312 Beyond the Sierras. 



ain slope.s and lillinc; iiji the vallo}' for ages after ages. The engineer car- 

 rie-j the track up this canon and Ihids his way to the crest. Tiien he winds 

 about the peaks, as best he may, until he linds an opening for a descent 

 on the other side, which is, also, through a canon, to the plain beyond. The 

 ascent and the descent are, alike, so steep as to oilier a great difticalty t<j 

 the locomotive and its load. On the northern slope of Tehachapi the track 

 drops down 1,700 feet in a distance of eleven miles; and the southern de- 

 clivity is almost as great. 



In passing again through the Mijjave desert, I will only pause to men- 

 tion a single fact. It seems that in those places on the earth's surface which 

 appear to be least auspicious there is still, a.s if by caprice, some great ele- 

 ment of wealth. While stopping, on a subsequent journey, at the town of 

 Mojave, I siw some heavy wagons coming in across the desert from the 

 east. They were discharging their load at the station into some freight cars 

 for San Francisco, and the load was borax, pure enough to be put into the 

 druggists' jars. Those wagons had come across the desert a distance of a 

 hundred and twenty miles, from Death Valley ; and I learned that the borax 

 miners at that place are now taking up ten tons of their mineral daily. 

 Death Valley is one of the cheerful names which the Californians, that is, 

 the American Californians, frequently bestow on their places of importance. 

 I had the pleasure of looking on a town near San Bernardino which goes by 

 the exhilarating name of Tombstone. How great is the diflerence in the 

 temper and spirit of the men who have conferred these names to that of the 

 old tonsured padres who called everything San and Santa! The rough ad- 

 venturer, vehement in manner, bearded like a pard, pick on shoulder and 

 shovel in hand, defiant alike of nature and her fiercest creatures, with a 

 half-sarcastic and half-humorous recklessness, calls one place Death Valley 

 and another Tombstone ; but your ancient padre called his mountain San 

 Bernardino and his town The Queen of the Angels. Such is the contrast 

 of national life in its native aspects. 



Speaking of the Angels, we arrive there on our south bound voyage on 

 the afternoon of the Oth of February. We have a stop of less than an hour, 

 and do not venture into the city. On the platform of the stiition the writer 

 had the pleasure of seeing, for the first time in his life, an ideal Indian. I 

 had become skeptical about the existence of such a creature anywhere in the 

 world. I now denounce myself before you all for my unbelief. The ideal 

 Indian is a fact, for I hive seen him with my eyes, though I did not touch 

 him with my hands. Here is his portrait, as well as I can draw it in words : 

 He is a Yuma, about six feet and two inches in height. He is absolutelj' 

 straight. He is symmetrical in every part. I think I never saw so perfect 

 a form except among the old Greek mirbles of the Castellani collection at 

 the Centennial Exposition. His movement is indescrib.ible. It is an ani- 

 mal movement — leopard-like. Though he maintains his upright position 

 perfectly in walking, he seems to give down and rise with a kind of spring 

 from foot to foot. He is swarthy to the last degree, and has a truly Indian 



