e Englishman touring the
world as the crow flies occupied the car. He looked at me so askance
that I made an opportunity of talking to him. I should like to read
his "Travels" to see what he made out of the riddle. In similar
circumstances, and without explanation, I had fun talking French and
swapping boulevard reminiscences with a member of a Parisian theatrical
troupe making a long jump through northern Wisconsin. And once, at six
of the morning, letting myself into my own house with a latch-key, and
sitting down to read the paper until the family awoke, I was nearly
brained by the butler. He supposed me a belated burglar, and had armed
himself with the poker. The most flattering experience of the kind was
voiced by a small urchin who plucked at his mother's sleeve: "Look,
mamma!" he exclaimed in guarded but jubilant tones, "there's a real
Indian!"

Our last camp of this summer was built and broken in the full leisure
of at least a three weeks' expectation. We had traveled south from the
Golden Trout through the Toowah range. There we had viewed wonders
which I cannot expect you to believe in,--such as a spring of warm
water in which you could bathe and from which you could reach to dip up
a cup of carbonated water on the right hand, or cast a fly into a trout
stream, on the left. At length we entered a high meadow in the shape
of a maltese cross, with pine slopes about it, and springs of water
welling in little humps of green. There the long pine-needles were
extraordinarily thick and the pine-cones exceptionally large. The
former we scraped together to the depth of three feet for a bed in the
lea of a fallen trunk; the latter we gathered in armfuls to pile on the
camp-fire. Next morning we rode down a mile or so through the grasses,
exclaimed over the thousands of mountain quail buzzing from the creek
bottoms, gazed leisurely up at our well-known pines and about at the
grateful coolness of our accustomed green meadows and leaves;--and
then, as though we had crossed a threshold, we emerged into chaparral,
dry loose shale, yucca, Spanish bayonet, heated air and the bleached
burned-out furnace-like country of arid California in midsummer. The
trail dropped down through sage-brush, just as it always did in the
California we had known; the mountains rose with the fur-like
dark-olive effect of the coast ranges; the sun beat hot. We had left
the enchanted land.

The trail was very steep and very long, and to