nted stirrup-leather, which effectually prevents the grazing of
the rider's leg. The surcingle, or, _Californice_, the _cinch_, is a
broad strip of hair-cloth with a padded ring at either end through which
you reeve and fasten with a half-hitch stout straps sewed to other rings
under the saddle-flaps. This arrangement is not only far securer than
our Eastern buckle, but enables you to graduate the tightness of your
girth much more delicately, and make a far snugger fit.

The only particular in which I could not commend and adopt the native
practice was the Mexican bit. It is a dreadful instrument of torture,
putting immense leverage in the rider's hands, and enabling him at will
to tear the mouth of his horse to pieces; indeed, the horse on which it
is used is guided entirely by pressure on the opposite side of the neck
from that in which one seeks to turn him. Our Eastern way of drawing his
head around would so lift the bit as to drive him frantic. There are
very few horses of any breed, even the Mustang, that _never_ stumble;
and as I prefer lifting my horse to letting him break his knees or neck,
I want a bridle I can pull upon without tearing his mouth. So, in spite
of its handsome appearance and the very manageable single white cord
into which its two reins are braided, I eschewed the Mexican head-gear,
and took the ordinary Eastern snaffle and curb. Immense spurs completed
our accoutrement,--whips being here unknown.

I may as well make a word-map of our route before going farther.
Pilgrims to the Yo-Semite ship themselves and their horses from San
Francisco by steamer to Stockton. This town is on the San Joaquin, the
most northerly of a series of rivers fed directly from the Sierra Nevada
water-shed, and here through the middle portion of the State,--a series,
indeed, continued through much of the still lower Pacific coast to the
Isthmus of Nicaragua. The Sacramento drains quite a different region,
that of the broad plains between the Sierra and Coast ranges, occupying
the northern portion of the State,--resembling in its physical features,
much more than any of the Pacific streams beside, the large isolated
trunks which drain the east slope of the Alleghanies. The Colorado is
almost the only other large river created from many tributaries, which
debouches between the Columbia and the Isthmus,--and that rises east of
the mathematical axis of the Rocky Mountains. The Yo-Semite valley is
one of the cradles through