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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
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+Title: A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+Author: Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4636]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 20, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
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+
+A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+By
+Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
+
+
+Author of "The Coming of Portola"
+
+
+
+With A Foreward by
+Charles A. Murdock
+
+
+
+Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
+The river sang below;
+The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
+Their minarets of snow.
+- Dickens in Camp.
+
+
+
+
+The Chapters
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+Preface
+
+Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthful James." The
+Glamour of the Old Mining Towns
+
+Inception of the Tramp. Stockton to Angel's Camp. Tuttletown and the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill"
+
+Tuolumne to Placerville. Charm of Sonora and Fascination of San Andreas
+and Mokelumne Hill
+
+J. H. Bradley and the Cary House. Ruins of Coloma. James W. Marshall and
+His Pathetic End
+
+Auburn to Nevada City Via Colfax and Grass Valley. Ben Taylor and His
+Home
+
+E. W. Maslin and His Recollections of Pioneer Days in Grass Valley.
+Origin of Our Mining Laws
+
+Grass Valley to Smartsville. Sucker Flat and Its Personal Appeal
+
+Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
+
+Bayard Taylor and the California of Forty-nine. Bret Harte and His
+Literary Pioneer Contemporaries
+
+
+
+The Illustrations
+
+
+
+Ruins of Coloma, a Name "Forever Associated With the Wildest Scramble
+for Gold the World Has Ever Been"
+
+Map of the "Bret Harte Country," Showing the Route Taken by the Writer,
+With the Towns, Important Rivers, and County Boundaries of the Country
+Traversed
+
+The Tuttletown Hotel, Tuttletown; a Wooden Building Erected in the Early
+Fifties
+
+Mokelumne River; "Whatever the Meaning of the Indian Name, One May Rest
+Assured It Stands for Some Form of Beauty"
+
+"A Mining Convention at Placerville"
+
+South Fork of the American River, Coloma. The Bend in the River Is the
+Precise Spot Where Gold Was First Discovered in California
+
+Ben Taylor and His Home, Grass Valley, Showing the Spruce He Planted
+Nearly Half a Century Ago
+
+E. W. Maslin in the Garden of His Alameda Home
+
+Angel's Hotel, Angel's Camp, Erected in 1852, as was the Wells Fargo
+Building Which Faces it Across the Street
+
+Main Hoist of the Utica Mine, Angel's Camp, Situated on the Summit of a
+Hill Overlooking the Town
+
+The Stanislaus River, Near Tuttletown, "Running in a Deep and Splendid
+Canon"
+
+Jackass Hill, Tuttletown. The Road to the Left Leads to the Former Home
+of "Jim" Gillis
+
+Home of Mrs. Swerer, Tuttletown. The Hotel and This Dwelling Comprise
+All That Is Habitable of the Tuttletown of Bret Harte
+
+Main Street, Sonora, "So Shaded by Trees That Buildings Are Half-hidden"
+
+Sonora, Looking Southeast. "No Matter From What Direction You Approach
+It, Sonora Seems to Lie Basking in the Sun"
+
+Main Street, San Andreas, "During the Mid-day Heat, Almost Deserted"
+
+Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas; in the Bar-room of Which Occurred the
+"Jumping Frog" Incident
+
+Mokelumne Hotel, on the Summit of Mokelumne Hill, and at the Head of the
+Famous Chili Gulch
+
+Placerville, the County Seat of El Dorado County, From the Road to
+Diamond Springs
+
+The Cary House, Placerville. "It Was Here That Horace Greeley Terminated
+His Celebrated Stage Ride With Hank Monk"
+
+Middle Fork of the American River, Near Auburn, and Half a Mile Above
+Its Junction With the North Fork
+
+An Apple Orchard, Grass Valley, "The Trees Growing in the Grass, as in
+England and the Atlantic States"
+
+The Western Hotel, Grass Valley. "The Well and Pump Add a Quaint and
+Characteristic Touch"
+
+A Bit of Picturesque Nevada City, Embracing the Homes of Its Leading
+Citizens
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+
+
+In California's imaginary Hall of Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a
+prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems
+published fifty years ago made California well known the world over and
+gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw the
+picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is unaccountable if
+we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His imagination gave
+him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied colors and rare
+literary skill painted the picture.
+
+His capacity for absorption was marvelous. At the age of about twenty he
+spent less than a year in the foot-hills of the Sierras, among pioneer
+miners, and forty-five years of literary output did not exhaust his
+impressions. He somewhere refers to an "eager absorption of the strange
+life around me, and a photographic sensitiveness," to certain scenes and
+incidents." "Eager absorption," "photographic sensitiveness," a rich
+imagination and a fine literary style, largely due to his mother,
+enabled him to win at his death this acknowledgment from the "London
+Spectator:" "No writer of the present day has struck so powerful and
+original a note as he has sounded."
+
+Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1836. His
+father was a teacher and translator; his mother a woman of high
+character and cultivated tastes. His father having died, he, when nine,
+became an office boy and later a clerk. In 1854 he came to California to
+join his mother who had married again, arriving in Oakland in March of
+that year. His employment for two years was desultory. He worked in a
+drug store and also wrote for Eastern magazines. Then he went to Alamo
+in the San Ramon Valley as tutor - a valued experience. Later in 1856 he
+went to Tuolumne County where, among other things, he taught school, and
+may have been an express messenger. At any rate, he stored his memory
+with material that ten years later made him and the whole region famous.
+
+In 1857 he went to Humboldt County where his sister was living. He was
+an interesting figure, gentlemanly, fastidious, reserved, sensitive,
+with a good fund of humor, a pleasant voice and a modest manner. He
+seemed poorly fitted for anything that needed doing. He was willing, for
+I saw him digging post holes and building a fence with results somewhat
+unsatisfactory. He was more successful as tutor for two of my boy
+friends. He finally became printers' devil in the office of the
+"Northern Californian," where he learned the case, and incidentally
+contributed graceful verse and clever prose.
+
+He returned to San Francisco early in 1860 and found work on the "Golden
+Era," at first as compositor and soon as writer. In May, 1864, he left
+the "Golden Era" and joined others in starting "The Californian." Two
+months later he was made editor of the new "Overland Monthly." The
+second number contained "The Luck of Roaring Camp." It attracted wide
+attention as a new note. Other stories and poems of merit followed.
+Harte's growing reputation burst in full bloom when in 1870 he filled a
+blank space in the "Overland" make-up with "The Heathen Chinee." It was
+quoted on the floor of the Senate and gained world-wide fame. He
+received flattering offers and felt constrained to accept the best. In
+February, 1871, he left California. A Boston publisher had offered him
+$10,000 for whatever he might write in the following year. Harte
+accepted, but the output was small.
+
+For seven years he wrote spasmodically, eking out his income by
+lecturing and newspaper work. Life was hard. In 1878 he sailed for
+Europe, having been appointed consular agent at Crefeld, Prussia, about
+forty miles north of Cologne. In 1880 he was made Consul at Glasgow,
+where he remained five years. His home thereafter was London, where he
+continued his literary work until his death in March, 1902.
+
+His complete works comprise nineteen volumes. His patriotic verse is
+fervid, his idyls are graceful and his humorous verse delightful. The
+short story he made anew.
+
+Harte's instincts and habits were good. He had the artistic temperament
+and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself
+"constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy.
+His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him
+remember him fondly. California failing to know him, wrongs herself.
+
+Charles A. Murdock.
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+A desire to obtain, at first hand, any possible information in regard to
+reminiscences of Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others of the little coterie
+of writers, who in the early fifties visited the mining camps of
+California and through stories that have become classics, played a
+prominent part in making "California" a synonym for romance, led to
+undertaking the tramp of which this brief narrative is a record. The
+writer met with unexpected success, having the good fortune to meet men,
+all over eighty years of age, who had known - in some cases intimately
+Bret Harte, Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille," Prentice Mulford, Bayard Taylor
+and Horace Greeley.
+
+It seems imperative that a relation of individual experiences - however
+devoid of stirring incident and adventure - should be written in the
+first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story
+of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers - should he
+have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no
+twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns,
+it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average
+Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the
+foot-hills of the Sierras lie outside the beaten tracks of travel. He
+has, therefore, assumed that "a plain unvarnished tale" of actual
+experiences might not be without interest to the casual reader; and
+possibly might incite in him a desire to see for himself a country not
+only possessed of rare beauty, but absolutely unique in its
+associations.
+
+But the point to be emphasized is that the glamour is not a thing of the
+past: it is there now. Nay, to a person possessed of any imagination,
+the ruins - say, of Coloma - appeal in all probability far stronger than
+would the actual town itself in the days when it seethed with bustle and
+excitement. Not to have visited the old mining towns is not to have seen
+the "heart" of California, or felt its pulsations. It is not to
+understand why the very name "California" still stirs the blood and
+excites the imagination throughout the civilized world.
+
+If this brief narrative should induce anyone to "gird up his loins,"
+shoulder his pack and essay a similar pilgrimage, the author will feel
+that he has not been unrewarded. And if a man over threescore years of
+age can tramp through seven counties and return, in spite of intense
+heat, feeling better and stronger than when he started, a young fellow
+in the hey-day of life and sound of wind and limb surely ought not to be
+discouraged.
+
+Thomas Dykes Beasley.
+
+
+
+A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+
+Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthfulful James."
+The Glamour of the Old Mining Towns
+
+
+
+It is forty-four years since the writer met the author of "The Luck of
+Roaring Camp" - that wonderful blending within the limits of a short
+story of humor, pathos and tragedy - which, incredible as it may seem,
+met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded
+as "indecent" and "immodest!"
+
+On the occasion referred to, I was strolling on Rincon Hill - at that
+time the fashionable residence quarter of San Francisco - in company
+with Mr. J. H. Wildes, whose cousin, the late Admiral Frank Wildes,
+achieved fame in the battle of Manila Bay. Mr. Wildes called my
+attention to an approaching figure and said: "Here comes Bret Harte, a
+man of unusual literary ability. He is having a hard struggle now, but
+only needs the opportunity, to make a name for himself."
+
+That opportunity arrived almost immediately. In the September number of
+the Overland Monthly, 1870, of which magazine Mr. Harte was then editor,
+appeared "Plain Language from Truthful James," or "The Heathen Chinee,"
+as the poem was afterwards called. A few weeks later, to my amazement,
+while turning the pages of Punch in the Mercantile Library, I came
+across "The Heathen Chinee;" an unique compliment so far as my
+recollection of Punch serves. To this generous and instantaneous
+recognition of genius may be attributed in no small measure the rapid
+distinction won by Bret Harte in the world of letters.
+
+Mr. Harte read his "Heathen Chinee" to Mrs. Wildes, some time before it
+was published. This lady, a woman of brilliant attainments and one who
+had a host of friends in old San Francisco, possessed the keenest sense
+of humor. Mr. Harte greatly valued her critical judgment. He was in the
+habit of reading his stories and poems to her for her opinion and
+decision, before publication, and it may well be that her hearty
+laughter and warm approval helped to strengthen his wavering opinion of
+the lines which convulsed Anglo-Saxondom; for no one was more surprised
+than he at the sensation they created. He had even offered the poem for
+publication to Mr. Ambrose Bierce, then editing the San Francisco News
+Letter; but Mr. Bierce, recognizing its merit, returned it to Mr. Harte
+and prevailed upon him to publish it in his own magazine.
+
+Had one at that time encountered Mr. Harte in Piccadilly or Fifth
+Avenue, he would simply have been aware of a man dressed in perfect
+taste, but in the height of the prevailing fashion. On the streets of
+San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the
+fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut,
+and usually of shiny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the
+customary headgear, completing a most funereal costume.
+
+Mr. Harte impressed me as being singularly modest and utterly devoid of
+any form of affectation. To be well dressed in a period when little
+attention was paid clothes by the San Franciscan, might, it is true, in
+some men have suggested assumption of an air of superiority; but with
+Mr. Harte, to dress well was simply a natural instinct. His long,
+drooping moustache and the side-whiskers of the time - incongruous as
+the comparison may seem - called to mind the elder Sothern as "Lord
+Dundreary." His natural expression was pensive, even sad. When one
+considers that pathos and tragedy, perhaps even more than humor, pervade
+his stories, that was not surprising.
+
+I had but recently arrived from England - a mere lad. California was
+still the land of gold and romance; the glamour with which Bret Harte
+surrounded both, that bids fair to be immortal, held me enthralled.
+Angel's, Rough and Ready, Sandy Bar, Poker Flat, Placerville, Tuolumne
+and old Sonora represented to me enchanted ground. Fate and life's
+vicissitudes prevented, except in imagination, a knowledge of the Sierra
+foot-hill counties; but in the back of my head all these years had
+persisted a determination to, at some time, visit a region close to the
+heart of every old Californian, and what better way than on foot?
+
+In spite of Pullman cars and automobiles - or, rather, perhaps on
+account of them - the only way to see a country, to get into touch with
+Nature and meet the inhabitants on the dead level of equality and human
+sympathy, is to use Nature's method of locomotion. Equipped with a stout
+stick - with a view to dogs - a folding kodak camera, and your "goods
+and chattels" slung in a haversack across your shoulders, you feel
+independent of timecards and "routes;" and sally forth into the world
+with the philosophical determination to take things as they come; keyed
+to a pleasurable pitch of excitement by the knowledge that "Adventure"
+walks with you hand-in-hand, and that the "humors of the road" are yours
+for the seeing and understanding.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+
+Inception of the Tramp. Stockton to Angel's Camp. Tuttletown and the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill"
+
+
+
+Following as near as might be the route of the old Argonauts, I avoided
+trains, and on a warm summer night boarded the Stockton boat. In the
+early morning you are aware of slowly rounding the curves of the San
+Joaquin River. Careful steering was most essential, as owing to the dry
+season the river was unusually low. The vivid greens afforded by the
+tules and willows that fringe the river banks, and the occasional
+homestead surrounded by trees, with its little landing on the edge of
+the levee, should delight the eye of the artist.
+
+I lost no time in Stockton and headed for Milton in the foot-hills, just
+across the western boundary of Calaveras County. The distance was
+variously estimated by the natives at from twenty to forty miles -
+Californians are careless about distances, as in other matters.
+Subsequently I entered it in my note book as a long twenty-eight.
+Eighteen miles out from Stockton, at a place called Peters, which is
+little more than a railway junction, you leave the cultivated land and
+enter practically a desert country, destitute of water, trees,
+undergrowth and with but a scanty growth of grass. I ate my lunch at the
+little store and noted with apprehension that the thermometer registered
+104 degrees in the shaded porch. I am not likely to forget that pull of
+ten miles and inwardly confessed to a regret that I had not taken the
+train to Milton. Accustomed on "hikes" to a thirst not surpassed by
+anything "east of Suez," I never before appreciated the significance of
+the word "parched" - the "tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth."
+
+At Milton one enters the land of romance. What was even more appreciable
+at the time, it marks the limit of the inhospitable country I had
+traversed. Mr. Robert Donner, the proprietor of the Milton Hotel, told
+me he once had "Black Bart" as his guest for over a week, being unaware
+at the time of his identity. This famous bandit in the early eighties
+"held up" the Yosemite stage time and again. In fact, he terrorized the
+whole Sierra country from Redding to Sacramento. He was finally captured
+in San Francisco through a clew obtained from a laundry mark on a pair
+of white cuffs. For years, Mr. Donner cherished a boot left by the
+highwayman in the hurry of departure, which, much to his annoyance, was
+finally abstracted by some person unknown. To dispose of Black Bart; he
+served his term and was never seen again in the Sierras. There is a
+rumor that Wells Fargo & Company, the chief sufferers by his activities,
+made it worth his while to behave himself in the future.
+
+The following day I reached Copperopolis. This place very justly has the
+reputation of being one of the hottest spots in the foot-hills. Owing to
+resumed operations on a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I
+found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was
+perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods - in short, I
+spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had
+been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road
+would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp,
+only thirteen miles away.
+
+It is uphill nearly all the way from Copperopolis to Angel's Camp, but
+mostly you are in the pine woods. My spirits rose with the altitude and
+delight at the magnificent view when I at last reached the summit.
+Toiling up the grade in the dust, I met a good old-fashioned four-horse
+Concord stage, which from all appearances might have been in action ever
+since the days of Bret Harte. At last I felt I was in touch with the
+Sierras. The driver even honored my bow with an abrupt "Howdy!" which
+from such a magnate, I took to be a good omen.
+
+In common with all the old mining towns - though I was unaware of it at
+the time - Angel's, as it is usually called, is situated in the ravine
+where gold was first discovered. It straggles down the gulch for a mile
+and a half. There are a number of pretty cottages clinging to the steep
+hillsides, surrounded with flowers and trees, the whole effect being
+extremely pleasing. I registered at the Angel's Hotel, built in 1852.
+Across the street is the Wells Fargo building, erected about the same
+time and of solid stone, as is the hotel. Nothing on this trip surprised
+me more than the solidity of the hotels and stores built in the early
+fifties. Instead of the flimsy wooden structures I had imagined, I
+found, for the most part, thick stone walls. It was evident the Pioneers
+believed in the permanence of the gold deposits in the Mother Lode.
+Possibly they were right; Angel's is anything but a dead town to-day.
+The Utica, Angel's and Lightner mines give employment to hundreds of
+men.
+
+In the afternoon I visited the Bret Harte Girls' High School. It is a
+very simple frame building, on the summit of a hill overlooking the
+town. The man who directed me how to find it, I discovered had not the
+remotest idea who Bret Harte might be; "John Brown" would have answered
+the purpose equally as well. In fact, all through the seven counties I
+traversed - Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada and
+Yuba - I found Bret Harte had left but a hazy and nebulous impression.
+Mark Twain, Prentice Mulford, Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, even "Dan
+de Quille," seemed better known.
+
+The next morning I started for Sonora. In seven miles I came to the
+Stanislaus River, running in a deep and splendid canon. The river here
+is spanned by a fine concrete bridge, built jointly by Tuolumne and
+Calaveras Counties, between which the river forms the dividing line. In
+the bottom of the canon is the Melones mine, with a mill operating one
+hundred stamps. The main tunnel is a mile and a half in length; the
+longest mining tunnel in the State, I was told.
+
+A steep pull of two miles out of the canon brought me to Tuttletown.
+Here I stayed several hours, for the interest of the whole trip, so far
+as Bret Harte was concerned, centered around this once celebrated camp,
+and Jackass Hill, on which, at one time, lived James W. Gillis, the
+supposed prototype of "Truthful James." He died a few years ago, but his
+brother, Stephen R. Gillis, is living there to-day, and after some
+little difficulty I succeeded in finding his house.
+
+Mr. Gillis scouts the idea that his brother "Jim" was the "Truthful
+James" of Bret Harte. He said that in reality it was J. W. E. Townsend,
+known in old times as "Alphabetical Townsend," also by the
+uncomplimentary appellation of "Lying Jim." According to Mr. Gillis,
+Bret Harte made but one visit to Tuttletown. He arrived there one
+evening "dead broke" and James put him up for the night and lent him
+money to help him on his way. Personally, Mr. Gillis never met Bret
+Harte but he had seen Mark Twain on a number of Occasions. I got the
+distinct impression that Stephen Gillis disliked the notoriety his
+brother had gained, through the fact that his name had become
+indissolubly linked with the "Truthful James" of Bret Harte's verses. Be
+that as it may, I later on met several men who had known "Jim" Gillis
+intimately and they all agreed that he possessed a keen sense of humor
+and had at command a practically inexhaustible stock of stories, upon
+which he drew at will. Whether Bret Harte derived any inspiration from
+"Jim" Gillis may perhaps always remain in doubt; but that Mark Twain
+did, there cannot, I think, be any question.
+
+In a recent life of Bret Harte, by Henry Childs Merwin, it is stated
+(page 21) that in 1858 Bret Harte acted as tutor in a private family at
+Alamo, in the San Ramon valley, which lies at the foot of Mount Diablo.
+On, page 50, however, we read: "In 1858 or thereabouts, Bret Harte was
+teaching school at Tuttletown, a few miles north of Sonora." It would
+seem that this statement is erroneous, apart from the fact that it
+conflicts with the prior date in reference to Alamo.
+
+Mrs. Swerer, who has lived continuously at Tuttletown since 1850, coming
+there at the age of ten, told me she received her education at the
+Tuttletown public school, as did her children and her children's
+children - she is now a great-grandmother! She said most positively that
+she never saw Bret Harte in her life, but had frequently seen "Dan de
+Quille" and Mark Twain. The latter, she said, made periodic visits to
+Tuttletown, and always stayed with "Jim" Gillis - called by Twain, the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill."
+
+Mrs. Gross, who keeps the Tuttletown Hotel and whose husband owned a
+store across the way, built of stone but now in ruins, was born in
+Tuttletown. She asserted she never heard of Bret Harte being in
+Tuttletown and feels it to be impossible he ever taught school there. At
+this ancient hostelry, built of wood and dating back to the early
+fifties, I dined in company with an old miner, who told me he came
+across "Jim" Gillis in Alaska. He said: "Gillis was a great josher. For
+the life of me, I could never tell from his stories whether he had been
+to the Klondike or not."
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+
+Tuolumne to Placerville. Charm of Sonora and Fascination of San Andreas
+and Mokelumne Hill
+
+
+
+Sonora is nine miles distant from Tuttletown, and I reached it in the
+early afternoon. Perhaps of all the old mining towns, Sonora is the most
+fascinating, on account of the exceeding beauty of the surrounding
+country. No matter from what direction you approach it, Sonora seems to
+lie basking in the sun, buried in a wealth of greenery, through which
+gleam white walls and roofs of houses. Even its winding streets are so
+shaded by graceful old trees that buildings are half hidden. The bustle
+and excitement of the mining days are passed forever, in all
+probability, for old Sonora; but in their place have come the peace and
+quiet that accompany the tillage of the soil; for Sonora is now the
+center of a prosperous agricultural district and the town maintains a
+steady and continuous growth.
+
+Here I had the pleasure of an interview with Mr. John Neal, a prominent
+and respected citizen of Tuolumne County, who as Commissioner
+represented his county at the San Francisco Midwinter Fair. Mr. Neal is
+over eighty, but still hale and hearty. He was the first person I had
+thus far encountered who had known Bret Harte in the flesh. He had also
+known and frequently met Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille" and Prentice
+Mulford. Of the four, it was evident that Mulford had left by far the
+most lasting as well as favorable impression on his mind. Of him he
+spoke in terms of real affection. "Prentice Mulford," he said, "was a
+brilliant, very handsome and most lovable young man." I asked him how
+these young men were regarded by the miners. He said: "In all the camps
+they were held to be in a class by themselves, on account of their
+education and literary ability. Although they wore the rough costume of
+the miners, it was realized that none of them took mining seriously or
+made any pretense of real work with pick and shovel." Mr. Neal knew
+James Gillis intimately and admitted he was a great story-teller. In
+fact, at the bare mention of his name he broke into a hearty laugh. "Oh,
+Jim Gillis, he was a great fellow!" he exclaimed. He said unquestionably
+Mark Twain got a good deal of material from him, and feels certain that
+Bret Harte must have met him at least on several occasions. Mr. Neal
+stated that up to the time of the Midwinter Fair, the output of gold
+from Tuolumne county reached the astonishing figures of $250,000,000!
+What it has amounted to since that time, I had no means of ascertaining.
+
+It is only twelve miles from Sonora to Tuolumne. From the top of the
+divide which separates the valleys there is a beautiful view of the
+surrounding country, the dim blue peaks of the Sierra Nevada forming the
+eastern sky-line. One of the chief charms of an excursion through these
+foothill counties is the certainty that directly you reach any
+considerable elevation there will be revealed a magnificent panorama,
+bounded only by the limit of vision, range after range of mountains
+running up in varying shades of blue and purple, to the far distant
+summits that indicate the backbone of California.
+
+Tuolumne is situated in a circular basin rather than in a valley, and
+thus being protected from the wind, in hot weather the heat is intense.
+If there are any mining operations in the immediate vicinity, they are
+not in evidence to the casual observer. It is, however, one of the
+biggest timber camps in the State. In the yards of the West Side Lumber
+Company, covering several hundred acres, are stacked something like
+30,000,000 feet of sugar pine. The logs are brought from the mountains
+twenty to twenty-five miles by rail, and sawn into lumber at Tuolumne. I
+was told that the bulk of the lumber manufactured here was shipped
+abroad, a great deal going to Australia.
+
+Tuolumne, in Bret Harte's time, was called Summersville. It was
+destroyed by fire about fourteen years ago, but the new town has already
+so assimilated itself to the atmosphere of its surroundings, that its
+comparative youth might easily escape detection. Altogether, I was
+disappointed with Tuolumne, having expected to find a second Angel's,
+owing to its prominence in Bret Harte's stories. A lumber camp, while an
+excellent thing in its way, is neither picturesque nor inspiring. I
+spent the night at the "Turnback Inn," a large frame building,
+handsomely finished interiorly and built since the fire. It is, I
+believe, quite a summer resort, as Tuolumne is the terminus of the
+Sierra Railway, and one can go by way of Stockton direct to Oakland and
+San Francisco.
+
+Returning to Angel's the next day, I lingered again at Tuttletown. There
+is a strange attraction about the place - it would hold you apart from
+its associations, The old hotel, fast going to decay, surrounded by
+splendid trees whose shade is so dense as to be impenetrable to the
+noon-day sun, is a study for an artist. And as I gazed in a sort of
+day-dream at the ruins of what once was one of the liveliest camps in
+the Sierras - with four faro tables running day and night - the pines
+seemed to whisper a sigh of regret over its departed glories. Jackass
+Hill is fairly honeycombed with prospect holes, shafts and tunnels. I
+was surprised to see that even now there is a certain amount of prospect
+work going forward, for I noticed several shafts with windlasses to
+which ropes were attached; and, in fact, was told that the old camp
+showed signs of a new lease of life.
+
+Musing on Tuttletown and its environment later on got me into serious
+difficulty. Having crossed the Stanislaus River and cleared the canon, I
+abandoned the main road for an alleged "cut-off." This I was following
+with the utmost confidence, when, to my surprise, it came to an abrupt
+end at the foot of a steep hill. In the ravine below was a house, and
+there fortunately I found a man of whom I inquired if I was in "Carson
+Flat." "Carson Flat? Well, I should say not! You're 'way off!" "How
+much?" I asked feebly. "Oh, several miles." This in a tone that implied
+that though I was in a bad fix, it might possibly be worse. However,
+with the invariable kindness of these people, he put me on a trail
+which, winding up to the summit of a ridge, struck down into Carson Flat
+and joined the main road. And there I registered a vow: "The hard
+highway for me!" As a consequence of this deviation, I materially
+lengthened the distance to Angel's. It is thirty miles from Tuolumne by
+the road, to which, by taking the "cut-off," I probably added another
+three!
+
+It is surprising how these towns grow upon one. Already the Angel's
+Hotel seemed like home to me and after an excellent dinner, I joined the
+loungers on the side-walk and became one of a row, seated on chairs
+tilted at various angles against the wall of the hotel. And there I
+dozed, watching the passing show between dreams; for in the evening when
+the electric lights are on, there is a sort of parade of the youth and
+beauty of the town, up and down the winding street.
+
+On account of the great heat that even the dry purity of the Sierra
+atmosphere could not altogether mitigate, I decided the next day to be
+content with reaching San Andreas, the county seat of Calaveras County,
+fifteen miles north of Angel's.
+
+Apart from its name, there is something about San Andreas that suggests
+Mexico, or one's idea of pastoral California in the early days of the
+American occupation. The streets are narrow and unpaved and during the
+midday heat are almost deserted. Business of some sort there must be,
+for the little town, though somnolent, is evidently holding its own; but
+there seems to be infinite time in which to accomplish whatever the
+necessities of life demand. And I may state here parenthetically, that
+perhaps the most impressive feature of all the old California mining
+towns is their suggestion of calm repose. Each little community seems
+sufficient unto itself and entirely satisfied with things as they are.
+Not even in the Old World will you find places where the current of life
+more placidly flows.
+
+On the main street - and the principal street of all these towns is
+"Main Street" - I had the good fortune to be introduced to Judge Ira H.
+Reed, who came to Calaveras County in 1854, and has lived there ever
+since. He told me that Judge Gottschalk, who died a few years ago at an
+advanced age, was authority for the statement that Mark Twain got his
+"Jumping Frog" story from the then proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel,
+San Andreas, who asserted that the incident actually occurred in his
+bar-room. Twain, it is true, places the scene in a bar-room at Angel's,
+but that is doubtless the author's license. Bret Harte calls Tuttletown,
+"Tuttleville," and there never was a "Wingdam" stage.
+
+That evening as I lay awake in my bedroom at the Metropolitan Hotel,
+wondering by what person of note it had been occupied in the "good old
+days," my attention was attracted to the musical tinkle of a cow-bell.
+Looking out of the window, I beheld the strange spectacle of a cow
+walking sedately down the middle of the street. No one was driving her,
+no one paid her any attention beyond a casual glance, as she passed. The
+cow, in fact, had simply come home, after a day in the open country; and
+it became plain to me that this was a nightly occurrence and therefore
+caused no comment. Unmolested, she passed the hotel and on down the
+street to the foot of the hill, where she evidently spent the night; for
+the tinkle of the bell became permanent and blended with and became a
+part of the subtle, mysterious sounds that constitute Nature's sleeping
+breath.
+
+This little incident in the county seat of Calaveras County impressed me
+as an epitome of the changes wrought by time, since the days when in
+song and story Bret Harte made the name "Calaveras" a synonym for
+romance wherever the English language is spoken.
+
+From San Andreas my objective point was Placerville, distant about
+forty-five miles. The heat still being excessive, I made the town by
+easy stages, arriving at noon on the third day. Mokelumne Hill, ten
+miles beyond San Andreas, also lends its name to the little town which
+clusters around its apex and is at the head of Chili Gulch, a once
+famous bonanza for the placer miners. For miles the road winds up the
+gulch, which is almost devoid of timber, amid piled-up rocks and debris,
+bleached and blistered by the sun's fierce rays; the gulch itself being
+literally stripped to "bedrock." I had already witnessed many evidences
+of man's eager pursuit of the precious metal, but nothing that so
+conveyed the idea of the feverish, persistent energy with which those
+adventurers in the new El Dorado had struggled day and night with
+Nature's obstacles, spurred on by the auri sacra fames.
+
+A little incident served to relieve the monotony of the climb up Chili
+Gulch. A miner, who might have sat for a study of "Tennessee's Partner,"
+came down the hillside with a pan of "dirt," which he carefully washed
+in a muddy pool in the bed of the gulch. He showed me the result, a few
+"colors" and sulphurets. He said it would "go about five dollars to the
+ton," and seemed well satisfied with the result. I shall always hold him
+in grateful memory, for he took me to an old tunnel, and disappearing
+for a few moments, returned with a large dipper of ice-cold water. Not
+the Children of Israel, when Aaron smote the rock in the desert and
+produced a living stream, could have lapped that water with keener
+enjoyment.
+
+The terrific heat in Chili Gulch made the shade from the trees which
+surround Mekolumne Hotel doubly grateful. Mokelumne Hill is, in fact, a
+mountain, and commands a view of rare beauty. At its base winds the
+wooded canon of the Mokelumne River, on the farther side of which rises
+the Jackson Butte, an isolated peak with an elevation of over three
+thousand feet, while in the background loom the omnipresent peaks of the
+far Sierra.
+
+The Mokelumne Hotel is regarded as modern, dating back merely to 1868,
+at which time the original building was destroyed by fire. The present
+structure of solid blocks of stone, should resist the elements for
+centuries to come. I was surprised at the excellent accommodations of
+this hotel. In what seemed such an out-of-the-way and inaccessible
+locality, I was served with one of the best meals on the whole journey,
+including claret with crushed ice in a champagne glass! What that meant
+to a tramp who had struggled for miles through quartz rock and
+impalpable dust, up a heavy grade, without shade and the thermometer
+well past the hundred mark, only a tramp can appreciate. I fell in love
+with Mokelumne Hill and, after due consultation of my map, resolved to
+pass the night in this picturesque and delightful spot. I was also
+influenced by its associations, as it figures prominently in Bret
+Harte's stories.
+
+Of the four famous rivers - the Stanislaus, Mokelumne, American and
+Cosumnes - which I crossed on this trip, the Mokelumne appealed to me
+the most. Whatever the meaning of the Indian name, one may rest assured
+it stands for some form of beauty. Jackson, the county seat of Amador
+County, is but six miles from Mokelumne Hill and a town of considerable
+importance, being the terminus of a branch line of the Southern Pacific
+Railway. It is situated in an open country where the hills are at some
+distance, and presents a certain up-to-date appearance. About a mile
+from Jackson the Kennedy mine, running a hundred stamps, is one of the
+greatest gold producers in the State.
+
+Sutter Creek, erroneously supposed by many to be the spot where gold was
+first discovered in California, four miles north of Jackson, is
+picturesque and rendered attractive by reason of the vivid green of the
+lawns surrounding the little cottages on its outskirts. This town, too,
+has a flourishing look, accounted for by the operation of the South
+Eureka and Central Eureka mines. A gentleman whom I met on the street
+imparted this information, and asked me if I remembered Mark Twain's
+definition of a gold mine. I had to confess I did not. "Well," said he,
+"Mark Twain defined a gold mine as 'a hole in the ground at one end, and
+a d - d fool at the other!'" The appreciative twinkle in his eye
+suggested the possibility that this definition met with his approval.
+
+Amador, two miles beyond Sutter Creek, did not appeal to me.
+"Stagnation" would probably come nearer than any other term to conveying
+to the mind of a person unfamiliar with Amador its present condition.
+One becomes acutely sensitive to the "atmosphere" of these places, after
+a few days upon the road, for each has a distinctive individuality. in
+spite of the fact that it was mid-day in midsummer, gloom seemed to
+pervade the streets and to be characteristic of its inhabitants. With
+the exception of an attempt to get into telephonic communication with a
+friend at Placerville, I lost not a moment in the town.
+
+On reaching Drytown, three miles north of Amador, I noted the
+thermometer stood at 110 degrees in the shade on the watered porch of
+the hotel, and deciding there was a certain risk attendant on walking in
+such heat, determined to make the best of what was anything but a
+pleasant situation, and go no farther. Drytown, in the modern
+application of the first syllable, is a misnomer, the "town" consisting
+chiefly of the hotel with accompanying bar, and a saloon across the way!
+
+Drytown was in existence as early as 1849, and was visited in October of
+that year by Bayard Taylor. He says: "I found a population of from two
+to three hundred, established for the winter. The village was laid out
+with some regularity and had taverns, stores, butchers' shops and monte
+tables." One cannot but smile at the idea of "monte tables" in
+connection with the Drytown of to-day; pitiful as is the reflection that
+men had braved the hardships of the desert and toiled to the waist in
+water for gold, only to throw it recklessly in the laps of professional
+gamblers.
+
+The Exchange Hotel, a wooden building dating back to 1858, stands on the
+site of the original hotel, built in 1851 and burned in 1857. Upon the
+front porch is a well furnishing cold, pure water. I found this to be
+the most acceptable feature of several of the old hostelries. The well
+and the swinging sign over the entrance suggested the wayside inn of
+rural England; more especially as the surrounding country carries out
+the idea, being gently undulating and well timbered.
+
+The following evening I put up at Nashville, on the North Fork of the
+Cosumnes River and well over the borders of El Dorado county, passing
+Plymouth en route. Plymouth, on the map, appeared to be a place of some
+importance, but a closer inspection proved that - in spite of its breezy
+name - it would take the spirits of a Mark Tapley to withstand its
+discouraging surroundings. Plymouth is "living in hopes," an English
+syndicate having an option on certain mining properties in the vicinity;
+but Nashville is frankly "out of business."
+
+At Nashville, in fact, I had some difficulty in securing "bed and
+lodging." There appeared to be only three families in this once
+flourishing camp. Strange as it may seem, money appears to be no object
+to people in these sequestered places. You have "to make good," and in
+this instance it required not a little tact and diplomacy.
+
+I arrived at Placerville the following day. Due to taking a road not
+shown on my map, I went several miles astray and for some few hours was
+immersed in wild, chaparral-covered mountains, with evidences on all
+hands of deserted mines; finally crossing a divide at an elevation of
+two thousand feet and descending into the valley where slumbers the
+little town of El Dorado, formerly bearing the less attractive
+designation "Mud Springs." This title, though lacking in euphony, was
+more in keeping with actual conditions, since the valley is noted for
+its springs, and Diamond Springs, a mile or two north, is quite a summer
+resort. Nor is there any indication of the precious metal anywhere in
+the immediate vicinity.
+
+In Placerville - known as "Hangtown" in the Bret Harte days - I
+registered at the Cary House, which once had the honor of entertaining
+no less a personage than Horace Greeley. It was here he terminated his
+celebrated stage ride with Hank Monk. I found that my friend Harold
+Edward Smith had gone to Coloma, eight miles on the road to Auburn, and
+had left a note saying he would wait for me there the following morning.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+
+J. H. Bradley and the Cary House. Ruins of Coloma. James W. Marshall and
+His Pathetic End.
+
+
+
+
+More than any other town, Placerville gave a suggestion of the olden
+times.  "John Oakhurst" and "Jack Hamlin" would still be in their
+element, as witness the following scene:
+
+In the card room back of the bar, in a certain hotel, a "little game"
+was in progress. A big, blond giant, with curly hair and clean-cut
+features - indeed he could have posed as a model for Praxiteles - arose
+nonchalantly from the table as I entered, and swept the stakes into a
+capacious pocket. An angry murmur of disapproval came from the sitters,
+and one man muttered something about "quitting the game a winner." With
+a hand on each hip, the giant swept the disgruntled upturned faces with
+a comprehensive glance, and drawled: "I'll admit there's something wrong
+in mine, gentlemen, or I wouldn't be here, see?" He waited a moment and
+amid silence passed slowly through the barroom to the sidewalk, seated
+himself, stretched his long legs and placidly gazed across the street.
+
+In the morning I had a long talk with Mr. J. H. Bradley, perhaps the
+best known man in El Dorado County. Though in his eighty-fourth year,
+his keen brown eyes still retain the fire and light of youth. The
+vitality of these old pioneers is something marvelous. Mr. Bradley was
+born in Kentucky, but, as a boy, moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he
+played marbles with Mark Twain, or Clemens, as he prefers to call him.
+In '49, he came across the plains to California. He was on the most
+friendly terms with Twain and said he assisted him to learn piloting on
+the Mississippi; and when Twain came to California, helped him to get a
+position as compositor with U. E. Hicks, who founded the Sacramento
+Union. He also knew Horace Greeley intimately, and has a portfolio that
+once was his property. Five years after Greeley's arrival in
+Placerville, which was in 1859, Mr. Bradley married Caroline Hicks, who
+with Phoebe and Rose Carey had acted as secretary to Mr. Greeley. Mr.
+Bradley takes no stock in the "keep your seat, Horace!" story. He
+considers it a fabrication. In his opinion, the romancers - Bret Harte,
+Mark Twain, et al. - have done California more harm than good. He also
+has a thinly disguised contempt for "newspaper fellows and magazine
+writers." Nor does he believe in the "Mother Lode" - that is, in its
+continuity - in spite of the geologists. He prefers to speak of the
+"mineral zone." In fine, Mr. Bradley is a man of definite and pronounced
+opinions on any subject you may broach. For that reason, his views,
+whether you agree with them or not, are always of interest.
+
+Hanging in the office of the Cary House is a clever cartoon, by William
+Cooper, of Portland, Oregon, entitled "A mining convention in
+Placerville;" in which Mr. Bradley is depicted in earnest conversation
+with a second Mr. Bradley, a third and evidently remonstrant Mr. Bradley
+intervening, while a fourth and fifth Mr. Bradley, decidedly bored, are
+hurriedly departing.
+
+Indeed, one glance at Mr. Bradley is enough to convince you that he is a
+man of unusual force of character. No one introduced me to him. I was
+merely informed at the Cary House that he was the person to whom I
+should apply for information concerning the old times. I accordingly
+started out to look for him and had not proceeded fifty yards when a
+man, approaching at a distance, arrested my attention. As he drew
+nearer, I felt positive there could be only one such personage in
+Placerville, and when he was opposite me, I stopped and said, "How are
+you, Mr. Bradley?" "That's my name, sir; what do you want?" he replied.
+
+They take life easily in the old mining towns. No wonder the spectacle
+of a man with a pack on his back caused comment, in that heat, tramping
+two or three hundred miles for pleasure! Beyond the trivial necessities
+that bare existence makes imperative, I was not conscious of seeing
+anyone do anything on the whole trip. Old miners not unnaturally took me
+for a prospector, and I think I never quite succeeded in convincing them
+to the contrary.
+
+In Placerville as in Angel's Camp, the evening promenade seems the most
+important event of the day. Young men and maidens pass and repass in an
+apparently endless chain. The same faces recur so frequently that one
+begins to take an interest in the little comedy and speculate on the
+rival attractions of blonde and brunette, and wonder which of the young
+bloods is the local Beau Brummel. The audience - so to speak - sit on,
+chairs backed against the walls of the hotels and stores, while many
+prefer the street itself, and with feet on curb or other coign of
+vantage, tilt their chairs at most alarming angles. A sort of animated
+lovers' lane is thus formed, through which the promenaders have to run
+the gauntlet, and are subjected to a certain amount of criticism.
+Everyone knows everyone. Good natured badinage plays like wild-fire, up
+and down and across the street. Later on, the tinkle of mandolin and
+guitar is heard far into the night watches.
+
+Having determined to reach Auburn - thirty miles away - the next day, I
+made an early start. Coloma lies at the bottom of the great canon of the
+South Fork of the American River. Hastening down the grade, in a bend of
+the road I almost ran into my friend. It seemed a strange meeting this,
+in the heart of the old mining country, and I think we both gave a
+perceptible start.
+
+It was at Coloma that gold was first discovered in California, by James
+W. Marshall, January 19, 1848. My companion had been so fortunate on the
+previous day as to meet Mr. W. H. Hooper, who arrived in Coloma August
+8, 1850, and who has lived there practically ever since. Though
+eighty-three, he is still strong and vigorous. From him my friend
+elicited some very interesting information in regard to Marshall
+especially, the substance of which I append from his notes. Mr. Hooper
+had known Marshall for many years, and his reminiscences of the
+discoverer have a touch of pathos bordering on the tragic.
+
+Marshall, a trapper by trade and frontiersman by inclination,
+accompanied General Sutter to California, assisted in the building of
+Sutter Fort and, on account of his mechanical ability, was sent to
+Coloma to superintend the erection of a sawmill. It was in the mill-race
+that he picked up the nugget which made the name "California" the magnet
+for the world's adventurers. Unaware of the nature of his "find," he
+took it to Sacramento, where it was declared to be gold. He was implored
+by General Sutter to keep the mill operatives in ignorance of his
+discovery, for fear they should desert their work. But how could such a
+secret be kept, especially by a man of generous and impulsive instincts?
+At any rate the news leaked out and the stampede followed.
+
+From Mr. Hooper's account, Marshall was a very human character. Late in
+life the state legislature granted him a pension of two hundred dollars
+per month. This sum being far in excess of his actual needs, it followed
+as a matter of course that his cronies assisted him in disposing of it.
+In fact, "Marshall's pension day" became a local attraction, and the
+Coloma saloon - still in existence - the rendezvous. These reunions were
+varied by glorious excursions to Sacramento, his friends in the
+legislature imploring him to keep away. After two years the pension was
+cut down to one hundred dollars per mouth and finally was discontinued
+in toto - a shabby and most undignified procedure. Opposite the saloon,
+at some little distance, is a conical hill. For many years Marshall,
+seated on the steps of the porch, had gazed dreamily at its summit.
+Shortly before his death, addressing a remnant of the "old guard," he
+exclaimed: "Boys, when I go, I want you to plant me on the top of that
+hill." And "planted" he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar monument on top
+of him!
+
+The poor old fellow died in poverty at Kelsey, near Coloma, August 10,
+1885, at the age of seventy-five. It is a sad reflection that a tithe of
+the money spent on the monument would have comforted him in his latter
+days; for the blow to his pride by the withdrawal of his pension, still
+more than the actual lack of funds, hastened the end.
+
+Mr. Hooper intimated that the population of Coloma diminished
+perceptibly after the termination of Marshall's pension. To common with
+the majority of the old miners, be saved nothing and never profited to
+any extent by the discovery that will keep his memory alive for
+centuries to come.
+
+Coloma in its palmy days had a population variously estimated at from
+five to ten thousand souls, with the usual accompaniment of saloons,
+dance halls and faro banks. There was a vigorous expulsion of gamblers
+in the early fifties and an incident occurred which quite possibly
+supplied the inspiration for Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." A
+notorious gambler and desperado, and his accomplice, demurred. Whereupon
+the irate miners placed them on a burro, and with vigorous threats
+punctuated by a salvo of revolver shots fired over their heads, drove
+them out of camp. They disappeared over the hill upon which the monument
+now stands, and were seen no more.
+
+Coloma suffered severely from fires. Little of the old town remains but
+ruins of stone walls, and here and there an isolated wooden building.
+The ruins, however, are not only exceedingly picturesque, being half
+buried in foilage of beautiful trees, but hold the imagination with a
+grip that is indescribable. I could willingly have tarried here for
+days.
+
+But while old Coloma is dead, there is a new Coloma that furnishes an
+extraordinary contrast. It is a sweet and peaceful little hamlet,
+situated on the lower benches of the canon, well up out of the river
+bottom, and is entirely devoted to horticulture. One has read of birds
+building their nests in the muzzles of old and disused cannon; even that
+does not suggest a more anomalous association of ideas than the
+spectacle of a vine-clad cottage shaded by fig trees, basking peacefully
+in the sun, so close to what was at one time a veritable maelstrom of
+human passions. So far as the new Coloma is concerned, Marshall's
+discovery might never have been made. Nowhere else will you find a spot
+where gold and what it stands for would seem to mean so little, Coloma!
+It is passing strange that a name so sweet and restful should forever be
+linked with the wildest scramble for gold the world has ever seen!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+
+Auburn to Nevada City Via Colfax and Grass Valley. Ben Taylor and His
+Home
+
+
+After surmounting the canon of the South Fork of the American River, you
+gradually enter a open country, the outskirts of the great deciduous
+fruit belt in Placer County, which supplies New York and Chicago with
+choice plums, peaches and pears. About three miles from Auburn, the road
+plunges into one of the deepest canons of the Sierras, at the bottom of
+which the Middle and North Forks of the American River unite. Just below
+the junction, the river is spanned by a long suspension bridge. Auburn
+is remarkably situated in that one sees nothing of it until the rim of
+the canon is reached, at least a thousand feet above the river. Thus
+there are no outskirts and you plunge at once into the business streets,
+passing the station of the Central Pacific Railway, which line skirts
+the edge of the canon on a heavy grade.
+
+I had accomplished a good thirty miles but that did not prevent me from
+accompanying my friend on a long and protracted hunt for comfortable
+quarters in which to eat and spend the night. There was quite an
+attractive hotel near the railroad, but actuated by a desire to see
+something of the town, which we found to be more than usually drawn out,
+we passed it with lingering regret. Whether by chance or instinct, we
+drifted to the ruins of the old hotel, now in process of reconstruction,
+and were comfortably housed in a wooden annex.
+
+Auburn marks the western verge of the mineral zone, but in the fifties
+there were, rich placer diggings in the immediate vicinity. There are
+some remarkably solid buildings of that period, in the old portion of
+the town, which, as customary, is situated in the bottom of the winding
+valley or ravine. Practically a new town, called "East Auburn," has been
+started on higher ground, and a fight is on to move the post office; but
+the people in the hollow having the voting strength, hang on to it like
+grim death. Along the edge of the American River canon and commanding a
+magnificent view, are the homes of the local aristocracy. In christening
+Auburn, it is scarcely credible that the pioneers had in mind
+Goldsmith's "loveliest village of the Plain;" nor, keeping the old town
+in view, is the title remarkably applicable today.
+
+Our next objective point being Colfax, distant in a north-easterly
+direction only fifteen miles, we made a leisurely inspection of the town
+and vicinity in the morning. The old town proved of absorbing interest
+to my friend, and we became separated while he was hunting up subjects
+for the camera. Having a free and easy working scheme in such matters,
+after a few minutes' search, I gave up the quest and started alone on
+the road to Colfax.
+
+A few miles out, I met a man with a rifle on his shoulder, leading a
+burro bearing a pack-saddle laden in the most scientific manner with
+probably all his worldly possessions, the pick and shovel plainly
+denoting a prospector. A water bucket on one side of the animal was so
+adjusted that the bottom was uppermost; on the top of the bucket sat a
+little fox-terrier, his eyes fixed steadfastly on his master. I paused a
+moment, possessed with a strong desire to take a snap shot of this
+remarkable equipment, but the man with the gun gave me a glance that
+settled the matter. His was not a bad face - far from it - but the
+features were stern and set, the cheeks furrowed with deep lines that
+bespoke hardship and fatigue in the struggle with Nature and the
+elements. That glance out of the tail of his eye meant: "Let me alone
+and I will let you alone, but let me alone!"
+
+Taciturnity becomes habitual to men accustomed to vast solitudes. Even
+on such a tramp as I had undertaken, in which I frequently walked for
+miles without sight or sound of a human being, I began to realize how
+banal and aimless is conventional conversation. Under such conditions
+you feel yourself in sympathy with the man who says nothing unless he
+has something to say, and who, in turn, expects the same restriction of
+speech from you.
+
+I was seated on the porch of the store at Applegate, disposing of a
+frugal lunch consisting of raisins and crackers, when my friend hove in
+sight. After a private inspection of the store's possibilities, with a
+little smile, the meaning of which I well understood from many similar
+experiences, he sat down beside me and without a word tackled the
+somewhat uninviting repast, to which with a wave of the hand I invited
+him. I may say here that Mr. Smith is a veteran and inveterate "hiker."
+I doubt very much whether any man in California has seen as much of this
+magnificent State as he, certainly not on foot; as a consequence he is
+accustomed to a ready acceptance of things as they are. Applegate, about
+midway between Auburn and Colfax, is an alleged "summer resort." It did
+not appeal to us as especially attractive, the view, at any rate from
+the road, being extremely limited and lacking any distinctive features.
+Without unnecessary delay, therefore, we resumed the march.
+
+It is practically up-hill - "on the collar" - all the way to Colfax, as
+is plainly evidenced by the heavy railroad grade. About a mile short of
+the town, we made a digression to an Italian vineyard of note. There, at
+a long table under a vine-covered trellis that connected the stone
+cellar with the dwelling-house, we were served with wine by a young
+woman having the true Madonna features of Sunny Italy, her mother, a
+comely matron, in the meantime preparing the evening meal, while on the
+hard ground encumbered with no superfluous clothing, disported the
+younger members of the family. And as I sat and smoked the pipe of
+peace, I reflected upon how much better they do these things in Italy -
+for to all intents and Purposes, I was in Italy.
+
+Colfax - before the advent of the C. P. R. R. called "Illinois Town" -
+is an odd blending of past and present; the solid structures of the
+mining days contrasting strangely with the flimsy wooden buildings that
+seem to mark a railroad town. We were amazed at the amount of traffic
+that occurs in the night. Three big overland trains passed through in
+either direction, the interim being filled in with the switching of
+cars, accompanied apparently with a most unnecessary ringing of bells
+and piercing shrieks from whistles. Since our hotel was not more than a
+hundred and fifty feet from the main line, with no intervening buildings
+to temper the noises, sleep of any consequence was an utter
+impossibility.
+
+Few Californians are aware, probably, that a considerable amount of
+tobacco is raised in the foothills of the Sierras. At Colfax, I smoked a
+very fair cigar made from tobacco grown in the vicinity, and
+manufactured in the town.
+
+I think we were both glad to leave Colfax. Apart from a nerve-racking
+night, the mere proximity of the railroad with its accompanying
+associations served constantly to bring to mind all that I had fled to
+the mountains to escape. Yet I cannot bring myself to agree with those
+who profess to brand a railroad "a blot on the landscape." The enormous
+engines which pull the overland trains up the heavy grades of the Sierra
+Nevada impress one by their size, strength and suggestion of reserve
+power, as not being out of harmony with the forces of Nature they are
+constructed to contend with and overcome.
+
+This thought occurred to us as we watched a passenger train slowly
+winding its way around the famous Cape Horn, some four miles from
+Colfax. Although several miles in an air line intervened, one seemed to
+feel the vibrations in the air caused by the panting monster, while
+great jets of steam shot up above the pine trees. I confess to a sense
+of elation at the spectacle. Nature in some of her moods seems so
+malignant, that I felt proud of this magnificent exhibition of man's
+victory over the obstacles she so well knows how to interpose.
+
+The road between Colfax and Grass Valley - the next stopping place on
+our itinerary - lay through so lovely a country that we passed through
+it as in a dream. Descending into the valley we were joined by several
+small boys, attracted, I suppose, by our - to them - unusual costume and
+equipment, who plied us with questions. They asked if "we carried a
+message for the mayor," and were visibly disappointed when we regretted
+we had overlooked that formality. For several minutes they kept us busy
+trying to give truthful answers to most unexpected questions. They had
+never heard of Tuolumne and wanted to know if it was in California.
+Their world, in fact, was bounded by Colfax on the south and Nevada City
+on the north.
+
+Grass Valley received its name from the meadow in which the town, for
+the most part, is situated. The ground is so moist that, notwithstanding
+the heat, the grass was a vivid green. Apple trees growing in the grass,
+as in the orchards of England and in the Atlantic States, and perfectly
+healthy, conveyed that suggestion of the Old World which lends a
+peculiar charm to these towns. And Grass Valley really is a town, having
+seven thousand inhabitants; and is, withal, clean, picturesque and
+altogether delightful. One understood why "Tuolumne" sounded meaningless
+to those small boys. Thus early in life they were under influences which
+will probably keep them in after years - as they kept their fathers -
+permanent citizens of the town of Grass Valley.
+
+Grass Valley was one of the richest of the old mining camps. There was
+literally gold everywhere, even in the very roots of the grass. The
+mining is now all underground and drifts from the North Star and Ophir
+mines underlie a part of the town.
+
+After a methodical search, we discovered an excellent restaurant and
+made a note of it as a recurrent possibility. A judicious choice of a
+suitable place in which to eat and eke, to pass the night, is to the
+tramp a matter of vital interest. Robert Louis Stevenson, in those
+entertaining narratives "An Inland Voyage" and "Travels with a Donkey,"
+lays heartfelt stress on these particulars; when things were not to his
+liking, roundly denouncing them, but if agreeably surprised, lifting up
+his voice in song and praise.
+
+Though tempted to pass the night in Grass Valley, impelled by curiosity,
+we pushed on four miles farther, to Nevada City. It is useless to
+attempt to convey in words the fascination of Nevada City. My friend,
+who is familiar with the country, said it reminded him of Italy. Houses
+rise one above the other on the hillside; while down below, the winding
+streets with their quaint old-time stores and balconied windows, are
+equally attractive. The horrors of the previous night at Colfax made the
+quiet peacefulness of Nevada City the more refreshing. At the National
+Hotel I enjoyed the soundest sleep since leaving home.
+
+In the morning there was a delicious breeze from the mountains, which
+rendered strolling about the town a pleasure. According to custom, we
+went our several ways, each drawn by what appealed to him the most at
+the moment. When ready to depart, finding no trace of my companion at
+the hotel, I left word that I had returned to Grass Valley; where an
+hour or two later, he rejoined me.
+
+More fortunate than I, my friend by chance encountered Mr. Morrison M.
+Green, on the street in front of his home upon the hill which looks down
+upon the town. This gentleman, who is in his eighty-third year, related
+an almost incredible incident in connection with the fire in 1857, which
+wiped out the town, with the exception of one house. Three prominent
+citizens who chanced to have met in a saloon when the fire broke out,
+having the utmost confidence in the safety of a certain building, on
+account of its massive walls and iron door, made a vow to lock
+themselves in it, and actually did so. They might perhaps have withstood
+the ordeal, had not the roof been broken in by the fall of the walls of
+the adjoining building. The iron door having been warped with the heat,
+it was impossible to open it; when last seen, they were standing with
+their arms around one another in the center of the store.
+
+At Grass Valley, my friend - greatly to my regret and I think also to
+his own - received word which rendered his return to San Francisco
+imperative. After a farewell dinner at the restaurant before mentioned,
+I accompanied him to the railway station, and in the words of Christian
+in "The Pilgrim's Progress," "I saw him no more in my dream." I confess
+to a feeling of depression after his departure, for however enjoyable
+the experiences of the road, they are rendered doubly so by the
+sympathetic companionship of a man endowed not only with a keen sense of
+humor but also with an unusual perception of human nature.
+
+After registering at the Holbrooke - a substantial survival of the old
+times - I called by appointment on Mr. Ben Taylor, a much respected
+citizen of Grass Valley and probably the oldest inhabitant of Nevada
+County, having reached the patriarchal age of eighty-six.
+
+Mr. Taylor has a charming home with extensive grounds overlooking the
+town and surrounding country. In his garden is a spruce he planted
+himself forty-five years ago, and apple trees of the same age. The
+spruce now has the appearance of a forest tree and shades the whole
+front of the house. His present home was built in 1864 and from all
+appearances should last the century out. He said the lumber was
+carefully selected, the boards being heavier than usual, and all the
+important timbers, instead of being nailed, were morticed and
+dove-tailed. This thoroughness of workmanship accounts for the excellent
+condition of the wooden buildings in these towns, many of which were
+constructed over fifty years ago.
+
+Mr. Taylor came to Grass Valley September 22, 1849, and has lived there
+almost continuously ever since. He crossed the plains one of twenty-five
+men, the last of his companions dying in 1905. The little band suffered
+many hardships, having to be constantly on watch for Indians, though he
+said they were more fearful of the Mormons. They came over the old
+emigrant trail across the Sierra Nevada. When they reached Grass Valley,
+their Captain, a man named Broughton, exclaimed: "Boys! here's the gold;
+this is good enough for us!" And there they stayed, the twenty-five of
+them!
+
+Mr. Taylor had frequently met Mark Twain, but never to his knowledge,
+Bret Harte. In common with other men who had known the Great American
+Humorist, Mr. Taylor smiled at the bare mention of his name. Twain's
+breezy, hail-fellow-well-met manner, combined with his dry humor,
+insured him a welcome at all the camps; he was a man who would "pass the
+time of day" and take a friendly drink with any man upon the road.
+Twain, he told me, and a man with whom he was traveling on one occasion,
+lost their mules. They tracked them to a creek and concluding the mules
+had crossed it, Twain said to his companion: "What's the use of both of
+us getting wet? I'll carry you!" The other complying, Twain reached in
+safety the deepest part of the creek and, purposely or not, dropped him.
+A man, to play such pranks as this, must be sure of his standing in a
+primitive community.
+
+Mr. Taylor is known to everyone in Nevada County as "Ben." His genial
+manner and kindly nature are apparent at a glance. But while Ben Taylor
+was on friendly terms with Mark Twain, he was never so intimate with him
+as with Bayard Taylor, whom, it seems, he much resembled. This
+accidental likeness, combined with the similarity of names, caused many
+more or less amusing but embarrassing complications, since they were
+frequently taken for each other and received each other's
+correspondence.
+
+I asked Ben Taylor - he rightly dislikes "Mister," perhaps the ugliest
+and most inappropriate word in the English language - if the shootings
+and hangings which figure so prominently in the stories of the romancers
+were not exaggerations. He said he certainly was of that opinion. I
+said: "As a matter of fact, did you ever see a man either shot or hung
+for a crime?" "I never did," he replied with emphasis. "But I once came
+across the bodies of several men who had been strung up for
+horse-stealing; that, however, was not in Grass Valley."
+
+Ben Taylor was present when Lola Montez horsewhipped Henry Shibley,
+editor of the Grass Valley National, for what she considered derogatory
+reflections on herself, published in his paper. It can readily be
+understood that Grass Valley was at that time a place of importance,
+when Lola Montez considered it worth while to stay there several years
+and sing and dance for the miners.
+
+In parting, Ben Taylor told me pathetically that his wife had died a few
+years before and he had never recovered from the blow; "I am merely
+marking time until the end comes," he added. Since his married daughter
+and family live with him, he is assured in his latter days of loving
+care and attention.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+
+E. W. Maslin and His Recollections of Pioneer Days In Grass Valley.
+Origin of Our Mining Laws
+
+
+
+To Mr. E. W. Maslin, of Alameda, of whom Ben Taylor said: "He is like a
+brother to me," I am indebted for information of much interest, bearing
+on the olden days and Grass Valley in particular. Mr. Maslin came around
+the "Horn" to California, in the ship Herman, on May 7, 1853. He arrived
+in Grass Valley and went to work as a miner the following morning. He
+now holds, and has for years, the responsible position in the United
+States Custom House, San Francisco, of Deputy Naval Officer of the Port.
+The clearing papers of every vessel that leaves San Francisco bear his
+signature. Although in his eightieth year, his memory is as clear and
+his sense of humor as vivid as when, a youth of nineteen, he left for
+good, Maryland, his native state. Few men in the San Francisco bay
+region are more widely known than he. His ready wit, cheery laugh and
+fund of information - for he is extremely well-read - always insure for
+him an attentive and appreciative audience.
+
+Speaking of Ben Taylor, he told me a characteristic incident, which
+being also typical of the men of '49, I give, with his consent, as
+related. When the White Pine excitement in 1869 started a rush of
+prospectors to Nevada, Mr. Maslin caught the fever with the rest.
+In common with all who dug for gold, he had his ups and downs, the fat
+years and the lean ones; at the time, his fortunes being at a lew ebb,
+he joined the stampede. Several years previous to his departure, without
+informing his wife, he had borrowed of Ben Taylor, three hundred
+dollars, secured by mortgage on his house in Grass Valley. At White Pine
+he met with considerable success, and in a short time sent his wife five
+hundred dollars, telling her for the first time of the mortgage on their
+home and requesting her to go to Ben Taylor at once and pay him in full.
+It so happened that Taylor had called on Mrs. Maslin for news of her
+husband, as she was reading this letter. She immediately tendered him
+the check with the request that he would inform her to what the interest
+amounted. "Why, Molly," said Ben Taylor, "you surely ought to know me
+well enough to know I would never take any interest on that money!" When
+it is remembered that the legal rate of interest at that time was ten
+per cent, and that double that amount was not infrequently paid - Mr.
+Maslin, in fact, expecting to pay Taylor something like five hundred
+dollars - the attitude of the latter will be the better appreciated.
+
+This seems a fitting place to pay a humble personal tribute of respect
+to the memory of the men of "the fall of '49 and the spring of '50." Not
+since the Crusades, when the best blood of Europe was spilt in defense
+of the Holy Sepulchre, has the world seen a finer body of men than the
+Argonauts of California. True, the quest of the "Golden Fleece" was the
+prime motive, but sheer love of adventure for adventure's sake played a
+most important part. Later on, the turbulent element arrived. It was due
+to the rectitude, inherent sense of justice and courage of the pioneers
+that they were held in check and, by force of arms when necessary, made
+to understand the white man's code of honor.
+
+So much in song and story has been said of the scramble for gold in
+the early days after the discovery, and so little attention given to the
+artistic and aesthetic sense of the pioneers, that the general
+impression made by the famous old mining towns of California, when seen
+for the first time, may be worth recording. In the massive stone hotels
+and stores of that period, as well as in the careful construction of
+dwelling houses, they exhibited a true perception of "the eternal
+fitness of things." The buildings of the fifties, in their extreme
+simplicity, are far more imposing than the nondescript, pretentious
+structures of today, and will, beyond doubt, in usefulness outlast them.
+
+As a result of ignoring the checker-board plan, and permitting the
+streets to follow the natural contour of the hills and ravines, these
+mountain towns seem to have become blended and to be in harmony with the
+wonderful setting Nature has provided. All buildings, residential or
+otherwise, are protected from the summer heat by umbrageous trees. Lawns
+of richest green delight the eye, and vines and flowers surround
+cottages perched on steep hillsides, or half-hidden in deep ravines. The
+first glimpse from a distant eminence of any of the old mining towns
+conveys the suggestion of peaceful homes buried in greenery, basking
+contentedly in the brilliant sunshine, surrounded by the whispering
+pines, with the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada for a background.
+
+You also receive the impression of cleanliness. If there were any old
+cans, scraps of paper and miscellaneous rubbish lying about in any town
+through which I passed, I did not notice them. One is struck, too, by
+the absence of the "vacant lot" - that unsightly blot of such frequent
+occurrence in all towns in the process of building, especially when
+forced by "booms" beyond their normal growth. Fortunately the very word
+"boom," in its significance as applied to inflated real estate values,
+has no meaning in these towns, with the result that they are compact.
+One may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses
+were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form,
+cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular
+block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of
+the Old World - a charm that haunts the memory and finally becomes
+permanent acquisition.
+
+However clever the stories of the romancers - of whom Bret Harte
+preeminently stands first - after all, their characters were
+intrinsically but creatures of the imagination; the pioneers were the
+real thing! Yet such is the nature of this topsy-turvy world, the copies
+will remain, whilst the originals will fade away and be forgotten! The
+writer will always hold it a privilege that he had the pleasure of
+meeting in the flesh a remnant of the men who laid the foundation of the
+institutions by means of which this great Commonwealth has grown and
+prospered; big, broad-minded, strong men who, whatever their failings -
+for they were very human - were generous to a fault, ever ready to
+listen to the cry of distress or help a fallen brother to his feet,
+scornful of pettiness, ignorant of snobbery, fair and square in their
+dealings with their fellows. Alas, that it should have come to "Hail and
+Farewell" to such a type of manhood!
+
+At my request, Mr. Maslin, at one time a practicing attorney, dictated
+the following succinct account of the origin of the mining laws of
+California. The discovery at Gold Hill, now within the corporate limits
+of Grass Valley, of a gold-bearing quartz ledge, subsequently the
+property of Englishmen who formed an organization known as "The Gold
+Hill Quartz Mining Company," led to the founding of the mining laws of
+California. On December 30, 1850, the miners passed regulations which
+had with them the force of laws, defining the location and ownership of
+mines. It was provided that claims should be forty feet by thirty feet;
+a recorder was to be elected by the miners and all difficulties arising
+out of trespass on claims were to be tried before the recorder and two
+miners, an appeal to be taken to the justice of the peace.
+
+When quartz lodes began to be discovered and worked, it was found that
+the location of claims by square feet did not protect the miner or
+afford sufficient territory upon which to expend his labor. Accordingly
+a miners' meeting was held in Nevada City on December 20, 1852, and a
+body of laws prescribed, governing all quartz mines within the county of
+Nevada. The following were the salient features: "Each proprietor of a
+quartz claim shall be entitled to one hundred feet on a quartz ledge or
+vein; the discoverer shall be allowed one hundred feet additional. Each
+claim shall include all the dips, angles, and variations of the same."
+The remaining articles related to the working, holding and recording of
+claims. This law was incorporated in the raining legislation of the
+State of Nevada and has formed the basis of the mining laws of each
+territory of the United States. Thus we have a proof not only of the
+intelligence of the early miner, but also of his capacity for
+self-government. It must be remembered that the miners came from all
+over the United States, but principally from the West and the South.
+Probably none had seen a quartz ledge before coming to California, yet
+the necessity for extending a claim as far as the ledge dipped was soon
+perceived, as also the taking into consideration a change in the
+direction or course of the lode. Commenting on these laws and the causes
+leading to their adoption, Mr. Muslin became emphatic. He said:
+
+"No body of rough, uncouth, pistolled ruffians, such as Bret Harte
+depicts the miners, would have formed such a group of benevolent,
+far-reaching and comprehensive laws. The early miner represented the
+best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles,
+enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the long
+journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea;
+undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of
+the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of
+the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which
+distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing
+dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous
+hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. It is another way of stating the
+maxim of law and equity: 'so use your own property, as not to injure
+that of another.'"
+
+Mr. Maslin agrees with Ben Taylor that the hangings and shootings of the
+period following the discovery of gold have been grossly exaggerated. On
+this point he said: "I will venture to assert that in certain of the
+Mississippi Valley States, in their early settlement, more men were
+killed in one year than in ten of the early mining years in California."
+Of lynching, he said: "There were few lynchings in California, and those
+mostly in the southern tier of counties, of persons convicted of
+cattle-stealing." In connection with lynching he related a serio-comic
+incident that occurred in Grass Valley in the early days.
+
+Several fires had taken place in the town and the inhabitants were in
+consequence much excited. A watchman on his rounds espied a light in a
+vacant log cabin, and entering, caught a man in the act of striking a
+match. He arrested him and the populace were for taking summary
+vengeance. A man known as "Blue Coat Osborne" cried out, "Let's hang
+him! Nevada City once hanged a man and Grass Valley never did!" This was
+an effective appeal, for the rivalry that has lasted ever since already
+existed. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed; the man was subsequently
+tried and acquitted, it appearing that he was a traveling prospector who
+had merely entered the cabin in order to light his pipe! In this
+connection, I may state that Mr. Maslin confirmed the story of the three
+friends in Nevada City, who attempted to withstand "the ordeal by fire."
+
+Mr. Maslin is justly jealous for the reputation of the Argonauts.
+Perhaps Bret Harte's miner, with his ready pistol, was as far from the
+mark as Rudyard Kipling's picture of Tommy Atkins as "an absentminded
+beggar" - an imputation the real "Tommy" hotly resented. At the same
+time, such stories as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Tennessee's
+Partner," not to quote others, prove Bret Harte conceded to the miner,
+courage, patience, gentleness, generosity and steadfastness in
+friendship. If Bret Harte really "hurt" California, it was because,
+leaving the State for good in February, 1871, he carried with him the
+atmosphere of the early mining days and never got out of it. He never
+realized the transition from mining to agriculture and horticulture, as
+the leading industries of the State. Thus his later stories which dealt
+with California, written long after the subsidence of the mining
+excitement, continued to convey to the Eastern or English reader an
+impression of the Californian as a bearded individual, his trousers
+tucked into long boots and the same old "red shirt" with the sleeves
+rolled back to the shoulders! As lately - comparatively speaking - as
+the Chicago Columbian Exposition, a lady told me she met at the Fair a
+woman who said she wanted to visit California, and asked if it would be
+safe to do so "on account of the Indians!" While Indians do not appear
+in Bret Harte's pages, it is a safe conjecture that, through association
+of ideas, this lady conjured up a vague vision of a "prairie schooner"
+crossing the plains, harassed by the Indian of the colored prints!
+
+The following picture of the trying of a civil suit under difficulties,
+though in all probability causing little comment at the time, would
+undoubtedly do so at the present day, were the conditions possible. In
+1853 Mr. Maslin owned, with his brother, a one-fifth interest in ten
+gravel claims at Pike Flat near Grass Valley. On the ground of alleged
+imperfection of location of a portion of these claims, they were
+"jumped," and litigation followed.
+
+The case was called before "Si" Brown, a justice of the peace, at Rough
+and Ready, in a building (of which I obtained a photograph) used as a
+hotel and for other purposes. In the long room, now occupied as a store,
+Judge Brown held his court. On the right was a door leading to the bar.
+Extending the whole length of the room were four faro tables. At the
+rear the judge, jury, attorneys and the principals in the lawsuit made
+the best of the accommodations.
+
+After stating the case, Judge Brown thus addressed the gamblers at the
+faro tables: "Boys, the court is now opened, call your games low!" In
+accordance with this request, though still audible, came in a monotonous
+undertone, the faro, dealers' oft-repeated call: "Gents, make your game
+- make your game!" The bets were put down and the cards called, in the
+same subdued voice. At intervals, an attorney on one side or the other
+would arise and say: "I move you, your Honor, that the court do now take
+a recess of ten minutes." The court: "The motion is sustained; but go
+softly, gentlemen, go softly!" It is probably needless to add that
+judge, jury, principals, attorneys and witnesses filed out of the door
+leading to the right; returning in ten minutes to resume the trial to
+the not altogether inappropriate accompaniment from the faro dealers,
+"Make your game, gents, make your game!"
+
+The spirit of rivalry between Grass Valley and Nevada City has been
+accentuated, of late, by the efforts of the former town to secure the
+honor of being the county seat, on the claim that it possesses nearly
+double the population of Nevada City. Politics serve to intensify the
+feeling; Grass Valley, which contains many people of Southern birth,
+being largely Democratic in its affiliations, whilst Nevada City is as
+strongly, and, one may add, as conservatively, Republican.
+
+Possibly the oldest building in Grass Valley is the Western Hotel. It is
+so hidden in the surrounding trees that it was with difficulty I took a
+photograph in which any portion of the hotel itself appeared. In the
+garden stands a splendid English walnut over forty years old; and on the
+porch, the well and pump to which I have before alluded as a
+distinguishing feature of the old-time hostelry, add a quaint and
+characteristic touch.
+
+Grass Valley and Nevada City are nearly three thousand feet above sea
+level. The air, in consequence, is light and pure and the heat seldom
+excessive. It would be difficult, the world over, to find a more
+agreeable or salubrious climate.
+
+It was with genuine regret that I left Grass Valley the following
+morning; not even Sonora possessed for me a stronger attraction. As I
+paused on the summit of the hill, for a farewell view of the town, I
+mentally resolved - the Fates permitting - I would pay another and more
+protracted visit to this land of enchantment.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+
+Grass Valley to Smartsville. Sucker Flat and its Personal Appeal.
+
+
+
+I was heading due west for Smartsville, just across the line in Yuba
+County. In four miles, I came to Rough and Ready, once a famous camp.
+Save for the inevitable hotel, now used in part as a store, there was
+nothing to suggest the cause of its pristine glory or the origin of its
+emphatic designation; today it is simply a picturesque, rural hamlet. In
+Penn Valley, a mile or two farther on, I passed a smashed and abandoned
+automobile, the second wreck I had encountered. I thanked my star I
+traveled afoot; heavy going, it is true, in places, but safe and sure.
+
+Notwithstanding the ubiquity of the autocar, it is still a fact that
+between the man in the car and the man on foot is set an impassable
+gulf. You are walking through a mountainous country, where every bend of
+the road reveals some new charm; absorbed in silent enjoyment of the
+scene, you have forgotten the very existence of the machine, when a
+raucous "honk" jolts you out of your daydream and causes you to jump for
+your life. In a swirl of dust the monster engulfs you, leaving you the
+dust and the stench of gasoline as souvenirs, but followed by your
+anathemas! This doubtless is where the man in the car thinks he has
+scored. Perhaps he has. When the dust on the road has settled and you
+have rubbed it out of your eyes, once more you forget his existence.
+
+But the very speed with which he travels is the reason why the man in
+the car misses nearly all the charm of the country through which he is
+passing. On this tramp I took forty-odd photographs, all more or less of
+historical interest. Riding in an automobile, many of the subjects I
+would not have noticed or, if I had, I would not have been able to bring
+my camera into play. On several occasions I retraced my steps a good
+quarter of a mile, feeling I had lost a landscape, or street scene I
+might never again have the opportunity to behold.
+
+What is of far greater consequence, the man on the road comes into touch
+not only with Nature, but the Children of Nature! In these days,
+automobiles are as thick as summer flies; you cannot escape them even in
+the Sierra foot-hills. No attention is paid them by the country people,
+unless they are in trouble or have caused trouble, which is mostly the
+case. But the man who "hikes" for pleasure is a source of perennial
+interest not unmixed with admiration, especially when walking with the
+thermometer indicating three figures in the shade. To him the small boy
+opens his heart; the "hobo" passes the time of day with a merry jest
+thrown in; the good housewife brings a glass of cold water or milk,
+adding womanlike, a little motherly advice; the passing teamster, or
+even stage-driver - that autocrat of the "ribbons" - shouts a cheery
+"How many miles today, Captain?" or, "Where did yon start from this
+morning, Colonel?" - these titles perhaps due to the battered old coat
+of khaki.
+
+All the humors of the road are yours. In fact, you yourself contribute
+to them, by your unexpected appearance on the scene and the novelty of
+your "make-up," if I may be pardoned the expression. At the hotel bar,
+you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into
+immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant." After dinner, seated on a
+bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the
+nation or of the town - usually the latter - with the man who in the
+morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you
+declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly
+interest are met more than half way.
+
+The early romances, the prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don
+Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than
+narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular -
+perhaps Fielding's masterpiece - is simply the story of a journey from
+London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant.
+In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the
+various characters, thrown together by chance, there assembled. Dickens
+unquestionably derived inspiration from Smollett and Fielding; nor is
+there any doubt but that Harte made a close study of Dickens.
+
+From which preamble we come to the statement; if you would study human
+nature on the road, you must simply go where men congregate and exchange
+ideas. The plots of nearly all Bret Harte's mining stories are thus
+closely associated with the bar-rooms and taverns of the mining towns of
+his day. What would remain of any of Phillpott's charming stories of
+rural England, if you eliminated the bar-room of the village inn? In
+hospitality and generous living, the inns of the mining towns still keep
+up the old traditions. The card room and bar-room are places where men
+meet; to altogether avoid them from any pharisaical assumption of moral
+superiority is to lose the chance of coming in contact with the leading
+citizen, philanthropist, or eccentric character.
+
+In the old romances it must be admitted there is much brawling and heavy
+drinking, as well as unseemliness of conduct. Yet in spite of the fact
+that hotel bars and saloons abound in all the old mining towns, the
+writer throughout his travels and notwithstanding the intense heat, not
+only saw no person under the influence of liquor, but also never heard a
+voice raised in angry dispute. Moderation, decency and a kindly
+consideration for the rights of others seem habitual with these people.
+
+It is fifteen miles from Grass Valley to Smartsville, and I arrived at
+the SmartsviIle Hotel in time for the midday meal. Smartsville has "seen
+better days," but still maintains a cheerful outlook on life. The
+population has dwindled from several thousand to about three hundred. It
+is, however, the central point for quite an extensive agricultural and
+pastoral country surrounding it.
+
+The swinging sign over the hotel bears the legend, "Smartsville Hotel,
+John Peardon, Propr." The present proprietor is named "Peardon," but
+everyone addressed him as "Jim." Having established a friendly footing,
+I said: "Mr. Peardon, I notice the sign over the door reads John
+Peardon. How is it that they all call you 'Jim?'" "Oh," he replied,
+"John Peardon was my father, I was born in this hotel;" - another of the
+numerous instances that came under my observation of the way these
+people "stay where they are put."
+
+John Peardon was an Englishman. The British Isles furnished a very
+considerable percentage of the pioneers, the evidences whereof remain
+unto this day. The swinging signs over the hotels for one; another, the
+prevalence in all the mining towns of Bass's pale ale. You will find it
+in the most unpretentious hotels and restaurants. An Englishman expects
+his ale or beer, as a matter of course, whether at the Equator or at the
+Arctic Circle. When I first arrived in California in 1868, I drifted
+down into the then sheep and cattle country in the lower end of Monterey
+County. An English family living on an isolated ranch sent home for a
+girl who had worked for them in the old country. Upon her arrival, the
+first question she asked was: "How far is it to the church?" The second:
+"Where can I get my beer?" When informed there was no church within a
+hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest
+saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad! Bereft, at
+one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground
+seemed to have given way from under her feet. For her, these two
+particulars comprised the whole of the British Constitution.
+
+Smartsville possessed a sentimental interest for me, for the reason that
+in the sixties my father mined and taught a private school in an
+adjoining camp bearing the derogatory appellation "Sucker Flat." What
+mischance prompted this title will never now be known. In my father's
+time, it contained a population of nearly a thousand persons; and
+judging from the manner in which the gulch and the contiguous flat have
+been torn, scarred, burrowed into and tunneled under, if gold there was,
+most strenuous efforts had been made to bring it to light.
+
+I asked if there was anyone in Smartsville who would be likely to
+remember my father, and was referred by Mr. Peardon to "Bob" Beatty,
+who, he said, had, lived in Smartsville all his life and knew everybody.
+As Mr. Beatty was within a stone's throw, at the Excelsior Store, I had
+no difficulty in finding him. Introducing myself, I asked Mr. Beatty if
+he remembered my father. "To be sure I do," he exclaimed, "I went to his
+school, and," laughing heartily, "well I remember a licking he gave me!"
+He said that among the boys who attended that school, several in after
+years, as men, had become prominent in the history of the State.
+
+Mr. Beatty - now a pleasant, genial gentleman of fifty-two - very kindly
+walked with me to the brow of the hill commanding a view of Sucker Flat,
+and pointed out the exact spot where the school had stood, for not a
+stick or a stone remains to mark the locus of the town - it is simply a
+name upon the map.
+
+I mention this incident as being another proof of the extraordinary hold
+the Sierra foot-hill country has upon the people who were born there, as
+well as upon those who have drifted there by force of circumstances. It
+is forty-six or forty-seven years since my father conducted that school,
+yet I felt so sure from previous experiences there would be in
+Smartsville someone who remembered him, that I determined to include it
+in my itinerary.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+
+Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
+
+
+
+Early the next morning I started for Marysville, the last leg in my
+journey, and a long twenty miles distant. I had been dreading the pull
+through the Sacramento Valley, having a lively recollection of my
+experience in the San Joaquin, on leaving Stockton. The day was sultry,
+making the heat still more oppressive. After leaving the foot-hills for
+good, I walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a
+shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized
+there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the
+shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light
+breeze sprang up - the fag end of the trade wind - and, though hot, it
+served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry
+weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one
+hundred miles due north of Stockton - of course, much farther by rail -
+and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the
+cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole
+distance. It is a country to avoid.
+
+About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by
+the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts
+Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly
+offered to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He
+seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I
+prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a
+man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel
+experience, and served to deprive him of further speech. He simply sat
+and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his
+machine.
+
+A sturdy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the
+scene, shouted as he passed: "Why didn't yer ride wid de guy?" I replied
+as before, "Because I prefer to walk;" adding for his benefit, "I've no
+use for autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal
+after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce
+joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this
+fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance
+of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can
+of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing a
+ride - in an autocar, at that - appealed with irresistible force.
+
+To walk in the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine
+tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a
+general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because
+he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible
+onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his
+back that infuriates the average dog, as I have on several occasions
+found to my annoyance. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his whimsical and
+altogether delightful "Travels with a Donkey," thus vents his opinion
+anent the dog question:
+
+"I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear
+more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver and is, besides, supported by
+a sense of duty. If you kill a wolf you meet with encouragement and
+praise, but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the
+domestic affections come clamoring around you for redress. At the end of
+a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen
+annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and
+respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of the
+clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not
+amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from traveling a-foot.
+I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway or
+sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them."
+
+I confess to a feeling of sympathy with the men we so indiscriminately
+brand with the contemptuous epithet, "hobo." In the first place, the
+road itself, with its accompanying humors and adventures, forms a mutual
+and efficacious bond. How little we know of the "Knights of the Road,"
+or the compelling circumstances that turned them adrift upon the world!
+"All sorts and conditions of men" are represented, from the college
+professor to the ex-pugilist. I have "hit the ties" in company with a
+so-called "hobo" who quoted Milton and Shakespeare by the yard,
+interspersed with exclamations appreciative of his enjoyment of the
+country through which we were passing. And once when on a tramp along
+the coast from San Francisco to Monterey, I fell in at Point San Pedro
+with a professional, who bitterly regretted the coming of the Ocean
+Shore Railway, then in process of construction. "For years," said he, "I
+have been in the habit of making this trip at regular intervals, on my
+way south. I had the road to myself and thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful
+beauty of the scene; but now this railroad has come with its mushroom
+towns, and all the charm has gone. Never again for me! This is my last
+trip!"
+
+I have not the slightest doubt that sheer love of the road - and only a
+tramp knows what those words mean - is the controlling influence which
+keeps fifty per cent of the fraternity its willing slaves. What was
+Senhouse - that most fascinating of Maurice Hewlett's creations - but a
+tramp? A gentleman tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the
+reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply
+because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry
+is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at
+least has poetry in his soul. In a decadent age symbolized by the tango
+and the problem play, it is at least an encouraging sign for the future
+that such a character as Senhouse came to the jaded reader of the erotic
+fiction of the day, as a whiff of sea breeze on a parched plain, and was
+hailed with corresponding delight.
+
+Of course there are "hoboes" and "hoboes," as in any other profession,
+but so far as my experience goes, the "hobo" is an idealist. Of the many
+reasons he has taken to the road, not the least is the freedom from the
+shackles of convention and the "Gradgrind" methods of an utilitarian and
+materialistic age. Nor is he a pessimist. Whatever his trouble, the road
+has eased him of his burden and made him a philosopher.
+
+Thoreau, writing in the middle of the last century, deplores the fact
+that in his day, as now, but few of his countrymen took any pleasure in
+walking, and that very rarely one encountered a person with any real
+appreciation of the beauty of Nature, which if he could but see it, lay
+at his very door. Speaking for himself and companion in his rambles, he
+says: "We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts (Concord,
+Massachusetts) practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at
+least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen
+would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy
+the requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are the capital in
+this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct
+dispensation from Heaven to become a Walker. Ambulator nascitur non fit.
+Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me,
+walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
+lose themselves for half an hour in the woods."
+
+Who is there who walks habitually, who does not know the man who tells
+you of the walks he "used to take?" You have known him, say a dozen
+years. During all that time, to your knowledge, his walks have
+practically been limited by the distance to his office and back from the
+ferry boat. When you urge him for perhaps the twentieth time, to essay a
+tramp with you, he will say he would like to very much, but
+unfortunately so-and-so renders it impossible. And then looking you in
+the eye, he will tell you how much he enjoyed tramps he took, of twenty
+or thirty miles - but that was before you knew him! As if a Walker with
+a big "W," as Thoreau writes the word, would remain satisfied with the
+memory of walks of twenty years ago!
+
+I had heard of the "Marysville Buttes," as one has heard of Madagascar,
+but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest
+surprise of the trip. As I first caught sight of them when within a few
+miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill. I could hardly
+believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated
+peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in
+fact, their bases are only a mile or two from the river. They have every
+indication, even to the unscientific eye, of having been upheaved by
+volcanic action. Perhaps that accounts for the uncanny impression they
+impart.
+
+A walk of twenty-one or two miles without food, in any kind of weather,
+is apt to produce an aching void. My first efforts on reaching
+Marysville were therefore directed to finding the sort of place where I
+could eat in comfort. The emphasis which Robert Louis Stevenson employs
+when upon this most important quest would be amusing were it not also a
+vital problem in your own case. There is nothing humorous per se in
+hunger or thirst; at any rate, not until both are appeased. With the
+black coffee and cigar, you can tip your chair at a comfortable angle
+against the wall, and watching the delicate wreaths of smoke in their
+spiral upward course, previous to final disintegration, smile at the
+persistent energy with which an hour ago you systematically worked the
+town from end to end, anxiously peering in the windows of uninviting
+restaurants until you finally found that little "hole in the wall" for
+which you were looking, with the bottle of Tipo Chianti, the succulent
+chops and the big red tomatoes, in the window. It is always to be found
+if you have the necessary perseverance. The genial Italian proprietor,
+with the innate politeness of his countrymen, will not bore you with
+questions as to where you have come from, whither you are going, or what
+you are walking for, anyway, etc., etc. He accepts you just as you are -
+haversack, camera, big stick and all, hanging them without comment on
+the hook behind your head; while you simply tell him you want a good
+dinner, the best he can give you, but to include the chops, tomatoes and
+Tipo Chianti. With a smile and that artistic flip of the napkin under
+his arm, which only he can achieve, he sets about giving his orders.
+Later on, after a hot bath, a shave and the luxury of a clean shirt,
+feeling at peace with the world and refreshed in body and soul, you set
+out to examine the town in comfort and at your leisure.
+
+In the mining days, Marysville ranked next to San Francisco, Sacramento
+and possibly Stockton, not only in interest but in actual volume of
+business transacted. It was the natural outlet for all the foot-hill
+country tributary to Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Smartsville. There
+the miners outfitted and there, when they had "made their pile," they
+began the process - subsequently completed in Sacramento and San
+Francisco - of reducing it to a negligible quantity. That, of course, is
+merely a reminiscence, but as the center of one of the most prosperous
+grain and fruit-raising sections of the Sacramento Valley, Marysville is
+still a place of considerable importance. The old town is very much in
+evidence; so much so that, in spite of the numerous modern buildings,
+the general effect produced is of age, as age is understood in
+California. I doubt if San Francisco before the fire, or Sacramento
+today, could show as many substantial, solid buildings dating back to
+the fifties.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+
+Bayard Taylor and the California of Forty-Nine. Bret Harte and His
+Literary Pioneer Contemporaries.
+
+
+
+And here in old Marysville, the county seat of Yuba County and situated
+on its extreme western boundary, I ended my tramp, having covered a
+distance of approximately two hundred and fifty miles, exclusive of
+retracements. The ideal time to visit the Sierra foot-hills would be in
+the late Spring or early Autumn. I was compelled to grasp the
+opportunity when it offered or forego the pleasure altogether. Nor is it
+necessary, of course, to walk; the roads, whilst generally speaking not
+classed as good going for automobiles, are at least passable. I was
+surprised at the number of high grade machines in evidence, in all the
+towns of importance mentioned in this narrative. There remains also the
+alternative of a good saddle horse, or, better still, a light wagon with
+camping outfit, thus rendering hotels unnecessary, the elimination of
+which would probably pay the hire of horse and wagon.
+
+Half a century is a long period. You could probably count on the fingers
+of one hand persons now living in the Sierra foot-hills who have any
+recollection of ever having seen Bret Harte. It must also be remembered
+that in the fifties his reputation as an author had not been
+established. Of all that group of brilliant young men who visited the
+mines in early days, which included for a brief space "Orpheus C. Kerr"
+and "Artemus Ward," I can well imagine that Bret Harte attracted the
+least attention. It is extremely doubtful to "my mind if he ever had
+much actual experience of the mining camps. To a man of his vivid
+imagination, a mere suggestion afforded a plot for a story; even the
+Laird's Toreadors, it will be recalled, were commercially successful
+when purely imaginary; he only failed when he subsequently studied the
+real thing in Spain.
+
+Bret Harte was a man who in a primitive community might well escape
+notice. In appearance, manner and training, he was the exact antithesis
+of Mark Twain. He was a student before he was a writer and possessed the
+student's shy reserve. I can well imagine him, a slight boyish figure,
+flitting from camp to camp, wrapped in his own thoughts, keeping his own
+counsel. Yet he alone of that little band, unless you except Mark Twain,
+possessed the divine spark we call "genius." Centuries after the names
+of all the rest are buried in oblivion, Bret Harte's stories of the
+Argonauts in the mining towns of California will remain the classics
+they have already become.
+
+Yet as before stated, when once I got fairly started on the road, the
+pioneers themselves and their worthy descendants absorbed my interest
+and assumed the center of the stage to the exclusion, for the time
+being, of the romancers; who, after all, each in his own fashion,
+depicted only what most appealed to him in the characters of these same
+men and their contemporaries. Bayard Taylor in his interesting work "El
+Dorado," the first edition of which appeared in 1850, thus states his
+opinion of the men of '49:
+
+"Abundance of gold does not always beget, as moralists tell us, a
+grasping and avaricious spirit. The principles of hospitality were as
+faithfully observed in the rude tents of the diggers, as they could be
+by the thrifty farmers of the North and West. The cosmopolitan cast of
+character in California, resulting in the commingling of so many races,
+and the primitive mode of life, gave a character of good-fellowship to
+all its members; and in no part of the world have I ever seen help more
+freely given to the needy, or more ready co-operation in any human
+proposition. Personally, I can safely say that I never met with such
+unvarying kindness from comparative strangers."
+
+That last sentence also spelt the literal truth in my experience. Even
+the dogs were kindly disposed and though I carried, a "big stick,"
+except by way of companionship and as an aid in climbing, I might safely
+have left it at home. And while at times I walked through a wild,
+mountainous and almost deserted country, the idea of possible danger
+never occurred to me. When finally one encountered a human being, he
+invariably proved a courteous, obliging and companionable personage to
+meet.
+
+Bayard Taylor attended in September and the beginning of October, 1849,
+the convention at Monterey, which gave to California its first, and in
+the opinion of many, its best constitution. He closes his review of the
+proceedings with these forceful and prophetic words:
+
+"Thus we have another splendid example of the ease and security with
+which people can be educated to govern themselves. From that chaos
+whence under, a despotism like the Austrian, would spring the most
+frightful excesses of anarchy and crime, a population of freemen
+peacefully and quietly develops the highest form of civil order - the
+broadest extent of liberty and security. Governments, bad and corrupt
+as many of them are, and imperfect as they all must necessarily be,
+nevertheless at times exhibit scenes of true moral sublimity. What I
+have today witnessed has so, impressed me; and were I a believer in
+omens, I would augur from the tranquil beauty of the evening - from the
+clear sky and the lovely sunset hues on the waters of the bay - more
+than all, from the joyous expression of every face I see, a glorious and
+prosperous career for the State of California."
+
+Southern California, by which is understood all of the State south of
+the Tehachapi Mountains, was mostly settled by and is still to a great
+extent the objective point of people from the East and Middle West. Most
+of them came in search of health and brought a competency sufficient for
+their needs. When President Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, visited
+California in 1911, he came over the southern route to Los Angeles.
+Addressing a Pasadena audience he said: "I am much disappointed when I
+see you. I expected to find a highly individualized people, characters
+developed by struggle and mutual effort; but I find you the same people
+we have at home," and more, to the same effect. Subsequently, Governor
+Wilson delivered an address at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, before the
+students of the University of California. At its close, Mr. Maslin
+mounted the stage, a copy of the paper containing the account of the
+Pasadena speech in his hands, and asked the Governor if he was correctly
+reported; to which he replied in the affirmative. "Governor," said Mr.
+Maslin, you came into the State at the wrong gate!" "Gate? gate? - what
+gate?" inquired the Governor. "You should have come through Emigrant
+Gap, through which most of the emigrants from '49 and on entered the
+State. Now, Governor, the people you saw at Pasadena never suffered the
+trials of a pioneer's lite, they are not knit together by the memory of
+mutual struggles and privations. When you come to the State again, come
+through Emigrant Gap. Let me know when you come, and I will introduce
+you to a breed of men the world has never excelled." With the smile with
+which millions have since become familiar, Governor Wilson grasped the
+hand of the pioneer and said: "When I come again, as I feel sure I
+shall, I shall let you know."
+
+The following morning I took the train for my home in Alameda. As I sat
+and meditated on the scenes I had witnessed and the character of the
+people I had met, it was borne in upon me that this had been the most
+interesting as well as enjoyable experience of my life. Already the
+temporary discomforts produced by heat and soiled garments had faded
+into insignificance, and assumed a most trivial aspect when I reviewed
+the journey as a whole. They were part of the game. To again quote
+"Trilby," tramping "is not all beer and skittles." Your true tramp
+learns to take things as he finds them and never to expect or ask or the
+impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour,
+without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod
+through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable
+feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel! And it is
+literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot. I will venture the
+assertion that the long-distance tramper - not even excepting Brother
+Weston - who has not at some time or another suffered from sore heels,
+does not exist. The tramp's feet are his means of locomotion; on their
+condition he bestows an anxiety and care which far surpass that of the
+man in the automobile, with all his complicated machinery to inspect.
+
+Remains then, the memory of the delicious, faint, cool, morning breeze,
+gently stirring the pine needles; the aromatic odor of forest
+undergrowth; the murmur of the stream hurrying down the mountain gorge
+to mingle its pure waters with those of the muddy Sacramento, far away
+in the great valley below; the deep awe-inspiring canons of the
+American, Stanislaus and Mokelumne Rivers; and back of all, the azure
+summits of the Sierra Nevada.
+
+Remains also, the memory of the kindly-disposed, courteous and
+open-hearted inhabitants of the old mining towns. But more forcibly than
+all else combined - for it seems to epitomize the whole - the glamour of
+the towns themselves appeals with an irresistible fascination, that no
+poor words of mine can adequately express.
+
+
+
+Appendix
+
+
+
+Views of the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+Here ends A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country by Thomas Dykes
+Beasley. Published by Paul Elder and Company and printed for them at
+their Tomoye Press in the city of San Francisco, under the direction of
+John Swart, in the year Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+******This file should be named attbh10.txt or attbh10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, attbh11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, attbh10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David A. Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>.
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
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+Title: A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+Author: Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4636]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 20, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+******This file should be named attbh10.txt or attbh10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, attbh11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, attbh10a.txt
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+***
+This etext was produced by David A. Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>.
+
+A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+By
+Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
+
+
+Author of "The Coming of Portola"
+
+
+
+With A Foreward by
+Charles A. Murdock
+
+
+
+Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
+The river sang below;
+The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
+Their minarets of snow.
+- Dickens in Camp.
+
+
+
+
+The Chapters
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+Preface
+
+Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthful James." The
+Glamour of the Old Mining Towns
+
+Inception of the Tramp. Stockton to Angel's Camp. Tuttletown and the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill"
+
+Tuolumne to Placerville. Charm of Sonora and Fascination of San Andreas
+and Mokelumne Hill
+
+J. H. Bradley and the Cary House. Ruins of Coloma. James W. Marshall and
+His Pathetic End
+
+Auburn to Nevada City Via Colfax and Grass Valley. Ben Taylor and His
+Home
+
+E. W. Maslin and His Recollections of Pioneer Days in Grass Valley.
+Origin of Our Mining Laws
+
+Grass Valley to Smartsville. Sucker Flat and Its Personal Appeal
+
+Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
+
+Bayard Taylor and the California of Forty-nine. Bret Harte and His
+Literary Pioneer Contemporaries
+
+
+
+The Illustrations
+
+
+
+Ruins of Coloma, a Name "Forever Associated With the Wildest Scramble
+for Gold the World Has Ever Been"
+
+Map of the "Bret Harte Country," Showing the Route Taken by the Writer,
+With the Towns, Important Rivers, and County Boundaries of the Country
+Traversed
+
+The Tuttletown Hotel, Tuttletown; a Wooden Building Erected in the Early
+Fifties
+
+Mokelumne River; "Whatever the Meaning of the Indian Name, One May Rest
+Assured It Stands for Some Form of Beauty"
+
+"A Mining Convention at Placerville"
+
+South Fork of the American River, Coloma. The Bend in the River Is the
+Precise Spot Where Gold Was First Discovered in California
+
+Ben Taylor and His Home, Grass Valley, Showing the Spruce He Planted
+Nearly Half a Century Ago
+
+E. W. Maslin in the Garden of His Alameda Home
+
+Angel's Hotel, Angel's Camp, Erected in 1852, as was the Wells Fargo
+Building Which Faces it Across the Street
+
+Main Hoist of the Utica Mine, Angel's Camp, Situated on the Summit of a
+Hill Overlooking the Town
+
+The Stanislaus River, Near Tuttletown, "Running in a Deep and Splendid
+Canon"
+
+Jackass Hill, Tuttletown. The Road to the Left Leads to the Former Home
+of "Jim" Gillis
+
+Home of Mrs. Swerer, Tuttletown. The Hotel and This Dwelling Comprise
+All That Is Habitable of the Tuttletown of Bret Harte
+
+Main Street, Sonora, "So Shaded by Trees That Buildings Are Half-hidden"
+
+Sonora, Looking Southeast. "No Matter From What Direction You Approach
+It, Sonora Seems to Lie Basking in the Sun"
+
+Main Street, San Andreas, "During the Mid-day Heat, Almost Deserted"
+
+Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas; in the Bar-room of Which Occurred the
+"Jumping Frog" Incident
+
+Mokelumne Hotel, on the Summit of Mokelumne Hill, and at the Head of the
+Famous Chili Gulch
+
+Placerville, the County Seat of El Dorado County, From the Road to
+Diamond Springs
+
+The Cary House, Placerville. "It Was Here That Horace Greeley Terminated
+His Celebrated Stage Ride With Hank Monk"
+
+Middle Fork of the American River, Near Auburn, and Half a Mile Above
+Its Junction With the North Fork
+
+An Apple Orchard, Grass Valley, "The Trees Growing in the Grass, as in
+England and the Atlantic States"
+
+The Western Hotel, Grass Valley. "The Well and Pump Add a Quaint and
+Characteristic Touch"
+
+A Bit of Picturesque Nevada City, Embracing the Homes of Its Leading
+Citizens
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+
+
+In California's imaginary Hall of Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a
+prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems
+published fifty years ago made California well known the world over and
+gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw the
+picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is unaccountable if
+we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His imagination gave
+him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied colors and rare
+literary skill painted the picture.
+
+His capacity for absorption was marvelous. At the age of about twenty he
+spent less than a year in the foot-hills of the Sierras, among pioneer
+miners, and forty-five years of literary output did not exhaust his
+impressions. He somewhere refers to an "eager absorption of the strange
+life around me, and a photographic sensitiveness," to certain scenes and
+incidents." "Eager absorption," "photographic sensitiveness," a rich
+imagination and a fine literary style, largely due to his mother,
+enabled him to win at his death this acknowledgment from the "London
+Spectator:" "No writer of the present day has struck so powerful and
+original a note as he has sounded."
+
+Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1836. His
+father was a teacher and translator; his mother a woman of high
+character and cultivated tastes. His father having died, he, when nine,
+became an office boy and later a clerk. In 1854 he came to California to
+join his mother who had married again, arriving in Oakland in March of
+that year. His employment for two years was desultory. He worked in a
+drug store and also wrote for Eastern magazines. Then he went to Alamo
+in the San Ramon Valley as tutor - a valued experience. Later in 1856 he
+went to Tuolumne County where, among other things, he taught school, and
+may have been an express messenger. At any rate, he stored his memory
+with material that ten years later made him and the whole region famous.
+
+In 1857 he went to Humboldt County where his sister was living. He was
+an interesting figure, gentlemanly, fastidious, reserved, sensitive,
+with a good fund of humor, a pleasant voice and a modest manner. He
+seemed poorly fitted for anything that needed doing. He was willing, for
+I saw him digging post holes and building a fence with results somewhat
+unsatisfactory. He was more successful as tutor for two of my boy
+friends. He finally became printers' devil in the office of the
+"Northern Californian," where he learned the case, and incidentally
+contributed graceful verse and clever prose.
+
+He returned to San Francisco early in 1860 and found work on the "Golden
+Era," at first as compositor and soon as writer. In May, 1864, he left
+the "Golden Era" and joined others in starting "The Californian." Two
+months later he was made editor of the new "Overland Monthly." The
+second number contained "The Luck of Roaring Camp." It attracted wide
+attention as a new note. Other stories and poems of merit followed.
+Harte's growing reputation burst in full bloom when in 1870 he filled a
+blank space in the "Overland" make-up with "The Heathen Chinee." It was
+quoted on the floor of the Senate and gained world-wide fame. He
+received flattering offers and felt constrained to accept the best. In
+February, 1871, he left California. A Boston publisher had offered him
+$10,000 for whatever he might write in the following year. Harte
+accepted, but the output was small.
+
+For seven years he wrote spasmodically, eking out his income by
+lecturing and newspaper work. Life was hard. In 1878 he sailed for
+Europe, having been appointed consular agent at Crefeld, Prussia, about
+forty miles north of Cologne. In 1880 he was made Consul at Glasgow,
+where he remained five years. His home thereafter was London, where he
+continued his literary work until his death in March, 1902.
+
+His complete works comprise nineteen volumes. His patriotic verse is
+fervid, his idyls are graceful and his humorous verse delightful. The
+short story he made anew.
+
+Harte's instincts and habits were good. He had the artistic temperament
+and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself
+"constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy.
+His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him
+remember him fondly. California failing to know him, wrongs herself.
+
+Charles A. Murdock.
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+A desire to obtain, at first hand, any possible information in regard to
+reminiscences of Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others of the little coterie
+of writers, who in the early fifties visited the mining camps of
+California and through stories that have become classics, played a
+prominent part in making "California" a synonym for romance, led to
+undertaking the tramp of which this brief narrative is a record. The
+writer met with unexpected success, having the good fortune to meet men,
+all over eighty years of age, who had known - in some cases intimately
+Bret Harte, Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille," Prentice Mulford, Bayard Taylor
+and Horace Greeley.
+
+It seems imperative that a relation of individual experiences - however
+devoid of stirring incident and adventure - should be written in the
+first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story
+of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers - should he
+have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no
+twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns,
+it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average
+Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the
+foot-hills of the Sierras lie outside the beaten tracks of travel. He
+has, therefore, assumed that "a plain unvarnished tale" of actual
+experiences might not be without interest to the casual reader; and
+possibly might incite in him a desire to see for himself a country not
+only possessed of rare beauty, but absolutely unique in its
+associations.
+
+But the point to be emphasized is that the glamour is not a thing of the
+past: it is there now. Nay, to a person possessed of any imagination,
+the ruins - say, of Coloma - appeal in all probability far stronger than
+would the actual town itself in the days when it seethed with bustle and
+excitement. Not to have visited the old mining towns is not to have seen
+the "heart" of California, or felt its pulsations. It is not to
+understand why the very name "California" still stirs the blood and
+excites the imagination throughout the civilized world.
+
+If this brief narrative should induce anyone to "gird up his loins,"
+shoulder his pack and essay a similar pilgrimage, the author will feel
+that he has not been unrewarded. And if a man over threescore years of
+age can tramp through seven counties and return, in spite of intense
+heat, feeling better and stronger than when he started, a young fellow
+in the hey-day of life and sound of wind and limb surely ought not to be
+discouraged.
+
+Thomas Dykes Beasley.
+
+
+
+A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+
+Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthfulful James."
+The Glamour of the Old Mining Towns
+
+
+
+It is forty-four years since the writer met the author of "The Luck of
+Roaring Camp" - that wonderful blending within the limits of a short
+story of humor, pathos and tragedy - which, incredible as it may seem,
+met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded
+as "indecent" and "immodest!"
+
+On the occasion referred to, I was strolling on Rincon Hill - at that
+time the fashionable residence quarter of San Francisco - in company
+with Mr. J. H. Wildes, whose cousin, the late Admiral Frank Wildes,
+achieved fame in the battle of Manila Bay. Mr. Wildes called my
+attention to an approaching figure and said: "Here comes Bret Harte, a
+man of unusual literary ability. He is having a hard struggle now, but
+only needs the opportunity, to make a name for himself."
+
+That opportunity arrived almost immediately. In the September number of
+the Overland Monthly, 1870, of which magazine Mr. Harte was then editor,
+appeared "Plain Language from Truthful James," or "The Heathen Chinee,"
+as the poem was afterwards called. A few weeks later, to my amazement,
+while turning the pages of Punch in the Mercantile Library, I came
+across "The Heathen Chinee;" an unique compliment so far as my
+recollection of Punch serves. To this generous and instantaneous
+recognition of genius may be attributed in no small measure the rapid
+distinction won by Bret Harte in the world of letters.
+
+Mr. Harte read his "Heathen Chinee" to Mrs. Wildes, some time before it
+was published. This lady, a woman of brilliant attainments and one who
+had a host of friends in old San Francisco, possessed the keenest sense
+of humor. Mr. Harte greatly valued her critical judgment. He was in the
+habit of reading his stories and poems to her for her opinion and
+decision, before publication, and it may well be that her hearty
+laughter and warm approval helped to strengthen his wavering opinion of
+the lines which convulsed Anglo-Saxondom; for no one was more surprised
+than he at the sensation they created. He had even offered the poem for
+publication to Mr. Ambrose Bierce, then editing the San Francisco News
+Letter; but Mr. Bierce, recognizing its merit, returned it to Mr. Harte
+and prevailed upon him to publish it in his own magazine.
+
+Had one at that time encountered Mr. Harte in Piccadilly or Fifth
+Avenue, he would simply have been aware of a man dressed in perfect
+taste, but in the height of the prevailing fashion. On the streets of
+San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the
+fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut,
+and usually of shiny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the
+customary headgear, completing a most funereal costume.
+
+Mr. Harte impressed me as being singularly modest and utterly devoid of
+any form of affectation. To be well dressed in a period when little
+attention was paid clothes by the San Franciscan, might, it is true, in
+some men have suggested assumption of an air of superiority; but with
+Mr. Harte, to dress well was simply a natural instinct. His long,
+drooping moustache and the side-whiskers of the time - incongruous as
+the comparison may seem - called to mind the elder Sothern as "Lord
+Dundreary." His natural expression was pensive, even sad. When one
+considers that pathos and tragedy, perhaps even more than humor, pervade
+his stories, that was not surprising.
+
+I had but recently arrived from England - a mere lad. California was
+still the land of gold and romance; the glamour with which Bret Harte
+surrounded both, that bids fair to be immortal, held me enthralled.
+Angel's, Rough and Ready, Sandy Bar, Poker Flat, Placerville, Tuolumne
+and old Sonora represented to me enchanted ground. Fate and life's
+vicissitudes prevented, except in imagination, a knowledge of the Sierra
+foot-hill counties; but in the back of my head all these years had
+persisted a determination to, at some time, visit a region close to the
+heart of every old Californian, and what better way than on foot?
+
+In spite of Pullman cars and automobiles - or, rather, perhaps on
+account of them - the only way to see a country, to get into touch with
+Nature and meet the inhabitants on the dead level of equality and human
+sympathy, is to use Nature's method of locomotion. Equipped with a stout
+stick - with a view to dogs - a folding kodak camera, and your "goods
+and chattels" slung in a haversack across your shoulders, you feel
+independent of timecards and "routes;" and sally forth into the world
+with the philosophical determination to take things as they come; keyed
+to a pleasurable pitch of excitement by the knowledge that "Adventure"
+walks with you hand-in-hand, and that the "humors of the road" are yours
+for the seeing and understanding.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+
+Inception of the Tramp. Stockton to Angel's Camp. Tuttletown and the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill"
+
+
+
+Following as near as might be the route of the old Argonauts, I avoided
+trains, and on a warm summer night boarded the Stockton boat. In the
+early morning you are aware of slowly rounding the curves of the San
+Joaquin River. Careful steering was most essential, as owing to the dry
+season the river was unusually low. The vivid greens afforded by the
+tules and willows that fringe the river banks, and the occasional
+homestead surrounded by trees, with its little landing on the edge of
+the levee, should delight the eye of the artist.
+
+I lost no time in Stockton and headed for Milton in the foot-hills, just
+across the western boundary of Calaveras County. The distance was
+variously estimated by the natives at from twenty to forty miles -
+Californians are careless about distances, as in other matters.
+Subsequently I entered it in my note book as a long twenty-eight.
+Eighteen miles out from Stockton, at a place called Peters, which is
+little more than a railway junction, you leave the cultivated land and
+enter practically a desert country, destitute of water, trees,
+undergrowth and with but a scanty growth of grass. I ate my lunch at the
+little store and noted with apprehension that the thermometer registered
+104 degrees in the shaded porch. I am not likely to forget that pull of
+ten miles and inwardly confessed to a regret that I had not taken the
+train to Milton. Accustomed on "hikes" to a thirst not surpassed by
+anything "east of Suez," I never before appreciated the significance of
+the word "parched" - the "tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth."
+
+At Milton one enters the land of romance. What was even more appreciable
+at the time, it marks the limit of the inhospitable country I had
+traversed. Mr. Robert Donner, the proprietor of the Milton Hotel, told
+me he once had "Black Bart" as his guest for over a week, being unaware
+at the time of his identity. This famous bandit in the early eighties
+"held up" the Yosemite stage time and again. In fact, he terrorized the
+whole Sierra country from Redding to Sacramento. He was finally captured
+in San Francisco through a clew obtained from a laundry mark on a pair
+of white cuffs. For years, Mr. Donner cherished a boot left by the
+highwayman in the hurry of departure, which, much to his annoyance, was
+finally abstracted by some person unknown. To dispose of Black Bart; he
+served his term and was never seen again in the Sierras. There is a
+rumor that Wells Fargo & Company, the chief sufferers by his activities,
+made it worth his while to behave himself in the future.
+
+The following day I reached Copperopolis. This place very justly has the
+reputation of being one of the hottest spots in the foot-hills. Owing to
+resumed operations on a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I
+found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was
+perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods - in short, I
+spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had
+been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road
+would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp,
+only thirteen miles away.
+
+It is uphill nearly all the way from Copperopolis to Angel's Camp, but
+mostly you are in the pine woods. My spirits rose with the altitude and
+delight at the magnificent view when I at last reached the summit.
+Toiling up the grade in the dust, I met a good old-fashioned four-horse
+Concord stage, which from all appearances might have been in action ever
+since the days of Bret Harte. At last I felt I was in touch with the
+Sierras. The driver even honored my bow with an abrupt "Howdy!" which
+from such a magnate, I took to be a good omen.
+
+In common with all the old mining towns - though I was unaware of it at
+the time - Angel's, as it is usually called, is situated in the ravine
+where gold was first discovered. It straggles down the gulch for a mile
+and a half. There are a number of pretty cottages clinging to the steep
+hillsides, surrounded with flowers and trees, the whole effect being
+extremely pleasing. I registered at the Angel's Hotel, built in 1852.
+Across the street is the Wells Fargo building, erected about the same
+time and of solid stone, as is the hotel. Nothing on this trip surprised
+me more than the solidity of the hotels and stores built in the early
+fifties. Instead of the flimsy wooden structures I had imagined, I
+found, for the most part, thick stone walls. It was evident the Pioneers
+believed in the permanence of the gold deposits in the Mother Lode.
+Possibly they were right; Angel's is anything but a dead town to-day.
+The Utica, Angel's and Lightner mines give employment to hundreds of
+men.
+
+In the afternoon I visited the Bret Harte Girls' High School. It is a
+very simple frame building, on the summit of a hill overlooking the
+town. The man who directed me how to find it, I discovered had not the
+remotest idea who Bret Harte might be; "John Brown" would have answered
+the purpose equally as well. In fact, all through the seven counties I
+traversed - Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada and
+Yuba - I found Bret Harte had left but a hazy and nebulous impression.
+Mark Twain, Prentice Mulford, Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, even "Dan
+de Quille," seemed better known.
+
+The next morning I started for Sonora. In seven miles I came to the
+Stanislaus River, running in a deep and splendid canon. The river here
+is spanned by a fine concrete bridge, built jointly by Tuolumne and
+Calaveras Counties, between which the river forms the dividing line. In
+the bottom of the canon is the Melones mine, with a mill operating one
+hundred stamps. The main tunnel is a mile and a half in length; the
+longest mining tunnel in the State, I was told.
+
+A steep pull of two miles out of the canon brought me to Tuttletown.
+Here I stayed several hours, for the interest of the whole trip, so far
+as Bret Harte was concerned, centered around this once celebrated camp,
+and Jackass Hill, on which, at one time, lived James W. Gillis, the
+supposed prototype of "Truthful James." He died a few years ago, but his
+brother, Stephen R. Gillis, is living there to-day, and after some
+little difficulty I succeeded in finding his house.
+
+Mr. Gillis scouts the idea that his brother "Jim" was the "Truthful
+James" of Bret Harte. He said that in reality it was J. W. E. Townsend,
+known in old times as "Alphabetical Townsend," also by the
+uncomplimentary appellation of "Lying Jim." According to Mr. Gillis,
+Bret Harte made but one visit to Tuttletown. He arrived there one
+evening "dead broke" and James put him up for the night and lent him
+money to help him on his way. Personally, Mr. Gillis never met Bret
+Harte but he had seen Mark Twain on a number of Occasions. I got the
+distinct impression that Stephen Gillis disliked the notoriety his
+brother had gained, through the fact that his name had become
+indissolubly linked with the "Truthful James" of Bret Harte's verses. Be
+that as it may, I later on met several men who had known "Jim" Gillis
+intimately and they all agreed that he possessed a keen sense of humor
+and had at command a practically inexhaustible stock of stories, upon
+which he drew at will. Whether Bret Harte derived any inspiration from
+"Jim" Gillis may perhaps always remain in doubt; but that Mark Twain
+did, there cannot, I think, be any question.
+
+In a recent life of Bret Harte, by Henry Childs Merwin, it is stated
+(page 21) that in 1858 Bret Harte acted as tutor in a private family at
+Alamo, in the San Ramon valley, which lies at the foot of Mount Diablo.
+On, page 50, however, we read: "In 1858 or thereabouts, Bret Harte was
+teaching school at Tuttletown, a few miles north of Sonora." It would
+seem that this statement is erroneous, apart from the fact that it
+conflicts with the prior date in reference to Alamo.
+
+Mrs. Swerer, who has lived continuously at Tuttletown since 1850, coming
+there at the age of ten, told me she received her education at the
+Tuttletown public school, as did her children and her children's
+children - she is now a great-grandmother! She said most positively that
+she never saw Bret Harte in her life, but had frequently seen "Dan de
+Quille" and Mark Twain. The latter, she said, made periodic visits to
+Tuttletown, and always stayed with "Jim" Gillis - called by Twain, the
+"Sage of Jackass Hill."
+
+Mrs. Gross, who keeps the Tuttletown Hotel and whose husband owned a
+store across the way, built of stone but now in ruins, was born in
+Tuttletown. She asserted she never heard of Bret Harte being in
+Tuttletown and feels it to be impossible he ever taught school there. At
+this ancient hostelry, built of wood and dating back to the early
+fifties, I dined in company with an old miner, who told me he came
+across "Jim" Gillis in Alaska. He said: "Gillis was a great josher. For
+the life of me, I could never tell from his stories whether he had been
+to the Klondike or not."
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+
+Tuolumne to Placerville. Charm of Sonora and Fascination of San Andreas
+and Mokelumne Hill
+
+
+
+Sonora is nine miles distant from Tuttletown, and I reached it in the
+early afternoon. Perhaps of all the old mining towns, Sonora is the most
+fascinating, on account of the exceeding beauty of the surrounding
+country. No matter from what direction you approach it, Sonora seems to
+lie basking in the sun, buried in a wealth of greenery, through which
+gleam white walls and roofs of houses. Even its winding streets are so
+shaded by graceful old trees that buildings are half hidden. The bustle
+and excitement of the mining days are passed forever, in all
+probability, for old Sonora; but in their place have come the peace and
+quiet that accompany the tillage of the soil; for Sonora is now the
+center of a prosperous agricultural district and the town maintains a
+steady and continuous growth.
+
+Here I had the pleasure of an interview with Mr. John Neal, a prominent
+and respected citizen of Tuolumne County, who as Commissioner
+represented his county at the San Francisco Midwinter Fair. Mr. Neal is
+over eighty, but still hale and hearty. He was the first person I had
+thus far encountered who had known Bret Harte in the flesh. He had also
+known and frequently met Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille" and Prentice
+Mulford. Of the four, it was evident that Mulford had left by far the
+most lasting as well as favorable impression on his mind. Of him he
+spoke in terms of real affection. "Prentice Mulford," he said, "was a
+brilliant, very handsome and most lovable young man." I asked him how
+these young men were regarded by the miners. He said: "In all the camps
+they were held to be in a class by themselves, on account of their
+education and literary ability. Although they wore the rough costume of
+the miners, it was realized that none of them took mining seriously or
+made any pretense of real work with pick and shovel." Mr. Neal knew
+James Gillis intimately and admitted he was a great story-teller. In
+fact, at the bare mention of his name he broke into a hearty laugh. "Oh,
+Jim Gillis, he was a great fellow!" he exclaimed. He said unquestionably
+Mark Twain got a good deal of material from him, and feels certain that
+Bret Harte must have met him at least on several occasions. Mr. Neal
+stated that up to the time of the Midwinter Fair, the output of gold
+from Tuolumne county reached the astonishing figures of $250,000,000!
+What it has amounted to since that time, I had no means of ascertaining.
+
+It is only twelve miles from Sonora to Tuolumne. From the top of the
+divide which separates the valleys there is a beautiful view of the
+surrounding country, the dim blue peaks of the Sierra Nevada forming the
+eastern sky-line. One of the chief charms of an excursion through these
+foothill counties is the certainty that directly you reach any
+considerable elevation there will be revealed a magnificent panorama,
+bounded only by the limit of vision, range after range of mountains
+running up in varying shades of blue and purple, to the far distant
+summits that indicate the backbone of California.
+
+Tuolumne is situated in a circular basin rather than in a valley, and
+thus being protected from the wind, in hot weather the heat is intense.
+If there are any mining operations in the immediate vicinity, they are
+not in evidence to the casual observer. It is, however, one of the
+biggest timber camps in the State. In the yards of the West Side Lumber
+Company, covering several hundred acres, are stacked something like
+30,000,000 feet of sugar pine. The logs are brought from the mountains
+twenty to twenty-five miles by rail, and sawn into lumber at Tuolumne. I
+was told that the bulk of the lumber manufactured here was shipped
+abroad, a great deal going to Australia.
+
+Tuolumne, in Bret Harte's time, was called Summersville. It was
+destroyed by fire about fourteen years ago, but the new town has already
+so assimilated itself to the atmosphere of its surroundings, that its
+comparative youth might easily escape detection. Altogether, I was
+disappointed with Tuolumne, having expected to find a second Angel's,
+owing to its prominence in Bret Harte's stories. A lumber camp, while an
+excellent thing in its way, is neither picturesque nor inspiring. I
+spent the night at the "Turnback Inn," a large frame building,
+handsomely finished interiorly and built since the fire. It is, I
+believe, quite a summer resort, as Tuolumne is the terminus of the
+Sierra Railway, and one can go by way of Stockton direct to Oakland and
+San Francisco.
+
+Returning to Angel's the next day, I lingered again at Tuttletown. There
+is a strange attraction about the place - it would hold you apart from
+its associations, The old hotel, fast going to decay, surrounded by
+splendid trees whose shade is so dense as to be impenetrable to the
+noon-day sun, is a study for an artist. And as I gazed in a sort of
+day-dream at the ruins of what once was one of the liveliest camps in
+the Sierras - with four faro tables running day and night - the pines
+seemed to whisper a sigh of regret over its departed glories. Jackass
+Hill is fairly honeycombed with prospect holes, shafts and tunnels. I
+was surprised to see that even now there is a certain amount of prospect
+work going forward, for I noticed several shafts with windlasses to
+which ropes were attached; and, in fact, was told that the old camp
+showed signs of a new lease of life.
+
+Musing on Tuttletown and its environment later on got me into serious
+difficulty. Having crossed the Stanislaus River and cleared the canon, I
+abandoned the main road for an alleged "cut-off." This I was following
+with the utmost confidence, when, to my surprise, it came to an abrupt
+end at the foot of a steep hill. In the ravine below was a house, and
+there fortunately I found a man of whom I inquired if I was in "Carson
+Flat." "Carson Flat? Well, I should say not! You're 'way off!" "How
+much?" I asked feebly. "Oh, several miles." This in a tone that implied
+that though I was in a bad fix, it might possibly be worse. However,
+with the invariable kindness of these people, he put me on a trail
+which, winding up to the summit of a ridge, struck down into Carson Flat
+and joined the main road. And there I registered a vow: "The hard
+highway for me!" As a consequence of this deviation, I materially
+lengthened the distance to Angel's. It is thirty miles from Tuolumne by
+the road, to which, by taking the "cut-off," I probably added another
+three!
+
+It is surprising how these towns grow upon one. Already the Angel's
+Hotel seemed like home to me and after an excellent dinner, I joined the
+loungers on the side-walk and became one of a row, seated on chairs
+tilted at various angles against the wall of the hotel. And there I
+dozed, watching the passing show between dreams; for in the evening when
+the electric lights are on, there is a sort of parade of the youth and
+beauty of the town, up and down the winding street.
+
+On account of the great heat that even the dry purity of the Sierra
+atmosphere could not altogether mitigate, I decided the next day to be
+content with reaching San Andreas, the county seat of Calaveras County,
+fifteen miles north of Angel's.
+
+Apart from its name, there is something about San Andreas that suggests
+Mexico, or one's idea of pastoral California in the early days of the
+American occupation. The streets are narrow and unpaved and during the
+midday heat are almost deserted. Business of some sort there must be,
+for the little town, though somnolent, is evidently holding its own; but
+there seems to be infinite time in which to accomplish whatever the
+necessities of life demand. And I may state here parenthetically, that
+perhaps the most impressive feature of all the old California mining
+towns is their suggestion of calm repose. Each little community seems
+sufficient unto itself and entirely satisfied with things as they are.
+Not even in the Old World will you find places where the current of life
+more placidly flows.
+
+On the main street - and the principal street of all these towns is
+"Main Street" - I had the good fortune to be introduced to Judge Ira H.
+Reed, who came to Calaveras County in 1854, and has lived there ever
+since. He told me that Judge Gottschalk, who died a few years ago at an
+advanced age, was authority for the statement that Mark Twain got his
+"Jumping Frog" story from the then proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel,
+San Andreas, who asserted that the incident actually occurred in his
+bar-room. Twain, it is true, places the scene in a bar-room at Angel's,
+but that is doubtless the author's license. Bret Harte calls Tuttletown,
+"Tuttleville," and there never was a "Wingdam" stage.
+
+That evening as I lay awake in my bedroom at the Metropolitan Hotel,
+wondering by what person of note it had been occupied in the "good old
+days," my attention was attracted to the musical tinkle of a cow-bell.
+Looking out of the window, I beheld the strange spectacle of a cow
+walking sedately down the middle of the street. No one was driving her,
+no one paid her any attention beyond a casual glance, as she passed. The
+cow, in fact, had simply come home, after a day in the open country; and
+it became plain to me that this was a nightly occurrence and therefore
+caused no comment. Unmolested, she passed the hotel and on down the
+street to the foot of the hill, where she evidently spent the night; for
+the tinkle of the bell became permanent and blended with and became a
+part of the subtle, mysterious sounds that constitute Nature's sleeping
+breath.
+
+This little incident in the county seat of Calaveras County impressed me
+as an epitome of the changes wrought by time, since the days when in
+song and story Bret Harte made the name "Calaveras" a synonym for
+romance wherever the English language is spoken.
+
+From San Andreas my objective point was Placerville, distant about
+forty-five miles. The heat still being excessive, I made the town by
+easy stages, arriving at noon on the third day. Mokelumne Hill, ten
+miles beyond San Andreas, also lends its name to the little town which
+clusters around its apex and is at the head of Chili Gulch, a once
+famous bonanza for the placer miners. For miles the road winds up the
+gulch, which is almost devoid of timber, amid piled-up rocks and debris,
+bleached and blistered by the sun's fierce rays; the gulch itself being
+literally stripped to "bedrock." I had already witnessed many evidences
+of man's eager pursuit of the precious metal, but nothing that so
+conveyed the idea of the feverish, persistent energy with which those
+adventurers in the new El Dorado had struggled day and night with
+Nature's obstacles, spurred on by the auri sacra fames.
+
+A little incident served to relieve the monotony of the climb up Chili
+Gulch. A miner, who might have sat for a study of "Tennessee's Partner,"
+came down the hillside with a pan of "dirt," which he carefully washed
+in a muddy pool in the bed of the gulch. He showed me the result, a few
+"colors" and sulphurets. He said it would "go about five dollars to the
+ton," and seemed well satisfied with the result. I shall always hold him
+in grateful memory, for he took me to an old tunnel, and disappearing
+for a few moments, returned with a large dipper of ice-cold water. Not
+the Children of Israel, when Aaron smote the rock in the desert and
+produced a living stream, could have lapped that water with keener
+enjoyment.
+
+The terrific heat in Chili Gulch made the shade from the trees which
+surround Mekolumne Hotel doubly grateful. Mokelumne Hill is, in fact, a
+mountain, and commands a view of rare beauty. At its base winds the
+wooded canon of the Mokelumne River, on the farther side of which rises
+the Jackson Butte, an isolated peak with an elevation of over three
+thousand feet, while in the background loom the omnipresent peaks of the
+far Sierra.
+
+The Mokelumne Hotel is regarded as modern, dating back merely to 1868,
+at which time the original building was destroyed by fire. The present
+structure of solid blocks of stone, should resist the elements for
+centuries to come. I was surprised at the excellent accommodations of
+this hotel. In what seemed such an out-of-the-way and inaccessible
+locality, I was served with one of the best meals on the whole journey,
+including claret with crushed ice in a champagne glass! What that meant
+to a tramp who had struggled for miles through quartz rock and
+impalpable dust, up a heavy grade, without shade and the thermometer
+well past the hundred mark, only a tramp can appreciate. I fell in love
+with Mokelumne Hill and, after due consultation of my map, resolved to
+pass the night in this picturesque and delightful spot. I was also
+influenced by its associations, as it figures prominently in Bret
+Harte's stories.
+
+Of the four famous rivers - the Stanislaus, Mokelumne, American and
+Cosumnes - which I crossed on this trip, the Mokelumne appealed to me
+the most. Whatever the meaning of the Indian name, one may rest assured
+it stands for some form of beauty. Jackson, the county seat of Amador
+County, is but six miles from Mokelumne Hill and a town of considerable
+importance, being the terminus of a branch line of the Southern Pacific
+Railway. It is situated in an open country where the hills are at some
+distance, and presents a certain up-to-date appearance. About a mile
+from Jackson the Kennedy mine, running a hundred stamps, is one of the
+greatest gold producers in the State.
+
+Sutter Creek, erroneously supposed by many to be the spot where gold was
+first discovered in California, four miles north of Jackson, is
+picturesque and rendered attractive by reason of the vivid green of the
+lawns surrounding the little cottages on its outskirts. This town, too,
+has a flourishing look, accounted for by the operation of the South
+Eureka and Central Eureka mines. A gentleman whom I met on the street
+imparted this information, and asked me if I remembered Mark Twain's
+definition of a gold mine. I had to confess I did not. "Well," said he,
+"Mark Twain defined a gold mine as 'a hole in the ground at one end, and
+a d - d fool at the other!'" The appreciative twinkle in his eye
+suggested the possibility that this definition met with his approval.
+
+Amador, two miles beyond Sutter Creek, did not appeal to me.
+"Stagnation" would probably come nearer than any other term to conveying
+to the mind of a person unfamiliar with Amador its present condition.
+One becomes acutely sensitive to the "atmosphere" of these places, after
+a few days upon the road, for each has a distinctive individuality. in
+spite of the fact that it was mid-day in midsummer, gloom seemed to
+pervade the streets and to be characteristic of its inhabitants. With
+the exception of an attempt to get into telephonic communication with a
+friend at Placerville, I lost not a moment in the town.
+
+On reaching Drytown, three miles north of Amador, I noted the
+thermometer stood at 110 degrees in the shade on the watered porch of
+the hotel, and deciding there was a certain risk attendant on walking in
+such heat, determined to make the best of what was anything but a
+pleasant situation, and go no farther. Drytown, in the modern
+application of the first syllable, is a misnomer, the "town" consisting
+chiefly of the hotel with accompanying bar, and a saloon across the way!
+
+Drytown was in existence as early as 1849, and was visited in October of
+that year by Bayard Taylor. He says: "I found a population of from two
+to three hundred, established for the winter. The village was laid out
+with some regularity and had taverns, stores, butchers' shops and monte
+tables." One cannot but smile at the idea of "monte tables" in
+connection with the Drytown of to-day; pitiful as is the reflection that
+men had braved the hardships of the desert and toiled to the waist in
+water for gold, only to throw it recklessly in the laps of professional
+gamblers.
+
+The Exchange Hotel, a wooden building dating back to 1858, stands on the
+site of the original hotel, built in 1851 and burned in 1857. Upon the
+front porch is a well furnishing cold, pure water. I found this to be
+the most acceptable feature of several of the old hostelries. The well
+and the swinging sign over the entrance suggested the wayside inn of
+rural England; more especially as the surrounding country carries out
+the idea, being gently undulating and well timbered.
+
+The following evening I put up at Nashville, on the North Fork of the
+Cosumnes River and well over the borders of El Dorado county, passing
+Plymouth en route. Plymouth, on the map, appeared to be a place of some
+importance, but a closer inspection proved that - in spite of its breezy
+name - it would take the spirits of a Mark Tapley to withstand its
+discouraging surroundings. Plymouth is "living in hopes," an English
+syndicate having an option on certain mining properties in the vicinity;
+but Nashville is frankly "out of business."
+
+At Nashville, in fact, I had some difficulty in securing "bed and
+lodging." There appeared to be only three families in this once
+flourishing camp. Strange as it may seem, money appears to be no object
+to people in these sequestered places. You have "to make good," and in
+this instance it required not a little tact and diplomacy.
+
+I arrived at Placerville the following day. Due to taking a road not
+shown on my map, I went several miles astray and for some few hours was
+immersed in wild, chaparral-covered mountains, with evidences on all
+hands of deserted mines; finally crossing a divide at an elevation of
+two thousand feet and descending into the valley where slumbers the
+little town of El Dorado, formerly bearing the less attractive
+designation "Mud Springs." This title, though lacking in euphony, was
+more in keeping with actual conditions, since the valley is noted for
+its springs, and Diamond Springs, a mile or two north, is quite a summer
+resort. Nor is there any indication of the precious metal anywhere in
+the immediate vicinity.
+
+In Placerville - known as "Hangtown" in the Bret Harte days - I
+registered at the Cary House, which once had the honor of entertaining
+no less a personage than Horace Greeley. It was here he terminated his
+celebrated stage ride with Hank Monk. I found that my friend Harold
+Edward Smith had gone to Coloma, eight miles on the road to Auburn, and
+had left a note saying he would wait for me there the following morning.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+
+J. H. Bradley and the Cary House. Ruins of Coloma. James W. Marshall and
+His Pathetic End.
+
+
+
+
+More than any other town, Placerville gave a suggestion of the olden
+times.  "John Oakhurst" and "Jack Hamlin" would still be in their
+element, as witness the following scene:
+
+In the card room back of the bar, in a certain hotel, a "little game"
+was in progress. A big, blond giant, with curly hair and clean-cut
+features - indeed he could have posed as a model for Praxiteles - arose
+nonchalantly from the table as I entered, and swept the stakes into a
+capacious pocket. An angry murmur of disapproval came from the sitters,
+and one man muttered something about "quitting the game a winner." With
+a hand on each hip, the giant swept the disgruntled upturned faces with
+a comprehensive glance, and drawled: "I'll admit there's something wrong
+in mine, gentlemen, or I wouldn't be here, see?" He waited a moment and
+amid silence passed slowly through the barroom to the sidewalk, seated
+himself, stretched his long legs and placidly gazed across the street.
+
+In the morning I had a long talk with Mr. J. H. Bradley, perhaps the
+best known man in El Dorado County. Though in his eighty-fourth year,
+his keen brown eyes still retain the fire and light of youth. The
+vitality of these old pioneers is something marvelous. Mr. Bradley was
+born in Kentucky, but, as a boy, moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he
+played marbles with Mark Twain, or Clemens, as he prefers to call him.
+In '49, he came across the plains to California. He was on the most
+friendly terms with Twain and said he assisted him to learn piloting on
+the Mississippi; and when Twain came to California, helped him to get a
+position as compositor with U. E. Hicks, who founded the Sacramento
+Union. He also knew Horace Greeley intimately, and has a portfolio that
+once was his property. Five years after Greeley's arrival in
+Placerville, which was in 1859, Mr. Bradley married Caroline Hicks, who
+with Phoebe and Rose Carey had acted as secretary to Mr. Greeley. Mr.
+Bradley takes no stock in the "keep your seat, Horace!" story. He
+considers it a fabrication. In his opinion, the romancers - Bret Harte,
+Mark Twain, et al. - have done California more harm than good. He also
+has a thinly disguised contempt for "newspaper fellows and magazine
+writers." Nor does he believe in the "Mother Lode" - that is, in its
+continuity - in spite of the geologists. He prefers to speak of the
+"mineral zone." In fine, Mr. Bradley is a man of definite and pronounced
+opinions on any subject you may broach. For that reason, his views,
+whether you agree with them or not, are always of interest.
+
+Hanging in the office of the Cary House is a clever cartoon, by William
+Cooper, of Portland, Oregon, entitled "A mining convention in
+Placerville;" in which Mr. Bradley is depicted in earnest conversation
+with a second Mr. Bradley, a third and evidently remonstrant Mr. Bradley
+intervening, while a fourth and fifth Mr. Bradley, decidedly bored, are
+hurriedly departing.
+
+Indeed, one glance at Mr. Bradley is enough to convince you that he is a
+man of unusual force of character. No one introduced me to him. I was
+merely informed at the Cary House that he was the person to whom I
+should apply for information concerning the old times. I accordingly
+started out to look for him and had not proceeded fifty yards when a
+man, approaching at a distance, arrested my attention. As he drew
+nearer, I felt positive there could be only one such personage in
+Placerville, and when he was opposite me, I stopped and said, "How are
+you, Mr. Bradley?" "That's my name, sir; what do you want?" he replied.
+
+They take life easily in the old mining towns. No wonder the spectacle
+of a man with a pack on his back caused comment, in that heat, tramping
+two or three hundred miles for pleasure! Beyond the trivial necessities
+that bare existence makes imperative, I was not conscious of seeing
+anyone do anything on the whole trip. Old miners not unnaturally took me
+for a prospector, and I think I never quite succeeded in convincing them
+to the contrary.
+
+In Placerville as in Angel's Camp, the evening promenade seems the most
+important event of the day. Young men and maidens pass and repass in an
+apparently endless chain. The same faces recur so frequently that one
+begins to take an interest in the little comedy and speculate on the
+rival attractions of blonde and brunette, and wonder which of the young
+bloods is the local Beau Brummel. The audience - so to speak - sit on,
+chairs backed against the walls of the hotels and stores, while many
+prefer the street itself, and with feet on curb or other coign of
+vantage, tilt their chairs at most alarming angles. A sort of animated
+lovers' lane is thus formed, through which the promenaders have to run
+the gauntlet, and are subjected to a certain amount of criticism.
+Everyone knows everyone. Good natured badinage plays like wild-fire, up
+and down and across the street. Later on, the tinkle of mandolin and
+guitar is heard far into the night watches.
+
+Having determined to reach Auburn - thirty miles away - the next day, I
+made an early start. Coloma lies at the bottom of the great canon of the
+South Fork of the American River. Hastening down the grade, in a bend of
+the road I almost ran into my friend. It seemed a strange meeting this,
+in the heart of the old mining country, and I think we both gave a
+perceptible start.
+
+It was at Coloma that gold was first discovered in California, by James
+W. Marshall, January 19, 1848. My companion had been so fortunate on the
+previous day as to meet Mr. W. H. Hooper, who arrived in Coloma August
+8, 1850, and who has lived there practically ever since. Though
+eighty-three, he is still strong and vigorous. From him my friend
+elicited some very interesting information in regard to Marshall
+especially, the substance of which I append from his notes. Mr. Hooper
+had known Marshall for many years, and his reminiscences of the
+discoverer have a touch of pathos bordering on the tragic.
+
+Marshall, a trapper by trade and frontiersman by inclination,
+accompanied General Sutter to California, assisted in the building of
+Sutter Fort and, on account of his mechanical ability, was sent to
+Coloma to superintend the erection of a sawmill. It was in the mill-race
+that he picked up the nugget which made the name "California" the magnet
+for the world's adventurers. Unaware of the nature of his "find," he
+took it to Sacramento, where it was declared to be gold. He was implored
+by General Sutter to keep the mill operatives in ignorance of his
+discovery, for fear they should desert their work. But how could such a
+secret be kept, especially by a man of generous and impulsive instincts?
+At any rate the news leaked out and the stampede followed.
+
+From Mr. Hooper's account, Marshall was a very human character. Late in
+life the state legislature granted him a pension of two hundred dollars
+per month. This sum being far in excess of his actual needs, it followed
+as a matter of course that his cronies assisted him in disposing of it.
+In fact, "Marshall's pension day" became a local attraction, and the
+Coloma saloon - still in existence - the rendezvous. These reunions were
+varied by glorious excursions to Sacramento, his friends in the
+legislature imploring him to keep away. After two years the pension was
+cut down to one hundred dollars per mouth and finally was discontinued
+in toto - a shabby and most undignified procedure. Opposite the saloon,
+at some little distance, is a conical hill. For many years Marshall,
+seated on the steps of the porch, had gazed dreamily at its summit.
+Shortly before his death, addressing a remnant of the "old guard," he
+exclaimed: "Boys, when I go, I want you to plant me on the top of that
+hill." And "planted" he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar monument on top
+of him!
+
+The poor old fellow died in poverty at Kelsey, near Coloma, August 10,
+1885, at the age of seventy-five. It is a sad reflection that a tithe of
+the money spent on the monument would have comforted him in his latter
+days; for the blow to his pride by the withdrawal of his pension, still
+more than the actual lack of funds, hastened the end.
+
+Mr. Hooper intimated that the population of Coloma diminished
+perceptibly after the termination of Marshall's pension. To common with
+the majority of the old miners, be saved nothing and never profited to
+any extent by the discovery that will keep his memory alive for
+centuries to come.
+
+Coloma in its palmy days had a population variously estimated at from
+five to ten thousand souls, with the usual accompaniment of saloons,
+dance halls and faro banks. There was a vigorous expulsion of gamblers
+in the early fifties and an incident occurred which quite possibly
+supplied the inspiration for Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." A
+notorious gambler and desperado, and his accomplice, demurred. Whereupon
+the irate miners placed them on a burro, and with vigorous threats
+punctuated by a salvo of revolver shots fired over their heads, drove
+them out of camp. They disappeared over the hill upon which the monument
+now stands, and were seen no more.
+
+Coloma suffered severely from fires. Little of the old town remains but
+ruins of stone walls, and here and there an isolated wooden building.
+The ruins, however, are not only exceedingly picturesque, being half
+buried in foilage of beautiful trees, but hold the imagination with a
+grip that is indescribable. I could willingly have tarried here for
+days.
+
+But while old Coloma is dead, there is a new Coloma that furnishes an
+extraordinary contrast. It is a sweet and peaceful little hamlet,
+situated on the lower benches of the canon, well up out of the river
+bottom, and is entirely devoted to horticulture. One has read of birds
+building their nests in the muzzles of old and disused cannon; even that
+does not suggest a more anomalous association of ideas than the
+spectacle of a vine-clad cottage shaded by fig trees, basking peacefully
+in the sun, so close to what was at one time a veritable maelstrom of
+human passions. So far as the new Coloma is concerned, Marshall's
+discovery might never have been made. Nowhere else will you find a spot
+where gold and what it stands for would seem to mean so little, Coloma!
+It is passing strange that a name so sweet and restful should forever be
+linked with the wildest scramble for gold the world has ever seen!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+
+Auburn to Nevada City Via Colfax and Grass Valley. Ben Taylor and His
+Home
+
+
+After surmounting the canon of the South Fork of the American River, you
+gradually enter a open country, the outskirts of the great deciduous
+fruit belt in Placer County, which supplies New York and Chicago with
+choice plums, peaches and pears. About three miles from Auburn, the road
+plunges into one of the deepest canons of the Sierras, at the bottom of
+which the Middle and North Forks of the American River unite. Just below
+the junction, the river is spanned by a long suspension bridge. Auburn
+is remarkably situated in that one sees nothing of it until the rim of
+the canon is reached, at least a thousand feet above the river. Thus
+there are no outskirts and you plunge at once into the business streets,
+passing the station of the Central Pacific Railway, which line skirts
+the edge of the canon on a heavy grade.
+
+I had accomplished a good thirty miles but that did not prevent me from
+accompanying my friend on a long and protracted hunt for comfortable
+quarters in which to eat and spend the night. There was quite an
+attractive hotel near the railroad, but actuated by a desire to see
+something of the town, which we found to be more than usually drawn out,
+we passed it with lingering regret. Whether by chance or instinct, we
+drifted to the ruins of the old hotel, now in process of reconstruction,
+and were comfortably housed in a wooden annex.
+
+Auburn marks the western verge of the mineral zone, but in the fifties
+there were, rich placer diggings in the immediate vicinity. There are
+some remarkably solid buildings of that period, in the old portion of
+the town, which, as customary, is situated in the bottom of the winding
+valley or ravine. Practically a new town, called "East Auburn," has been
+started on higher ground, and a fight is on to move the post office; but
+the people in the hollow having the voting strength, hang on to it like
+grim death. Along the edge of the American River canon and commanding a
+magnificent view, are the homes of the local aristocracy. In christening
+Auburn, it is scarcely credible that the pioneers had in mind
+Goldsmith's "loveliest village of the Plain;" nor, keeping the old town
+in view, is the title remarkably applicable today.
+
+Our next objective point being Colfax, distant in a north-easterly
+direction only fifteen miles, we made a leisurely inspection of the town
+and vicinity in the morning. The old town proved of absorbing interest
+to my friend, and we became separated while be was hunting up subjects
+for the camera. Having a free and easy working scheme in such matters,
+after a few minutes' search, I gave up the quest and started alone on
+the road to Colfax.
+
+A few miles out, I met a man with a rifle on his shoulder, leading a
+burro bearing a pack-saddle laden in the most scientific manner with
+probably all his worldly possessions, the pick and shovel plainly
+denoting a prospector. A water bucket on one side of the animal was so
+adjusted that the bottom was uppermost; on the top of the bucket sat a
+little fox-terrier, his eyes fixed steadfastly on his master. I paused a
+moment, possessed with a strong desire to take a snap shot of this
+remarkable equipment, but the man with the gun gave me a glance that
+settled the matter. His was not a bad face - far from it - but the
+features were stern and set, the cheeks furrowed with deep lines that
+bespoke hardship and fatigue in the struggle with Nature and the
+elements. That glance out of the tail of his eye meant: "Let me alone
+and I will let you alone, but let me alone!"
+
+Taciturnity becomes habitual to men accustomed to vast solitudes. Even
+on such a tramp as I had undertaken, in which I frequently walked for
+miles without sight or sound of a human being, I began to realize how
+banal and aimless is conventional conversation. Under such conditions
+you feel yourself in sympathy with the man who says nothing unless he
+has something to say, and who, in turn, expects the same restriction of
+speech from you.
+
+I was seated on the porch of the store at Applegate, disposing of a
+frugal lunch consisting of raisins and crackers, when my friend hove in
+sight. After a private inspection of the store's possibilities, with a
+little smile, the meaning of which I well understood from many similar
+experiences, he sat down beside me and without a word tackled the
+somewhat uninviting repast, to which with a wave of the hand I invited
+him. I may say here that Mr. Smith is a veteran and inveterate "hiker."
+I doubt very much whether any man in California has seen as much of this
+magnificent State as he, certainly not on foot; as a consequence he is
+accustomed to a ready acceptance of things as they are. Applegate, about
+midway between Auburn and Colfax, is an alleged "summer resort." It did
+not appeal to us as especially attractive, the view, at any rate from
+the road, being extremely limited and lacking any distinctive features.
+Without unnecessary delay, therefore, we resumed the march.
+
+It is practically up-hill - "on the collar" - all the way to Colfax, as
+is plainly evidenced by the heavy railroad grade. About a mile short of
+the town, we made a digression to an Italian vineyard of note. There, at
+a long table under a vine-covered trellis that connected the stone
+cellar with the dwelling-house, we were served with wine by a young
+woman having the true Madonna features of Sunny Italy, her mother, a
+comely matron, in the meantime preparing the evening meal, while on the
+hard ground encumbered with no superfluous clothing, disported the
+younger members of the family. And as I sat and smoked the pipe of
+peace, I reflected upon how much better they do these things in Italy -
+for to all intents and Purposes, I was in Italy.
+
+Colfax - before the advent of the C. P. R. R. called "Illinois Town" -
+is an odd blending of past and present; the solid structures of the
+mining days contrasting strangely with the flimsy wooden buildings that
+seem to mark a railroad town. We were amazed at the amount of traffic
+that occurs in the night. Three big overland trains passed through in
+either direction, the interim being filled in with the switching of
+cars, accompanied apparently with a most unnecessary ringing of bells
+and piercing shrieks from whistles. Since our hotel was not more than a
+hundred and fifty feet from the main line, with no intervening buildings
+to temper the noises, sleep of any consequence was an utter
+impossibility.
+
+Few Californians are aware, probably, that a considerable amount of
+tobacco is raised in the foothills of the Sierras. At Colfax, I smoked a
+very fair cigar made from tobacco grown in the vicinity, and
+manufactured in the town.
+
+I think we were both glad to leave Colfax. Apart from a nerve-racking
+night, the mere proximity of the railroad with its accompanying
+associations served constantly to bring to mind all that I had fled to
+the mountains to escape. Yet I cannot bring myself to agree with those
+who profess to brand a railroad "a blot on the landscape." The enormous
+engines which pull the overland trains up the heavy grades of the Sierra
+Nevada impress one by their size, strength and suggestion of reserve
+power, as not being out of harmony with the forces of Nature they are
+constructed to contend with and overcome.
+
+This thought occurred to us as we watched a passenger train slowly
+winding its way around the famous Cape Horn, some four miles from
+Colfax. Although several miles in an air line intervened, one seemed to
+feel the vibrations in the air caused by the panting monster, while
+great jets of steam shot up above the pine trees. I confess to a sense
+of elation at the spectacle. Nature in some of her moods seems so
+malignant, that I felt proud of this magnificent exhibition of man's
+victory over the obstacles she so well knows how to interpose.
+
+The road between Colfax and Grass Valley - the next stopping place on
+our itinerary - lay through so lovely a country that we passed through
+it as in a dream. Descending into the valley we were joined by several
+small boys, attracted, I suppose, by our - to them - unusual costume and
+equipment, who plied us with questions. They asked if "we carried a
+message for the mayor," and were visibly disappointed when we regretted
+we had overlooked that formality. For several minutes they kept us busy
+trying to give truthful answers to most unexpected questions. They had
+never heard of Tuolumne and wanted to know if it was in California.
+Their world, in fact, was bounded by Colfax on the south and Nevada City
+on the north.
+
+Grass Valley received its name from the meadow in which the town, for
+the most part, is situated. The ground is so moist that, notwithstanding
+the heat, the grass was a vivid green. Apple trees growing in the grass,
+as in the orchards of England and in the Atlantic States, and perfectly
+healthy, conveyed that suggestion of the Old World which lends a
+peculiar charm to these towns. And Grass Valley really is a town, having
+seven thousand inhabitants; and is, withal, clean, picturesque and
+altogether delightful. One understood why "Tuolumne" sounded meaningless
+to those small boys. Thus early in life they were under influences which
+will probably keep them in after years - as they kept their fathers -
+permanent citizens of the town of Grass Valley.
+
+Grass Valley was one of the richest of the old mining camps. There was
+literally gold everywhere, even in the very roots of the grass. The
+mining is now all underground and drifts from the North Star and Ophir
+mines underlie a part of the town.
+
+After a methodical search, we discovered an excellent restaurant and
+made a note of it as a recurrent possibility. A judicious choice of a
+suitable place in which to eat and eke, to pass the night, is to the
+tramp a matter of vital interest. Robert Louis Stevenson, in those
+entertaining narratives "An Inland Voyage" and "Travels with a Donkey,"
+lays heartfelt stress on these particulars; when things were not to his
+liking, roundly denouncing them, but if agreeably surprised, lifting up
+his voice in song and praise.
+
+Though tempted to pass the night in Grass Valley, impelled by curiosity,
+we pushed on four miles farther, to Nevada City. It is useless to
+attempt to convey in words the fascination of Nevada City. My friend,
+who is familiar with the country, said it reminded him of Italy. Houses
+rise one above the other on the hillside; while down below, the winding
+streets with their quaint old-time stores and balconied windows, are
+equally attractive. The horrors of the previous night at Colfax made the
+quiet peacefulness of Nevada City the more refreshing. At the National
+Hotel I enjoyed the soundest sleep since leaving home.
+
+In the morning there was a delicious breeze from the mountains, which
+rendered strolling about the town a pleasure. According to custom, we
+went our several ways, each drawn by what appealed to him the most at
+the moment. When ready to depart, finding no trace of my companion at
+the hotel, I left word that I had returned to Grass Valley; where an
+hour or two later, he rejoined me.
+
+More fortunate than I, my friend by chance encountered Mr. Morrison M.
+Green, on the street in front of his home upon the hill which looks down
+upon the town. This gentleman, who is in his eighty-third year, related
+an almost incredible incident in connection with the fire in 1857, which
+wiped out the town, with the exception of one house. Three prominent
+citizens who chanced to have met in a saloon when the fire broke out,
+having the utmost confidence in the safety of a certain building, on
+account of its massive walls and iron door, made a vow to lock
+themselves in it, and actually did so. They might perhaps have withstood
+the ordeal, had not the roof been broken in by the fall of the walls of
+the adjoining building. The iron door having been warped with the heat,
+it was impossible to open it; when last seen, they were standing with
+their arms around one another in the center of the store.
+
+At Grass Valley, my friend - greatly to my regret and I think also to
+his own - received word which rendered his return to San Francisco
+imperative. After a farewell dinner at the restaurant before mentioned,
+I accompanied him to the railway station, and in the words of Christian
+in "The Pilgrim's Progress," "I saw him no more in my dream." I confess
+to a feeling of depression after his departure, for however enjoyable
+the experiences of the road, they are rendered doubly so by the
+sympathetic companionship of a man endowed not only with a keen sense of
+humor but also with an unusual perception of human nature.
+
+After registering at the Holbrooke - a substantial survival of the old
+times - I called by appointment on Mr. Ben Taylor, a much respected
+citizen of Grass Valley and probably the oldest inhabitant of Nevada
+County, having reached the patriarchal age of eighty-six.
+
+Mr. Taylor has a charming home with extensive grounds overlooking the
+town and surrounding country. In his garden is a spruce he planted
+himself forty-five years ago, and apple trees of the same age. The
+spruce now has the appearance of a forest tree and shades the whole
+front of the house. His present home was built in 1864 and from all
+appearances should last the century out. He said the lumber was
+carefully selected, the boards being heavier than usual, and all the
+important timbers, instead of being nailed, were morticed and
+dove-tailed. This thoroughness of workmanship accounts for the excellent
+condition of the wooden buildings in these towns, many of which were
+constructed over fifty years ago.
+
+Mr. Taylor came to Grass Valley September 22, 1849, and has lived there
+almost continuously ever since. He crossed the plains one of twenty-five
+men, the last of his companions dying in 1905. The little band suffered
+many hardships, having to be constantly on watch for Indians, though he
+said they were more fearful of the Mormons. They came over the old
+emigrant trail across the Sierra Nevada. When they reached Grass Valley,
+their Captain, a man named Broughton, exclaimed: "Boys! here's the gold;
+this is good enough for us!" And there they stayed, the twenty-five of
+them!
+
+Mr. Taylor had frequently met Mark Twain, but never to his knowledge,
+Bret Harte. In common with other men who had known the Great American
+Humorist, Mr. Taylor smiled at the bare mention of his name. Twain's
+breezy, hail-fellow-well-met manner, combined with his dry humor,
+insured him a welcome at all the camps; he was a man who would "pass the
+time of day" and take a friendly drink with any man upon the road.
+Twain, he told me, and a man with whom he was traveling on one occasion,
+lost their mules. They tracked them to a creek and concluding the mules
+had crossed it, Twain said to his companion: "What's the use of both of
+us getting wet? I'll carry you!" The other complying, Twain reached in
+safety the deepest part of the creek and, purposely or not, dropped him.
+A man, to play such pranks as this, must be sure of his standing in a
+primitive community.
+
+Mr. Taylor is known to everyone in Nevada County as "Ben." His genial
+manner and kindly nature are apparent at a glance. But while Ben Taylor
+was on friendly terms with Mark Twain, he was never so intimate with him
+as with Bayard Taylor, whom, it seems, he much resembled. This
+accidental likeness, combined with the similarity of names, caused many
+more or less amusing but embarrassing complications, since they were
+frequently taken for each other and received each other's
+correspondence.
+
+I asked Ben Taylor - he rightly dislikes "Mister," perhaps the ugliest
+and most inappropriate word in the English language - if the shootings
+and hangings which figure so prominently in the stories of the romancers
+were not exaggerations. He said he certainly was of that opinion. I
+said: "As a matter of fact, did you ever see a man either shot or hung
+for a crime?" "I never did," he replied with emphasis. "But I once came
+across the bodies of several men who had been strung up for
+horse-stealing; that, however, was not in Grass Valley."
+
+Ben Taylor was present when Lola Montez horsewhipped Henry Shibley,
+editor of the Grass Valley National, for what she considered derogatory
+reflections on herself, published in his paper. It can readily be
+understood that Grass Valley was at that time a place of importance,
+when Lola Montez considered it worth while to stay there several years
+and sing and dance for the miners.
+
+In parting, Ben Taylor told me pathetically that his wife had died a few
+years before and he had never recovered from the blow; "I am merely
+marking time until the end comes," he added. Since his married daughter
+and family live with him, he is assured in his latter days of loving
+care and attention.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+
+E. W. Maslin and His Recollections of Pioneer Days In Grass Valley.
+Origin of Our Mining Laws
+
+
+
+To Mr. E. W. Maslin, of Alameda, of whom Ben Taylor said: "He is like a
+brother to me," I am indebted for information of much interest, bearing
+on the olden days and Grass Valley in particular. Mr. Maslin came around
+the "Horn" to California, in the ship Herman, on May 7, 1853. He arrived
+in Grass Valley and went to work as a miner the following morning. He
+now holds, and has for years, the responsible position in the United
+States Custom House, San Francisco, of Deputy Naval Officer of the Port.
+The clearing papers of every vessel that leaves San Francisco bear his
+signature. Although in his eightieth year, his memory is as clear and
+his sense of humor as vivid as when, a youth of nineteen, he left for
+good, Maryland, his native state. Few men in the San Francisco bay
+region are more widely known than he. His ready wit, cheery laugh and
+fund of information - for he is extremely well-read - always insure for
+him an attentive and appreciative audience.
+
+Speaking of Ben Taylor, he told me a characteristic incident, which
+being also typical of the men of '49, I give, with his consent, as
+related. When the White Pine excitement in 1869 started a rush of
+prospectors to Nevada, Mr. Maslin caught the fever with the rest.
+In common with all who dug for gold, he had his ups and downs, the fat
+years and the lean ones; at the time, his fortunes being at a lew ebb,
+he joined the stampede. Several years previous to his departure, without
+informing his wife, he had borrowed of Ben Taylor, three hundred
+dollars, secured by mortgage on his house in Grass Valley. At White Pine
+he met with considerable success, and in a short time sent his wife five
+hundred dollars, telling her for the first time of the mortgage on their
+home and requesting her to go to Ben Taylor at once and pay him in full.
+It so happened that Taylor had called on Mrs. Maslin for news of her
+husband, as she was reading this letter. She immediately tendered him
+the check with the request that he would inform her to what the interest
+amounted. "Why, Molly," said Ben Taylor, "you surely ought to know me
+well enough to know I would never take any interest on that money!" When
+it is remembered that the legal rate of interest at that time was ten
+per cent, and that double that amount was not infrequently paid - Mr.
+Maslin, in fact, expecting to pay Taylor something like five hundred
+dollars - the attitude of the latter will be the better appreciated.
+
+This seems a fitting place to pay a humble personal tribute of respect
+to the memory of the men of "the fall of '49 and the spring of '50." Not
+since the Crusades, when the best blood of Europe was spilt in defense
+of the Holy Sepulchre, has the world seen a finer body of men than the
+Argonauts of California. True, the quest of the "Golden Fleece" was the
+prime motive, but sheer love of adventure for adventure's sake played a
+most important part. Later on, the turbulent element arrived. It was due
+to the rectitude, inherent sense of justice and courage of the pioneers
+that they were held in check and, by force of arms when necessary, made
+to understand the white man's code of honor.
+
+So much in song and story has been said of the scramble for gold in
+the early days after the discovery, and so little attention given to the
+artistic and aesthetic sense of the pioneers, that the general
+impression made by the famous old mining towns of California, when seen
+for the first time, may be worth recording. In the massive stone hotels
+and stores of that period, as well as in the careful construction of
+dwelling houses, they exhibited a true perception of "the eternal
+fitness of things." The buildings of the fifties, in their extreme
+simplicity, are far more imposing than the nondescript, pretentious
+structures of today, and will, beyond doubt, in usefulness outlast them.
+
+As a result of ignoring the checker-board plan, and permitting the
+streets to follow the natural contour of the hills and ravines, these
+mountain towns seem to have become blended and to be in harmony with the
+wonderful setting Nature has provided. All buildings, residential or
+otherwise, are protected from the summer heat by umbrageous trees. Lawns
+of richest green delight the eye, and vines and flowers surround
+cottages perched on steep hillsides, or half-hidden in deep ravines. The
+first glimpse from a distant eminence of any of the old mining towns
+conveys the suggestion of peaceful homes buried in greenery, basking
+contentedly in the brilliant sunshine, surrounded by the whispering
+pines, with the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada for a background.
+
+You also receive the impression of cleanliness. If there were any old
+cans, scraps of paper and miscellaneous rubbish lying about in any town
+through which I passed, I did not notice them. One is struck, too, by
+the absence of the "vacant lot" - that unsightly blot of such frequent
+occurrence in all towns in the process of building, especially when
+forced by "booms" beyond their normal growth. Fortunately the very word
+"boom," in its significance as applied to inflated real estate values,
+has no meaning in these towns, with the result that they are compact.
+One may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses
+were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form,
+cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular
+block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of
+the Old World - a charm that haunts the memory and finally becomes
+permanent acquisition.
+
+However clever the stories of the romancers - of whom Bret Harte
+preeminently stands first - after all, their characters were
+intrinsically but creatures of the imagination; the pioneers were the
+real thing! Yet such is the nature of this topsy-turvy world, the copies
+will remain, whilst the originals will fade away and be forgotten! The
+writer will always hold it a privilege that he had the pleasure of
+meeting in the flesh a remnant of the men who laid the foundation of the
+institutions by means of which this great Commonwealth has grown and
+prospered; big, broad-minded, strong men who, whatever their failings -
+for they were very human - were generous to a fault, ever ready to
+listen to the cry of distress or help a fallen brother to his feet,
+scornful of pettiness, ignorant of snobbery, fair and square in their
+dealings with their fellows. Alas, that it should have come to "Hail and
+Farewell" to such a type of manhood!
+
+At my request, Mr. Maslin, at one time a practicing attorney, dictated
+the following succinct account of the origin of the mining laws of
+California. The discovery at Gold Hill, now within the corporate limits
+of Grass Valley, of a gold-bearing quartz ledge, subsequently the
+property of Englishmen who formed an organization known as "The Gold
+Hill Quartz Mining Company," led to the founding of the mining laws of
+California. On December 30, 1850, the miners passed regulations which
+had with them the force of laws, defining the location and ownership of
+mines. It was provided that claims should be forty feet by thirty feet;
+a recorder was to be elected by the miners and all difficulties arising
+out of trespass on claims were to be tried before the recorder and two
+miners, an appeal to be taken to the justice of the peace.
+
+When quartz lodes began to be discovered and worked, it was found that
+the location of claims by square feet did not protect the miner or
+afford sufficient territory upon which to expend his labor. Accordingly
+a miners' meeting was held in Nevada City on December 20, 1852, and a
+body of laws prescribed, governing all quartz mines within the county of
+Nevada. The following were the salient features: "Each proprietor of a
+quartz claim shall be entitled to one hundred feet on a quartz ledge or
+vein; the discoverer shall be allowed one hundred feet additional. Each
+claim shall include all the dips, angles, and variations of the same."
+The remaining articles related to the working, holding and recording of
+claims. This law was incorporated in the raining legislation of the
+State of Nevada and has formed the basis of the mining laws of each
+territory of the United States. Thus we have a proof not only of the
+intelligence of the early miner, but also of his capacity for
+self-government. It must be remembered that the miners came from all
+over the United States, but principally from the West and the South.
+Probably none had seen a quartz ledge before coming to California, yet
+the necessity for extending a claim as far as the ledge dipped was soon
+perceived, as also the taking into consideration a change in the
+direction or course of the lode. Commenting on these laws and the causes
+leading to their adoption, Mr. Muslin became emphatic. He said:
+
+"No body of rough, uncouth, pistolled ruffians, such as Bret Harte
+depicts the miners, would have formed such a group of benevolent,
+far-reaching and comprehensive laws. The early miner represented the
+best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles,
+enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the long
+journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea;
+undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of
+the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of
+the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which
+distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing
+dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous
+hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. It is another way of stating the
+maxim of law and equity: 'so use your own property, as not to injure
+that of another.'"
+
+Mr. Maslin agrees with Ben Taylor that the hangings and shootings of the
+period following the discovery of gold have been grossly exaggerated. On
+this point he said: "I will venture to assert that in certain of the
+Mississippi Valley States, in their early settlement, more men were
+killed in one year than in ten of the early mining years in California."
+Of lynching, he said: "There were few lynchings in California, and those
+mostly in the southern tier of counties, of persons convicted of
+cattle-stealing." In connection with lynching he related a serio-comic
+incident that occurred in Grass Valley in the early days.
+
+Several fires had taken place in the town and the inhabitants were in
+consequence much excited. A watchman on his rounds espied a light in a
+vacant log cabin, and entering, caught a man in the act of striking a
+match. He arrested him and the populace were for taking summary
+vengeance. A man known as "Blue Coat Osborne" cried out, "Let's hang
+him! Nevada City once hanged a man and Grass Valley never did!" This was
+an effective appeal, for the rivalry that has lasted ever since already
+existed. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed; the man was subsequently
+tried and acquitted, it appearing that he was a traveling prospector who
+had merely entered the cabin in order to light his pipe! In this
+connection, I may state that Mr. Maslin confirmed the story of the three
+friends in Nevada City, who attempted to withstand "the ordeal by fire."
+
+Mr. Maslin is justly jealous for the reputation of the Argonauts.
+Perhaps Bret Harte's miner, with his ready pistol, was as far from the
+mark as Rudyard Kipling's picture of Tommy Atkins as "an absentminded
+beggar" - an imputation the real "Tommy" hotly resented. At the same
+time, such stories as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Tennessee's
+Partner," not to quote others, prove Bret Harte conceded to the miner,
+courage, patience, gentleness, generosity and steadfastness in
+friendship. If Bret Harte really "hurt" California, it was because,
+leaving the State for good in February, 1871, he carried with him the
+atmosphere of the early mining days and never got out of it. He never
+realized the transition from mining to agriculture and horticulture, as
+the leading industries of the State. Thus his later stories which dealt
+with California, written long after the subsidence of the mining
+excitement, continued to convey to the Eastern or English reader an
+impression of the Californian as a bearded individual, his trousers
+tucked into long boots and the same old "red shirt" with the sleeves
+rolled back to the shoulders! As lately - comparatively speaking - as
+the Chicago Columbian Exposition, a lady told me she met at the Fair a
+woman who said she wanted to visit California, and asked if it would be
+safe to do so "on account of the Indians!" While Indians do not appear
+in Bret Harte's pages, it is a safe conjecture that, through association
+of ideas, this lady conjured up a vague vision of a "prairie schooner"
+crossing the plains, harassed by the Indian of the colored prints!
+
+The following picture of the trying of a civil suit under difficulties,
+though in all probability causing little comment at the time, would
+undoubtedly do so at the present day, were the conditions possible. In
+1853 Mr. Maslin owned, with his brother, a one-fifth interest in ten
+gravel claims at Pike Flat near Grass Valley. On the ground of alleged
+imperfection of location of a portion of these claims, they were
+"jumped," and litigation followed.
+
+The case was called before "Si" Brown, a justice of the peace, at Rough
+and Ready, in a building (of which I obtained a photograph) used as a
+hotel and for other purposes. In the long room, now occupied as a store,
+Judge Brown held his court. On the right was a door leading to the bar.
+Extending the whole length of the room were four faro tables. At the
+rear the judge, jury, attorneys and the principals in the lawsuit made
+the best of the accommodations.
+
+After stating the case, Judge Brown thus addressed the gamblers at the
+faro tables: "Boys, the court is now opened, call your games low!" In
+accordance with this request, though still audible, came in a monotonous
+undertone, the faro, dealers' oft-repeated call: "Gents, make your game
+- make your game!" The bets were put down and the cards called, in the
+same subdued voice. At intervals, an attorney on one side or the other
+would arise and say: "I move you, your Honor, that the court do now take
+a recess of ten minutes." The court: "The motion is sustained; but go
+softly, gentlemen, go softly!" It is probably needless to add that
+judge, jury, principals, attorneys and witnesses filed out of the door
+leading to the right; returning in ten minutes to resume the trial to
+the not altogether inappropriate accompaniment from the faro dealers,
+"Make your game, gents, make your game!"
+
+The spirit of rivalry between Grass Valley and Nevada City has been
+accentuated, of late, by the efforts of the former town to secure the
+honor of being the county seat, on the claim that it possesses nearly
+double the population of Nevada City. Politics serve to intensify the
+feeling; Grass Valley, which contains many people of Southern birth,
+being largely Democratic in its affiliations, whilst Nevada City is as
+strongly, and, one may add, as conservatively, Republican.
+
+Possibly the oldest building in Grass Valley is the Western Hotel. It is
+so hidden in the surrounding trees that it was with difficulty I took a
+photograph in which any portion of the hotel itself appeared. In the
+garden stands a splendid English walnut over forty years old; and on the
+porch, the well and pump to which I have before alluded as a
+distinguishing feature of the old-time hostelry, add a quaint and
+characteristic touch.
+
+Grass Valley and Nevada City are nearly three thousand feet above sea
+level. The air, in consequence, is light and pure and the heat seldom
+excessive. It would be difficult, the world over, to find a more
+agreeable or salubrious climate.
+
+It was with genuine regret that I left Grass Valley the following
+morning; not even Sonora possessed for me a stronger attraction. As I
+paused on the summit of the hill, for a farewell view of the town, I
+mentally resolved - the Fates permitting - I would pay another and more
+protracted visit to this land of enchantment.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+
+Grass Valley to Smartsville. Sucker Flat and its Personal Appeal.
+
+
+
+I was heading due west for Smartsville, just across the line in Yuba
+County. In four miles, I came to Rough and Ready, once a famous camp.
+Save for the inevitable hotel, now used in part as a store, there was
+nothing to suggest the cause of its pristine glory or the origin of its
+emphatic designation; today it is simply a picturesque, rural hamlet. In
+Penn Valley, a mile or two farther on, I passed a smashed and abandoned
+automobile, the second wreck I had encountered. I thanked my star I
+traveled afoot; heavy going, it is true, in places, but safe and sure.
+
+Notwithstanding the ubiquity of the autocar, it is still a fact that
+between the man in the car and the man on foot is set an impassable
+gulf. You are walking through a mountainous country, where every bend of
+the road reveals some new charm; absorbed in silent enjoyment of the
+scene, you have forgotten the very existence of the machine, when a
+raucous "honk" jolts you out of your daydream and causes you to jump for
+your life. In a swirl of dust the monster engulfs you, leaving you the
+dust and the stench of gasoline as souvenirs, but followed by your
+anathemas! This doubtless is where the man in the car thinks he has
+scored. Perhaps he has. When the dust on the road has settled and you
+have rubbed it out of your eyes, once more you forget his existence.
+
+But the very speed with which he travels is the reason why the man in
+the car misses nearly all the charm of the country through which he is
+passing. On this tramp I took forty-odd photographs, all more or less of
+historical interest. Riding in an automobile, many of the subjects I
+would not have noticed or, if I had, I would not have been able to bring
+my camera into play. On several occasions I retraced my steps a good
+quarter of a mile, feeling I had lost a landscape, or street scene I
+might never again have the opportunity to behold.
+
+What is of far greater consequence, the man on the road comes into touch
+not only with Nature, but the Children of Nature! In these days,
+automobiles are as thick as summer flies; you cannot escape them even in
+the Sierra foot-hills. No attention is paid them by the country people,
+unless they are in trouble or have caused trouble, which is mostly the
+case. But the man who "hikes" for pleasure is a source of perennial
+interest not unmixed with admiration, especially when walking with the
+thermometer indicating three figures in the shade. To him the small boy
+opens his heart; the "hobo" passes the time of day with a merry jest
+thrown in; the good housewife brings a glass of cold water or milk,
+adding womanlike, a little motherly advice; the passing teamster, or
+even stage-driver - that autocrat of the "ribbons" - shouts a cheery
+"How many miles today, Captain?" or, "Where did yon start from this
+morning, Colonel?" - these titles perhaps due to the battered old coat
+of khaki.
+
+All the humors of the road are yours. In fact, you yourself contribute
+to them, by your unexpected appearance on the scene and the novelty of
+your "make-up," if I may be pardoned the expression. At the hotel bar,
+you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into
+immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant." After dinner, seated on a
+bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the
+nation or of the town - usually the latter - with the man who in the
+morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you
+declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly
+interest are met more than half way.
+
+The early romances, the prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don
+Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than
+narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular -
+perhaps Fielding's masterpiece - is simply the story of a journey from
+London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant.
+In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the
+various characters, thrown together by chance, there assembled. Dickens
+unquestionably derived inspiration from Smollett and Fielding; nor is
+there any doubt but that Harte made a close study of Dickens.
+
+From which preamble we come to the statement; if you would study human
+nature on the road, you must simply go where men congregate and exchange
+ideas. The plots of nearly all Bret Harte's mining stories are thus
+closely associated with the bar-rooms and taverns of the mining towns of
+his day. What would remain of any of Phillpott's charming stories of
+rural England, if you eliminated the bar-room of the village inn? In
+hospitality and generous living, the inns of the mining towns still keep
+up the old traditions. The card room and bar-room are places where men
+meet; to altogether avoid them from any pharisaical assumption of moral
+superiority is to lose the chance of coming in contact with the leading
+citizen, philanthropist, or eccentric character.
+
+In the old romances it must be admitted there is much brawling and heavy
+drinking, as well as unseemliness of conduct. Yet in spite of the fact
+that hotel bars and saloons abound in all the old mining towns, the
+writer throughout his travels and notwithstanding the intense heat, not
+only saw no person under the influence of liquor, but also never heard a
+voice raised in angry dispute. Moderation, decency and a kindly
+consideration for the rights of others seem habitual with these people.
+
+It is fifteen miles from Grass Valley to Smartsville, and I arrived at
+the SmartsviIle Hotel in time for the midday meal. Smartsville has "seen
+better days," but still maintains a cheerful outlook on life. The
+population has dwindled from several thousand to about three hundred. It
+is, however, the central point for quite an extensive agricultural and
+pastoral country surrounding it.
+
+The swinging sign over the hotel bears the legend, "Smartsville Hotel,
+John Peardon, Propr." The present proprietor is named "Peardon," but
+everyone addressed him as "Jim." Having established a friendly footing,
+I said: "Mr. Peardon, I notice the sign over the door reads John
+Peardon. How is it that they all call you 'Jim?'" "Oh," he replied,
+"John Peardon was my father, I was born in this hotel;" - another of the
+numerous instances that came under my observation of the way these
+people "stay where they are put."
+
+John Peardon was an Englishman. The British Isles furnished a very
+considerable percentage of the pioneers, the evidences whereof remain
+unto this day. The swinging signs over the hotels for one; another, the
+prevalence in all the mining towns of Bass's pale ale. You will find it
+in the most unpretentious hotels and restaurants. An Englishman expects
+his ale or beer, as a matter of course, whether at the Equator or at the
+Arctic Circle. When I first arrived in California in 1868, I drifted
+down into the then sheep and cattle country in the lower end of Monterey
+County. An English family living on an isolated ranch sent home for a
+girl who had worked for them in the old country. Upon her arrival, the
+first question she asked was: "How far is it to the church?" The second:
+"Where can I get my beer?" When informed there was no church within a
+hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest
+saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad! Bereft, at
+one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground
+seemed to have given way from under her feet. For her, these two
+particulars comprised the whole of the British Constitution.
+
+Smartsville possessed a sentimental interest for me, for the reason that
+in the sixties my father mined and taught a private school in an
+adjoining camp bearing the derogatory appellation "Sucker Flat." What
+mischance prompted this title will never now be known. In my father's
+time, it contained a population of nearly a thousand persons; and
+judging from the manner in which the gulch and the contiguous flat have
+been torn, scarred, burrowed into and tunneled under, if gold there was,
+most strenuous efforts had been made to bring it to light.
+
+I asked if there was anyone in Smartsville who would be likely to
+remember my father, and was referred by Mr. Peardon to "Bob" Beatty,
+who, he said, had, lived in Smartsville all his life and knew everybody.
+As Mr. Beatty was within a stone's throw, at the Excelsior Store, I had
+no difficulty in finding him. Introducing myself, I asked Mr. Beatty if
+he remembered my father. "To be sure I do," he exclaimed, "I went to his
+school, and," laughing heartily, "well I remember a licking he gave me!"
+He said that among the boys who attended that school, several in after
+years, as men, had become prominent in the history of the State.
+
+Mr. Beatty - now a pleasant, genial gentleman of fifty-two - very kindly
+walked with me to the brow of the hill commanding a view of Sucker Flat,
+and pointed out the exact spot where the school had stood, for not a
+stick or a stone remains to mark the locus of the town - it is simply a
+name upon the map.
+
+I mention this incident as being another proof of the extraordinary hold
+the Sierra foot-hill country has upon the people who were born there, as
+well as upon those who have drifted there by force of circumstances. It
+is forty-six or forty-seven years since my father conducted that school,
+yet I felt so sure from previous experiences there would be in
+Smartsville someone who remembered him, that I determined to include it
+in my itinerary.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+
+Smartsville to Marysville. Some Reflections on Automobiles and "Hoboes"
+
+
+
+Early the next morning I started for Marysville, the last leg in my
+journey, and a long twenty miles distant. I had been dreading the pull
+through the Sacramento Valley, having a lively recollection of my
+experience in the San Joaquin, on leaving Stockton. The day was sultry,
+making the heat still more oppressive. After leaving the foot-hills for
+good, I walked ten miles before reaching a tree, or anything that cast a
+shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized
+there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the
+shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light
+breeze sprang up - the fag end of the trade wind - and, though hot, it
+served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry
+weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one
+hundred miles due north of Stockton - of course, much farther by rail -
+and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the
+cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole
+distance. It is a country to avoid.
+
+About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by
+the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts
+Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly
+offered to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He
+seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I
+prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a
+man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel
+experience, and served to deprive him of further speech. He simply sat
+and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his
+machine.
+
+A sturdy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the
+scene, shouted as he passed: "Why didn't yer ride wid de guy?" I replied
+as before, "Because I prefer to walk;" adding for his benefit, "I've no
+use for autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal
+after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce
+joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this
+fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance
+of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can
+of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing a
+ride - in an autocar, at that - appealed with irresistible force.
+
+To walk in the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine
+tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a
+general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because
+he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible
+onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his
+back that infuriates the average dog, as I have on several occasions
+found to my annoyance. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his whimsical and
+altogether delightful "Travels with a Donkey," thus vents his opinion
+anent the dog question:
+
+"I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear
+more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver and is, besides, supported by
+a sense of duty. If you kill a wolf you meet with encouragement and
+praise, but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the
+domestic affections come clamoring around you for redress. At the end of
+a fagging day, the sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen
+annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and
+respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of the
+clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not
+amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from traveling a-foot.
+I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway or
+sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them."
+
+I confess to a feeling of sympathy with the men we so indiscriminately
+brand with the contemptuous epithet, "hobo." In the first place, the
+road itself, with its accompanying humors and adventures, forms a mutual
+and efficacious bond. How little we know of the "Knights of the Road,"
+or the compelling circumstances that turned them adrift upon the world!
+"All sorts and conditions of men" are represented, from the college
+professor to the ex-pugilist. I have "hit the ties" in company with a
+so-called "hobo" who quoted Milton and Shakespeare by the yard,
+interspersed with exclamations appreciative of his enjoyment of the
+country through which we were passing. And once when on a tramp along
+the coast from San Francisco to Monterey, I fell in at Point San Pedro
+with a professional, who bitterly regretted the coming of the Ocean
+Shore Railway, then in process of construction. "For years," said he, "I
+have been in the habit of making this trip at regular intervals, on my
+way south. I had the road to myself and thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful
+beauty of the scene; but now this railroad has come with its mushroom
+towns, and all the charm has gone. Never again for me! This is my last
+trip!"
+
+I have not the slightest doubt that sheer love of the road - and only a
+tramp knows what those words mean - is the controlling influence which
+keeps fifty per cent of the fraternity its willing slaves. What was
+Senhouse - that most fascinating of Maurice Hewlett's creations - but a
+tramp? A gentleman tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the
+reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply
+because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry
+is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at
+least has poetry in his soul. In a decadent age symbolized by the tango
+and the problem play, it is at least an encouraging sign for the future
+that such a character as Senhouse came to the jaded reader of the erotic
+fiction of the day, as a whiff of sea breeze on a parched plain, and was
+hailed with corresponding delight.
+
+Of course there are "hoboes" and "hoboes," as in any other profession,
+but so far as my experience goes, the "hobo" is an idealist. Of the many
+reasons he has taken to the road, not the least is the freedom from the
+shackles of convention and the "Gradgrind" methods of an utilitarian and
+materialistic age. Nor is he a pessimist. Whatever his trouble, the road
+has eased him of his burden and made him a philosopher.
+
+Thoreau, writing in the middle of the last century, deplores the fact
+that in his day, as now, but few of his countrymen took any pleasure in
+walking, and that very rarely one encountered a person with any real
+appreciation of the beauty of Nature, which if he could but see it, lay
+at his very door. Speaking for himself and companion in his rambles, he
+says: "We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts (Concord,
+Massachusetts) practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at
+least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen
+would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy
+the requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are the capital in
+this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct
+dispensation from Heaven to become a Walker. Ambulator nascitur non fit.
+Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me,
+walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
+lose themselves for half an hour in the woods."
+
+Who is there who walks habitually, who does not know the man who tells
+you of the walks he "used to take?" You have known him, say a dozen
+years. During all that time, to your knowledge, his walks have
+practically been limited by the distance to his office and back from the
+ferry boat. When you urge him for perhaps the twentieth time, to essay a
+tramp with you, he will say he would like to very much, but
+unfortunately so-and-so renders it impossible. And then looking you in
+the eye, he will tell you how much he enjoyed tramps he took, of twenty
+or thirty miles - but that was before you knew him! As if a Walker with
+a big "W," as Thoreau writes the word, would remain satisfied with the
+memory of walks of twenty years ago!
+
+I had heard of the "Marysville Buttes," as one has heard of Madagascar,
+but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest
+surprise of the trip. As I first caught sight of them when within a few
+miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill. I could hardly
+believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated
+peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in
+fact, their bases are only a mile or two from the river. They have every
+indication, even to the unscientific eye, of having been upheaved by
+volcanic action. Perhaps that accounts for the uncanny impression they
+impart.
+
+A walk of twenty-one or two miles without food, in any kind of weather,
+is apt to produce an aching void. My first efforts on reaching
+Marysville were therefore directed to finding the sort of place where I
+could eat in comfort. The emphasis which Robert Louis Stevenson employs
+when upon this most important quest would be amusing were it not also a
+vital problem in your own case. There is nothing humorous per se in
+hunger or thirst; at any rate, not until both are appeased. With the
+black coffee and cigar, you can tip your chair at a comfortable angle
+against the wall, and watching the delicate wreaths of smoke in their
+spiral upward course, previous to final disintegration, smile at the
+persistent energy with which an hour ago you systematically worked the
+town from end to end, anxiously peering in the windows of uninviting
+restaurants until you finally found that little "hole in the wall" for
+which you were looking, with the bottle of Tipo Chianti, the succulent
+chops and the big red tomatoes, in the window. It is always to be found
+if you have the necessary perseverance. The genial Italian proprietor,
+with the innate politeness of his countrymen, will not bore you with
+questions as to where you have come from, whither you are going, or what
+you are walking for, anyway, etc., etc. He accepts you just as you are -
+haversack, camera, big stick and all, hanging them without comment on
+the hook behind your head; while you simply tell him you want a good
+dinner, the best he can give you, but to include the chops, tomatoes and
+Tipo Chianti. With a smile and that artistic flip of the napkin under
+his arm, which only he can achieve, he sets about giving his orders.
+Later on, after a hot bath, a shave and the luxury of a clean shirt,
+feeling at peace with the world and refreshed in body and soul, you set
+out to examine the town in comfort and at your leisure.
+
+In the mining days, Marysville ranked next to San Francisco, Sacramento
+and possibly Stockton, not only in interest but in actual volume of
+business transacted. It was the natural outlet for all the foot-hill
+country tributary to Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Smartsville. There
+the miners outfitted and there, when they had "made their pile," they
+began the process - subsequently completed in Sacramento and San
+Francisco - of reducing it to a negligible quantity. That, of course, is
+merely a reminiscence, but as the center of one of the most prosperous
+grain and fruit-raising sections of the Sacramento Valley, Marysville is
+still a place of considerable importance. The old town is very much in
+evidence; so much so that, in spite of the numerous modern buildings,
+the general effect produced is of age, as age is understood in
+California. I doubt if San Francisco before the fire, or Sacramento
+today, could show as many substantial, solid buildings dating back to
+the fifties.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+
+Bayard Taylor and the California of Forty-Nine. Bret Harte and His
+Literary Pioneer Contemporaries.
+
+
+
+And here in old Marysville, the county seat of Yuba County and situated
+on its extreme western boundary, I ended my tramp, having covered a
+distance of approximately two hundred and fifty miles, exclusive of
+retracements. The ideal time to visit the Sierra foot-hills would be in
+the late Spring or early Autumn. I was compelled to grasp the
+opportunity when it offered or forego the pleasure altogether. Nor is it
+necessary, of course, to walk; the roads, whilst generally speaking not
+classed as good going for automobiles, are at least passable. I was
+surprised at the number of high grade machines in evidence, in all the
+towns of importance mentioned in this narrative. There remains also the
+alternative of a good saddle horse, or, better still, a light wagon with
+camping outfit, thus rendering hotels unnecessary, the elimination of
+which would probably pay the hire of horse and wagon.
+
+Half a century is a long period. You could probably count on the fingers
+of one hand persons now living in the Sierra foot-hills who have any
+recollection of ever having seen Bret Harte. It must also be remembered
+that in the fifties his reputation as an author had not been
+established. Of all that group of brilliant young men who visited the
+mines in early days, which included for a brief space "Orpheus C. Kerr"
+and "Artemus Ward," I can well imagine that Bret Harte attracted the
+least attention. It is extremely doubtful to "my mind if he ever had
+much actual experience of the mining camps. To a man of his vivid
+imagination, a mere suggestion afforded a plot for a story; even the
+Laird's Toreadors, it will be recalled, were commercially successful
+when purely imaginary; he only failed when he subsequently studied the
+real thing in Spain.
+
+Bret Harte was a man who in a primitive community might well escape
+notice. In appearance, manner and training, he was the exact antithesis
+of Mark Twain. He was a student before he was a writer and possessed the
+student's shy reserve. I can well imagine him, a slight boyish figure,
+flitting from camp to camp, wrapped in his own thoughts, keeping his own
+counsel. Yet he alone of that little band, unless you except Mark Twain,
+possessed the divine spark we call "genius." Centuries after the names
+of all the rest are buried in oblivion, Bret Harte's stories of the
+Argonauts in the mining towns of California will remain the classics
+they have already become.
+
+Yet as before stated, when once I got fairly started on the road, the
+pioneers themselves and their worthy descendants absorbed my interest
+and assumed the center of the stage to the exclusion, for the time
+being, of the romancers; who, after all, each in his own fashion,
+depicted only what most appealed to him in the characters of these same
+men and their contemporaries. Bayard Taylor in his interesting work "El
+Dorado," the first edition of which appeared in 1850, thus states his
+opinion of the men of '49:
+
+"Abundance of gold does not always beget, as moralists tell us, a
+grasping and avaricious spirit. The principles of hospitality were as
+faithfully observed in the rude tents of the diggers, as they could be
+by the thrifty farmers of the North and West. The cosmopolitan cast of
+character in California, resulting in the commingling of so many races,
+and the primitive mode of life, gave a character of good-fellowship to
+all its members; and in no part of the world have I ever seen help more
+freely given to the needy, or more ready co-operation in any human
+proposition. Personally, I can safely say that I never met with such
+unvarying kindness from comparative strangers."
+
+That last sentence also spelt the literal truth in my experience. Even
+the dogs were kindly disposed and though I carried, a "big stick,"
+except by way of companionship and as an aid in climbing, I might safely
+have left it at home. And while at times I walked through a wild,
+mountainous and almost deserted country, the idea of possible danger
+never occurred to me. When finally one encountered a human being, he
+invariably proved a courteous, obliging and companionable personage to
+meet.
+
+Bayard Taylor attended in September and the beginning of October, 1849,
+the convention at Monterey, which gave to California its first, and in
+the opinion of many, its best constitution. He closes his review of the
+proceedings with these forceful and prophetic words:
+
+"Thus we have another splendid example of the ease and security with
+which people can be educated to govern themselves. From that chaos
+whence under, a despotism like the Austrian, would spring the most
+frightful excesses of anarchy and crime, a population of freemen
+peacefully and quietly develops the highest form of civil order - the
+broadest extent of liberty and security. Governments, bad and corrupt
+as many of them are, and imperfect as they all must necessarily be,
+nevertheless at times exhibit scenes of true moral sublimity. What I
+have today witnessed has so, impressed me; and were I a believer in
+omens, I would augur from the tranquil beauty of the evening - from the
+clear sky and the lovely sunset hues on the waters of the bay - more
+than all, from the joyous expression of every face I see, a glorious and
+prosperous career for the State of California."
+
+Southern California, by which is understood all of the State south of
+the Tehachapi Mountains, was mostly settled by and is still to a great
+extent the objective point of people from the East and Middle West. Most
+of them came in search of health and brought a competency sufficient for
+their needs. When President Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, visited
+California in 1911, he came over the southern route to Los Angeles.
+Addressing a Pasadena audience he said: "I am much disappointed when I
+see you. I expected to find a highly individualized people, characters
+developed by struggle and mutual effort; but I find you the same people
+we have at home," and more, to the same effect. Subsequently, Governor
+Wilson delivered an address at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, before the
+students of the University of California. At its close, Mr. Maslin
+mounted the stage, a copy of the paper containing the account of the
+Pasadena speech in his hands, and asked the Governor if he was correctly
+reported; to which he replied in the affirmative. "Governor," said Mr.
+Maslin, you came into the State at the wrong gate!" "Gate? gate? - what
+gate?" inquired the Governor. "You should have come through Emigrant
+Gap, through which most of the emigrants from '49 and on entered the
+State. Now, Governor, the people you saw at Pasadena never suffered the
+trials of a pioneer's lite, they are not knit together by the memory of
+mutual struggles and privations. When you come to the State again, come
+through Emigrant Gap. Let me know when you come, and I will introduce
+you to a breed of men the world has never excelled." With the smile with
+which millions have since become familiar, Governor Wilson grasped the
+hand of the pioneer and said: "When I come again, as I feel sure I
+shall, I shall let you know."
+
+The following morning I took the train for my home in Alameda. As I sat
+and meditated on the scenes I had witnessed and the character of the
+people I had met, it was borne in upon me that this had been the most
+interesting as well as enjoyable experience of my life. Already the
+temporary discomforts produced by heat and soiled garments had faded
+into insignificance, and assumed a most trivial aspect when I reviewed
+the journey as a whole. They were part of the game. To again quote
+"Trilby," tramping "is not all beer and skittles." Your true tramp
+learns to take things as he finds them and never to expect or ask or the
+impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour,
+without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod
+through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable
+feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel! And it is
+literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot. I will venture the
+assertion that the long-distance tramper - not even excepting Brother
+Weston - who has not at some time or another suffered from sore heels,
+does not exist. The tramp's feet are his means of locomotion; on their
+condition he bestows an anxiety and care which far surpass that of the
+man in the automobile, with all his complicated machinery to inspect.
+
+Remains then, the memory of the delicious, faint, cool, morning breeze,
+gently stirring the pine needles; the aromatic odor of forest
+undergrowth; the murmur of the stream hurrying down the mountain gorge
+to mingle its pure waters with those of the muddy Sacramento, far away
+in the great valley below; the deep awe-inspiring canons of the
+American, Stanislaus and Mokelumne Rivers; and back of all, the azure
+summits of the Sierra Nevada.
+
+Remains also, the memory of the kindly-disposed, courteous and
+open-hearted inhabitants of the old mining towns. But more forcibly than
+all else combined - for it seems to epitomize the whole - the glamour of
+the towns themselves appeals with an irresistible fascination, that no
+poor words of mine can adequately express.
+
+
+
+Appendix
+
+
+
+Views of the Bret Harte Country
+
+
+
+Here ends A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country by Thomas Dykes
+Beasley. Published by Paul Elder and Company and printed for them at
+their Tomoye Press in the city of San Francisco, under the direction of
+John Swart, in the year Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+******This file should be named attbh10.txt or attbh10.zip******
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
+by Thomas Dykes Beasley
+
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