the Klamath River--a narrow, rapid stream, recalling
some portions of the Housatonic, which we intersected about noon, and
along which we rode for an hour--we met only two or three silent
horsemen and as many eremitic wood-choppers.

Turning north from the Klamath, we dined at a miserable settlement
called Cottonwood, around which for miles in every direction departed
gold-hunters had burrowed till the ground was a honey-comb, or more
properly a last-year's hornets'-nest, since there was no sign of honey
in the cells, and, from what a most dejected native told us of the
yield, never had been any to speak of.

Leaving dreary Cottonwood with even greater pleasure than we had felt in
abandoning Yreka, we began ascending the slope toward the Oregon line.
At every mile the country grew lovelier. California seemed determined to
make our last impressions of her tender. The bare, brown rocks became
densely wooded with oaks and evergreens. Late in the afternoon we came
to broad meadows of such refreshing deep-green grass as we had not seen
before since we left the rich farming-lands of the Atlantic side, and
the level golden bars which lay on them between forest-edges made us
homesick with memories of peaceful Eastern lawns at sunset. After
crossing several miles of such meadows, and the quiet brooks which ran
through them, we traversed a number of strange low ridges, undulating in
systematic rhythm, like a mountain-chain making a series of false starts
prior to the word "go," reached the true base of the Siskiyou Mountains,
and began our final climb out of the Golden State.

The road was very uneven, rocky, cut up by rivulets from the higher
ridges, and in most places only a rude dug-way, with a rocky wall on one
side, and a butment of thickly wooded _debris_ steeply descending to a
black brawling torrent on the other. But we did not trouble ourselves
with the road. The wild beauty of the forest absorbed us on either hand;
and we were astonished at the rapid transition which the leaves suddenly
took on, from the dry, burnt look, characteristic of the end of the
California dry season, to autumnal splendors of red and yellow, hardly
rivalled by the numberless varieties of tint in our own October woods.
Just as the sun sank out of sight, we reached a lofty commanding ridge,
stopped to rest, turned around and saw Shasta looming grandly up out of
the valley-twilight, his icy forehead all one mass of gold and ruby
fire. It was one