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Show THE WONDERS OF CALIFORNIA. 141 From noon till 5 P. M., we endure the thumping of a Concord coach over the Sierra spurs, those within frying, those without broil-ing; in valleys where the thermometer stands in dead air at 100, or over ridges where the stifling dust is mitigated sometimes by a gentle breeze. This all the way to Murphy's, another old mining town, where we receive the cheering intelligence that the real trouble of the route is about to begin. We change from the coach to a " mountain- wagon" so- called a street hack with three seats and no springs capital thing for a torpid liver. Despite the jolting, our condition is improved. We leave the dust; for there is not soil enough up here to create it. We run beside clear, cold streams. We are in a region of cool airs. The road is shaded by" rocky cliifs, or on the levels by tall timber; and the wild ever- varying beauty of gorge, crag, or wooded flat makes us forget fatigue. The vegetation changes as we gain in elevation. The shrubby manzanita, dwarfish oak, and arrowwood disap-pear, and we are in a magnif-icent forest of tall trees with-out underbrush. Every mile the trees increase in size; the smallest we see for hours are three or four feet in thickness, and nature seems to usher us in through fitting portals to the wonders that are to come. The big trees do not stand alone in grandeur, as I had supposed ; but, for twenty miles around, vegetation shades off gradually in forests of immense pines. At last we reach the borders of " The Grove " par excellence, while there is still light enough to appreciate its glories. There they stand, the vegetable wonders of the world : some in clusters, joining their branches like the columns of great gothic arches reaching away to prop the firmament, or now and then one isolated, and stretching out gaunt arms and opening boughs as if it would drink the clouds. The majority appear stumpy and truncated, too THE TVYO GUARDSMEN. |
