December 4 Sunday – Sam left San Francisco with James Gillis for Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County, Ca., some one hundred miles east of San Francisco. They boarded a San Joaquin steamer for Stockton, and from there went on by stagecoach to “that serene and reposeful and dreamy and delicious sylvan paradise” (Jackass gulch) [Sanborn 256]. Brother Billy Gillis, then 23, waited there for them. Steve Gillis, finding no way to reconcile with Emeline Russ, returned to Virginia City. Before leaving Sam must have sold some or all of the Norcross mining stock, as he later wrote to James Gillis, Steve’s brother, “I took $300 with me.” He would be away from San Francisco for twelve weeks. Jackass Hill was named after its day as a pack-train stop about 1848 [Sanborn 254-5; Rasmussen 250]. Paine in 1912, and others since, have claimed the story about Steve Gillis being in trouble with the law for a barroom brawl was the impetus for Sam’s departure from San Francisco, but Sanborn claims no court or newspaper records of such a brouhaha exist, and that had Sam and friend Gillis been involved in such a fracas their rival reporters would surely have made news of it. Sam still harbored dreams of striking it rich. Jim Gillis told Sam about pocket mines and that he was ready to return to the hills [Sanborn 255]. Note: Benson gives this as also the day of Sam’s arrival [123].