I had heard of the “Marysville Buttes,” as one has heard of Madagascar, but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest surprise of the trip.  As I first caught sight of them when within a few miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill.  I could hardly believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in fact, their bases are only a mile or two from the river.  They have every indication, even to the unscientific eye, of having been upheaved by volcanic action.  Perhaps that accounts for the uncanny impression they impart.

A walk of twenty-one or two miles without food, in any kind of weather, is apt to produce an aching void.  My first efforts on reaching Marysville were therefore directed to finding the sort of place where I could eat in comfort.  The emphasis which Robert Louis Stevenson employs when upon this most important quest would be amusing were it not also a vital problem in your own case.  There is nothing humorous per se in hunger or thirst; at any rate, not until both are appeased.  With the black coffee and cigar, you can tip your chair at a comfortable angle against the wall, and watching the delicate wreaths of smoke in their spiral upward course, previous to final disintegration, smile at the persistent energy with which an hour ago you systematically worked the town from end to end, anxiously peering in the windows of uninviting restaurants until you finally found that little “hole in the wall” for which you were looking, with the bottle of Tipo Chianti, the succulent chops and the big red tomatoes, in the window.  It is always to be found if you have the necessary perseverance.  The genial Italian proprietor, with the innate politeness of his countrymen, will not bore you with questions as to where you have come from, whither you are going, or what you are walking for, anyway, etc., etc.  He accepts you just as you are — haversack, camera, big stick and all, hanging them without comment on the hook behind your head; while you simply tell him you want a good dinner, the best he can give you, but to include the chops, tomatoes and Tipo Chianti.  With a smile and that artistic flip of the napkin under his arm, which only he can achieve, he sets about giving his orders.  Later on, after a hot bath, a shave and the luxury of a clean shirt, feeling at peace with the world and refreshed in body and soul, you set out to examine the town in comfort and at your leisure.

In the mining days, Marysville ranked next to San Francisco, Sacramento and possibly Stockton, not only in interest but in actual volume of business transacted.  It was the natural outlet for all the foot-hill country tributary to Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Smartsville.  There the miners outfitted and there, when they had “made their pile,” they began the process — subsequently completed in Sacramento and San Francisco — of reducing it to a negligible quantity.