[6] A Phyllis of the Sierras.
[7] Pemberton’s “Life of Bret Harte,” page 102.
[8] Side-meat is the thin flank of a pig, cured like a ham. It was the staple article of food in the Southwest.
[9] This poem is included in the author’s collected poems under the title, The Return of Belisarius.
[10] Bret Harte in the General Introduction to his works.
[11] The proof-sheets of the Heathen Chinee are preserved in the University of California, and they show many changes in Bret Harte’s writing. See “Bret Harte’s Country,” an interesting illustrated article by Will. M. Clemens, in “The Bookman,” vol. xiii, p. 224.
[12] The Society upon the Stanislaus first appeared in the “News Letter.”
[13] See Hittell’s “History of California.” This book, the best and fullest on the subject, contains ample evidence of our author’s accuracy.
[14] A Forty-Niner, as defined by the California Society of Pioneers, is an immigrant who, before midnight of December 31, 1849, was within the State of California, or on shipboard within three miles of the coast, that being the extent of the maritime jurisdiction of the State.
[15] There was, however, a miner of seventy at Sonoma who had left a wife and six children at home in the East; and on October 1, 1850, there arrived in Sacramento a veteran of the Revolutionary War, ninety years of age. He had come all the way from Illinois to seek the fortune which fate had hitherto denied him. Unfortunately, he was so feeble that it became necessary to send him to a hospital, and history does not record his subsequent career, if indeed he survived to have one.