A Tramp Through The Bret Harte Country | Page 4

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