assified,
distilled and evaporated in that mighty heat, and seemed to fire with a
midsummer madness all who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted,
stimulated, intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sore
horses became furious and ungovernable under their influence; wearied
teamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in the
ascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air, extended
their vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of objurgation.
It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver exhausted description and
condensed its virtues in a single phrase: "Gin and ginger." This
felicitous epithet, flung out in a generous comparison with his
favorite drink, "rum and gum," clung to it ever after.

Such was the current comment on this vale of spices. Like most human
criticism it was hasty and superficial. No one yet had been known to
have penetrated deeply its mysterious recesses. It was still far below
the summit and its wayside inn. It had escaped the intruding foot of
hunter and prospector; and the inquisitive patrol of the county
surveyor had only skirted its boundary. It remained for Mr. Lance
Harriott to complete its exploration. His reasons for so doing were
simple. He had made the journey thither underneath the stage-coach, and
clinging to its axle. He had chosen this hazardous mode of conveyance
at night, as the coach crept by his place of concealment in the wayside
brush, to elude the sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were
after him. He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers, as
they already knew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he
deemed it unwise to present himself in his newer reputation of a man
who had just slain a brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a
reward was offered. He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach swirled
past the brushing branches of fir, and for an instant lay unnoticed, a
scarcely distinguishable mound of dust in the broken furrows of the
road. Then, more like a beast than a man, he crept on his hands and
knees into the steaming underbrush. Here he lay still until the clatter
of harness and the sound of voices faded in the distance. Had he been
followed, it would have been difficult to detect in that inert mass of
rags any semblance to a known form or figure. A hideous, reddish mask
of dust and clay obliterated his face; his hands were shapeless stumps
exaggerated in his trailing sleeves. And