the triangle of bright stars
that bounded the constellation. To have found friends and to be sure of
a welcome at all of these and everywhere between was a great extension
to my enjoyment, and visiting them was not only a pleasant duty but a
delightful outing.

IN THE SIERRAS

Belated vacations perhaps gain more than they lose, and in the sum total
at least hold their own. It is one advantage of being well distributed
that opportunities increase. In that an individual is an unsalaried
editor, extensive or expensive trips are unthinkable; that his calling
affords necessities but a scant allowance of luxuries, leaves recreation
in the Sierras out of the question; but that by the accidents of
politics he happens to be a supervisor, certain privileges, disguised
attractively as duties, prove too alluring to resist.

The city had an option on certain remote lands supposed to be of great
value for water and power, and no one wants to buy a pig of that size in
a poke, so it was ordained that the city fathers, with their engineer
and various clerks and functionaries entitled to a vacation and desiring
information (or _vice versa_), should visit the lands proposed to be
acquired.

In 1908 the supervisors inspected the dam-sites at Lake Eleanor and the
Hetch-Hetchy, but gained little idea of the intervening country and the
route of the water on its way to the city. Subsequently the trip was
more thoroughly planned and the result was satisfactory, both in the end
attained and in the incidental process.

On the morning of August 17, 1910, the party of seventeen disembarked
from the Stockton boat, followed by four fine municipal automobiles.
When the men and the machines were satisfactorily supplied with fuel and
the outfit was appropriately photographed, the procession started
mountainward. For some time the good roads, fairly well watered, passed
over level, fruitful country, with comfortable homes. Then came gently
rolling land and soon the foothills, with gravelly soil and scattered
pines. A few orchards and ranches were passed, but not much that was
really attractive. Then we reached the scenes of early-day mining and
half-deserted towns known to Bret Harte and the days of gold. Knight's
Ferry became a memory instead of a name. Chinese Camp, once harboring
thousands, is now a handful of houses and a few lonely stores and
saloons. It had cast sixty-five votes a few days before our visit.

Then came a stratum of mills an