even the Sahara so thoroughly deserves the name of "desert.” In Egypt there is the oasis, in Arabia here and there a date and a sweet-water well; here there is nothing, not even earth. The ground is soda, and the water and air are full of salt.

This road is notorious for the depredations of the "road agents," as white highwaymen are politely called, red or yellow robbers being still "darned thieves." At Desert Wells, the coach had been robbed, a week before I passed, by men who had first tied up the ranchmen, and taken their places to receive the driver and passengers when they arrived. The prime object with the robbers is the treasury box of "dust," but they generally "go through" the passengers, by way of pastime, after their more regular work is done. As to firing, they have a rule—a simple one. If a passenger shoots, every man is killed. It need not be said that the armed driver and armed guard never shoot; they know their business far too well.

Hard by Desert Station we came on hot and cold springs in close conjunction, flowing almost from the same "sink-hole "the original twofold springs, I hinted to our driver, that Poseidon planted in the Atlantic isle. He said that "some one of that name had a ranch near Carson, so I "concluded" to drop Poseidon, lest I should say something that might offend.

From Desert Wells the alkali grew worse and worse, but began to be alleviated at the ranches by irrigation of the throat with delicious Californian wine. The plain was strewn with erratic boulders, and here and there I noticed sharp sand-cones, like those of the Elk Mountain country in Utah.

At last we dashed into the "city" named after the notorious Kit Carson, of which an old inhabitant has lately said, "This here city is growing plaguy mean: there was only one man shot all yesterday." There was what is here styled an "altercation a day or two ago. The sheriff tried to arrest a man in broad daylight in the single street which Carson boasts. The result was that each fired several shots at the other, and that both were badly hurt.

The half-deserted mining village and wholly ruined Mormon settlement stand grimly on the bare rock, surrounded by weirdlooking depressions of the earth, the far-famed "sinks," the very bottom of the Plateau, and goal of all the Plateau streams—in

summer dry, and spread with sheets of salt; in winter filled with brine. The Sierra Nevada rises like a wall from the salt pools, with a fringe of giant leafless trees hanging stiffly from its heights-my first forest since I left the Missouri bottoms. The trees made me feel that I was really across the Continent, within reach at least of the fogs of the Pacific-on "the other side;" that there was still rough cold work to be done was clear from the great snow-fields that showed through the pines with that threatening blackness that the purest of snows wear in the evening when they face the east.

As I gazed upon the tremendous battlements of the Sierra, I not only ceased to marvel that for three hundred years traffic had gone round by Panama rather than through these frightful obstacles, but even wondered that they should be surmounted now. In this hideous valley it was that the Californian immigrants wintered in 1848, and killed their Indian guides for food. For three months more the strongest of them lived upon the bodies of those who died, incapable in their weakness of making good their foothold upon the slippery snows of the Sierra. After a while, some were cannibals by choice; but the story is not one that can be told.

Galloping up the gentle grades of Johnson's Pass, we began the ascent of the last of fifteen great mountain ranges crossed or flanked since I had left Great Salt Lake City. The thought recalled a passage of arms that had occurred at Denver between Dixon and Governor Gilpin. In his grand enthusiastic way, the Governor, pointing to the Cordillera, said, “Five hundred snowy ranges lie between this and San Francisco." "Peaks," said Dixon. "Ranges!" thundered Gilpin ; "I've seen them."

Of the fifteen greater ranges to the westward of Salt Lake, eight at least are named from the rivers they contain, or are wholly nameless. Trade has preceded survey; the country is not yet thoroughly explored. The six paper maps by which I travelled the best and latest-differed in essential points. The position and length of the Great Salt Lake itself are not yet accurately known; the height of Mount Hood has been made anything between nine thousand and twenty thousand feet; the southern boundary line of Nevada State passes through untrodden wilds A rectification of the limits of California and

L

Nevada was attempted no great time ago, and the head waters of some stream which formed a starting-point had been found to be erroneously laid down. At the flourishing young city of Aurora, in Esmeralda county, a court of California was sitting. A mounted messenger rode up at great pace, and, throwing his bridle round the stump, dashed in breathlessly, shouting,— "What's this here court?" Being told that it was a Californian court, he said, "Wall, thet's all wrong: this here's Nevada. We've been an' rectified this boundary, an' California's a good ten mile off here." "Wall, Mr. Judge, I move this court adjourn," said the plaintiff's counsel. "How can a court adjourn thet's not a court ?" replied the Judge. "Guess I'll go." And off he went. So, if the court of Aurora was a court, it must be sitting now.

The coaching on this line is beyond comparison the best the world can show. Drawn by six half-bred mustangs, driven by whips of the fame of the Hank Monk "who drove Greeley," the mails and passengers have been conveyed from Virginia City to the rail at Placerville, 154 miles, in 15 hours and 20 minutes, including a stoppage of half-an-hour for supper, and sixteen shorter stays to change horses. In this distance, the Sierra Nevada has to be traversed in a rapid rise of three thousand feet, a fall of a thousand feet, another rise of the same, and then a descent of five thousand feet on the California side.

Before the road was made, the passage was one of extraordinary difficulty. A wagon once started, they say, from Folsom, bearing "Carson or bust" in large letters upon the tilt. After ten days, it returned lamely enough, with four of the twelve oxen gone, and bearing the label "Busted."

When we were nearing Hank Monk's "piece," I became impatient to see the hero of the famous ride. What was my disgust when the driver of the earlier portion of the road appeared again upon the box in charge of six magnificent irongreys! The peremptory cry of "All aboard" brought me without remonstrance to the coach, but I took care to get upon the box, although, as we were starting before the break of day, the frost was terrible. To my relief, when I inquired after Hank, the driver said that he was at a ball at a timber ranch in the forest "six mile on." At early light we reached the spot-the

summit of the more eastern of the twin ranges of the Sierra. Out came Hank, amidst the cheers of the half-dozen men and women of the timber ranch who formed the "ball," wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and took the reins without a word. For miles he drove steadily and moodily along. I knew these drivers too well to venture upon speaking first when they were in the sulks; at last, however, I lost all patience, and silently offered him a cigar. He took it without thanking me, but after a few minutes said: "Thet last driver, how did he drive?" I made some shuffling answer, when he cut in: "Drove as ef he were skeert; and so he was. Look at them mustangs. Yoo-ou!" As he yelled, the horses started at what out here they style "the run;" and when, after ten minutes, he pulled up, we must have done three miles, round most violent and narrow turns, with only the bare precipice at the side, and a fall of often a hundred feet to the stream at the bottom of the ravine the Simplon without its wall. Dropping into the talking mood, he asked me the usual questions as to my business, and whither I was bound. When I told him I thought of visiting Australia, he said, "D'you tell now! Jess give my love -at Bendigo-to Gumption Dick." Not another word about Australia or Gumption Dick could I draw from him. I asked at Bendigo for Dick; but not even the officer in command of the police had ever heard of Hank Monk's friend.

The sun rose as we dashed through the grand landscapes of Lake Tahoe. On we went, through gloomy snow-drifts and still sadder forests of gigantic pines nearly three hundred feet in height, and down the canyon of the American river from the second range. Suddenly we left the snows, and burst through the pine woods into an open scene. From gloom there was a change to light; from sombre green to glowing red and gold. The trees, no longer hung with icicles, were draped with Spanish moss. In ten yards we had come from winter into summer. Alkali was left behind for ever; we were in El Dorado, on the Pacific shores-in sunny, dreamy California.

CHAPTER XX.

EL DORADO.

THE city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold figures largely in the story of Spanish discovery in America. The hardy soldiers who crossed the Atlantic in caravels and cockboats, and toiled in leathern doublets and plate armour through the jungle swamp of Panama, were lured on through years of plague and famine by the dream of a country whose rivers flowed with gold. Diego de Mendoza found the land in 1532, but it was not till January, 1848, that James Marshall washed the Golden Sands of El Dorado.

The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly paradise in America. Not to speak of New Atlantis, the Canadian Indians have never ceased to hand down to their sons a legend of western abodes of bliss, to which their souls journey after death, through frightful glens and forests. In their mystic chants they describe minutely the obstacles over which the souls must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring. These stories are no mere dreams, but records of the great Indian migration from the West: the liquid-eyed Hurons, not sprung from the Canadian snows, may be Californian if they are not Malay, the Pacific shores their happy hunting-ground, the climate of Los Angeles their never-ending spring.

The names "The Golden State" and "El Dorado" are doubly applicable to California: her light and landscape, as well as her soil, are golden. Here on the Pacific side, Nature wears a robe of deep rich yellow even the distant hills, no longer purple, are wrapt in golden haze. No more cliffs and canyons-all is rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra, which faces eastwards, with four thousand feet of wail-like rock, on the west descends