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.
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