A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country

se. Ruins of Coloma. James W.

the olden times. "John Oakhurst" and "Jack Hamlin" would

e 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

sisted 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

vention in Placerville;" in which Mr. Bradley is depicted in earnest conversation with a second Mr. Bradley, a third and ev

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

r three hundred miles for pleasure! Beyond the trivial necessities that bare existence makes imperative, I was not conscious of seeing anyone do any

runette, 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 love

reat canon of the South Fork of the American River. Hastening down the grade, in a bend of the road I almost ran into my fr

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

as 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

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

sad reflection that a tithe of the money spent on the monument would have comforted him in his latter days; for t

of Marshall's pension. To common with the majority of the old miners, he saved nothing and nev

y 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 place

olated wooden building. The ruins, however, are not only exceedingly picturesque, being half buried in foliage of beau

he 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 co