but now it is spoiled by the
gold-diggings. Here we stayed all night in a very rough kind of tavern.
During the night we heard the howls of wolves and jackals very near the
hotel, which was not pleasant. We started at five o'clock the next
morning in a big, open _char-a-bancs_, and went through the most
beautiful forest. The trees are all from one hundred and fifty to two
hundred feet high, and from six to seven feet in diameter; hardly any
smaller trees among them. And such wonderful ferns! And the ice-plants!
This has a brilliant red stalk and flowers coming from under the snow.
We were so high up that there was snow on the ground all about us. The
trees are perfectly beautiful. The mansanilla, the branches of which
are like red coral, and the leaves the lightest of greens, the
California laurel, and many others of which I do not know the names,
were too beautiful. The white pine has cones one and a half feet long.

We drove up for four hours through the forest, until we reached the
height of five thousand feet. Here was a magnificent view, as you may
imagine. Then we began going down. That was something dreadful! The
driver, with his six horses, drove at a diabolical rate, one foot on
the brake, the other planted against the dashboard to keep his balance,
holding a tremendously long whip in one hand and the six reins in the
other. I shut my eyes and said my prayers. I cannot find words to
describe my emotion when I saw the precipice on one side and the
mountain on the other, especially when we came to a sharp corner and
looked in front, when we actually seemed to be going into space.

We arrived exhausted at the Yosemite Valley, where the feeling of
repose at being on flat ground and driving through those green pastures
surrounded by the six-thousand-feet-high mountains was delicious. We
found the hotel large, comfortable, with a good many other visitors.
The _table d'hote_ dinner was well attended. Outside the hotel we spied
an Indian lurking about. They told us that he was the last of the
Yosemite tribe; he boasted that he had never spoken to a white man. I
am sure no white man would ever care to speak to such an
uncouth-looking tramp as he was, dressed in ragged clothes and wearing
shabby boots, playing hide-and-seek in the most undignified manner, and
utterly unworthy of the traditional Cooper Indian.

J. had time to put in a little fishing. The last of the Yosemites
dodged behind the trees, watching him and pr