A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country Part 4

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 a.s.sociation of ideas, this lady conjured up a vague vision of a "prairie schooner"

crossing the plains, hara.s.sed 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 Gra.s.s 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 princ.i.p.als 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, princ.i.p.als, 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 Gra.s.s 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; Gra.s.s 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 Gra.s.s 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.

Gra.s.s 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 Gra.s.s 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

Gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 impa.s.sable 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 pa.s.sing. 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" pa.s.ses the time of day with a merry jest thrown in; the good housewife brings a gla.s.s of cold water or milk, adding womanlike, a little motherly advice; the pa.s.sing teamster, or even stage-driver--that autocrat of the "ribbons"--shouts a cheery "How many miles today, Captain?" or, "Where did you start from this morning, Colonel?"--these t.i.tles 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sociated with inns and the various characters, thrown together by chance, there a.s.sembled. d.i.c.kens unquestionably derived inspiration from Smollett and Fielding; nor is there any doubt but that Harte made a close study of d.i.c.kens.

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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sumption 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 Gra.s.s Valley to Smartsville, and I arrived at the Smartsville 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 Ba.s.s'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 Const.i.tution.

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 t.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 f.a.g 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 pa.s.sed him some twenty yards before he started his machine.

A st.u.r.dy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the scene, shouted as he pa.s.sed: "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 l.u.s.ty 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 f.a.gging 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sing. 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 Sh.o.r.e 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.

Th.o.r.eau, 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, Ma.s.sachusetts) practiced this n.o.ble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own a.s.sertions 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 G.o.d. 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 Th.o.r.eau writes the word, would remain satisfied with the memory of walks of twenty years ago!

I had heard of the "Marysville b.u.t.tes," 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 Gra.s.s 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 quant.i.ty. 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 Francis...o...b..fore the fire, or Sacramento today, could show as many substantial, solid buildings dating back to the fifties.