Backwards March, 339 



•way alone to the Oakland boat and the Central Pacific tiain. The sun is up, 

 and the bay is as bright as that sea of glass which St. John saw at Patmos. 

 The water-fowl are skimming its surface. The air is balmy, and the heaven 

 is blue as I take my last look at the beautiful water and the surrounding 

 shores. Yerba Buena, fare thou well, and be thou happy, and be good, 

 also, if you can ! 



My programme for the home run is by way of the Central Pacific and 

 the Denver & Rio Grande. I still promise myself much admirable scenery 

 and many points of interest on the journey. By noonday we are again at 

 Sacramento. I say we editorially and out of courtesy to my fellow unknown 

 travelers. As for our own pilgrims, they are all scattered into isolation and 

 silence. Not one is aboard this train, except the writer, and he by no means 

 enjoys his own company, being rather melancholy at the backward turn. 

 At Sacramento we dine ; and here I meet, by accident, at the table, my friend 

 Hon. M. M. Estee, and also the popular Governor Waterman, whom we did 

 not have the pleasure to meet on our former visit to the city. 



After leaving Sacramento, the Central Pacific heads for the mountains, 

 and strikes them at the little town of Colfax. You enter the Sierras proper 

 -at Clipper Gap, and begin an ascent through a series of scenes of great beauty 

 and grandeur. At this place I first saw, in its full native sublimity, the 

 mountain forest of California. It is of pine and spruce, and one must needs 

 be greatly impressed with these splendid trees, crowded together in vast 

 areas and prevailing even to the summit of the Sierras. The passage of the 

 Central Pacific over these heights carries the traveler through some of the 

 wildest landscapes to be seen in California. I greatly enjoyed the passage, 

 and, being in a day car, almost by myself, I found opportunity to study the 

 scenery, and presently to observe the mining camps and mountain towns 

 with more care than I had been able to bestow on many other localities. 

 You may see in these parts the sluices which the miners have constructed, 

 their reservoirs of water, and their mining apparatus, on either hand, as you 

 fly along between and around the Nevada heights. I have not anywhere 

 seen American life in so wild and free an aspect as here in the mouxitain 

 camps and Swiss-like hamlets of the Sierras. In our brief stops at the sta- 

 tions I noted with pleasure the tone and rhythm of human character in these 

 almost inaccessible places. I like the mountaineers. There is a stalwart 

 honesty and patriotism about them which will long preserve a nest for 

 human freedom in the hill-tops and fastnesses. It was to me a matter of 

 regret that the after part of this section of the homeward journey was cov- 

 ered by darkness. I had no opportunity to take a view of Ogden, being 

 obliged to satisfy myself, or rather dissatisfy myself, with a mere glimpse of 

 the city as she sat obscurely in the gloom of night. 



From Ogden to Salt Lake City the run is brief. You are already trans- 

 ferred to the splendid narrow-gauge road called the Denver & Rio Grande. 

 About midnight you are lodged at Salt Lake, and, with the early morning, 

 gain your first view of what is perhaps the most marvelous landscape in the 



