be ready; and having
purchased a few pounds of crackers, half a pound of tea, some sugar
and cheese, I was prepared to encounter the perils of the wilderness.
This was all the provision I took. Of other baggage I had none, save
my overcoat and sketch-book, which, for a journey of five days, did
not seem unreasonable. Zoega promised me any amount of suffering; but
I told him Californians rather enjoyed that sort of thing than
otherwise.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE ENGLISH TOURISTS.

My English friends were so well provided with funds and equipments
that they found it impossible to get ready. They had patent tents,
sheets, bedsteads, mattresses, and medicine-boxes. They had guns, too,
in handsome gun-cases; and compasses, and chronometers, and pocket
editions of the poets. They had portable kitchens packed in tin boxes,
which they emptied out, but never could get in again, comprising a
general assortment of pots, pans, kettles, skillets, frying-pans,
knives and forks, and pepper-castors. They had demijohns of brandy and
kegs of Port wine; baskets of bottled porter and a dozen of Champagne;
vinegar by the gallon and French mustard in patent pots; likewise
collodium for healing bruises, and musquito-nets for keeping out
snakes. They had improved oil-lamps to assist the daylight which
prevails in this latitude during the twenty-four hours, and shaving
apparatus and nail-brushes, and cold cream for cracked lips, and
dentifrice for the teeth, and patent preparations for the removal of
dandruff from the hair; likewise lint and splints for mending broken
legs. One of them carried a theodolite for drawing inaccessible
mountains within a reasonable distance; another a photographic
apparatus for taking likenesses of the natives and securing
fac-similes of the wild beasts; while a third was provided with a
brass thief-defender for running under doors and keeping them shut
against persons of evil character. They had bags, boxes, and bales of
crackers, preserved meats, vegetables, and pickles; jellies and
sweet-cake; concentrated coffee, and a small apparatus for the
manufacture of ice-cream. In addition to all these, they had patent
overcoats and undercoats, patent hats and patent boots, gum-elastic
bed-covers, and portable gutta-percha floors for tents; ropes, cords,
horse-shoes, bits, saddles and bridles, bags of oats, fancy packs for
horses, and locomotive pegs for hanging guns on, besides many other
articles commonly deemed