It was after the Colonel"s retirement that we came to spend the summers at Nantucket, and I began to enjoy the leisure that never comes into the life of an army woman during the active service of her husband. We were no longer expecting sudden orders, and I was able to think quietly over the events of the past.
My old letters which had been returned to me really gave me the inspiration to write the book and as I read them over, the people and the events therein described were recalled vividly to my mind--events which I had forgotten, people whom I had forgotten--events and people all crowded out of my memory for many years by the pressure of family cares, and the succession of changes in our stations, by anxiety during Indian campaigns, and the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes and new friends.
And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket, when the summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased their pipings in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering whether it should keep its summer blue or change into its winter grey, I sat down at my desk and began to write my story.
Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November days, when a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up all the threads of my various experiences and wove them together.
But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist for me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them as they had appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as it may seem, I did not once stop to think if the people and the lands still existed.
For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with reveille and ended with "Taps."
Now on this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us in the morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear was the "ruck"
of the waves on the far outer sh.o.r.es and the sad tolling of the bell buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came rolling over the bar.
And so I wrote, and the story grew into a book which was published and sent out to friends and family.
As time pa.s.sed on, I began to receive orders for the book from army officers, and then one day I received orders from people in Arizona and I awoke to the fact that Arizona was no longer the land of my memories.
I began to receive booklets telling me of projected railroads, also pictures of wonderful buildings, all showing progress and prosperity.
And then came letters from some Presidents of railroads whose lines ran through Arizona, and from bankers and politicians and business men of Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma City. Photographs showing shady roads and streets, where once all was a glare and a sandy waste. Letters from mining men who knew every foot of the roads we had marched over; pictures of the great Laguna dam on the Colorado, and of the quarters of the Government Reclamation Service Corps at Yuma.
These letters and pictures told me of the wonderful contrast presented by my story to the Arizona of today; and although I had not spared that country, in my desire to place before my children and friends a vivid picture of my life out there, all these men seemed willing to forgive me and even declared that my story might do as much to advance their interests and the prosperity of Arizona as anything which had been written with only that object in view.
My soul was calmed by these a.s.surances, and I ceased to be distressed by thinking over the descriptions I had given of the unpleasant conditions existing in that country in the seventies.
In the meantime, the San Francisco Chronicle had published a good review of my book, and reproduced the photograph of Captain Jack Mellon, the noted pilot of the Colorado river, adding that he was undoubtedly one of the most picturesque characters who had ever lived on the Pacific Coast and that he had died some years ago.
And so he was really dead! And perhaps the others too, were all gone from the earth, I thought when one day I received a communication from an entire stranger, who informed me that the writer of the review in the San Francisco newspaper had been mistaken in the matter of Captain Mellon"s death, that he had seen him recently and that he lived at San Diego. So I wrote to him and made haste to forward him a copy of my book, which reached him at Yuma, on the Colorado, and this is what he wrote:
YUMA, Dec. 15th, 1908.
My dear Mrs. Summerhayes:
Your good book and letter came yesterday p. m., for which accept my thanks. My home is not in San Diego, but in Coronado, across the bay from San Diego. That is the reason I did not get your letter sooner.
In one hour after I received your book, I had orders for nine of them.
All these books go to the official force of the Reclamation Service here who are Damming the Colorado for the Government Irrigation Project. They are not Damming it as we formerly did, but with good solid masonry. The Dam is 4800 feet long and 300 feet wide and 10 feet above high water.
In high water it will flow over the top of the Dam, but in low water the ditches or ca.n.a.ls will take all the water out of the River, the approximate cost is three million. There will be a tunnel under the River at Yuma just below the Bridge, to bring the water into Arizona which is thickly settled to the Mexican Line.
I have done nothing on the River since the 23rd of last August, at which date they closed the River to Navigation, and the only reason I am now in Yumais trying to get something from Government for my boats made useless by the Dam. I expect to get a little, but not a tenth of what they cost me.
Your book could not have a better t.i.tle: it is "Vanished Arizona" sure enough, vanished the good and warm Hearts that were here when you were.
The People here now are cold blooded as a snake and are all trying to get the best of the other fellow.
There are but two alive that were on the River when you were on it.
Polhemus and myself are all that are left, but I have many friends on this coast.
The nurse Patrocina died in Los Angeles last summer and the crying kid Jesusita she had on the boat when you went from Ehrenberg to the mouth of the River grew up to be the finest looking Girl in these Parts; She was the Star witness in a murder trial in Los Angeles last winter, and her picture was in all of the Papers.
I am sending you a picture of the Steamer "Mojave" which was not on the river when you were here. I made 20 trips with her up to the Virgin River, which is 145 miles above Fort Mojave, or 75 miles higher than any other man has gone with a boat: she was 10 feet longer than the "Gila"
or any other boat ever on the River. (Excuse this blowing but it"s the truth).
In 1864 I was on a trip down the Gulf of California, in a small sail boat and one of my companions was John Stanton. In Angel"s Bay a man whom we were giving a pa.s.sage to, murdered my partner and ran off with the boat and left Charley Ticen, John Stanton and myself on the beach.
We were seventeen days tramping to a village with nothing to eat but cactus but I think I have told you the story before and what I want to know, is this Stanton alive. He belonged to New Bedford--his father had been master of a whale-ship.
When we reached Guaymas, Stanton found a friend, the mate of a steamer, the mate also belonged to New Bedford. When we parted, Stanton told me he was going home and was going to stay there, and as he was two years younger than me, he may still be in New Bedford, and as you are on the ground, maybe you can help me to find out.
All the people that I know praise your descriptive power and now my dear Mrs. Summerhayes I suppose you will have a hard time wading through my scrawl but I know you will be generous and remember that I went to sea when a little over nine years of age and had my pen been half as often in my hand as a marlin spike, I would now be able to write a much clearer hand.
I have a little bungalow on Coronado Beach, across the bay from San Diego, and if you ever come there, you or your husband, you are welcome; while I have a bean you can have half. I would like to see you and talk over old times. Yuma is quite a place now; no more adobes built; it is brick and concrete, cement sidewalks and flower gardens with electric light and a good water system.
My home is within five minutes walk of the Pacific Ocean. I was born at Digby, Nova Scotia, and the first music I ever heard was the surf of the Bay of Fundy, and when I close my eyes forever I hope the surf of the Pacific will be the last sound that will greet my ears.
I read Vanished Arizona last night until after midnight, and thought what we both had gone through since you first came up the Colorado with me. My acquaintance with the army was always pleasant, and like Tom Moore I often say:
Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy Bright dreams of the past which she cannot destroy! Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care And bring back the features that joy used to wear. Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
I suppose the Colonel goes down to the Ship Chandler"s and gams with the old whaling captains. When I was a boy, there was a wealthy family of ship-owners in New Bedford by the name of Robinson. I saw one of their ships in Bombay, India, that was in 1854, her name was the Mary Robinson, and altho" there were over a hundred ships on the bay, she was the handsomest there.
Well, good friend, I am afraid I will tire you out, so I will belay this, and with best wishes for you and yours,
I am, yours truly,
J. A. MELLON.
P. S.--Fisher is long since called to his Long Home.
I had fancied, when Vanished Arizona was published, that it might possibly appeal to the sympathies of women, and that men would lay it aside as a sort-of a "woman"s book"--but I have received more really sympathetic letters from men than I have from women, all telling me, in different words, that the human side of the story had appealed to them, and I suppose this comes from the fact that originally I wrote it for my children, and felt perfect freedom to put my whole self into it. And now that the book is entirely out of my hands, I am glad that I wrote it as I did, for if I had stopped to think that my dream people might be real people, and that the real people would read it, I might never have had the courage to write it at all.
The many letters I have received of which there have been several hundred I am sure, have been so interesting that I reproduce a few more of them here:
FORT BENJAMIN HARRISON, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA. January 10, 1909.
My dear Mrs. Summerhayes:
I have just read the book. It is a good book, a true book, one of the best kind of books. After taking it up I did not lay it down till it was finished--till with you I had again gone over the malapais deserts of Arizona, and recalled my own meetings with you at Niobrara and at old Fort Marcy or Santa Fe. You were my cicerone in the old town and I couldn"t have had a better one--or more charming one.
The book has recalled many memories to me. Scarcely a name you mention but is or was a friend. Major Van Vliet loaned me his copy, but I shall get one of my own and shall tell my friends in the East that, if they desire a true picture of army life as it appears to the army woman, they must read your book.
For my part I feel that I must congratulate you on your successful work and thank you for the pleasure you have given me in its perusal.
With cordial regard to you and yours, and with best wishes for many happy years.