HOPE CANYON, CALIFORNIA, October 3, 1900
You have a right to complain. "A letter a year" is a paucity; I freely
acknowledge it; but how can one write when there is nothing to write
about but failures? No one can keep it up; it breaks the heart,

I told you--it seems ages ago, now--how I missed him at Melbourne, and
then chased him all over Australasia for months on end.

Well, then, after that I followed him to India; almost saw him in Bombay;
traced him all around--to Baroda, Rawal-Pindi, Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore,
Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras--oh, everywhere; week after week, month after
month, through the dust and swelter--always approximately on his track,
sometimes close upon him, get never catching him. And down to Ceylon,
and then to--Never mind; by and by I will write it all out.

I chased him home to California, and down to Mexico, and back again to
California. Since then I have been hunting him about the state from the
first of last January down to a month ago. I feel almost sure he is not
far from Hope Canyon; I traced him to a point thirty miles from here, but
there I lost the trail; some one gave him a lift in a wagon, I suppose.

I am taking a rest, now--modified by searchings for the lost trail. I
was tired to death, mother, and low-spirited, and sometimes coming
uncomfortably near to losing hope; but the miners in this little camp are
good fellows, and I am used to their sort this long time back; and their
breezy ways freshen a person up and make him forget his troubles. I have
been here a month. I am cabining with a young fellow named "Sammy"
Hillyer, about twenty-five, the only son of his mother--like me--and
loves her dearly, and writes to her every week--part of which is like me.
He is a timid body, and in the matter of intellect--well, he cannot be