And there was a majesty about their advance that fascinated me, for every bound, though it carried them twelve or fifteen feet, was so free and light that they seemed to move by machinery rather than by prodigious strength of muscle. But it suddenly occurred to me that they were crossing my path, and I saw, moreover, that our relative speeds, if maintained, might probably bring us into actual collision at the point of intersection. But it was not for me to yield the road, and the wolves thought it was not for them. And so we approached, the wolves keeping exact time and leaping together, as if trained to do it, and then, without swerving a hair's-breadth from their original course they bounded across the path only a few feet behind my camel. It was superb courage on their part, and as an episode of wild-beast life, one of the most picturesque and dramatic I ever witnessed.
The next station we halted at was Wadsworth, a "hard place," so men say, where revolvers are in frequent use and Lynch is judge. Here the broad-faced Bannack chief got down, and, followed by his tag-rag retinue, disappeared into the cluster of wigwams which we saw pitched behind the station. I noticed a man standing here with a splendid cactus in his hand, covered with large magenta blossoms, and this reminded me to note the conspicuous change in the botany that about here takes place. The flowers that had borne us company all through Utah and now and then brightened the roadside in Nevada had disappeared, and were replaced by others of species nearly all new to me. I saw here for the first time a golden-flowered cactus and a tall lavender-coloured spiraea of singular beauty. A little beyond Wadsworth the change becomes even more marked, for striking the Truckee river, we exchange desolation for pretty landscape, and the desert for green bottom lands. The alteration was a welcome one, and some of the glimpses, even if we had not passed through such a melancholy region, would have claimed our admiration on their own merits. The full-fed river poured along a rapid stream, through low-lying meadow-lands fringed with tall cotton-wood, the valley sometimes narrowing so much that the river took up all the room, and then widening out so as to admit of large expanses of grass and occasional fields of corn. And so to Greeno, where we supped heartily off "Truckee trout," one of the best fish that ever wagged a fin. As we got back into the cars it was getting dark, for with the usual luck of travel the Central Pacific has to run its trains so as to give passengers ugly Nevada by day and beautiful California by night.
Awaking next morning was a wonderful surprise. We had gone to sleep in Nevada in early summer, and we awoke in California late in autumn! In Utah, two days ago, the crops had only just begun to flush the ground with green. Here, to-day, the corn-fields were the sun-dried stubble of crops that had been cut weeks ago!
And the first glimpses of it were fortunate ones, for when I awoke it was in a fine park-like, undulating country, studded with clumps of oak-trees, but one continuous cornfield. Great mounds of straw and stacks of corn dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see, and already the fields were alive with carts and men all busy with the splendid harvest. After a while came vast expanses of meadow, prettily timbered, in which great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were grazing, ranches such as I had never seen before. And then we passed some houses, broad-eaved and verandahed, with capacious barns standing in echelon behind, and all the signs of an ample prosperity, deep shaded in walnut-trees laden with nuts, overrun by vines already heavy with clusters, and brightened by clumps of oleanders ruddy with blossom. And then came the corn-fields again, an unbroken expanse of stubble, yellow as the sea-sand, and seemingly as interminable. What a country! It is a kingdom in itself.
And its rivers! The American River soon came in sight, rolling its stately flood along between brakes of willow and elder, and aspen, and then the Sacramento, a noble stream. And the two conspire and join together to take liberties with the solid earth, swamp it into bulrush beds by the league together, and create such jungles as almost rival the great Himalaya Terai. And so to Sacramento.
Sacramento was en fete, for it was the race week. So bunting was flapping from every conspicuous point, and everything and everybody wore a whole holiday, morning-cocktail, go-as-you-please sort of look. This fact may account for the very ill-mannered conductor who boarded us here.
I am sitting in the smoking-car. Enter conductor with his mouth too full of tobacco to be able to speak. He points at me with his thumb. I take no notice of his thumb. He spits in the spittoon at my feet and jerks his thumb towards me again. I disregard his thumb. "Ticket!" he growls. I give him my ticket. He punches it and thrusts it back to me so carelessly and suddenly that it falls on the floor. He takes no notice, but passes on into the car. I take out my pocket-book and make a note;—
"Such a man as this goes some way towards discrediting the administration of a whole line. It seems a pity therefore to retain his services."
However, of Sacramento, I was very sorry not to be able to stay there, for next to the Los Angeles country I had been told that it was one of the finest "locations" in all California, and I can readily believe it, for the botany of the place is sub-tropical, and snow and sunstroke are equally unknown. Fruits of all kinds grow there in delightful abundance, and I cherish it therefore as a personal grudge against Sacramento that there was not even a blackberry procurable at breakfast.
Passing from Sacramento, and remarking as we go, the patronage which that vegetable impostor, the eucalyptus globulus (or "blue-gum" of Australia) has secured, both as an ornamental—save the mark!—and a shade-tree, two purposes for which by itself the eucalyptus is specially unfitted, we find ourselves once more in a world given up to harvesting. A monotonous panorama of stubble and standing crops, with clumps of pretty oak timber studding the undulating land, leads us to the diversified approaches to San Francisco.