king of, we did not have an idea that
it would ever be settled up with Whites or used for anything but a
feeding ground for wild animals. If we had been told at that time that a
railroad would pass through the place where the city of Reno now stands,
we would have thought the one who told us such a wild, improbable story
to be a fit subject for a straight jacket.

We pulled out of there early Monday morning; we took the trail up Long
Valley towards Honey Lake, which we reached on the evening of the third
day. Nothing occurred to disturb us during this time. As soon as we went
into camp that evening the emigrants got out their fishing tackle and
went to the lake. Some of them caught some fish, but many of them came
back disappointed. None had the luck they'd had at Truckee river. Still,
the most of us had some fish for supper that night.

While we were at supper, Jim told the people that they were through
catching trout, that the next fish we had would be salmon. They said
they had never heard of that kind and asked what it looked like. Jim
told them that the meat of some kinds of salmon was as red as beef,
while another kind was pink, and still another kind was yellow, and
they were considered the finest fish that swim in the water, and he
continued, "I have seen them so thick in the spring in some of the
streams in California that it was difficult to ride my horse through
them without mashing them, and they ran against the horse's legs and
frightened him so that he was as eager to get away from them as they
were of him."

An old man presently asked how large a salmon usually was, to which Jim
answered, "Well, they run in weight from ten to fifty pounds, but I have
seldom seen one as small as ten pounds, and they are very fat when they
are going upstream to spawn, but when they are coming down they are so
poor they can scarcely swim."

We left Honey Lake in the morning, and the third day from there we
struck the Sacramento valley, and we now told the emigrants that they
had no further use for our services, that their road was perfectly safe
from this point to Sacramento city.

Two of the committee came to us and said, "As this is Saturday we will
camp here until Monday, and we want you two men to stay with us, for the
women want to fix up something for you to eat on your way back."

Jim answered that we would stay with them over Sunday and take a rest,
for we had a long and tiresome journey before us, but it must