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" Possible qua vous ne le voyiez pat, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous entendiez en grenouilles, possible que vous ne vous y entendez point, possible qua vous avez de l'experience, et possible que vous ne soyez qu'un amateur. De toute maniere, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle battra en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du comte de Calaveras.
Nevertheless, it was thought merely prudent, while preparing the papers in the well known case of "The Arcadian Shepherds' Association of Tuolumne versus the Kedron Vine and Fig Tree Growers of Calaveras," that the Colonel should seek with a shotgun the seclusion of his partner's law office in the sylvan outskirts of Rough and Ready for that complete rest and serious preoccupation which Marysville could not afford.
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. From San Andreas my objective point was Placerville, distant about forty-five miles.
" Mon Dieu! repond Smiley, toujours d'un air degage, elle est bonne pour une chose a mon avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du comte de Calaveras. "L'individu reprend la boite, l'examine de nouveau longuement, et la rend a Smiley en disant d'un air delibere: Eh bien! je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille.
Though not the first to see the Mariposa Big Tree grove, he was the first to explore it, after he had heard from a prospector, who had passed through the grove and who gave him the indefinite information, that there were some wonderful big trees up there on the top of the Wawona hill and that he believed they must be of the same kind that had become so famous and well-known in the Calaveras grove farther north.
I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had impressed them. "Ah, it's nice! It's splendid!" they all replied and echoed. "The Bridal Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing to it."
Never since the great earthquake of '52 had Rough-and-Ready been so stirred to its deepest foundations. On the third day the sheriff of Calaveras a quiet, gentle, thoughtful man arrived in town, and passed from one to the other of excited groups, dropping here and there detached but concise and practical information. "Yes, gentlemen, you are right, Mrs.
Murieta and his company rode away from this massacre with thirty thousand dollars in gold-dust and about forty horses as their loot. But the story which Boyce and the other two survivors told turned the mining towns into armed camps; and now Sheriff Charles Ellis of Calaveras County started so fierce a warfare against the bandits that they had to flee the country.
The 'Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' fired the laugh heard round the world. Like Byron, Mark Twain woke one morning to find himself famous. A classic fable, which had once evoked inextinguishable laughter in Athens, was unconsciously re-told in the language of Angel's Camp, Calaveras County, where history repeated itself with a precision of detail startling in its miraculous coincidence.
We spent a day in the Calaveras Grove, rested beneath the "big trees," and rode on horseback through the fallen trunk of one of them. Some vandals sawed off one of the most magnificent specimens twenty feet above the ground, and, on this the owners of the hotel built a little octagonal chapel. The polished wood, with bark for a border, made a very pretty floor.
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