00 feet; Sportsman's Hall, 3600 feet; Camino, 3000 feet; Smith's
Flat, 2250 feet; Placerville, 1830 feet; El Dorado, 1610 feet; Folsom,
198 feet, and Sacramento, 32 feet.

A well equipped auto stage is run daily between Tallac House and
Placerville. Experienced and careful drivers and first class cars
only are used. They are owned by the Richardson Garage, of Pasadena,
Calif., long known to the exacting population of that city as a
thoroughly reliable, prompt and efficient house.

CHAPTER XIV

TAHOE TAVERN

Swinging around to the south from the course of the Truckee River
on to the Lake, the railway deposits the traveler at Tahoe Tavern,
preeminently the chief resort for those who demand luxurious comfort
in all its varied manifestations. Yet at the outset let it be clearly
understood that it is not a fashionable resort, in the sense that
every one, men and women alike, must dress in fashionable garb to be
welcomed and made at home. It is a place of common sense and rational
freedom. If one comes in from a hunting or fishing trip at dinner
time, he is expected to enter the dining room as he is. If one has
taken a walk in his white flannels he is as welcome to a dance in the
Casino, the dining-room, or the social-hall as if he wore the most
conventional evening dress. Indeed, visitors are urged to bring their
old clothes that they may indulge to the full their _penchants_
for mountain-climbing, riding, rowing, fishing, horse-back-riding,
botanizing in the woods, or any other out-of-door occupation where old
clothes are the only suitable ones.

The building itself is completely embowered in pine, cedar, spruce
and firs of differing ages, sizes and qualities of color. Though far
enough from the Lake to allow of a large untrimmed grass-plot where
innumerable swing seats, reclining chairs, "lazy rests," etc., invite
to lounging and loafing, the trees have been so trimmed out as to give
exquisite glimpses of the dazzling blue of the water from every hand.

The Tavern is especially appropriate to its surroundings. It is three
full stories high, with many gables relieving the regularity of the
roof, which is steep-pitched, to throw off the winter's snows. The
whole structure is covered with shingles, stained or oiled to a dark
brown, and as climbing and clinging vines have wreathed themselves
about every corner, and up many posts of the veranda, and there is a
wealth of cultivated wild flowers banked up in beds a