hree nails, and I _have_ seen
praiseworthy candles making desperate efforts to stand straight in
tumblers! Many of our friends, with a beautiful and sublime faith in
spermaceti and good luck, eschew everything of the kind, and you will
often find their tables picturesquely covered with splashes of the
former article, elegantly ornamented with little strips of black wick.

The sad forebodings mentioned in a former letter have come to pass. For
some weeks, with the exception of two or three families, every one upon
the river has been out of butter, onions, and potatoes. Our kind
friends upon the hill, who have a little remaining, sent me a few
pounds of the former the other day. Ham, mackerel, and bread, with
occasionally a treat of the precious butter, have been literally our
only food for a long time. The rancheros have not driven in any beef
for several weeks, and although it is so pleasant on the bars, the cold
on the mountains still continues so intense that the trail remained
impassable to mules.

The weather here for the past five weeks has been like the Indian
summer at home. Nearly every day I take a walk up onto the hill back of
our cabin. Nobody lives there, it is so very steep. I have a cozy
little seat in the fragrant bosom of some evergreen shrubs, where often
I remain for hours. It is almost like death to mount to my favorite
spot, the path is so steep and stony; but it is new life, when I arrive
there, to sit in the shadow of the pines and listen to the plaintive
wail of the wind as it surges through their musical leaves, and to gaze
down upon the tented Bar lying in somber gloom (for as yet the sun does
not shine upon it) and the foam-flaked river, and around at the awful
mountain splashed here and there with broad patches of snow, or
reverently upward into the stainless blue of our unmatchable sky.

This letter is much longer than I thought it would be when I commenced
it, and I believe that I have been as minutely particular as even you
can desire. I have mentioned everything that has happened since I last
wrote. Oh! I was very near forgetting a present of two ring-doves
(alas! they had been shot) and a blue jay which I received yesterday.
We had them roasted for dinner last evening. The former were very
beautiful, approaching in hue more nearly to a French gray than what is
generally called a dun color, with a perfect ring of ivory encircling
each pretty neck. The blue jay was exactly like its namesa