ditions are rapidly
improving, the cattle- and sheep-men being held strictly to certain
rules laid down by the Supervisor. Systematic efforts are made to rid
the Forest, as far as possible, of predatory animals that kill the
sheep, also of poisonous plants which render grazing dangerous.

There are far less cattle on the Sierra ranges in the Tahoe region
than there are sheep. During the summer most of the mountain valleys
have their great sheep-bands. Many are brought over from Nevada,
and far more from the Sacramento Valley and other regions near the
Pacific. The feed, as a rule, is good and abundant from the time the
snow leaves until the end of September or even later. Though the year
1913 was the third dry season (comparatively speaking) the region
had suffered, I found a score or more of meadows in my rambles around
Tahoe, where thousands of sheep might have had rich and abundant
pasture.

But well may John Muir dislike sheep in his beloved Sierras, and term
them in his near-to-hatred "the locusts of the mountains." When the
most fertile valley has been "fed off" by sheep, or they have "bedded
down" night after night upon it, it takes some time before the young
growth comes up again.

It is the custom when the lambing season is over, and the lambs
are strong enough to travel and old enough to ship, to move to some
convenient point on the railway, where there is an abundance of
feed and water on the way, and there ship either to Reno, Carson and
Virginia City, or to some market on the Pacific Coast. Hence overland
travelers on the Southern Pacific trains are often surprised to see
vast flocks of sheep and hear the bleating of the lambs at unlooked
for stations at the highest points of the Sierra Nevada, as at Soda
Springs, Cisco, Emigrant Gap, Blue Canyon, or sidings on the way.

There is a large mining industry within the Reserve. Since 1849 the
western part of the Forest has been most active, one county, Sierra,
having produced since then upwards of $200,000,000. The present output
is much smaller than formerly, still it is large enough to render
mining an important factor in the productive wealth of the state.
In 1853 hydraulic mining was inaugurated near Nevada City. This gave
renewed interest to placer-mining.

Four of the old emigrant roads cross the Tahoe and El Dorado Reserves.
The most famous of these is the one across Donner Pass and through
Emigrant Gap. This was the general course taken by the unfo