Went seventeen miles to Pleasant Valley, in the vicinity of Ringgold and Weaver. Here the country begins to look like California—canvas houses, hot weather, dry, reddish soil. This day's travel I consider the conclusion of a journey, a longer or more tedious than which is not often performed on this earth.
"The heart rebounds with long forgotten fleetness" at the thought of having performed it. The interminable wastes are passed over, the wilderness of wild sage and ashes is behind me, and climbing a hundred mountains will no longer tire my feet. This act is ended, and now for a struggle for gold and then
"Oh! for a falcon's wing to bear,
To bear me to my home."
NOTE.
The distances in the foregoing journal are probably inaccurate, as we had no means to measure them, and depended entirely on our own judgment. In reading it over, I have noticed many typographical and grammatical errors, but these will be excused when it is recollected that it was written for the most part in haste and at different times.
C. W. S.