d me tickets by that southern line how much longer it
was. Still a glance at the map showed me it was longer, and I
objected. "Yes, it _is_ longer," he replied, "but I can get you
tickets cheaper that way, and you will be far more comfortable." I
assented. But I am surprised he succeeded with the others, as I am
now that he did so with me--that none of the many, more suspicious
than I am, did not fathom his object. But so it was. All who went to
the happy valley travelled over that route, 1500 miles out of the
way!

Besides the extra distance, and consequent extra expense, there was
another very serious disadvantage in summer (the time I did the
journey) to the line he recommended. It is much farther south, and in
consequence a great deal hotter. I suffered not a little therefrom.
Others did the same, and as they dropped in by twos and threes,
exhausted by the heat, and joined the exasperated and despairing
prior arrivals in the valley, they cursed, in no measured terms, the
man who had so deceived them. In two words, the Antelope Valley is a
howling desert. Not a blade of grass, not a green tree, no trees at
all. In this it is a perfect contrast to the swampy "Eden," so well
described by Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit," but as regards the
impossibility of making it a home, the two are alike. More on this
head when we get there.

I am not one of those to whom "money is no object;" quite the
reverse, and more especially had I to study economy when I left for
America. I therefore took second-class tickets from the said agent
for the whole line from New York to San Francisco. The Antelope
Valley is, by the route I was to travel, some 300 miles nearer, but I
thought it better to go to the capital of California first, and get
what I might want. He assured me I should have every comfort in the
said second class, and the amount I paid him for the tickets,
considering the enormous distance (I forget the sum), was not great.
He told me I should not get a regular bed as in a Pullman car, but
that if I took a small mattress and blankets, I should find room to
lie down and sleep. The tickets he gave me were to be exchanged at
New York for a rail-book, with coupons in it to carry me over the
different lines.

When leaving New York I went to the office to have this done, but
only on the morning of the day I was to leave. I then found to my
astonishment there was no second class, only first and emigrant
class, and that my tickets