Chapter I: Front Matter

A TRAMP THROUGH THE BRET HARTE COUNTRY

By Thomas Dykes Beasley

Author of "The Coming of Portola"

With A Foreword 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