From Sacramento, "They steamed inland on the Flora to Marysville on the Feather River..." (pg 356 Scharnhorst V1)
From Marysville, "They then took a stage to Grass Valley..."
Scharhorst reports that Twain spent the night in Meadow Lake, a mining camp where Orion had previously lived. It is currently a ghost town on the map called Summit City.
Stagecoach service from Carson and Virginia City is generally associated with the Wells Fargo Company. By the end of 1866 they did own most if not all the routes across the Sierra Nevada mountains. There had been three other lines operating but were all absorbed. In 1864 Wells Fargo purchased the very popular and well-equipped Pioneer Stage Line but operated it as a wholly-owned subsidiary using the Pioneer name. Pioneer, in 1865, purchased the California Stage Company that had a route north of Lake Tahoe by way of Lake City, Nevada City, Grass Valley, Lincoln and Sacramento, with a connection to Marysville. Langton’s Pioneer Express and Stage Line ran from Virginia City to Nevada City and Marysville by way of Henness Pass. This line was purchased by Wells Fargo in 1865. There was also the Pacific Stage and Express Company, operating from Virginia City via Truckee Meadows, Crystal Peak, Nevada City, Grass Valley, Auburn and Newcastle into Sacramento.
The history of Northern California Stagecoach travel began in 1851 when James Birch was granted a government contract to carry mail between Sacramento and Nevada City. Also, in 1851, Frank Stevens founded the Pioneer Line to operate between Sacramento and Placerville.
Clemens, who was traveling with his friend and lecture manager Denis E. McCarthy (“Mac”), had delivered his Sandwich Islands lecture in You Bet (Nevada County, California) on 25 October, and planned to lecture next in Virginia City, Nevada. En route, they stopped in Meadow Lake (Nevada County) on 26 October and remained overnight, traveling south early the next morning to Cisco (formerly Heaton Station, Placer County). From there they took the Pioneer stage to Virginia City, arriving that same evening. Mark Twain Project
It should be noted that in attempting to plot the stage coach route over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I used USGS kmz formatted topographic maps from 1891 and 1892 that show roads that, to my eye, best follow routes through this treacherous terrain. From north of Meadow Lake to Verdi, in Nevada, is the primary freight route of the day, the Henness Pass road.
Intro at Red Dog: Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall not waste any unnecessary time in the introduction. I don't know anything about this man; at least I know only two things about him; one is that has never been in the Penitentiary, and another is that I can't image why.
Be them your natural tones of eloquence?
From page 356-7: The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835-1871
From Sacramento Sam and his front man headed east to the interior mining towns, They steamed inland on the Flora to Marysville on the Feather River—Sam thought it was “the most generally well built town in California’—where he “gave the best satisfaction” to “a very respectable audience” on the evening of October 15, They then took a stage to Grass Valley for a performance on October 20. The town reminded Sam “of Virginia [City] in her palmy days,” particularly because he met “a great many old time Washoe miners,’ some of whom were “doing remarkably well.”
...
Between October 23 and 25 Sam spoke in Nevada City, California, and in two decaying but nearby mining camps, Red Dog and You Bet. He publicized the first of these three lectures in the Nevada City, California,...
Sam and McCarthy spent that night in Meadow Lake, the mining camp where his brother Orion had formerly lived, though Sam did not lecture there. It would not have paid. “Meadow Lake is the prettiest site for a town I know of,” he reported in the San Francisco Bulletin.
and the town already built there is the wildest exemplar of the spirit of speculation I have ever stumbled upon. Here you find Washoe recklessness and improvidence repeated: A lot of highly promising but unprospected ledges, and behold! on such guarantees as these they have built a handsome town and painted it neatly, and planned wide, long streets, and got ready for a rush of business, and then—jumped aboard the stage coaches and deserted it! . . . Here is a really handsome town, built of two-story frame houses—a town capable of housing 3,000 persons with ease, and how many inhabitants has it got? A hundred! You can have a house all to yourself merely by promising to take care of it... . One man has even had the temerity to build a large, handsome dressed stone house, at great expense. A bright, new, pretty town, all melancholy and deserted, and yet showing not one sign of decay or dilapidation! I never saw the like before.