Beautiful but Poor — page 210: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BEAUTIFUL BUT POOR. 201 companied on piano and guitar, he thought that if young Porchet could be so blind to those attractions, he was indeed true to the love he left behind him. The next morning’ Mr. W——, with an old moun- tain man for a guide, on a sure-footed mule, with two others in the train carrying provisions and — stores, started on the perilous journey. All day, creeping slowly along narrow trails, now on a ledge barely wide enough for the mule-path, overhanging the wild rushing river a thousand feet below—then pressing through chaparral so thick the animals could just get ahead—now shivering just below the snow range on a wind-swept ridge, then pitching down into a mining gulch full of busy men all grimy with yellow dirt—on they went the entire ‘day long, halting but an hour at noon to give the mules a little barley and themselves a scanty lunch. That night they camped in a grove of tall sugar pines, a little way back from the river, and over the camp-fire Mr. W—— listened to thrilling stories of what California life was in ’49, when every one who came was mad with the greed for gold—when vice and crime ran hand in hand, life only held by the pistol-grip or knife-point, and property held more by might than right. Early next day they were on the move up stream, now obliged to follow the river bank as near as pos- ° sible, for the snowy range of the Sierra Nevada rose high above their heads. At noon they came toa lonely little valley, not two acres in extent, shaded at one end by half a dozen trees and a huge overhanging precipice. Here two fat, sleek mules fed undisturbed, and as they rode up near them, the guide pointed to a pack (ele) comicbooks