yes, it was complete and absolute ruin. ’

Elam paused a moment; mentally looking at the past ‘ I considered myself disappointed in love too,’ he resumed in the quaintest of tones. ‘ Though I had not yet been out to find my girl, I knew she was somewhere in that other valley waiting for me : and when the greedy grasshoppers ate up everything, I felt that I had been jilted. It actually gives me a pang now to think of those useless pegs on which my imagination had so often seen a girl’s pink cotton dress and a white sun-bonnet. ’ Elam gave a great sigh. He was an eccentrric fellow.

‘ I became misanthropic; said to myself that between fate and the grasshoppers I had been used hardly. Packing up my books and a few other traps, I bade adieu to tne Rogue river Valley for ever, and started for the mountains. It was a longish journey, as I had to drive before me the stock I had left. There, in the mountains, I settled down again, built myself a fort, and played hermit. ISo jilting girls should come near me now.’ ‘ A fort ?’

‘ A regular fort. A stockade eighteen feet high, high with an embankment four feet high around it, and a strong gate in the middle. My tent was in the midst of the enclosure, with my books aud household go s, fire arms, and all the rest of my property stowed away in it.’ ‘ Were you afraid of the Indians?’ * Indians and white men. Yes, I saw a good many Indiana at first within the range of my rifle. They learned to keep away from my fort, finding it did not pay to attempt to invade it. Down in the valley below these were mining camps ; and you perhaps know what some of the hangers-on of such camps are. I sold beef- that is, heads of cattle —to the miners ; aud as I had sometimes a tidy sum of money by me, it was necessary to be careful.’ ‘ What a strange life for a young man. For you, Elam !’ ‘ I heded my cattle, drove them to market, cooked, studied, wrote; and indulged in misanthropy, combined with some rifle practice By the time I had entered on the second summer in the mountains, I felt quite at home, and was getting rich. After all, the life had its charms. A man cannot quite tire of it when he is but a few years out of his teens.’

‘ And the girl wife ? ’ ‘I am coming to that. Having had time to forget my ill-usage, a reaction set in, you 83 3, and I thought after all I must ride to the Wallamet to see after my girl. But I was not in the hurry over it that I had been before. This is all very dull, you will say, but there’ll be some stir presently.’

It is not at all dull.’ (To he continued.')