s of the
Sierras.

Then he plunged down from the ridge and was soon traversing one of the
most lonesome and gloomy trails in all the mountains. The tree trunks
were covered with yellowish green moss. In one place stood a pine stump
fifty feet high with the upper hundred feet of the tree thrust into the
earth beside it. At another place a huge log blocked the trail. Then he
crossed a brook and was among chaparral and manzanita bushes. Then he
was among the pines again, listening to their voices, for a breeze was
blowing up the canon. Now he came to a spooky region which had been
swept by fire, with bare tree trunks, broken and going to decay,
standing like ghosts of the forest. Beyond was a clump of young firs
with gray stems, so straight and perfect as to be almost uncanny. Or was
it the traveler's overwrought imagination?

Now the trail turned at right angles along the steep side of a canon,
and he heard the music of the mountain torrent far below. Half a mile
further on, where the trail crossed the brook at the head of the canon,
it doubled back on itself along the other side. The traveler refreshed
himself at a mossy spring by the side of the trail, then, as he emerged
from the canon at a sudden turn, Downieville appeared. It lay far below
him, at the forks of the North Yuba. How musically the roar of the river
came up through the autumn stillness! Sign boards pointing to the Ruby
Mine, and to the City of Six, prepare the traveler for the discovery of
some settlement in the wilderness. But he is hardly prepared for such a
beautiful and welcome sight. Here, tucked away among the mountains as
tidily as some Eastern village, lies the county seat of Sierra County.
But this is California and not Maryland, for yonder comes a mountaineer
up the trail with his pack horses.

Keeler lost no time in descending and transacting his business at the
court-house. But after his lonesome walk over the mountains something he
saw here appealed to his imagination. It was a human skull, which had
belonged to a murderer. The murdered man was a Frenchman, killed for his
money. This was Keeler's first visit to Downieville since the crime, and
as he had known the Frenchman he determined to visit his grave.

The cemetery is up the river beyond the edge of the town; and here, in
more senses than one, a traveler finds the end of the trail. Men and
women whose life journey had begun in New England, Old England, Wales,
Ireland, France, Denmark