d in his
eyes; and he declared we were in a new country, and I must come forth
upon the platform and see with my own eyes. The train was then, in its
patient way, standing halted in a by-track. It was a clear, moonlit
night; but the valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, and
only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks and relieved the
blackness of the pines. A hoarse clamour filled the air; it was the
continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the
mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the
nostrils--a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but
I returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling at my heart.

When I awoke next morning, I was puzzled for a while to know if it were
day or night, for the illumination was unusual. I sat up at last, and
found we were grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; and
suddenly we shot into an open; and before we were swallowed into the
next length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested
ravine upon my left, a foaming river and a sky already coloured with the
fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over the displays of nature; but
you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. It was like meeting
one's wife. I had come home again--home from unsightly deserts to the
green and habitable corners of the earth. Every spire of pine along the
hilltop, every trouty pool along that mountain river, was more dear to
me than a blood relation. Few people have praised God more happily than
I did. And thenceforward, down by Blue Canyon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all
the old mining camps, through a sea of mountain forests, dropping
thousands of feet toward the far sea-level as we went, not I only, but
all the passengers on board, threw off their sense of dirt and heat and
weariness, and bawled like schoolboys, and thronged with shining eyes
upon the platform, and became new creatures within and without. The sun
no longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone laughingly along the
mountain-side, until we were fain to laugh ourselves for glee. At every
turn we could see farther into the land and our own happy futures. At
every town the cocks were tossing their clear notes into the golden air,
and crowing for the new day and the new country. For this was indeed our
destination; this was "the good country" we had been going to so long.

By afternoon we were at Sacramento, the city of gardens in a pla