of the canyon lay a
wandering sheet of water of intensest blue. Ahead, the folds of hills
interlaced the distance, with a remote blue mountain rising in the
center of the picture.

They asked questions of a handsome, black-eyed man with curly gray hair,
who talked to them in a German accent, while a cheery-faced woman smiled
down at them out of a trellised high window of the Swiss cottage perched
on the bank. Billy watered the horses at a pretty hotel farther on,
where the proprietor came out and talked and told him he had built it
himself, according to the plans of the black-eyed man with the curly
gray hair, who was a San Francisco architect.

"Goin' up, goin' up," Billy chortled, as they drove on through the
winding hills past another lake of intensest blue. "D'ye notice the
difference in our treatment already between ridin' an' walkin' with
packs on our backs? With Hazel an' Hattie an' Saxon an' Possum, an'
yours truly, an' this high-toned wagon, folks most likely take us for
millionaires out on a lark."

The way widened. Broad, oak-studded pastures with grazing livestock lay
on either hand. Then Clear Lake opened before them like an inland sea,
flecked with little squalls and flaws of wind from the high mountains on
the northern slopes of which still glistened white snow patches.

"I've heard Mrs. Hazard rave about Lake Geneva," Saxon recalled; "but I
wonder if it is more beautiful than this."

"That architect fellow called this the California Alps, you remember,"
Billy confirmed. "An' if I don't mistake, that's Lakeport showin' up
ahead. An' all wild country, an' no railroads."

"And no moon valleys here," Saxon criticized. "But it is beautiful, oh,
so beautiful."

"Hotter'n hell in the dead of summer, I'll bet," was Billy's opinion.
"Nope, the country we're lookin' for lies nearer the coast. Just the
same it is beautiful... like a picture on the wall. What d'ye say we
stop off an' go for a swim this afternoon?"

Ten days later they drove into Williams, in Colusa County, and for the
first time again encountered a railroad. Billy was looking for it,
for the reason that at the rear of the wagon walked two magnificent
work-horses which he had picked up for shipment to Oakland.

"Too hot," was Saxon's verdict, as she gazed across the shimmering level
of the vast Sacramento Valley. "No redwoods. No hills. No forests. No
manzanita. No madronos. Lonely, and sad--"

"An' like the river islands," Billy interpol