Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 118, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1911 — POET OF SIERRAS NEARING END [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POET OF SIERRAS NEARING END

Although foaquin Miner, “the poet of the Sierras,” bo far recovered from a recent Illness which threatened to prove fatal that he was able to return with his wife and daughter to his home on the heights overlooking Oakland and San Francisco bay, yet his friends entertain little hope that he will ever be fully restored to health. He is now In his seventieth year. Previous to his last illness be had been separated from his wife for thirty years, but the danger of his death happily reunited them, and now the aged poet Is spending the remainder of his days amid his well beloved bills, on the spot where he has created a characteristic home, called The Heights. His massive frame has weakened, his once keen eyes are dim, his flowing hair and beard are white, and the physicians who have climbed the wooded hills to minister to him declare there is little if any hope—that it is merely a matter of a few weeks when Joaquin Miller will have been gathered to his fathers. His ashes, according to his wish, will be scattered to the winds from the pyre in the hills back of The Heights, which marks the last resting place of his daughter, Maud, who died several years ago. The reunion with his wife may prolong his days, and the care that his other daughter, Juanita, bestows upon him may build up his withered strength a little, but there is hardly more than a shell for them to nurse. Perhaps no more picturesque figure is extant in the literary history of California and the west than Joaquin Milter. He is a distinct type, seemingly inseparable from the environment In which he has lived these twenty years or more. He has fathered inspiration from the rolling, green hills, from the ruddy sunsets, from the bine Pacific waters, from the fog banks that roll In with the nightfall, from the vista of land and sea as seen from his eyrie on The Heights, from the Golden Gate and the shadowy ships that sail through it into the rim of the horizon and are lost in the vapor’s pall. He has been, perhaps, too familiar to the residents of Oakland and neighboring suburbs to create the interest that he would if he should suddenly appear in some eastern city dad In his high top hoots, buckskin clothing and wide brimmed sombrero, with his curly hair flowing from beneath its brim. Even to this day, or perhaps it should be said pp to the time of his illness, Joaquin Miller retained his grace and commanding aspect He has lived much out of doors and has been browned by suns. With his own hands he has planted the hundreds of trees that surround the little collection of houses, the chapel and the funeral pyre, which constitute The Heights. A few years ago the poet’s mother died at the age of ninety. There was a strikingly beautiful attachment between the two, and since her death the decline has set in which is the basis of his present illness. “More than twenty years ago,” Miller wrote in an article published some time ago, “I sat down here an a mountain side with mother and began to plant trees. Men and women came to work and to rest with us, men and women from colleges and universities. No one was asked to come—no one was ever asked to go. “More than twenty years ago, while feeling my way along here and trying to use what little common sense I then had, I wrote a smalt book, The Building of the City Beautiful’ — "You want to see San Francisco? Well, you must come to Oakland; and do you want to see Oakland and San Francisco and the bay of all hays on the globe, and the Golden Gate, at a glance and all together? Then you must go two miles to the northeast and then half a mile perpendicular. In short, you must come to The Heights, to the camp where Fremont tented half a century ago. and to the ■pot from which he viewed and named the now famous Golden Gate, long before gold was found.” - The real name of the poet is Ctnclnnatus Heine Miller. The pseudonym “Joaquin” was derived from his defense of the Mexican bandit, Joaquin Murletta, many years ago. Milter was born In the Wabash district of Indiana on November 10, 1841, and In 1854 was taken to Oregon by

his father. He had little schooling and early ran away from home, going to the California gold fields. He accompanied Walker on the Nicaragua' expedition, lived among the Indian*,; and Spaniards on the coast of Calif or-, nia and became familiar with thefr. customs. He studied law, being graduated from Columbia college, in Oiw-r gon, in 1858. He practiced unsuccessfully in Idaho and turned expressmessenger. In 1868 he settled In Oregon and became editor of “The Eugene City Democratic Register,” whleli was suppressed in the same year. Ini 1864 Miller returned to the law and! practiced in Canyon City, Ore. Herat he became popular, owing to his services against the warlike Snake In-; dians, and front 1866 to 1870 served as a Judge in Grant oounty. p|l His • first important attempts at writing were made here, and he tried to Bell a collection of his poems under the title of “Songs of the Sierras” in the east. They did not find a reepl market, and he finally went to E*gi| land, where they were published aodcreated a sensation. It was in London that Miller was recognized, pet ted# lionized and even overestimated perThe poet returned from England' and went to Washington, and finally. In 1877, to California and settled at The Heights, where his retreat soon became the Mecca for literary people. At times persons with literary or artistic tendencies, forswearing the world for,a time, have gone to MIN ler’s home as a haven of refuge. Here are buried the bodies of Maud Miller, the poet’s daughter, and of his mother. It has been said that the poet d*| sired to have his own body Imnipß upon the pile of rough stone* that cover his child’s grave, but the truffet of his request is that he be cremated and the ashes placed upon the pile, that the wind may scatter them far and wide over the land he loved so His life has not been spent in tlM*. ways of ease and luxury, such as one usually associates with the existence of poets. He has "roughed It” maw I has lived bard. He has fought ant! has been beaten; he has fought and; he has won. Today he sits before his home on the veranda, with its trellised vines,* and receives the care of wife and daughter. He sits by the hour gazing, out from the secluded Heights upon the cities, the bay, the ships and th* hills beyond that through twenty-five, years or more he has watched and studied and loved. Every little atteation that a woman knows so well how to bestow Is showered upon the white haired man, the patriarch of the Oakland hills, known the world over for his flowery verse, his eccentricity, hi*f love of the beautiful and of California.