Home Literary Studies IV. "By Way of Angel's ... to Jackass Hill" (January-February 1865)
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IV. "By Way of Angel's ... to Jackass Hill" (January-February 1865)

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IV"By Way of Angels...to Jackass Hill"(January-February 1865)THERE is a gap of four years between Notebooks 3 and 4, a period forwhich no notebooks are known to exist. Following his experience as aMississippi River pilot, Clemens helped form the Marion Rangers in thesummer of 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War. This informal con-nection with the Confederacy is described in "The Private History of aCampaign That Failed." Having had his "taste" of the war, Clemens"stepped out again permanently" and in late July 1861 took advantageof his brother Orion's recent appointment as Nevada territorial secretaryto accompany him West. They arrived in Carson City in mid-August 1861.It was not long before Samuel Clemens caught the mining fever. His lettersof the next months are replete with the details of his own mining endeav-ors in Humboldt and Esmeralda counties and with the statistics of hisirrepressible stock speculations and transactions in "feet." It was fromAurora, Esmeralda County, that in the spring of 1862 he sent his firstpieces to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise over the pen nameJosh. By the summer of that year he was beginning to doubt that he would63
© 2019 University of California Press, Berkeley

IV"By Way of Angels...to Jackass Hill"(January-February 1865)THERE is a gap of four years between Notebooks 3 and 4, a period forwhich no notebooks are known to exist. Following his experience as aMississippi River pilot, Clemens helped form the Marion Rangers in thesummer of 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War. This informal con-nection with the Confederacy is described in "The Private History of aCampaign That Failed." Having had his "taste" of the war, Clemens"stepped out again permanently" and in late July 1861 took advantageof his brother Orion's recent appointment as Nevada territorial secretaryto accompany him West. They arrived in Carson City in mid-August 1861.It was not long before Samuel Clemens caught the mining fever. His lettersof the next months are replete with the details of his own mining endeav-ors in Humboldt and Esmeralda counties and with the statistics of hisirrepressible stock speculations and transactions in "feet." It was fromAurora, Esmeralda County, that in the spring of 1862 he sent his firstpieces to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise over the pen nameJosh. By the summer of that year he was beginning to doubt that he would63
© 2019 University of California Press, Berkeley
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