The heart of the Father had been bored out, and the hollow converted into a drive, admitting a horse and rider for eighty-seven feet, and allowing them room to turn and go back. I had the pleasure of taking this novel ride, allowing my horse to be led.
Many of my readers have seen, and most of them have heard of the novel dancing-hall in the heart of one of these denizens of the forest, which admits four quadrilles upon its floors, and can imagine the romance of "tripping the light fantastic toe" amid such surroundings. Another tree had been sawed into tablets, upon which each visitor left a name or record. The day previous to our visit, a little boy of eight years old had visited the grove. When his bright eyes rested for a time upon the tablet, his little fingers grasped a piece of chalk, and he readily wrote: "And God said, let there be a Big Tree, and there was a Big Tree."
We looked admiringly upon the "Twin Trees" named for Ingomar and Parthenia, and perhaps like these lovers of old, embodied "two hearts that beat as one." During our three days visit we left no tree unexamined, each one being fraught with individuality, and each in living language addressing our hearts in its own characteristic sentiment.
These veterans varied in age from twelve hundred to twenty-five thousand years, and for their accumulated cycles commanded veneration.
After fully satisfying our love of sight seeing, and taking time to fully contemplate the beauty and sublimity of the wonders, we returned by way of Sonora and Columbia to our temporary home in Sacramento, not only satisfied but highly gratified by our tour.
CHAPTER XXIX.
"Dared I but say a prophecy,
As sang the holy men of old,
Of rock-built cities yet to be
Along these shining shores of gold,
Crowding athirst into the sea;
What wondrous marvels might be told!
Enough to know that empire here
Shall burn her loftiest, brightest star;
Here art and eloquence shall reign
As o'er the wolf-reared realm of old;
Here learned and famous from afar,
To pay their noble court, shall come,
And shall not seek or see in vain,
But look on all with wonder dumb."
Once more away from Sacramento we visited Marysville, which is a beautiful brick town, laid out with great regularity and width of street, each house nestling in flower-garden and shade, and is a place of extensive manufactures and trade. We went from there to Colusa, where I reaped a rich harvest of gain. Indeed I never found a people more lavish in the expenditure of money, seeming to value it only for the good it dispensed.
Leaving Colusa, elated with the success we had met, we journeyed to Marysville in a very happy state of mind that was doomed to undergo a severe reverse on our arrival. When we started there were three hundred dollars in "hard money" in my trunk, and when we arrived in Marysville my heart sank within me and I could feel the blood leave the surface and my face grow deadly cold when I learned that my trunk, which we had seen stowed in the "boot" of the stage on starting, was not there on our arrival. After a few moments, in which I considered what should be done, I went to the stage agent, who telegraphed back to Colusa, and, after an hour of deep and painful suspense, the answer came back that the trunk was safe. By some singular omission the straps of the boot had not all been buckled and my trunk had fallen out. It was picked up by some honest farmer, who, believing that it belonged to a passenger in the stage, had sent it to the office. The next morning it came to me, and I was amply compensated for the delay in the kindness of the agent, who not only expressed great regret for the mishap, but voluntarily defrayed all extra expense incurred.