oking fell to Polly's share,
and then she would ride along for hours with a little sister on her
lap and fat brother "Bub" behind her on the saddle-blanket, so that
her mother might rest and be quiet.

But soon the clear green Truckee River ran foaming and fretting beside
the road, and off in the west rose the snowy peaks of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. Then the people began to laugh and to sing, for they
knew that California, the land of gold, was almost in sight and that
their weary journey was nearly ended.

And one day they said joyfully to each other, "We are in California
at last;" and it was a happy company that travelled down through the
pines of the mountain sides and the oak trees of the foot-hills. Many
emigrants left the train when they got to the great Sacramento River
valley, and settled here and there to farming. Polly's father with
others kept on to the gold-diggings and camped there. He built a
log-cabin soon, for it was almost winter and time for the rains, and
Polly says she was glad to have a house at last. They finally took up
farming land near what is now Stockton, as gold-mining did not pay.

Mrs. Davis, who is straight and strong, and still a hard worker, says
her five months' trip across the plains was almost like a long picnic
after all, for she has forgotten many of the trying and disagreeable
things.

THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD

The army of emigrants and gold-hunters who crossed the plains to
California found it was a long and tiresome trip by wagon-train or on
horseback. The oxen or mules would sometimes get so tired that they
could go no farther; and because the food often ran short, there was
much suffering from hunger.

The longest way of all to California was by sailing vessel from New
York round Cape Horn, nearly nineteen thousand miles to San Francisco.
The passengers paid high prices and were six months on the way. Those
who came by the Panama route had trouble crossing the isthmus, where
it was so hot and unhealthy that many died of fevers and cholera. The
Pacific mail steamers connecting with a railroad across the isthmus
at last shortened the time of this trip of six thousand miles to
twenty-five days. For ten years all the Eastern mail came this way
twice a month.

It was thought a wonderful thing when the "pony express" carried mail
twice a week between St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Eastern railroads
ended, and Sacramento. To do this a rider, with th