You see that inland yachting is not child's play, nor are these inland yachts without their romantic records. The flag of the San Francisco yacht club has floated among the South Sea Islands; one of its boats has beaten the German and English types in their own waters; one has been as far as the Australian seas; one is a pearl fisher in the Gulf of California, and another is coquetting with the doldrums along the Mexican coast. They are staunch little beauties all, and it would be neither courteous nor healthful to think otherwise in the presence of inland yachtsmen.
Telegraph Hill, 1855
IN YOSEMITE SHADOWS
OSEMITE, Sept.—: Come at once—the year wanes; would you see the wondrous transformation, the embalming of the dead Summer in windings of purple and gold and bronze—come quickly, before the white pall covers it—delay no longer. The waters are low and fordable, the snows threaten, but the hours are yet propitious; and such a welcome waits you as Solomon in all his glory could not have lavished on Sheba's approaching queen. * * *"
There was much more of the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhetoric, written and sent by a dear hand, whose fanciful pen seemed touched by the ambrosial tints of Autumn. So the year was going out in a gorgeous carnival, before the Lent-like solemnity of Winter was assumed.