August 7 Thursday – Sam vacillated, hating to admit failure as a miner. He wrote from Aurora to Orion, telling him of Barstow’s offer of $25 week as a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise. Sam decided to think on the matter. His decision shaped the course of his life.
My Dear Bro:
Barstow wrote that if I wanted the place I could have it. I wrote him that I guessed I would take it, and asked him how long before I must come up there. I have not heard from him since.
Now I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and on foot for a walk of 60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that mail facilities may prove infernally “slow” during the few weeks I expect to spend out there. But do you write Barstow that I have left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me he must write me here, or let me know through you. You see I want to know something about that country out yonder.
The Contractors say they will strike the Fresno next week. After fooling with those assayers a week, they concluded not to buy “M. Flower” at $50, although they would have given five times the sum for it four months ago. So I have made out a deed for one-half of all Johnny’s ground and acknowledged and left it in Judge F. K. Bechtel’s hands, and if Judge Turner wants it he must write to Bechtel and pay him his Notary fee of $1.50. I would have paid that fee myself, but I want money now as I leave town to-night. However, if you think it isn’t right, you can pay the fee to Judge Turner yourself.
Hang to your money now. I may want some when I get back.
Col. Youngs sends his regards, & says he will have our census completed & send up to you to-morrow, & we ought to have a larger representation—although the law said census must be taken in May—but he couldn’t help it, d—n’em they wouldn’t run the line.
Yes, I will scrape up some specimens—have got a lot—but they’re a d—d nuisance about a cabin. I picked up some splendid agates & such things, but I expect they are all lost by this time.
No—I shan’t pay Upton—just yet.
See that you keep out of debt—to anybody[.]Bully for Bunker. Write him that I would write him myself, but I am to take a walk to-night & haven’t time. Tell him to bring his family out with him. He can rely upon what I say—and I say the land has lost its ancient desolate appearance; the rose and the oleander have taken the place of the departed sage-brush; a rich black loam, garnished with moss, and flowers, and the greenest of grass, smiles to Heaven from the vanished sand-plains; the “endless snows” have all disappeared, and in their stead—or to repay us for their loss, the mountains rear their billowy heads aloft, crowned with a fadeless and eternal verdure; birds, and fountains, and trees—tropical trees—everywhere!—and the poet dreampt of Nevada when he wrote:
“—and Sharon waves, in solemn praise,
Her silent groves of palm.”
and to-day the royal Raven stands on a fragrant carcass and listens in a dreamy stupor to the songs of the thrush and the nightingale and the canary—and shudders when the gaudy-plumaged birds of the distant South sweep by him to the orange groves of Carson. Tell him he wouldn’t recognise the d—d country. He should bring his family by all means.
I intended to write home, but I haven’t done it.
Yr. Bro. Sam.
P. S. Put the enclosed slips in my scrap book. [MTL 1: 233]. Note: the two lines of poem from “Calm on the listening ear of night” (1834) by Edmund Hamilton Sears. The scrapbook mentioned is lost. Frederick K. Bechtel (b.1823) commissioner of deeds for Nevada Terr. Benjamin B. Bunker, attorney general of Nevada Terr.
Arthur B. Perkins, (1891-1977) the “first historian” of the Santa Clarita Valley, puts forth a theory about Sam’s wanderings during this week. Perkins claims to have seen a stagecoach entry made at Lyon’s Station, the nearest stage stop to Soledad Canyon, some fifty miles north of Los Angeles, where a gold discovery had just been made. This would have Sam traveling 600 miles round trip, which is possible, but less likely. The stagecoach entries have not survived, but such theories about Sam’s “Long Walk” have [Lennon 17].
Sam sold his mining interests to Judge George Turner. From a Christie’s sale (Lot 59 Sale 8444; May 17, 1996; avail. Online) a document written and signed by Samuel Clemens:
By this indenture “Samuel L. Clemens of Mono Co., Cal.,” agrees to sell to “George Turner, of Carson City, Nevada Territory” for $1,000 his interests in “certain veins or lodes of rock containing precious metals…gold and silver bearing quartz, rock and earth therein.” In the blank space provided Clemens has carefully listed the shares (measured by feet) in 15 different claims (the names of which reflect the geographic origin of the prospectors): “Fifty (50) feet in the Sciola; 62 ½ in “Ottawa;” Fifty (50) in the “Allamoocha”; 6 ¼ in 1 st Ex. S. “Winnomucca;” 25 feet in the “Tom Thumb;” 50 in the “Fresno;” 12 ½ feet in the “Horatio;” 100 feet in the 1 st N.E.Ex. Fresno;” 50 feet in the “Rosetta;” 100 in the “Potomac;” 12 ½ in the “Daniel Boone”; 12 ½ feet in the “Boston”; 12 ½ in the “Great Mogul;” 12 ½ in the “Long Island;” 25 feet in the “Mountain Flower.” [See also MTL 1: 233n4 and 235n2.]