shores of two pleasant mountain
lakelets--the Blue Lakes, which are probably ancient craters.

Two days' easy driving, stopping overnight in Potter Valley, brings you
to Lakeport, the capital of Lake County, and the only town I have seen in
California where dogs in the square worry strangers as they are entering
the place. As the only hotel in the town occupies one corner of this
square, and as in Californian fashion the loungers usually sit in the
evening on the sidewalk before the hotel, the combined attack of these
dogs occurs in their view, and perhaps affords them a pleasing and
beneficial excitement. The placid and impartial manner with which the
landlord himself regards the contest between the stranger and the
town dogs will lead you to doubt whether his house is not too full to
accommodate another guest, and whether he is not benevolently letting
the dogs spare him the pain of refusing you a night's lodging; but it is
gratifying to be assured, when you at last reach the door, that the dogs
"scarcely ever bite any body."

Clear Lake is a large and picturesque sheet of water, twenty-five miles
long by about seven wide, surrounded by mountains, which in many places
rise from the water's edge. At Lakeport you can hire a boat at a very
reasonable price, and I advise the traveler to take his blankets on board,
and make this boat his home for two or three days. He will get food
at different farm-houses on the shore; and as there are substantial,
good-sized sail-boats, he can sleep on board very enjoyably. Aside from
its fine scenery, and one or two good specimens of small Californian
farms, the valley is remarkable for two borax lakes and a considerable
deposit of sulphur, all of which lie close to the shore.

At one of the farm-houses, whose owner, a Pennsylvanian, has made himself
a most beautiful place in a little valley hidden by the mountains which
butt on the lake, I saw the culture of silk going on in that way in
which only, as I believe, it can be made successful in California. He
had planted about twenty-five hundred mulberry-trees, built himself an
inexpensive but quite sufficient little cocoonery, bought an ounce and
a half of eggs for fifteen dollars, and when I visited him had already
a considerable quantity of cocoons, and had several thousand worms then
feeding.

It was his first attempt; he had never seen a cocoonery, but had read all
the books he could buy about the management of the silk-worm; and,