The Project Gutenberg EBook of By Shore and Sedge, by Bret Harte

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Title: By Shore and Sedge

Author: Bret Harte

Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2178]
Release Date: May, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY SHORE AND SEDGE ***

BY SHORE AND SEDGE

by

BRET HARTE

CONTENTS

AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
SARAH WALKER
A SHIP OF '49

BY SHORE AND SEDGE

AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

I

On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were camped in Tasajara
Valley, California. It could not have been for the prospect, since a
more barren, dreary, monotonous, and uninviting landscape never
stretched before human eye; it could not have been for convenience or
contiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty miles away; it could
not have been for health or salubrity, as the breath of the
ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes swept through the
valley; it could not have been for space or comfort, for, encamped on
an unlimited plain, men and women were huddled together as closely as
in an urban tenement-house, without the freedom or decency of rural
isolation; it could not have been for pleasant companionship, as
dejection, mental anxiety, tears, and lamentation were the dominant
expression; it was not a hurried flight from present or impending
calamity, for the camp had been deliberately planned, and for a week
pioneer wagons had been slowly arriving; it was not an irrevocable
exodus, for some had already returned to their homes that others might
take their places. It was simply a religious revival of one or two
denominational sects, known as a "camp-meeting."

A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-rooms,
known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the actual
dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized shanties of boards
and canvas, sometimes mere corrals or inclosures open to the cloudless
sky, or more often the unhitched covered wagon which had brought them
there. The singular resemblance to a circus, already profanely
suggeste