ight through the tree
tops--it is so high and fairy-like and far away. It is as if it were on
the very summit of the Sierras.

Ah! that is the engine blowing off the clouds of steam as she drops,
shoots, slides, glides from the mountain to the sea. The train is a mile
in length. The dust of three thousand miles is on her skirts. But
before the going down of the sun she will draw rein to rest by the
Golden Gate.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WIDOW IN DISGRACE.

Stick a pin here. Be sure you remember that these settlers of the
Sierras were as distinct a people from the settlers by the sea as you
can conceive. The one was of the West, the other of the East. The one
ate codfish and had a nasal accent and sang hymns. The other had never
seen the ocean, he detested codfish, ate bacon and swore like a pirate.

Years went by and people, strangers, came and went, but our First
Fam'lies of the Sierras remained.

This is history. The Phoenicians landed and left their impress on
Ireland long before England heard of the first Caesar. Their impetuous
blood signalizes the Fenian of to-day.

The Pilgrim Fathers refused to return. A world of immigration flowed to
and fro. But these few gave to the bleak and barren East the sharp nose,
the nationality, good or bad, of the north of North America; while the
few first settlers of the South gave spring to a current that will flow
on for a thousand years.

I am all the time wondering when I think of the people of the Sierras,
what women, or men and women, the traveler of a century hence will find
there.

I think he will not find a coward or a miser. I think he will find a
brave, generous, open-handed and unsuspicious people. A people full of
freedom, of lofty aspiration, of purity, partaking of the awful
sublimity that environs them.

And somewhere in these Sierras will they name the new Parnassus. The
nine sisters, in the far New Day, will have their habitation here when
the gold hunter has gone away, and the last pick lies rusting in the
mine.

The sea of seas shall rave and knock at the Golden Gate, but this shall
be the vine-land, the place of rest, that the old Greeks sought forever
to find. This will be the land of eternal afternoon.

A land born of storm and rounded into shape by the blows of hardy and
enduring men, it shall have its reaction--its rest.

The great singer of the future, born of the gleaming snows and the
gloomy forests of the Sierras, shall some day swin