of its crystal purity, the
music of its flow and the joy of its song, repeated, "Come and take a
drink."

We filled our canteens and went back to meet the others. We found them
in a line three miles long; and it was well into the afternoon when
the last wagon reached the river.

The train crossed to the farther shore, into the grateful shade of the
pine forest and there made camp.

What an enchanting spectacle was that scene of wooded hills, with its
varying lights and shades, all about us! From as far as we could see,
up the heights and down to the river bank, where their roots were
washed in the cool water, the great trees grew.

We were still within the confines of Nevada, but two men were there
with a wagon-load of fresh garden stuff, brought over from the
foothills of California to sell to the emigrants: potatoes, at fifty
cents a pound, pickles, eight dollars a keg, and so on. We bought, and
feasted.

The camp that night by the Truckee River was the happiest of all. We
had reached a place where green things grew in limitless profusion,
where water flowed pure and free; and we were out of the desert and
beyond the reach of the savage Redman.

CHAPTER XIII.

INTO THE SETTLEMENTS. HALT.

Having begun the ascent of the lofty and precipitous east slope of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, one night about the first of September the
camp-site selected was at a spot said to be directly on the boundary
line between Nevada and California.

Lounging after supper about a huge bonfire of balsam pine, the
travelers debated the question whether we were really at last within
the limits of the Mecca toward which we had journeyed so patiently
throughout the summer. While so engaged, the stillness, theretofore
disturbed only by the murmur of our voices and occasional popping of
the burning logs, was further dispelled for a few seconds by sounds
as of shifting pebbles on the adjacent banks, accompanied by rustling
of the foliage, waving of tall branches and tree-tops, and a gentle
oscillation of the ground on which we rested. These manifestations
were new to our experience; but we had heard and read enough about the
western country to hazard a guess as to the significance of the
disturbance.

"Jack," aroused from his first early slumber of that particular
evening, raised himself on an elbow, and asserted, confidently:

"That settles it; we _are_ in California: that was an earthquake."

Appearing already to have ca