of his brief unhappy relations with her. Since they made a turning point in his career and introduced into his poetry additional "Byronic" notes, let us have an abridgement of his own version of the affair as set forth in Memorie and Rime:
When I came down from the mountains and embarked in journalism, she wrote to me, and her letters grew ardent and full of affection. Then I mounted my horse and rode hundreds of miles through the valleys and over the mountains, till I came to the sea, at Port Orford, then a flourishing mining town, and there first saw "Minnie Myrtle." Tall, dark, and striking in every respect, . . . this first Saxon woman I had ever addressed had it all her own way at once. She knew nothing at all of my life, except that I was an expressman and country editor. I knew nothing at all of hers, but I found her with kind, good parents, surrounded by brothers and sisters, and the pet and spoiled child of the mining and lumber camp. . . . The heart of the bright and merry girl was brimming full of romance, hope, and happiness. I arrived on Thursday. On Sunday next we were married! Oh, to what else but ruin and regret could such romantic folly lead?
"Procuring a horse for her"—for she, too, was an excellent and daring rider—"we set out at once to return to my post, far away over the mountains." After a week's ride, the bridal couple reached their intended home in Eugene, "but only to find that my paper had been suppressed by the Government, and we resolved to seek our fortunes in San Francisco.
