Mining Jackass Hill: Day By Day

January and February – Sam’s fourth known notebook, and the first that might be called a “writer’s notebook,” was written during these months. The notebook contained a great amount of literary material that would be immediately useful in the Jumping Frog story, but also material that would later appear in Roughing It, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and others [MTNJ 1: 66-7].

December, late – Just after Christmas, Sam and Jim Gillis set out on foot over the hills to Vallecito, Calif., an old mining town [Sanborn 257].

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"It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was