Honey Lake belied the sweetness of its name. It was a small sheet of muddy water, but emptying into it was a sparkling river, or creek, known as Susan's River, which, meandering through an emerald valley and watering many a meadow, gave unwonted beauty to a scene the like of which had not been gazed upon by the toil-worn plainsmen for many a day. Here, too, we got our first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada.
After the privation and poverty of the desert, the wild abundance of the forests of the Sierra was luxury indescribable. We camped by crystal waterfalls with rank and succulent grasses all about us; overhead were the spreading branches of noble pines, and our camp-fires were heaped with an extravagance of fuel. But we soon found how hard it was to climb the mountain-range; and when, after a day's solid rest and comfort, we reached the crest of the ridge, we saw that the trail pitched almost perpendicularly over the sharp backbone of the Sierra. Two or three trees that grew by the place where the track led to the brink were scarred and worn nearly through by ropes that had been wound around them to let down the heavy wagons into the abyss below. The cattle were taken out of the teams and driven down through the undergrowth of thickets; and then, making a rope fast to the rear axle of each wagon, one wagon at a time was carefully lowered down the steep declivity.
That arduous labor over, we passed through the "Devil's Corral" and camped in Mountain Meadows, a very paradise of a spot, in which it seemed as if we were surrounded by every luxury imaginable, albeit we had nothing but what uncultivated nature gave us.
The vale of the new Eldorado was tawny and gold with sear grass and wild oats. In the distance rose the misty mountain wall of the Coast Range; nearer a heroic outline of noble peaks broke the yellow abundance of the valley's floor. This was the group known as Sutter's Buttes, near the base of which was Nye's Ranch (now Marysville), the goal of our long tramp. Dogtown, Inskip, and a little host of other mining hamlets, claimed our attention briefly as we swept down into the noble valley, on whose farther edge, by the historic Yuba, we found our last camp.
Here we met the wave of migration that earlier broke on the shores of the Pacific. In the winter of 1849-50 two hundred and fifty vessels sailed for San Francisco from the ports of the Atlantic States; and their multitudes of men were reinforced by other multitudes from other lands. In a single year the population of the State was augmented by an influx of more than one hundred thousand persons, arriving by sea and by land.
