d the lesson of bearing it
resignedly. At the last crossing of the Sacramento, we learned from the
ferryman that a providential wagoner was just ahead of us, going
certainly to Dog Creek, and presumably, if we made it an object, all the
way to Strawberry Valley, at the foot of Shasta. The one whose turn it
was not to carry the color-box galloped ahead, and detained the wagoner
until the heavy dragoon had time to come up. With a deep sigh of relief,
we stowed our box in the "prairie-schooner,"--made a contract to have it
packed on mule-back from Dog Creek to Shasta, in consideration of one
among a gross of cheap watches which we had brought for trade with
Indians and Trappers,--and, relieving our horses by the first canter
they had enjoyed that day, sped away with the deep conviction that the
man who first called chrome and white-lead _light_ colors must have been
indulging the subtile irony of a diseased mind.

The seven miles of our journey from the last Sacramento crossing to Dog
Creek were even grander in their scenery than our morning stage. The
road was a dug-way from one to seven hundred feet above the base of a
winding castellated cliff, here and there cut in rugged sandstone, but
often both walled and buttressed with steep slopes of virgin turf kept
emerald by innumerable trickling springs, ice-cold and crystal-clear,
while here and there it passed through woods as dark as twilight. The
slope on which we travelled formed one side of a valley, green at its
bottom as a New-England meadow, and watered by a picturesque affluent of
the Sacramento. About dark we came to the Dog-Creek Ranch, where we had
such a delicious supper of trout, cooked in the good old Green-Mountain
fashion with an Indian-meal night-gown on, as made us "forget the steps
already trod," followed by a really nice _pair_ of beds, wherein we took
long and ample preparation to "onward urge our way" upon the morrow.

At Dog Creek we were encamped round about by the largest and most
prosperous Indian tribe that we had seen on our trip. Their bows and
arrows were elegant in shape and color: the former stained in a variety
of patterns, sometimes carved, and wrapped as well as strung with
deer-sinews; the latter headed with nicely cut pieces of a black
obsidian which abounds in the vicinity of Shasta Peak, and which of
itself is an unerring test of the original volcanic character of the
mountain. The quivers of this Dog-Creek tribe were the most beautifu