ed with arcades straddling nearly across the road, under which all
passing wagoners not only may, but must, shelter themselves from the
rigors of rain or sun, and billeted along their fronts with seductive
descriptions of the paradise within, to which few hearts prove obdurate
after being softened by the compulsory magnanimity of the arcade.

In time there must be a railroad all the way from Sacramento to
Portland. There is not a mile of the distance between Red Bluffs and the
Oregon metropolis where it is not greatly needed already. Nearly the
whole intervening region is exhaustlessly fertile,--one of the finest
fruit-countries in the world,--but so entirely without an economical
avenue for its supplies or outlet for its productions, that many of the
ranchmen who have settled in it feel despondent in the midst of
abundance, and leave hundreds of magnificent orchard-acres paved with
rotting apples which would command a "bit" a pound in the San-Francisco
market, if the freight did not more than consume the profit, and the
length of the journey render the fruit unsalable.

The first day out from Tehama we made a distance of nearly forty
miles,--part of the way through oak-groves and part over fine breezy
plains, with the noble mountain-chain out of which Lassen's Buttes rise
into the perpetual-snow region continually in sight on the right hand.
The only incident that occurred to us this day, in any other key than
that of pure sensuous delight in the fact of life and motion under such
a spotless sky and in an air that was such breathable elixir, together
with the artistic happiness which flowed down on us from the noble
neighboring mountains, was our discovery early in the afternoon of a
cloud of dust about half a mile ahead, with the forms of a hundred
horsemen dimly looming through it. Such a sight sets an old overlander
instinctively fumbling at his holsters; fresh as we were from the
horrors of the desert, we felt our scalps begin to detach themselves
slightly from the cranium. But we rode straight ahead, as our only
method of safety was to wear a bold front, if the cavaliers were, as we
half suspected, a party of Humboldt Indians who had lately taken the
warpath between Lassen's Buttes and the coast. I don't recollect ever
having been better pleased with the look of Uncle Sam's cavalry-uniform
than we were, upon coming up with the squad and finding it a detachment
of our own men sent out to chastise the savages.

Th