August 19 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Steamboat Springs, Nevada Territory, to his mother, and sister Pamela, sending another $20 greenback [MTL 1: 263]. “Letter from Mark Twain” dated Aug.18 ran in the Enterprise [Smith 66].

I must have led a gay life at Lake Bigler, for it seems a month since I flew up there on the Pioneer coach, alongside of Hank Monk, the king of stage drivers. But I couldn’t cure my cold. I was too careless. I went to the lake (Lake Bigler I must beg leave to call it still, notwithstanding, if I recollect rightly, it is known among sentimental people as either Tahoe Lake or Yahoo Lake — however, one of the last will do as well as the other, since there is neither sense nor music in either of them), with a voice like a bull frog, and by indulging industriously in reckless imprudence, I succeeded in toning it down to an impalpable whisper in the course of seven days. I left there in the Pioneer coach at half-past one on Monday morning, in company with Mayor Arick, Mr. Boruck and young Wilson (a nice party for a Christian to travel with, I admit), and arrived in Carson at five o’clock — three hours and a half out. As nearly as I can estimate it, we came down the grade at the rate of a hundred miles an hour; and if you do not know how frightfully deep those mountain gorges look, let me recommend that you go, also, and skim along their edges at the dead of night [Smith 68-70].

The Enterprise ran another “Letter from Mark Twain” datelined “Steamboat Springs, Nevada Territory, August 18, 1863” [Camfield bibliog.].