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Show CONCLUSION. 499 CONCLUSION. THE traveler and the lecturer have apparently laid down a law that, whether the journey does or does not begin at home, it should always end at that" hallowed spot." Unwilling to break through, what is now becoming a time-honored custom, I trespass upon the reader's patience for a few pages more, and make my final salaam in the muddy-puddly streets, under the gusty, misty sky of the " Liverpool of the South." After a day's rest at Carson City, employed in collecting certain mecessaries of tobacco and raiment, which, intrinsically vile, were about treble the price of the best articles of their kind in the Burlington Arcade, I fell in with Captain Dall, superintendent of the Ophir mines, for whom I bore a recommendation from Judge Crosby, of Utah Territory. The valuable silver leads of Virginia City occupied me, under the guidance of that hospitable gentleman, two days, and on the third we returned to Carson City, vid the Steamboat Springs, Washoe Valley, and other local lions. On the 24th appeared the boys driving in the stock from Carson Lake: certain of these youths had disappeared; Jim Gilston, who had found his brother at Dry-Creek Station, had bolted, of course forgetting to pay his passage. A stage-coach, most creditably horsed, places the traveler from Carson City at San Francisco in two days; as Mr. Kennedy, however, wished to see me safely to the end, and the judge, esteeming me a fit Mentor for youth, had intrusted to me Telemachus, alias Thomas, his son, I resolved to cross the Sierra by easy stages. After taking kindly leave of and a last "liquor up" with my old compagnons de voyage, the judge and the marshal, we broke ground once more on the 25th of October. At Genoa, pronounced Ge-noa, the county town, built in a valley thirteen miles south of Carson, I met Judge .Cradlebaugh, who set me right on grounds where the Mormons had sown some prejudices. Five days of a very dilatory travel placed us on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada; the dugways and zigzags reminded me of the descriptions of travelers over the Andes; the snow'threatened to block up the roads, and our days and nights were passed among teamsters en route and in the frame-house inn. On.the 30th of November, reaching Diamond Springs, I was advised by a Londoner, Mr. George Fryer, of the " Boomerang Saloon," to visit the gold diggings at Placerville, whither a coach was about to start. At " Hangtown," as the place was less euphoniously termed, Mr. Collum, of the Cary House, kindly put me through the gold washing and "hydraulicking," and Dr. Smith, an old East Indian practitioner, and Mr. White, who had collected |
