he east the traveler comes over what is practically the long
known and historic overland stage-road, over which so many thousands
of gold-seekers and emigrants came in the days of California's gold
excitement. Every mile has some story of pioneer bravery or heroism,
of hairbreadth escape from hostile Indians or fortuitous deliverance
from storm or disaster. It was over this route the pilgrims came who
sought in Utah a land of freedom where they might follow their
own peculiar conceptions of religion and duty, untrammeled and
uninterfered with by hostile onlookers and disbelievers. Here came the
home-seekers of the earlier day, when California was still a province
of Mexico; those who had been lured by the glowing stories of the Land
of the Sun Down Sea, where orange and lemon, vine and fig flourished
and indicated the semi-tropic luxuriance and fruitfulness of the land.

[Illustration: Truckee, Calif., Where Travelers Take Trains for
Lake Tahoe]

[Illustration: Crossing the Truckee River Near Deer Park Station]

[Illustration: Placerville, El Dorado Co., California]

[Illustration: Vineyard on the Automotive Highway between Placerville
and Lake Tahoe]

From the west the railroad traverses, in the main, the continuation
of this old overland road. After leaving the fertile valley of the
Sacramento and rising into the glorious foot-hills of the Sierras,
every roll of the billows of the mountains and canyons wedged in
between is redolent of memories of the argonauts and emigrants. Yonder
are Yuba, Dutch Flat, the North Fork, the South Fork (of the American
River), Colfax, Gold Run, Midas, Blue Canyon, Emigrant Gap, Grass
Valley, Michigan Bluff, Grizzly Gulch, Alpha, Omega, Eagle Bird, Red
Dog, Chips Flat, Quaker Hill and You Bet. Can you not see these camps,
alive with rough-handed, full-bearded, sun-browned, stalwart men,
and hear the clang of hammer upon drill, the shock of the blast, the
wheeling away and crash of waste rock as it is thrown over the dump
pile?

And then, as we look up and forward into the sea of mountain-waves
into the heart of which we ride, who but Joaquin Miller can describe
the scene?

Here lifts the land of clouds! Fierce mountain forms,
Made white with everlasting snows, look down
Through mists of many canyons, mighty storms
That stretch from Autumn's purple drench and drown
The yellow hem of Spring. Tall cedars frown
Dark-brow'd, through banner'd clouds that stretch and stream
Above th