tomed as we were to a constant heat of 28 degrees day and night. While our cattle were taking a feed of grass, I examined the vegetation of the neighbourhood, and gathered an Arum, an orchid, and a Polygonatum.

At a quarter past eight we were off. Tired of leading our mules in a file, we left them at liberty, in the hope that they would follow our horses. At first they gave us some trouble, rushing into the underwood and down a ravine in search of water; presently, however, they became more quiet, and we had them perfectly at command. At half-past nine we reached the bottom of a deep and narrow alpine valley, traversed by the American river, which, at half-past nine, we crossed over on a wooden bridge. These limpid murmuring waters, hemmed in by heaps of rocks, and mirroring the trees and climbing plants, made us regret we had not pushed on the night before as far as the cabin of the toll-taker of the bridge. This man, a carpenter and a photographic artist, seemed to enjoy true happiness in that secluded spot, where he lived with his young and amiable wife. A creeper penetrated into the house through the crevices of the plank walls, and covered the room with its fresh and cheerful verdure. The infant child of this happy pair hid its little face in its mother's bosom in terror at our beards. There was something so touching in the contemplation of this family group in such a spot, that we could hardly tear ourselves away. Nature, by a fine setting, lends a potent charm to a moral picture. Hence is it, that the

expression of a human face which interests us is all the more engaging when brought into relief by these two circumstances, isolation and the beauty of the surrounding scenery.

The heat became overpowering as we climbed the steep path on which a blue-flowered lupin grew in abundance. In the afternoon, in the thick of the forest, we crossed a small marsh, which had on us the effect of an oasis. Veratrum, Rudbeckia, and Ranunculus peered above the sward of this swampy meadow. A little further on, under the lofty firs, we came upon a streamlet bursting from a rock, and there we pitched our camp. Our meal of ham and rice was soon cooked over a splendid fire. Stretched at our ease on a carpet of moss, and rather fatigued, these overhanging woods gave us the feeling of being under the roof of a sumptuous palace. Around us were some Monotropa, Pyrola, Asarum, Paris, orange-tinted lilies, and Ribes of different species. At nightfall we made our beds at the foot of some firs. Our cattle, tethered along the brink of the stream, were eagerly browsing away the hours of rest.

We were afoot at four A.M. It took us till nine to load our mules. All day we were up and down pretty steep ascents and declivities. Water was not so scarce as on the previous days. Every now and then we met with small streams, in which we were glad enough to quench our thirst. The oak and pine forest was now often diversified

with the alder and the poplar. From time to time we came to glades of rich grass, bright with flowers, and, among others, with a yellow-petaled Pinguicula. We came across a sinister-looking group of travellers, who seemed willing enough to give us a wide berth. Who knows but that in our strange costume we looked suspicious enough to them? Our road soon became so steep that our pack-mules suffered much. Their loads shifted on their backs as they struggled up the steep inclines, and we had not only to readjust the packs, but often to replace them when the animals stumbled and fell. Without having experienced it, no one can form an idea of the labour and trouble of setting to rights a pack that has slipped underneath the belly of the animal, or has even canted to one side. Much time is lost, and much strength expended, to get things once more into anything like order, and you may consider yourself lucky if nothing is damaged, and the backs of the mules escape without sores. We soon discovered, at a distance which it was next to impossible to calculate, the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada.

We passed close to a hut, the suspicious-looking occupants whereof told us that their usual calling was that of bear-hunters. One almost instinctively felt as if an atmosphere of crime were overhanging that gloomy lair, where not the slightest evidence of a hunter's life was to be seen. An immense granite rock, more than a thousand feet in height, rose on the opposite side of a small river, the course

of which we followed. A humble roof, then unoccupied, was situated on the edge of the stream. The absent owner had surrounded it with a few flowers, and had sent adrift upon the water a lilliputian frigate and two miniature canoes, which he had evidently cut, with his own hands, out of the wood of the forest. He was, no doubt, a sailor who had been tempted from his ship by the yellow locks of the Siren-Gold.

We climbed some dangerous granite rocks, affording but a slippery footing to our beasts. An immense precipice, with a river at the bottom, yawned beside us to our right, along the whole line of our track across the mountain. A few years hence, when American enterprise has cut a road through these rocky steeps, the traveller will hardly imagine the dangers and fatigues he is spared. Emerging without an accident from this fearful pass, our way lay over a prairie, in which we found an emigrant family encamped.

At half-past five we halted on the banks of a little river, in which we bathed in spite of the coldness of the stream. We were instantly seized by greedy mosquitoes, which savagely phlebotomized us as we sat and wrote our diaries. Even the night failed to rid us of these intolerable companions, and the fire we kept blazing in self-defence scarcely checked the fury of their attacks. George, to whom this new, fairly went off to

life of labour and endurance was sleep on the grass without cleaning his plates and dishes. Happy fellow! We could not close our eyes, but sum

moned hopes and recollections to our aid to beguile the lagging hours.

On the 8th of August, at 4 A.M. the thermometer stood at one degree below zero on the banks of the stream, and at six, in the woods, it was only three degrees higher. Frost lay glistening upon the grass as far as the eye could reach. This severe temperature had prevented our taking an instant's sleep under the solitary woollen coverlet which constituted our bed, and our feet were almost frozen. As we could not collect our scattered cattle before seven, I had time to search for plants. Excepting the genus Eriogonum and a very few others, all I gathered belonged to genera indigenous to the north of Europe, which is easily accounted for by the altitude of the region we were in. There were Populus, Salix, Corylus, Alnus, Ribes, Rubus, Symphytum, Potentilla, Angelica, Heracleum, Epilobium, Viola, Aconitum, Lilium, Polygonatum, Polygonum, Ranunculus, Pinguicula, Linariads, Hypericum, Rumex, etc. In the river were Fontinalis, Jungermannia, Marchantia, and Ranunculus aquatilis.

At half-past seven we were off. The country was at first rather flat, and there was no road. Enormous trunks of firs half-burnt strewed the ground in all directions, and hindered our march, while they pointed out the track of colonists on their way to Carson Valley. Hundreds of squirrels, sprightly and graceful in all their movements, skipped across our path and over the trunks of the fallen