From San Andreas my objective point was Placerville, distant about forty-five miles.  The heat still being excessive, I made the town by easy stages, arriving at noon on the third day.  Mokelumne Hill, ten miles beyond San Andreas, also lends its name to the little town which clusters around its apex and is at the head of Chili Gulch, a once famous bonanza for the placer miners.  For miles the road winds up the gulch, which is almost devoid of timber, amid piled-up rocks and debris, bleached and blistered by the sun’s fierce rays; the gulch itself being literally stripped to “bedrock.”  I had already witnessed many evidences of man’s eager pursuit of the precious metal, but nothing that so conveyed the idea of the feverish, persistent energy with which those adventurers in the new El Dorado had struggled day and night with Nature’s obstacles, spurred on by the auri sacra fames.

A little incident served to relieve the monotony of the climb up Chili Gulch.  A miner, who might have sat for a study of “Tennessee’s Partner,” came down the hillside with a pan of “dirt,” which he carefully washed in a muddy pool in the bed of the gulch.  He showed me the result, a few “colors” and sulphurets.  He said it would “go about five dollars to the ton,” and seemed well satisfied with the result.  I shall always hold him in grateful memory, for he took me to an old tunnel, and disappearing for a few moments, returned with a large dipper of ice-cold water.  Not the Children of Israel, when Aaron smote the rock in the desert and produced a living stream, could have lapped that water with keener enjoyment.

The terrific heat in Chili Gulch made the shade from the trees which surround Mekolumne Hotel doubly grateful.  Mokelumne Hill is, in fact, a mountain, and commands a view of rare beauty.  At its base winds the wooded canon of the Mokelumne River, on the farther side of which rises the Jackson Butte, an isolated peak with an elevation of over three thousand feet, while in the background loom the omnipresent peaks of the far Sierra.

The Mokelumne Hotel is regarded as modern, dating back merely to 1868, at which time the original building was destroyed by fire.  The present structure of solid blocks of stone, should resist the elements for centuries to come.  I was surprised at the excellent accommodations of this hotel.  In what seemed such an out-of-the-way and inaccessible locality, I was served with one of the best meals on the whole journey, including claret with crushed ice in a champagne glass!  What that meant to a tramp who had struggled for miles through quartz rock and impalpable dust, up a heavy grade, without shade and the thermometer well past the hundred mark, only a tramp can appreciate.  I fell in love with Mokelumne Hill and, after due consultation of my map, resolved to pass the night in this picturesque and delightful spot.  I was also influenced by its associations, as it figures prominently in Bret Harte’s stories.