Here I had the pleasure of an interview with Mr. John Neal, a prominent and respected citizen of Tuolumne County, who as Commissioner represented his county at the San Francisco Midwinter Fair.  Mr. Neal is over eighty, but still hale and hearty.  He was the first person I had thus far encountered who had known Bret Harte in the flesh.  He had also known and frequently met Mark Twain, “Dan de Quille” and Prentice Mulford.  Of the four, it was evident that Mulford had left by far the most lasting as well as favorable impression on his mind.  Of him he spoke in terms of real affection.  “Prentice Mulford,” he said, “was a brilliant, very handsome and most lovable young man.”  I asked him how these young men were regarded by the miners.  He said:  “In all the camps they were held to be in a class by themselves, on account of their education and literary ability.  Although they wore the rough costume of the miners, it was realized that none of them took mining seriously or made any pretense of real work with pick and shovel.”  Mr. Neal knew James Gillis intimately and admitted he was a great story-teller.  In fact, at the bare mention of his name he broke into a hearty laugh.  “Oh, Jim Gillis, he was a great fellow!” he exclaimed.  He said unquestionably Mark Twain got a good deal of material from him, and feels certain that Bret Harte must have met him at least on several occasions.  Mr. Neal stated that up to the time of the Midwinter Fair, the output of gold from Tuolumne county reached the astonishing figures of $250,000,000!  What it has amounted to since that time, I had no means of ascertaining.

It is only twelve miles from Sonora to Tuolumne.  From the top of the divide which separates the valleys there is a beautiful view of the surrounding country, the dim blue peaks of the Sierra Nevada forming the eastern sky-line.  One of the chief charms of an excursion through these foothill counties is the certainty that directly you reach any considerable elevation there will be revealed a magnificent panorama, bounded only by the limit of vision, range after range of mountains running up in varying shades of blue and purple, to the far distant summits that indicate the backbone of California.

Tuolumne is situated in a circular basin rather than in a valley, and thus being protected from the wind, in hot weather the heat is intense.  If there are any mining operations in the immediate vicinity, they are not in evidence to the casual observer.  It is, however, one of the biggest timber camps in the State.  In the yards of the West Side Lumber Company, covering several hundred acres, are stacked something like 30,000,000 feet of sugar pine.  The logs are brought from the mountains twenty to twenty-five miles by rail, and sawn into lumber at Tuolumne.  I was told that the bulk of the lumber manufactured here was shipped abroad, a great deal going to Australia.