On account of the great heat that even the dry purity of the Sierra atmosphere could not altogether mitigate, I decided the next day to be content with reaching San Andreas, the county seat of Calaveras County, fifteen miles north of Angel’s.

Apart from its name, there is something about San Andreas that suggests Mexico, or one’s idea of pastoral California in the early days of the American occupation.  The streets are narrow and unpaved and during the midday heat are almost deserted.  Business of some sort there must be, for the little town, though somnolent, is evidently holding its own; but there seems to be infinite time in which to accomplish whatever the necessities of life demand.  And I may state here parenthetically, that perhaps the most impressive feature of all the old California mining towns is their suggestion of calm repose.  Each little community seems sufficient unto itself and entirely satisfied with things as they are.  Not even in the Old World will you find places where the current of life more placidly flows.

On the main street — and the principal street of all these towns is “Main Street” — I had the good fortune to be introduced to Judge Ira H. Reed, who came to Calaveras County in 1854, and has lived there ever since.  He told me that Judge Gottschalk, who died a few years ago at an advanced age, was authority for the statement that Mark Twain got his “Jumping Frog” story from the then proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas, who asserted that the incident actually occurred in his bar-room.  Twain, it is true, places the scene in a bar-room at Angel’s, but that is doubtless the author’s license.  Bret Harte calls Tuttletown, “Tuttleville,” and there never was a “Wingdam” stage.

That evening as I lay awake in my bedroom at the Metropolitan Hotel, wondering by what person of note it had been occupied in the “good old days,” my attention was attracted to the musical tinkle of a cow-bell.  Looking out of the window, I beheld the strange spectacle of a cow walking sedately down the middle of the street.  No one was driving her, no one paid her any attention beyond a casual glance, as she passed.  The cow, in fact, had simply come home, after a day in the open country; and it became plain to me that this was a nightly occurrence and therefore caused no comment.  Unmolested, she passed the hotel and on down the street to the foot of the hill, where she evidently spent the night; for the tinkle of the bell became permanent and blended with and became a part of the subtle, mysterious sounds that constitute Nature’s sleeping breath.

This little incident in the county seat of Calaveras County impressed me as an epitome of the changes wrought by time, since the days when in song and story Bret Harte made the name “Calaveras” a synonym for romance wherever the English language is spoken.