beautiful polished panels
that they shone like mirrors. There must have been harnesses for twelve
horses hanging on the walls. Mr. L. gave me a box made of the thirty
different kinds of wood found in California.

The following day we drove with four horses to Mr. Rathbone's, who also
has a gorgeous place. His picture-gallery is worthy of a Rothschild.

* * * * *

We left San Francisco for Los Angeles; the directors of the road put
everything at our disposition as usual. We had a _salon_, bed, and
dressing-rooms in one car, and Miss Cadwalader and Miss Clymer had
similar ones in another. There were kitchen, dining and reading rooms
for the whole party, which had now grown to be sixteen in number,
Senator Conover and his wife and some officers going with General
Taylor to Fort Yuma having joined us.

We went to Santa Monica, which is the fashionable watering-place of
these parts. Here we drove on the beach, which is thirty miles long. A
gentleman of Los Angeles was attached to our party and showed us the
sights. We saw all kinds of ranches--orange, grape, and bee ranches.
Then we drove to a Mexican settlement, where they gave us a gorgeous
dinner, really worthy of more time than we could give it, for we had to
leave at five o'clock for Los Angeles, where we dined again.

The next day we started off on another tour. We drove through
twenty-five miles of banana, pineapple, pomegranate groves and
vineyards. We tasted all the wines and fruit-syrups, and drank native
port and champagne. We had a special train and arrived at Merced the
next morning, to start on our Yosemite Valley tour.

_May 20th._

Just our luck! The first rain for four months pours down to-day. We
drove, nevertheless, from 7 A.M. until 6 P.M. (only stopping for our
meals), over barren, sandy, and desolate country. We saw whole flocks
of sheep dead and dying by thousands from want of care and drought. We
(seven and the driver) were packed away in an open three-seated wagon
with four horses, and drove over the dreariest road one can imagine. We
passed continually places where the ground was all upturned, evidently
either worked-out or abandoned gold-diggings. It was very pathetic when
one thought of the work, time, and hopes wasted there. At twelve
o'clock we reached Hunter's (the name of the hotel), and then we drove
over more dismal plains still to a hotel called Clark's. It must
originally have been a lovely place,