Main Street, Sonora, "So Shaded by Trees That Buildings Are Half-hidden" Sonora, Looking Southeast. "No Matter From What Direction You Approach It, Sonora Seems to Lie Basking in the Sun" Main Street, San Andreas, "During the Mid-day Heat, Almost Deserted" Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas; in the Bar-room of Which Occurred the "Jumping Frog" Incident Mokelumne Hotel, on the Summit of Mokelumne Hill, and at the Head of the Famous Chili Gulch Placerville, the County Seat of El Dorado County, From the Road to Diamond Springs The Cary House, Placerville. "It Was Here That Horace Greeley Terminated His Celebrated Stage Ride With Hank Monk" Middle Fork of the American River, Near Auburn, and Half a Mile Above Its Junction With the North Fork An Apple Orchard, Grass Valley, "The Trees Growing in the Grass, as in England and the Atlantic States" The Western Hotel, Grass Valley. "The Well and Pump Add a Quaint and Characteristic Touch" A Bit of Picturesque Nevada City, Embracing the Homes of Its Leading Citizens Foreword In California's imaginary Hall of Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems published fifty years ago made California well known the world over and gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw the picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is unaccountable if we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His imagination gave him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied colors and rare literary skill painted the picture. His capacity for absorption was marvelous. At the age of about twenty he spent less than a year in the foot-hills of the Sierras, among pioneer miners, and forty-five years of literary output did not exhaust his impressions. He somewhere refers to an "eager absorption of the strange life around me, and a photographic sensitiveness," to certain scenes and