Mr. Hutchinson had the Duke out early, because it is one of the obligations to see the sun rise, reflected in the Mirror Lake—if you can. There is no fear of cloud or rain. In the Mirror Lake is reflected—or was as we saw it—the precipice at the other side of the Valley, the bulk of Mount Watkins (so called from a photographer who has been daring and successful in his renderings of the Yosemite), and all the surrounding scenery. Once a friend and I saw a cow on its back in the air, by the shore of a Highland lake. The surface was smooth as that of the Mirror before us now. It was flapping its tail from side to side, and its forelegs were up in the sky. We could not make it out at first. There was, in fact, a cow standing near the water of the loch; and what we saw was a reflection of the animal, actually stronger and better defined than the object itself. So it was with the reflections in the Mirror Lake; but when the sun rose over the cliff and we looked at the water, the glare was too dazzling. "It was," as Mr. Wright remarked, "like the electric light." There were curious optical effects produced, some being troubled with purple, others with green or yellow in their eyes, after a vain attempt to look at the reflection, but that did not last long.
We returned to breakfast to make an early start for Union and Glacier Points on ponies. Among the company at the hotel, introduced by Mr. Hutchinson, there was a young lady who was well acquainted with the Valley, and who proved to be a very agreeable companion in our mountain ride; but it was not long ere she was candid enough to let it be known that she did not visit the Yosemite out of love of the picturesque and beautiful, but that she was interested in the sale of photographs of the Valley, and was, in fact, a very persuasive and efficient agent of a firm in San Francisco, who had thus established an outlying picket of great activity and vigilance; and I am sure we all hope she may always be as successful with the visitors as she was with us. Of what we saw from the Glacier Point I must leave others to write or speak. It is reached by a zigzag on the mountain-side—a peculium of the maker, and all the "trails," as they are called, in the valley are the property of individuals or firms who are paid by tariff, and we heard "Eleven gone up before—Duke Sutherland, Lady Green, Sir Green, Mr. Wright, Mr. Russell, Mr. Jerome coming! Sixteen coming up behind!" On the plateau behind the cliffs, from which you look down on the Valley and at the snowfields on the mountain ranges opposite, there is a log house and shanty, and there we had a mountain meal ere we began the descent.
Nothing in the way of riding is more disagreeable than going down a very sharp mountain-side on a pony not, for all you know, very sure-footed, and so instead of riding, I resolved to walk, now and then taking a short cut, to the great discomfiture of feet and boots, although it is three thousand feet to the bottom, and make the best of my way and the most of the road, which is very fair, down the zig zags. I reached the plain thoroughly hot and tired, and bathed in perspiration, in fifty-seven minutes. The horsekeeper, who came down with the rest of the party, seemed to have been affected by the rarity of the atmosphere or something else up at the mountain hostelry, for he insisted on it that I had ridden down, and demanded his horse. "What the thunder, Russell, have you done with my horse?" he asked again and again. Satisfied for the time by my assurances that I had not ridden at all, he went off, and then, thinking over the matter, came back again to repeat his question, till I told him I would not answer it any more. He was an amusing fellow in his way, and affable. He called the Duke "Sutherland," now and then putting Mr. before it. As he was watering his horses, he said: "Here, Mister Sutherland, lay hold of the bucket, will you, whilst I take a turn at this one." And the Duke did so with alacrity. It was a day of incessant activity. No sooner had the mountain party come down than they were off again to drive through the Valley. The rest of our party had already executed masterly investigations at the foot of all the waterfalls; admired the Bridal Veil and the Widow's Tear, as one cascade is satirically termed, "because," says the guide, "it dries up in six months;" had driven and ridden everywhere and seen everything, and we had to do the same; but it would need a week of conscientious work to exploit the Valley thoroughly. At half-past 7, the dinner hour, the little inn was swarming with people; the stage had arrived with fresh contingents. Every place was full, and what with the clatter of knives and forks, the clamour of waiters, the tumult of voices laughing and talking, it was scarcely possible to conceive that a few short years ago this valley was in the exclusive possession of the Indian and the wild beast. There is now, however, a great conflict of interests, and Mammon is holding his revels in the Valley. The State has voted a certain sum of money, twenty-five thousand dollars, I think, to buy up the interests of the trail-makers; that is, those who struck out and made paths to the various objects of attraction; but no success has yet been attained in the negotiations, and, indeed, I should think it a very bad investment for most of them to accept their share of such a sum. Macaulay, for example, who made the path up to the point from which we descended to-day, must make many hundreds of dollars in the height of the season, as he charges so much a visitor, and, besides, has a restaurant where they take their meals at the top.
Next day (June 5th) we left the Yosemite with the satisfactory assurance that we had made the most of our time, though we could not believe we had done it justice. There were some small "nuages" on the face of our "Mirror Lake," caused by changes in the mode of conveyance; but we found six horses and one of the coaches of the country were better than four horses and two carriages of less capacity. Yosemite, I may tell my readers, means "Grizzly Bear" (it may be "Great Grizzly Bear"); but we only heard of one having been thereabouts for a long time, and I believe it was thoroughly tamed. After a glorious day in the woods, clambering up the steep from the Valley, and then on by the road—the only one—to Clarke's, halted there for the night, when we returned from a ceremonious visit to the "Big Trees." We had a most delightful ride from Bruce's, and a hard canter back through the woods on capital ponies, full of life and action, and very sure-footed, but rather inclined to have their own way, which was not always that of the rider. We turned into bed at Bruce's, quite delighted with our expedition, and rather anxious to see the road we had traversed in the dark by the garish light of day. Every traveller's tale, and every guide-book of recent date relating to this part of the world, has a full account of the dimensions, number, appearance, and condition of these wonders of the world. They are either prostrate, mutilated, or decaying; not one has survived the stormy life he must have led for some 3000 years—a few hundreds more or less do not signify. Those which remain upright are scarred by fire and lightning, and drop their monster arms, hung with ragged foliage and sheets of bright moss, mournfully over the ground where their trunks will repose in time to come. I cannot conceive any object of the kind so magnificent as one of those Washingtonias in the full vigour of mature treehood; but we could only fancy what it must have been like by measuring the stems, for there was not anywhere in the forest a tree to be seen which had not suffered. The best way to visit the scene—for it may well be called so—is to strike out from the road on the way to the Yosemite before the halt at Bruce's; but the hotel-keepers and stage-drivers will persuade the stranger, if they can, to defer the excursion till his return from the Valley, so as to make a half-day more out of him.
June 6th.—All up at 5 o'clock, and off soon after 6 A.M. The first stage, eleven miles, we did in two hours and ten minutes—a very pretty road; the second stage, eight miles, in forty-four minutes. The ravages made by fires are most deplorable. We had passed through this great forest track in the dark, but now seen in the morning light, the trunks of magnificent trees rotting on the ground, or standing upright with lifeless arms, consumed at the base, were visible everywhere. It is difficult to find out the exact truth about the cause of these fires. Some few people said "it was the Indians," but the weight of testimony attributes them to the shepherds, who for the most trifling purposes kindle a great fire. In some of the large trees they have hollowed out regular chambers, and of course the tree dies. Such waste of timber! For mile after mile we passed scenes of desolation which ere long those who allowed them will have cause to regret. From time to time we encountered on the road trains of waggons drawn by teams of handsome mules with bells, and had occasion to admire the economy of labour exhibited in the management, by which the driver is enabled to work a powerful break with one hand whilst he drives with the other. The next stage, of fourteen miles, was over an exceedingly bad road; but the horses were good, and we rattled along at a capital speed down towards the plain. Once the quick-eyed driver, pulling up suddenly, said, "See that rattle?" leaped down and made towards the bush; and as we followed him, sure enough we heard distinctly the noise of the snake, which he had intercepted on its way to a rabbit hole. It took refuge in a clump of bushes with gnarled roots, and coiled itself round one of the branches; but by a course of judicious and rather nervous poking it was driven from its vantage ground, and trying to escape was killed by the driver with a blow of his whip, followed by a good many unnecessary strokes from the rest of the party. It was over three feet long, and had just been making an evening meal upon a rabbit, which it had left where we had startled it; and it was evident from its swollen appearance that it had been for some time engaged in the warren close at hand.
At 10.20 we reached Fresno, which is what the Americans call "quite a place," containing not only an hotel, a restaurant, and a store, but a shop where photographs were exhibited. The chef-d'œuvre, a portrait of a Spanish lady 140 years of age, living at Los Angeles, did not, however, commend itself to our taste. We halted at Coarse Gold at 11.40, and left at 12.35. Mr. Jerry Loghlan—who excused himself for not working on the ground that "there was no use in it, as there was nothing to be had," the mines being worked "out"—whose acquaintance we had made on the way up, a huge, broad-shouldered vaurien, was still hanging about with his specimens of quartz, gold, and rattlesnakes' tails, and a black eye recently acquired in battle.
After a long, hot, and dusty drive, it was with no small gratification we made out on the flat the houses of Madera, and after a time the carriages of the special train. The air is so bright and pure that the distances are very deceptive, and it was nearly 5 o'clock P.M. before we reached the station, which had been visible for more than an hour previously. It was pleasant news to hear that the little German barber at the way-side had got baths all ready. In the rear of his shop there was a row of apartments, each provided with a clean zinc bath, hot and cold water to turn on at discretion, and an abundance of towels. This in the centre of a waste seemed very creditable to the civilisation of the people. I should like to know in what part of Europe you would get similar comfort under similar circumstances. I am afraid there are many parts of the British Islands where a traveller would demand such a luxury in vain. And the barber was there to shave those who needed it, and to give you all the news of the day if you wanted it. He was a Prussian, and he grinned from ear to ear as, in reply to my question whether he had served, he said: "Serve, indeed! Not I. I came away and escaped from all that nonsense. There is not a king or an emperor or a prince that I would fight for. Why should I?" "But," said I, "you would have to fight for the Republic here if it were in danger; and that would not be fighting for your fatherland." "Yes," said he, "it would, for this is my fatherland now. But I do not want to fight for it either if I can help it. Fighting is nonsense."
Our excellent stewards received us, if not with open arms, with smiling faces. The carriages were trim and clean and fresh, the tables spread out, and all kinds of dainties provided for the evening meal. We rested quietly for the night in the siding at Madera, and got under weigh at 5 o'clock on the morning of June 7th, the train being timed so as to reach San Francisco at 12.30.
CHAPTER III.
SAN FRANCISCO.
The Palace Hotel—General McDowell—Palo-Alto—The "Hoodlums"—The Real Sir Roger—Exiles in the Far West—The Chinese Population—For and Against them—The Sand Lot—Fast Trotters—The Sea Lions—The Diamond Palace—The Coloured Population—"Eastward Ho!"