in the dust, laboriously carrying the bag and
saddle-blanket.

I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I saw
the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the teamsters
leading the horse towards me. The young man said that, seeing the
horse coming, they had drawn the team across the road to stop him, and
remembering that he had passed them with a lady on him, they feared
that there had been an accident, and had just saddled one of their own
horses to go in search of me. He brought me some water to wash the
dust from my face, and re-saddled the horse, but the animal snorted and
plunged for some time before he would let me mount, and then sidled
along in such a nervous and scared way, that the teamster walked for
some distance by me to see that I was "all right." He said that the
woods in the neighborhood of Tahoe had been full of brown and grizzly
bears for some days, but that no one was in any danger from them. I
took a long gallop beyond the scene of my tumble to quiet the horse,
who was most restless and troublesome.

Then the scenery became truly magnificent and bright with life.
Crested blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds
scampered through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed like "living
light," exquisite chipmunks ran across the track, but only a dusty blue
lupin here and there reminded me of earth's fairer children. Then the
river became broad and still, and mirrored in its transparent depths
regal pines, straight as an arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen
clinging to their stems, and firs and balsam pines filling up the
spaces between them, the gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake
lay before me, with its margin broken up into bays and promontories,
most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar pines. It lay dimpling and
scintillating beneath the noonday sun, as entirely unspoilt as fifteen
years ago, when its pure loveliness was known only to trappers and
Indians. One man lives on it the whole year round; otherwise early
October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, and thereafter, for
seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snowshoes. It never
freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of
its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk,
deer, chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes.
On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a lumber-wagon at